Harvey’s father was the only passenger actually carrying a suitcase and not wheeling it. She saw him first and was surprised at how his ponytail had thinned and gone gray. He was smaller too, in his frame, and this shocked her.
Her father sometimes used a cane to get around, but pride had packed it in his luggage, so he moved slow enough to hide his limp. When he noticed Harvey at the guardrail with the sign held up, he rushed forward, almost losing his balance.
Harvey led him to one side and they sat down.
“Did you like my sign, Dad?”
He touched it with his hand. “I’ll take it back with me, if you don’t mind.”
“I wasn’t sure if you’d be embarrassed.”
“It’s great,” he told her. “Really great. I can’t believe I’m here.”
“How was your flight?”
“Awesome.”
“Was the food okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I was happy just to get something.”
“Did you sleep?”
“Nah,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Too excited, I guess.”
IN THE TAXI, the Haitian driver spoke English with Harvey’s father, who was still nervous and couldn’t stop talking. The driver said he had never been to New York, but his children had. He was wearing a light blue shirt and red silk tie.
When they pulled up outside her building, Harvey’s father took an envelope of crisp euro notes from his jacket. “I don’t know what any of these bills mean,” he said to the man, “so I’m gonna have to trust you.”
Harvey reached in when the change came back and handed a five-euro note to the driver.
“Merci, mademoiselle.”
Harvey asked in French if he could pick them up later, but he told them he was off duty.
In the birdcage elevator, Harvey’s father said he couldn’t believe she was speaking another language.
“You have to meet Leon, my tutor,” she said. “He reminds me of you.”
When they got upstairs, Harvey gave her father the tour. He told her how grown up it all seemed. When she asked what he meant, he laughed and said, “It just looks sharp, Harvey, with the flower vases and the flat-screen—like something you’d see on TV.”
When she returned from the restroom, Harvey found him standing at the kitchen window.
“You can see into other people’s apartments . . .” he said. “And they can probably see into yours, right?”
“If I keep the blinds open and the lights on.”
He just looked at her.
“Don’t worry, Dad, I’m safe, it’s safe here.”
She wanted to make him something to eat, and put four croissants in the oven as he walked around the apartment. Harvey listened to the sound of his footsteps on the wooden floor. When there was no sound, she wondered what he was looking at or what he was thinking.
XI
AFTER HARVEY HAD left for Paris, Jason sometimes sat on her bed, or looked in a drawer, or peeked into the wardrobe at clothes she had chosen to leave.
The night she departed, he slept on the couch with the TV on. In the morning he made coffee and drank it standing up in her room. Then he took a pair of her shoes from the closet and dropped them by the front door.
WHEN THE CROISSANTS were ready, they ate them in the living room. Harvey asked about Vincent, her father’s best friend. They went fishing twice a week now, he told her, or to the movies, or the diner where Vincent had met his wife, Bethany.
“And how’s work, Dad?”
“It’s good, but there’s a new manager who’s doing things a little different with deliveries and smartpads and all that tech stuff. Still, move with the times, right, Harvey? You taught me that.” He held up a croissant. “Unbelievable.”
“I know,” Harvey said, “someone told me it’s the water in Paris.”
Her father drank his coffee and smoothed the back of his gray ponytail. “Old man now.”
“You look good, Dad.”
“I’ll be fifty this year.”
“That’s not old anymore.”
“Feels old.”
“Fifty is the new forty.”
“Mary at the store says something like that too. You know Mary, right? You met her? She said there’s something her husband uses—like color dye, you know? It comes in a little bottle and you put it on with plastic gloves. She said her sister could do it for me if I wanted. She cuts people’s hair out of her home since her divorce.”
“Is that what you want, Dad?”
“I kind of like it gray,” he said. “Makes me feel like an older Steven Seagal. You ever see his movies?”
“Only with you.”
WHEN THEY WERE finished eating, Harvey put her father on the couch and undid his shoelaces. Then she pulled the blanket over him so he could sleep a little.
She cleared the dishes from their meal, then perched on the arm of the couch, looking at her father’s old white socks poking through the blanket at the end. When he was asleep, she went into her room and took his Father’s Day present from her closet—making sure to keep the envelope of official documents separate from the box.
A part of her wanted to open the envelope and get it over with, clear the air and not let the tension of a confession build up. Twenty years he had kept the truth from her. But now she knew, and had paperwork to prove it.
When it first came to light, she felt betrayed—but was old enough to know that emotions take time to settle. A few weeks later she told Sophie.
Then a little while later, when they were leaving a cinema on Avenue Junot, Sophie said she’d been thinking about it, and that Harvey’s father might feel ashamed once he found out Harvey knew.
Harvey said that it must have seemed to him like the right thing to do at the time, and that it was too late for anything to change now. She was grown up; had her own life; and would never live at home again.
WHEN JASON OPENED his eyes, Harvey was on the arm of the couch.
“Hi, Dad,” she said, giving him the box.
“What’s this, Harv?”
“Happy Father’s Day.”
“But that’s not until next week.”
“I was going to give it to you in the restaurant tonight, but I can’t wait.”
The box fit squarely in his hands.
“Open it,” Harvey said.
But when the ribbon was almost off, she began to cry.
“What’s wrong, Harvey? What’s up?”
“I just hope you like it. I mean, I just hope you’re not freaked out.”
“Oh, I’ll love it. Even if it’s from Victoria’s Secret—though I can’t promise I’ll wear it . . .”
“Oh, Dad,” she said, and went to blow her nose.
Harvey had completely taped the lid shut, so her father would have to rip the cardboard. She told him to make a hole in the top, then reach in and pick one thing out at a time. “There are a few pieces,” she told him. “One for each day of your visit.”
When his arm stopped moving, Harvey clapped. “Do you have something?”
“I think so. It’s round. I know that much.”
“Don’t tell me—just pull it out.”
When his arm appeared from the box, he was holding a baseball. “Woah! Thanks, Harvey. It’s really cool . . .”
“No, silly, don’t you remember?”
Jason turned the baseball in his hands. “Remember what?”
“Well,” Harvey said. “It’s kinda how you became my dad.”
XII
A FEW WEEKS after Jason’s thirtieth birthday, Social Services wanted to schedule a visit. Jason told them he wasn’t interested and hung up. The woman called back the next day and told him what a shock it must be, but that she really needed to come over and chat with him in person.
Jason didn’t know what she was talking about, and was afraid they wanted to cut his disability benefit. The third time she called, he told her he was still registered disabled, then read her the number on his parking permit. When the wo
man tried to speak, he hung up the phone.
Wanda had worked for Social Services on Long Island since 1968 and would not be deterred. When she telephoned a couple of days later, Jason couldn’t believe it.
“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” he said. “I’m not bothering nobody.”
He went on about how much he needed disability to supplement his income. Wanda listened. When Jason stopped talking, she mentioned how she thought they might have met at Wednesday’s service—but understood how painful it would have been for him to attend the funeral, seeing as he hadn’t spoken to his brother in such a long time.
JASON STAYED AWAKE all night, reading descriptions of the crash on the Newsday website.
He found traffic reports from the evening it happened. It said that cars were backed up for miles. Nassau County Police closed the road for an investigation. There were even a few minutes of live “on the scene” television coverage with Jodi Goldberg of FOX 5 News. Jason watched it over and over.
At first light, he got in his car and went to Dairy Barn for coffee and cigarettes. Then he drove out there.
Somewhere between Exits 45 and 46 on the westbound side of the Northern Parkway, Jason pulled off the road and stood in the wet grass. He only had to walk about thirty yards before locating the spot. He knew because the ground was churned with plastic and glass.
The car they were traveling in must have flipped and hit the tree because bark was torn off and there were gashes in the bare wood.
He touched the gashes.
Although Jason had not spoken to his brother in over ten years, he felt this was a different sort of absence—like opening your eyes upon darkness.
He remembered when they were young and walked to school along Kissena Boulevard. Jason used to hold his brother’s hand. He considered how memories hold our lives in place but weigh nothing and cannot be seen or touched.
Then he went back to his car and drove along the grass to where the lives of his brother and sister-in-law had come to an end.
He took a black garbage bag from the trunk and stepped over the wet, uneven ground, stooping to collect shards of dashboard plastic, glass from a headlight, an undamaged side mirror, a floor mat, a door handle.
Soon the bag was full.
When he noticed a woman’s high-heeled shoe in the grass some distance off, Jason put the bag in the trunk and went home.
WHEN WANDA CAME over the next day, she was holding a bunch of flowers. “It’s probably not your thing,” she said. “But I couldn’t show up empty-handed.”
Jason offered her something to drink, but she said she was fine. He could tell she was looking at the tattoo on his neck, trying to figure out what it was.
“Must be a shock,” Wanda kept saying. “I’m so sorry.”
Then she put on a pair of red-framed glasses and read silently from the folder in her hands. She had the sort of Afro hairstyle that was popular in the 1970s. Jason watched her turn the pages; watched her earrings swing when she moved her head to read or glance up at him.
Wanda informed Jason that his disability benefit payments were up to date, and she could see no reason why they would be stopped. She read the date he’d received his first payment, and told him the first name of the person who had processed the application.
Then Wanda closed the folder and asked about his brother, Steve.
Jason just turned the brass rings on his fingers one at a time.
“Looks like you’re trying to crack a safe,” Wanda said, pointing with her eyes. “Do those mean anything?”
One of the rings was of a snake eating its own tail. Another was some kind of demon, which the magazine advertisement said was Lucifer’s first incarnation. The other rings were just skulls, but one of the skulls wore a top hat, which Jason loved because it reminded him of Slash from Guns N’ Roses.
Jason said that his brother was a good guy, but they had no relationship. If Wanda hadn’t called, he wouldn’t even know.
“His wife also passed in the car with him,” Wanda said. “Such a tragic day.”
Jason thought of the woman’s shoe he had seen lying in the grass. “How long was he married?” he asked.
Wanda put her glasses back on and opened the folder. “Seven years, to Melanie Morgano from Bellmore.” She paused. “I was told at the service, Jason, that your parents passed some time ago?”
“What’s the difference? Who gives a shit now?”
Wanda sighed and looked at the overflowing ashtrays, empty soda cans, take-out containers, random engine parts, and peeling iron dumbbells. One of the front windows had a long crack in the glass, and a blanket and pillow sat in a pile at one end of the couch where she imagined he fell asleep every night in front of the television.
“Did you have a good relationship with them? What was your father like?”
“My father?” Jason said fiercely. “What do you want to know about him for?”
Wanda leaned back in her seat. “What made him a good or bad parent?”
Jason shrugged as though he didn’t want to talk. “What makes anyone behave like they do? You’re a social worker, Wanda—you tell me.”
Wanda said every case was different. “Still,” she said, “from your reaction I’m guessing it wasn’t easy for you and Steve.”
“My father hated everyone, especially himself.”
“It’s amazing you’re so well adjusted, then.”
“Is that a joke?”
“No, I’m being serious,” Wanda said. “You invited me in. You asked if I wanted something to drink. You don’t strike me as a mean person.”
“Well, if you’d met my brother, Steve, you’d understand what a fuckup I turned out to be, compared to him.”
Wanda shot him a hard look. “You shouldn’t be so quick to judge yourself, Jason.”
“Is that what you came here to tell me?”
“It’s just my opinion.”
Jason looked at the flowers she had brought. Imagined rolling them to bits in his hands.
“Would it be all right if I had that glass of water now?” Wanda said, touching her throat.
But Jason wasn’t listening.
“I’ll just help myself, then,” she said, getting up. “You don’t mind, do you?”
XIII
A WEEK EARLIER, Harvey was taken from her classroom to the principal’s office. There was Principal Russo in her stiff wooden chair with a woman Harvey had never seen before. They both had white mugs and carried them slowly to their mouths because that’s how grown-ups drink. The room was flooded with afternoon sun and smelled like coffee and white paper.
Harvey tried to remember what she had done wrong. Was playing Deadly Spitting Cobras naughty? Had she drawn something bad without knowing?
She was sitting in a red padded chair meant for grown-ups, a giant red mouth that could swallow her at any minute. When she looked up again, Principal Russo and the woman were smiling at her, and Harvey felt the rush of something good about to happen. That was it. She had done something good and was about to get her reward from the principal and this woman.
Then the principal dragged her heavy chair over to where Harvey was sitting. Wait till I tell Mommy, Harvey thought. She had never been so close to Principal Russo—could have reached out and actually touched her.
“We have something to tell you, Harvey,” she said. “This lady’s name is Wanda, and she is going to help me tell you.”
Then Wanda just came out and said it.
Harvey imagined her parents in white casts, petrified except for their eyes. Sucking soup through straws. Their legs suspended by pulleys. She would bring them fruit and magazines. She would play with Duncan or with her farmyard on the bed and they would watch.
Principal Russo held Harvey’s hand. Harvey saw that she was crying and felt suddenly terrified.
“They were so badly injured from the crash,” Wanda continued, “that they died before even getting to the hospital. That’s how bad it was, Harvey—I’m so sorry.�
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Harvey looked at the door to Principal Russo’s office, because her real life was on the other side.
The door was blue and had always been blue. It had a square window at the height that only grown-ups could see in and out of.
“But when can I go home?” Harvey wanted to know. “It’s pizza night.”
“You like pizza, huh?” Wanda said.
Harvey nodded. “It’s my favorite food.”
“Well, that’s great to know, because it’s my job to look after you now. Since your mom and dad have gone up to heaven.”
“They’re with Jesus and the angels,” said Principal Russo, swallowing as if there were something bad in her mouth.
“That’s right,” said Wanda. “They’re safe and they’re not in any pain—but they can’t come back to life. Do you understand that? They cannot come back to life.”
Something heavy began to shift in Harvey’s body, as though part of her wanted to follow them.
“It’s okay to cry,” Wanda said. “This is a very tough thing to hear—a very sad day.”
“That’s right,” Principal Russo said, her hand making circles on Harvey’s back. “That’s right.”
FOR THE NEXT week, Harvey lived with one of the teachers from school. Some of the other kids were jealous. Miss Bateman had really long hair and looked so different when she shook it down at home. But her toilet didn’t flush properly, and the poop just went in circles.
Her house smelled like soap, and there were plants with green leaves that made Harvey want to bite them. Miss Bateman stayed up late talking on the phone, wrapping her hair around her fingers, speaking softly enough to conceal words and giggling.
The best thing happened before bed: Miss Bateman would brush Harvey’s hair. Harvey looked forward to having her hair brushed. The brush clawed a bit and pulled her head back—but Harvey didn’t care about anything except having Miss Bateman brush her hair at night.
After brushing came a braid. Miss Bateman held a strand of hair. “This is the fence,” she said. Then she took two more strands. “And here are two bunnies about to go jumping.”
Harvey closed her eyes. “Go bouncing!” she said.
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