Thirty-Two
Saturday morning, late February. Gray, gray, gray.
Dune slept straight through the lunch he was supposed to have had with his father at noon.
He’d been out late the night before, drinking himself into oblivion, or, more accurately, attempting to drink himself into oblivion.
His problems felt so insurmountable that no amount of Budweiser would wash them away.
Sometimes he could temporarily forget he was miserable.
Miserable at school because nobody asked about what happened but everyone’s eyes were full of pity, unless they were full of glee because Dune Finnegan wasn’t on top of the world for a change.
Miserable at home because his mother told him constantly, in an increasingly urgent and hysterical tone, that he needed to be “the man of the house,” a statement that pierced him straight through, heart and soul.
He wasn’t even eighteen! Miserable rehearsing for the play, which he’d been so fucking stubborn about and now hated and would have given anything to leave but how could he after he’d made Clara quit?
Why he’d chosen to punish her in that way now seemed incomprehensible to him, but he’d done it, and he had to live with it or face even more humiliation.
Dune never imagined Clara would leave the play entirely.
He didn’t think Mr. Goodwin would seriously entertain his objections.
Now he was stuck performing with Deirdre Connelly, who was not fun, not pretty, not Clara, and who had very strong and wrong opinions on every little step they took. His life was exhausting.
He rolled over and looked at his watch. He could probably still catch his father if he hurried.
He made himself stand up and assess the internal damage.
His head hurt. What else was new? But his stomach seemed okay.
He pulled on the shirt he’d worn out last night; it reeked of cigarettes.
He went to the kitchen. He hoped the leftover coffee in the pot was from this morning.
He casually rinsed out a mug, filled it with cold coffee, and nuked it in the microwave.
Poured as much half-and-half into the cup as would fit.
It tasted terrible, but he needed the caffeine to counter his pounding head.
“Do your job, friend,” he said to his coffee mug.
As he got in the car and drove to meet his father, he mulled over his most recent pressing problem.
Greta Crane. Five feet and six inches worth of relentless cheer except for recently, a development Greta had made clear was all Dune’s fault.
In the space of weeks, so many things Greta claimed to like about Dune were offered up on a virtual silver platter as liabilities.
It almost felt like his father’s actions had set off some kind of citywide mandate that allowed everyone in his life to grade him.
His teachers, Mr. Goodwin, his friends, his mother, and now Greta Crane, who he’d somehow, inexplicably, after a series of heavily inebriated weekends, started dating.
He could hear Greta’s voice asking her favorite question: “What are you thinking about?” The question was almost a tic she used to fill silences and was his least favorite question of all time because even though she asked it constantly, he never had an acceptable answer handy.
He realized the point of the question: Greta wanted him to be thinking about her.
But if he was with her, if she was sitting right in front of him not giving him a second’s peace, why would he also be thinking about her?
Instead of thinking about Clara. He would not think about Clara.
(He couldn’t stop thinking about Clara.) Or about how much he hated hated hated working at Finnegan’s.
Or about how he’d been offered an early acceptance at Notre Dame and instead of feeling excited, dreaded the prospect of moving away, which also made no sense because he dreaded being at home, too.
As he pulled into the diner to meet his father, he added these lunches to the list of things he resented.
His father was trying, he could see that.
But it was the What are you thinking? problem all over again because the only thing his father wanted was for everyone to be happy for him and move on, as if they could all snap their fingers and make life easy again.
For a brief moment, Dune considered answering the question, telling everyone in exquisitely pointed terms exactly what he was thinking, but that would require a private reckoning, and he couldn’t do it.
He wasn’t ready. How had his life been one thing in early December and something completely different overnight?
Without Finn present, Honey hadn’t lasted a full week at the lake.
The house had already been closed for the winter and was freezing and Honey refused to use space heaters because they were too dangerous.
“Then why do we have them?” Fern asked.
“Don’t you start!” Honey snapped and Fern and Dune looked at each other in disbelief.
The situation became worse by the minute.
Honey didn’t know how to start a fire or turn on the water supply to the house.
All the mouse droppings in the kitchen freaked her out and she declared the view of the gray, choppy water and denuded trees depressing.
She spent most of her time muttering to herself about Finn.
He was relieved when Honey got the call from Helen Harper about the food poisoning and they had to rush back to Cambridge Road, even though it meant an inevitable confrontation with Clara.
He knew his rage toward her was overblown, but he couldn’t help placing more of the blame on her mother than his father.
Mothers were supposed to be steadfast, loyal, present, and true.
Fathers were fallible; it was how they were built.
He believed a truly good mother, a good person, would have the strength and discipline to put a stop to all of it.
That this equation by all rights should extend to his father was a thought he became skilled at ignoring.
Once he got to the diner, he and his father quickly ordered their usual—a BLT for Finn, a turkey on rye for Dune—and proceeded to make awkward conversation until Finn tried, again, to bring Dune over to his side.
Dune didn’t want his father to be his friend.
Dune didn’t want to understand. He didn’t want to know about Finn’s feelings for Nina Larkin or hear all the ways Finn believed Honey fell short.
He finally stopped his father midsentence, something about Finn needing to live his life fully, and said, “Dad. I don’t need to know any of this. ”
“What do you need to know?” Finn asked, leaning forward earnestly and uncharacteristically. Renewed and reborn with a different wedding ring on the same old finger.
“Mainly? I need to know how to get the garbage disposal working again. Mom’s flipping out about it being on the fritz.”
“I’ll come over and fix it,” Finn said.
“I think for the time being I should do it. Until Mom—calms down a little.”
Dune couldn’t read the look on Finn’s face.
It wasn’t disappointment or relief but something more complicated.
Admiration? Maybe. His father was in a big battle with his uncle Dennis.
He knew there was a lot of trouble over the salmonella incident.
“I hear you about a cooling-off period,” Finn said.
“But I’m only five minutes away. I’m not going to let all this fall on you. ”
“Okay,” Dune said, understanding in that moment that he might have a clearer grasp on this situation than his father, a realization that made him unaccountably sad. “So. The disposal?”
The disposal wasn’t that hard to unjam, and when he turned it on and it made its horrifying grinding sound again for the first time in days, Honey clapped her hands and hugged him and gave a little cheer and seemed truly happy for the first time since his father had married his girlfriend’s mother.
“The man of the house!” she exclaimed triumphantly before going up to bed that night.
He thought of the former man of the house and what he’d be doing if he were in the living room.
He walked over to the bar cabinet. Opened it up and poured himself a hefty glass of Jameson and took a big sip.
It tasted awful and made him cough, but he was getting used to it.
He sat in a rocking chair with the glass in his hand and patiently drank the whole thing.
By the time he was finished, the pit in his stomach had mellowed a little and his mind had settled.
He refilled his drink. No wonder his father imbibed every night.
This stuff took the edge off his mother like nothing else.
He missed Clara, but now, into his third whiskey of the evening, he saw even more clearly that choosing to be together would be choosing to be part of the scandal.
For both of them! He wasn’t only thinking about himself.
He stumbled up the stairs to his bedroom.
On his desk sat a decaying wrist corsage.
He’d ordered it for Clara as soon as they decided to go to the New Year’s formal together and had forgotten to cancel the order, so the pretty white gardenia had shown up at his door the morning of the dance that neither of them would attend.
He didn’t have the heart to throw it away, so there it sat.
It was nothing but a decimated, formerly beautiful thing.
He took the flower out of the plastic box, fully brown now, still attached to the jaunty silver wristband, opened his window, and chucked it into the yard.