was that the negotiator and the idealist were mostly on the same side.
“How about,” Noah said, “we change the subject.”
His father smiled. “So I’m right?”
“Dad, I’m going to tell you that you’re right. You are one-hundred-percent correct. And do you know why I’m going to tell you that?”
“Because I just had a heart attack.”
“You are a very smart man.”
Max laughed. “Play to your advantages, then take the victory and don’t look back.”
This time Noah laughed along with the fleshy, temporarily grayish man with the bushy eyebrows and the salt-and-pepper hair who, by some accident of biology, was his father. And he realized that maybe they were more alike than he liked to think.
When the laughter faded, Max said, “I updated my will—”
Noah stopped him. “We’re not talking about that. You’ll probably outlive me. Let’s talk about something else. How has Tricia been holding up?”
Max shook his head. “It’s tough. She’s too young to…” He trailed off, realizing that the subject of Tricia’s age was a bit of a sore point for his son. “She’s doing all right. But why don’t you tell me what’s going on in your life. Are you still dating that architect?”
The architect would have been Harry. Noah and Harry had been more than “dating,” and Max knew it, but he couldn’t quite find the right words to advance a same-sex relationship to the next, more serious level.
And, in any event, Harry walked out of Noah’s life one year earlier and was never heard from again, which was hard to do in Washington, but he had managed it. After Harry was gone, Noah didn’t mourn; and he also didn’t feel compelled to cry about it to his family. He merely mentioned it during a phone call, almost as an after-thought. The breakup had been dismissed with the briefest of mentions and Noah—as he always did—moved on with his life. It was just one of those things that he had to put quickly and silently in the past.
Although now, with his father seemingly not even remembering the breakup, he wished he had made a slightly bigger deal over it.
“No. Harry and I split up.” He paused and added, “Quite some time ago.”
“Sorry. He seemed like a nice guy.” When Noah didn’t reply, he added, “Are you dating anyone now?”
“I’m taking a breather. There’s no rush, right?”
“Right.” There were a few moments of awkward silence until Max understood that his son was saying nothing more on the subject, then he scrambled for a new topic. “So…back to your book.”
Noah sighed. “I can’t see how I can possibly finish it. No one will talk on the record, and when they do talk, they don’t say anything. I wonder sometimes why they even bother talking to me.”
“Maybe they are talking to you. Maybe you’re just not listening.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You are the product of privilege, and you forget that sometimes. You’ve had a good life, but I’m not quite sure you appreciate exactly how good you’ve had it.” Blood was suddenly rushing to Noah’s head, but he decided to give his father a free pass for his heart attack and held his tongue.
Max continued. “Seriously. You’ve always had money and a roof. Don’t get me wrong; I was happy to provide them. And you were also privileged to be born into a family that accepted you, gay and all. How old were you? Seventeen?”
“Twenty.”
“Twenty. Young. But you told me you were gay, and still you were accepted and supported.” He waved a steady finger in Noah’s direction. “Twenty years old, and you were out, gay, and proud, with the full support of your family and no financial worries. Do you think that’s the way it happens for everyone?”
“No. I know that I had it easier than a lot of people. But if people don’t come out—”
Max slumped back into the thin pillows, dismissing the argument before Noah had a chance to start it. “I know, I know. If people don’t come out, Bush and Cheney will think no one except for you and Rosie O’Donnell are gay and they’ll put you in camps. Blah, blah, blah.”
Blah, blah, blah? Had his father, the famous lawyer and occasional social activist Max Abraham, really just dismissed his fears, diminishing them to three nonsense syllables? A Jew born at a time when millions of Jews were being exterminated in Nazi camps? A man who lived through, and protested against, McCarthyism and segregation? This was the man who was telling him that he was unrealistic to expect gay men and lesbians to show their faces?
Noah suddenly wished they were still talking about Harry.
The silence following his comment lasted an uncomfortably long time, before Max finally—and correctly—said, “I think I’ve pissed you off.”
“A little.”
“Eh, maybe it’s good to get pissed off sometimes. Right?” Noah didn’t answer. “I’m sorry, but I’m a bit tired. I didn’t mean to cause a problem here. I was just trying to point out that it’s easier for some people—you, for example—to come out than it is for others.” Max looked at Noah and winked, and Noah thought, Did he wink? Yes, he winked! Which just pissed him off even more.
“You’re a good boy,” Max said. “You’ve got passion, and—most importantly—you are right. I hope you succeed. Just…try a little patience.”
Noah could understand why other lawyers ran when his father walked into a room, because he was by turns frustrating, charming, infuriating, friendly, maddening, self-deprecating, and, finally…well, he was Max Abraham. He did whatever he could to get your goat, then embraced you before you could hate him. And then, when all was forgiven, he would whip out the needle yet again.
In this case, though, Max Abraham was apparently going to wait for the needle, because he went for the dodge…although it was an understandable dodge.
He yawned.
“I hate to end such an…interesting discussion on this note, but I’m getting tired, and I want to save some energy for Tricia. You don’t mind?”
In fact, Noah was relieved. “No, I understand.”
“We’ll pick this up later, okay?”
“Okay.” Not that picking it up again was really necessary, but Noah knew his father wouldn’t let the conversation end until he had won the argument unequivocally. They had been down this road before.
Back safely in the waiting room, Noah sent Tricia in, knowing that Max needed to talk to a young person with a more pragmatic sensibility.
And Noah wasn’t that young person. He was just his son.
Noah sat in the waiting room while Tricia visited, mostly because he had nothing else to do at 1:30 in the afternoon in a city where he no longer lived. He made another feeble attempt to leaf through his notes, but, despite his father’s avid advocacy on their behalf, still couldn’t get inside the heads of the completelashuels.
Even as he stewed over his words, he knew he had to concede to his father one point: Max Abraham, as well as Noah’s mother, had made his coming-out process an easy one. Even in their liberal and generally secular precincts of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the family dynamics involved in announcing one was gay were usually fraught with fear and loathing, both internal and external. But that wasn’t Noah’s experience. Maybe it was the innate decency of his parents, he thought, or maybe it was their interactions with openly gay men and lesbians predating Stonewall. Or maybe it was the distance they placed in their relationship—even when Noah was a child—that allowed his parents to step back and look at him not as the end product of their commingled DNA, but as just another person, the