The Laws of our Fathers

SEPTEMBER 7, 1996

Sonny Sonny is sick. As she envisions it, the cancer is a fire, an errant spark that smolders and is never out, an ember no larger than an atom that somehow licks itself to life and burns through her flesh, with ghoulish smells and unbearable heat she somehow does not feel. It grows. The cancer bums. In the dream, the light of fire magnifies itself until her breast is glowing like ET's heart in the movie Nikki is always watching, until the blaze shows the palpitating strength of life, so that life resembles death, and the fire suddenly blooms in a monstrous explosion of light, the dreaded atomic flashpoint of her childhood, ending all the world.

'No!' she screams into the dark, and Seth, struggling awake, claps his hand over her mouth, then holds her from behind. For a long moment, their bodies move together in the labored breath of terror. She has warned him. The dreams come every six months or so and the fear is plundering. It hangs in her bones, like the ache of an ailment, until she has a mammogram. She will call Gwen in the morning. With luck they can take her today. Embracing her, Seth kisses her neck, then her mouth, stale with sleep.

'Oh, I hate this, I hate this,' Sonny declares in the dark. 'And even when Gwendolyn's called and told me everything's all right, I'll still worry. Because what do I do the day it isn't all right?'

'That won't happen.'

'Don't treat me like a child, Seth. You can't make promises.'

'Sonny, look, we go on. Okay? You don't know and I don't know. But we go on. It hasn't happened, and I trust it won't.'

'It's Nikki,' she says. 'It's deserting her, failing her that way. That's the worst part. It's torture. To think that for everything, everything I've done and tried to do – that she'll be alone.'

'Nikki will be okay. That I can promise you.'

Sonny sits up. Damp with sweat, she has started to grow cold. She grabs the satin binding of the blanket which her thrashing wrested from the mattress and draws it around herself.

'To leave her with Char-lie! God,' says Sonny.

'Over my dead fucking body will she be with Charlie. Forget that.'

'He's her father.'

'When was the last time he called? A cottonwood has more feeling for its lint than Charlie has for his children.' She actually laughs. It's terrible. Does Seth delight her any more than at the moments he speaks of Charlie, riled by contempt and wrath? 'If I tell Charlie I'm taking care of her, that I'm adopting her, he'll be relieved. You know that.'

Adopt her. Seth could do that. The law. Thank God for the law. Charlie can consent and Seth can adopt her.

'Would you really adopt her?'

'Today.'

'Do you mean it?'

She feels him move from her and is blinded then by the bedside light. When she removes her hand, Seth is staring at her.

'Look into my eyes,' he intones. ‘I mean it. If you'll have it, if she'll have it, we'll start whenever. She's precious to me. You know that.'

She thinks out loud. 'What if Charlie won't go along?'

'You tell Charlie he doesn't have to pay child support anymore,' says Seth, 'and he'll crawl here from Cincinnati to sign.'

In the absolute quiet of night, Sonny laughs. A pure bubble of delight. He's right.

'You really mean it?'

'Of course I mean it.'

Seth can adopt her.

'I want to know you understand how important this is to me,' Sonny says. 'Right now I'm here, and whatever happens between us happens. But if I'm gone – promise,' she says. 'Promise me you really understand and really mean this.'

'You're going to be fine.'

'I need your promise. I don't want to think of her in someone's home and not being a part of it. I don't want her feeling she's in between, like I did whenever I was with my aunt and uncle, that I didn't really have a place there, that I was sweet and nice but not fully tied to them. I don't want that. Bring her into your life. Completely. Will you promise? Promise that.'

'Fine,' he says. 'Okay.'

'Don't humor me, Seth. This is the most serious thing in my life.'

'Sonny, I'm as serious as you are.'

'Because if you promise this and don't do it, I will haunt you. I will be a mean ghost. I really will. You have to take her in. Let her feel she belongs to you. As she belongs to me. I want you to promise you'll be her father. Not a stranger. Not just somebody who thinks she's wonderful. But someone committed to her life as his legacy, someone who wants her to understand everything that is deepest in you. That's what you have to promise. Give her what you know most purely is yourself. I'm serious.'

'Of course, I promise that. I know what it means to be some- body's father, Sonny. Right now – here, today – she's my daughter.'

'I want to know you mean it.'

Forlornly, he looks into the brightness of the bedside lamp for quite some time.

'What would you say -' His face, in the harsh light, swims in feeling. He starts again. 'If it's all right with both of you-' He gets no further.

'Say it, Seth. I need to hear this.'

When he turns, his look contains all his familiar skepticism about himself.

‘I think I'd like to raise her as a Jew,' he says.