The Tragedy of Arthur: A Novel Read Free

the rest of you, we know what it feels like and we have to give it up, breaking eggs to join you in this vain search for an omelette to absorb us.)
    Dad wasn’t gone long, that first time, and then he came back to live with us. But he went away again less than two years later.
    When we were eight or nine, after our parents were separated but before our mother remarried, she woke us early one winter Saturday. It was still dark, but that’s not saying much in a Minnesota January. She had already sprinted out to the garage to unplug the car’s core heater from the wall outlet, start the engine, and leave it to warm up as she sprinted back inside. Forced to eat and dress as if it were a school day, I crept along unwillingly, like a snail, but Dana was quickly ready, refusing food and hurrying into her coat and lunar footwear. We rode through the Minneapolis cold as the sky bleached and streetlights winked. We drove out of the city, through two-story suburbs, then one-story, through dreary flatland, past white and hibernating farms until we reached daylight and the minimum-security facility, where we were led into the Family Room, as that windowless, barred space of gray concrete was whimsically named.
    Our mother pointed out the table where we were meant to sit, and then she stepped away. I may be misremembering, or she may have said hello to him when I wasn’t looking. Either way, we were to present our belated Hanukkah gifts to him while she stayed far across the room reading the newspaper.
    Our father was brought out to us. I recall being disappointed that he wasn’t shackled. I don’t think I wanted him to suffer (although maybe I did; I don’t underestimate children’s preference for color over kindness). Rather, I was searching, I think, for some evidence of harsh treatment so that I could imagine rescuing him, or begin to accept that my crimes had led him to a dire and unjust end. Instead, his world just looked boring.
    I had spent some allowance on modeling clay and made him a diorama: the four of us together in our house (three shoe boxes cut open and taped together), our hands joined in a circle around the kitchen table, upon which was spread a vast, if not entirely recognizable, clay feast. This work expressed many of my fixations at eight years old: a reunited family, food (I was in the midst of one of my chubby spells, which correlated pretty well with his jail time), and religion (a shortlived fever, but it was climbing fast that year). The sculpture had suffered a bit in the cold, and white cracks had shot through most of the furniture and figures. I felt a round of pre-crying trembles revving up in my face. My father thanked me, complimented the “evident skill and passion involved,” pointed out his favorite parts, seemed pleased, I suppose. He promised me some lessons working with clay when he came home. He apologized that he couldn’t keep the gift where he was but asked me to protect it for him. That’s when my tears broke through the flimsy dam. I think my mother should have warned me that he wouldn’t be allowed to keep the diorama. I snuffled my promise to guard it until he was set free.
    By then Dana couldn’t keep still another minute, and had no patience for me to have some emotional attack before her big moment. “Daddy, I have to give you mine now.”
    “Can’t wait,” he said, and I thought he meant he literally could not wait because the guards were coming to haul him away.
    “You have to wait, Dad! She worked hard for you,” I sputtered, rushing to protect Dana from heartbreak.
    “Artie, it’s okay: I can’t wait, meaning I’m excited. Let’s have it, Dana.”
    Her eyes were wide and she stood up at the table, her handsclasped in front of her chest. She began Portia’s big speech from
The Merchant of Venice
, Act IV, Scene i. She shouted it at first, directly at one of the startled corrections officers standing next to the grated door leading back to the cells. The guard