He drove by his father’s house after his shift and, in the scant moonlight, saw the old man standing bowlegged on the roof, knots of unlit Christmas lights in his hands like clusters of barbed wire. The tail of his robe flapped in the wind and showed off the skinny fenceposts of his legs, flattened against his pajamas. It was raining and his father’s back was turned to him, and as Hayslip slowed to a stop, Ernie nearly lost his footing, his arms pinwheeling for balance. A hammer slid down the shingles, clanged off the aluminum ladder angled against the gutter, and fell to the lawn.
Hayslip got out of his car, afraid to call out, afraid the distraction would startle him. But then his father turned to stare down at the lip of the roof, the missing hammer. His mouth was drawn in a sour frown, hanks of hair blowing in his eyes. He saw Hayslip standing there on the street, frozen with his car keys in his hand.
His father held up the Christmas lights looped around his hands. “Probably should have untangled them first, I guess,” he called out. His voice was a fragile thing shunted by the wind. It was almost bashful, the way he peered down at the tangled wires.
“Dad, come on down. Please.”
His father dismissively waved a hand Hayslip’s way—shooing a fly away. “These lights aren’t going to hang themselves, Nick. I should’ve had them up a while ago.”
“It’s raining. I don’t want you to fall.”
“I’m not going to fall,” Ernie said, even as he began cautiously scooting toward the edge of the roof.
Hayslip went to the ladder and held it flush against the eaves of the house, the sound of the rain loud as it fell on the hedges. He had to close his eyes for a moment when his father’s leg appeared over the edge, gingerly searching for purchase. He was wearing slippers! Jesus Christ!
Inside, the house was the same as when he’d been there last, the same, essentially, since his childhood. Ordered and tidy, the kitchen sink devoid of dishes, the counters gleaming. His father’s bed would undoubtedly be made. But lights burned in various rooms, even, he saw, the laundry room and the attic, as if his father needed these buoys to navigate the darkened spaces of the house. For comfort or guidance, Hayslip couldn’t say.
Ernie looked like a drowned fucking rat, shivering in his soaked robe and pajamas. Hayslip started the shower, and when his father protested—even as he shivered, and drops of water rained down, trailing his passageway through the house—Hayslip shook his head and said, “I don’t want to hear it.” Gently enough, he pushed him into the bathroom with a towel and a change of clothes and, while steam began creeping from beneath the bathroom door, he went to the small bar in his father’s den and poured himself a drink. The uncoiling heat in his guts calmed him and he stood watching beads of rain run down the front windows.
He heard the shower stop running and, eventually, heard his father rummaging around in his bedroom. The house was very quiet and Hayslip could hear the wind lean into the house and occasionally the rattle of the ladder against the eaves. His father stepped into the den in a sweatshirt and chinos, his hair standing up in puffed white thatches. So childlike in his frailty that Hayslip felt something like despair at how inadequately he was prepared for this, how rapidly their positions seemed to be changing.
“I was fine up there,” his father said, shrewdly eyeing Hayslip’s glass. “Just so you know.”
“Kidding me? You’d have busted your ass up there.”
“Oh, bull pucky.”
“You’d have busted your ass, fallen off the roof, and laid out in the yard for who knows how long with a pair of busted legs or worse. Gone into shock, gotten pneumonia.”
“Psssh.”
“And then you’d have croaked, Dad. For Christmas lights. How’s that sound?”
Ernie turned away, went and adjusted—minutely, so little that Hayslip couldn’t even tell the difference—a frame on the wall. “The whole street’s got their lights up, Nick. I’m gonna be the guy without lights up? ‘He’s just too old,’ they’ll say. ‘Just doesn’t have the same zing, old Ernie. He’s lost it.’”
“Fuck the neighbors,” Hayslip said.
His father’s mouth knit itself shut, became a thin red line.
“You are too old, Dad. Call me, I’ll put ’em up for you.”
Ernie turned and there was something restorative in his anger, something that took years off his face and seemed to ratchet his spine up, remove some of that terrible hunched quality he had of late, as if his very confusion had been weighing heavy upon him. His voice was hard and direct, even as the finger he pointed in Hayslip’s direction wavered and trembled. “And you, Nicholas, you’re the man to be telling me how to live? That’s what I’m hearing?”
“I’m worried about you.”
“I’m worried about you. You look like a damned skeleton. Are you eating anything?”
“You’re changing the subject,” Hayslip said.
“I’m fine,” Ernie said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “A man can put his Christmas lights up whenever he damned well wants. This is still America, last time I looked around.”
“Jesus.”
“Are you done lecturing me? Drinking my booze and lecturing me?”
“I’ll put them up tomorrow,” Hayslip said. “When it’s not pissing rain. When it’s light out.”
“Don’t bother,” his father said stiffly. “I don’t want to disrupt your busy schedule starving yourself to death. Or whatever in God’s name it is you’re doing.”
“I’m just trying to help. I’m worried. The thing with the fridge, and now this. I’m worried.”
His father’s mouth quavered with anger. “A man my age has earned the right to be a little confused at times. I was tired. And as far as the G.D.’ed Christmas lights go, Sunny Jim, I’ll be putting them up at my leisure, thank you much.”
They hadn’t always spoken like this. As a boy, his parents had been the totality of his world. Honest and benevolent gods, the two of them; his father’s hands rough on his back as he guided Hayslip’s bicycle down its wobbling sidewalk travels. His mother handing him the keys to their pickup as a birthday gift when he turned eighteen. What had changed between them? Vietnam? The job? Melissa? Or was it simply time doing what time did, drawing wider the chasms between people?
He sipped his drink and in the reflection cast back from the front window he saw his father standing next to him, ghostly but present, his hands still thrust in his pockets, his hair fluffy and uncombed. Both of them swallowed in their clothes, the shape of Hayslip’s skull clearly visible beneath the skin. Looking at the two of them in the reflection, their resemblance was obvious. And he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to help either of them. The world was narrowing.