Moondogs - Alexander Yates [153]
“What do you want to say to him?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve gotten so used to saying nothing.” He paused, expecting a gentle admonishment that didn’t come. It was a long time before he made a go of it.
“I don’t know what this means, but Hon wanted me to tell you that the London thing is figured out.” His tone sounded flat and lame in the quiet room. “He came by yesterday. He’d still be here if the hospital would let him …” Benicio drifted. He fixed his eyes on the assisted rise and fall of his father’s chest.
“I’m glad I started talking to you again. I don’t regret stopping, but I’m glad I started again. And I’m sorry if I hurt you.” He turned to Alice. “Fuck, it sounds like someone else said that.”
“Nope, it was you.” She rubbed her hand in slow circles on his back and he shifted his weight a few times to indicate that she should stop. Each breath came close to crumbling.
He tightened his grip on his father’s thick fingers and felt the hard wedding band, still coated with coarse flecks of ash. It was loose—Howard had lost weight. He was quiet for a long time. “I met her,” he finally said.
“I can leave,” Alice said, “if you want.” The back of his head brushed her cheek as he nodded.
She left.
Benicio turned his father’s wedding band, slid it off and put it back on again. He remembered the last time he’d held Howard’s hand, hardly half a year ago, at his mother’s funeral. It was the first time they’d touched, or talked, in years. What had Benicio said to him? Something to the effect of: I haven’t forgiven you yet, but I will. What the fuck was that? What had he been waiting for? Saying he would meant that he already had. He’d wanted to hug his father right there—a real hug, nothing perfunctory. But there had been something in the way. There was still something in the way.
“I don’t know what her name is,” he said. “She told me it was Solita. And I met her kid, June. He was about … I guess I would have been fifteen when he was born. The winter before we got certified, or maybe the one after. If he’s yours. He doesn’t look like yours. And if he was, I think even you would have done better by him.” He paused to breathe. Under the circumstances, “even you” sounded petty, and mean. “This isn’t really fair,” he said. “I had all these things to say to you. I’d practiced them. But they’re not things you say to someone on a respirator. Who’s dying. Or so they tell me.” He let out a little laugh that broke in half. He bit his lower lip, hard. “Mom knew,” he said. “I was too busy being mad at you, at both of you, to ask. I should have asked her a lot of things.” He let his head droop until it rested on the bed. He accounted the way he’d acted to his mother as the worst thing he’d done with his young life. Even confessing this to Howard felt cheap, because Howard probably couldn’t even hear it. “She knew everything,” he said. “Not just about what happened at the resort, but she knew about Solita, and about the money under your bed, and if June was yours or not. She knew, but nobody asked.”
Benicio had to stop there. Thinking about his mother made him cry. He loved her, and his father, too.
LATER THAT MORNING Benicio and Alice returned to the Shangri-La together. They hadn’t gone back since Howard’s arrival at Makati Med and couldn’t go any longer without a shower and maybe an hour or two of sleep in a real bed. As they waited outside for Edilberto to pick them up, Alice touched the cut on Benicio’s head and asked if it hurt. “No,” he said. He’d taken off the bandage and the single stitch was already halfway dissolved into a little scab. This was the closest they’d come to talking about his disappearance on the night of the eruption.
Edilberto wept as he drove. Alice, warmed by how hard he was taking things, consoled him at red lights. He kept trying to make eye contact with Benicio in the rearview as he said how sorry he was. When they pulled up to the security checkpoint outside the hotel he popped the trunk and hood for the guards and turned around in the driver’s seat.