Chapter 27 - Jamie
JAMIE
That night, in Declan's apartment, I lie with my head on his chest and my phone in my hand.
The phone is heavy. Not physically. The phone weighs six ounces.
The phone is heavy because of the call I'm about to make, the call that will travel from East Atlanta to Duluth, Minnesota, and that will change a relationship that is twenty years old and built on hockey and a frozen rink and a man who taught me to skate by standing at the far end and not moving.
"I want to call my dad," I say.
The sentence is quiet. The sentence is the last wall.
Every other wall has fallen: the search bar, the naming, Becca, Cole, Mik, the team, the locker room, Declan.
This wall is the oldest and the tallest and the most frightening, because this wall is my father.
Tom Kowalski. High school hockey coach. The man who stood still and let me come to him.
"I'll be right here," Declan says.
"I know."
His hand is on my back. The hand is warm and steady and the steadiness is the thing I need because the steadiness is the opposite of what's happening in my chest, which is a seismic event that would register on instruments.
I dial. The phone rings once. Twice. Tom Kowalski answers on the second ring because Tom Kowalski always answers on the second ring, because availability is a form of love.
"Hey, Dad."
"Hey, Jamie. How's it going?"
His voice is the voice I've heard every day of my life. The Duluth cadence. The coaching cadence. The specific, measured rhythm of a man who speaks the way he watches film: one element at a time, each word evaluated before deployment.
"Good. We're playing well. Coach has me on the first power play unit now."
"I saw. Your entry on that play against Columbus was textbook. The weight transfer on the inside edge, the way you loaded before the pass. That's the technique we worked on at the outdoor rink."
"Dad." I close my eyes. Declan's heartbeat is under my ear. The heartbeat is steady. My heartbeat is not. "I need to tell you something."
The pause on the other end is three seconds.
Three seconds is an eternity in Tom Kowalski's conversational rhythm, which is already slow, which is already deliberate, which already processes before it produces.
Three seconds from my father is the equivalent of a standing ovation from a normal person.
Three seconds means he has heard the weight.
"Okay," he says. "I'm listening."
I'm listening. Not "what's wrong." Not "are you hurt." Not "is it hockey." I'm listening. The same two words Becca used. The Kowalski family response to weight: I'm listening. The space cleared. The rink empty. The far end of the ice, where he stands, where he waits.
"I've met someone." My voice is steady and I don't know how it's steady because everything inside me is shaking. "His name is Declan."
His name is Declan. Four words. The last wall.
My body goes rigid. The rigidity is the bracing, the impact position, the body preparing for the hit the way it prepares for a hit on the ice: weight low, core tight, ready to absorb.
I am bracing for my father's silence or my father's confusion or the devastating pause that would mean my father is recalculating everything he thought he knew about his son.
The pause is five seconds. Five seconds that I count because counting is what I do when I'm afraid and the counting gives the brain something to hold while the body absorbs.
"Tell me about him," my father says.
The sentence is so unexpected that my body goes from rigid to soft in a single breath.
The rigid-to-soft is the landing after a jump you didn't think you'd clear.
The rigid-to-soft is the relief that Cole described, the bag set down, except the bag was my father's response and the bag was the heaviest one I carried and the setting-down is physical.
I feel my shoulders drop. I feel my jaw unclench.
I feel the thing in my chest that has been coiled since Duluth loosen by a full revolution.
"He's a journalist," I say. "Was a journalist. He covered the team.
He left the beat because of me. Because he couldn't cover me and.
.." I stop. The sentence has a destination that I've never traveled to in conversation with my father.
The destination involves words like "feel" and "relationship" and the specific, terrifying vocabulary of a son telling his father that he loves a man.
"Because he has feelings for you," my father says. He says it for me. He completes the sentence I couldn't complete, the way he used to complete my skating drills, standing at the far end, waiting, and when I got close enough, extending his hand to close the last distance.
"Yeah," I say. "And I have feelings for him."
"How old is he?"
"Twenty-seven."
"What kind of journalist?"
"A good one. He wrote the culture piece. The one about the team. Mom sent it to you."
"Your mother sends me everything. She has a folder.
" He pauses. The pause is shorter this time.
Two seconds. The processing is happening in real time and the processing is not rejection.
The processing is a man from Duluth, Minnesota, who coaches high school hockey and who raised his son on an outdoor rink and who is doing the thing he always does: watching the play develop, reading the angles, making the adjustment.
"Is he kind to you?" my father asks.
The question is so simple and so Tom Kowalski that my eyes burn.
Not "is he successful" or "what does his family do" or any of the questions that a different father might ask.
Is he kind to you. The only question that matters, asked by a man who has never needed more than one question to identify the essential thing.
"He's the kindest person I've ever met," I say. "He remembers that I drink tea. He took off his glasses when he wanted to be honest with me. He gave up the best job he ever had because he couldn't be objective about me and he chose honesty over the career."
"He sounds like someone with integrity."
"He is."
"Then I'm glad you found him." Another pause.
The pause is the processing. The processing is not finished but the processing is not adversarial.
The processing is a man adjusting his understanding of his son, and the adjusting is work, and the work is visible in the pauses, and the pauses are getting shorter because the adjustment is landing. "Jamie. I need you to hear something."
"Okay."
"I love you. That does not change. That has never changed. That will never change. You are my son and you are a hockey player and you are whatever else you are, and the whatever-else does not subtract from anything. It adds."
The sentence is the longest sentence my father has ever said to me.
My father, who communicates through nods and one-sentence observations and the specific, economical language of a man who believes that words should be deployed like resources, sparingly and with precision.
My father just produced a sentence that is, by Tom Kowalski standards, a soliloquy, and every word in the soliloquy is the right word.
The tears arrive. Silent, the way crying works in the Kowalski family (we cry inward, we cry quiet, we cry in cars and showers and parking lots, not because we're ashamed but because the crying is private and private things deserve quiet).
The tears move down my face and Declan's hand on my back tightens, the fractional tightening of a man who feels the change in my breathing and responds with pressure.
"I need some time," my father says. "To understand.
Not to accept. The accepting is done. The understanding takes longer because I'm your father and fathers process differently than sisters, and Becca has probably known since you were twelve and I'm slower than Becca. Everyone is slower than Becca."
I laugh. The laugh is wet and rough and the laughing while crying is the sound of a man whose father just made a joke about his sister's omniscience while telling him that love does not change, and the sound is the ugliest and most beautiful sound I've ever produced.
"I'll call again in a few days," he says. "When I've had time. The second call will be better. It always is."
"I know, Dad."
"Jamie."
"Yeah?"
"Tell Declan I said thank you. For having the integrity to leave the beat. A man who chooses honesty over convenience is a man I want to meet."
I hang up. The phone goes dark. The screen reflects the amber light of Declan's apartment.
"He said he loves me," I say. My voice is rough. My eyes are wet. My hand finds Declan's and I lace our fingers together and squeeze. "He said he needs time to understand but he loves me and that doesn't change."
"That's a good answer."
"That's his answer. He'll call again in a few days. He always does."
"Becca told you that."
"Becca knows everything." I pause. "She also says she wants to meet you. She says, and I'm quoting, 'If he's good enough for my brother, he's good enough to survive my interrogation.'"
Declan laughs. The laugh fills the apartment with warmth, the same warmth as the jollof rice and the books and the amber light. The night is warm and the lamp is on and the walls are down, all of them, every single one.
My father said it adds. The whatever-else does not subtract. It adds.
I close my eyes. The last wall is down. And behind it is not emptiness. Behind it is my father's voice saying "tell me about him" and "is he kind to you" and "I love you, that does not change."
The wall was the heaviest. The wall is down. And the man who built the rink, who stood at the far end, who never chased, who always waited, that man is still standing there. Still waiting. Still my father.
I came to him. I always come to him. He always waits.