A Life [antikvár]

"why are you mad?" My wife asks ine that, seems Hke every morning. Usually at breakfast, when my face is still wrinkled from sleep. "I'm not mad," I say. "It's just my face." I've said that to her ten times. She's my third wife and I'm happy with her, but she has yet to learn that I don't like to talk in the morning. Which is tough on her, a decent person, full of lively chatter, like bright pebbles. Confronting me where I m sitting at my typewriter is a small round mirror, clamped in a pretty but rickety Mex-made stand. It frames my face neatly, and sometimes when I work, I study my image. I certainly look mad. The fact is I am mad, most every morning. I wake up mad. Still. "Haven't you noticed that everyone is afraid of you?" my wife goes on, her tone gentle and sympathetic. "You're intimidating." "Bullshit!" "Ask your children. Or mine." She's brought me two blond stepchildren, nice kids. "They're scared of you too." I'm rather good at concealing anger. Had to be in my old profession. But recently it's begun to show through. What I'm mad at nowadays is, for instance, mortality. I've passed seventy-eight and have only recently found how to enjoy life. For one thing, I've stopped worrying about what people think of me—or so I like to believe. I used to spend most of my time straining to be a nice guy so people would like me. Now I'm out of show business and I've become my true grumpy self. I no longer hide it; it's out in the open, my perennial scowl. Which is why my smile, when it does appear, is so dazzling. The sheer surprise of it! That's supposed to be a joke. SOMETIMES the image I see in the little round mirror shocks me. There he is—my father. I'm beginning to look like the man I feared most of my life and particularly during the years when I was growing up. I look away. I look back. He's still there, and his face still disturbs me.