He didn't need to. The hand was the speaking.
It went from my back to my hip and stayed there, fingers curling around the bone, and the intention was in the curling. He was — I'd thought I could read him. I'd thought I had the man read. Tonight had taught me I hadn't yet learned what he looked like when he was using me.
I let him.
I let him for the same reason he was doing it. I'd agreed to this. I'd stood in his hallway in a dress I hadn't worn in two years specifically to agree to this. The agreement had been, in plain English, that we'd do this and not call it more, and that on a night when one of us was unequal to the world, the other would be the body that the world could be replaced with for an hour.
This was that night.
For him.
For me, too. I wasn't going to say that part out loud.
I put my forehead against his collarbone.
I made my voice small — quieter than I'd said anything to him in any of our nights — and I said it into his chest.
"Promise me you won't fall in love with me."
He didn't answer right away.
I waited.
His hand stayed at my hip. His other came up to the back of my head — slow and gentle — and he held me there.
"I wouldn't dream of it."
I closed my eyes.
It was, I knew,a lie.
I closed my eyes a little tighter.
It was a lie I'd be willing to believe for as long as he was willing to keep telling it.
13.Beau
My father was a memory.
Twelve days. I was still counting. Across all twelve, I never persuaded myself that the man at the head of the table — the one who would have come down the stairs in the cardigan with his hands full of three different sections of the morning paper — was actually not coming down the stairs.
My head knew. My body wasn't catching up.
I took to lying to myself.
I told myself, in the morning, that today was going to be a manageable day. When I poured the coffee, I told myself it was the only thing on the agenda for the next three minutes, and the next three minutes were all I had to handle. In the shower, I told myself I was fine.
Sabrina helped.
She helped specifically and only when she was in the room with me. The night before last, she was there until morning, and the stretch between her leaving for her apartment and me putting on a tie for the lawyer was a part of the day I didn't want to revisit. The minute she left, I was back to it — being a son in a house his father wasn't in anymore.
At the service, they listed Henry Cross — spouse, parent, professional, survived by — and the latter struck me the most. Because what followed were four names in a line, and four names in a line simply couldn't bear the weight of what he truly was now.
He was more than that.
He was going to be my job to remember as more than that.
I was sitting in the chair I always sat in — to the right of my father's chair when he was sitting in his. Mom was sitting in his chair. The lawyer was at the foot of the table.
