"Ich muss bald pinkeln," Jack's dad announced. ("I have to pee soon.")
"I'll take him," Jack told the two doctors.
"I think I should come with you," Dr. von Rohr said.
"Nein," William told her. "We're boys. We're going to the boys' room."
"Just behave yourself, William," Dr. Krauer-Poppe warned him. Jack's dad stuck his tongue out at her as he stood up from the table.
"If you're not back in a few minutes, I'll come check on you," Dr. von Rohr said, touching Jack's hand.
"Jack, your father cried when you won the Oscar--he cried and he cheered," Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. "He was so proud of you--he is so proud of you."
"I just meant that Emma must have helped him," William said; he was indignant.
"You cried and cheered, William--we all did," Dr. von Rohr replied.
It slowly registered with Jack, when he was walking with his father to the men's room--that if they'd watched Jack Burns at the Academy Awards in 2000, his father had been in the Sanatorium Kilchberg for more than three years. No one, not even Heather, had told Jack how long William had been there.
"Of course Emma helped me, Pop," Jack admitted. "She helped me a lot."
"I didn't mean I wasn't proud of you, Jack. Of course I'm proud of you!"
"I know you are, Pop."
In the men's room, Jack tried to block his father's view of the mirror, but William planted himself in front of the sink, not the urinal. They did a little dance. William tried to look over Jack's shoulder at the mirror; when Jack stood on his toes to block his dad's view, William ducked his head and peered around his son. They danced from side to side. It was impossible to prevent William from seeing himself in the mirror.
If mirrors were triggers, they didn't affect Jack's father in quite the same way as the word skin had. This time, he didn't try to take off his clothes. But with every glimpse he caught of himself, his expression changed.
"Do you see that man?" Jack's dad asked, when he saw himself. It was as if a third man were in the men's room with them. "Things have happened to him," his father said. "Some terrible things."
Jack gave up trying to shield his dad and looked in the mirror, too. The third man's face kept changing. Jack saw his father as William might have looked when he first caught sight of Jack as an infant, before the boy's mother had whisked him away--a kind of expectancy giving way to wonder on William's suddenly boyish-looking face. Jack saw what his father must have seen in a mirror that day in Copenhagen, when they pulled Niels Ringhof's body from the Kastelsgraven--or when William learned that Alice had slept with the boy, and then abandoned him.
His dad was slumping in Jack's arms, as if William wanted to kneel on the men's room floor--the way he'd dropped to his knees at the waterfront in Rotterdam, when Els had to carry him to Femke's car. Or when the policeman had brought Heather home--and the cop told William the story of how they'd mistaken Barbara, his dead wife, for a German tourist who looked the wrong way crossing the street at Charlotte Square.
"That man's body is a map," William said, pointing at the slumping man in the mirror. "Should we look at the map together, Jack?"
"Maybe later, Pop. Not now."
"Nicht jetzt," his father agreed.
"You said you had to pee, Pop," Jack reminded him.
"Oh," Jack's father said, stepping away from his son. "I think I have."
They both looked at his pants. William was wearing khaki trousers with the same pleats and sharply pressed pant legs that Professor Ritter favored, but William's were stained dark; his feet were standing in a puddle of urine on the floor.
"I hate it when this happens," his dad said. Jack didn't know what to do. "Don't worry, Jack. Dr. von Rohr will be coming to the rescue. What did you think her overnight bag was really for?" William turned abruptly away from the mirror--as if the third man in the mirror had insulted him, or made him feel ashamed.
Seemingly part of his father's daily schedule, there came a head-of-department knock on the men's room door. "Herein!" William called. ("Come in!")
Dr. von Rohr's long arm reached into the men's room; she was offering Jack her oversize handbag without showing them her face. "Danke," Jack said, taking the bag from her hand.
"It's different when he sees himself in the mirror without his clothes," she warned Jack, letting the door close.
Jack undressed his father and wiped his body down with paper towels, which he soaked in warm water; then he dried his dad off with more paper towels. William was as accepting of this treatment as a well-behaved child.
Jack was able to guide him out of sight of the mirror. But when William was standing there, naked--while Jack searched for the change of clothes in Dr. von Rohr's big bag--a well-dressed gentleman entered the men's room, and he and Jack's father exchanged stares. To the gentleman, who looked like a middle-aged banker, Jack's dad was a naked, tattooed man. To William Burns, if Jack could read his father's indignant expression, the well-dressed banker was an intruder; moreover, he was intruding on a tender father-and-son moment. Furthermore, to the gentleman, William Burns was a naked, tattooed man with gloves on--and there was no telling what the gentleman might have made of the copper bracelets.