The Forgotten Hours(71)
“Shit, sorry, forgot to get any. I’ve got tequila?” Katie said, getting up to grab the bottle from the credenza.
“I’ll take a glass too,” her brother said.
“You got a text, Dad.” She handed her father her phone. As he read, the creases in his forehead smoothed out; his jaw relaxed. He took the glass she handed him and drank it down slowly.
“I press here?” he asked, pointing to the space bar with his thumb.
Katie nodded. It was the strangest thing, having her father move around in space next to her. For so many years she had seen him in only one fixed place: the visiting room at Wallkill, sitting on the same stool. Only in her memories had he walked, stood, sat, eaten. Only in scenes from long ago had he interacted with the world of people and objects. Now, in her apartment—where she had lived so many hours invisible to him, where she had made love to men and cried out in Zev’s embrace—he moved just the way she remembered: with a kind of automatic fatherly authority. She was the child; he was the adult. It was familiar, but it wasn’t like she had imagined it would be.
John gave Katie back her phone, and she summoned all her willpower not to look at the text he’d just sent. “Got some music? Jazz, maybe?” he asked.
She found some Ella Fitzgerald on the radio. The music seemed to change the composition of the air between them, filling it with a kind of honeyed softness that was lighter than the silences. For hours they talked and laughed, stretched out their limbs and punched each other in the arms, and listened to each other’s stories. Finally, after dusk had passed and the sky hung dark above the streetlights, David headed to the bathroom, and Katie went to her room to change into a dress before heading out for dinner. When she returned, her father was hunched over, his face sunk into his hands.
“Daddy?” she said. “What’s the matter? Are you okay?”
He raised his face to her, and his eyes were small and bloodshot, his cheeks glistening. “Those balloons, Katie.” His voice broke. “I can’t stop thinking about just how—how beautiful they were. Just so crazy, goddamn beautiful.”
32
After a big breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon the next morning, John Gregory said he had to go. He promised to call as soon as he got his own cell phone.
“Aren’t you staying with me?” Katie said. “I took the morning off.”
“Of course I am,” he said, rising. “But I’ve got to get out there a bit, see what’s going on. Ride the wind a bit. You know? Just let the freedom sink in.”
“Okay, but all alone?” Katie asked. Her father out there wandering the streets on his own didn’t seem like much fun.
“Well, who said anything about being alone?” Her father smiled, hitched his bag to his shoulder, and threw the Falcon keys up in the air, catching them in one hand.
She felt a quick stab of jealousy. Of course he had people in his life she didn’t know about, relationships that were as unknown to her as her relationships were to him. He had his freedom now; who were they to make assumptions or have expectations? He was a grown-up, for God’s sake, and she was not his mother.
“And soon I’ll be settling into the cabin,” he added. “You’ll come see me there, spend weekends, right?”
She asked if he had enough money, and he waved her away. “Your mother and I came to an arrangement. Don’t worry about me.”
She was aware of feeling disappointed, like a child who asked about the constellations and discovered that grown-ups didn’t actually know much of anything; it just seemed as if they had all the answers. John scribbled a number down on a scrap of paper and kissed her on both cheeks, his stubble reminding her of endless nights in her cool sheets, his warm breath on the top of her head as he read to her.
When her father left, she strapped on her trainers and went for a run. Halfway through, her phone started buzzing: yet another text from Jack. To her surprise, her insides turned over, and she wondered why she even cared anymore, why she wasn’t more angry at him. The confusion she’d felt after their kiss in the hallway had not entirely disappeared. Beneath her spiky anger was an undertow of tenderness, as though in the end she would forgive him anything. It was mysterious to her why she felt this way after so much time had passed. Though she sensed that there was something unsteady or untrustworthy about him, at the very same time she held an entirely different version of him in her mind: a boy’s self with a pure-hearted essence. A boy who had shared a timeless moment with her. Those two selves were as real to her as the pavement beneath her feet.
She slowed to a walk and made her way back to her apartment. After showering and dressing for work, she looked up Jack’s number in her contacts and blocked it, then blocked him. A small pang, a goodbye of sorts, pinched at her, and she let it pass. Then she got out her laptop and stared at the screen. Perhaps, with great care and delicacy, she could type out for Zev the story of what had happened. Perhaps black words on a clean white screen would be easier, or at the very least safer, than words from her mouth into the air. Could she explain herself?
Dearest Zev, she started.
She imagined Zev at a podium, his shirtsleeves rolled up, face shadowed by his angular features under slanted lights. She deleted the two words she’d written.
Hi Handsome! Can’t wait till you get back.
Uncertainty buzzed in her ears.