Father's Day

by Simon Van Booy

  Now his own words are attacking him.

  Harvey is still in her seat, but pee is dripping through slats in the chair.

  Jason is red in the face because the cops have to pin him down with their knees.

  In the back of the cruiser, he realizes what he’s done and bites down so hard that his mouth fills with blood.

  What will he do with her toys? With the pillow she puts her head on? Who will check on her in the early hours? Flip the mattress when she has an accident?

  There will have to be a trial, of course. He may even serve time. Then Wanda telling him that Harvey has gone to a family in Buffalo and he can never see her again. He wants to know if Harvey asked for him, but Wanda refuses to say.

  Once it’s all done with, when time has passed and he’s back at home, he’ll carry her mini drum kit through the house to the garage.

  Let the spare room fill up with junk again.

  Carry her dresser out to the curb, then watch from the living room window as some stranger heaves it into the back of a minivan, a surprise for his youngest daughter. Doesn’t matter if a drawer is busted, he just wants to get it home. There’s nothing he can’t fix. Amazing what people throw away.

  XXV

  THE MORNING AFTER her father arrived in Paris, Harvey found him standing barefoot in the kitchen, drinking a glass of water and looking at Isobel’s drawings on the refrigerator.

  “I still have your drawings,” he said. “When you get a house, I’ll give them to you.”

  Over breakfast, Harvey said it would likely rain the next few days, so they should pack a lunch and hop the train to Versailles—if only to see the gardens.

  She told her father to pick out another item from the Father’s Day box. Whatever he chose, she said, would give them something to talk about on the journey.

  Harvey said she was going to make a French version of his favorite ham-and-mustard sandwiches. She also cut two slices of lemon cake to eat at Marie Antoinette’s house.

  Jason watched as she wrapped their lunch in foil. Then she told him again to pick something from the box, so she could pack it with the food.

  The line of people at the ticket machine was so long that they missed the first train to the palace. The platform for electric RER trains was underground. Vending machines cast a warm orange glow over the swept gray concrete. Then the train marked RIVE GAUCHE arrived and they got on and found seats at the end of an upper level.

  The train ran parallel to the Seine, below the main streets of Paris, which were bright and bustled with people and cars and bicycles going madly in all directions. After leaving the city behind, the train rattled past rows of crumbling houses patched with cement. When the train stopped, they noticed an old man and his wife, yards from the track, digging for carrots on a kidney-shaped plot of land.

  Harvey told her father that some of the older houses had been built hundreds of years before the invention of trains, when there were only fields and sky and one muddy road that gradually widened, the closer it got to Paris.

  Jason looked out at the old houses, his palms spread on the glass as though he were a boy again.

  When he asked why Versailles was worth seeing, Harvey told him that in 1789 there was a revolution and the people who lived in the palace got their heads cut off because they had ignored the suffering of others.

  “That’s like my worst nightmare,” Harvey told her father. “To get decapitated like that.”

  Jason shrugged. “Wouldn’t bother me. When you’re dead, you’re dead.”

  Harvey put her hands on her father’s neck. “But it’s your head, Dad!”

  “There are worse ways to go, kid.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like, you could waste your life and then die without realizing it.”

  “Waste your life how?”

  “By not having anyone.”

  Harvey laughed. “Huh?”

  “Well, I mean, if you don’t love nobody.”

  Harvey snickered “Are you getting sentimental on me?”

  “I’m serious, Harvey.”

  “Okay, so you wouldn’t mind having your head cut off as long as you’re in love when the guillotine falls?”

  Jason felt a sudden tightness in his throat but wanted to hear the words out loud. “I’ve loved three people,” he said. “In my life.”

  Harvey looked out at the passing trees. “Is that a lot?”

  “I think it’s a good number,” Jason said. “It’s better than two.”

  “There’s me and your brother,” Harvey said. “But who is the third person?”

  “That’s for another day, Harv.”

  “Tell me now, Dad. I want to know. It was a woman, wasn’t it?”

  “Forget it, Harvey.”

  When the final stretch took them into a tunnel, Jason saw his reflection in the blackened glass. He felt from time to time, this woman he had once loved was watching him, and remembered the color of her lips, or the way her body felt.

  Harvey took a bar of chocolate from her purse, and shared the pieces. The windows on one side of the train opened a few inches, and when they were out of the tunnel, Jason stuck his hand out.

  “Long ago,” Harvey said, “only kings and queens and their servants got to experience Versailles. Everyone else had to imagine it from what they could see through the railings.”

  “But we get to go in, right?”

  “If it’s not, like, crazy busy. But why don’t you unwrap the thing from your Father’s Day box?”

  Jason tried to feel what it was through the wrapping. “I can’t even guess,” he said.

  “Just open it, Dad.”

  When he removed the paper, Jason saw it was a two-handled Peter Rabbit cup that he knew once belonged to his brother. “How come you have this, Harvey?”

  “Don’t worry, Dad—it’s not the one from home. I got it online.”

  The original cup had been among the things brought over by Wanda when Harvey first moved in.

  The ceramic felt cool in his hands. Small painted rabbits bounced happily on the rim, while larger ones lower down wore human clothes, drank tea, and stood chatting over a garden fence.

  The carriages near the front of the train must have been full of people, because when the train stopped, Harvey and her father followed a heavy stream of tourists down a long cobbled avenue with lanes of cars on either side.

  As they neared the gates, men approached with Eiffel Tower models. Some of the men were insistent, but when Harvey spoke in French, they laughed and withdrew.

  As they crossed the last cobblestone street before the heavy gold gates of the palace, a yellow postal van failed to stop and came within a yard of hitting them.

  Jason followed the van up the street with his eyes until it stopped at a red light. He felt the impulse to get up there and pull the driver out, smash his face on the road, knock his teeth out—teach him a hard lesson . . .

  But then he felt the pull of a hand and Jason realized he had stopped walking, and that his daughter was there by his side.

  “You okay, Dad? You want to sit down for a while?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “It’s a great day and I’m with my daughter and everything’s great. We’re totally fine.” He took off his motorcycle jacket and tucked it under one arm. There were visible lines of thread running up the back of the jacket, where it had been sewn up, but the cuffs had worn to strings, and the elbows and shoulders were cracked like old faces, and there were dark stains that could not be removed.

  After passing through the gates, Harvey found the cobblestones hard to walk on in sandals. “People must have laid these with their bare hands,” Jason said. “They’re so uneven.”

  When they reached the entrance, people were lining up to go inside the palace and to board a miniature train that spared visitors the long walk to Marie Antoinette’s house.

  There was no wait to enter the grounds themselves, so Jason and Harvey crunched past everyone on a white gravel path that ran
between neatly planted sections of flowers. Black birds circled cone-shaped trees. People were taking photographs at the top of a staircase, where Harvey and her father could look out at the gardens and to the green woods beyond.

  Jason imagined peasants dressed in rags with jagged teeth, tearing up the plants and drinking wine from bottles, then pissing it into the fountain. He imagined the faces of people who would soon lose their heads. He wondered if they knew they were going to die and if the reason for their execution was obvious to them.

  At the edge of the fountain was the bronze statue of a man with a beard leaning back on his elbows. He was being handed a bronze bunch of flowers by a bronze baby with heavy wings.

  For a while, Harvey and Jason just stood looking around. Some of the other tourists had been there since early morning, and their feet dragged on the white stones as they returned from far corners of the estate. In the distance, a lake in the shape of a holy cross shimmered in the midday heat.

  When they reached a flight of steps leading down to the Orangerie, Harvey said she wanted to go back and walk slowly with her father beside the pink and purple flowers. “Remember the flowers we used to plant?” she asked him.

  Sunday was often spent in the yard with forks and spoons—and later trowels and spades, once they got the hang of it. Over time, Jason had learned what to plant and how to feed and water. Now roses climbed one side of the house, and daffodils unfolded in the front borders when spring came.

  “Remember pushing my hands into the soil?” Harvey said.

  Jason couldn’t recall it.

  “Kneel,” she told him.

  “What?”

  “C’mon, Dad.”

  Jason looked around at all the people. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  “This is France, Dad. It’s hard to get in trouble here.”

  He sighed and got down on his knees. “You gonna make me a prince or something?”

  Harvey told him to reach over the low green box-hedging and put his hands on the soil. “Hurry up,” she said. “Before someone comes.”

  “I thought you said—”

  “C’mon, Dad.”

  Jason hesitated, but then reached over and lay his palms on the bare soil between two rows of plants. Harvey got down next to him. “You used to put your hands over mine like this . . .” she said, showing him. “. . . And told me you were going to grow a Harvey tree.”

  It was hard to get up because of his leg, so his daughter helped him.

  “You remember when we did that, Dad?”

  “I don’t, Harvey, I’m sorry.”

  “That’s funny,” she said, brushing off a few small stones. “Because I think about it all the time.”

  XXVI

  AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS of living together, it was time for Harvey to start second grade. Jason said they were going to have a celebration dinner and took some ribs out of the freezer. They were also having barbecue pizza, french fries, tater tots, and mozzarella sticks.

  In the afternoon, after watching Return of the Jedi, Jason said he had to change the oil in the car.

  Harvey wanted to help. “We can pretend it’s our spaceship,” she said.

  Jason didn’t think it was a good idea. “If you get any oil or grease on your hands, you can’t go putting your fingers in your mouth.”

  Harvey glared at him. “I would never do that.”

  Jason made her stay in the house as he drove the car onto the metal ramps. The afternoon was warm enough to wear shorts, and after he gave the signal, she came skipping outside.

  Some of the neighbors were mowing their lawns, but when they shut the engines off, you could hear birds and locusts in the trees.

  Harvey wasn’t allowed underneath the car, even to look, so she sat cross-legged on the grass where she could see Jason working. When the oil came out, she lay on her stomach and watched it gloop into the pan. Jason brought the pan over to show her. Harvey wanted to put her finger in, and it took all of her energy to keep her hand away.

  “The blacker and thicker it is,” Jason explained, “the dirtier.”

  Harvey asked if oil was dangerous.

  “When it’s hot in the engine, it’s dangerous,” he said.

  “Could it make a car crash?”

  Jason set the oil pan on the ground and took a new filter from the box. Harvey followed him with her voice. “Maybe that’s what happened to my mom and dad? Maybe the oil got so hot, it made them crash?”

  Jason didn’t answer until he was back under the car, looking up into the engine with a flashlight. “Doesn’t work like that, Harvey.”

  “Then how did they die if it wasn’t oil?”

  Jason shined the flashlight in her eyes.

  “Hey!” she said.

  He motioned for her to come under.

  “Really?” she said. “I can come?”

  “Be careful,” he warned her. “Crawl.”

  Jason put the blue oil filter in her hands and steadied it so she could screw it on. It took some time to line up the threads, but when they finally caught, Harvey shouted, “I got it! I got it!”

  When the filter was on tight, Jason told her to go on in the house and wash her hands. He would back the car off the ramps. She trotted along the path toward the front door, then turned back to see if he was watching.

  “I put the blue thing on by myself, right?” she called out.

  “Like a real mechanic,” Jason said.

  When the screen door closed, Jason lit a cigarette and held it loosely between his oily fingers. When it was finished, he put it out with his foot and looked at the ground. Then Harvey opened the screen door a crack. Jason told her to stay inside until the car was down.

  Harvey pushed a chair to the window and watched Jason strain to get his prosthetic leg in the driver’s seat with the car up on ramps. Then the headlights came on, and in two jerks it was down and level with the driveway again.

  Jason gave the signal and she ran out. Then he put the hood up and leaned in with a flashlight.

  Harvey asked if she could hold the light, but instead of shining it into the engine, she put the flashlight on Jason. “I want to see your blood,” she said, noticing rashy scar tissue on his forearm. “Why is your skin messed up here?”

  Jason pulled his arm back. “Look, Harvey—this is where the new oil goes in.” He handed her a gray funnel and showed her where to position it over the opening. Harvey said it was just like a trumpet and went to blow, but Jason slapped her hand away before it touched her mouth. She felt a tremor in her bottom lip but tried to concentrate.

  “Sorry,” Jason said. “I guess it kind of does look like a trumpet.”

  For a few moments, Harvey couldn’t speak, or look at him.

  “Oil was once trees and bushes that got pressed in the ground so long that they turned into liquid. You wanna pour it in?”

  Harvey shrugged. “What if I mess up?”

  Jason placed the container in her hands, then helped her tip the contents slowly. When she was halfway done, a burst of excited laughter escaped from her mouth and oil splashed over Jason’s wrist.

  “Shit, Harvey, hold it steady now.”

  She felt her confidence coming apart, and the container began to shake.

  “Harvey!” Jason snapped, but then remembered what Wanda had said about how important it was for them to do things together for the first time. He steadied her hands until they stopped shaking. “You’re doing great, Harvey—just keep pouring. Pour out all those plants from dinosaur times.”

  Harvey said she couldn’t believe that oil was old dinosaur food. Jason couldn’t either, but had seen it on TV.

  “Why are there no dinosaurs now, Jason?”

  “They’re extinct.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It means they’re dead and can never come back.”

  “Like my mom and dad,” Harvey said. “They’re eggs tint too.”

  When the container was almost empty, Jason asked if she was ready for
the next quart.

  “It needs another one?”

  Harvey mopped her brow with a frayed sleeve. “Did the dinosaurs know they were going to die?”

  “Doubt it.”

  “How come we don’t know when we’re going to die?”

  Jason didn’t answer, but as Harvey was pouring in the second quart, he said, “You just have to live each day with the best you got.”

  “You’ve got me,” Harvey said.

  “That’s right.”

  Then her eyes lit up. “And I’ve got Duncan.”

  WHEN THEY WERE finished, Harvey wanted to wash the car. Jason said no but then went inside and came back with a bucket of warm water and soap. Harvey skipped behind, clapping her hands.

  “First day of school tomorrow,” Jason said. “Excited?”

  “No.”

  Jason put the key in the ignition and the radio came on. When he turned the dial, there was static; then Spanish music tinkled out through the speakers.

  “Can we listen to this?” Harvey said.

  Jason raised the volume so they could hear it with the windows closed.

  “Reminds me of my mom,” Harvey said.

  “She was Italian, right, Harvey?”

  “No,” Harvey said, sponging the door. “She was Spanish. Grandma and Grandpa Morgano came from Ecuador.”

  Dirt ran down the side of the car in suds. When they met at the bucket to dip their sponges, Jason asked whom she’d visited in Florida with Wanda if her grandparents were dead.

  “Mom’s great-aunt,” Harvey said.

  “What was she like?”

  “Nice,” Harvey said, dipping her sponge, then slopping it against the front panel. “But Wanda said she’s sick.”

  Jason wiped his rag over the spokes of the front wheel. “Sick with what?”

  “I don’t know,” Harvey said. “I can’t remember.”

  Then she remembered. “Lung cancer! Lung cancer!”

  Jason was wiping the tire with a circular motion. “That’s pretty bad, Harvey.”

  Harvey dipped her sponge. The water was a dirty gray. “Does lung cancer mean you’re gonna die?”