“What was your resolution?” his mom asked over breakfast. “For New Year’s?”
“I don’t know.” Julian took a long sip of coffee and guided the last of his eggs onto his toast. “I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”
“Mine,” she said brightly, “is to get this house organized.”
“Seems pretty organized to me,” he muttered. And he meant it. He noticed as soon as he arrived with Philip for Christmas, how the pantry looked like a strangely perfect IKEA ad, or the closet in his bedroom was practically empty, every nook and cranny of his childhood home pared down and somehow more than just holiday ready.
“Finishing getting organized,” she conceded. “I’ve been doing a little every week. Purging on trash day, sending Bonnie to Goodwill. That’s where you come in.” Her eyes twinkled with impending mischief. “There’s two boxes in the garage with your name on them. Literally.”
“So that’s where this was headed.” He smiled wryly at her. “Free labor?”
“It’s stuff I thought you might want, or want to see, before I tossed it. Do you mind?” she asked. Julian nodded as he carried his plate to the sink. “You might try forgiveness,” his mom lobbed at him abruptly. “For your resolution.”
He looked up at her, smiling cautiously beneath the stained-glass panel that hung in the pass-through—a fiery sun pattern that for years had filled the kitchen with a red-orange light. “Forgive who?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Whoever needs forgiving. Start with your mom. We’re the beginnings of all problems, right? Moms? Plenty of time to think while you’re cleaning out there.”
“Yup.” Julian raised his eyebrows in a show of confusion and headed to the garage.
It had been a weird, exhilarating week since Phil left. There was nothing new about how they spent their days. He and his mom did the usual things, time-killing pleasures of past visits. They went to the movies and saw The Lord of the Rings, and Julian nodded along as his mom critiqued woeful departures from the book. They watched home design shows until the same episodes reran, oohing at nice interiors and ridiculing bad choices. “Oh, come on!” his mom cried at one appalling misstep—text painted on a kitchen wall that said, Today Is a Great Day for a Great Day! “I couldn’t get up in the morning,” she declared, “if I had to read such empty words.” During commercials they made vague plans for spring break and beyond. She fought him on coming home for the summer instead of doing an internship, but she agreed to go to South Padre Island in April. It was kind of like band camp reunions, Julian thought as they curled up on the couch, cramming in the good times without grazing old wounds. He avoided talk of the Rosenblums; she left unsaid how rarely he visited. They laughed a lot, sometimes until they cried. But it wasn’t until they watched the ball drop in Times Square, the night before, that Julian began to comprehend the giddy feeling in the air. His mom was dying, not today or tomorrow, but soon.
She wasn’t joking about the boxes. He entered the garage and spotted two large ones in the corner with JULIAN’S THINGS written on the sides. The space was immaculate, eerily more pristine than the closets. On one rack of shelving sat original boxes for appliances, the Dirt Devil and George Foreman Grill, while the other rack held four footlockers for her Christmas tree ornaments, each labeled by name. The floor was swept and mopped. And in the center of it, the only other thing left in the garage, was his dad’s old weight bench with a handwritten sign taped to it: SALVATION ARMY PICKUP (1/5/02).
Julian slid the boxes over to the bench and started perusing. The lighter one was full of debate trophies from high school, the fruits of young ambition now coated with dust. He opened the heavier box, and under stacks of papers and school projects he found his childhood journals. His mom had kept them. But then she was the reason they existed at all. There were dozens, two or more a year until he left home, in various states of decay—edges frayed, tattered spines, pages hanging loose off metal spirals.
He took out his first one, with the Care Bears cover—December 3, 1987, scrawled on the top line—and remembered the day his mom gave it to him. He started school that year, and he lived for his turn at show-and-tell. The teacher said to bring an object about his dad, and he was determined to show the Teeth. He had discovered them not long before, snooping in his parents’ room: four molars at the ends of a metal retainer, in the top drawer of his dad’s dresser. He waited until his mom was paying bills that day to grab them. But when he snuck in and gazed upon them, he thought of the toothy killer plant from Little Shop of Horrors—he and his mom had just watched the movie—and fantasy got the best of him. He stuck the retainer in his mouth and put on his mom’s lipstick to match the plant’s lips. Then he grabbed a framed photo of his dad in a military uniform and serenaded him with “Feed Me Seymour,” singing until his mom appeared at the door. She muscled the lipstick off with Kleenex, shouting that her son shouldn’t be wearing makeup, and sent him to his room. She came to him there later and apologized and gave him a journal as an early Christmas gift. Sitting in the garage, Julian recalled every bizarre twist of the incident, summed up in three lines on the opening page:
Mom says Dad was in a war.
And I should write things here if I don’t want to say them out loud.
Or if she’s ever not around to talk to.
He set his Care Bears journal on the bench and tugged up handfuls of others from the bottom of the box, taking desultory peeks inside, until a draft swept through the garage and made him shiver. He was still wearing the boxers and T-shirt he’d slept in. He grabbed his first journal of sixth grade, with a diva-feathered Annie Lennox on the cover, and went inside.
“You can get rid of the trophies,” Julian called on his way to the kitchen. “But can you keep the other box for now? There’s stuff in there I want to—” He stopped at the sight of his mom leaning forward in her chair, gripping the edge of the table. “Mom? Are you OK?”
She didn’t respond. But as he started across the kitchen she turned her head slowly, like it pained her to move, and whispered, “I think we better call somebody, Jules.”
Royalwood Hospital rang in the New Year and kept ringing. It was the first thing Julian thought when they finished the paperwork. They sat in the admitting lounge, his mom hunched over in a puffy jacket while he cast frantic glances around. Blue streamers hung off the intake desk. A Baby New Year sign was still pinned to a bulletin board, with his wide infant grin and jaunty top hat. It was tacky, wrong, to leave up old holiday decorations in a hospital. There had to be a policy against it. His mind raced in circles, criticizing the staff and space, because it had nowhere to go. His mom wouldn’t talk to him. He asked a million questions driving over there. “Are you in pain?” “What’s happening?” “What can I do?” All she said was that her stomach hurt; her back hurt. But she grimaced. And it was the frozen detachment of her expression that killed him as they waited to be seen.
His mom changed momentarily when Bonnie arrived. Julian had texted her when they got to the hospital, along with Phil, who immediately started looking for flights back to Texas. Bonnie threw open the door to the room they’d been parked in, and his mom’s face softened. Bonnie hurried to her, still bundled in her jacket on the bed, and murmured something a long time in her ear. His mom nodded. “Well,” Bonnie exclaimed, stepping back and smiling at Julian. “Here we are.”
A doctor came in, not much older than Julian, he thought, and spoke to his mom about going over her oncologist’s file and figuring out what was going on. Then it started: a process Julian had never seen before, of his mom hooked up to tubes, a catheter, a chest port he didn’t know she was hiding under her shirt, pricked and drawn for blood, promised information soon. The whole time his mom nodded blankly, fingering the blankets layered over her body while her arms, now exposed in a gown, seemed to thicken. Or Julian’s eyes were playing tricks on him. Bonnie dished the latest school gossip. His mom listened, maybe. She glanced up at times with a vague smile but otherwise stared at her feet, or farther out somewhere. They existed like this for hours, morning into afternoon, pieces of day shedding their character in the fluorescent light. Nurses came in and out to check monitors. Julian and Bonnie flanked the bed. They talked and were quiet. They didn’t mention her legs clearly swelling under the coverlet.
When the doctor returned he brought a middle-aged woman, Eastern European by accent, devoid of any bedside manner. She spoke quickly, almost cheerfully, about how lucky that she was there, a nephrologist on a holiday, and creatinine and numbers going up or down, but the gist of it was that his mom, Lacy is her name?, had unhappy kidneys, just one working really, and now it wasn’t, and soon her liver would stop too, organ dominoes, and then no more peeing and toxins would build up and make her very sleepy until she faded off. “A good death,” she finished, smiling at his mom. “No pain, not the cancer. OK, bye.” She nodded and left. The young doctor looked from them to the door, mumbled he was sorry, and followed her out.
“Hang on.” Julian took off after them. “Doctors?” he called, squinting in the hallway light and quickly saddling his aggression. “I’m trying to—” The woman opened her mouth. “Not you,” Julian snapped. “Good death? I don’t know what you’re doing in a white coat. You,” he addressed the young doctor, “seem at least semihuman. My mom has cancer. She stopped chemo. Fancy doctors at MD Anderson gave her six months. We show up here and random stranger doctors say she’s dead on arrival, so I’m just trying to get some answers.”
“Her oncologist—” The doctor pressed his hand to his clipboard. “He discussed with your mom—she’s been in kidney failure for some time, or close to it. They knew there was a chance this could happen. How it ended. I don’t know if she told you?”
“You’re not listening,” Julian pushed. “You’re the ones who keep people alive, not me. So do it. Dialysis, whatever you do, just do it.”
“It’s hours,” the specialist said. “Maybe days more you get, but once the liver goes, that’s it. Nothing to do. I see this every day. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe hours matter,” Julian said and stormed back to the room.
Inside Bonnie hummed and massaged his mom’s hand. “I talked to the doctors,” Julian began. “We can start dialysis to keep your kidneys going.” His mom turned and smiled weakly, but something was gone, the usual flicker of self-consciousness or thought behind her eyes. “For more time,” he said.
“No, Jules,” she replied softly.
“Mom,” he pressed, “don’t you want to—” Before he could finish, Bonnie’s other hand grasped his below the bed where his mom couldn’t see. She squeezed it. And in one touch the situation revealed itself to him. They were having breakfast that morning when everything went sideways into nightmare. Yet however strange it felt, so impossibly unreal, he was the one who’d missed the rehearsals. Didn’t even know about them until it was too late, and here they stood on a grand morbid stage. His elder knew her lines and told him kindly to stop.
His mom wiggled her free hand at him, to come closer. Julian took it in a daze, the three of them forming an impromptu circle. “I have the people I love most here,” she said.
The doctors were right. His mom seemed good as she drifted into evening. When her eyes were open they talked and sang. She responded here and there with phrases or their names, those eventually breaking up into sounds without place or time. A smile settled over her, or her face upturned in a way that looked peaceful. Night fell. Inside Julian wrestled with all he didn’t know and needed urgently to ask her—What are you thinking? Where are you? Are you scared? Each time he nearly gave in and opened his mouth to speak, he thought of Bonnie squeezing his hand. And reminded himself that the things his mom didn’t say weren’t his to demand. That he had to let it be.
Close to midnight, Philip texted that he was descending into Houston. His mom wasn’t waking up anymore by then, just breathing rhythmically with her arms tucked under the covers like a child. Bonnie stepped out to get coffee. Julian went into the bathroom to cry and wash his face. When he turned off the faucet he heard a voice. He opened the door and found a nurse at the foot of the bed. Not someone assigned to them, a woman he saw in the hallway that morning pushing a cart and wearing a pair of 2002 New Year’s sunglasses. She was reading: “‘Don’t be alarmed! You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the—’”
“Get out!” Julian cried. The woman looked up, stricken like she’d seen a demon. “Get the hell away from her!” He charged at her. “Now!”
She hurried out of the room. Julian approached his mom, ran a finger down her cheek, and whispered he was sorry. “Quite a commotion out there,” Bonnie said when she returned a few minutes later. “A nurse crying about something. Here’s your coffee.” She shot him a look as she passed the cup. Her eyes were red. Julian could smell the smoke on her.
“Me, probably,” he mumbled. “She was reading the Bible to Mom. I went off.” He glared at Bonnie, angrier as he put it into words. “An atheist her whole life, and they come try that shit when she’s lying here helpless?”
“Listen to me.” Bonnie sat down and stroked his mom’s leg. “My mama drank herself to death. By the end she was swollen and tender as a buster. I went home to be with her, and—” She looked up at Julian and sighed. “You are still here, OK? When it’s done? Alive like the rest of us, getting up, making breakfast in the morning, even if it’s just for one.” Softly Bonnie petted his mom’s hand. “This one here made me a better person. Yes, you did, Lacy. Her way with students. All of them. Mexican, or from wherever. She could see what they wanted. She liked seeing different people getting things. Being proud. She made me think. Me and everybody at school.” Bonnie fluffed her blouse and wrinkled her nose. “I made it sixteen years and Mr. Boudreaux leaving without a cigarette, but this?” She wiped her eyes. “I’m gonna wash my hands again.” She hustled into the bathroom.
The young doctor knocked at the door. “Mr. Warner? How’s she doing?” Julian stared. “I think there was a misunderstanding with one of our staff.”
“The nurse,” Julian rifled back, “reading my mom the Bible without her consent?”
“Yes. I apologize. I asked one of our orderlies to stop by and suggest you read to your mom, and when she didn’t see anyone in here—she keeps the Good Book in her pocket. She was trying to help. You should try it,” he said. “Reading to her. She can still hear, even if she can’t respond. So she knows you’re here.”
“I didn’t bring anything,” Julian mumbled, “to…” He nodded at the doctor to go. He waited a moment, alone with his mom and the tick and burble of the machines. He picked up a stack of used magazines by the bed, Texas Monthly and Car and Driver. He opened his backpack in a futile gesture. And he saw it. The Annie Lennox journal he was holding when he found his mom in pain, that he had no recollection of tossing in with his wallet in the commotion to get to the hospital.
“He’s probably right,” Bonnie said, emerging from the bathroom. “About reading to her. What you got there?”
“An old journal. I was cleaning out the garage when she…”
“Scintillating stuff.” She blew on her coffee. Julian opened the cover and paused, scanning his words, editing, trying to control who knew what. “Go on,” she said softly.
So in the middle of the night Julian sat beside his mother, like he had countless mornings as a boy, and read to her:
September 23, 1993
Mom was supposed to take me to Amy’s house for a sleepover with the Woodwind Girls. She knew it was Crucial (a French horn hanging out with flutes and clarinets?) even if I couldn’t stay overnight. But she got a migraine and made Dad take me. He asked her why I was the only boy going. They took forever fighting about it (like I can’t hear in the living room?!?!) so I got three sticks of gum out of Mom’s purse. I found a business card in the pocket next to the gum. *I wasn’t snooping.* Deborah Epstein, Esq.—Matrimonial + Divorce. Everyone’s parents are divorced these days. Might as well join the club.
I was the last one there, thanks to Dad. I ditched him at the lame “Parents Party” downstairs. I did our secret knock on Amy’s door, but when she opened it, it wasn’t just the Woodwind Girls. Faith Felton crashed the sleepover. Lame Faith with her Keds and stupid scrunchies. Amy rolled her eyes and we all ignored her. I told the Girls about Mrs. Cooper’s nipples doing a jailbreak in Earth Science, poking through her bra and shirt and everything. They laughed so hard. Mandy and Tina played Uno. Amy passed me a note that Faith was only there because Amy and Faith’s moms are BFFs and Faith and her mom are staying at Amy’s house because Faith’s dad TOUCHED HER and her parents are splitting up. Then Faith flipped out and yelled at me Why Are You Here? Are You G_____? Amy told her to shut up, but she grabbed my journal and asked if that’s where I wrote down my G_____boyfriends. I pulled it back, but she yelled Do You Even Have a Dick? and grabbed my belt and tried to undo my pants. I screamed at her to stop and ran. I hid on the stairs. She’s going to spread rumors that I’m G_____ on Monday. I can’t go back to school. I’ll tell Mom I’m sick. But the algebra test. And I can’t be sick forever …
I heard Dad from all the way on the second floor. He was laughing and talking too loud. When I came downstairs he had his arm around another man. He said Come meet Gorey. They did a shot of liquor and we left. Dad couldn’t walk straight on the path, and he went the wrong way in the car until I told him. Dad said Mr. Gorey is Amy’s uncle, visiting on his way to Gulfport. He’s the only other guy in Dad’s company who didn’t get killed in Vietnam. Dad was a minesweeper in the war. He tried to show me with his hands, but the car swerved. He was driving fast. He said what kept him alive in Vietnam was his mind and Mom’s letters. He said I’m smart as hell and I got that from him and Mom, and everything I am is from them, so fuck (he swore) anybody who says I’m going to hell or can’t hang out with girls. Then he missed the turn onto Rustling Elms Drive and hit the brakes, but we hit a mailbox. It swung around. Dad put his head on the steering wheel and just sat there. He asked if I wanted to drive the rest of the way. I asked if I should, and he drove home. What’s wrong with him?
Julian had never reread this journal, had long ago buried the incident. He looked up at his mom, certain she’d have opinions, that she heard every word and couldn’t resist waking up to comment on the mysteries of their family and time. But she didn’t. His mom lay still, her chest rising and falling, undisturbed.
On the afternoon of Lacy Warner’s memorial, Julian stood at the mirror of his high school boys’ room. He barely recognized the face staring back. He knew he had to get away from everything for a moment before the service started—from Bonnie, the hundreds of people who came, even Philip—so he ran to the bathroom. To be alone and let something out, get out a good pre-cry before the ceremony if he could. He opened his mouth, silent and fishy at first, but right as a wheeze began to trickle from his lips, he heard a shuffle. He turned and saw feet in the far stall. A toilet flushed. Julian swiveled to leave when out walked his dad, Aaron Warner.
“Julian.” Aaron said his name to the reflection in the mirror, casually, as though they had seen each other now and then, or even once, in the eight years since he left. His gut pushed out, and he looked shorter. His face was hardened with age. “I ate something funny last night.”
“I have to get in there,” Julian mumbled and slipped out the door.
He hurried down the hall toward the auditorium. Every moment since he stepped inside the school was like a dream watched from above. Since his mom died. Time had warped. She was supposed to have six months after she stopped chemo at Christmas. He was supposed to be in Cambridge finishing school. Now his vanishing act of a dad appears? A worthless man who did nothing to raise him was here, alive, but his mom was gone? At the door of the auditorium he stopped and turned, thinking he saw a glimpse of her down the hall like he used to in between classes. He remembered how he ducked to avoid her in those days, and suddenly he wanted it all back—all the time, every hour he pined to get away from her and home.
Julian went in and stood in the shadows. The smell of chilled dust wafted from the navy velour curtains. The stage was done up exactly as his mom had written. After Christmas Julian noticed her scribbling on a yellow pad she carried around, but it wasn’t until he was back from the hospital that he looked at it on her nightstand and saw notes she had made for her memorial service. Not in a church, she wrote, At the high school, where people know me. Pots of daisies and bluebonnets. The stage lit like a rainbow. No readings, just songs. No mention of a picture or people to talk about her, which didn’t surprise Julian. He had to take care of those himself.
In the front row Philip and Bonnie craned their necks toward him. The principal gave a nod, and the memorial began. Julian stepped onstage, past a blown-up photo of Lacy teaching at a blackboard, and crossed to the podium. He squinted at the outlines of people and thanked them for coming. He told them a story of Lacy Warner that he knew to be true but didn’t understand, of a strong woman who didn’t mention her cancer was terminal until her son finished exams and came home the other week. Because education was the most important thing. He didn’t share what he witnessed a few nights before—the person he knew best in the world rendered silent, unreachable, by the ruthless efficiency of death. A young teacher spoke after him, of how she wouldn’t have survived her first year without Lacy stopping by with Kit Kats and the way she listened, like your problems were hers. Bonnie spoke last. Even in the darkest times, she said, she knew there was a God because she lived half her life, past forty, when one day at the pool He put her there, Lacy, in a pretty sarong in the next lounge chair. Another smart weirdo living undercover in the suburbs, who taught her the meaning of friendship. The girls’ choir came onstage in red satin gowns and sang “Coat of Many Colors.”
There was a reception in the cafeteria. Bonnie must have hugged every guest. Philip stood beside Julian as he shook hands and nodded at condolences. All of his old teachers came. The skylights in the cafeteria let in a brilliant winter sun that made Julian squint as they talked. Occasionally, through the numbness he felt the weight of disbelief. This is it? the question turned inside him. This is how we remember?
“Eat something,” Philip insisted when the first wave of people subsided. “What do you want? A cookie? Cold cuts?”
“Just coffee,” Julian mumbled. “I’ll stay here.” He watched Philip zigzag through bodies and remembered the sight of him coming through the door at the hospital. The love mingled with fear as he took in Julian, and his mom’s face stretched out in the death rattle.
Aaron appeared out of the crowd. “Real nice day, Jules,” he said.
“You made it.” At Philip’s urging, Julian had sent an email to an AOL account he found under “Aaron Warner” in his mom’s address book, with details about the memorial. And got no response.
“Did you do all this yourself?” Aaron asked. “The service and whatnot?”
“It’s what she wanted.”
Aaron nodded. “She didn’t tell you she was sick till last month?”
“I didn’t know she was dying. We talked every week in the fall, about her chemo. I thought it was going well. Did you?” Julian stood up straight, taller than his dad. “Know she was sick?”
“We didn’t keep in touch.” He fiddled with the program in his hands. “Quite a woman. Lacy. The good ones die young.” He shut his eyes and leaned his head back, like she might be up past the skylights, sending down a little winter color. “How long you in town for?” he asked.
“Philip and I fly back to Boston tomorrow.”
“Philip?”
“My fiancé. Here he is.” Philip handed him a paper coffee cup and smiled widely. “Philip, this is my dad, Aaron.”
“Nice to meet you.” Philip held out his hand. “I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances.”
“OK.” Aaron let his hand be shaken. “What’re y’all doing later?”
“Today?” Julian said. “Miss Bonnie’s hosting a thing.”
“Oh.”
“But I don’t know if that’s a good…”
“OK.” Aaron nodded at his feet. “We could get a coffee after that, if you want.”
“Um.” Julian felt Philip’s laser eyes burning into his head. “I could step away. Briefly.”
So later that afternoon, as Bonnie’s house warmed up with wine and stories of Lacy, Julian left alone and took Royalwood Drive to the Starbucks across the pond from Kroger. Anger stirred as the occasion of the memorial wore off and Julian’s nerves receded. He didn’t want to see his dad. He was only going because Philip pulled rank as the therapist’s son and insisted it was the right thing to do. Who was Aaron to suggest coffee? A guy who leaves while Julian was at a swim meet—he had somewhere else to be, was all his mom said—never to be heard from again? Not one call on a birthday or graduation, and he and his mom had done just fine, thank you. And now at the worst moment of his life, his dad wanted to lean on the manners of people he used to know and have a catch-up?
Julian straightened his collar and entered Starbucks. He swept the place with his eyes, but the only customer was a young mother nursing at a corner table. Then he saw the blazer his dad was wearing earlier, heaped over a chair next to a table cluttered with things—junk mail, an OTB receipt, two empty cups, the denuded bottom of a muffin slumped on its wrapper, a yellow Post-it with his dad’s handwriting. Julian hovered over the table, twisting his head to read the list on it:
Zoloft (90 refill) Xanax soon
Beer, Swanson salisbury steak
Car wash—Thurs ½ price Platinum pckg
“Jules?” Aaron called.
Julian jerked up, one hand knocking the muffin off the table. “Shit, sorry,” he mumbled. “I’ll get you another.”
“That’s all right.” Aaron approached with his hands on his stomach. “Bread’s my friend today. How’s life in the Ivy League?”
“Oh. Yeah, I’m at Harvard. How did you…”
“It was in the local paper.”
“Yeah. Phil and I are both done this spring.”
“You graduate this year?” Aaron said. “I could’ve sworn you got one more to go.”
“I’m doing it in three. When you’re paying for it yourself, you go as fast as you can.”
“You want a drink?” Aaron asked.
“I’m good.”
“We’re here. Let me buy you a drink. Coffee, latte, whatever you want, you want one of those caramel—”
“A small coffee’s fine,” Julian said. “Plain black.”
“That’s how I take it.” Aaron smiled. “With eight sugars.” He went to the counter.
Julian lifted his tidy Moleskine notebook from his coat pocket. He wrote down names for thank-you notes to send once he was back in Cambridge.
“Whatcha writing?” Aaron asked, returning with two coffees.
“A list. People who sent flowers and cards.”
“Is that a diary?”
“A journal,” Julian corrected.
“What do you put in there?”
“Stuff to do. Stuff that happens. Jot things down and make sense of it later.”
“Does it?” Aaron asked. “Make sense when you read it later?”
“Sometimes.”
They sat quietly a moment until, apropos of nothing, Julian launched into his fabulous life. The Phi Beta Kappa thing, and getting into Columbia Law, and how Philip took an analyst position at Morgan Stanley because his dad’s at Goldman and Philip didn’t want any special treatment, and how much Julian respected him for that, and how Philip’s parents wanted the Central Park Boathouse for their wedding but they weren’t sure. Julian talked and talked like he used to, waiting for Aaron to say something. To tell him the things his boy wasn’t anymore, all the people his boy wasn’t like and never was. Aaron nodded throughout. At a pause late in the monologue, Aaron asked, “Do Philip’s parents—”
“The Rosenblums.”
“OK.” Aaron nodded, and kept nodding into an unsettling zone between assent and nervous tic. “Is his being—do they know why Philip turned out to be…”
“To be what?”
“Homosexual. Is it the same, or, like how you did?”
“Huh.” Julian strapped his journal shut. “I think people would like one explanation. Some things are bigger than us, you know?”
“Is that legal?” Aaron asked. “You two getting married?”
“It will be. Sooner or later.”
“Well, that sounds real nice. Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Julian said.
Aaron stared at his coffee. “It’s a damn stupid policy,” he mumbled.
“Policy?”
“This Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell business. Perfectly able-bodied homosexuals want to serve their country, but draft-dodging Clinton and now this ‘Air National Guard’ sack of shit Dubya say they can’t. The idiots running our military.” Aaron’s eyes welled up as he studied his son’s face. “But, hey, if it spares you the—” His hand reached across the table and patted Julian’s. Just as fast he pulled it back into his lap, like a crab darting for a hole.
“How are you?” Julian asked, after a time. “You’re still living in Houston?”
“Yeah. I got an apartment off I-45, by Greenspoint Mall. I get my medical at the VA. I make out all right. In a couple of years I can take Social Security early.”
“Oh. You’re—thinking about retiring?”
“Retire,” Aaron said grimly, and laughed. “Stop working. Checked out. Pick a year. Turns out the corporate thing wasn’t for me. The rat race, the people. Two decades. Not getting those back. I’m working security now.”
“Like, a security guard?”
“A manager. At a skyscraper downtown on Fannin. There’s a big law firm there, Vinson & Elkins?” Aaron offered. “See people coming in and out all day long. Talk, say hi.”
“Good. That’s good. Do you have anybody in your life?”
“What do you mean?”
“People,” Julian said. “Like, anybody you see every day?”
“Yeah. The guys at the VA. I started sticking around there in the fall, after the doctor. We hang out in the lounge. Watch TV. Take trips. The Vietnam memorial.”
Julian’s mind filled with visions of wheelchairs and amputees, insane screaming people, people lost to the system and their loved ones if they had any. He thought of poor people. How poor his dad looked in his suit. “You have friends,” he said. “At the VA.”
“Pretty good doctors too,” Aaron said. “This one guy, served in Desert Storm, he got his jaw blown off hunting, but they put it back together and made him custom dentures. He’s eating ribs today.”
“You had fake teeth, didn’t you?” Julian asked. Aaron stared blankly. “Not like that guy,” Julian continued, “with the jaw, not a whole set. Those four teeth? That retainer? In your underwear drawer, under the picture of you in Vietnam. Remember?”
“Oh. That, yeah.”
“I always wondered how—did you lose them in combat?”
“Combat?” Aaron frowned. “The teeth? That wasn’t the war. Football, back at UT.”
“Oh.” Julian sat up straight. “I must have—never mind.”
“Those teeth.” Aaron grinned. “They sure gave your mom the creeps.”
“Are you seeing anybody? Besides your friends, like, dating?”
“I am officially off the market.” Aaron shook his head and chuckled. “One marriage was plenty trouble for one lifetime. Sure as hell not doing that again.”
Anger flared once more inside Julian. But almost as quickly as it came it died down. Aaron sat across the table, folding empty sugar packets, and it was as if Julian could see him for the first time. Past the things his dad never did, the failures that cluttered Julian’s mind, to the things Aaron managed to do, that took up all his energy, taking care of himself. Remembering his pills. Eking by at the supermarket register. Forgetting himself at a double feature, some day when the ticket lady wasn’t watching for folks jumping theaters. The way he taught his son to do years ago. Julian groped inside for the hatred as familiar as an old pair of jeans, but it had faded at the sight of his dad. How much he needed and how little he had.
“Why’d you leave?” Julian asked. “Why did you leave us?”
Aaron watched his son as though he had whole chapters to share behind his eyes, if he felt like it. Or Julian was imagining things. “You’re better off,” Aaron said. “I promise.”
Julian flushed, ashamed that he went there. “I should go.”
“When’s your graduation?” Aaron asked as they were leaving.
“The first weekend in June.”
“Right around the corner. Maybe I can make it up.”
“Oh,” Julian said. “OK.”
“Keep in touch.”
“OK. Keep that email address.”
“Yup,” Aaron nodded. “That’s my email.”
“I mean, it’s the only thing I found for you in Mom’s stuff. To reach you.”
Aaron hugged him, finishing with a quick pat on the back. “You got good in you,” Aaron mumbled, looking away. “Like your mom. Take care, Jules.” He got in the old Taurus with its low-hanging muffler. Julian waited beside his mom’s minivan. He waved, but his dad didn’t see him as he pulled out of the parking lot.
Julian drove back to Bonnie’s house. She was waiting in the foyer when he came inside. Guests milled around chatting and laughing in the den behind her. He pushed the door shut and leaned against it. Slowly she approached Julian and rubbed his shoulder like she knew a thing or two, and in her soft, bendy drawl asked, “How’s your daddy doing?”