The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

He had been an indifferent father, better than his own, perhaps, but that was saying very little. When Tommy was still an unknown fishboy inside Rosa, Sammy had resolved never to let him feel abandoned, never to walk out on him, and until now, until tonight, he had managed to keep the promise, though there were times-the night he had decided to take that job at Gold Star Comics, for example-when it had been difficult. But the truth was that, for all his noble intentions, if you didn't count the hours when the boy was sleeping, then Sammy had missed out on most of his childhood. Like many boys, Sammy supposed, Tommy had done most of his growing up when the man he called his father was not around, in the spaces between their infrequent hours together. Sammy wondered if the indifference that he had attributed to his own father was, after all, not the peculiar trait of one man but a universal characteristic of fathers. Maybe the "youthful wards" that he routinely assigned to his heroes-a propensity that would, from that day forward, enter into comics lore and haunt him for the rest of his life-represented the expression not of a flaw in his nature but of a deeper and more universal wish.

Dr. Fredric Wertham was an idiot; it was obvious that Batman was not intended, consciously or unconsciously, to play Robin's corrupter: he was meant to stand in for his father, and by extension for the absent, indifferent, vanishing fathers of the comic-book-reading boys of America. Sammy wished that he'd had the presence of mind to tell the subcommittee that adding a sidekick to a costumed-hero strip was guaranteed to increase its circulation by 22 percent.

But what did it matter? It was better not to have put up any fight at all; it was over now. He had no choice but to set himself free.

Yet he could not seem to get himself out of Tommy's bedroom. He stood there by the bed for a good five minutes, reviewing the history of sleep in this room, from the days of the baby who lay on his belly in the center of an enameled metal crib, legs tucked under him, his big diapered tuchis poking up into the air. He remembered a stretch of what Rosa had termed "the night jeebies," when Tommy was two or three, how the boy would wake, night after night, screaming as if he were being ski

He took off his shoes and got into the bed. He rolled over and lay on his back, and folded his hands together under his head to make a pillow. Maybe he could just lie here for a while, before he went to find his suitcase in the garage. He recognized that there was some danger of his falling asleep-it had been a long day and he was bone-tired-which would spoil his plan of getting out tonight, before there could be any discussion of his leaving. And he was not sufficiently convinced of the rightness of his decision to give Rosa or Joe or anyone else the chance to try to dissuade him. Rut it felt very good to lie down beside Tommy and listen to him sleep again, after so long.

"Hi, Dad," Tommy said, groggy, sounding confused.

"Oh." Sammy jumped. "Hey, son."

"Did you catch the monkey?"

"What monkey is that, son?" Sammy said.

Tommy waved a hand in a circle, impatient at having to explain it all again. "The monkey with the thing. With the spatula."

"No," Sammy said. "I'm sorry. He's still at large."

Tommy nodded. "I saw you on TV," he said, sounding more awake now.

"Yeah?"

"You were good."

"Thanks."

"You looked a little sweaty, though."

"I was sweating like a pig, Tom."

"Dad?"

"Yeah, Tom?"

"You're kind of squooshing me."

"I'm sorry," Sammy said. He inched a little ways away from Tommy. They lay there; Tommy turned over with a little grunt of a

"Dad, you're too big for this bed."

"Okay," Sammy said, sitting up. "Good night, Tom."

"G'night."

Sammy went down the hall to the bedroom. Rosa liked to sleep in a very dark room, with the blinds lowered and the curtains drawn, and it was not without a certain amount of stumbling and groping that Sammy found his way to the closet. He closed the door behind him and pulled the chain for the light. Quickly he took down a scarred white leather valise and filled it from the hanger rod and the built-in chest of drawers. He packed for warm weather: poplin shirts and tropicalweight suits, a vest, undershirts, boxers, socks and garters, neckties, a bathing suit, a brown belt and a black, stuffing everything into the valise with an indiscriminate and careless haste. When he was through, he yanked the light shut and stepped out into the bedroom, dazzled by the roiling Persian-carpet geometries that filled his eyes. He made his way back out to the hallway, congratulating himself on not having woken Rosa, and crept back down to the kitchen. He would just make himself a sandwich, he thought. His mind was already engaged in the composition of the note he pla

When he got within a few feet of the kitchen, however, he smelled smoke.

"You did it to me again," he said.

Rosa was sitting in her bathrobe, with her hot lemon water, her ashtray, and the ruins of an entire cake before her. The nocturnal luminescence of Bloomtown, compounded of streetlights, porch lights, the headlights of passing cars, the luster of the state highway, and the diffused glow in the low clouds of the great city sixty miles distant, came in through the dotted-swiss curtains and settled ticking over the teakettle and the clock and dripping kitchen tap.

"You have a suitcase," Rosa said.

Sammy looked down at the valise, as if to confirm her report. "True," he said, sounding a little surprised even to his own ears.

"You're leaving."

He didn't answer.

"I guess that makes sense," she said.

"Doesn't it?" he said. "I mean, think about it."

"If that's what you want to do. Joe was going to try to talk you into staying. He has some plan or other. And, of course, there's Tommy."

"Tommy."

"You are going to break his heart."

"Is that cake?" Sammy said.

"For some reason I made a red velvet cake," Rosa said. "With sea-foam frosting."

"Are you drunk?"

"I had a bottle of beer."

"You like to bake when you're drunk."

"Why is that?" She slid across the kitchen table the tumbled remains of the red velvet cake, with sea-foam frosting. "For some reason," she said, "I also seem to have felt compelled to eat most of it."

Sammy went to the kitchen drawer and got a fork. He wasn't in the least hungry as he sat down, but then he took a bite of the cake and, before he could stop himself, had finished what was left. The sea-foam crunched and melted in his teeth. Rosa got up and poured him a glass of milk, then stood behind him while he drank it, ruffling the hair at the back of his neck.

"You didn't say," Sammy said.

"I didn't say what?"

"What you want me to do."

He leaned back into her, his head against her belly. He was tired suddenly. He had pla

"You know I want you to stay," she said. "I hope you know that. God damn it, Sammy, I would love nothing more."

"To prove a point, is what you're saying."

"Yes."

"About how nobody can tell us how to live, and it takes all kinds, and mind your own damn business. Like that."