Cole opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
Daniel wipes his cheek. “There’s not even a friggin’ toaster in this house.”
* * *
—
He spends over an hour settling his father down. He stirs honey into warm milk, turns on the bedside TV, and gets him talking about his boyhood in Suffield.
“Henry Harrison came up from the South like so many during the war because the GIs wanted cigars and there were labor shortages with everybody fighting overseas. He was from Georgia, a black man, and he lived in the barracks by where the tracks cross Konkapot Creek. So one day I happened to be kicking by the fields during coffee break and Henry Harrison started telling me about his boy, who was about my age—and what grade was I in? What comics did I read? Anyway, he sets his coffee on the tractor’s footrest, opens his lunch pail, unwraps some wax paper, and hands me a hunk of cornbread. ‘Go on,’ he says, ‘take it,’ and I’ll tell you now it was the richest, most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. My eyes went wide and then all soft, like I was drunk on the bread, and he must’ve seen that because he laughed out loud and gave me a second piece, which I devoured and then licked my fingers and palms and even the crumbs that had fallen on my shirt. I knew right then that anything I ate in the rest of my life would be a disappointment.” He takes the last swallow of milk and hands Cole the mug. “And I wasn’t wrong.”
He’s cleaned up the cuts on his father’s feet and the scrape on his palm. No luck getting him out of the pajamas, stuck with nettles and dirty at the knees. He switches off the lamp and turns the TV volume down, his father looking staticky in the fuzzy light. “Did the man ever give you cornbread again?”
“After coffee break he took off on the tractor—he was plowing ahead of the setter—and he was standing up, preparing to swing around the pole at the end of a bent, looking back over his shoulder, and when he saw me he gave a little wave, and I’d like to believe he was thinking of his son at that moment—his hand still raised to me as he drove the tractor under the net wire. It sliced his head clean off.”
* * *
—
Past midnight his father’s asleep and Daniel’s moving around overhead in the attic. In bed, he opens his laptop and returns to the email, but he freezes up. No hurry, he decides, since he’s not even sure where he can find wi-fi in town. In Japan it’s already tomorrow, and his sister—well, he really has no idea—she could be streaking over Afghanistan, miles above the surface of the earth, where time zones don’t seem to matter. It’s a weekday. Ian’s probably standing in front of forty-five uniformed high-schoolers. Eight years ago—when he last saw his brother and Michiko and his nephews—Cole made the trip to Toyohashi. Ian was late meeting him at the station, and once they got to their small house Cole felt he was imposing and immediately regretted coming, but a few days later he wasn’t so sure. It might have been that he simply felt large and obtrusive because the rooms and doorways and tables and chairs were so small. Michiko waited on him attentively, completely, but that, too, made him uncomfortable. Showing Cole the city and its historic parks and temples Ian sometimes seemed indifferent, but when he took him into a robatayaki he was suddenly overeager, showing off his Japanese, calling the owner to their table, patting backs, spending money, becoming the little brother seeking approval for his success, for a life well lived. Despite being an inch taller, Ian was bald on the top and chubby up front. Even his teeth had changed—gray and crooked, obscured by a push-broom mustache hanging over his mouth. On nights when he got to drinking Suntory whiskey, which was most nights, he’d start in on the school administration—restrictive and authoritarian—treating teachers like minions, and then that the whole culture was no different and he always felt scrutinized, trapped like a zoo animal. Michiko could be a relief, he said, but she had plenty of tricks for keeping the upper hand. And the whole kid thing had been a disappointment; he thought they’d be more like friends to him, that he’d be able to reason with them, but instead—just so they’d brush their teeth, sit still on the train, or practice the piano—he had to spank them. By the time he got to the last bit he’d be so loaded that he didn’t know what he was saying, and one night he hit such a dark drunk he looped back to the beginning: I hate that school, I really hate teaching, I hate this whole fucking country and everyone is conspiring against me. And then, on Cole’s last night in Japan, as if it was all the same thread: “You were just as bad as her, you know. The two of you saying ‘It’s the last time. Never again. Everything’ll be okay.’ But you knew it was a lie, didn’t you?”
Cole gripped the edge of the table, still as stone.
* * *
—
“Hey,” Nikki says.
“Can you talk?” he asks.
“Yeah,” and then after a pause, “I’m home.”
“Home?”
“At my apartment.”
“Oh.” It’s cooled off a little, and he pulls the sheet up to his chest.
“How’s Daniel?”
In their last call—and after a long talk with her son—she resigned herself to his working tobacco, even admitting that it might do him some good. “He’s rummaging through the attic. He should get to sleep, though. He starts his job in the morning, early.”
“Make sure he’s got sunscreen. And plenty of water.”
“He’s all set. He even made his own lunch.”
“And you?” she asks. “Long days watching the barn come down?”
“Actually, my father’s taking a lot of my time.”
“I heard you reconnected with an old friend.”
He smiles, and somehow through the phone she knows.
“Feeling randy?” she says.
“She’s married.” They both know what he means: Nikki’s married too.
She takes a deep breath.
“Is it true you don’t like our hot tub?” The long pause that follows is familiar and therefore perversely comforting: at least they still have this dynamic between them.
“I liked it,” she finally says, “because it relaxed you. I was hoping it would help.”
“But wasn’t it pretty sensual, too?”
“Sensuality-wise, I needed a little more than taking a bath together. I can wait a while. I waited for years. But we’re not young anymore, Cole.”
“I just felt—”
“Stop!” She hates his victimized tone as much as he does. “Do you really want to claim you’re a little hurt to hear I was faking it with our hot tub when you couldn’t even fake it with me in bed? Jesus. I gotta go.” She waits for him to say “Goodnight,” then says “Bye.”
He switches off the lamp. Moonlight angles sharply through the front windows. It’s quiet overhead. He hopes Daniel has gone to sleep.
* * *
—
It started a few days after the ultrasound, when they learned their child was a boy and he stopped off in the afternoon at that Little League game. At bat, a small boy in a baggy uniform swung at two wild pitches but then made contact and ran like hell. The ball rolled only halfway to third base—a perfect bunt, if he’d been bunting—and when he was called safe he couldn’t restrain a beaming grin, accepted pats on the back from his coach, and then gazed into the stands to find his father as the first baseman punched his fist into his glove, spitting and kicking up dirt. When all eyes were on the next batter, the first baseman—twice the size of the kid on the bag—elbowed him hard in the ribs, doubling him over. Cole shot to his feet shouting “Hey!” instantly so enraged that he could hear his blood pounding. A grandstand full of fathers—and not a single one of them noticed!
He left before the game was over and, at home, stood at the fridge staring at the ultrasound photo that Nikki had stuck on the door with a magnet. What if it had been his boy taking that elbow? How easily could he have controlled his rage? He opened the fridge and grabbed a be
er. He drank several more through the evening, and later in bed Nikki held the ultrasound in her fingers—the baby cradled inside her, his giant head, a raised arm, a tiny fist—and cooed, “Hello, Daniel.” Then she set the picture on her nightstand and turned to him so full of love and passion and straight-up horniness that any man would catch on fire, but Cole couldn’t do it, couldn’t let loose. That was the first time.
Nikki was understanding. “A baby coming,” she said. “It’s a lot to take in.” But she had no idea, neither of them did, that it was the beginning of the end of what for six years had been a crackling sex life.
The end came fifteen years later. On that Saturday morning when he didn’t accept her invitation to come back to bed with his coffee, he cleaned up the tung oil and worked on a bid for dormers in a bungalow, or maybe it was a wraparound porch on a foursquare. When he made Daniel breakfast around noon, he realized Nikki had gone out, and he didn’t see her until dinnertime, when she came home with shopping bags from two other dressmakers like her with shops on Alberta. Then, around nine o’clock, Daniel texted that he was going with friends to a late movie, and Cole shaved and put on his dancing shoes to surprise Nikki at the Iguana.
Inside, over the tops of a hundred heads, he spotted two women from her book group, martini glasses in hand, talking at the bar. The music was loud, the bass thumping his spine, so he was dancing already as he shouldered through the rowdy crowd and the dizzying fumes of bourbon and beer, perfumes, orange slices and bitters. He scanned the dance floor and saw her bopping under the lights in a blue and green dress he’d never seen, and he was seized by desire as her beauty rushed through him, swift and sparkling. She was a slinky, sexy dancer. He pushed by a few more bodies, ready to spring onto the parquet. Though he was still fighting through the crowd, her eyes seemed to lock onto him, her playful appraising gaze, her knowing grin, her inside-joke wink—Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me—and he fell in love all over again. She reached out a hand, and it was taken. She twirled once, then twice, fell into Tony’s arms, and popped back out for another spin. Cole stopped dead. She hadn’t seen him, and neither, apparently had anyone from the book group. He turned away, dropping his face into his collar like a spy, and at home he scrubbed the stamp off the back of his hand at the kitchen sink. Then he vomited and smoked a joint and watched half a season of Six Feet Under. At one point Daniel was in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal. When Nikki came in he pretended to be asleep on the couch, the only light in the living room coming from the TV. Though she didn’t try to wake him, she did spread a blanket over his body. Like a shroud.
He never told her what he’d seen at the Iguana. He didn’t think she’d forgive him for not blowing up.
11
He oversleeps—didn’t hear the damn alarm!—and then races into Kelly’s room, but Daniel isn’t in her bed. Smelling warm butter, he goes downstairs.
“Beurre,” his father is telling his son at the stove. “The best beurre in the world is French.”
“I take Spanish,” Daniel says. “Now step back.” He wields the pan like a sword and flips a crepe in the air. It’s the same pan from back then, with that simple turning at the end of the wooden handle. “Dad, you’re up,” he says looking over. “I searched this place top to bottom for a toaster. Nada. But I found a reasonable substitute.”
“Lower that flame,” Phil instructs him. “And more butter in the pan.”
“Crepes are the rich man’s toast. Congratulations, Dad. You’ve reformed me. A couple days in New England have turned me bourgeois.”
They spread jam and sprinkle sugar, the three of them eating faster than Daniel can cook. “Mangez voilà magnifique qu’est-ce que c’est,” Phil says. Gibberish. He’s off somewhere, his face blank, but blissful too, chewing, swallowing, holding out his empty plate for more. Daniel gulps a tall glass of milk, snatches his lunch from the fridge, and they all three load into the car.
Cole fights the steering the whole way, and at Boulger he points out Little Kirk, parking his motorbike by a shed. Daniel walks across the dirt and shakes his hand, and the two of them, along with a couple dozen Hispanic men and boys, board the dusty bus, and the two fathers sit in the car watching it pull away. “You can’t say we didn’t do something right,” Phil says finally, smacking Cole on the knee.
* * *
—
The end of the job has come on faster than he expected. He’d planned to stay less than a week, and it’s been ten days, but it’s Alex and Antoine who are suddenly leaving. He’s taking Daniel over to their house this evening—excited to show off his son—for a final quick goodbye.
For now they’re standing in the hot sun outside the bank in the center of East Granby. Cole’s check has already been deposited in their account, the documents are notarized, he’s signed the bill of lading, and the cargo’s insured. The two flatbeds loaded with his chestnut are lined up the length of the cemetery, idling.
Cole leans back against the hood of Phil’s Bonneville. “Where’s your first stop?”
“Bratislava,” Antoine says.
“At a hotel,” Alex adds, “that actually has the same name as Antoine’s great grandfather.”
“Maybe just a coincidence,” Antoine says.
“Maybe not.” Alex reaches out her arms. “Well,” she says. “It’s been really wonderful, Cole. And I’ve got—”
“Wait, I’ll see you tonight. With Daniel.”
“Didn’t I text you? We’re driving down to Brooklyn to spend the night with Antoine’s brother. We got a security warning from the airline saying to get to JFK extra early, so this way we won’t have to leave at two a.m.”
“Oh, shoot. So this is really it.”
“Until next time.”
He’s terrible at goodbyes. He can remember fearing even before his mother died that there wouldn’t be a next time.
Antoine hugs him, his arms like rocks. And then Alex, soft and strong. “I’ve got something for you,” she says, and pulls the ring off of her thumb and slips it on his finger. “And one more.” From her pocket she produces a smaller chestnut ring. “Antoine made this one last night. That design comes from traditional Hungarian embroidery.”
“It’s beautiful. You’re so kind.”
“It’s for your wife,” she says, sliding it onto his pinkie. “For Nikki.”
He admires the two rings, side by side on his fingers, and his eyes fill with tears. “Thank you.”
Antoine opens the pickup door, and Alex hugs Cole again.
“Bon voyage,” he says.
They climb inside and she starts the engine. Cole’s last sight of her is through the windshield, her hair tied up in a scarf. She clunks it into reverse, looking out the rear window over her shoulder. She waves at him, rolling backward, and then stops, trying to work the old transmission into gear, and in that halted moment with the sun igniting her hair and glinting off her cheeks, she looks more like his mother than ever.
* * *
—
Within a couple minutes the trucks pull away with his chestnut, shooting long black clouds of smoke drifting over the cemetery. He’s got time to spare before his lunch date with Liz, and should go back to the house and wire in the new ceiling light he bought for the kitchen, but instead decides to take a drive. He heads south and turns up the long entrance to East Granby High School, which has a new façade and new bleachers; the pasture where Buford used to graze is now a subdivision with small houses, thrown together in the eighties by the look of the siding and wrought iron.
Then he takes the twenty-minute drive to Bloomfield, where he and his brother and sister moved in with their uncle Andrew and Sandy after their mother died. Bloomfield High has put in a new track, and there’s a Warhawk banner fading in the sun, but otherwise he guesses it looks about the same. He went here for two years but hardly has a memory of it. Nearly straight
A’s, piling on extra classes—all a blur, as if one night he crept downstairs to find his mother slumped against the piano and the next moment he was in Seattle at UDub.
Across the street from his uncle Andrew and Sandy’s house he parks in the shade. It’s been painted a blue that’s probably too bright, but it still looks cozy with its steep roof, gingerbread details in the fascia, and deep turnings in the front porch columns. The street’s less run-down than it used to be. The houses are close together, separated only by the driveways. Down the side of theirs, the cedar fence is gone. And the hot tub, too. The garage isn’t in the spot he remembers.
A woman with a trowel appears on the opposite side. Could she be Sandy? She must be. There’s no reason she and Andrew wouldn’t still live here. Her hair’s shorter, her hips wider. He watches her set down a flat of pansies and kneel beside it. Then a little girl comes running around from the back. “Mommy. Where are you?”
What could he have been thinking? Sandy was twelve years older than he was, and this woman’s in her thirties. With a five-year-old daughter. He’s off by twenty-five years.
He was a college junior when Andrew wrote to say Tilly had died, and that was the last Cole ever heard from him. The letter also said she had set up a trust to continue paying Cole’s tuition, and that Andrew would cover his airfare to the funeral. It took him a week to write back—really busy time…midterms…advanced calculus, some of it nearly true. She died four years and two months after his mother, and leaving Bloomfield now, driving along a golf course to Simsbury and Tilly’s old house, he knows that, even taking self-preservation into account, not coming back for her funeral was unambiguously wrong.
The grand and stately house looks just the same—red brick with black shutters and ivory trim—and he can easily imagine Tilly still sitting at the head of the kitchen table. Then he notices, in the side yard, an elderly woman half-hidden by the mulberry bush sitting at an easel, painting. On a garden table beside her, brushes fan out in smudged jars among squished metal tubes and what look like small apothecary bottles. Though her hair is white, it’s permed in the style his mother’s used to be.
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