Rhapsody on a Theme

by Matthew J. Metzger

  “Well, I think when you can’t name your son’s boyfriend of seven years, that constitutes a bit of a lack of a relationship, yes,” Darren muttered.

  “Darren. I am trying.”

  “You’re trying for all of ten minutes, for the first time since I can remember,” Darren said tartly. “Forgive me if I’m not exactly blown away here.”

  “There’s no need for sarcasm.”

  “There’s every need,” Darren snapped. “When was I born?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “When was I born?”

  “For goodness’ sake, Darren, I know my son’s birthday.”

  “What is it, then?”

  Father paused, and Darren raised his eyebrows pointedly. Eventually, Father said, “All right, I take your point…”

  “And where?”

  “Where?”

  “Yes, where?”

  “…Gloucester,” Father said eventually.

  “Wrong,” Darren said flatly. “That was Misha. When we were visiting Uncle Theo for Christmas because Mother couldn’t go skiing that year.” Uncle Theo, with the same crazy hair as Scott and Darren. Mother’s brother, long since dead. Some kind of accident. Very, very faintly, Darren could remember the funeral, but he’d only been ten and hadn’t known Uncle Theo very well, so the memory had been largely lost to not paying attention and a lack of any actual grief. He’d been more interested in the church organ than the eulogies.

  Father’s face tightened.

  “You might be trying right now, but there’s a lot of missing history to try and cover up,” Darren said flatly.

  “Darren…”

  Darren shrugged. He was mildly surprised to find that once, when he would have gotten angry, he was feeling somewhat indifferent. It was almost embarrassing, seeing this aging man whose life was crumbling. He wanted to walk away just to avoid the excruciating conversation, or lack thereof. But there was no anger anymore; the irritation was washed away by the drug and the distance, and the sense of failure or invisibility deadened by the sheer fact that…

  That Darren was building a life of his own, and Father’s had sunk away.

  “How did you get my address?”

  Father paused. “Scott,” he said eventually, to Darren’s surprise. “I…may have implied I required your contact details for editing my will.” Lies, Darren suspected. He knew for a fact that he hadn’t been in Father’s will before the divorce. He’d been removed when he turned eighteen, because—in Father’s own words—there was no need to provide for him as a minor anymore. Privately, Darren had at the time suspected Father didn’t want to provide for his bisexual, uneducated son in the first place.

  “…Right.”

  “He, ah,” Father hesitated, then continued. “He suggested that I wait a little while before contacting you. That you have been…unwell lately.”

  “Depression,” Darren said flatly.

  Father stared, and Darren shifted back in his seat a little.

  “Depression,” Father echoed.

  “Yes. Fairly severe.”

  “How severe?”

  Darren raised his eyebrows. “Worse than I was at home as a kid, but I doubt you remember that either. About four or five months after Mother announced your divorce that Christmas, I tried to kill myself.” There was an odd sense of vindictive freedom about saying it, about putting it in such stark terms, and it was intensified when Father paled and flinched back. “Things were going badly with my boyfriend and I felt very intensely alone, and the depression all flared up again.”

  “And…recently?”

  Darren shrugged. “We’re trying drugs to treat it. The first and second trials knocked me about a bit.”

  Father eyed him. “Are you…feeling better?”

  “I suppose so,” Darren replied. “Although really, Scott shouldn’t have needed to tell you. I’ve had depression since I was about twelve.”

  Father’s face tightened and he sighed heavily. “Darren, you must understand that your mother and I were not raised in families—or even times—which really recognised such illnesses, and…we were concerned about you, but we thought you would grow out of it. Teenagers are…moody.”

  “Most teenagers don’t jump off the fourth floor of a car park,” Darren returned dryly. Father flinched, and Darren decided to be somewhat cruel. “You should have noticed, Father. Nobody accidentally jumps off that car park; you have to get over two concrete barriers and a fence.”

  “Darren…”

  “My counsellor attributes a lot of my depressive state to my upbringing. She says if I had received more support growing up, I wouldn’t struggle so much now.” Father flinched again and pursed his lips. “But that’s history,” Darren said finally. “The new medication is helping, and Jayden helps. More than you would ever understand.”

  “So, ah…you are still with him?”

  “Yes. Obviously.”

  “I see,” Father said. Darren ordinarily would have bristled, but found himself largely uninterested. “You, uh. Alison and I were…surprised.”

  “Really.”

  “It had not occurred to us that you were, uh…”

  “Father, for God’s sake, why are we discussing this? I was sixteen when you found out.” Technically fifteen, Darren supposed, but he wasn’t going to go splitting hairs with a partner in a law firm.

  “Right,” Father said, in a wholly unconvinced manner, and Darren sighed heavily.

  “Look, this is pointless,” he said. “We’re not getting anywhere. What do you want out of this?”

  Father operated in business terms—even at home, which was the problem—and Darren knew the way his father worked enough to know that that was the only way to generate a useful response.

  “I suppose,” Father said finally, “I regret the distance between us and I want to close it.”

  “And this is coincidentally coming only after the divorce and your realisation that…what? You’re not scoring good family points at work anymore? You’re not being prioritised for time off?”

  “The divorce merely opened my eyes, Darren. I realised that once your mother is gone—in any way—I have very little link to my children.”

  “You didn’t have one with Mother. I’m not close to her either,” Darren said. Less so, even, because whereas Father had simply failed to speak to him one way or the other since the mugging, Mother had been quite clear through her pained expressions and sideways remarks that she was not pleased at her teenage son having a boyfriend in the slightest.

  “Your mother keeps tabs.”

  “Really,” Darren said flatly. “I’d be interested to know how.”

  “She keeps records. Addresses, phone numbers…”

  “So she keeps contact details,” Darren clarified. “Marvellous, Father. I applaud her. However she knows no more of the detail than you do.”

  “Darren…”

  “Look, you can be proud,” Darren said flatly. “You put in the money and you put in the academic opportunities and I turned out all right in the end. Unwell, but I have a job and I have a mortgage and I pay the bills on time. But I don’t need you, Father. I haven’t needed you for years because if I had, I would have gone under a long time ago. You put in no emotional effort. You might have fathered children, but you weren’t my father in any real sense of the word. So I’m fine, and I have my own life now, and I’ll get by in the end. But I don’t need you to do it.”

  Father’s face twisted, and he looked suddenly hurt. Darren was struck by a crashing wave of pity. Father was greying and balding, and not the domineering, loud man that had structured his teenage years around music for him and set out a life plan for both of his children that neither were willing to follow. And Darren pitied him. He had screwed up, and Darren pitied that.

  “I’m not going to cut off contact and tell you to never talk to me again,” he said lowly, draining his glass and pushing it aside with an air of quiet finality. “But you can’t waltz in, have a chat, and expect eve
rything to be fine. If you want to work on this, then whatever, that’s up to you. But I have nothing to gain here—or lose—so you’re going to have to make the effort, not me.”

  “I…understand,” Father said quietly.

  “And I’d start by actually remembering my boyfriend’s name,” Darren said flatly. “Do the normal stuff—send Christmas cards, birthday cards, that kind of thing. Remember birthdays. You can’t throw money at people and expect a relationship, it doesn’t work like that. That’s business.”

  “I will…try.”

  Darren sighed and shook his head. “Honestly, Father? If I were you, I would concentrate on Misha. She’s only thirteen. There’s time still. Me, I don’t need you. But she does, especially after that car crash of a divorce. The two of you dragged her through every family court in the area, and she is going to hate both of you for good if you don’t sort that out. But at the end of the day, I don’t hate you. I just don’t particularly care.”

  Father nodded jerkily and Darren rose.

  “Nice seeing you,” he said politely, extending a hand, and Father shook it wearily. “I still have your business email. I’ll send the landline number for the house.”

  “Thank you,” Father said and called when Darren was halfway to the door. “Darren!”

  “What?”

  Darren half-turned. Father sat still, watching him for a long and silent minute, before eventually saying, “I…am proud, Darren. Of you.”

  Darren paused, nodded, and left.

  Chapter 22

  Jayden received a text not an hour and a half after leaving the house, and dutifully waited outside the supermarket for Darren’s car. He had bought a large slab of Dairy Milk, hoping that it wouldn’t be needed, and when Darren pulled up in the pick-up point, watched his face carefully.

  “How did it go?” he asked once he was situated, and Darren put the car into gear and moved off. He looked calm, but that didn’t mean he was.

  “As you’d expect,” he said. “The man can’t do small talk for the life of him.”

  Jayden laughed. The acerbic tone was a good sign, and he didn’t seem angry, so…“So no argument?”

  “Not really. Was a bit awkward. Told him to focus on building a relationship with Potato and leave me alone.”

  Jayden hummed.

  “Still doesn’t remember your name either.”

  “Oh God,” Jayden said and laughed again. “Okay. Maybe that’ll never happen anyway.”

  “Beginning to think not,” Darren agreed amiably.

  “But you’re okay? You’re not, you know, upset or…or angry or anything like that?”

  “No,” Darren said, turning the wrong way at the junction. Jayden threw him a look, and Darren shrugged. “I’m hungry, let’s go for lunch. Father bought the drinks, but we didn’t stop long enough for food. There’s only so much awkward I could stand.”

  “I can’t imagine wanting to eat what your dad considers food anyway,” Jayden said snottily, and Darren laughed. He sounded light and fine. Jayden relaxed fully against the leather seat.

  “It’s not that bad. Mother is worse.”

  “This from the man who will eat mouldy bread,” Jayden retorted, then opened up the chocolate, snapped a piece off, and fed it to Darren by hand at a set of traffic lights. “There, that’s my contribution to warding off any bad feelings about your meeting. The rest of this bar is mine.”

  “Thanks, but I am okay,” Darren mumbled around the chocolate. “Usual cafe?”

  “Yeah, go on.”

  Darren parked up in a nearby Tesco known for not checking the length of time cars stayed there. It was windy (as usual) and Jayden squeezed Darren’s elbow as they crossed the road to a cheap-and-cheerful cafe with plastic tablecloths and American-style menus. Serving big portions, importantly. Jayden was determined to get Darren’s weight back up. He was sick of seeing those hipbones so blatantly when Darren came out of the shower, it was scary and horrible and he looked kind of ill. (And it wasn’t even sexy.)

  “I can’t believe he even had the cheek to come,” Jayden said as they entered the cafe and found their usual table. They were semi-regulars: they came enough that they were offered a smile and a, ‘morning, dears’ from the middle-aged waitress, but not so often that their orders were predictable. “I mean, what was it? He thought after the divorce he could, what, score points against your mum or…?”

  “I don’t know.” Darren shrugged. “I think he’s feeling a bit crap now his wife’s left him and his kids are so uninterested that they don’t chase him up about cards or visits either. Wanted some validation of having been a father, maybe.”

  “He was a crap father!” Jayden exclaimed, then grimaced. “Sorry, I know, I should be more…he’s your father, crap or not, and I…but I just…he sucked, Darren. I mean, my dad isn’t perfect but he’s a proper dad, you know? Your dad was just…he might as well have not been there.”

  “Your dad is awesome.”

  “Dad can be a tosser.”

  “Yeah, but your dad loves you,” Darren said flatly. “It’s blindingly obvious. And he’s not even your real dad.”

  Jayden snorted. “True. And he still did a better job than yours—well, no, I mean, you’re amazing anyway, but…oh, you know what I mean.”

  Darren shrugged. “Father’s a businessman, not a family man,” he said eventually. “Scott once said he shouldn’t have had kids, and he’s right.”

  Jayden squeezed his hand, recognising the devil’s advocate when he saw it. Hell, Darren probably hadn’t been that fair to Mr. Peace to his face. He never had been. It had actually been a little bit funny when they were teenagers, because if anything could send Darren from mature and acerbic into a full-on teenage tantrum, it had been his father telling him to practice, and the switch had been amazing to see. But still…

  “I just don’t like him,” Jayden said eventually. “Either of them, your mum or your dad.” It felt odd to use those terms about the starchy, stiff people Jayden remembered. Darren had once accidentally said ‘Mum’—not to her face, about her—and Jayden had felt that it didn’t apply, somehow. “They just ignored you all the time and they were crap.”

  “Yeah, your mum was better at it,” Darren said and grinned. “And she fed me.”

  Jayden tapped the menu pointedly.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Darren said, flipping it open. “Nagger.”

  “I’ll nag until you’re back to normal,” Jayden said and wrinkled his nose. “I didn’t think your hands could get more…spidery, but they have. Be grateful I’m not buying a scale and weighing you at home. Do they have scales at your gym?”

  “I’m going to say no, because I see where this is going,” Darren said flatly.

  Jayden rolled his eyes and huffed. Darren tapped the side of his foot under the table.

  “I’ll get there,” Darren said. “At least I want to eat now.”

  “Still not as much as you used to,” Jayden complained.

  “You know,” Darren said quietly, and Jayden raised his eyebrows. “The drugs have settled properly now.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Mm. Don’t feel so sleepy all the time. No headaches. Feeling properly hungry again.”

  “Good. I…”

  “Feeling horny again,” Darren finished, and Jayden flushed a brilliant scarlet, his face burning.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Ready to order, you two?”

  Jayden buried his face in his hands and let Darren blithely order for them. There was no way the waitress hadn’t heard him, and she was old enough to be either of their mothers, and this was so embarrassing, and why did he have a boyfriend who just came out with this kind of stuff in public? “I hate you,” he said when she’d gone, and Darren sniggered.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “No, I don’t, that’s the problem,” Jayden grumbled, but in the back of his mind, he was pleased. They’d had an active sex life, before the fluoxetine, and there was only so much Darren coul
d cover the gap with blowjobs or Jayden’s own stress could halt the problem for a while. Jayden had to admit, he was feeling tense and frustrated at the lack of it. He’d even tried…tried wanking this morning in the shower, but it just…

  It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t enough.

  Still…

  “Fine. That you’re…that’s good,” he said primly, and Darren laughed. He looked messily beautiful, wild-haired and thin-faced, slouching over the table with those large hands folded on top of the plastic, chequered tablecloth. Jayden rested his hand over one and rubbed the rough nails. “I’m glad you’re doing better,” he murmured. “You’re you.”

  Darren hummed, still watching his face. Examining. Jayden shifted, frowned, shifted again, and demanded an explanation. “Nothing,” it came, and he scowled even harder. “Just looking.”

  “At what?”

  “At the bloody floor. At you, what else?”

  “Why?” Jayden demanded.

  “Because you look a bit better too,” Darren said. “Not so permanently worried. I mean, you’re still stressed, that’s obvious, but you look less like I’m about to go mental and shoot up a supermarket or something.”

  Jayden hummed, and Darren turned his hand over, wiggling his fingers invitingly. Jayden watched their fingers twisting together, his paler and thinner than Darren’s, but his hand also substantially smaller. They fit the same way they always did. He smiled.

  “I realised,” Darren said, “talking to Father, I realised that I’ve come further than I thought I did.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I don’t need him. He was saying all this stuff and I wasn’t getting angry or upset, I just…pitied him. He’s just this old guy who’s fucked up and regrets it, and I pitied him for that. But I wasn’t angry. I didn’t really even care that much. I don’t need him, and I don’t need Mother. I don’t even need Scott, because I’ve got you, and that’s…that’s what I need. You and Rach and my job and Paul and Ethan, much as I will kill you if you tell them that. Any of them.”

  Jayden laughed, something loosening in his chest, and he squeezed those large fingers in his contentedly. “I need you too,” he confessed. “I need you to…to remind me to relax sometimes, and to be silly with me, and to…to let me fuss and be stressy and a bit of a bitch. To put up with me.”