21. Theo #2
“Your son is in love.”
Paul flinches. She keeps going.
“I'm not asking you to like it. I'm telling you the fact of it. Your son is in love with a man. Your son is in love with a man who took four punches to the face from you last night and did not hit you back because your son was in the room.”
Paul's face goes gray under the tan.
“You have spent your son's whole life telling him—with your mouth, with your silences, with the men you brought around, with the jokes you didn't stop at the dinner table—that whoever he might love would disgust you. You have told him that since he was eight years old. I was there. I watched you do it. I made excuses for you because you were grieving and because Ellen asked me to go easy on you and I have regretted every one of those excuses for eleven years.”
“Diane—”
“Don't. I am not done.”
He shuts up.
“Your son has kept himself small his whole life so you wouldn't be ashamed of him.
Your son has played a sport he isn't even sure he likes because you wanted a hockey son.
Your son has dated girls he didn't want to date because you wanted to meet them. Your son has hidden himself in his own house. And finally, he met a man, a grown, difficult, stupid, decent man, by the sound of him, and for the first time in twenty years he has been seen by somebody, and you…”
Her voice cracks.
“…you have treated it like a personal injury.”
She lets the sentence sit on the marble between them. The kettle clicks off behind Paul's shoulder. Nobody moves to pour it.
Paul's eyes are wet. He isn't looking at her. He's looking at the taped knuckles of his right hand on the edge of the sink.
“He is leaving your house, Paul. You can pretend he's staying. You can put security on the lawn and monitor his phone. He will leave. He might leave tonight. He might leave in a year. He might go quiet about it first and turn his face away from you for ten years and only call on Christmas. But he is leaving, because you have made it impossible for him to stay and be whole. And if you want any version of him back, any single version, the Christmas version, the every-other-year version, you are going to sit on that stool and you are going to hear me say this next part.”
She waits.
He sits on the stool.
“You have a choice. You can be his father or you can be right. You cannot be both.”
The kitchen is quiet.
His shoulders go down, a quarter inch. Then a half.
“Diane.”
“Yes, Paul.”
His hand on the sink edge loosens.
“I don't know how to do this.”
“I know you don't. I'm going to help you. Starting now. Starting with you picking up that phone…” She points at the phone on the counter, his phone. “…And calling your guy on the lawn and telling him he's dismissed.”
He looks at her.
“Now, Paul.”
He reaches for the phone.
I stand up and Paul looks at me long and hard for one minute, before he sighs and his head hangs. That’s my sign. I’ve won for now. I go back upstairs and sit on the edge of my bed.
I open the thread with Maddox.
I heard
About blackridge, I mean
Please Maddox
I will get on a bus
I will get on anything
I can come to blackridge
I dont need to stay here i never needed to stay here
I love you
I love you i'm sorry i didn't say it last night
I'm saying it now
Please answer
I send them fast. I send them before I can think about whether I should have spaced them out, whether a twenty-year-old dumping eleven texts on a man who's been fired from his job and evicted from his apartment is a good look, whether he'll read them in the order I meant or in a blur on a notification screen.
I send them.
The three dots do not appear.
The read receipt does not appear.
The little delivered does appear under the last one and stays. Delivered. Delivered. Delivered. Eleven times.
I wait.
Seven minutes. Ten. Fifteen.
No reply.
The last delivered sits there flat and gray and final at the bottom of the screen.
My hands start to shake.
I set the phone face-up on the duvet. I stand up.
I walk to the window. Private security is gone from the curb.
Diane's car is in the driveway. A cardinal is on the fence.
The sky is the pale winter blue of a Sunday that is about to be the worst Sunday of my life, and I stand at the window and I think, very calmly, He has changed his mind.
He has changed his mind and he is not going to answer because he is kind enough not to say it in writing.
He is going to Blackridge alone. He is going to let the distance do the work. He is going to let me read the delivered and understand.
He said wait for me.
He said it in a corridor under fluorescent light with security on his arms and blood on his quarter-zip, and he said it with his eyes on my eyes, and I believed him.
I still believe him.
The delivered doesn't change.
I sit down on the carpet under the window.
I put my face in my hands. I do not make a sound this time, because Diane is downstairs and Paul is downstairs and I am not going to be the sound effect to their conversation, but I cry the whole way down into the carpet, and I think, Please, Maddox, please just one word, please just a thumb and a word, please.
The phone on the duvet lights up once and my heart launches and I lunge. It's Diane, from the kitchen, one floor down.
Come eat. Bring the phone. I'm not letting you be alone with it.
I wipe my face.
I pick up my phone.
I go down to my aunt.