Stranger, Father, Beloved (21 page)

When Ryan skipped into the house and turned to see them all sitting in the living room, John playing with Max, she furrowed her brow at the scene. It was the first time she and Michael had seen each other since their altercation a few days ago. She looked to Michael to see if he would say anything about the slap. He smiled meekly to show her he would not.

“Hope you'll join us for dinner, Ryan,” John said, and now she couldn't say no. Michael had averted his gaze from her, and John was saying the words he couldn't say. She went up to her room and then came back down and drifted in, sitting by Max. When John asked the questions, the right things happened. The TV was playing a comedy film, and they were all half watching it. Michael had initially wanted to pour some gin into his seltzer water before John arrived, but now the urge had lessened into nothing. He sipped his water and politely watched the film. Nancy, too, sat in a chair and kept her eyes on the screen. She was undoubtedly in amazement at the scene before her, as seen in the little looks she stole at the kids on the floor with their books and Max's toys and of John occasionally joking with Max and laughing at the movie.

Michael wanted to blurt out: See? I knew it! A different man was needed for this house. John's normalcy seeped through their home like a great fog of goodness, allowing all of his family to relax. Michael felt that John protected them all from Michael's sick mind, his cold demeanor, his complete and total inability to be a normal father to his children and a normal husband to Nancy.

Instead of saying anything, Michael remained seated in the yellow chair across from Nancy's blue one, John between them on the couch, the teenage girl with her tan legs sprawled out by the little brother. Nancy got up to put the pasta in boiling water, and when she returned, she looked relieved to see them all still there as she cautiously took her seat again.

Ryan had not looked at him, but he wasn't hoping for that much to happen. She did turn to her mother and say, “Mom, this movie's good. Can we bring trays in here and keep watching when it's ready?”

“Okay, but then dessert at the table, like a normal family?” Nancy tried her bargaining, and it worked. Ryan looked back at the screen and nodded.

With John here, things were normal. He was the glue that held them all together. Michael could not share this with him. Best to try to pretend to be normal. Best to take what they could get and not demand more. Nancy wasn't stealing worried glances at his glass. She knew he hadn't visited the liquor cabinet. In gratitude, most likely, she rose and left the room silently. He knew why. She would prepare the trays for all of them, so that when the pasta and meat sauce were done, they could just put a large serving on each of their plates and get back to the movie.

They ate ravenously, all eyes on the screen watching Steve Martin, dear old Dad, handle each of his children's issues with aplomb.

“Can I have more, Mom?” Max asked, and Nancy swept across
the room, smiling, and took away his tray, reappearing with more food. Michael relaxed.

“Me too, Mom. More for me?” Ryan asked. Both parents hid the pleasure that had washed over their faces.

“Sure thing,” Nancy said, taking her tray and disappearing into the kitchen.

After the movie ended, they went into the kitchen, where they made ice-cream sundaes on the kitchen table. Nancy had spread out the tubs of vanilla and chocolate ice cream, the rainbow sprinkles and brown sprinkles, and the hot fudge sauce. While the kids were laughing and drizzling the chocolate sauce on their ice cream and John was busy scooping his ice cream, Michael turned to look at Nancy. She was watching her kids with quiet pleasure. She turned to look at him, and when their eyes met, Michael was overwhelmed with appreciation for her and a tear came to his eye. He mouthed, “Thank you” to her, so that no one else could see, and then smiled. She stood there stunned; a tear appeared at the corner of her eye, and she wiped it away in time to offer Michael a bowl and take one for herself.

They sat for a few minutes, and then Max asked, “Another one?” and they all settled back into the sitting room and put on another Steve Martin movie, a relief to be back with him and his “Dad knows best” antics.

Nancy would tentatively turn to Michael every once in a while and smile to see if the love she had seen was still there, and he would return her gaze, out of sheer appreciation for everything she was and every tiny thing she did for this family. If there was goodness in this world, it was surely found in her.

When the second movie ended, the tired kids shuffled up to bed. Nancy looked to Michael for what to do now. She was as desperate as he to preserve what was happening. He took control as the man of the house.

“John, stay over. It's a long drive home for you, and it's late.” John looked at Nancy, and she nodded. “We have a guest room all made up. It's no inconvenience.”

“Great, thank you.”

“Want to have a beer first on the porch, admire our work in the yard?”

“Yeah, sounds good.”

“Nancy, honey, I'll be up soon to bed. I'll see you in there, sweetheart.”

She smiled and nodded, taking the bowls in and then heading up to bed. He had done a good job tonight, Michael thought. He had made love to his wife. He had pleasured her. He had brought his family together. Now he had good company while his family slept. It was a different sort of night.

They sat out there in the warm, muggy evening, heavy in their chairs, not speaking much and enjoying the cold beers. He might wrap his arms around his wife tonight in bed. He knew what it felt like to have a wife and be a husband—to be proud of what she did and who she was, her loving qualities reflected in the happiness of the offspring, the family. He opened the door to John's room, delivering him there, said an awkward good night, and ascended the stairs. John would be there in the morning, he thought over and over as he climbed the steps. With John asleep below him in the beautiful house he had bought, he felt like a real man. He put his arms around his wife and held her while she slept. He let her hold his hand, and he held her tight. At a certain point, sleep took him. It was easy and natural to drift off; John was there.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ryan and Dari made milk shakes and went upstairs to Dari's room. Both wore silk pajamas they had picked up at the discount lot in Orin. Dari's were a lilac color, Ryan's a baby blue. Dari's younger brother was having his sleepover party in the basement, a group of twelve-year-old boys excitedly watching movies in the basement. They could hear a steady murmuring of voices and loud exclamations. The house was alive with voices.

Ryan had slept over the last five nights at Dari's house and had no intention of leaving if Dari and her family allowed her to continue to stay. Last week they had spent the Fourth of July at Dari's family's house, grilling hot dogs as they all sat on wicker chairs outside. Far off, they had watched fireworks in the sky over the bay, and the brothers had put on a horror movie and they had all lain around watching it and clutching each other with fear. It had been a perfect day.

The girls lay on Dari's bed and flipped through a
Glamour
magazine that they had bought to go along with the theme of girlie sleepover parties. They had decided to buy the most raucous colors of the cheapest makeup and do their faces up for glamour shots from the neck up. Ryan finished covering her cheeks with rouge that resembled burn
stains, picked up the dainty plastic eye shadow brush, and began to color in the space above her eyes with the glittery light blue shadow.

Kumiko gave a light little knock, a timid tap near the door handle. She pushed open the door and stood there, a despondent and quizzical look on her face.

“What's up, little bud?” Dari asked.

“Nothing.” Kumiko stood by the door, her tiny hand on the knob, staring shyly at the floor. Ryan had been to the house enough times to know that something was clearly wrong.

“Okay, what's wrong, little bean? Come sit on the bed and tell us.” They moved over, and Kumiko sat down in between them.

“Nothing. I'm just feeling calm, that's all.”

“Okay, but if you are ever upset and need to talk, we're all ears,” Ryan said and picked up her eye shadow brush.

“What are you guys doing in here?”

“Glamour shots. Want us to do your face too?”

“Yeah, but I want the electric yellow eye shadow.”

Ryan finished her face and turned to Kumiko.

“Look up,” she said, and the small dark eyes darted up to the ceiling. Kumiko had the flawless skin of a young girl, smooth and fine. Ryan tried not to smile, but she was enamored of the girl's pretty face and delicate features: her little nose and the jack-o'-lantern smile. She spread the yellow shadow over her lids, and when Kumiko opened her eyes, they flashed with an eerie brilliance. She seemed more of an otherworldly creature than ever.

“No rouge for you—you are perfect already as you are. I don't need to do anything else.”

Kumiko went to her room to go to bed. Ryan and Dari snapped a few photos of their painted faces and then washed off the makeup with warm green washcloths.

They lay on the couch before bed watching television. Ryan lay with her head near Dari's lap, and she could feel the atoms buzzing on Dari's thigh, only inches away. The TV voices hummed and murmured before them, and when a certain program or image grew tiresome, Dari would flick the remote and something new would light up. Everyone else in the household was asleep, and the moment seemed endless.

Dari clicked the remote, and they saw a woman gliding along an old castle corridor, holding a small candle, looking desperate and afraid. It was a black-and-white movie, ancient. The movie's image would flicker, momentary visual static undoing its integrity. The grittiness appealed to both of them, and Dari remained on the channel for a while as they watched in silence.

In one swift movement, and without thinking, Ryan slid up closer to Dari and rested her head on Dari's thigh. After she realized what she had done, she lay there paralyzed and stunned by her own bizarre recklessness, not daring to move again. Surprisingly, her friend's leg did not tense against her, nor did she speak or move away. Her thigh muscle was relaxed under the weight of Ryan's neck and head, and as they continued to watch the screen, Dari gently laid a hand on Ryan's hair and stroked it absentmindedly. Heat exploded up Ryan's neck, yet she kept still.

Dari finally spoke. “Should we go to bed?”

They got into Dari's bed and lay in silence. Ryan had felt drowsy earlier in the night, but now that she was under the covers, her eyes snapped open. Her body was tensed and her breath was shallow and strained, as if she were pushing each breath out. They seemed to lie there forever, and Ryan assumed her friend must be asleep and wondered what she'd do. She didn't trust her body, she didn't know if her hands would move of their own accord if she were unconscious,
acting out their secret wishes on her sleeping partner. There was a summer thunderstorm booming and flashing outside the window, occasionally sending down sheets of rain that drummed on the roof. She wondered what the gulls did in this type of weather; did they burrow down somewhere safe, or did they sit proudly on the sides of the rocking boats in the harbor, excited by the growling clouds and the electrified sky?

“I'm not tired, are you?” Dari's thin voice surprised her, and she became aware of something shifting in the chemistry of the room. She had her. It dawned on Ryan that she
had
her.

“No, I'm not.” A few more minutes passed, and suddenly Ryan felt a small cold hand touch her arm and the little fingers wrap around her wrist. Ryan buried her face into Dari's neck and breathed in the smell of her hair, her lips moving. A slow, aching feeling started turning its mechanism in her gut, and she knew the deal was sealed—they wouldn't be separating. Ryan hardly had time to notice the relief she felt at the reciprocity of the feelings, so lost was she in wanting to slam herself into this body. They embraced, their lips came together, and they pulled their bodies together as close as possible. All clothes came off, and Ryan moved her mouth over every area of Dari's body, down to her bony knees and back up. After several minutes, it became clear to her that Dari wanted her to stay in one spot until a terrific spasm released itself. They drifted off, and Ryan woke up to Dari's mouth moving over her. Giggling, she found it easy to give in as the little mouth dutifully worked on her until she felt the surprising tremble and then the powerful release.

“Was that your first orgasm?” Dari asked.

“Yes.”

“I gave you your first orgasm? Wow, lucky me.”

The two began laughing as they moved their hands over the soaking wet sheets. Ryan felt herself surging with power—that was what had been missing from her life, and now she was completed.

They played a game with each other where one girl began to doze and the other would quietly begin to work on the other's body until she awoke full of desire and then came. It was the easiest thing in the world, and she was pleasantly surprised to know that Dari tasted like honey. The almond scent was still on Dari's skin, and she had the softest skin of anyone in the world. They eventually wrapped themselves up together tightly in the quilt and slept deeply.

At three in the morning, Ryan woke up and Dari was not in the bed. She waited a moment and heard the door open. Dari entered, carrying carrot slices and two pieces of chocolate cake on a tray, as well as a large glass of milk. They ate the carrots first, then the cake, and then shared the glass of milk. Then they dressed, tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom, brushed their teeth, returned to the bed, and undressed. They kissed until it felt as though they were blue in the face, and then slept until a quarter past seven.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Michael had received the invitation from Will and Mary Campbell two weeks ago, right after the Fourth of July. Will was hosting a dinner party for the Yalies, and he included a special note letting Michael know that Alex would be there and they both hoped to see him and hear his comments on Alex's essay. Will lived five minutes away on the Peninsula, and Michael and Nancy had been to his place before. It was a pretty little house, and they had a chicken coop in their yard and a stream running behind it. Four couples were attending his party, all former students and their wives. Alex and Meg were making the trek down from Massachusetts and staying the night at Will's place, or so Will told him.

On the day of the dinner party, Michael tried to feel excitement, but instead he felt terror. He had not seen Alex in fifteen years. After Alex's wedding, they had seen each other once at a mutual friend's cocktail party a few years after college, but their interaction had been strained and with his move and new marriage, there had not been much to bind them together over the many years.

His hands were shaking more than usual, and as he dressed in their bedroom, he kept getting distracted and forgetting what he was
doing. Going to the bureau to get his socks, he paused in the middle of the room and looked around, then sat down on the bed, wondering what he was supposed to do.

His chest felt as if it were pulled tight in a vise or a corset, and his mind kept repeating the comments he would give on Alex's essay when asked. There was too much textual support from other scholars. He needed to add more of his own opinions around the quotes. Yes, that was it. He tried mouthing the words aloud in the empty bedroom and pretended he was telling them to a classroom of students to make it really feel official.

He couldn't have a drink now. He would be driving Nancy, and he would never put her life in danger. He had two small bottles of vodka in his jacket pocket, though. When they arrived, he would say he had to use the bathroom and go in and drink one of the bottles to calm himself down.

With shaking hands, he pulled out the familiar tan plastic bottle and wriggled a pill loose. He returned the bottle to his pocket and walked to his bathroom, filled a glass of water, and let the water slide the pill down his throat. He had on a brown tweed jacket, and he felt he looked like a British detective from another era. It was as if he were wearing a costume for an academic, which showed how much he had abandoned that identity. His brown hair showed no signs of balding, though it was thinning. He did not look right, but the thought of selecting a new outfit was an exhausting effort he could not entertain.

Alex and Meg had children, he thought. Yes, he knew they had children, two girls. But he wouldn't have to see them; the party was for adults only. He sat back down on the bed. He suddenly felt very old. His thinness, a physical quality he had been so proud of, now seemed only to indicate frailty. Signs of age were showing in his face, particularly around his eyes and in the wrinkles on his forehead. He
sat on the bed in this way, observing his reflection for several minutes. Nancy had run out to get a bottle of wine and a pie to take with them to offer as dessert. She would probably be home in fifteen minutes. Michael was relieved that she was taking care of it. She really was a good woman, he reflected, and shame flooded him yet again for not loving her enough.

He looked like a tired teenage boy; an old one with some disorder that caused advanced aging on a body that clung futilely to youth. He heard the front door shut as Nancy returned and then kitchen cabinets slam downstairs. He would have to go down soon. Did he have to go down? No, he could shut the bedroom door and remain locked inside for a few more minutes.

“Michael?” Nancy called up the stairs.

Before he and Nancy left for the five-minute drive to Will and Mary's house, Michael made himself a hot coffee with brandy mixed in and put in vanilla flavoring to hide the scent of the alcohol from Nancy. He could sip it as they drove, and it would settle his nerves.

Michael and Nancy were the second couple to arrive, after Philip and Jane. Philip had been good friends with Alex at Yale and was friendly with Michael, though he never seemed to know quite what to say to Michael. Philip had gone on to become a tenured professor at Wesleyan, and he had married one of his former students, Jane. Jane was a pretty blond woman who had come from an upper-crust family and always wore pearls on her ears and whose tanned skin glistened around her catlike eyes.

When Alex and Meg walked in the front door, Michael beheld his old friend. His tall stature was immediately impressive, as it always had been. Meg clung to his side, her tiny bird hand clasped on his
sculpted forearm, and her little heels clip-clipped across the wooden floor as they made their way inside. Michael saw that Alex had put on a little weight, but not much—he was still beautiful, but something was missing. He was wearing khaki pants and a plaid starched shirt, no doubt selected by Meg. The colors were too bright and the fit too boxy for Alex to have picked them out himself—the button-down shirt had pink and purple squares. As Meg gave Mary the bottle of wine they had brought, Alex turned his great curly head and he and Michael looked at each other. His easy, tranquil smile appeared, and Michael responded in kind and rose to his feet. The two shook hands and hugged briefly. Michael was startled to realize that he remembered Alex's smell and it was the same as it had been—pleasant and strong, like the forest.

One more couple arrived, and everyone exchanged hugs and admired the house. A sickening feeling crept through Michael as he kept an ever-watchful eye on Alex. He could not, in fact, keep his eyes off of him. Even when he was standing across the room talking to Ken's wife, Sharon, who had been a student in their class along with Ken, Michael watched Alex.

It was as confusing as seeing a diamond shrouded in silver tinfoil, something pure and beautiful muddled by a tacky imitation of beauty. His beauty kept disappearing and being lost as Michael studied him. Meg had dulled him down in the end. This was not the normal effect of aging; this was something sinister. His laugh was different. Michael had never seen a person go into and out of states so quickly, from shocking truth and beauty to falseness. Yet when the real Alex emerged in disparate moments, Michael drew in his breath every time. He was magic—yes, he was magic. He had a deep voice, one of tenderness, and he imagined Alex with his daughters and pain gripped his heart knowing how good a father Alex ­undoubtedly
was: tucking them into bed, buying them ice-cream cones, ushering them safely into the waves hitting the beach, protective as a father should be. Would the girls turn out false like Meg or refined like Alex? There was no telling. At that very moment Meg clicked across the floor in her little black-and-white polka-dot dress, dropped her diamond-laden hand onto Alex's arm, and turned to Michael. He felt he detected cruelty behind the smile playing at her lips. Maybe Meg knew she was taking the life out of Alex, moment by moment.

During dinner, everyone ate the turkey and Alex commenced to talk about his daughters using the Slip'n Slide.

“You should have seen them,” he said with his gentle mirth. “I went out with them, and they were jetting across the lawn so fast and then landing on the grass with such force I thought they were surely hurt! Mud everywhere! And you should see the grass—”

Meg interrupted. “Of course they weren't hurt. We would never let them slide anyplace dangerous.”

“Oh, no, she's right,” Alex said, growing flustered at his mistake. Michael imagined reaching across the table, taking Meg's face in his hands, and smashing it into the dish of green beans Mary had prepared. A designer gold watch flashed on Alex's beautiful wrist when he cut his meat, one he would have never picked out for himself. The light from the chandelier above the dining room table hit it every time Alex turned his hand, and it made Michael's head begin to hurt.

When Michael and Alex spoke to each other, the softness and gallant refinement returned. Then Meg would begin to hover around Alex, and his smile would become uneasy and his manner changed to one of false pleasantries. After dessert and while everyone moved to the living room to enjoy their coffee and have more wine, Michael
whispered to Alex that he needed some fresh air and would he like to accompany him to the backyard? Alex's face lit up yes, and Michael realized that Alex had been lonely for his company as well.

“I'll grab one of the bottles of wine and meet you out there,” Alex said in an uncharacteristic moment of mischief.

They walked through Will and Mary's yard to the little stream and remained standing, as there was nowhere to sit. They passed the wine bottle back and forth. Michael was in that perfect stage of drunkenness in which he had lost all feelings of self-consciousness yet still felt clear in his mind and could probably walk a straight line. He gave Alex his comments in more depth for the essay on the permissiveness of the unreliable narrator in the three novellas.

“You know, Michael, I have been working on that essay for over two years now, and I could never figure out why it wasn't a slam dunk when I sent it out. Will couldn't either. We give it to you, and within a month, you know exactly what to fix to make it perfect. You have a gift, my friend.”

Michael didn't want the evening to end. He thought of his gazebo, newly built, just a ten-minute walk away.

“Alex, I'd love to show you all the new things we added to my yard. It's only a few minutes away. Let's go over. We can sit in the gazebo and keep talking.”

“Well, Meg will probably kill me, but we never get to see each other, so why not? Let's do it.” Michael tucked the bottle of wine under his jacket and they walked on the grassy sides of the windy roads, talking about college, about doing road trips up the coast on weekends, going to local bars in newly discovered little New En­gland towns. Still talking, they walked past grand old Cape Cod–style houses, past the pond, through a wooded area, and finally to Michael's yard.

The two crossed the lawn to the gazebo, which was mostly finished, except for the ceiling latticework. The yard was immersed in dusk, and the lightning bugs were out, slowly waltzing from bush to bush. Michael and Alex sat in the gazebo and talked.

“Your house is stunning, Michael,” Alex said as he took a sip of the wine. “I can tell from out here that it is gorgeous.” The house was lit up, as Max was asleep inside, the high school babysitter sitting somewhere inside, probably talking on the phone to a friend.

“Thank you, we put so much into it and were lucky to get this property.”

“Our house is nice, too, but it doesn't have the character that yours has. Meg is a good decorator, but she is very ‘by the book' in what she chooses. It's fine, though,” he said and waved his hand to dismiss the turn the conversation was taking into negativity.

“You know, I miss you sometimes,” Michael said and waited, his old friend shame grinning wickedly next to his heart.

Alex smiled sadly. “I miss you too, Michael.”

“Those days in college were the best of my life, I think.”

“For me, too. Those and fatherhood. Holding my daughters when they were born and watching them grow up has been something I never imagined would be so wonderful.” And the lines on his face appeared, lines he was happy to have. The exchange for him, the loss of freedom to Meg, was worth it.

Alex was happy. A hollow feeling inside of Michael became emptier still, and he did not know he could feel so entirely empty of all the meaning and experience in the world.

“Still,” Alex continued in his sensitive way, “if I were to compile the greatest hits of my life, in terms of memories, my time with you would be up there. You know that. My time with you, fatherhood, and my life with Meg. My job is, whatever, it's a means to an end. My
daughters mean the world to me, and our time in Connecticut meant the world to me too, friend.”

Michael suddenly recalled the morning after that one rainy night in college he had spent in Alex's room. He remembered waking up on the floor around five a.m., still drunk from the bourbon, and putting on his dried pants and shirt to leave the room for the bathroom. Before he had left, he had turned and looked at Alex in bed. One of Alex's muscular legs lay exposed to the air, and his hand was on his chest. The blanket covered all of him except for the single exposed leg and his upper chest and face. In sleep, Alex's face took on another dimension of beauty Michael had never had the pleasure of seeing before. His wavy brown curls fell loosely over his surrendered pale face, the full lips, the strong jaw. A sudden urge to lie on top of Alex seized him, a desire to press himself hard against the solid figure. Just as strong as his desire was to kiss that mouth, the desire to have those strong arms wrapped around him, was his desire to hold himself back, which he did as he gazed at the sleeping figure with burning intensity. After he stumbled to the bathroom, calming his arousal and his pounding heart, he returned to the room and fell asleep on the floor once again. When he woke again, he recalled some sort of bizarre passion and dismissed the moment as the insanity that came from drinking alcohol and having no female companion.

In the gazebo, the two men locked eyes and passed the bottle back and forth. Michael was getting up his nerve to ask the most important question of his life.

“Did you love me?” The words had come out, but Michael now felt he might choke. The air in the gazebo was heavy, pregnant with musky night air and illuminated bugs.

“I did,” Alex responded.

“Did you want me?” Michael asked.

“I don't know.” There it was—a better answer existed, but that answer contained within it the seed of all possibilities, the seed of potential. Something had been there; Michael had not been crazy to imagine it. He burned all over, he quivered, and he stood up with the bottle and turned to look at Alex. There was the deeply handsome face he had admired so much, the strong jaw, the dazzling green eyes. There was the beautiful neck. For the moment, all the damage Meg had done vanished, and the face of a younger man was before him. Alex held his gaze, and for the first time Michael saw a flash of lust in his eyes. It was utterly intoxicating and paralyzed Michael where he stood, his eyes locked on Alex's.