The Whites: A Novel by Richard Price Read Free Book Online

mostly beat-up but relatively violation-free properties in Washington Heights and the Bronx, had a house in Pelham Manor the length of a tanker and a personal worth of $30 million if a dime.
    But if he had been blessed with wealth, he had been cursed with loss: after three years of reasonably happy marriage, his wife, Angela, had attempted to drown their then six-month-old son in the backyard wading pool. Four months later, on her first leave from the Payne-Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, she tried it again. Nineteen years later she was still institutionalized, most recently at a residential treatment facility in Michigan, not far from her parents’ home in Wisconsin. Pavlicek still grieved for her and still hated himself for being so oblivious to her pain and madness back then. As far as Billy knew, they were still married.
    “You ever been out of the country?” Pavlicek asked as they cruised past the Forensic Psychiatric Center, a.k.a. the Hat Factory, on Wards Island.
    “Nope,” Billy said, trying to peer through the barred windows to the Thorazine-infused prisoners within. “My dad was in England a bunch of times, did a tour in Vietnam.”
    “That’s him. Plus, war doesn’t count.”
    “Been to Puerto Rico with Carmen to see her grandmother once.”
    “Puerto Rico is part of the U.S. Plus, visiting family doesn’t count.”
    “Then I guess I’ve been living in my ass for forty-two years. What’s your point, big shot?”
    “Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Amsterdam with John Junior?”
    “You went to Amsterdam?”
    “Four years ago I was invited to talk at an urban renewal conference there, and I wanted to bring him. He was sixteen, it’s a cool city, sort of, so he says, ‘I’ll let you take me to Amsterdam . . .’”
    “Let you.”
    “‘. . . let you take me if you get stoned with me there. Nick Perlmutter went with his dad last year and told me they got wasted together.’ Says to me, ‘Hey, at least you’ll know who I’m getting high with.’”
    “You did not do that.”
    “I’m sorry, you never got high?”
    “With my kids?”
    “Your kids are little, Billy. It’s different later, it’s like trying to hold back water with your hands. Trust me.”
    “You still don’t have to smoke up with them.”
    Pavlicek shrugged.
    Feeling a little scandalized, Billy shut up.
    “In any event, we got there, made a beeline to the nearest coffee bar, sat outside facing this plaza, platz , or whatever, Junior’s all showing off how he can read a pot menu like a wine list, orders us something supposedly mild, a few hits and we’re both zotzed. It was fun at first—we couldn’t figure out how to take our picture, holding the camera every whichaway, laughing, you know, stupid stoned. Finally this Dutch lady inside the bar takes pity on us, comes out and does the honors. Two American morons getting high in Amsterdam, never seen that before. We’re laughing our balls off for about a half hour, then the paranoia just shuts us down like, blam. I mean like a solid hour of Can’t Talk, sitting there wondering how do we find the fucking hotel, Prinzengracht, Schminzenstrasse, where’s the Anne Frank House and are we bad half-Jews if we blow it off, how do we even just, like, stand up. Hours like that, then Johnnie finally turns to me, says, ‘Well, this wasn’t one of my better ideas, was it.’ He flies home the next day, it’s really a nothing city, but I’m stuck doing the panels. I felt horrible . . . I mean, OK, you’re right, what kind of pandering asshole has to curry favor with his kid like that. But you know what? A week later I finally come home and I see that on his bedroom door Johnnie had taped blowups of all the photos of us that the Dutch lady took, and goddamn didn’t it look like we had a blast. And now when we . . . It always plays for a laugh when it comes up in conversation, between the pictures and the way we tell it to people. It’s like, after a