Mat Johnson - Loving Day

Zeke . There, for the first time, is the name. The word that defines the wound of her heart. I reach out for Sun’s hand. It goes into mine, but absently. She doesn’t seem to realize that this is the first time she’s told me even that much about him.

Others are starting to leave. Others are, so we should. Before I can start the process though, Art comes over. He gives me a hug like I’m the one who’s lost a brother.

“Tal has you. This was a gift. You are here to be a father. There are no coincidences.”

“God willing,” I say.

“God is dead, but we still have Jung. Forgive me, I get very philosophical at events like these. The next, it’ll be mine — at least I hope so. You start, you’re the youngest one in the family. At the end, you’re the oldest. Then you go. But Tal has you, and I think that’s wonderful.”

He gets a hug from Sun for this. Takes it, squeezes too hard, winks over her shoulder at me. Letting go, he starts to leave, then turns around again.

“And you know there’s no money, right?” I assumed there would be no hat passed, so say yes. He sighs heavily, smiles, walks back to hug me again. Says in my ear, “Irv played the market like it was horses. Nobody wins at horses. Also, greyhounds: he lost on those too. Between that and the medical bills, nothing. But thank Jung, a young girl going to college soon has her real father to take care of her.”

And then he lets me go.

“What was that about?” Sunita Habersham asks me when Art has rejoined his sister in her hosting duties.

“He’s drunk. And Irv was fucking broke,” I say, a little too loud for the room.

—

“It’s got, like, a thousand page views on YouTube,” Tal tells me. “Pops! Look,” she says, leaning over from the backseat and trying to push her phone into my face while I’m driving. I want to point this hazard out but see the image in a flash.

“But it only says 907 hits, honey.” Sun’s hand on my knee starts pinching again, but I don’t bother looking over for the reproach I know is waiting in her eyes.

“That’s like a thousand,” Tal corrects. “And it will be over that when my cousin Nate puts it on Channel Six News.”

“It’s going on TV?” Sun turns to ask. She actually sounds happy about this.

“No. On their YouTube channel. That’s bigger — way bigger. Because I don’t think anyone watches, you know, live TV anymore? Except for HBO?”

“You’re up-speaking.” She’s up-speaking. Lifting the end of her sentences an octave higher. It’s a white-girl affectation, one Tal’d largely dropped over the last few months. A habit, most likely, reacquired in the hours with family before. Her other family.

“Well you’re up your own ass,” Tal responds, then the headphones are on before she has to endure my admonishment. She gets out and slams the door as soon as we pull up back in our driveway.

“You’re worried about money,” Sun states after the silence. “You were thinking Irv’s estate might have helped, and now you’re dealing with the disappointment of that. And that has you angry. The fear, it has you angry.”

“And I’m angry that I’m angry. And I’m broke.”

“You’re not broke. You’re cash poor. But you’re land rich.”

“I really don’t feel like a member of the landed gentry at the moment. I’m thinking, maybe I should burn down the house, make it look like it was an accident or crackheads or something, and whatever’s left from the insurance payout after I cover Tal’s education we, you and me, and her eventually, should take it somewhere it can last. Like Belize,” I say out loud. I actually say it out loud. It’s made sense in my head for months, but when it hits the air there’s an oxidizing reaction and it sounds a like a joke. Sun just looks at me. Because she knows I’m not kidding.

“You know that’s crazy talk, right? If you did that, you’d go to jail. And where would we go?” she asks and I know she means an entirely different we than us . “Roslyn’s got lots of leads for permanent settlements, but one of them is here. You need to go to her.”

“I’m not going to her. She’s been sniffing around this place for months, even before I moved y’all in. Why was she here that day she Tased me?”

“You Tased her first.”

“Yeah, but still? Or when I caught her checking out my rooms? I know she wants it, but that old lady is sneaky. She’ll try and rob me, watch. I know you hate me saying it, but I don’t trust her. She’s got her own agenda.”

“If she wants to buy the place, her agenda is the same as yours. Talk to Roslyn,” Sun says, as always ignoring my bias on the subject.

—

It’s later that afternoon when I wake from a nap to hear Tal’s voice talking to someone downstairs. I don’t give it further thought till I hear voices coming up the stairs. I hear Tal say, “It was up here,” and then multiple footfalls banging down my hallway.

“What the hell are you doing?” There’s a guy with her. When he turns around, I see he’s one of the kids from the funeral, the one that was texting at the cemetery. Tal’s crouching at the bathroom door, like we were that night. She stands to yell at me.

“Pops, put some pants on!”

“He doesn’t need pants. We can just film him from the chest up.” And then there is a video camera in my face. It’s reaching up, and suddenly a light is shining in my eyes.

“What the fuck are you doing,” is the appropriate response.

“Pops, this is Nate? Did you guys meet? Nate Karp? My cousin?”

I look down at my groin. I’m wearing boxer shorts. My reproductive organs are not showing. So I reach out to shake his hand. Tal says something about pants again, but to punish her for her tone I make no motion to go put mine on. These underwear could have passed as basketball shorts in the seventies. Doctor J went out on the court like this all the time.

“So, some quick questions. Did you see the ghosts?”

I can just make out Tal next to him through the glow. She wants me to say “Yes.” She’s nodding “Yes” in slow deliberate motions, like that will influence me, and it does. I don’t want to hurt her.

“I saw something. Definitely,” I tell him. The last word I say with added gravitas to make up for the vagueness of the answer.

“Okay, so you say you saw something, too. Do you think it was ghosts?”

I look at Tal. She’s not moving her head anymore. She’s just staring at me, intently.

“No,” and in response to her eye-rolling I add, “look, I’m not going to sit here and lie. Come on. You can’t expect me to do that.” Her cousin peers at me, lifting his gaze from the viewfinder, then turns to Tal for cues.

“But you said you saw something. What do you think it was?”

“Crackheads. I’m pretty sure I saw crackheads. But I don’t know.” I throw in the last bit to be generous, but Tal gives up on me anyway and walks down the hall.

“Well, could they have been ghosts, do you think?” he asks. Tal stops walking. Turns. Looks at me. I look at her. Then I turn to her cousin.

“Sure, they were ghosts. Ghosts of who they once were. You could say that about half of the city of Philadelphia.”

I TRY FORMALITY, send an email. The header is Loudin Mansion Is for Sale . This is as straightforward with Roslyn as I can possibly be. The body of the message has bullet points and text in bold. The most important of these says the house has been appraised at $1.8 million if fully restored; another bullet offers the house for the generously discounted rate of $1.3 million, which is a steal based on the $310,000 in estimated repairs the property would need. My father bought the place for $800,000, but that was at auction, at risk, and he paid much more personally for the purchase later. I don’t reveal to her that the mortgage payments will drain the money from his cash accounts in months, a fact no one but Sirleaf and I know. Another sub-bullet point, under a category I term “Advantages of Buying Loudin,” it says, “$0 Moving Costs.” At the end of the email, back in sentence form, I state that I would like to discuss this further at her earliest convenience. I even provide a link to my calendar. I sign it with Sincerely , for I am nothing if I am not sincere in my urge to be rid of this place.