Chapter Four
Alonzo
I had Hank's present wrapped and standing by the front door by five o'clock, which, for me, is a small miracle.
It was a fishing rod. A good one—a light little fly setup the guy at the sporting goods place swore was the right thing for a man easing back into life.
That had been the cardiologist's whole sermon, back in the spring: walking, fishing, low water, no stress, find the man something gentle to do with his hands.
And I'd thought, the second I heard it, the river.
I'd take Hank down to the bend where it runs slow, and we'd stand there not catching anything and not talking much, the way men do, and it would be good for his heart in every way a heart can mean.
I'd been looking forward to giving it to him for two weeks.
Because this wasn't just a birthday. You have to understand that.
In January we'd nearly lost him—I'd sat in that bruise-colored waiting room and watched the woman I love come apart in increments—and this was the first birthday on the far side of that, the first one we got to keep.
Diane had been cooking for two days. Beth had ordered the cake from Sugar she'd been smacking my arm to land a punchline and bracing her hand on my knee to haul herself up off of things since before either of us had any idea who we'd grow into. There was nothing in it.
That's what I'd have told you, if you'd stopped me on my way out her door that night. Hand to God, eyes clear, not a flicker: there was nothing in it.
I did not, one single time that whole evening, think about a fishing rod by a door, or a lemon cake with a candle in it, or an empty chair pulled up to the Thompson table, or the woman who'd ordered that cake sitting at that table in front of her entire family with the seat beside her conspicuously, humiliatingly bare.
I never swung by. I'll just say it plain.
By the time I looked at the clock it was after ten, and dropping in on a birthday at ten with a fishing rod and an excuse felt worse than not coming, so I told myself I'd make it right with Hank that weekend—take him to the river, just us, the way I'd planned.
I told myself that, and it felt like a solution instead of what it was.
? ? ?
The rod was still standing by our front door when I let myself in a little before midnight.
I saw it the second I stepped inside—wrapped, ribboned, leaned exactly where I'd left it at five o'clock, like a thing I'd dreamed about giving and never had.
Beside it on the table was Beth's phone, dark, and a foil-wrapped wedge of cake she'd brought home and set out for me with a fork laid next to it, which somehow gutted me worse than if she'd thrown it away.
She was on the couch with the one lamp on. Not asleep. Just sitting there in the half-dark with her knees pulled up, still in her dress from the dinner.
"Hey," I said. "Sorry I'm so late. That was a whole thing—her ceiling, it was—" I gestured vaguely, the way you do when the truth has shrunk in transit and you're hoping the gesture covers the gap. "How was it? Did your dad have a good night?"
She looked at me for a moment. Whatever was in her face, she'd already folded it down small and put it away somewhere I couldn't reach.
"It was a nice night," she said. "He liked the cake."
"I'm gonna take him to the river this weekend. Give him the rod then. Better, honestly—just us, we can actually fish." I heard myself selling it and I kept going anyway. "Beth. Hey. Don't be like this. It was an emergency. You'd have done the same thing."
"Would I," she said. Not really a question. She unfolded herself and stood up and turned off the lamp, and in the dark her voice came quiet and even and so, so tired. "I'm going to bed."
And I stood there in my own front hall, beside a fishing rod I'd never delivered, genuinely, honestly baffled—wronged, even—that she could be cold to me over a night I'd spent doing nothing in this world but the right thing.
That was the first one. The first time I chose her over Beth, over Beth's family, over Beth's father's first breathing birthday.
If you'd accused me of it that night I'd have laughed in your face, because in my head I hadn't chosen anything—you don't choose between a friend drowning and a slice of cake, you just go, any decent man goes.
That's how I'd have defended it. That's how I defended every single one of them, each one a little worse than the last, right up until the morning I woke and found there was nothing left to defend.