Free Secret Father by James Carroll Page B

week, when I should have.
    "Rick banged into his room, the slam of his door sounded like a gunshot."
    "I heard a gunshot recently," I said, not knowing why I brought that up. Deflecting the memory of a slamming door?
    She didn't hear me anyway. She went on, "Then I told my husband I thought they had both behaved like children. I went to bed, and by the time David came into our room, I was asleep."
    She had finally referred to her husband by name—an unconscious expression, perhaps, of the moment's intimacy, a thwarted intimacy, to be sure. But I knew from life with Edie that the heat of argu-ment was still heat. Mrs. Healy stared at the red tip of her cigarette. Aware of myself as an uninvited witness to this family's complexities, I knew better than to prompt her, but I also knew that the story had just begun.
Where the hell is Michael in this?
    "The next morning—yesterday—we woke to find that Rick was gone. He left a note on the kitchen table, addressed to me, in German, saying only that he could no longer go on living like a
Heuchler,
a hypocrite. The purity of youth. He signed it formally, 'Ulrich.'"
    "Rejecting his American name," I said.
    "Yes. More completely than you think. He signed it 'Ulrich von Neuhaus,' as if he is no longer one of us as Healy. And then he is leaving the note in the kitchen where my husband, too, would read it. Von Neuhaus is Ulrich's name before my husband adopted him as a boy of six, my husband who loves him as I do, but who cannot understand his impossible position."
    "Von Neuhaus," I said softly, sensing the blow it would be to Healy. "His biological father's name."
    "No," she said a bit too emphatically. "My family name."
    "But you said—"
    "Von Neuhaus was Ulrich's original name because his father and I never married. His father was the war. That is all."
    "I see," I said. But of course I saw so little. The aristocratic "von" would explain her self-assured bearing, although now she seemed ready to forfeit that under the weight of sadness. The barest alteration in color had come over her throat and neck, a pinkish flush that rose from the chute of two slender bones just visible inside the collar of her coat. As she drew on her cigarette, her cheekbones seemed to press out against her skin. Impossible position, she had said. The wave of feeling I saw in her seemed one of simple regret, as if her choices, long made, more than her husband's or her son's, were the ones that had been wrong.
    "Rick was gone," she said slowly. "And"—she paused, flagging what she was about to say—"so was my husband's flight bag."
    "What?"
    "His flight bag. An overnight bag. A government-issue canvas bag with zipper pockets. It was gone. Apparently Rick took it. That seems to be the main problem, Mr. Montgomery. My husband's problem—his flight bag. He had brought it the night before home with him, after being away, supposedly in Brussels, but I do not know. Such things he does not confide in me, as I said to you—nor should he. I know what I know only because I saw his irritation at Rick become a matter of gross alarm when he realized the bag was gone."
    "National security."
    "I believe so. Yes."
    "Why would Rick take his father's bag?"
    "He needs a bag. He sees a bag. He takes it." She shrugged, shaking her head. "An expression of anger, perhaps." She smiled wanly. "But also maybe the Air Force bag had its own appeal. This could be near to funny. Our rebellious son who works to be free of his father's shadow, who wants to reclaim a pure German spirit—still, he loves to be the American general's son. In his British school, until last year, it was the nationality. In the American school this year, it is the rank. He hates it. He loves it. If he took my husband's bag, it is, I think, also because of the letters printed on the blue canvas: USAF. Because of the silver stars on the tag, making it a general's bag."
    "So what does your husband carry in such a bag? What would alarm