Stranger, Father, Beloved

by Taylor Larsen

  “I’ll grab one of the bottles of wine and meet you out there,” Alex said in an uncharacteristic moment of mischief.

  They walked through Will and Mary’s yard to the little stream and remained standing, as there was nowhere to sit. They passed the wine bottle back and forth. Michael was in that perfect stage of drunkenness in which he had lost all feelings of self-consciousness yet still felt clear in his mind and could probably walk a straight line. He gave Alex his comments in more depth for the essay on the permissiveness of the unreliable narrator in the three novellas.

  “You know, Michael, I have been working on that essay for over two years now, and I could never figure out why it wasn’t a slam dunk when I sent it out. Will couldn’t either. We give it to you, and within a month, you know exactly what to fix to make it perfect. You have a gift, my friend.”

  Michael didn’t want the evening to end. He thought of his gazebo, newly built, just a ten-minute walk away.

  “Alex, I’d love to show you all the new things we added to my yard. It’s only a few minutes away. Let’s go over. We can sit in the gazebo and keep talking.”

  “Well, Meg will probably kill me, but we never get to see each other, so why not? Let’s do it.” Michael tucked the bottle of wine under his jacket and they walked on the grassy sides of the windy roads, talking about college, about doing road trips up the coast on weekends, going to local bars in newly discovered little New En­gland towns. Still talking, they walked past grand old Cape Cod–style houses, past the pond, through a wooded area, and finally to Michael’s yard.

  The two crossed the lawn to the gazebo, which was mostly finished, except for the ceiling latticework. The yard was immersed in dusk, and the lightning bugs were out, slowly waltzing from bush to bush. Michael and Alex sat in the gazebo and talked.

  “Your house is stunning, Michael,” Alex said as he took a sip of the wine. “I can tell from out here that it is gorgeous.” The house was lit up, as Max was asleep inside, the high school babysitter sitting somewhere inside, probably talking on the phone to a friend.

  “Thank you, we put so much into it and were lucky to get this property.”

  “Our house is nice, too, but it doesn’t have the character that yours has. Meg is a good decorator, but she is very ‘by the book’ in what she chooses. It’s fine, though,” he said and waved his hand to dismiss the turn the conversation was taking into negativity.

  “You know, I miss you sometimes,” Michael said and waited, his old friend shame grinning wickedly next to his heart.

  Alex smiled sadly. “I miss you too, Michael.”

  “Those days in college were the best of my life, I think.”

  “For me, too. Those and fatherhood. Holding my daughters when they were born and watching them grow up has been something I never imagined would be so wonderful.” And the lines on his face appeared, lines he was happy to have. The exchange for him, the loss of freedom to Meg, was worth it.

  Alex was happy. A hollow feeling inside of Michael became emptier still, and he did not know he could feel so entirely empty of all the meaning and experience in the world.

  “Still,” Alex continued in his sensitive way, “if I were to compile the greatest hits of my life, in terms of memories, my time with you would be up there. You know that. My time with you, fatherhood, and my life with Meg. My job is, whatever, it’s a means to an end. My daughters mean the world to me, and our time in Connecticut meant the world to me too, friend.”

  Michael suddenly recalled the morning after that one rainy night in college he had spent in Alex’s room. He remembered waking up on the floor around five a.m., still drunk from the bourbon, and putting on his dried pants and shirt to leave the room for the bathroom. Before he had left, he had turned and looked at Alex in bed. One of Alex’s muscular legs lay exposed to the air, and his hand was on his chest. The blanket covered all of him except for the single exposed leg and his upper chest and face. In sleep, Alex’s face took on another dimension of beauty Michael had never had the pleasure of seeing before. His wavy brown curls fell loosely over his surrendered pale face, the full lips, the strong jaw. A sudden urge to lie on top of Alex seized him, a desire to press himself hard against the solid figure. Just as strong as his desire was to kiss that mouth, the desire to have those strong arms wrapped around him, was his desire to hold himself back, which he did as he gazed at the sleeping figure with burning intensity. After he stumbled to the bathroom, calming his arousal and his pounding heart, he returned to the room and fell asleep on the floor once again. When he woke again, he recalled some sort of bizarre passion and dismissed the moment as the insanity that came from drinking alcohol and having no female companion.

  In the gazebo, the two men locked eyes and passed the bottle back and forth. Michael was getting up his nerve to ask the most important question of his life.

  “Did you love me?” The words had come out, but Michael now felt he might choke. The air in the gazebo was heavy, pregnant with musky night air and illuminated bugs.

  “I did,” Alex responded.

  “Did you want me?” Michael asked.

  “I don’t know.” There it was—a better answer existed, but that answer contained within it the seed of all possibilities, the seed of potential. Something had been there; Michael had not been crazy to imagine it. He burned all over, he quivered, and he stood up with the bottle and turned to look at Alex. There was the deeply handsome face he had admired so much, the strong jaw, the dazzling green eyes. There was the beautiful neck. For the moment, all the damage Meg had done vanished, and the face of a younger man was before him. Alex held his gaze, and for the first time Michael saw a flash of lust in his eyes. It was utterly intoxicating and paralyzed Michael where he stood, his eyes locked on Alex’s.

  At that moment he saw a figure crossing the lawn toward them, a horrible blur to Michael’s right. Moving like an inevitable tide, the polka-dotted dress whooshed through the night. “Alex?” she asked in their direction.

  Wearily Alex responded, “I’m in here, honey.” She stood before the steps of the gazebo and eyed Michael with clear disdain but said nothing to him.

  “I’ll be back in a little while, honey.”

  “I drove over, Nancy said you might have wandered over here . . . I didn’t know where you went.”

  “Sorry, honey. Go on back, and I’ll join you in a while. Michael and I need to catch up.” Surprisingly, she obeyed, and, giving the dark space where Michael was standing one last look, she turned on her white heels and clipped across the grass as gracefully as she was able to with her heels sinking into the dirt.

  Michael sat back down beside Alex, desperate, as their time together was drawing to a close. He felt a feverish desire, confusing for his system to process.

  “Alex—”

  “I know.”

  Michael reached out and placed his hand on Alex’s strong arm. The sensation was like stretching out on hot sand after a cool swim—perfect heat.

  “We can’t,” Alex said and rose. “I don’t know if we ever could, but we are too old now, that’s for sure.” He placed a hand on Michael’s shoulder, a resigned hand, and smiled his soft smile. He was clearly very drunk, and he stumbled a bit. Then he made his way down the steps and strode across the grass away from Michael.

  “Alex, can you find your way back? Do you know the way back?” Michael called out to him before he disappeared.

  “I remember, Michael. I can find my way back. I’m sorry. I loved talking to you tonight. I loved talking to you . . .” he said as he disappeared around the side of the house.

  * * *

  Michael sat in the gazebo for more than thirty minutes. He could not bring himself to return to the party. He went inside and called Will to say he had had a wonderful time and had too much to drink, so sorry! Then he wandered out his back door with a bottle of gin, down to the old pond he and Ryan used to wa
lk to. He sat on the sandy bank in the dark, taking swigs of gin, then took his shoes and socks off and walked barefoot and fully clothed into the lukewarm water. With the water up to his shoulders, he held the bottle to his chest possessively with the bottom half of it submerged and the bottleneck exposed to the air so he could take occasional small swigs and look around, keeping watch on the surface of the water and the brush around it.

  Things could have turned out differently if Alex had never met Meg. Alex would not have gotten married, or would at least have put it off until he was settled as a professor. Yes, they would have been poor, but poor and beloved. And they would have had each other’s company for all these years as they watched the students come and go from the university together—youth entering, while they slowly aged on the beautiful campus. Michael would have published in the academic world, and Alex would have helped him edit his pieces before Michael sent them off. Perhaps they could have moved next door to each other or, if the house was large enough, have shared a house. Michael could have taken the upstairs and Alex the downstairs, and before bed they might have read together in the living room before a roaring fire. Complete peace would have been the makeup of that house.

  Nancy wouldn’t find him out here, and if she did, he would just sink below the surface. The little fox emerged, walked to the side of the pond, and stuck its tongue into the water, lapping up a few little gulps. It sensed him there, floating in the middle, and raised its head, looking squarely at him. Michael looked back, happy for this nonhuman company. He hoped it would stay. He tried to compel it to stay with the intensity of his gaze. The fox stared back, unable to make sense of what Michael was doing in the middle of the pond at night; this was usually his terrain for nighttime drinking. Then he quickly turned and scampered off, out of sight.

  * * *

  When Michael walked into his house through the back around midnight in his wet clothes, still partly drunk, he was surprised to see Ryan in the kitchen making tea, having just gotten home herself. She looked at his wet clothes and concern washed over her face.

  Utterly defeated, Michael dropped his normally stern countenance and just stood there.

  “Is everything okay?” Ryan looked again at his wet clothes and the mud on his knees. “Dad, I’m sorry I hit you.”

  “Ryan, I’m sorry for everything. I’m so sorry for everything.”

  “Is everything okay?” she asked again, her face softening.

  “No, it’s not, but it has nothing to do with you. You’re my special girl, Ryan, you always will be.” He found he was close to tears. “I want the best for you.” Embarrassed by his sudden emotion, he quickly went up the stairs and locked himself in the guest bath for a shower.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Packed to the brim with sleepy, distracted bodies, the car headed west on Interstate 20. It passed dunes topped with dried-out weeds, and the sun flashed brilliantly, reflecting off everything—off the windows of other cars and the restaurants they passed, off the pavement, and off the ocean that glittered in stunning blasts when it appeared around a bend. Ryan and Max sat in the backseat, Ryan looking less miserable than she had in days past. Nancy and Michael had gotten her to come along only after Nancy had threatened to take away her weekly allowance if she didn’t, something that would have forced her to find part-time work for spending money. She had one condition that they had granted: she wanted to bring her friend Dari along.

  During the drive, Michael thought about the dinner party he had attended a week ago, and he wondered if going had been a mistake.

  Alex had still been the most poised of anyone in the room, but his elegance had faded, like an old painting too long neglected. Meg had become more grotesque, a cartoonish bleached-blond nightmare. Michael had never before been so repulsed by another human being, although he had disguised it well for the sake of the party. Meg was the most unnerving, most gut-wrenchingly soul-killing woman he had ever encountered. Recalling her jokes made him wince with pain; remembering the sound of her voice made him want to split the earth apart.

  Michael pondered all of that as he drove the car to the retreat center. Whenever he recalled his questions to Alex, asked with a vulnerability that he didn’t know he possessed, and remembered the responses, his stomach turned and then tightened, as if an internal fist were keeping a stranglehold on him, a grip on his spine, lest he collapse and spill all over the world. Images were hitting him in a series now: Alex’s lips saying “I don’t know,” Meg crossing the lawn in a blur of white and black polka dots, Alex looking like an ordinary man when placed beside Meg.

  Michael had been up all night, and his hands were full-on shaking, though he was able to drive. He kept pouring more coffee down his throat and wiping the sweat from his brow. Everyone in the car kept talking, their voices disrupting his thoughts. His family was packed into the family van, and John was following in his own car. Michael had spoken little, and he could tell that every once in a while, his family members and the girl would steal a worried glance at him. Michael couldn’t bring himself to utter a single word, and he drove clutching the wheel tightly.

  * * *

  When the car arrived at the center, the place was even more basic than Michael remembered. The pine cabin he would be sharing with his family and John had four bedrooms, but each of the rooms had only bunk beds, and he was shaken with embarrassment, for this was all his idea.

  There was afternoon prayer in the Solstice Chapel, and the group made their way over to it. They sat in a pew, all in one long row, and Michael realized that there were no other families in the chapel with them. It was the middle of the day, and it was just their family with the landscaper and Dari. Every once in a while, everyone looked at Michael, waiting. No one talked, and Ryan and Dari appeared to be smirking at each other. Ryan’s little mouse of a friend hadn’t said much to Michael but seemed to have become best friends with his daughter overnight.

  Max leaned forward and turned to look at Michael, and his eyes looked slightly frightened. Even Nancy, ill at ease, was sitting very upright, and it was clear to Michael for the first time that everyone present thought he had lost his mind. Nancy did not seem to be enjoying herself, although she was trying for everyone else’s sake, and John was especially quiet. This was supposed to be the kind of thing that would light Nancy up—she had been waiting years for something like this, or so Michael had thought. The skin on the back of his neck began to itch. When the owners of the retreat center, Joy and Bill Dover, came out and began talking only to their row, as they were the only ones present, the group bristled and stiffened under their kind gaze. Michael felt that if he did not remove himself from the room immediately, he would indeed lose his grasp on keeping the lid firmly pressed down.

  “It is so good to have John back with us again. And he’s found new friends. It is amazing to see such a large and beautiful family—two beautiful sisters, and the little boy and a couple here to reconnect away from the hectic world, get back to ‘the stuff of the earth,’ as we like to say.” Bill held his hands together in front of his rather large belly, drawing everyone’s attention to it while he spoke. He turned to his wife, who smiled and began to speak.

  “Bill and I have been here for over twenty years, and we’ve seen a lot of families come and go. People come because at home there’s always the television, there’s always something to pull you away from the people you love the most. People feel weak these days, weaker and weaker as they have too many obligations, too many movies, video games, laundry lists, school papers . . . I could go on and on. That’s why my husband and I came here and started this retreat center. Our marriage was in a rough patch, and we didn’t know if we were going to make it through. But we did, and we’re here, and our family is the stronger for it.”

  Both had on matching lime-green T-shirts and stood under the stained-glass windows in dazed serenity. Had John told these people of his troubled marriage? Had they tailored their speech to
fit what they felt was a troubled dysfunctional family? Michael had no idea whether or not John had told the Dovers anything about his family’s problems. He remembered his sister, Sarah’s, awful grin in the photo she had sent of herself and her gaggle of children. It was a grotesque, hearty grin, one that seemed to show either transcendence of the problems of the earth or utter disregard for them and rapture for her own private world.

  “Bill will read a welcome passage, adapted from the Bible, and then we’ll have a period of silence.” Michael thought of Alex as he had seen him at the party; there was a lost wildness, something crucial had been rubbed away—a slow killing. The way he held a cup of coffee was different, the way he sat in a chair was different. But in their time in the gazebo, Michael had seen the hidden beauty of his character emerge, and it had taken his breath away. The moment was beautiful, but to have Meg march across and snatch it away filled Michael with anger, and to see Alex leave with Meg, once again an ordinary, uninteresting man, made their exchange in the gazebo seem to be a fantasy. Meg got to lie down with him every night in bed and hold him. What had she ever done to earn his hand? Michael wished above all wishes that he had never gone to the stupid dinner so that he could instead remember Alex as he had been in college: fresh, innocent, respectful, lanky, intense.

  Every time Alex made love to his wife, she took another part of him for herself, she stole a bit of his preciousness and pulled it into her feverish vagina for her own purposes. She was the most horrible person he would ever encounter in his life—Michael knew it. And if it had been medieval times, he would have enjoyed nothing more than to kill her. But he would never be able to put an end to her. The thought that she could outlast him made him physically ill, that she might live to see him reduced to nothing but a pile of ashes would be a horrible fate. Alex was gone; it was blasphemy, and no one saw it but himself. He was the only one who had really known Alex and seen him for what he truly had been—a perfect human being, his beloved.