The Banks of Certain Rivers

by Harrison, Jon

  “Right,” I say, and Alan shrugs and tells me he’ll be right back. Truth is, through cleverness and good luck, Alan and Kristin are well off enough that neither of them really needs to work at all. About ten years ago, when I first met him, Alan was working—during long breaks between flying international routes—on a tennis-simulating contraption, a clunky device involving blocky sensors and accelerometers pulled from several cars’ airbag deployment systems that he’d strapped onto a tennis racquet. With the whole assembly wired up to a pair of computer servers, Alan claimed it could perfectly detect how the racquet was being swung through three-dimensional space, and after applying for patents on the thing he shopped it around to a number of sports companies as a potential training aid. There were some flickers of interest, but the contraption was pretty ungainly, heavy as a sack of bricks and dangling bundles of wires, and after striking out on who knows how many sales pitches Alan gave up on it and turned his attention once again to flying. He’d given it a good shot, and was not left embittered. A device ahead of its time, we called it.

  Ahead of its time, that is, until a year or so later when chronology aligned with Alan’s mad science and four impeccably dressed Japanese businessmen showed up at his home. They were from a certain entertainment company, they explained, and wished to engage in discussions about his tennis racquet invention. Those conversations led to two of his patents ending up in the Wii videogame system, and a whole bunch of money ending up in the Massies’ bank account in the form of licensing fees and continuing royalties.

  The money didn’t change them. Al kept flying planes, and Kris kept on with her dental practice. They stayed the same, but it was an awfully nice score for both of them.

  On the way back to Alan’s place, with a quiver of ten-foot posts sticking out from the back of my truck, I get a text from Lauren. The shelves look fantastic, she writes, and she wishes I could have stayed all night.

  “That from Lauren?” Alan asks, peering over at the phone in my hand.

  “Yep.” I’m angling the screen away from him, but what’s the point? He knows.

  “Things are going well with her. You guys were screwing yesterday.”

  “Alan.”

  “I could tell. I mean, her car was there, you were over there, it’s pretty obvious what—”

  “Enough. Enough.”

  “And the look on your face after. Even with the lip. Which looks much better today, I should add. But man, Carol’s house? Ballsy, Neil. Ballsy move.”

  “Okay. Yes. Okay. Ballsy. Whatever. It was stupid. Stupid, stupid. I know we can’t…I told her we can’t—”

  “Neil.”

  “What?”

  “Stop.”

  “I’m just telling you.”

  “No, I mean stop the car. Right now. Pull over. Right here.”

  I pull off to the side of the road and put the truck in park, and Alan turns and grabs me by the shoulder. “Will you listen to yourself?” he says, shaking me. “Listen to yourself. You’re a grown man, and you’re talking like a kid. You need to just suck it up, and get it out there. And Christopher—”

  “God, Christopher.”

  “He’s going to take it just fine.”

  “You say that.”

  “He’s a smart kid,” Alan says. “The smartest kid I know. Solid. After everything, solid. He’s going to take it just fine.”

  “But Wendy, the way he feels about her…”

  Alan crosses his arms and stares forward. “It’s an admirable thing you’re doing. Maybe. But maybe it’s stupid too. And maybe it’s unfair. Unfair to yourself, and unfair to Chris. Maybe you’re not giving him enough credit.”

  “Hey, hold on a second. That’s not—”

  “I said maybe. Maybe. This is just my opinion, Neil. I don’t like you beating yourself up. I don’t like seeing it. Maybe get it out there.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  “Fair enough,” Alan says, and I put the truck into gear to bring us back up onto the highway. I don’t look over at him for a while as we drive, because I know he’s right. I don’t say anything either, but it isn’t long before Alan starts up again.

  “Besides,” he goes on, “I’d say you have a pretty good thing going. I mean, look, here we have an older guy, a very decent guy, he likes a younger woman—”

  “I’m only five years older. Well, six—”

  “Like I’m saying. And she reciprocates the feeling.”

  “It’s not that big a difference.”

  “They like each other, these two. A good thing. Capital G, capital T. Good thing.”

  “It is a good thing.”

  “A genuine affection. These two are truly fond of each other.”

  “We are,” I say.

  “You and I have been friends for a long time, Neil. It makes me happy to see you this way. It makes Kris happy. We’re all having dinner tonight, the four of us, like we do, and you have no idea how much we are looking forward to it. We look forward to it every week. You’re like a new guy.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “But,” Alan say, raising his eyebrows, “we’re getting tired of being the only ones in Port Manitou in on the secret.”

  “It’s not…it isn’t going to be that much longer.”

  “Fine then. Get it out there. Tell Christopher.”

  “I’m going to tell him. Really. I am.”

  “When, though?”

  “After graduation. Okay? When Chris is done. That’s when.”

  “Is that really fair to him? Or Lauren, for that matter? This isn’t as big a deal as you’re making it out to be. Your son is going to know about this, somehow. Why not get it out there on your terms?”

  I throw my head back and groan. “Leave it, Alan. Please?” He is right, and it’s infuriating.

  “Okay. I’ll leave it for now.” We turn into Alan’s drive, and he points over to the left, toward Mega-Putt. “Take us right over the grass.” I drive across his lawn and park next to a hole featuring something like an Aztec pyramid in miniature, and help Alan unload the posts. Then I start off without saying goodbye—maybe I’m just a little miffed at him still, or flustered—but Alan waves me to a stop and jumps back in, reminding me he’s left his bicycle at my house. I don’t say anything about it. Coming up my drive we see Christopher buzzing around Carol’s yard on our riding mower, his ears encased in massive headphones and his head bobbing away to some music. He grins when he notices us and waves as we go by.

  “Tell him he can mow my yard whenever,” Alan says.

  “I’m sure he’ll get right on that,” I say.

  “He’ll get free passes to Mega-Putt.”

  We park, and I head out back to check if he’s made it to the field yet. Alan follows as far as the fire pit, picks up a stick, and pokes around in the barely smoking ashes. Chris must have made a fire last night.

  The field is still not mowed.

  “Your son needs to do a better job at destroying his evidence,” Alan calls. He hoists aloft a charred beer can dangling from the end of his impromptu spear right as Chris rolls by on the mower. Alan wags the can at him, and my son pretends not to see.

  “What is that?” I shout, knowing he can’t hear me. “Chris? Where did that come from?” He can’t hear me as he bounces past, but I’m sure he knows exactly what I’m saying, and I see him smile as he rumbles off toward the tall grass of the field.

  “He needed a hotter fire,” Alan says, dropping the can back into the ashes. “Aluminum won’t melt until it gets up to about twelve hundred degrees.”

  “Jesus, Alan,” I start to say, but I can’t come up with anything else.

  From: xc.coach.kaz@gmail.com

  To:w.kazenzakis@gmail.com

  Sent: September 8, 10:23 am

  Subject:slam dunk

  _____________________________

  One other thing: remember the overnight basketball camp Chris and Steve Dinks used to do on Saturday nights
in seventh grade? Christopher is actually on the staff there now, a “camp counselor” I guess you could call him, and I think he’s genuinely enjoying it. He’s certainly not doing it for the money; Parks & Rec hardly pays him anything, but he keeps going back to coach the games and chaperone the sleepovers. I suppose there is a sort of compensation for him in the form of free pizza. Our son’s appetite is a force of nature.

  Seriously though, I bumped into the guy who runs the program last week, and he told me how much the kids love Chris. He’s a natural with them. And they’re in awe of his ability to dunk a basketball. I know he loves the job. It’s fun to see him so into something (besides cooking).

  See you in a bit.

  CHAPTER SIX

  In the kitchen, after Alan has gone, I find signs that Chris has been to our local farmers’ market this morning. It’s a new thing of his, an interest in cooking and locally grown produce, encouraged by my Celebrity Chef brother Michael. You’d recognize Michael; he’s that bald chef from Chicago with the hoop earring and the weird last name, the funny one with a couple restaurants who cooks once in a while on Good Morning America and does a guest judge bit on that chef reality show. Chris adores him, and every time he comes up on one of his frequent visits Michael teaches my son some new technique in the kitchen. The seeds of culinary art have taken root in my home.

  Fueled by this expanding base of knowledge, Chris cooks for us at least one night a week now, and usually he makes something surprisingly good. I’ve never been too inventive in the kitchen myself, but I do all right, and I’d like to think I’ve done an okay job nourishing my son over the past few years. His height—six feet six and counting—would suggest I’ve nourished him pretty well.

  He won’t let me come with him to the market. It’s something he would have done with his mom, and I don’t want to intrude on that. I imagine him there, my lone teenaged boy, sniffing produce and thumping melons, coming up with some idea for dinner, or thinking how he’d impress Wendy or Michael just by being there.

  On our kitchen table there are a couple brown paper bags. A peek inside reveals fresh tomatoes, some herbs, and what looks like a chunk of some sort of plastic-wrapped cheese. There’s also a long bundle of hydrangea stalks lying on the table, covered in a riot of deep blue blossoms. He got these, I’m sure, for his mother.

  Chris roars past outside the kitchen window on the riding mower, and I take a look in the fridge to see what else he might have picked up. Staring me in the face from the center shelf is a six-pack-minus-one of Budweiser beer. I glance behind it for anything else, and lift it by the empty loop just as Chris barges in through the door from the garage.

  “Chris,” I say. He stops when he sees what I’m holding, composes himself, and smiles.

  “Dad.”

  “Is this yours?”

  “Well…yeah.”

  I drop the cans with a thunk to the table and look up at my son. As Christopher is in full inheritance of the Olsson height gene, I do my best to create an effect of being eye to eye with him during disciplinary moments like these.

  “Where did those come from?” I ask, crossing my arms and raising my chin to speak with him. I rise up on my toes a little bit too.

  “Does it matter?”

  “If you’re bringing them into my house, then yes, it matters a lot.” There’s an interesting distinction here: when we’re working on a project together, it’s our house. When I’m enforcing rules, it’s mine. Right now, it’s my house all the way.

  “Dad, I’m almost eighteen, I should be able—”

  I hold up my hand. “Two things. First, you’re not eighteen yet. Second, even when you are eighteen, it still won’t be legal for you to—”

  “Will you just let me finish?” Chris slouches a little as he says it, making my job of appearing taller that much easier.

  “Fine. Go ahead and finish. But can you dispute those two things?”

  “No….”

  “Okay. Finish, then. What were you going to say?”

  “I was responsible about it. I waited until I was home, I just had one. I sat by the fire pit and had one. One. I just needed to think about some stuff. Okay? Don’t you think if I’m responsible about it I should be able to—”

  “Chris, what I think doesn’t matter here. What does matter here is the law, whether I agree with it or not. And if you got busted for minor in possession, what would happen with basketball?”

  His shoulders fall, and he stares at the floor. “I know.”

  “And how would it look for me? My job?”

  “Okay, I know.”

  “Be smart, Chris.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now,” I say, working to keep my serious expression, “get them out of here. I don’t want to see them in the fridge, or anywhere else.”

  My son furrows his brow. “Wait, you aren’t like dumping them out or anything?”

  “I’m going to trust you to take appropriate action with that beer. I don’t want to see them. I’m sure”—I clear my throat here—“you’ll do the right thing. So take care of them, and then we’ll go see Mom.”

  Christopher’s face brightens and he rises up to his full height. “Yeah, um, I’m…I’ll get rid of these right now!” He grabs the cans and trots off down to our basement. When he comes back upstairs he dusts his hands together, holds them up empty, and with a wide-eyed, completely earnest expression says: “They’re all gone, Dad. See that? All gone.”

  We take Christopher’s car, an older Volvo wagon that he saved up to buy from Alan and Kris, over to see Wendy. I’m planning on running the seven miles back home, so I’ve got clothes to change into in a bag in back. It’s about a fifteen-minute drive over rolling hills lined with woods and farms, and Chris seems distracted.

  “So,” I ask, “what stuff did you need to think about last night?”

  “Nothing really. Just stuff.”

  “Stuff like…Jill?” Christopher’s old girlfriend left a few weeks ago to start her freshman year at Cornell, and my son has been in a minor funk ever since.

  “Nah.”

  Jill Swart was great—smart, a middle-distance runner and lacrosse player—and she graduated in the spring. She and my son dated for almost two solid years, and I know they talked about trying to keep things going after she left for school, but Chris has been surprisingly realistic about the situation. Even though he’s pretty reluctant to discuss it I’ve managed to put together though various conversations with him that he’s told Jill he’s okay if she starts dating other people at college. I’m proud of him for being so mature, but I also know how much it hurts him.

  “Is it school?” I venture again. “Are you worried about next fall?”

  A pause.

  “I dunno.”

  I take this response as an affirmative, but I’m not going to push it. Chris has been offered a basketball scholarship at Western Michigan, and he’s having second thoughts. The scholarship is a good deal, and Chris knows it, but Western isn’t his first choice in schools, and now the cooking bug has got him too. Michael has offered not only to write Chris a letter of recommendation for culinary school, but to grant him a coveted internship at his flagship restaurant as well. I know my son is tempted. What I don’t know, however, is whether or not he’s genuinely serious about cooking, or if this is a passing phase. I’ll probe more later, and I know just the time and place to do it.

  “Hey, I talked to Mrs. Mackie last week,” I say. “She told me we can take her boat out tomorrow if we want.”

  “I’d be into that,” Chris says, his expression brightening. After cooking, his other love is sailing, and the Assistant Superintendent of our school district, Peggy Mackie, has been letting us take her boat out on the weekends. Aside from just being a good time, I’ve found that sailing with Chris is one of the best ways to get him to talk about things.

  “I’ll call her tomorrow and set it up,” I say. Tomorrow we can talk more.

  We’re quiet for the rest of the ride
to Wendy’s. It’s pretty nice, as these places go; the buildings are new and well landscaped, and the staff seems happy and motivated to do good work. There are three wings, each with its own parking lot: The “Living Center” (for the Alzheimer’s people), “Hospice & Palliative Care” (for the dying people), and “Long Term Care” (for the vegetables). We park at Long Term. Chris brings his things from the farmers’ market, and I have the pack with my running clothes over my shoulder. Inside, I’m happy to see the head nurse, Shanice, seated at the main station. Of everyone I ever met working here, Shanice is my favorite.

  “Hi, Mister K.,” she says with a broad smile. “Hey there, Christopher.” She peers over her glasses at him. “Looks like you brought some things for your mom. You bring those gorgeous flowers for your mom?”

  Chris grins, saying nothing, and reaches over the desk for a pair of scissors. He clips off one of the hydrangea stalks and tucks the cluster of blossoms into a pen-filled mug in front of Shanice, causing her mouth to fall open in an exaggerated expression of surprise. Chris bites his lip, like he can’t believe he’s just pulled off this crazy smooth maneuver, and starts to blush as he slinks off to his mother’s room. Shanice lets out a low whistle as he goes.

  “Damn, Mister K.,” she says. “You’re raising that boy right!”

  It’s dark inside Wendy’s room. The sounds are there, the sounds I’ve tuned out, the beeping machines, the wheezing machines, the gurgles and the hisses. They’re just extensions of the body at the center of it all, and you ignore them after a while, just like you ignore the sounds of your own living form.

  The body at the center. Wendy. My wife. Her mouth hangs open in the dark, and her eyes stare at nothing above sharp cheekbones. Both fragile wrists are curled from atrophy, and her left middle finger, eternally bent backwards from the break it endured when it was wrenched from the pool grate, points up at the ceiling.