Chapter Twenty-Four #2
In April of 1976, Felix ran into Cal Jenkins on Sutton Street, near the hardware store, and even though he was bundled up against the chill, he could tell from Cal’s face that his appearance was alarming. He’d lost thirty-five pounds.
Whereas Cal, Felix thought, was the picture of health. Fifty-five now, with less hair but wearing it swept back in a Leslie Howard sort of way, his blue eyes full of life. Felix thought, I could lift a barn with a body like that. Cane and all.
Their brief conversation on the sidewalk led to coffee, and coffee led to the Jenkinses stopping by the house on Roswell Lane to see if Felix needed anything. Which led to the Jenkinses coming around.
—
It was as if the three of them had built a machine long ago and covered it up; now, when they pulled the tarp off, it was well-oiled, shiny, and ready to go. Cal and Becky did a little, at first. Then, they did a little more, and separately, to divvy it up and to give Felix twice the company.
They had conversations with him about telling Tom that were similar to ones Felix had had with Bishop.
But they were still deferring to Felix on all matters concerning Tom.
Felix alarmed them by showing not just reluctance to reach out to his son but also a resentment toward him.
His brow collapsed at the mention of Tom’s name.
He complained about Tom’s stubbornness, said that came from Margaret, then shook his head and said, never mind, because it could just as easily have come from him.
—
They didn’t know how to say, If you wait much longer, you might be too weak to talk to him.
They didn’t know how to say, If there’s a chance that he’ll come home—and they were sure there was—the longer you wait, the worse it will be for him.
They didn’t know how to say, Let us go get him. You could die next week.
It was mid-June. Several people from the furniture company came and spent an hour or so.
Neighbors came with food. His old secretary from Tuck did she happen to have his new address?
She went and got it while Cal waited for her in the hall, and she returned with a slip of paper; before passing it to him, she said, “Wait—who are you, anyway?”
“I’m his uncle,” Cal said.
—
He didn’t pretend to be an uncle with the dark-haired, blue-eyed young woman who answered the buzzer of an apartment on Dorr Street, less than a mile from the other address, because something about the way she confirmed that Tom lived there told Cal they were a couple.
To her, he introduced himself as Cal Jenkins, a friend of the family.
She seemed at least to have heard of him, and she asked him in, saying Tom had just stepped out but shouldn’t be long.
Her name was Kathy. As she got Cal a glass of water in the kitchen, she followed his eyes to the photos on the refrigerator.
“That was last year in Nova Scotia,” she said, pointing to one of them.
Her and Tom on a beach, wet-haired, forehead to forehead, smiling into each other’s faces.
In the living room stood a bookcase full of worn paperbacks, many of them stacked sideways.
On the wall over the couch hung a framed poster of Che Guevara, a Peter Max print.
On the coffee table sat a dog-eared copy of The Brothers Karamazov lying open and face down next to a little tower consisting of All the President’s Men, Watership Down, Steal This Book, Jaws.
They sat across from each other on the couch, and just as Cal was wondering if it was okay to tell her why he was there, Kathy said, “Wait, are you Skip’s father? ”
He nodded, and she said Tom had told her all about him, and about Skip too.
Cal must have looked surprised by that, because she offered, “His half brother, Skip—who died, right?” She told him that her cousin Riley had died in the Tet Offensive, too, and looking down at the striped throw pillow she’d moved onto her lap, she said she was very sorry for Cal’s loss.
He was very sorry for hers, he said. He was also inwardly happy, if happy was the word for it, that she knew about him, about Skip and all that had happened, because it meant Tom spoke of it, that he was able to speak of it, had maybe even worked through some of his anger.
It meant he was with someone he trusted.
Why, then, was he so goddamn hard to reach?
Cal asked if they had a phone, and Kathy said yes and pointed to it: the color of an avocado, sitting right there on the end table.
The number Cal could see written on the middle of the dial was not the number he’d gotten from Felix’s address book.
He told Kathy he didn’t need to use the phone; he just wondered if they ever used it.
He went on to explain that Tom’s father, in Bonhomie, had been trying to call him—for a while, now—and Tom never seemed to get any of the messages that were left.
Kathy dipped her head a little. Tom had his own line, she said.
It didn’t come into the apartment, just went straight to an answering service.
A service he never checked? Kathy seemed to know the answer to that but didn’t want to say.
Then the front door opened, and Tom walked in.
His hair was just as long as the last time Cal had seen it but a little less unkempt.
His jeans and his vest were the smooth denim of a leisure suit, and under the vest, he wore a T-shirt with a cartoon tongue sticking out of a pair of cartoon lips.
He clutched the rolled top of a paper bag in one hand.
The look on his face when he saw Cal sitting on his couch revealed that he’d gotten all of Felix’s messages and knew why Cal was there.
“Hi, Tom,” Cal said.
“Hi,” Tom said.
“Hi,” Kathy said, smiling at Tom and making a slight what choice did I have? gesture with her hands.
For a moment, Tom and Cal just took each other in, as if sizing up opponents. With no change in his expression, Tom lifted the bag. “Lo mein?”
—
None of the messages had been specific. His father had used the word serious, but he hadn’t said anything was life-threatening.
Tom had built up the distance between them for a reason; the word serious in a few phone messages wasn’t going to just erase it.
His father was selling the house, maybe.
Or something had happened to his mother (would that warrant a call)?
Tom was going to call him back eventually, he was just putting it off, and when he started feeling guilty about that, he thought of all the years his father had put off telling him the truth.
Which didn’t ease his guilt any but made him understand why he was being a jerk.
Still, he didn’t need terrible news about his father and a lecture on his behavior from Cal in one shot. In his own living room. In front of his girlfriend.
People grow up to get away from that shit.
But how the hell did something move or progress or whatever it was doing so fast? Diagnosed in late September? At death’s door in mid-June? Not death’s door, Cal said. That was part of the point of coming to get him now, before things got that far.
Because things would get that far.
Apparently, Cal didn’t trust Tom to do what he was told, because he followed him the whole way back to Bonhomie, his headlights like a pair of accusing eyes in Tom’s rearview mirror, and he didn’t peel off when they got into town; he followed Tom all the way to the house on Roswell Lane. He walked him to the front door.
“Okay, g’night,” Tom said gruffly, with a little salute.
“Why don’t I come in with you?”
“I’m fine.”
“But why don’t I come in with you.”