Image Study II: “He was so in love with his own good luck, and they hated him for it.”

For some reason this reminds me of the Swede’s dream home, the strong stone farmhouse he wanted for his whole life and that his wife absolutely hated. The doors are open, the blinds on the window flung away, letting in the summer light, letting the green of the trees show into the stone home. It’s interesting, the feelings people get towards houses; after Merry’s bombing and disappearance, Dawn abhorred the house, and it’s not hard to understand why. “…because Merry was still there, in every room, Merry at age one, five, ten…. but as she might not survive their staying– and he, it still seemed, could endure anything, however brutally it flew in the face of his own inclinations– he agreed to abandon the house he loved, not least for the memories it held of his fugitive child.” (p. 192)

This sculpture is in the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis; it depicts a mother, father, and child. The two adults are lifting their kid in the air and dancing around with it, celebrating, as the plaque says (more or less), the union of parent and child, the bond between those who give life and those to whom it is given. It’s one of my mother’s favorite sculptures, but American Pastoral makes looking at it hard. It reminds me of the incredible bond the Swede feels with Merry, the bond parents have to feel with the children they’ve created and raised and that the children feel less and less of as time passes. When he meets her for the first time after the bombing, “all the fathering talent in the world collected and gathered up and mobilized in one man” can not help him; he is horrified, he is deeply hurt– he leaves in a mist of pain and confusion and doubts himself for days afterward. How strong is this bond? How much can a parent love their child when it has killed? When it doesn’t want to be loved by them?