Fortunate Son

Eric graduated from Hensley High at the age of fifteen. He applied to UCLA, was accepted, and moved in to live with Christie. Six months later Christie bore their daughter, Mona. He got a job at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club as their youngest tennis pro and spent his spare time restring-ing fancy rackets for the wealthier clients. He made good money in tips, and his salary would do. He enjoyed his daughter, was rather perplexed by the deep love Christie felt for him, and drifted further and further away from his father.

He majored in economics because he liked numbers and the objective approach that dominated the department. He didn’t feel overworked, and if some paper came due that he didn’t have time to finish, Christie helped him by typing, reading books for him, or even writing the essays.

He didn’t feel guilty taking her help — after all, he was working twenty-five hours a week, sharing the housework, and carrying a full load at school.

His father had told Eric that if he wanted to be a parent that he had to learn to support himself. The boy didn’t mind.

Actually he felt relieved when he was no longer expected to spend time at his father’s house. Ahn still made him uncomfortable, and he felt guilty about his father’s empty life.

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O ne n i g h t E ri c and Christie were sitting in the beach-house living room, with eleven-month-old Mona rolling and crawling on the couch between them.

Christie said, “Isn’t she beautiful?”

Eric thought, Yes, she is, though he didn’t say it.

“She’s so happy because we love her,” Christie added.

Eric wondered about love. He felt respect for his father but not anything that he’d describe as the kind of love that he’d read about in books and saw in movies. He had more feeling for Ahn, but this too was not love — it was the remnant of fear that he felt when he was just a child. The only love that he’d ever really experienced was for Branwyn and then Thomas —

who in Eric’s mind was a part of Branwyn. There was something else about Thomas that Eric felt drawn to. It was a quality that Eric remembered but couldn’t quite describe; Thomas was smart or clear or maybe even unafraid. He had something that Eric lacked, but the Golden Boy (a nickname they’d given him at college) couldn’t ever say for sure what it was.

Looking upon his straw-headed, violet-eyed daughter, Eric realized that he felt delight but not the kind of love that he knew as a child.

Even with Christie, whom he slept with every night, there was no driving passion. He compared his life to the pleasant garden that Ahn would take Eric and Thomas to when they were small. There was a big lawn and stone animals for the boys to play on. But very soon Eric became bored with the pretty grass and the whimsical creatures. He remembered that it was only Thomas who made those days bearable.

Thomas would talk to the animals, and they would tell him 1 8 5

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stories about what happened at night when all the people were gone. When the lawn became dark, the elephant battled the lion. Every night they fought and roared, baring claw and tusk, Thomas said in his breathless whisper, but no one could see them because no one was allowed in the children’s park after sunset.

At that moment Eric could see Thomas standing there in the middle of the broad lawn while Ahn sewed on the parents’ bench, chatting with the other domestics.

Eric recalled a day when he and Thomas were on top of the elephant, the largest animal in the menagerie. Thomas had raced Eric to the top, and for the first time the smaller boy won. But when he got up there he slipped on the slick head and fell to the ground below with a loud thump. Eric asked his brother if he was okay, but Thomas didn’t even cry.

It wasn’t until the next morning that Branwyn noticed the swelling on his leg and took him to the emergency room.

“Eric. Eric,” Christie was saying.

“What?”

“I was talking about Mona. Don’t you care about her?”

“Sure I do. Of course.”

“Then why don’t you ever tell her that you love her?”

Because I want her to be safe, he thought. But he said, “I tell her all the time; it’s just that I do it when we’re alone.”

A f te r a year Eric moved his family into special university housing that UCLA initiated for their younger students with children. One day he got the letter in the mail. The school took the top three floors of one of the fancy buildings on Wilshire, the Tennyson, for this experiment. Eric was chosen.

The apartment was a seven-room penthouse that looked out 1 8 6

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over a great part of L.A., even as far as the ocean. The rent was less though not quite enough less for Christie to quit her job.