One Day in October #5
“He’s right here!” Allegra and Isaac shouted it. Luca’s hand in Isaac’s had grown icy, and Isaac heard Luca’s breath growing shorter, and knew the suppressed tears were there in his chest.
“I’m right here, Mom,” he said softly.
And that prompted her to look at him, full-on, her face older, worn down by pain and denial. Her eyes full of pity, her face still cold.
“But you’re obviously still choosing a lifestyle your father and I cannot condone,” she said softly.
“I’m in love,” he said, a smile touching his pale features.
His full mouth was drawn now, his lips pressed together, probably in an effort not to scream.
“I know you don’t care. You’d rather I was dead than in love.
But I’m in love. And me and Isaac and Allegra, we’re a family.
We had a birthday party for Allegra that would put a queen to shame.
Her nursery is adorable. She and Isaac and Nonna, they made this blanket that could welcome an emperor into the world.
And my business is in the black, and I got jobs booked for years.
Years, Mom. I don’t even have to work a site.
But you don’t care about that. You just care that the person I’m in love with isn’t who you think I should love.
” His lower lip wobbled. “But I’m not going to change that for you.
We came here….” He glanced at Allegra, who nodded.
“We came here,” she echoed.
“To ask you if you wanted to be part of our lives. ’Cause we’re having a great time, and we wanted to share. If you don’t want to share, well….”
“You don’t have to,” Allegra said firmly. She took Luca’s hand and kissed it. “‘Allow me’ to come in, my fat ass, Mom. Like I’d leave these guys behind for that sort of ice-cold comfort in a million years.”
With that she spun on her heel and headed back to the car, calling over her shoulder, “C’mon, fellas. I was promised pancakes.”
Luca turned to follow her, but Isaac stayed behind.
For a moment, Mrs. Giordano stared at him. “What?” she asked, her voice gratifyingly wobbly.
“My parents died when I was younger than Allegra,” he said.
“They knew who I was and loved me, and would have loved Luca and Allegra and that baby so much. I just wanted to tell you that. That the best people I’ve ever known would have loved us and embraced us as a family, and you’re missing out on that.
That could be you celebrating your grandbaby.
Your son’s business. Your son’s relationship.
But it’s not. And that’s all your fault, because it’s right there.
How’s it feel to have everything in the world right there at your fingertips and be too blind to see? ”
She stared at him, her mouth open, and he turned to take Luca’s hand as they made their way back to the Kia.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “That probably wasn’t my place.”
“It’s fine,” Luca said, wrapping his arm around Isaac’s shoulders. “It’s fine,” he repeated, leaning over to kiss Isaac’s temple. “I love you so much for standing up for us.”
Isaac paused as they neared the Kia and hugged Luca, leaning his head on his chest and just standing there, breathing him in.
“My parents would have loved you,” he said softly. “They would have loathed Todd, but they would have loved you. I’m so mad your parents can’t see that. It’s so unfair.”
Luca wrapped his arms tight around Isaac’s shoulders, and for three breaths—one, two, three—they breathed all the things that should have been.
And then Isaac did the grown-up thing and held his hand out for his keys.
“You two sit in the back and cry,” he said. “I’ll get us to pancakes.”
They found a local place that served fluffy pancakes and savory crepes. While Luca and Allegra stopped every so often and wiped their eyes, they still kept chatting about the food, about Halloween decorations, about Christmas, and how they were going to handle the baby in the middle of Christmas.
Isaac listened to them happily, his brain buzzing away with his own plans.
“Whatcha thinkin’?” Luca asked when he and Allegra finally wound down. Casually, he snuck his fork across the table to pick up a whipped-cream-covered banana Isaac had left behind. Isaac laughed at him while he stuck it in his mouth and then answered.
“I should just start my Christmas kid-knitting,” he said, and while that was part of what he’d been thinking about, it wasn’t all of it. “I’ve got my people stuff planned and mostly executed, but I usually spend November and December knitting for the kids.”
“Every kid?” Allegra asked, wiping the last of the whipped cream off her plate with her finger before popping her finger in her mouth. “That’s a lot of kids!”
Isaac shook his head. “No. I make them work for it. There’s always skills to master or a contest to win.
My fifth period is going to create their own word problems and figure them out and justify their answers, and the best ones get put on the test. I give away four hats there—two for the best grades on the test, and two for what the kids vote as the best word problems, the ones that are challenging but a good test of their skills.
” He snorted. “It’s a great exercise, and the contest keeps everybody focused until the test. Anyway, the other classes have something similar.
Plus I’ve got three TA’s, and they all get something, and I owe a couple of teachers knitwear. It’s time.”
“Wow,” Luca said, shaking his head. “That’s a whole lot of work. What made you decide to do all that?”
Isaac sort of chuckled. “It grew,” he said, thinking about it. “I started knitting and bringing it to school because it calmed my nerves, and—”
“Wait,” Allegra said. “How did you start knitting? You never told us that!”
It was like the question, innocently asked, dropped him through a wormhole in time.
“Can we go to the movies?” Isaac asked, looking outside at the glorious day around them.
“No,” Todd mumbled, doing his crossword puzzle at the breakfast table.
“Maybe visit the park—there’s wind, we could fly kites.” They were getting married in a few months—they had to have more adventures in them than this, right?
“We’re grown men,” Todd said, not glancing up. “No.”
“Maybe I could call that one woman from school—Roxy—and we could go shopping—”
“Oh my God,” Todd muttered. “Isaac, could you sit still for one goddamned minute? My God, get a hobby. Do a jigsaw puzzle, arrange flowers, learn to knit or something!”
Isaac tried to mask his hurt. “Don’t you want to spend time with me?” he asked.
Todd spared him a glance and then rubbed the back of his neck as though trying to calm a fractious child.
“I do,” he said, obviously striving for patience.
“I do. But my brain is all busy from the workweek and I… I really need some quiet today. Seriously, Isaac, can we just spend some quiet time together?”
Isaac sighed, deflated, and started to straighten the Sunday supplements, because he knew Todd would get frustrated at the mess if he didn’t.
“Fine,” he muttered, and then he spotted the ad flier for a sale on yarn at the craft store, along with needles, hooks, and how-to books.
“You know—let me run to the store, though. I’ll be back in an hour. Knitting isn’t really a bad idea.”
“Isaac?” Luca prompted. “How did you learn to knit?”
“I taught myself,” he said, the memory so clear.
“Todd was… well, I was driving him batshit because I wanted to go out and do something and he wanted a quiet day at home. So I ran out and got some yarn and some how-to books, and I sat down and read and fiddled and studied and then made this really awful scarf that not even Todd would claim, and I just… just kept doing it. Reading, studying, fiddling. Trying new things. Getting better. Pretty soon, it became an obsession,” he said, smiling.
“Wow,” Luca said, and there was something warm in his eyes. Something forgiving.
“What?” Isaac asked, but he could feel it too.
“Todd’s the one who gave you knitting. And yarn. That’s….”
“That’s the nicest fucking thing I’ve ever heard you say about him,” Allegra said, and Isaac had to laugh.
“He wasn’t a monster,” he said, fingering the Cthulhu on his vest and smiling. “I… I need to remember that.”
“No,” Luca said softly. “You wouldn’t have loved him if he’d been a monster. He was simply not….”
“Not a good time,” Isaac said with a small laugh. “But for a little while, I thought he was what I needed.”
“And now?” Luca asked.
Isaac smiled into his eyes. “And now I’ve met someone who’s not only a great time, but who is also exactly what I need.”
“Ooh,” Allegra teased her brother. “Did you hear that? I think he said he loves you more than yarn.”
Luca chuckled. “Now I wouldn’t go that far—”
“I would,” Isaac said, and that warm moment, that piece of his soul that hadn’t sat right for years and years and years finally clicked into place. “I do love you more than yarn.”
Luca’s attention was completely on him, their eyes saying these things that their hearts heard.
“Oh stop that,” Allegra ordered. “I was promised pancakes and yarn, and after this morning, somebody had better pony up!”
THAT AFTERNOON—after a giddy and expensive trip to the yarn store—Isaac volunteered to put the new purchases in the stash boxes, keeping things vaguely organized. He was moving boxes around when he spotted it—that linen tote with the many skeins of ugly brown alpaca yarn.
Except it wasn’t ugly, he thought, pulling the canvas bag of it out of the box and touching it with gentle fingers.
It was, in fact, amazingly soft, and it wasn’t really crap brown.
It was spun through with other colors, surprising hints of orange or purple or blue or red saving it from being boring, suggesting all sorts of things that it could be that didn’t include a plain sweater, no cables, no lace, no colorwork.
Hats, for example. Hats with Christmas lights dancing around them. Or maybe reindeer prancing. Maybe a thick scarf with purple and orange and red and blue stripes. Maybe a headband with an intricate pattern in cream or white worked into it in contrast.
Maybe all the things that would keep his students and his teacher friends warm in the winter and spread the love and the joy of the hobby while purging this yarn of the bitterness of what had felt like a betrayed heart.
Todd had never betrayed him, Isaac thought sadly. Todd was who he’d always been, but that person was not who Isaac had needed. That didn’t make him a monster—or even a mistake.
It made him a person Isaac had loved once, someone who’d had moments of kindness, moments of passion. Even, Isaac thought, remembering their wedding day and Todd’s simple, almost embarrassed kiss at the end of the justice of the peace ceremony, moments of sweetness.
Isaac would probably have moved on from that relationship if given a little more time.
Thinking back on it now, he’d been making plans to leave, to move out, in the quietest part of his mind.
But they hadn’t had the time to say goodbye, to part amicably, to be friends who were no longer meant to be lovers.
Luca, he thought, pulling out the balls of contrasting yarn for the brown, Luca had been meant to be his lover. Isaac might not have made it to meet Luca if he hadn’t spent that time with Todd.
When he had the project bag full of yarn and needles, of ideas and plans, he stepped back from his stash and looked at the brown alpaca/wool blend in the tote hanging from his wrist.
Todd didn’t need to be erased from his memory. He didn’t need to be hidden in the back of Isaac’s mind like unwanted worsted. Memories of Todd could be woven throughout Isaac’s other memories of that time, and he would be sturdy and necessary—and yes, loved.
But he wasn’t who Isaac wanted to be with now.
With a happy little sigh, Isaac took his kid-knitting projects into the living room and sat down, determined to put his life into order like perfect little loops on a shaft of wood, ready for all its potential to be released into the world.