In a Father's Place by Christopher Tilghman
"In a Father's Place" by Christopher Tilghman explores the complexities of familial relationships through the character of Dan Williams, a middle-aged widower grappling with his past and present. As the patriarch of a prominent Maryland family with deep historical roots, Dan's life is marked by the loss of his wife, Helen, and the estrangement from his son, Nick. The narrative unfolds during a rare family reunion, where Dan seeks to reconnect with his grown children, Rachel and Nick, amidst the tensions brought on by Nick's girlfriend, Patty.
Rachel, a strong and accomplished lawyer, shares a bond with Dan, while Nick's relationship with Patty complicates the family dynamic, as she appears to challenge Dan's role as a father. The story delves into themes of responsibility, identity, and the effects of past decisions on present relationships. As Dan confronts his feelings of inadequacy and the specter of familial disconnection, he ultimately strives to reclaim his role as a father, culminating in a moment of personal revelation and joy. This narrative presents a poignant exploration of the challenges of parenting and the enduring impact of family history.
In a Father's Place by Christopher Tilghman
First published: 1989
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of work: The 1980's
Locale: Chesapeake Bay
Principal Characters:
Dan Williams , a lawyer and widowerNick , his sonRachel , his daughterPatty Keith , Nick's girlfriend
The Story
Dan Williams is a middle-aged man seeking to come to terms with ghosts from his familial past and with the discordances of his familial present. The Williams family, of which Dan is now the patriarch of sorts, is a venerable Maryland clan, with roots that can be traced back to the American Revolution. Dan, a widower with two grown and relocated children, now lives alone in a house that is a physical emblem of familial tradition and history—antiques stand on the oaken floors, two-hundred-year-old oil portraits hang on the walls.
Into this house, Dan welcomes his children for a rare weekend reunion. His daughter, Rachel, a corporate lawyer working in Wilmington, Delaware, is a robust, physical woman; a lacrosse player during her college days, she shares a heartiness with her father that bonds them in an athletic way. She returns with the news that she is leaving the homegrounds of the Chesapeake and relocating to Seattle. Dan's son, Nick, is a writer currently living in New York City. Dan sees his relationship with his son as problematic—he laments to his daughter that he has "made a hash" of Nick. To complicate matters further, Nick has brought his girlfriend, Patty Keith, with him.
Tragedies, large and small, shadow Dan's life. His wife, Helen, died in a hit-and-run accident soon after their marriage, leaving a huge gap in his existence as a husband as well as his existence as a man. Dan subsequently sought to fill that gap through a relationship with Sheila Frederick, who years before had been merely a high school fantasy object. This romance left a slightly smaller, but equally jagged, hole in Dan's heart. Meanwhile, Dan handed over the raising of his two young children to a housekeeper—an act that he now perceives as an abdication of his fatherly responsibility and as a partial cause of his lack of connection with Nick. Dan thinks, too, of his own father and his relationship with that man; Dan worries about being one of a "generation that lost its children."
The facts of Dan's personal past impinge on his present. Part of his purpose in having his children temporarily back in the fold is to attempt a reconciliation between himself and his son, although the estrangement is not so dramatic that it is apparent to Nick. What exacerbates Dan's problem, however, is the addition of the fourth party, Patty. A woman seemingly without humor, she enjoys reading literary deconstructionist Jacques Derrida. She is also without tact; she seems to appraise the house as well as the family within it, gathering some sense of the ultimate worth of both as if considering some financial settlement.
Dan and Rachel work to appreciate Patty, to allow her into their lives for this short space of time, but it proves difficult. Communication between Dan and Patty is tense, fraught with suspicion and mistrust. Patty figures as an interloper, as a woman looking to control Nick in ways that Dan would never wish him to be controlled. Worried as he is about his own failure to help Nick's passage from boyhood to manhood, Dan worries just as seriously about this woman's submerged desire to subordinate Nick's will to her own, to somehow possess him as she might possess a piecrust tea table or a letter from George Washington.
Nick feels the agonizing pull of both his father and his lover. He also has complicated matters by bringing his work home with him—that work being a novel loosely based on his familial history. As Patty tells Dan, Nick supposedly is trying to deconstruct his family, looking for those crucial and ultimately limiting points of contradiction in the familial weave. As much as Dan wants to understand the complex fabric of family, with its intricate and puzzling mesh of past and present influence, he fears the radical rending of that fabric.
To keep the family momentarily whole, Dan and Rachel join forces against Patty's intrusive presence and construct a strategy to liberate Nick from her witchlike hold. They first manage to separate Nick and Patty so that Dan can have his son to himself, beyond the baleful influence of Nick's lover. As Patty perceives the ploy, her resentment builds.
Later, Rachel hauls Nick off to go sailing, an act that recapitulates their childhood. A storm blows up on the bay, and the drama of the story builds partly around the fate of brother and sister. Their experience is a test of their abilities both as sailors and as independent human beings, with the storm reaffirming their intense and preeminent relationship as siblings. While Nick and Rachel maneuver on the bay, Dan weathers a more figurative storm at home, taking on Patty's rage when she realizes what Dan and Rachel have done. She first lashes out specifically at Dan, and then more expansively, and expensively, at the family. Accusing them of hypocrisy, of seeking to transform family into history and artifact, Patty carries out the deconstruction that Nick supposedly pursues in his novel: She exercises that of which Nick (and Derrida) only write. Dan reacts by evicting Patty from the house and from the family, thus reassuming some of the fatherly responsibility he has long left unclaimed. By asserting his paternal will, Dan experiences an epiphany, an authentic rush of joy that is part of a private celebration of his own identity as father.
Sources for Further Study
Booklist. LXXXVI, April 15, 1990, p.1609.
The Christian Science Monitor. June 15, 1990, p. 13.
Kirkus Reviews. LVIII, February 15, 1990, p.218.
Library Journal. CXV, May 15, 1990, p.96.
Los Angeles Times Book Review. April 29, 1990, p.3.
The New Republic. CCII, June 4, 1990, p.40.
The New York Times Book Review. XCV, May 6, 1990, p. 12.
Newsweek. CXV, April 2, 1990, p.59.
Publishers Weekly. CCXXXVII, February 9, 1990, p.44.
Time. CXXXVI, July 2, 1990, p.67.