Father's Day

by Simon Van Booy

  “Okay, but why are you whispering?”

  “I don’t know. I guess because it’s dark.”

  They couldn’t see anything. Even the streetlights were out. Harvey said it was as though the world had closed its eyes.

  They got up and felt their way around the house. Harvey knew when they were in the garage by the smell of oil and the cool, stale air. In her mind she could see Jason’s bike on the ground, assembled now into what he called a “rolling frame.”

  Finally, Jason found the toolbox with the flashlight inside, but when he clicked the button, nothing happened. Harvey asked if she could try.

  There were no candles in the house either, and the batteries in the TV remote control were not the right size for the flashlight.

  Jason said the couch would be the safest place for them to stay until the power came back on, and that Harvey would have to sleep there too, which she was happy about. Harvey wanted to know what would happen if the power stayed off for a week. Jason said he could build a fire in the backyard and they could grill whatever was in the freezer.

  “What if we get attacked?” Harvey said. “By robbers?”

  “That ain’t going to happen,” Jason said. “I wouldn’t let that happen.”

  “Do I still have to put my shoes away when I get home from school?”

  “No, Harvey—while the power is off, you can leave them by the door. Which is what you do most of the time, anyway.”

  They spent the next hour fetching things they would need to get them through the night. The first trip was to Harvey’s bedroom, where she identified (by squeeze) Duncan, Lester, Jig, Mr. & Mrs., Simple Bear, Blue Bear, Tuesday, Foxy, and Megatronus.

  After that, Jason felt in the cupboards for cookies, donuts, cans of soda, bars of chocolate, and chips. Then they sat together as if watching television, except that it was dark and couldn’t even see each other.

  Jason doled out some of the snacks and they slurped soda from the can. Then it started to feel late, even though Jason said it was only eight o’clock.

  Harvey asked what would happen if she needed to pee. Jason said he’d carry her.

  “Okay,” she said. “Because I need to go.”

  Jason thought it was best if she got on his back so that his arms were free.

  “It’s so weird,” he said, “to be creeping through our own house like we’ve never been here before.”

  Harvey wanted Jason to sit in the bathroom with her, but Jason said he’d come in only to help wipe when she was done. She had a habit of rushing, and he told her to sit for a while so they wouldn’t have to come back in ten minutes. Then he got down with his back against the door. It reminded him of their first outing at the mall, when she needed to go and he didn’t know what to do.

  Even though Harvey was almost in third grade, Jason felt she was still too young to go in public restrooms alone. A few times other men made comments, saying he couldn’t bring a girl into the men’s room—perhaps not realizing he was a single father. The first time it happened, Jason told the man to mind his own goddamn business, but Harvey told Jason off when they got outside, said he shouldn’t be so rude even when the other person was wrong. The next time it happened, Jason just nodded at the guy, then did a hundred push-ups in the garage with his teeth clenched the moment they got home.

  “Hey, Harvey,” he said, tapping on the door. “Remember our first trip to the mall? How I made you go in the restroom with that random woman?”

  Harvey laughed.

  Then Jason asked why she’d taken off at the Little League game.

  “I don’t know,” Harvey said. “Guess I wanted you to come and find me.”

  “How would I have known where to look?”

  Harvey said she didn’t know, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

  “What if you’d gotten hit by a car?”

  “Then at least I would be with Mom and Dad.”

  “You shouldn’t say that.”

  “But they’re in heaven.”

  “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “But aren’t they in heaven with the angels?”

  “Yeah, sure, they are in heaven, but you are on Long Island sitting on the can during a power cut.”

  “But I’ll go to heaven one day,” Harvey said. “Then I’ll see them again.”

  Jason’s eyes moved around for something to see, but the darkness was impenetrable.

  “Anyway,” Harvey went on. “You’re older, so you’ll probably be in heaven before me and can say hi.” Jason could hear her getting off the toilet. “You’ll say hi to them from me, right?”

  “I ain’t going to heaven, Harvey. People like me don’t get in.”

  Jason wondered if his comment would make her cry. But then her voice came through the door. “I’m sure my dad has told God all about you. You know he had a jewelry business at the mall?”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “He sold golden crosses, and some of them had Jesus on, so you’re definitely going to heaven.”

  When the door opened, she felt in the air for Jason’s hand. “You’re the sort of person they want up there,” she said.

  When they got back to the couch, Harvey lay on top of her blanket, and went to sleep.

  Jason was on the floor with his eyes open, listening to insects scratch in the trees. Then he reached out and fingered the hem of the couch, then moved his head toward the television, the patio door, the kitchen . . . familiar places he knew were there but had to be imagined.

  In the darkness there was a door to the garage behind which his tools hung on nails above the workbench. Next to it was the rolling frame Harvey liked to sit on and pretend she was riding across America to the famous bike show Jason had told her about in South Dakota.

  He continued lying there, very still, looking at things he could no longer see—but which, he knew, somehow held their lives together.

  As a teenager, Jason had no safe place—only safe things, like his flick-knife, the toys he stole for Steve, and the wax that allowed him to style his hair like James Dean. He used to cut his arms deliberately in the bathroom at school. It was an emblem—a visible sign of the suffering that pulled him apart every day. Cutting was a pain he could control, a release from mental anguish, and what a thrill at the sudden line of blood a moment after the knife crossed.

  Only two people knew about that. The first was Rita Vega, the woman he had once been in love with. He thought of her now in the darkness as he listened to the rise and fall of Harvey’s breathing. He even said her name several times without moving his lips—and heard her voice say Jason.

  She would be in darkness now too, he thought.

  He imagined that Rita was down there on the floor with him. The smell of shampoo in her hair. The cushions moving as she tried to get comfortable. Every day some part of her rose to the surface of his life.

  Another person he’d told things to, and who knew about the cutting, was someone he met during his incarceration. A young prison minister who sat Jason down and asked if he could name five good things about the world. Jason had been able to think of only one: that his little brother had managed to avoid getting beaten, and was probably going to graduate high school and have an awesome life.

  Encouraged, the minister asked him to go on, to tell him more. It was simple, Jason said. The good of his brother’s life outweighed the terror, so Steve wasn’t afraid of everything.

  The minister leaned forward and put his hands close to Jason. “And are you afraid?” he said. “Do you live in fear?”

  “Of course,” Jason told him, grabbing more of the candy the minister had used to entice him into the meeting. “Why else do you think I messed that guy up in the bar? Aren’t we all afraid, Father?”

  The minister couldn’t believe it. “Yes,” he said. “It’s remarkable that you can verbalize it. But tell me, if you know this, Jason—why do you still act out? Why did you hit your cellmate in the face with your lunch tray last week?”

/>   “Why do you believe in God?” Jason said, reaching for another handful of jelly beans. “There’s no proof of it.”

  “Because I feel it . . .” the minister said.

  “Well, I feel rage,” Jason said. “So that’s what I believe. That’s my religion.”

  Jason could tell the minister liked him. That he was intrigued with what he was saying.

  “If only you would let God in,” the minister said, “you might start to feel otherwise.”

  “That’s your savior,” Jason said. “The only god I know is the one who left his son to die on the cross with his mother watching.”

  STEVE’S IMAGINED FUTURE happiness was the reason Jason never wanted to see him again. To get involved in his life once out on parole would almost certainly have led to his younger brother’s ruin.

  The one time he came close to failing was when Steve graduated from high school. A week before, Jason bought a dress shirt and some slacks from a discount store. Each day he came up with a new excuse as to why he should show up at the ceremony. But deep down he knew they were all lies, and the deceit reminded him of his father.

  Then graduation day came, and after half a bottle of bourbon, Jason dressed himself in the fancy clothes and set out by bus for his old high school. But then he got close and saw families parking their cars and moving in groups toward the football field. He stood and watched the procession of rented suits and silk dresses, uncomfortable shoes and gelled hair.

  Everyone would know he’d been in prison. Everyone would remember how he’d broken a janitor’s nose freshman year, and that their mother had killed herself in the bathroom without her clothes on.

  Worse yet, he knew that a single comment could set him off.

  Jason could see the police with their fat bellies and shaved heads. Could already feel them dragging his cuffed body across the lawn. Steve would be there, begging them, pulling on their arms, on the verge of anger himself.

  In some ways he just couldn’t understand what was happening. Their father had been dead for several years, yet the danger of violence seemed greater than ever.

  He turned and ran back the way he had come, crossing block after block, following streets the bus had taken only moments before, dodging cars at intersections, jumping up and down curbs in his thrift-store dress shoes.

  When he could go no farther, he dragged his body through an open gate and collapsed in the wood chips of an empty playground, his fancy shirt saturated with sweat, and a tear in the seat of his pants.

  When his breath returned and the sweat on his body had dried, Jason got up and brushed off his clothes. Then he sat on a swing and imagined the ceremony taking place across town. Steve getting helped into his gown by the teacher he was living with. He might even have a girlfriend. What if she were graduating too? Her parents would make a big deal of it for both of them—give a dinner in their honor, include Steve as one of their own.

  Jason could already envision his brother’s diploma, framed on the wall of a split-level home with two cars in the driveway. A wife who spent Sunday in the garden, and folded his clothes at night; who planned surprise birthday parties, and made albums of the places they went, the things they saw.

  Jason gripped the chains that suspended the plastic seat, then pushed off—letting his body swing through the air, as though he weighed nothing at all and could have gone on forever, with only his mind for company.

  He imagined the applause, the podium where each graduate would be officially recognized. Then his brother in a satin gown, shaking hands with the principal, who leans in to give words of encouragement before finally presenting the diploma. Like the others, Steve is supposed to walk off the stage, but instead, stands for a moment, lingers in the midst of their shared victory—perhaps even unraveling the scroll and raising it to a surge of applause.

  In Jason’s mind, it’s like the end of a movie, with music and wide shots as people in the crowd leap to their feet, whistle with two fingers, and toss the flat, rented graduation hats high in the air, screaming and holding on to each other’s bodies. Then the camera freezes on a single moment; fades to black, but you can still hear voices as the mottled lockers and empty classrooms, uneaten sandwiches and scribbled yearbooks, nicknames and first kisses, begin their retreat to that flickering, unattainable country of childhood.

  XXXII

  WHEN THEY WOKE up next morning, the electricity was back on and their dinners lay half-eaten from the night before.

  After wiping Harvey’s mouth and hands with a cool cloth, Jason reset the air conditioner and cleared the table for breakfast. Harvey watched him spread a wave of butter over her toast and asked if there was going to be another power cut.

  With time to go before school, Harvey carried a glass of milk to the front step. The flowers from last summer were in full bloom, and she wondered if they would ever be taller than the house. When her glass was empty she went back inside. Jason was vacuuming crumbs off the couch. Then he went out to the patio and smoked a cigarette.

  Harvey was curious to see how Long Island would look after a night without power, but nothing had changed, and the faces of other drivers showed no sign of having gone to bed blind.

  When Jason got back from dropping her off, he spent several hours writing descriptions on his computer and listing items for sale on his eBay site. When he added up the approximate value of everything, he was still a little short for the month, so he sat on the front steps with a mug of coffee, and searched in his mind for anything he could sell at a quick profit.

  After a second cup on the couch, he decided to look in the attic. It was another warm day, and the moment he stepped off the ladder could feel his shirt begin to stick. Near the opening, Jason discovered a pair of silver-handled salad servers, some Mickey Mouse comics from the 1950s, a Donald Duck telephone, ten Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cards that smelled like mothballs, and a brass candlestick. There was also a vintage Snoopy doll still in the box with the original price sticker. Jason had bought most of the items at a Catholic thrift store in Commack, at a time when he was flush with profitable inventory.

  Wondering what other treasures lay undiscovered, he went in deeper, opening boxes, and making small tears to see inside plastic bags. In a far corner of the attic, near some exposed insulation, was a plastic container of semi-valuable items that Wanda had stuffed into boxes before his brother’s house was repossessed following the accident. There were watches, a pearl necklace, pocketbooks, letters, books, and photographs in manila envelopes with dates written on the outside. Jason sat on a rafter, and raised each picture to his face the way a jeweler looks at rare stones.

  His eyes stinging with sweat, he came downstairs with his eBay finds and a dozen photographs, which he looked at again in the light, over an egg salad sandwich and glass of orange soda.

  He tried to imagine the sounds and the voices when each picture was taken. How unlikely their fate would have seemed to them.

  IN THE CAR on the way home from school, Jason told Harvey she had a surprise waiting—but all she cared about was a boy who had borrowed her pencil and then lost it. When they got home, she kicked her shoes off at the door and went to watch TV.

  “Harvey!” Jason called after her. “Put your shoes away.”

  As she slid over to the hall cupboard in her socks, Jason waited for her to notice. But she just slid back to the couch, scooping up the remote on her way.

  “I was in the attic today,” he said. “I found some pictures of you and your parents.”

  Harvey was flicking through the channels. It was so hot outside, she said. And were there ice pops in the freezer? Was that the surprise he’d told her about in the car? Or was it McDonald’s?

  OVER DINNER, JASON decided he couldn’t wait any longer for her to notice, and told her that he’d framed and hung some old photos, at a height where Harvey could see them. That was her surprise.

  “Oh,” she said, shoveling refried beans onto a tortilla. “So it’s not a toy or anything?”
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br />   “I got some nice frames at Marshalls. I’m surprised you didn’t notice, Harvey. They’re all around the house.”

  Harvey looked at the tortilla in her hand. “It’s parent-teacher night next week.”

  “Oh, cool,” Jason said, imagining himself in her little orange chair, listening to the teacher go on about drawings and macaroni art.

  “Didn’t you get a letter or something, Harvey? Usually, they send a letter or something, don’t they?”

  “It’s in my backpack.”

  “When did you get it?”

  “You don’t have to go. I can just tell them you’re working.”

  “But I’m not working.”

  “But we can tell them that.”

  “Don’t you want me to go?”

  JASON WENT OVER their conversation as he washed dishes.

  Harvey was watching television. Jason could hear the voices of cartoon children, laughing and finding things out.

  After making coffee, he sat on the couch, but his presence did not distract Harvey from the flickering screen.

  When the cartoon was over, Jason got up. “Come and look at the pictures,” he said. “I spent the whole frickin’ day putting them up, Harv.”

  Harvey melted reluctantly off the couch, then followed Jason into the hall. When she stopped in front of the first picture, all she could do was grimace. “You can’t even see my face,” she said, touching the image of herself in a green snowsuit. “Are you sure it’s me?”

  “I had it blown up, Harvey. It looks like you’re building a snowman in the yard of your old house. Don’t you remember that?”

  Harvey thought for a moment. “I broke a mug of hot chocolate and got in trouble,” she said. “Snow is soft, but the mug still broke.”

  Standing before the largest image—a grainy candid photograph of her parents leaving church on their wedding day—Harvey asked Jason if he knew who the people in the picture were, because she couldn’t tell.

  He tried to disguise his anger with a laugh, but the words came out quickly. “That’s your dad and your mom, Harvey. Can’t you see that?”