Lily King - Father of the Rain

Alex calls from the porch. He’s worried about traffic.

“I’ll call you tonight,” she says.

I wipe my eyes and walk her to the car. My father says goodbye, telling them to stop by whenever they’re in the Northeast again. He looks spent. I know he’ll go right up for a nap after they drive away.

I hug them both. Alex hands me a watercolor. It’s not of the harbor as I expected, but of me and Julie with her shorn hair. We’re leaning in, talking. There’s little I recognize in his rendering of me, but he’s captured Julie’s mouth and her perfectly imperfect nose with only a few brushstrokes.

That night, after AA and supper, we watch the Red Sox play Cleveland. My father is pissed at Clemens, pissed at the announcers. He thinks they talk too much. At the seventh-inning stretch, he takes his glass in for more soda. He lets the dogs out and then back in. He returns, and when the players are back on the field, he watches in silence, his breathing heavy. Mo Vaughn makes a double play, and he says, “Now that’s how you do it.” There is something slightly self-satisfied in his voice that makes me turn. He meets my eye, raises his eyebrows slightly. He’s been on his best behavior all day, and he hasn’t said a mocking thing about Julie or her father since they left. But honestly, I don’t know anymore if he is fucking with me.

By November, Neal is still my lone friend in Ashing, but I only see him when I go to his shop. The rest of his life is a mystery to me.

“Are you really as reclusive as you seem?” I ask him.

“Pretty much.”

“Were you always?”

“Not so much.” He’s particularly preoccupied today, watching the cars through the door, fidgeting with a pen cap. The skin under his eyes looks bruised. I’m probably not looking so well myself. The cold has brought on doubt and fear. I cannot seem to make a plan. The dead star feeling has taken hold. It makes everything feel struck, as if my whole body is a big bell that won’t stop ringing. I sleep less and less. I roam the house at night. I look for hidden bottles. I am ashamed of my lack of trust in my father, when I always thought the problem between us was his lack of trust in me. I write more fragments in my Jonathan notebook. My heartbeat is too fast and too heavy. What will become of me? At times it seems there is only a paper-thin wall between me and permanent full-blown panic. Neal calms me. If I described how I felt I know he would say he feels that way too.

“I heard you had a drink with Jason Mullens.”

I laugh. “Two months ago.”

“You gonna go out with him again?”

“No.”

“Has he called?”

“He’s left a couple of messages. He keeps calling himself Officer Mullens on the machine. My father must think there’s a warrant out for my arrest.”

Neal pretends to laugh. Then he stands up and says he has to go. He’s going to close the shop for a lunch break.

Two days later I’m in Goodale’s parking lot, loading groceries into the car, when a station wagon pulls up next to me, a bright red French armoire strapped to its roof.

Neal’s mother, who usually drives a Volkswagen Fox since she gave up the Pinto, leaps out. “Isn’t it just divine?” she says, and hugs me hard. There is an awful stench to her, pungent, animal. “Isn’t it to die for?”

I give the armoire the attention she requires. I stroke its unpainted feet, marvel at its size. I can’t picture such an enormous and loud piece of furniture in their small house on July Street. “Wow,” I say.

“It has about a thousand shelves on the sides. It is crucial to getting things organized chez moi .” There is something extra-intense about the way she is looking at me, as if I am just about to reveal a great secret. She’s got the wrong person. I’ve been cleaning bathrooms all morning. I have very little to impart.

“It’s been the most amazing day. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a day like it, Daley. I discovered something. Something about stockings.”

“Stockings?”

“It’s really a miracle. And no one ever talks about it. I don’t think anyone else knows. You can just piss. Did you know that? You can piss in your pantyhose and it doesn’t leak. It just sort of evaporates. I’ve been doing it all week. Nobody can tell! But I’ve got to get home now. I promised Neal I wouldn’t go out and I did, and now he’s going to be furious with me.” She looks delighted by the idea. “You know he won the Renaissance Cup, don’t you?”

“I do know that.” I smile. “I remind him of that more than he’d like.”

“Oh, he is such a pill , isn’t he? You have no idea until you have a son what they put you through. But they’re better than a husband, that’s for sure. My husband just disappeared. Poof . Gone.”

“Really?”

“He does this on occasion. Huge drama queen. ‘I just can’t abide this and that’ sort of thing. You know that store almost didn’t take my check, for crying out loud. They are a bunch of asses on sticks. Filthy French mongrels.” She looks at me as if I’ve just appeared. “Oh, Daley, it is so good to have you back home.” She pulls me to her again and, now that I know what the smell is, it’s worse. “We need your youth and beauty and inspiration in this tired old town.” She is hollering in my ear. “See?” she says, pulling away, looking at the ground between her feet. “I did it again and nothing came out.”

After she leaves, I drive straight to Neal’s. The shop is closed and he doesn’t answer his upstairs bell. I wonder if he is out trying to find her. This is what my father meant when he said Neal has not had it easy. I go back in the afternoon and he still isn’t there. I leave a note. The next day I leave another. The shop is closed every day that week. Neal’s upstairs lights are never on. I wonder how bad it gets and how it ends.

Now that the evenings are shorter, my father goes to bed earlier. The first night Neal comes over it’s just past nine and my father is already asleep. He taps on the back door quietly. At first I think it’s the wind, and the door isn’t shut all the way. But there is Neal’s face, bending to fit in one of the panes of glass.

“I see you, Shirley Temple,” I say, before I open the door. I’m surprised by how relieved I am to see him.

“Hey,” he says softly, his voice gutting out. He has his hands in his pockets.

I step onto the porch to hug him and he falls into me. His breaths are deep but not smooth.

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

“She told me she saw you. I work so hard to keep her away from town when she’s like that.”

“Where is she now?”

“McLean’s. She always ends up there. They pump her back up with lithium and give her a good talking to about taking it regularly even when she feels she doesn’t need it, especially when she feels she doesn’t need it. And then they send her home.” He doesn’t lift his head from my shoulder. I touch his hair, too gently for him to notice. “My dad couldn’t handle it. He’s never been able to handle it. Her mania ignites some sort of terror in him. Now I just tell him to get out, and I call him when it’s over. I don’t know how she was when you saw her, but she can get viciously angry. It’s crazy. And then she can become a puddle of syrupy sickness, on and on about how you are the most sacred, the most perfect being ever to be put on earth. I remember once when I was little she tried to convince me that I was Jesus Christ. I was so scared. I didn’t want to be Jesus. I didn’t want all those holes in my body.”

I hold him tight.

After his breathing has smoothed out, I ask him if he wants to come in for some tea.