The Banks of Certain Rivers

by Harrison, Jon

  They remained close up until the end. There are two times in my life I recall ever seeing my father cry: the night the Detroit Tigers won the 1984 World Series, and seventeen years later at Dick Olsson’s funeral.

  Dick’s passing was the great sorrow of my father’s life. I guess he was lucky to have just that one.

  I finish up Christopher’s sandwich and dust my hands over the sink. I consider taking a shower, but through the kitchen window I see Chris shooting hoops on the barn slab court, so I head outside instead.

  “Want to play?” Chris asks me, and I laugh.

  “Maybe something like ‘horse,’” I say. He passes me the ball and I take a shot that misses off the backboard with a loud clunk.

  “We’ll play to twenty. I’ll give you five points.”

  “You’ll still kill me.”

  “I’ll keep my right hand behind my back. You’ll beat me if I play left handed.”

  I say fine, and he lets me have the ball first. We dance around; he goes easy on me. It’s fun to watch him move so well, so confidently, even when he’s blowing past and stealing the ball right out of my hands. I manage to hang on, barely, keeping one point ahead of him until it’s 15-14. Then in a blur Chris dunks on me, twice, before sinking an unbelievable three-pointer from the middle of the court to finish me off.

  “Nice game, Dad.”

  Panting, doubled over with my hands on my knees, I manage to say: “Nice game.”

  I spend the early afternoon grading papers out on the back deck. The work is from my morning physics class and nothing too mentally strenuous: check yes, check no. 100%, A+, great work, and so on. The kids made an effort. Christopher ducks his head out the door to say goodbye, and I tell him to be careful and say hi to everyone at the rec center for me. When I ask him if he needs any money he shakes his head and says he’s all set.

  It’s a date night, of sorts, so I take a long shower and spiff myself up in a dark gray button down shirt and some newer jeans. Lauren is planning to check in with Carol before we go, and she’ll leave her car parked over there for cover in the unlikely event that Chris makes an unexpected (and unannounced) return home. I’ve got a few minutes before Lauren is supposed to show up, so I stroll over to the farmhouse on my own.

  I find Carol in her room, propped up on a pillow in bed with a months-old issue of Cosmopolitan. She’s not wearing her oxygen line, and her eyes look bright when she sees me leaning in the doorway.

  “Did you have a good day?” I ask.

  “Really good day, Neil. Chris came by earlier.”

  “He said he was going to.”

  “Sounds like you boys had a nice visit with Wendy.” The wrinkles in her face turn to something like a smile. “Chris is such a good boy. You’ve done a good job.”

  I smile back, as much at the compliment as at the pleasure of having Carol return from dreamland for a while. “I got pretty lucky with him,” I say. “He’s all right.”

  “He is all right, Neil.”

  The sound of the side door stops me before I can say anything else, and Lauren calls, “Hi Carol!” When she comes down the hall she acts surprised to see me.

  “Oh, hello there,” she says with a smirk.

  “Hi Lauren. How have you been?”

  “I’ve been very well, thank you.” She nearly keeps a straight face through our forced formality. “Carol, how are you doing today?”

  “I’m just great,” she says. Behind the doorjamb, where Carol can’t see, I give a big thumbs-up, and Lauren nods.

  “I’m going to leave you two,” I say, and Carol waves goodbye.

  “Have fun tonight, Neil.”

  “I—” Have fun? Does she know I have plans? “Thanks. I will.”

  Lauren tells Carol she’ll be right back, and walks me to the door.

  “She’s doing good? She looks good,” Lauren whispers.

  “She seems great. Does she know we’re doing something tonight?”

  “Yes. I told her.” My mouth falls open, and Lauren rolls her eyes and pokes me in the ribs with her index finger when she sees the look on my face. “No, of course I didn’t tell her. What are you thinking?”

  “That ‘have fun’ thing she said, I don’t know….”

  “It’s Saturday night. It’s traditional in this country for people to have fun on a Saturday night. So of course she sent you off with good wishes. Don’t be so paranoid, okay?” She pokes me again. “Can you run over to your house and grab a bag or a pack? Something to lug our wine in.”

  I say sure and Lauren sneaks in with a quick kiss. “I’ll meet you over there,” she says. I head back through the dusk and find a canvas shopping bag in my front closet, and go back out to wait on the front steps. The day is nearly gone and the moon, waxing almost full, is just coming up over the trees. I’m watching a pair of bats circle over the yard when I hear Lauren walking back from Carol’s, and I have to peer at her for a moment in the darkness to discern that she’s got three bottles of wine held in her arms against her chest.

  “Here,” I say, getting up to take two of the bottles from her.

  “God, I wish she could be like that all the time,” Lauren says with a sigh. “Poor thing.” She holds the last bottle out and as I take it she leans forward and kisses me, fully and with no intention of pulling away. I bend my knees just enough to put the wine on the ground and rise back up to slip my right hand around her back. My left hand slides down Lauren’s hip, over her jeans, between her legs and up, and as I start to press against her she lets out a breathy laugh and bites my chin.

  “You can’t you can’t you can’t,” she says. “We have to get over there. I don’t have a change of clothes. Neil, we have to. You’re going to make me a mess.”

  “We could go inside and take off your clothes,” I murmur into her hair. “Mine could come off too. The problem would be solved.”

  “We cannot.” Lauren places her hands against my chest like she’s going to shove me away, but she stops and wraps her arms around me. “Later. Kris and Alan are waiting.”

  “This is some unexpected restraint,” I say, kneeling down to put the third bottle in with the others. “Seeing how you’ve been lately. But fine, fine.” I let out an exaggerated sigh. “It’s fine, I guess. I’ll just save myself up.”

  “You save yourself up, pal,” she says, and she gives my rear end a smack as I pick up the canvas bag and start away. We set off down my drive, and the moonlight shines in our faces. There’s a path along the road to Alan’s house, worn smooth by feet and bicycle tires, and I let Lauren go ahead of me when we come to it.

  Some lights are still on in Carol’s house as we cross her broad front yard. I put timers in there a year ago to create the illusion of activity; it makes Carol feel better if we make it appear that she’s getting around easily in her home.

  “You really didn’t say anything to her about us having dinner?” I ask, and Lauren swings her head.

  “Why would I even bring it up?”

  “I don’t know, you spend a lot of time over there with her.”

  “So do you. Maybe you let it slip?”

  “Yeah, right.” I maneuver the shopping bag’s straps up to my shoulder, and the bottles clank together inside.

  “Yeah, right. Neil, I know, okay? I get it. I’m not going to let anything slip. No one’s going to know anything until you’re ready. I’m fine with it.”

  “I don’t get how you can be, sometimes.”

  “You know why. I tell you enough. You just never want to tell me back, though. You don’t like to say it.”

  “That’s not true. I do say it.”

  Lauren laughs. “Okay, say it right now, then.”

  “You’re putting me on the spot. It wouldn’t be meaningful.”

  “Just say it. You don’t even need to mean it.”

  “I do mean it, though.”

  “Mean what?”

  “You’re trying to trick me.”

  “If you mean it, if you feel it, sayi
ng it shouldn’t be such a big deal. But I’m not going to force you or anything. Just remember to tell me once in a while. I like to hear it. And not just when we’re messing around.”

  I think about this; is that really the only time I tell her I love her?

  The thing is, I do love Lauren. Wildly, madly. I really do. It’s hard to love things, though. It’s especially hard to admit it. In my experience, the minute you admit that you really love something? That’s just about the time it decides to go away.

  After her brother’s car accident, Lauren spent nearly a month in Pennsylvania. Before she left, I told her to text me if she needed me to take care of anything for her while she was gone. I didn’t really expect to hear from her, thinking she’d be pretty busy back home, but hardly a week passed before I got a message from her. I’d been expecting her to ask me to water her plants or something, but instead that first message said:

  God, I forgot how much I hate this place.

  The rest of her messages were similar in tone. There’s a strip mall at every intersection, she’d write. There’s an Applebees in every mall. I miss Port Manitou. I want to come home. I’d type a message back asking what I could do, asking how her brother was doing, and she’d simply write back: no, nothing, all set, he’s doing fine.

  I want to come home.

  Three days before she did come home, she called me to let me know when her flight would be arriving. Could I pick her up? Would I, she asked, if it wasn’t too much of a bother? Of course I would.

  “Dinner probably won’t work that night,” she added. “I’ll be too tired.” She laughed. “You didn’t really think I forgot about it, did you?”

  After she’d been back a couple days, we made our plans. Conveniently, Christopher would be spending the night at a friend’s house, and Lauren suggested we go to a restaurant she loved in Traverse City. I didn’t know if she really wanted to go all the way out there because she liked the place so much, or if somehow she sensed how concerned I was over the possibility of the two of us being seen together in Port Manitou. Not that I was worried about it for my sake; I just wasn’t sure how Christopher might take it.

  We had a good time on our date. What surprised me the most was what an effortlessly good time it was, especially on the twenty-minute drive there; I picked her up and there were no forced moments or awkward silences. She caught me up on her brother’s condition, told me anecdotes both funny and aggravating over our meal about his rehabilitation, her family, her hometown. When we made it back to her place, we talked for nearly half an hour while my truck sat idling.

  “You could just park and shut the car off, you know,” she said. “We could keep talking inside, and you wouldn’t waste fuel or irritate my neighbors.”

  “I didn’t want to be presumptuous,” I said.

  “Oh, look at you. A gentleman!” She pointed at the keys. “Just shut off the engine.”

  “But also….”

  “But also what?”

  “But also I want there to be a second time,” I said. “After this time.” I had to laugh at myself. “Look, I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “It’s been a while since I’ve done anything like this.”

  She peered out over the hood, into the condo lot, and smiled. “Park over there,” she said, pointing. “Then let’s go upstairs and talk.”

  There was a second time. A second, and a third.

  And as the weeks went on, there were more times after that.

  The faint buzz of a jazz saxophone—one of Alan’s Coltrane albums on vinyl, I’m betting—rolls out through the screen door of Alan and Kristin’s house as we come up through their front yard. I hear Kristin say, “They’re here!” from inside and she meets us at the door. She’s a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, and she looks young despite being almost fifty with defiantly white hair.

  “I think it’s safe,” she says, sotto voce, making a show like she’s looking for spies out in the darkness before she ushers us in. “No one followed you over, did they?”

  “Didn’t hear anyone,” Lauren says, smiling at the ribbing I’m getting.

  I give Kristin a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek. “You can both stop it now. Really.”

  “I’m teasing. Your lip doesn’t look bad at all. And here Alan had me thinking you were going to look like a monster.”

  “Neil, come here!” Alan calls from deep in the house. I head back to his study, and find my friend seated before three enormous flat screen monitors—two more than the last time I was in here—across his desk. The walls of the room are lined with books, mostly aviation books, along with pictures and mementos from his time as a pilot.

  “Check this out,” he says, angling the center monitor toward me. “Watch this guy.” He starts an online video of a jumbo jet approaching a runway at an impossible angle, straightening out at the last possible second to make the landing. “YouTube,” he says, shaking his head as he shoves the monitor back into place. “Who came up with this thing? I could watch those crosswind landings all day. Sometimes I do.”

  On the desk next to the keyboard is something like a steering wheel that Chris might have for his video game console down in our basement.

  “What is this?” I ask, picking it up. It’s surprisingly heavy.

  “Ah ha, it’s a control yoke for the new flight simulator.” Alan points under the desk. “We have rudder pedals too. The realism in this software is amazing. Especially with the extra monitors, it’s like a panoramic view. Want to see me fly it?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Come over sometime and try it. It’ll make your palms sweat. I need to stay current. Keep up on my instrument approaches.” Alan pauses for a moment, looking at the setup. “I need to be ready for….” He stops himself again. “You know.”

  “Yeah,” I say. Alan shuts down the system, and I follow him out of the study. There’s a picture of him hanging just inside the door to the hallway; he’s standing in a jetway in his pilot’s uniform: hat, epaulets, a pair of silver wings pinned to his chest. He’s relaxed in the photo, a wry half-smile on his face, a briefcase down by his feet. I see Alan glance at the picture as we pass it, and I feel bad for him.

  Kris and Lauren are chatting on the living room couch when we come out, leaning close and laughing. Kristin nods and raises her eyebrows when she sees us.

  “Did he show you his new video game?” she asks me.

  “It is not a video game,” Alan says. “You talk like it’s a child’s toy. That software is a highly sophisticated training aide. Used by professionals. Like myself.” He grabs me by the elbow and pulls me to the kitchen. “Come on. There’s work to be done. Ingredients to be prepped. And wine to be drunk.”

  “Now you’re talking,” I say.

  “And after the meal is consumed and the wine is drunk, I have something else for us in the form of a bottle of ouzo sent by Nicole. A nod to your heritage.”

  Nicole—the older of Alan and Kristin’s two daughters now both away at college—is now somewhere in Europe for a junior semester abroad.

  “You forget this heritage is in name only,” I say.

  “I forget nothing. We’ll drink to your adopted heritage. We’ll honor your name.” Alan presses an onion into my hand and points to a cutting board with a chef’s knife on it. “Chop. Coarse chop is fine.”

  In his spare time—and he does have a lot of spare time now, Mega-Putt construction notwithstanding—Alan also keeps an incredible garden, the abundance of which often spills into my home and Christopher’s cooking experiments. Peppers, beans, corn, squash. Varieties of melons and heirloom tomatoes. And onions, like the massive one I’m cutting up right now.

  “So things are good?” Alan asks as I chop and begin to squint and cry from the onion. “With Lauren?”

  “Just as good as they were this morning,” I say, wiping my eyes with the backs of my wrists.

  “You still want me to drop it, I can see.” He places a bowl of gigantic homegrown tomatoes next to me. “Break t
hese down when you’re done with that onion. Coarse chop as well. Look at you crying. I should have given you the onion last. Didn’t your famous chef brother ever teach you the right way to use a knife? I won’t be held accountable if you lose a finger in here. By the way, Leland slowed down to check out Mega-Putt today. I watched him from up here.”

  “Just tell me what I need to cut,” I say.

  With Alan directing, the two of us work our way through a pile of ingredients (along with a pretty nice bottle of cabernet) to make a cioppino. Renaissance guy that he is, Alan has baked loaves of bread too, and we slice them up and brush them with olive oil before toasting them under the broiler. The women have put a pretty big dent into a bottle of wine themselves, and when the four of us come together to sit at our meal the room is filled with jovial talk and laughter. It washes over me, the wine and the food, and especially the company, and as I laugh with my friends and hold Lauren’s hand under the table next to me I am filled with a sublime joy.

  Kristin gets up at some point to check a cobbler she’s put in the oven, and I lean over and kiss Lauren’s cheek. Alan gives me a look: a little knowing smile, a raised eyebrow. Telepathically, through the alcohol and the camaraderie, I know he’s telling me:

  You could be like this all the time if you wanted, Neil.

  Now Kristin’s back with oven mitts and dessert, she orders Alan to grab ice cream and some bowls. He comes back with a bottle of wine instead, one of their own.

  “Have we gone through those other three bottles already?” Lauren asks.

  “Just be glad he didn’t bring out that grappa,” Kristin says.

  “Ouzo,” Alan corrects her.

  “Ouzo, whatever. We’ll regret it in the morning, whatever it is.”

  Later, after more laughter and ouzo and Alan’s repeated refusals to give us a tour of Mega-Putt, Lauren and I start back home, taking the long route back through the orchard. The moon is high now, casting sharp shadows and lighting our way, and with the anise-flavored spirits thick in my veins I’m holding Lauren’s hand and taking care with every step. She still needs to drive home, so she paced herself after that first bottle of wine, wisely skipping Alan’s multiple toasts to my adopted ancestry.