Places in the Dark Read Free

proud of what he’d done, then looked at our father, no doubt expecting the same admiring response.
    Instead, he encountered a solemn face, stern, dark eyes.
    “Don’t you think that was rather foolhardy, William?” my father asked.
    Billy stared at him quizzically.
    I sensed trouble on the wing, set down my knife and fork, and waited expectantly.
    “You have to think before you act,” my father said. “That’s what the mind is for.” He tapped his forehead to emphasize the point. “It reins in our impulses. And if you don’t pay heed to it, then…”
    “What are you telling him, Walter?”
    It was my mother’s voice, firm, determined, a sword flourished in the air between them.
    I knew that the old battle was about to erupt again, my father in command of reason’s stolid force, my mother the determined general of passion’s fiery legions. It had been going on for years, though the end seemed already settled, the spoils divided, I the sturdy coin claimed by my father, Billy my mother’s golden treasure.
    “What’s that, my dear?” my father replied, his tone not so much condescending as already seeking to dampen the fuse he’d unintentionally lit. It was a tone I’d cometo expect on such occasions. For although my father could appear impressive, a man of strong opinions who peppered his talk with learned citations, I’d early recognized that he was, in fact, curiously weak. When faced with confrontation, he was always quick to retreat, particularly before the formidable and unbending figure of my mother.
    She faced him from the opposite end of our dining table, blue eyes leveled with resolve. “Do you think Billy should have let Jenny drown? Is that what
you
would have done, Walter?”
    “Of course not.”
    “But why not? Wouldn’t you have controlled any impulse to save her?”
    “I’m not twelve years old, Mary,” my father replied. He glanced at me, his usual ally at such moments, but I offered nothing. “William could have drowned. That’s the long and the short of it. He could have died. Would
you
have wanted that?”
    True to her nature, my mother chose not to answer a question she recognized as purely rhetorical. “The real issue is not whether Billy might have drowned,” she replied. “It’s how he should live his life.”
    “And how is that?” my father asked, folding his napkin now, placing it tidily on the table beside his plate.
    “Certainly not by ‘controlling his impulses,’” my mother said.
    “Mary, I was only making the point that—”
    “I know precisely the point you were making.”
    “I’m not sure you do.”
    “That Billy should live as a coward.”
    “That was not my point at all.”
    “You can dress it up any way you like, Walter, but it amounts to the same thing.”
    My father adjusted his fork, spoon, water glass. He said softly, “What do you think he should have done?”
    “Exactly what he did,” my mother answered.
    “Risk his life?”
    “Follow his passion.” Her gaze fell proudly on my brother. “We’re not always directed by our minds.”
    “Follow his passion,” my father repeated, allowing only the slightest skepticism in his voice. “Without rules of any kind.” A small, faintly timid smile fluttered onto his lips. “The voice of the apostate, my dear.”
    It was a reference to the fact that my mother had been raised a Catholic but had long ago rejected that faith, substituting the romantic poets for the Holy Father, their wild verse for the harsh injunctions of Mother Church.
    “Call it whatever you wish,” my mother snapped.
    “Do you really believe, Mary, that passion can guide a life?” my father added, his voice barely above a whisper.
    My mother stared at him unflinchingly. “Yes. Absolutely.”
    “So the heart is the only reference one should consult?” my father asked, now assuming a professorial manner, as if trying to neutralize the confrontation he’d unwittingly started and now wished only to