My Father's Study

I was five years old and had not yet grasped the extent of my father’s failings. As children do, I accepted the world as I found it. Here I was, flitting up and down the carpeted halls of our family home, skipping between the patches of light refracted through the high windows. There was my father, nestled somewhere in the corner of our home known to me only as his study, wholly absorbed in whatever affairs occupy men in their private moments. It seemed natural if not inevitable that we should exist on opposite sides of the stately French doors that rose from floor to ceiling at the end of the hall. In time, I learned that while those doors were invariably locked, rattling their handles was a reliable method of summoning my mother, who had the uncanny ability to materialize just as mischief was being done.

* * *

By the time I was twelve, I had come to understand my father as a friendly neighbor, one that could be counted on in good times, if not the bad. Quick with a kind word should the two of us happen to cross paths in the second-floor hallway, ready to politely slip back into his study should the conversation snag on an unplanned lull. He always visited at dinner time, descending from his secluded perch to sit elbow-to-elbow at our shabby round table with the in-laid Lazy Susan that couldn’t quite hold three place settings comfortably. He would compliment the chef if my mother made it, or praise the virtues of familial support if I had made it.

I stopped shaking doorknobs that I knew wouldn’t turn, but the mystery of a forbidden room in my own home was too much for a young boy’s mind to bear. One day, I realized that given the geometry of our home and that my father’s study was situated in the northwest corner, the room almost certainly had an exterior window. Thinking myself clever, I first counted out the windows inside, then army crawled behind our hedges to sneak a glimpse into the verboten chamber. To my elation, the blinds were drawn only seven-eighths of the way and if I turned my head completely sideways, I could make out the suggestion of a heavy wooden desk, flanked by a sagging bookshelf. The next day, the slats were shut tight and there they remained for many years.

Each morning when I passed by on my way to school, my father’s study seemed a stoic refuge, so completely quiet and still that I suppose I would have never known if my father clambered out the window and left our home entirely. However, whatever business was conducted in there seemed to reach its peak around midnight, with an amber glow seeping out from under the door and some surprisingly boisterous chatter spilling out into the hall. Sometimes, I secretly set an alarm just to press my ear to the glass, listening to the distant rumble of the night voices.

* * *

On my eighteenth birthday, I entered my father’s study for the first time in my life. The wooden doors stuck in their pegs and cracked in protest, as if affronted. My father had never been much for didactics, largely trusting my educators to expand my mind to life’s possibilities. He must have believed that the tacit endorsement of a closed door was capable of saying what he could not; that I was free to pick through these possibilities without reprisal and that he was proud of me. All the same, he matter-of-factly requested I meet him in his study at precisely six o’clock in the evening, as if we often met and talked, as if the room he spent all his time in had not been shuttered to the outside world for eighteen years. His study was smaller than I expected, dim and airless. The floorplan was roughly circular, with two rickety bookshelves overburdened with aging textbooks set behind a squat, hulking desk that was much too large and dominated the space with its ugliness. The opposite wall was covered in two tidy rows of oil portraits, each frame embossed with the name of the long-deceased family member depicted above. The portraits were of uniformly poor quality, painted in a dark, greasy palette as if the artist had run low on supplies and decided to make do with black and brown alone. My father hefted the only chair over his slab of a desk and gestured for me to sit, before finding a spot to lean against the wall that didn’t threaten to upset either the precarious shelves nor the drab paintings.

“So, this is it,” I said, determined not to let curiosity get the better of my bitterness.

“Oh, don’t be like that. I need to tell you what my father told me when I was your age and company will be arriving soon.” My father clasped his hands, a picture of level-headed virtue.

“That you’re sorry? I suppose it can’t be that if it’s a family tradition.”

I expected, or wanted, him to be angry. I knew the way he rolled his tongue back behind his teeth before ratcheting up the volume, like a cornered snake. But he just stared at me, looking genuinely wounded.

“I always thought I’d have more time,” he finally mustered. “This room has a way of changing your perspective.

“Well then, change my perspective.”

Before he could respond, the rows of family portraits began to judder and rasp against the wall. The ruckus only grew in intensity as frames shimmied about, scraping against each other, groaning and babbling. To my satisfaction, the disturbance did seem to draw my father’s exasperation, as the beginnings of his snake-glare pulled at the corners of his mouth.

“Hell, it doesn’t really matter when you’re about to see it anyways. The paintings talk at night. Say hi to your relatives.”

And indeed, they did. Soon the room was awash in overlapping conversations as each family member tried to speak at once, then tried again just considerably louder after hearing the competition. After their initial exorcism, the ghastly paintings came to rest with no visible difference from having undergone the ordeal. The only change was auditory - voices I hadn’t heard in years, or in some cases had never heard at all, emanated from the moribund oils. The effect was unfortunate.

One voice rose above the rest and seemed to be trying to restore order, though it was difficult to tell which painting it belonged to as all the faces were as flat and lifeless as the day that poor painter took up his brush.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen! Quiet! Have you no sense of decorum? Quiet, I said!”

I craned my neck, having decided that voice must be coming from the picture second to the right on the top row.

“Yes, that’s right. I suppose I must be your great-great-great-grandfather. Something like that at least. Welcome to my father’s study! I am the Top Councilman, please direct any inquiries to me first, as is our protocol.”

I looked back at my father, as if expecting him to be surprised.

He smiled weakly. “There’s a certain structure to how this works. We can get into it more tomorrow, tonight you just need to see it.”

A voice came from the bottom row, shrill and sputtering.

“The politics never stop with you lot! Oh, it’s too much for the boy. Oh, let’s take it slow. How convenient that he only met the esteemed Top Councilman.”

“Fine,” my father snapped, “a quick civics lesson. But it will be quick.” He gestured at one row and then the other. “Each row is empowered to elect a representative. You’ve met the Top Councilman; the Bottom Councilman requests a similar audience.”

“Oh, um, hello there Councilman.”

The Bottom Councilman tutted and harrumphed, reluctant to be mollified.

“As the current man of the house, I hold the third seat on the Council,” my father continued. “A position that you will hold soon and your son after that. Together, the Council ensures the continued security and prosperity of our family. This is why we introduce the young men of our family to the gallery when they come of age. It only affects the men of the family, you see.”

“What if I don’t have a son? Or can’t conceive at all?”

“We don’t seem to have a problem with that.”

His pursed lips made it clear that particular discussion was resolved. I suppose it was asking a lot of the old man that we resuscitate our relationship, introduce me to ancient family magic, and cover the birds and the bees all in one night.

* * *

I was thirty-three years old the first time I knocked on the door to my father’s study, demanding entry. This was a strict violation of our usual arrangement, in which I dutifully waited in the hallway for my father to unbolt the doors at exactly four in the afternoon every Tuesday and Thursday. These meetings lasted precisely one hour so as to allow my father an additional hour’s time to review his notes and prepare remarks before the gallery woke up for the evening. We had both played our roles faithfully ever since he revealed the miraculous contents of his study. He, the esteemed representative of our humble household and me, well, something of an errand boy.

“Dad, you’ve grown old. You need to get serious about spinning off some of your responsibilities. I need time in your study if I’m to eventually take over the family business. And I need to speak privately with the paintings before it’s time to introduce my son to them.”

I made note of the setting sun, a cruel but useful bit of leverage. Neither of us seemed willing to break the leaden silence. Finally, something clicked softly behind the French doors.

“Well, you’d better come in, if you’re kicking me out.”

My father was slumped in the desk chair, kneading his bony knuckles. Little hollows pockmarked his face where it had once been full and he moved laboriously, in crabbed skitters, like a dog unaware of its tether. Years of crowded solitude had not been kind to him.

“It’s funny,” he said, “I almost didn’t know what you meant. I still think of this as my father’s study.”

“Dad, have you commissioned a painting yet? I don’t mean to be morbid, but have you even thought of what row you want to be on?”

“Of course I have,” he snapped. “It’s not that simple. The bottom row would be more politically advantageous of course, but I couldn’t see the cover of my sophomore biology textbook. I met your mother in that class, you know.”

“Can’t you just move the book?”

“Heavens, no! Never moving anything in here is one of our oldest laws. Everyone wants something or other relocated and no one getting the satisfaction maintains order. It’s a mutually assured irritation doctrine. Why do you think I keep this dreadful thing?” He tapped the desk ruefully.

“Appalling taste?”

We both laughed and it felt good to laugh together. Too late, I thought about hugging my father and letting the years fall away but the paintings were stirring and the moment had passed. Two rows of unseeing eyes meant it was time to press on.

“Seriously, Dad. We need a plan. I don’t know how this works.”

“Well, the usual way I suppose. Our family isn’t that exceptional.”

“Don’t be cute, you need to step up on this. Don’t make me paint your corpse before I can bury it. That isn’t fair.”

As expected, spectators only made the exchange more excruciating. After their noisy entrance, some of the paintings had elected to keep their mouths shut and pretend not to be in tonight, an effect that was actually quite convincing given the lack of movement in the pictures themselves. Others chatted among themselves demonstrably, no doubt hoping to make it clear that they were not eavesdropping and in fact would not even consider doing such a thing. It must be strange to have the mental faculties to realize that the proper thing to do is to make oneself scarce, but lack the necessary appendages to actually do so.

White-faced and imperious, my father snatched up his papers and walked to the door.

“The kitchen table will do just fine for me on Fridays. You can expect to receive details of my affairs within two weeks.”

I wanted to say something to soften the blow, but I knew he would never truly believe that I was just an impartial executor and not the gravedigger, reaching out with a hearty handshake even as I held my shovel behind my back.

“You did the right thing, son,” the Top Councilman said. “He’ll come around.”

* * *

It took nearly fifty-one years before my father and I had our first real argument. And all it took was decades of emotional neglect and for his immortal spirit to be transmuted into a painting! I tried to be sympathetic to the rigors of this transition, but my father was lamentably stuck in the past. As far as the family business went, he continued to advocate for action as if the old rules of globalism commerce still applied, and in matters of the family, he clung to authority that was no longer his to claim. In both cases, his advice was an unwelcome irritant.

My father’s death had gone about as well as anyone could expect. It was his liver that got him in the end; he claims it wasn’t such a bad way to go. Despite the friction between us, we had managed to hammer out the necessary details to handle his corporeal affairs. I found his instructions in a crisp, brown envelope. The only detail I changed was the open casket, as I couldn’t quite stomach the thought of seeing his face at the service, only to retire to his study and see his face again.

Ironically, I was supposed to be at the height of my powers, firmly planted as the rock of the house, inoculated to anger and grief by a lifetime of experience. I held the most powerful independent vote on the Council and enjoyed material control of my father’s study even if I was still learning to tame its politics. The truth, of course, was that I was furious with my father for dying and for dying with so much left unsaid.

Inspiriting an oil portrait is the perfect cover for this kind of duplicity, a way to leave without shouldering the burden of having left. Adding his painting to the bottom row meant that he was ostensibly available to talk every evening, but who can find the time for such a thing?

Having married late, it was time to start making plans to introduce my son to the inner workings of my father’s study. Near the end of my father’s first life, I had begrudgingly concluded that his experience might help me wrap my arms around the problem. My son was bright and distant, like a nebula drifting over some far-off corner of the night sky. I sat on the front lawn, looking upwards with my mail-order telescope, trying to plot out my impossible ascent.

“How did you handle telling me about your study?” I asked his painting, staring at its lifeless eyes as if I didn’t know the answer.

“Well, it’s no easy task,” he began, only to be interrupted by the Bottom Councilman.

“You’ve made a fine choice in joining our venerable row, I’ll tell you. And all due appreciation for hanging him up.”

A chorus of congratulations from the lower portraits, garbled with good-natured ribbing from the upper row brought home the fact that a private conversation was no longer possible. I blanched, overcome with some sense of guilt that I would perceive this as a loss.

“So,” my father said, his tone even and conversational, “how’s your mother taking it?”

* * *

I was eighty-three years, five months, and two days old when I heard my son talking to the gallery and put two and two together. I felt a fine layer of grit over my whole body, over my eyes, inside my throat, and such incredible weight pulling me down. Saying anything was exhausting, like swimming back to the surface from the bottom of a bowl of oatmeal.

“I’m here, sorry, I’m here,” I stammered, and bit back more. I realized I’d never really thought about how to make a good first impression joining my row.

My father replied from somewhere below, an indistinct dark shape rippling against a darker background. “Don’t worry, the first time’s hard on everyone.”

Several other portraits murmured in assent.

“I guess I never thought to ask about the actual mechanics of it all.”

“There’s certainly a learning curve,” the Top Councilman supplied. I tried to turn my head towards his voice and almost laughed at the strangeness of no longer knowing what that meant.

“And we don’t quite see the way we used to, do we?”

“Well, you get used to that. Learn to read it. Just takes practice,” the Bottom Councilman said.

“Yes, of course. Sorry everyone, I didn’t intend to make such an entrance. Actually, I’d planned to pick your brains about this, come to my first day prepared. I suppose I always thought I’d have more time.”