17

“Wipe your feet. I’ve just had the rugs cleaned.” The front door opens directly into the living room. It’s different from my memory of white walls and fake Colonial-style furniture. Three of the walls are a pale pink and the fourth—the narrowest, at the far end of the room—is the designated accent wall, as it’s painted a weird persimmon color. The furniture is modern; the couch and chairs have huge soft cushions that could swallow a child. The only thing in this room that I recognize is the antique oak sideboard, which is too big for the dining area in this house, but which once fit perfectly in the dining room in my mother’s house. It’s placed against the persimmon wall, with a collection of photographs in chunky frames displayed on it. Even from a distance I can see that all of the pictures are of Paul’s kids. It looks like he has a dozen, but I realize that they’re the same two, replicated over and over at different stages of their lives—as infants, as toddlers, in grade school photos, in middle school graduation pictures. There’s no picture of Tony. Perhaps I’ve never sent one.

Adele is standing in the archway that leads into the kitchen, waiting for me.

“Shall I put my stuff in my room?”

Adele looks at me like I’ve asked for money. “I assumed you’d be staying in a hotel. We don’t have room here. I never suggested…”

“I can’t afford a hotel.”

She doesn’t answer me.

I drop my duffel bag, travel-worn and grubby, right on her cream-colored sofa. I want to ask why I can’t use Paul’s room. I know that the closet that was my space has long since been retrofitted into the walk-in closet it originally was designed to be. I decide to drop the subject for the moment. There are far more important questions to ask. “Where’s Dad?”

My stepmother pins a look on me. “Paul’s in with him now. When he comes out, you can go in.”

“I’ll go in now. I just came two thousand miles to see him.”

“You will wait here.”

I’ve been through the tortures of the damned to get here to see my father and this woman is going to prevent me with four words? “Give me one good reason I can’t go in. He’s my father.”

“He gets upset if too many people are in there.”

“You mean that you do.” I turn around and go through the living room to the short hallway that leads to the two bedrooms. As provoked as I am, I hesitate before entering the hallway. I stand in the archway and listen to the voices coming from one of the bedrooms. I realize that my father isn’t in his bedroom at all, but in what was once Paul’s. The voices aren’t live; they’re coming from a television show. The canned laughter gives it away. I listen harder. If Paul is in there, he isn’t saying anything. Then I hear a pair of chuckles, a shared amusement at whatever’s on the screen, and I have a flash of childish jealousy.

Why should this stepson be there in the first place? Oh, yeah. I know why. Because his stepfather always treated him like a son—apple of his eye if not child of his loins. If Paul had been a wolf cub and my father the pack leader, Dad would have made sure Paul got the best chunks of the kill. If there was one life preserver in the boat and we were sinking, I know who would have gotten it. It wasn’t normal. Weren’t young men supposed to hate their stepfathers? I guess when the stepfather in question is treating you like the son he never had, you don’t have to hate him. The laughter again. I march down the hallway and push open the bedroom door.

Because the television is on the same wall as the door, they are facing me as I enter the room. I am shocked at the sight of both of them. I know I should have been anticipating seeing my father as a dying man, but I am more shocked at the sight of Paul. He is huge, bald, and dressed in a Bridgewater State College sweatshirt that has seen better days. There is one brief, crystal moment when all three of us stare at one another, trying hard to reconcile this version of ourselves to those of our memories.

My father speaks first. “Justine? You’re here.” It almost sounds like a question.

“I got here a few minutes ago.” I can’t get near to him because Paul’s bulk takes up the space beside the twin bed, which is shoved up against the wall and the bureau. “Didn’t Adele tell you I was coming?”

“No. I guess she wanted it to be a surprise.”

More like she didn’t want him disappointed if I failed to show up. I sort of respect that.

“Well, I’m here now.” I take a step toward the bed and Paul gets the message. He rises and squeezes himself out of the alley formed by the bed and the bureau.

“Hey, Justy, it’s good to see you.” He opens his arms wide and scoops me into an embrace I’m not looking for. The nickname reminds me of his taunting me with “Busty Justy” when puberty hit me like an invasion of the body snatchers. I’ve grown into them, but the girls are still worth a glance.

“Yeah, you, too.” I hope that it doesn’t show on my face just how startled I am by him, but he knows.

“My wife’s a great cook.” He’s obviously had to explain before how he was a star athlete turned blimp.

Once Paul leaves the bedroom, I am alone with my father for the first time in decades. We are both silent for a moment, taking it in, figuring it out. Not just about the fact that I’m here only because he’s dying but by the larger gorilla of our history—his failure to love me. His failure to make me an equal in an unequal house. His failure to stand up to that woman when I most needed him to, if only that once. I step to the side of the bed. He is sitting up, the thin blanket spread neatly over his lower half, with the top of his Father Knows Best pajamas buttoned right up to the top button. A glass of water is on the nightstand, a newspaper folded up neatly beside it. The television is blaring out a commercial for adult diapers, and my father points to it. “That’s me. How about that? Just like a baby.”

I wonder what I want from him, this desiccated remnant of the father who bowed to every opinion Adele voiced. I sit in the chair beside the bed and wait for him to say something of worth to me. What do I want? A deathbed confession of wrongdoing? I want him to tell me that he was wrong not to take my side. Wrong to be sucked into the lie that I had made the whole thing up. Isn’t blood thicker than water?

I am trembling with the desire to hear his confession. Get an apology.

My father says nothing. He is attached to a morphine drip, and I excuse him again for his silence.