Anything We Want
Chapter 1
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If you try to be kind and don’t worry about
being right, you’ll be right every time.
The snow had picked
up in intensity, but we were nearly home.
I’d gone with my father to the store for things we needed, and we were
on the way back to our ski home. Dad
was used to driving in snow, having grown up in Maine, and snow was part of the
bargain with a ski house.
Accidents weren’t,
and I could tell the Jeep was slipping around even though Dad was driving
slowly, and with a firm grip on the wheel.
“Jesus!” Dad cried, and I looked up only
to see a figure sprawled in the snow, half in the road. Dad hit the brakes and slid to a stop. Then he backed up so the Grand Cherokee’s
headlights would provide illumination in the dark. Dad was out of the car almost before it stopped, crying, “Jesus
Christ! Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!”
I got out my side
and ran around to the front, fearing what I’d see. It seemed unreal, and I was afraid I was about to see a dead guy
in the road. I began to panic when I
saw the smallish figure in the road, snow turning it white, but the snow was
red where his face was bloody. My father
was already bending to look at him, and he said, “Call 911, Paul! Now!”
I watched him lean
closer to the person in the road, and struggled for a moment to get my phone
loose. No signal. None.
I looked quickly and the battery was up, so we were in a blind
spot.
“Nothing, Dad,” I
said. “I can’t call.”
He looked at me,
and his expression was helpless at first, like maybe I’d know what to do. Then he looked at the person on the ground
and said, “He’s alive. We have to get
him help.”
I just stared for a
second, then asked, “What can I do?”
Dad looked at me,
then he looked around, and he looked back at the guy in the road. His expression hurt me to see, because it
was the first time in my life when I knew my father didn’t know what to do. He decided, though.
“Help me get him in
the car.” He looked up at me. “He’s not dead, and I know I didn’t hit
him. Come on, Paul, let’s take him
home.”
We fumbled around,
then finally my father picked the guy up under the shoulders and I took his
feet. If he wasn’t dead, he sure was
out, and trying to be careful became out of the question with such a dead
weight. We did manage to get him into
the Jeep, and in the light I could tell he was a boy, not a man, and probably
around my age.
There was no plan
at all to put him into the back, so when he was belted into my seat, I got in
the back where I buckled up. Then my
father told me to lean forward and steady our passenger by the shoulders, so I
had to undo my own belt.
I was scared, and
my father wore an expression I’d never seen.
I felt like some ghost. The kid
in the front seat looked dead, but Dad said he wasn’t, and I only thought that
meant ‘not yet’.
It was uphill to
the house, but home was the closest place.
It was miles back to town, and everyone would have shut down by then
anyhow. We left the store right at
closing time, and got to the gas station just before they started turning the
lights off.
When we pulled up
to our house, Dad said, “Stay with him.
I’ll get something to help carry him,” and in about two minutes he was
back carrying a blanket. I was out of
the car by then, and at the passenger door.
When I opened it, I got a better look at our charge, and I felt sick.
The kid’s face was
a mess, bleeding from what looked like cracks in the skin, which was no color
that belonged on a human face.
He was stirring a
little, and stood on his own when we got him out of the vehicle, so with both
of us helping, we got him inside. We
sat him on a sofa in the TV room, and Dad said for me to get him a glass of
water. I hurried back with a glass and
Dad said, “See if you can get him to drink some. I’ll call emergency from here.”
I sat next to the
boy, whose eyes were open a slit, and asked, “Want some water?”
A sound came from
his throat, and he nodded as if it hurt to, so I held the glass to his
lips. I tipped the glass and some water
went in, but he gagged on it and it came right back out. I thought I forced too much in at once, and
said, “Sorry. Here, can you hold the
glass?”
His hands came up,
and he had mittens on them, so I said, “Wait a second,” and put the glass
down. Then I pulled his mittens off and
handed him the glass. I touched one of
his hands doing that, and it was freezing.
“I’ll help,” I said, and kept one hand on the glass to support it while
he managed a few sips.
“Good,” he
croaked. “I’m cold.”
I could hear my
father talking on the phone, and he came into the room with the cordless to his
ear. “Paul, get his boots and socks
off. We have to check for frostbite.”
Dad was beside me
by then, and he pulled the ski cap off the boy’s head and looked at his ears,
then he leaned in close to peer at his nose.
He picked his hands up one at a time and checked all his fingers. He was saying things into the phone. “Ears look good. His nose is kind of bruised looking, but it’s not white.”
I had the boy’s
feet bared and Dad knelt to check his toes, and said into the phone, “No white
on the feet either.” He listened for a
moment, said, “Okay,” and looked up at our patient. “How long were you out there?
Did a car hit you?”
The boy croaked,
“Long time. All day. Not hit, just fell.”
Dad nodded and
asked, “What’s your name?” He looked at
me and said, “Paul, get his coat off and put that blanket on him. Turn the heat up in here.”
Before I could
move, the boy looked straight ahead and said, “Dana. My name is Dana,” and then his eyes closed and he fell back
against the sofa, where his head lolled to one side, and he was asleep.
Dad kept talking to
the emergency people. I struggled to
get Dana out of his coat and stretched out on the sofa. I got some more blankets and a bed pillow,
and I fussed until he at least looked comfortable. He was in no condition to disagree with me, and his face already
looked better. He looked like he fell
through a roof or something, but maybe just a thatched roof after all. The black, purple and green areas seemed to
be resorbing into him, but the puffiness and cracks remained.
I dimmed the light,
turned the thermostat up, and went to find my father, who was still on the
phone, only now he was looking outside through the window in the front
door. He looked at me and asked, “How
is he?”
“Sleeping,” I
said. “Want me to get the groceries, or
are we building TV dinners in the back seat?”
Dad slapped at my
hair and grinned. He was listening on
the phone, so pointed outside rather than saying anything. I got the message and put my coat back on.
Dad was still on
the phone when I had everything inside and put away, so I started dinner. I’m no cook, but I can manage pork chops and
microwaved Idahos, and that’s what I decided to make. Dad came in, phone still in hand, and added some chopped garlic
from a jar to the pork chops. He took a box of
broccoli from the freezer and put it beside the stove. I made a face, but took out a pan to cook it
in just the same. I like most
vegetables, but I think broccoli is one of the lower orders that grows over
septic fields.
Dad is the real
cook in our partnership; a partnership that began two years earlier when my
mother left us to live with her lesbian partner and lover.
Yeah, shock up the
wazoo, but let me back up a little. My
father made a lot of money in the early years of the Internet. He started several web-based marketing
companies, then sold them to larger companies.
His last sell, in 1996, was a big one, and he was a rich man. His name is Franklin Dunn, and you may have
heard of him. His friends call him
Frank, and I call him Dad.
He’d married my
mother in 1990, and I came along less than two years after that.
Our little family
was a tight unit for a long time. My
parents loved each other and me, and I adored both of them. I still do.
They still love each other too, and that’s the messy part.
Our lifestyle was
not ostentatious at all, although we lived well. Our main residence then was a modern condominium in Boston, in a
high-rise building with a good view of the harbor. We had a little summer house that wasn’t fancy at all, and was
way off the beach on Cape Cod.
Dad’s indulgence
was this ski house, which he bought after Mom left. It’s pretty spectacular.
It’s way more than we need, but we both fell in love with the house at
first sight, and now it’s ours. He sold
the condo in Boston, the house on Cape Cod, and now our official year-round
home is in Brattleboro, Vermont, high over the Connecticut River. Our house there is nice, but nothing
spectacular. It’s a restored Colonial
home of no historical note, yet it’s really a pretty place, and quite
comfortable.
Mom left us
stunned, to say the least, and I was embarrassed almost to death at first. Yet she knew she was the one breaking up
our family, so she didn’t go after Dad’s money. He was devastated in the beginning, of course, but he realized
fairly quickly that she couldn’t help being gay, and he ended up giving her a
pile of cash anyhow. They are still
great friends, and she’s still my mom, and I love her. Dad and I have both come to adore mom’s
mate, Ally. Dad calls her his
sister-in-law, and I just call her Ally, and everything is good in that
respect.
When my folks
split, I’d been attending a private
school in Northford: Barents Academy,
which the students naturally refer to as Bareass Academy. It’s okay, but I was always bored
there. Now I’m in public school in
Brattleboro, and I’m still bored, but I much prefer it. I had friends at Bareass, but more as a
necessity than a preference. I mean,
you had to have someone to talk to
and do things with, but in a private school like that, things feel forced. My roommate and best friend there was named
Percy, for God’s sake, and I don’t think that
would have happened in nature. It was
basically a bunch of over-privileged kids learning all about snobbery.
In Brattleboro, I
get to make my own friends, and I do dumb things with them that we can laugh
about. Brattleboro is an old, mostly
brick and clapboard little city on the river, and I think the word funky may
have been coined to describe it. There
is a crooked little main street, and crooked little alleyways everywhere else,
until you get out onto the road along the river. That’s crooked too, but the river is the reason for it, and
that’s where we live.
I do normal things,
though, and that’s what I like. My
friends don’t know of my father, or his net worth, and I take the yellow bus to
school like everyone else. I love it,
and when the story of my lesbian mother became known it actually enhanced my
social standing. It made me someone
interesting to know, and someone who lots of people think should become an
artist or a poet owing to my experience.
I’m not making this up.
It’s easy enough
for people to figure out that we have some money because my Dad doesn’t work,
but I live on my twenty dollar allowance plus lunch money, and I feel that I
fit in better with regular people than the elite at Barents. It’s clear that my Dad does, too, so the
first Christmas without my mother we had a talk before buying anything.
I am a reader, and
probably a romantic, and I didn’t see my father’s money doing much good for us,
so I asked him to take some of it and do good things with it instead of
spending it on me. That would be my
present.
Dad is maybe the
ultimate geek. He is totally unassuming
in person, and thinks his ideas are his only strong suit. The results of those ideas, specifically the
money, don’t get in his way of having more ideas, and the idea of helping
people with the money had him intrigued from the get-go. The question was how, and we decided on a
small scale at first. There was no risk
with little money, and we could observe the results.
Maybe.
We heard all the
time about people donating big money, but never saw the result of those huge
gifts. Yet, on a small scale, it was
hard to be benefactors when we didn’t know the benefactees, and we didn’t, so
we didn’t do a whole lot.
I’d helped Dana out
of his coat, his mittens, and his footwear.
He was dressed properly for the weather that day, but in old clothing
that was seriously beat up.
When dinner was
cooking, and my father was still on the phone, I went in the other room to see
how Dana was doing. He was asleep
still, and it was the look on his damaged face that startled me. It was still hard to tell what he looked
like, but his color was more normal than before. What struck me was that, in dreamland, Dana’s expression was so
content that he reminded me of an angel in one of those dark old paintings you
see, where the oils have cracked like Dana’s face. It was unsettling.
I backed out, and
my father finally hung up the phone.
“Sorry, Paul, I had to talk to a lot of people.” He smiled, “You okay?”
I nodded, and he
said, “This is really strange, no?” and
I nodded again.
Dad smiled, then
rolled his eyes. “I have a mile of
medical advice in my head; that’s what the calls were all about. We were looking for frostbite at first, then
signs of hypothermia, then abuse, but I guess that’s not the issue. It looks like he’s okay. That skin color and cracking come from the
cold, and it’s the precursor to frostbite.
It’ll go away.” He leveled his
gaze and caught my eyes. “He lives with
his mother, and they’re trying to find her now.”
Dad’s eyes zeroed
in on mine. “They’re poor, Paul. Poor people.” He looked around the kitchen and said, “Let’s eat. Let’s you and me talk this out, okay?” He looked toward the TV room where Dana was,
and asked, “Sleeping?”
On my nod we went
to the kitchen, and I served up okay potatoes, overdone pork chops, and
broccoli that’s not worthy of comment.
My dad had a little glass of Petit something-or-other, and I had a big
glass of water.
“What happened on
the phone?” I asked.
Dad swallowed and
said, “Nobody wants to do what they didn’t absolutely have to because of the
storm. That’s why I looked at the kid’s
condition. There’s no evidence of
frostbite, so we’ll leave it ‘til morning.
I … um,” Dad’s look became serious.
“What?”
Dad seemed to
blush. “I think this is what we talked
about, Paul. This is a hard-luck
family, and they could obviously use some dollar help, but I believe they need
some moral help, too.” Dad saw my
expression and smiled. “I mean
friendship, Paulie. They’ve been down,
and the mother works hard for almost nothing.
It’s not a pretty picture.”
His look hardened,
but he wasn’t good at that. Still, I
knew that he meant to get serious.
“That boy on the sofa; Dana.
He’s well-liked but not trusted.”
Dad’s gaze softened. “He steals,
Paul, and he lies. He doesn’t get into
big trouble, but the deputy thinks he’s the kind of boy who will end up getting
himself killed one day.”
I just looked at my
father, and he returned my gaze; as unblinking as I was. I’m sure I inherited that from him. In regular life I blink like anyone else,
but when I’m serious, especially with my folks, I never blink at all.
I was feeling
serious right then, too. “You’re right.
This is what we talked about.” I
implored him with my eyes. “We can
help, right?”
Dad looked at me
with a flat expression, then he smiled.
“I think we can do anything we want, Paul. We can help, yes.”
I smirked, “Will
we?”
My father
smiled. “I love you, Paul, and you know
that. I like you, too, I really
do. Yes, we can help … and we will.”
I said, “Yay,”
softly, then looked in the direction of the room where Dana was sleeping. I wondered about him: already a thief and a
liar. I didn’t know what that meant,
really. Well, I understood the thief
part, but not the liar.
I’d fibbed to stay
out of trouble, but never really lied to misrepresent myself, which is what I
took real lies to mean. I didn’t know
if I could tell, but he was innocent in sleep, and I was tired myself.
“Night, Dad,” I
said. “I’m beat. I’ll sleep in the room with Dana.”
Dad asked, “Do I
get a hug?” and the answer was yes.
I pulled more
blankets out of the hall closet, went upstairs for a pillow from my bed, and
settled onto the other sofa in the TV room.
+ + + + + + + +
When the sales lady
was showing us the house the first time, she kept calling that room the ‘media’
room. I finally told her, “If you call
it the media room again, we’ll go find a house that doesn’t have one.”
“Paul,” my father
warned.
“I’m serious,
Dad! Media room sounds like something
in the basement of the White House. Why
can’t we call it a den, or a study or something?”
The poor lady was
baffled by my outburst. “Er, this home
already has a study … and a den.”
“Well,” I said,
“You read in a study and you relax in a den.
What do you do in a media
room?”
She cupped her chin
in her hand and thought for a moment before saying, “Watch television, I
suppose.”
I smiled, “Can we
see the TV room one more time?”
After Dad bought
the house, he hired my mother and Ally to decorate it, which Mom is great at,
and they did a wonderful job. When
people came over, they were always astounded that a home that exuded such
warmth and charm was inhabited only by a father and son. The house was stark when we first moved in;
all wood and stone and glass, with very white walls most places. Some floors were slate, some were tiled, and
others were shiny hardwood. The living
room and dining room are both vast spaces with soaring ceilings, a colossal
stone chimney that separates them, and giant, granite fireplaces that face into
each room.
Mother tamed the
space with large antiques, oriental screens, sectional furniture, and color,
lots of color. Along the way, she and
Ally made it a fun place to live, with surprises everywhere, like a Christmas
tree stand in the main downstairs bathroom, which we did put a tree in for the
holidays. We have a realistic looking,
but fraudulent, palm tree there the rest of the time.
It’s a big house,
though, and we truthfully don’t use most of it. Dad’s bedroom is absolutely colossal, and it has two walk-in
closets that are each bigger than my bedroom in Brattleboro. He kind of lives in there most of the time,
so it’s not all wasted space. One area
is an office and another holds his exercise equipment, and yet another area is
set up like a sitting room. His view
from there is up the mountain. It’s
impressive with the big windows, but not a real vista.
I live at the other
end, in the smallest bedroom. I didn’t
choose it based on size, but because I like the view, and it has a private
little deck where I can catch some rays on nice days, or just lean on the rail
and survey the fantastic view from there.
I have the vista across the valley, where more mountains rise up far on
the other side.
We have a lady,
Karen Benz, who cleans the place, and her husband, Heinrich, fixes things,
plows the driveway, and keeps us supplied with firewood. The house is fairly new and not much breaks
on its own, but we manage to keep Heinrich around a lot with our mishaps.
+ + + + + + + +
I had a hard time
falling asleep, and not because I wasn’t tired. I had Dana on my mind, and I could hear him over there
breathing. That was good, of course, but
I worried that he’d wake up and not know where he was, or worse; not be able to
find a bathroom. Or he’d be hungry and
not know where the kitchen was. And I
might have been just a little worried that he’d murder me in my sleep so he
could steal things, then say he didn’t do it.
Oddly enough, that was the thought that took me to dreamland.
“Hello?”
I stirred.
“Hello? Anyone here?”
I sat up and saw
Dana on his feet, looking the other way.
“I’m here,” I whispered, and he spun around as if I’d yelled it. I smiled, “Hi. Feeling better?”
He nodded. “Who’re you? Where am I?”
“You’re right
there,” I said, then realized he probably wasn’t ready for my twisted humor. “This is our house. We found you on the road, dead.”
He looked startled,
so I added, “Okay, maybe not dead, but you looked open to the idea at the
time.”
He looked confused
and I gave up and stood up.
“Sorry. I’m Paul Dunn. My friends call me Mortimer.” I grinned, “Welcome to our TV room.”
He smiled, then
snickered, “Does your TV room have a
toilet?”
Uh oh. “No, but there’s one right down the
hall. I’ll show you. Hungry?”
His eyes bugged,
and he said, “Starved! But I really
gotta go first.”
I walked past him
out into the hall, then reached into the bathroom and turned the light on. I pointed down the hall and said, “The
kitchen’s there when you’re done. A
sandwich okay?”
“Anything!” I heard
before the door closed behind him.
I poked around the
supplies in the kitchen and made a couple of turkey sandwiches. I was still putting them together when I
heard his voice. “Jesus! This is some place! You live here?”
I turned around and
said, “We live in Brattleboro, but we do own this house.”
Dana was literally
a mess. His face had returned to
more-or-less normal color, but the skin was cracked everywhere, and some of the
cracks were still oozing blood. His
hair was long, dark-blond, and all matted.
He also needed to brush his teeth, but even with all those deficits, his
appearance was somehow agreeable to me.
It wasn’t anything
specific, either. He wasn’t handsome in
any traditional sense, nor did he look to be in shape. He wasn’t fat or lumpy, but kind of looked
like he could have come squeezed out of some big-ass toothpaste tube. He was more-or-less cylindrical from his
shoulders down to the floor: thick
looking. Right then he was staring at
the sandwiches, which I quickly put on a plate for him.
“Sit and eat,” I
said, and he obeyed so fast I felt like the master of the universe. “What to drink?”
He looked up, embarrassed
by the half sandwich in his mouth, and couldn’t say anything. I took it easy and said, “Take your
time. There’s water, milk, Coke and
ginger ale. Juices, too.”
When he managed to
swallow his food, he asked hopefully, “Milk?”
“Coming up.” I took out one of the new gallons we’d just
bought, poured him a glass, and set the jug beside him. He looked grateful, and I turned to look out
the window so he could eat without me looking at him.
“It’s really coming
down out there,” I said, and not really as idle conversation, but a statement
of fact. The snow was coming down like
the winter interpretation of a cloudburst, and looked to be over a foot deep
already on the deck rail. It was just
falling straight down, too, not swirling around like it does sometimes.
Dad and I had
planned to go skiing in the morning, so the snow excited me. Then I thought about simply opening the
door, and the ride to the mountain, and decided to clear some snow before it
got too deep to actually go anywhere.
I turned to Dana
and asked, “You okay for a few minutes?
I think I should shovel some snow before I can’t.”
“I can help,” he
said.
“No, no. I’ll do it.
I just want to clear the doors so they’ll open. I indicated the cupboard and refrigerator
behind him. “There’s more food if
you’re still hungry. I won’t be long.”
I bundled up and
took a shovel from the closet, and as soon as I opened the door I knew I
wouldn’t have to do much. The air was
frigid: five degrees by the
thermometer, and the snow was like dust under my feet. Every
step I took cleared about a two-foot hole. The snow was so light and fluffy that back-to-back sneezes
probably would have cleared that deck.
Just walking cleared a swath to the edge of the porch, and I used the
shovel to clear the steps down. I
worked for about ten minutes, but there wasn’t much point to it. This snow wouldn’t be a problem.
I stood there and
looked at it, though, and it was simply beautiful. I’d only turned on the porch light, and that was perfect to watch
the snow falling.
I think I was born
liking snow, like maybe in a prior life I was an Eskimo, or even a
penguin. In Boston, where the snow was
usually heavy, wet and dangerous, when it snowed I could watch it from the
first flake to the last and love every one of them.
I was leaning on
the rail when Dana suddenly appeared beside me, and I was startled. He leaned on the rail like I was and said,
“It’s beautiful, huh?” He glanced at me
and added, “It’s really coming down, too.
Wanna measure?”
I looked at him,
and he said, “If you have a ruler we can figure out how fast it’s coming
down. I guess about two inches an
hour. All we need is a ruler and a
pail.”
I looked at him,
amused. “A pail? Like Jack and Jill went up the hill?” I had an idea what a pail was, and was
fairly certain we’d never owned such a device.
His expression told
me he thought I was an idiot, but he was polite. “Anything big enough to catch snow. Even a water glass.”
I said, “Let’s find
something. I’m not even sure if we have
a ruler here.”
We went inside and
looked around, and decided on a measuring cup.
We could see where the snow came up to in ounces and figure it out
another day. Dana ran out to put the
cup upside-down so it would get cold, and after ten minutes I went out to right
it, so it could collect snow. I was
certain that the snow was coming down even faster then, and was grateful
because I’d have a story to tell.
Back in the house,
Dana was tired. “You don’t have to stay
up if you don’t want,” I said. “I can watch
the clock and measure the snow.”
He yawned, then
winced because it hurt his face. “Or
not,” he said. “You could sleep, too. We both know it’s snowing hard.”
I said, “Now you say that. Go to bed. I want to see this.”
“Okay,” Dana said
hesitantly, and with even more hesitance he said, “Thank you. I don’t even know
you.”
I looked at him,
and my own smile came slowly, but it was real.
“We’ll know each other.
G’night.”
He gave a weak wave
and left, and I watched the Pyrex cup for an hour after that.
Well, I tried to,
but I was asleep with my head on the table when the light came on. It was my father, and he asked, “What’s
going on?”
I looked around,
and looked outside where it was becoming light, then things came back to
me. I had to go to the bathroom, and
told my father, “I guess I fell asleep watching the cup.” I saw the question on his face and said, “I
gotta go. I’ll be back.”
I went to the
bathroom, then upstairs to my own bed, where I closed the magic blinds and went
back to sleep, feeling like eight more hours might do the trick.
Sure, but a
half-hour is what I got. “Wake up,
Paul,” my father said as he shook my shoulder.
“Why?” I asked my
comfy pillow, then I realized my father was there. I groggily turned over and looked at the wall, then turned again
toward the door. My dad was there and I
asked, “Wha?”
“Time for
breakfast, Paul. And we have a guest,
if you don’t remember.”
“I remember,” I
mumbled. “What time is it? Is it day already?”
“It’s day,” Dad
said gently. “I’m cooking, so shake a
leg.”
“I will,” I
complained, and I rolled out of bed and headed to the bathroom.
I am in the habit
of taking cool showers because they wake me up, and that’s what I did, and I
shaved using the ice water from the tap, then brushed my teeth and combed my
hair. Unlike most kids I know, I don’t
worry about my hair, because it’s so bad that worrying is pointless. It’s there and it’s brown, and I comb it
when it’s wet. I haven’t bought a hair
product yet, and whatever soap I take my shower with, that’s what I wash my
hair with. My hair, like my father’s,
does exactly what it wants, and cowlicks are me.
I know this girl in
Brattleboro who calls herself Arizona, and she told me I should change what I
wash my hair with every three days, because hair remembers. I think I forgot her advice before I got
home. I just wash my hair with soap,
and I’m not bald yet. I remembered what
Arizona said eventually, and now I change the soap from time to time so my hair
won’t get addicted to one particular brand, but I still don’t use shampoo. It’s the word, not the product, which is
probably fine, but shampoo? Not my style, man. My hair just doesn’t understand, and it licks cows in all
directions whatever I do.
I was awake after
my cleanup, and feeling good. It was
still snowing pretty hard out, so I just dressed in jeans and a sweater, pulled
on a pair of slippers, and headed down to the kitchen. In a moment, I was on the way back to my
bedroom to get some clothes for Dana, who wanted to take a shower after Dad
suggested it.
I favor old
clothes, so I had several sets of sweats still in the packages, and only had to
choose a color. I knew I wouldn’t wear
the green ones, so I picked those, and also some new underwear and socks. I brought it all down to the kitchen and
extracted the clothes from their plastic wrap.
Dana was already in the shower, so I just put them inside the bathroom
door and told him they were there.
I went to the
kitchen and got a cup of coffee. My
father smiled at me when I only added a droplet of milk. I suppose it’s a pointless gesture when I do
that, because it doesn’t even change the color, but it does seem to take the
edge off of straight black coffee. I
always look away when Dad puts about six spoonfuls of sugar in his own mug.
“Did you talk to
Dana?” Dad asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, but not about what happened to
him. I made him some food, and we just
talked about snow. He was pretty tired,
and I was kinda not ready. I don’t know
what I should talk about, anyhow.”
Dad looked at me
and said, “I don’t either, but I think we’ll have to ask some questions. I would have heard back if the constable
located his mother, so it may be a sore subject.”
“Yeah,” I said.
We sat there,
sipping coffee in silence, until Dana showed up. He looked a damn sight better than the night before, but his skin
was still all cracked. The clothes fit
him okay, anyhow, and his hair looked way better than the matted mess from the
night before. It was wavy, and I guess
you could call it dark blond or light brown and get away with either. It frames his face in an easy way, and I
thought once more that he had nice features.
He smiled
hesitantly, “Hi.”
“Sit down,” Dad
said. “Hungry?”
Dana sat and
smiled, nodding.
“Breakfast coming
up,” Dad said, and he went to the oven and pulled out some trays. The first had a pile of bacon and sausages
and the next was full of French toast.
Butter and syrup were already on the table, and as we helped ourselves,
Dad asked, “Milk?”
“Perfect,” Dana
said, and I agreed silently.
People can say what
they want about real maple syrup, but the Fancy grade is hands-down the
best. It’s so sweet and perfect. Anyone who argues for a lesser grade is just too
cheap to buy the good stuff, or they don’t have a working sweet tooth.
I swallowed that
thought when I looked at Dana, and mentally kicked myself.
He was obviously not used to good stuff, and nibbled at a
slice of bacon like it was the last food on Earth. I smiled at him; “Good, huh?
There’s lots more, so eat what you want.”
I drew a slice of
the bacon through the syrup on my plate and bit it in half. I loved that: the smoky, salty meat and the
sweet, gooey syrup. It was Heaven on
Earth to chew that, while I watched the butter melt into the syrup on top of my
French toast.
Dana seemed to shed
his inhibitions, and started shoveling it in, and he appeared to savor
everything as much as me, and continued to eat long after I was stuffed. I think I ate six halves of toast, four
slices of bacon, and two sausages. Dana ate the rest, and Dad actually reheated
the last of it for him in the microwave because it had gone cold.
My father seemed
pleased. I was full, and Dana sat back with what I took to be a satisfied look
on his face. He said, “Wow! That was really good.”
My father smiled,
then asked, “Dana, what’s the story about yesterday?”
… more