“And you get to play… hockey, was it?”
“Yeah.”
“You said your brother played here too?”
“Yeah.”
“But not together at the same time?”
He let out a long sigh, rubbing his hands down his sweats and then placing them back on the arms of the chair and leaning back. “That was the plan. We were on the high school team together. And travel clubs. He was a junior when I was a freshman. And that’s what we thought would happen here. Two years of playing together. But…”
Marlo waited, but Logan was done.
I didn’t blame him. I didn’t blame any of us for sharing—or not sharing—any part of what we were going through. And yet we’d all signed up for this study.
Or had our coach/parent/whomever sign us up.
“Thanks for sharing, Logan. And you are?” she said, turning her attention to the boy sitting kitty-corner to Logan, forming the side of our U with the other guy who had raised his hand when asked about encouragement/coercion to take this class.
“I’m Dustin. A junior. Fine Arts major.”
“That’s interesting. What type of art are you interested in, Dustin?”
“I’m a painter. Or I want to be,” he said. “Working on it.”
“And who did you lose?” Marlo asked.
“My father. Heart attack. In late May. Two days before I was coming home from here for the summer.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “And you’re here for yourself, Dustin? No one set it as a condition?”
He chuckled and looked to Logan. “I’m hardly the team sports type who’s going to have a domineering coach.”
He certainly didn’tlooklike the team sports type. Definitely the struggling artist type. Starving artist, really, given how wispy thin he was. He had some height on him, but he looked like he stayed up nights painting and smoking cigarettes, contemplating great works of art.
His jeans were of the painted-on variety, though not out-and-out skinny jeans. He wore black Chucks on his large feet, and a lavender cardigan that had paint smears along the cuffs over a tee shirt for a band I’d never heard of, but guessed was retro cool.
Much like Paige, his was not a look I could pull off, nor would I want to, but I found I liked it on him.
“So, here just on your own, then?” Marlo prodded. Gently, like she knew there was more to the story with Dustin.
“Yeah. For me. I realized there were some unresolved things that would never be resolved now that he’s passed and maybe I could, I don’t know, work through them here.”
“I’m glad you identified that. Great self-awareness. Would you like to say more—”
“I was going to come out to him as soon as I got home. And now I’ll never have the chance,” Dustin said, words coming quicker now, like they had with me—bottled up and the cork had been sprung. “I thought he’d be cool with it. I even thought he probably already knew, or suspected at least, but I was still really nervous to have that discussion with him. And my mom. But especially him.”
“Sure,” Marlo said. “And now it’s unknown to you how he would have responded. And that’s important to you.” There was a tiny bit of questioning in her voice, but mostly statement. Because, sure, that would make Dustin wonder for the rest of his life.
My mom and I had fought like crazy my whole senior year of high school. Typical mother/daughter bullshit that she called part of the “pulling-away process,” which was natural and good. Of course, there was deep guilt on my part about it now, but I would never have the kind of guessing that Dustin would about his father’s feelings toward him.
My mom loved me fiercely, unconditionally, and with her whole body. She was my sounding board, sometimes my worst critic, but always my biggest champion.
And now she was gone.
“Well, at least I know that my coming out didn’t kill him, so there’s that,” Dustin said. Gallows humor that we all needed, making us laugh.
“Silver linings wherever we can get them,” Marlo said. She turned to the only one left of us who hadn’t spoken. “And you?”
