The neighborhood had become familiar to her now. She could speak of home. A taxi circling Washington Square Park, making its way to LaGuardia Place and the tall silver towers just beginning to be illuminated from within.
“You see, Naomi. I wanted you to meet. I wanted to bring you here, to meet your ‘half-uncle.’ I am so worried what will become of Karl if—when—something happens to me . . . There is enough money for him in the trust, not much but enough, and I provide for him too of course, and there is my medical insurance from the university, and my life insurance, and my social security . . . I wire the money to his bank account, for his medical expenses . . .and his other expenses. Fortunately his rent in the ‘mausoleum’ is stabilized. But Karl needs a friend. A friend who will care for him, not merely admire him from a distance. A ‘blood relative’—so to speak. And so, I have brought you together. I am so sorry it turned out as it did, dear Naomi, I am hoping—you will not judge Karl too harshly? He is your father’s half-brother, and I know that Gus would have been concerned for him, and kind to him—that was how Gus was, he couldn’t help himself. The more impaired, maimed, ‘kooky’—(remember how often Gus used that word?—it was a favorite word of his, that used to annoy me)—the more sympathetic he was. And Karl was very taken with you, however he behaved today. In fact I think he behaved badly because of you—wanting to impress you. He’d said to me beforehand, ‘But I’ve never had a niece before. How does one behave with a niece?’ And so, Naomi—I hope you will forgive me for this afternoon, which has been so upsetting. But I hope—can you promise me?—you will see Karl again? You will not—abandon him?”
The taxi had pulled up to the curb. It was time to ascend to the thirty-first floor.
Quickly Naomi said, to placate the distressed woman, “Yes.”
AFTERWARD in the solitude of the white-walled room overlooking the nighttime city calmly thinking Not ever again. Not ever again, Karl Kinch.
“UNWANTED”—“WANTED”
This is hard to speak of. And it was a long time ago.
But now that I have begun to confide in you, dear Naomi—I think that I should tell you this.
In essence—your father was not a “wanted” child. He was certainly not an “intended” child. You might say he was, very emphatically, a “not-wanted” child.
When I became pregnant—more or less by chance—with my younger son, I was well into my thirties and established in my work. Out of a kind of excess of well-being, I decided to have that child—(though “have” is a strange term; I have always disliked the “having”—“possessing”—nature of the parent-child relationship, that is so fraught with a wrongful appropriation of the younger by the elder and more powerful)—though there was never the slightest intention of establishing a family with the man who was the father, or even with the child . . .