The color began receding from Adam’s face but lingered on his ears. Another burst of jealousy shot through me as I thought about how much Erica probably loved that, too.
“I don’t know what to do with that.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter now. She’s already here.”
“This is the strangest conversation we’ve ever had.”
“I blame Erica.”
ADAM
Iran into Dad in the hall leaving Jo’s apartment on Saturday night. He was working on one of the normally flickering sconces that he’d turned off. I raised an eyebrow at the couple of lanterns evenly spaced on the floor behind him.
“Trying not to kill myself with a live wire,” he explained, climbing down from the small stepladder. “It’ll be a late night, but I want these all rewired and replaced by morning.” He pulled his cell phone out and tapped the screen. A second later I heard Jeremy’s voice on the speaker.
“Ready?”
“Yeah,” Dad said. “Go ahead and hit the breaker for the sixth floor.”
A series of steady, bright lights flicked on down both sides of the hall. Dad grinned.
“Did it work?” Jeremy asked.
“One floor down, five more to go.” Dad surveyed the perfectly working new sconces, then addressed me as he bent to fold the ladder with one hand and pick up his toolbox with the other. “We could use your help.” He was careful not to look at me when he asked. I don’t know if he didn’t want to see my face when I refused, or if he thought that, if he avoided eye contact, I might say yes.
“Okay,” he said when I didn’t answer. “I gave you a chance to answer like a man, but if you’re going to be silent like a boy, then I’ll decide for you.” He walked by me like we were strangers passing on the street. “Grab the lanterns and meet me on the fifth floor.”
We worked in silence for the whole right side of the floor—four lights—and, despite myself, I was impressed with my dad. I knew he and Mom had practically taken our house down to the studs and built it back up again, but the bulk of that had been done when I was too little to understand all the hats he had to wear. Electrician, plumber, architect, carpenter. And he wore them well. Mom handled the design side, though she did a lot more than pick out paint colors. She refinished floors and restored fireplaces; she made furniture and laid tile. Looking around this hallway, I couldn’t help thinking how much she would have loved to be here, working with us.
My expression must have revealed something about my thoughts, because Dad halted in the middle of capping the wires of the next light. “What’s that look?”
I handed him another cap, and it was either too late or I was too tired, but I decided to answer him honestly. “Mom would have loved this.”
I saw a smile play at his lips as he resumed working. “I ever tell you what we did on our honeymoon?”
“Dad,” I said, making sure he heard the warning in my voice.
“No, no.” He waved me off before relaying the story. “We’d just bought the house, so we had no money to go anywhere. We decided to drive to the Poconos and get a little cabin by the mountains—this was in the summer, so it wouldn’t have been crowded with skiers. We took our time on the drive, taking back roads and stopping whenever we wanted. So we’re an hour into the drive when your mom suddenly grabs my arm and yells for me to stop. I slam on the brakes so hard that we both get seat belt bruises across our chests.”
“Did she see a deer dart into the road or something?” I asked, curious despite my desire to remain indifferent to him.
“Somebody had the doors open to a big old barn, and somehow she happened to be looking over at the exact right second to see what she swore was a nineteenth-century quartersawn oak dining table set.”
I laughed, because that was exactly the kind of thing I could imagine Mom doing. “Our dining table?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“It took her less than twenty minutes to convince the owner to sell it to us for the money we were going to rent our cabin with, and we spent that night back at the house eating pizza and drinking cheap wine while I stripped the table and she tore the ripped caning out of the seats.” He smiled again. “We didn’t have any other furniture yet, and the upstairs was missing a good chunk of its roof, so we slept on blankets in front of the fireplace. One of the best nights of my life.” Then his voice cracked. “And nine months later we had Greg.”
And just like that my chest felt too tight, like there wasn’t enough room inside me. I didn’t like seeing my dad get choked up. It felt like he was betraying something by showing me his weakness, like he was robbing me of the anger I still held so close. All he had to do was tell one story, let me hear the pain that he felt even as he smiled, and the glare I normally graced him with was gone. Instead I rotated my jaw and squeezed the cap in my hand, all my muscles coiled tight so that I didn’t crack with him,forhim, as I watched him grieve his son.
He didn’t try to hide it from me the way he had in the past. This time, there was no getting up and going into another room; he stood on the stepladder and clapped a hand on my shoulder, tight, like it was the only thing in the world keeping him upright when my eyes flooded and I’d never felt weaker in my life.
I couldn’t cry in front of my dad—that would have felt like an intrusion. More than that, I knew that if I did cry with my dad, I wouldn’t be able to hate him again in the morning.
IN BETWEEN
Adam:
You didn’t text me with a million exclamation points so I’m guessing the finals didn’t go your way.
