Slide - Kyle Beachy [20]
The father disappears into master bedroom to Mister Rogers his shoes, hang the jacket, rack the tie. He moves toward comfort, decompression, release of less permanent cords of tension. Goes to basement, emerges with bottle, joins wife and only child in kitchen. Pleasant meal at home with the family.
I filled glasses of water from the tap and carried them to the table. For a few moments I examined my reflection in the smudgeless glass, and when I looked up they were upon me, closing inward, bearing serving dishes of chicken and vegetables as we triangulated ourselves around the circular table. My father spoke his quiet grace, which I applauded for its elemental role in the grand ritual, a nicely official starting point. Amen.
“I had lunch with Nancy Hoyne today.” Carla spoke while dumping what was surely excessive salt onto her plate. “I didn't realize Jesse was in town for a few weeks before he heads back to Northwestern.”
I nodded with a full mouth, unsure to whom her comment was directed. Richard and the Honorable Derrick Hoyne, neighbor, had a history that dated back to high school wrestling. Nancy was one of my mother's few still-married friends. Their son, Jesse, was an outrageous prick and engaged to a former J. Crew or some such model, some cute, small-faced New Englander. Then there was the daughter, a blond pigtailed little girl I'd always glared at out of totally unfair association with her brother.
“Nancy and I both wish your father and Derrick could get over their little disagreement.”
“That's what happens, Potter, when you're a judge and sit in that chair all day. How can you be wrong when your chair is so high? Look at their tiny heads down there. They look like ants.”
My mother reached again for the salt. I tried to keep track of the things that were being said. Much of what could have been their own private conversation was being channeled through me. I watched my dad take a bite of his chicken. I watched his jaw muscles work. But this feeling of remove allowed me to perceive them in a certain way, a setting-apart of the mother and father so I could more fully honor them, commandment numero five. My mother spoke and I watched her wait for my father's response. Incredibly, our first meal all together since my return, the First Supper, and at some point I would have to offer a contribution of my own. I thought to describe my trip to ProTemps or discuss the sounds from the attic I heard in bed. Or baseball, because there was always baseball, a sport that was perhaps invented by a father in search of something to discuss with his son.
Audrey's fluency in the language of gesture: the way she leaned into a response, closing in like an insect to nectar, eye contact and gentle movements of the head and shoulders, the way she sent cards and handwrote letters and called distant cousins on birthdays, the scarf she learned how to knit to give Carmel. And now the starfish undisturbed in the deep end of Stuart's pool and the photograph of Carmel at the foot of the stairs. Gestures of infinite meanings, codes for which I lacked any key.
“You know, Dad, I realized today I have no idea what's going on with SLHJ”
But my timing was off, and now he had to hurry to finish chewing.
“Let me ask you a hypothetical, Potter. Imagine you have a job that pays between fifty and seventy-five thousand dollars a year. You are a successful young professional. But your job is not your life. You still enjoy meeting friends at a bar, going to ball games. You are either married or a bachelor.”
“So in this fantasy I don't live entirely off the charity of my parents, you're saying.”
What I saw on his face might have been a very very subdued and reluctant smile.
“I know for a fact,” Carla said, “that whatever you end up doing, you're going to be great at it. Whatever it is. Could be anything.”
I couldn't believe how much salt. I thought about warning her, but which was salt—heart attack? Or blood pressure?