Stranger, Father, Beloved

by Taylor Larsen

  Through sheer force of will, Michael made it through the rest of the meeting in the church, back to the cabin, and set out his toiletries in the modest bathroom.

  * * *

  They went into the cafeteria for dinner. Some hippie boys working at the retreat center kitchen eyed Ryan and Dari with interest. They were probably fresh out of high school and had come here on the work exchange program that was advertised on a flyer on the board in the registration building. They might have driven down from a state like Vermont to escape drug-addicted parents and attempt to clean up their lives. Pea-green plastic tables filled the room, and the family sat on orange plastic chairs.

  There was an evening bonfire and everyone went, including a new couple that had arrived shortly after Michael and his family. The three scrawny cook boys were there, and the Dovers, of course, ever present, unstoppable in their gladness. They all sat on wooden benches with wooden backs, and when Michael stretched back, he suddenly found himself very relaxed in the night air with the fire burning and crackling before them. Joy Dover told a sad Native American story about a man who had been killed protecting his lover from the bad intentions of other men, and in her sorrow after his death, his lover had stood high up on that rock ledge—Joy pointed to the one on the mountain behind her—and she had jumped to her death. It was said that she had become an eagle that flew around the mountains and forests looking for the other eagle. The sad story quieted everyone, and a serene, introspective mood lay heavily on the group. Joy and Bill went on to sing a Native American song, and then they told stories from the Song of Solomon. Michael’s eyes were closing. With his head nodding forward, he slept.

  When he woke up he was alone, and the first thing he saw was the campfire, still burning before him but smaller in size. The stars filled the sky above him, and Michael found he was wrapped in a blanket. He had been lying on his side on the bench, passed out asleep. It might have been the deepest sleep of his life. He heard the hoot of an owl, and the fire crackled every few seconds. He forgot where he was, and he pulled the Native American blanket more tightly around him and dozed off again. It seemed his systems wouldn’t allow him to stay awake. He actually tried to wake himself at one point and open his eyes fully, but they kept shutting. He could hear the fire, feel its heat, and hear the wind moving through the trees, the side of his face surrendered against the wooden plank, but he could not keep his eyes open.

  The trees above him were tall, and they swayed gently and bowed their green tops judiciously over him, making friends with the mild wind. At one point he heard the sound of a little animal moving under the platform below him—a mouse, chipmunk, or some other ground animal. It did not startle him, and his eyes remained glued shut, listening. It seemed an enchanted forest. He felt as if he were having the sleep denied him for forty years. He was the wood. He was the fire and wind. There weren’t any dreams, only the quiet world of the deepest levels of his mind, the world of shapes and primordial sounds and movements. His bone marrow was having a “conversation” with the elements, and more essence was being negotiated.

  At dawn, Alex’s original young face appeared in his mind and Michael’s body began groaning awake. The face was expressionless, then that smile, enough to begin the familiar twisting pain around his heart. Michael’s eyes snapped open, and his body began to tense once again.

  A memory emerged from somewhere deep within him. It was from that drunken night in college, when he had gone to the party, found his arms around somebody, heard laughter, awoke remembering nothing, and walked around the campus ashamed afterward for the rest of his college career and, in fact, the rest of his life. The memory was about five seconds long, but it was the key. Before he blacked out, Michael remembered, his arms had been around the strong torso of a crew boy, the captain, Skip Brenner, the great rower for the university team. Skip was over six foot three and had bright short blond hair. Skip was looking down at him with disapproval and seemed to be moving around with the parasite Michael attached to him, perhaps as part of a joke since Michael would not let go. Michael remembered enjoying the ride of clinging to this man, and then he suddenly reached up, trying to climb up Skip to reach the handsome face. His mouth made it as far as Skip’s neck, and he pressed his lips firmly down. He heard noise, shouting, and he was hit hard in the face, and then blackness. He remembered nothing else until he woke up alone on the lawn the next day.

  No wonder he had put such a memory out of his mind. It was the truth of a desperate man. The day after that terrible party, and all the days thereafter, Michael felt a growing dread at the thought of staying at the university to get his PhD to teach. Instead he had a desire to get away. He began taking business classes and knew that upon graduation he would go for his graduate business degree at another school in another city. He had gone to the party in the first place because Alex had had his second date with Meg that night, and she had very quickly become his steady. It all fell into place as one gigantic debacle that had reached its tentacles across his life this far.

  He had clung to Skip as a lowly barnacle clings to a ship. He had wrapped himself around the body of a man, ridiculed by all around him, exposed for the lunatic he really was. The party guests must have all laughed and pointed at Michael for a good while, until the joke got tiresome and Skip got really fed up and shook him loose. But no, Michael had come after him again, a predatory, primitive version of himself hell-bent on getting what he wanted, contact. Until he had been punched in the face and dropped onto the lawn, ultimately harmless, a nuisance no more. A man. To do that to a man! How could he have forgotten the details of that night?

  He remembered being so disappointed that Alex could not accompany him to the party, as he usually did, because he had a date with Meg. Michael remembered drinking and laughing with the crew team, but he had somehow completely repressed the rest of the night, his embarrassing lack of control, his parasitic desire to be close to Skip, the tall, impressive form of a man. He did vaguely remember his sore jaw when he woke up on the lawn and ran back to his dorm, utterly ashamed before others saw him, but even then he did not know why he was so ashamed, that even then, so close to the events, the memory was gone.

  His shame at recalling this memory now was so large that it silenced him, and he walked along the retreat’s lake in that silence, letting the memory slip back to its dark place in his heart. He was washed out, drained of all feeling, drained of all desire. His anxiety was on hiatus, and a sense of hopelessness took its place. He remembered the men who had stood in his father’s court for conducting illicit activities in a men’s bathroom on the outskirts of town. His father had dealt with them with the same even-keeled approach he gave to all his criminals, but once home, over dinner, Michael’s mother had asked him how his day had gone and he had mumbled, “Faggot perverts.”

  Michael walked back to the cabin in which they all were staying and looked in the window to John’s room. The curtain was half drawn, and he could see John in deep sleep curled on his side, the room shadowy in the first light. The walls of his room were light blue, and there was a crucifix on one side. Michael looked down modestly at his own hands that he held together, not in prayer but as people do with each other, palm to palm. They were nice hands, he thought, as his mother had always told him. He looked in the room at John’s hands, which were folded in front of his chest. More gnarly, more character, those hands had.

  Michael walked through the grass by the lake that had clear emerald green water in it, shimmering in the early dawn light. He would recommend swimming in it to his family. He walked up the steps to the old wooden chapel beside it and tried the handle. It opened, and he entered. Bill was sitting in the first pew, his eyes closed and his hands at his sides. Several candles were lit on the altar before him, and other than the candles and the light streaming in through the stained glass, reds, greens, oranges, and blues, creating a swirl of color on the church walls, the room was mostly dark. Michael sat next to Bill, a few
feet away, and when the man didn’t open his eyes, Michael closed his as well, joining him in full darkness. His hands were shaking lightly, but he allowed them to buzz at the end of his long arms.

  He remembered his father’s constant looks of disapproval and his irritation when the two would find themselves alone in the hallway. “Oh . . . ” his father would always say when he found himself confronted with his son at the other end of the hallway, and then his father would force a smile when he remembered his manners. Michael would smile back politely and then look down, to show respect, to show reverence. But now, he was aware, the smile had been coated in shame. The two bone marrows had had a conversation while they both slept in the house, father and son, and the father had not liked what was in his son. His father was proud of how he loved women, loved their bodies, loved their style, and he had been most proud of the wife he had selected for himself, the embodiment of femininity and grace and style. He must have hoped he could have at least shared that appreciation with his son, the womanizing trait, the desire to devour the female flesh that walked the earth.

  Michael allowed the thoughts of his father to slip away in the silent church, and thankfully, Alex slipped away too. He remembered his mother in her bed at home, and he knew he must see her soon. He had to see how she was doing and to be under her kind gaze again. He opened his eyes and saw that Bill was staring at him and smiling. Bill didn’t say anything, he only waited.

  “I’d love some counsel,” Michael began.

  Bill nodded. “I would be happy to help, Michael.”

  “I am having issues delivering on my obligations as head of the household.”

  “A family needs a strong leader. Are you having issues with fidelity?”

  “Not exactly that.”

  “Well, that’s good. That type of betrayal is hard to fix. I’m so glad it’s not that. What can you not follow through on? You are obviously feeling troubled, and your family looks to you to be their leader. Women are the weaker sex, more powerful in some ways since they are creators of life, but they look to us for strength and leadership, to show them the way, not to mention the children.”

  “I know,” Michael said and looked down, sighing wearily. “It’s being married that’s hard.”

  “Marriage is hard. It’s a long road. There are times when you hate the other person. Every couple experiences this. But you have to stay the course. Remember why you fell in love with your wife, and let that glue bind you back to her.”

  “I was never in love with her, Bill.” The words just came out, and both men were shocked and silenced by the hideous, helpless reality that they created.

  Bill struggled for something to say. “Can you fall in love with her now?” He turned to look at Michael. Michael saw that his face was desperate and that he truly cared about Michael’s ­predicament. A kind man, devoted to helping others. But Michael and Nancy could not be helped.

  “No, Bill, I can never fall in love with her.”

  Bill seemed to accept that after a minute of sitting. “Okay, then, if you can’t honor her, you need to let her go and let Christ take her in his arms for comfort. She at least needs that.”

  * * *

  Michael spent the day swimming. The water was deliciously cold, and there was a wooden floating dock that the girls swam to and lay across. Ryan even swam Max out to the dock, holding him in her arms, laughing. Nancy sat on the shore with her cover-up on, wearing a large sun hat, but at a certain point she took out a book and seemed to relax. Michael had taken one of his pills, so his hands had stopped shaking and he was getting that familiar foggy feeling in his mind, the thoughts were dispersing, and everything was slowing down to place him in the moment. He swam halfway around the lake, occasionally darting down to the bottom, where round granite rocks and a few lone dark fish sat, and swimming back up to the surface. It was a beautiful, sunny day, not the slaughtering kind of heat but merciful, with a breeze. He remembered swimming this way a few times as a child, with his father watching from the shore. He would show off and dive dramatically down to the bottom in order to attract his father’s attention. His father had smiled at his brazen swimming, especially when he was younger.

  He saw John waving to him, and then John entered the water and swam out to him.

  “I’d like to swim around the lake too, if you don’t mind,” John called out, his face gleeful as he paddled to keep his head above water. So the two thin male forms moved through the water toward the other side of the lake with Michael leading, and when they rounded the bend, Michael saw that there was a small private beach, attached to a little yellow house. No one was around, and the house seemed to be shut down for the time being.

  They lay down in the grass just above the little beach with their feet in the dazzling gold sand. John’s chest was thin, but it was attractive—pale, not too much hair, with nice trim arm and shoulder muscles. He realized that John’s body was not too different from his own. He could get used to this company, he remarked to himself as he had so many times about John. His silence helped Michael make it through this life because the crowded thoughts dissipated with no additional chatter. The wind picked up and made little ripples on the water and sent a small stream rushing to the shore.

  Again Alex’s solemn young face appeared in Michael’s mind, causing his heart to flutter. He cleared his throat. “John, you’ve come to mean a lot to our family.”

  “I feel the same. You guys have brought me back to life. It’s so nice to be around children, too. I always wanted kids, but it might be too late for me now.”

  “If anything should happen to me, I want you to help out and be part of things—whatever’s needed . . . would you consider that?”

  John sat up, alarmed. “Are you sick? Did your doctor say something?”

  The word “sick” stabbed Michael like a knife, but then he realized that John didn’t mean it in an accusatory manner. He was only concerned about Michael’s health.

  “I don’t want to get into the details,” Michael replied, “but if anything should happen to me, I would need to know that Nancy and the children are taken care of. I need to know that.”

  “What are you talking about? You are sick, aren’t you? Does Nancy know?”

  The word “sick” could mean so many things, Michael mused. He was sick, in a sense. “I might be sick,” and when the words escaped his mouth, it was such a relief to say them. “I have a malignancy—”

  “The doctor found a malignancy?”

  “Yes, they found it. It had been there for a while.” Off in the distance on the other side of the lake, a red kayak drifted by with a young couple paddling—the woman paddling in ineffectual strokes, hitting the water with little chops. The man was trying to paddle forward in smooth strokes and he was carrying them forward.

  “Oh, Michael, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “Nancy doesn’t know anything, and I would like to keep it that way.”

  John sat stunned. “Okay.”

  It was such a relief to tell John of his inabilities, to tell him that something was wrong. This conversation felt entirely honest, though it was not technically true. It felt truer than much of what he said to other people, and it was as far as he could get with the truth.

  “That’s why you brought me here to the retreat center, isn’t it?” John said. “To tell me this?”

  “Yes, John.” Sleepiness was flooding his mind, and the day before him seemed real and then not real. “John, can we just sleep for a little bit? The sun is so nice—”

  “Yes, let’s take a nap. I didn’t sleep so well. Let’s rest. You will need your strength, so let’s rest.”

  Michael smiled to himself and sank into sleep. He was being treated with sympathy now . . . something was wrong with him, and he needed the sympathetic response of a kind person, which he was being given. When he awoke, it was cloudy and John was lying on his back with h
is hand over his face, not asleep but trying to be. Michael tapped him on the shoulder, and the two eased themselves into the cold water.

  Swimming back, at around the halfway point, Michael’s body felt heavy again. It was hard to move his arms through the water. The tiredness was creeping back into his bones. He realized that it might be nice to fall asleep in the water, be pulled under, and allow the water to seep down his throat. He could slip to the bottom of the lake, life could leave him, and he could be food for those sleepy black fish that surely hadn’t had a good nibble for a while. It would be a peaceful way to go. He stopped moving and opened his mouth slightly. The water started to go in, and his body fought him instantly and he began to cough out the water, preserving himself. He did the slow crawl through the darkening water, as more and more clouds formed overhead. Drops of rain hit the top of his head and the water around him, but he barely noticed. Eventually his feet hit the sand. John exited the water behind him. The rain was coming down hard now, and the two men ran up the side of the hill laughing, getting their feet muddy. They had no towels, and they ran across a field to the cabin and sprinted inside.

  After showering and wrapping himself in a towel, Michael heard the shower turn off downstairs, too. The two men were mirroring each other in different parts of the house. He felt they were the same person, almost; different versions of the same man, and one day the one below would be the one above. John would be showering and climbing into bed with Nancy. John would rub her back at night while she fell asleep. It would be better, and her time with Michael would fade away as if it had never really happened at all. Michael slid into bed beside Nancy for the last time. She was asleep, enjoying her nap. He fell asleep, too, with his arm slung over her. She nestled in closer to him without waking.