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By Root 1162 0

how “your sisters” never called him, I realized it could actually happen, and that by saying this I would save him. I suddenly saw a future with my father. But the check came along with the drink and I was knocked out of my reverie by an argument he wanted to start and I simply stood up and walked away from the booth without looking back at him or saying goodbye and then I was standing in sunlight, loosening my tie as a parking valet pulled up to the curb in the cream-colored 450 SL. I half smiled at the memory, for thinking that I could just let go of the damage that a father can do to a son. I never spoke to him again. This was in March of 1992 and he died the following August at the house in Newport Beach. Lying in bed on 13th Street, I realized the one thing I was learning from my father now: how lonely people make a life. But I also realized what I hadn’t learned from him: that a family—if you allow it—gives you joy, which in turn gives you hope. What we both failed to understand was that we shared the same heart.

There was one last story to write.

I went back to Los Angeles in August and on the afternoon of the anniversary of my father’s death I waited in the parking lot of the McDonald’s on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. It was 2:30. After composing myself sufficiently I left the car and limped into the restaurant (I was still using a cane). I ordered a hamburger, a small bag of fries, a child’s Coke—I wasn’t hungry—and I took my tray and sat at a table by the window. The 450 SL pulled into the parking lot at exactly 2:40. A boy—seventeen, maybe eighteen—who looked strikingly like Clayton—stepped out of the car. He was taller now, I noticed, and his hair was short and even though he had sunglasses on I recognized him immediately. I was holding my breath. I watched as he walked hesitantly toward the entrance. He had a shadow—this was evidence. Once inside, he spotted me and moved with confidence toward the table I was trembling at. The world became hushed. I pretended to be absorbed in the task of opening the paper the hamburger came wrapped in and then I lifted it to my mouth and took a small bite. Robby was sitting across from me but I couldn’t look at him or say anything. He was silent as well. When I looked up, he had taken off the sunglasses and was staring at me sadly. I started crying while chewing on the hamburger and wiped my face while trying to swallow. All I could say before turning away was “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said softly. “I understand.”

His voice had deepened—he was older now, and was no longer the shy boy I knew those months on Elsinore Lane—and there was something in him that suggested forgiveness. His secret life made him seem less brooding, less sullen. Something had been solved for him. The actor was gone.

I had to keep turning away from him because I was breaking down.

“Why did you leave?” I managed to ask in a hoarse voice. “Why did you leave us?”

“Dad,” he sighed. The word sounded different from how he had said it in the past. He placed his hand on mine. It was real. I could feel it. “It’s okay.”

I reached over and touched his face with the palm of my other hand, and then his shyness returned and he looked down.

“Don’t worry,” the boy said. “I’m not lost.”

He said it again, “I’m not lost anymore.”

I wanted another chance but I was too ashamed to hear his answer. I asked anyway. “Robby,” I choked, my face wet. “Please come back.”

But all he eventually saw was the flowering smile of acceptance.

He was standing outside, staring through the window at me for one last time.

He was looking at this story with affection.

I noticed my son had left a drawing behind: a landscape of the moon. It was so detailed that I had to linger over it, wondering about the patience required of my son to draw this particular moonscape. Where did this burning, ceaseless intention come from?

I also saw that one word was written on it, and I touched the word with a finger.

I didn’t know what brought him here. I didn’t know what called him away.

He was returning to the land where every boy