You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [7]
I see those same hands now spread on his thighs, nails bitten down, cuticles torn.
I don’t know how to say good-bye.
In the village of Saint-Sever an old woman nursed my dying friend through the night. At dawn I kissed his cold forehead and kept marching.
In the yard of the old house the apple tree still rustles in the evening breeze.
“Graham.”
“You want to know what it’s like?” he says. “I’ll tell you. It’s worrying all the time that one day he’s going to leave me. And you want to know why that is? It’s got nothing to do with being gay. It’s because I know Mom left you. I tell you it’s selfish not to take the pills because I know. Because I take them. You understand, Dad? It’s in me too. I don’t want Eric to find me in a parking lot in the middle of the night in my pajamas talking to a stranger like Mom did. I don’t want him to find me hanged. I used to cast fire from the tips of my fingers some weeks and burn everything in my path and it was all progress and it was all incredibly, incredibly beautiful. And some weeks I couldn’t brush my hair. But I take the pills now, and I haven’t bankrupted us yet, and I don’t want to kill myself just now. I take them and I think of Eric. That’s what it’s like.”
“But the fire, Graham? What about the fire?”
In his eyes, there is sadness enough to kill us both.
“Do you remember how you used to watch me do my sketches in the barn?”
Tears run down his cheeks as he nods.
“Let me show you something,” I say. Across the room in the drawer of the desk I find a marker. It makes sense to me now, he can see what I see, he’s always been able to. Maybe it doesn’t have to end. I unhook a painting from the wall and set it on the floor. On the yellow wallpaper I draw the outline of a door, full-size, seven by three and a half.
“You see, Graham, there’ll be four knobs. The lines between them will form a cross. And each knob will be connected to a set of wheels inside the door itself, and there will be four sets of hinges, one along each side but fixed only to the door, not to the frame.” I shade these in. Graham cries. “A person will use the knob that will allow them to open the door in the direction they want—left or right, at their feet or above their heads. When a knob is turned it’ll push the screws from the door into the hinges. People can open doors near windows without blocking morning or evening light, they’ll carry furniture in and out with the door over their heads, never scraping its paint, and when they want to see the sky they can open it just a fraction at the top.” On the wall I draw smaller diagrams of the door’s different positions until the felt nib of the pen tatters. “It’s a present to you, this door. I’m sorry it’s not actual. You can imagine though how people might enjoy deciding how to walk through it. Patterns would form, families would have their habits.”
“I wanted a father.”
“Don’t say that, Graham.” He’s crying still and I can’t bear it.
“It’s true.”
I turn back to the desk and, kneeling there, scrawl a note. The pen is nearly ruined and it’s hard to shape the letters. The writing takes time.
• Though some may accuse me of neglect, I have been consistent with the advice I always gave my children: never finish anything that bores you. Unfortunately, some of my children bored me. Graham never did. Please confirm this with him. He is the only one that meant anything to me.
“Graham,” I say, crossing the room some minutes later to show him the piece of paper, to show him the truth.
He’s lying on the bed, and as I stand over him I see that he’s asleep. His tears have exhausted him. The skin about his closed eyes is puffy and red and from the corner of his mouth comes a rivulet of drool. I wipe it away with my thumb. I cup his gentle face in my hands and kiss him on the forehead.
From the other bed I take a blanket and cover him, pulling it up over his shoulders, tucking it beneath his chin. His breath is calm now, even. I leave the note folded by his side. I pat down his hair and turn off the lamp. It’s time for me to go.
When I’m sure