Hypothermia

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I’m a really first-rate writer. Nobody knows it, but it’s true — that’s what I said to my son yesterday. It wasn’t the first time; I usually say it when I’ve had too much to drink. What you are, he responded, looking me straight in the eye, is a run-of-the-mill pen pusher at a second-rate newspaper. He’d also had too much to drink. I’m a writer, I repeated. Maybe I’m a lousy one, but I’m still a writer. I’d never used that one before. But his retort left me in the shade. With cocksure cruelty, he smiled — a smile I’ve lived with since he was a boy — and said: Yeah, right. You ever gonna get a book published? Real writers publish books.

I left the table and went and locked myself in the bathroom where I sat down on the toilet to have a smoke. I could hear Estela scolding my son. She was reminding him—Allow me to remind you, she said, which meant that they’d already argued about it before — that I’d stopped working on my own writing full time the minute she told me she was pregnant. He wanted you to have the same privileges your grandfather gave him, my wife continued. Your father never could’ve paid for all the things you’ve had just by writing essays. Not to mention books. Well, they were so good nobody wanted to publish them.

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