David Hopson - All the Lasting Things

Jennie rolled over the interruption like a tire hitting a nail. Deflated, she nevertheless insisted on finishing an untenably long sentence as she pulled a sheaf of problematic photos from her folder and pressed them to Claudia’s desk. “Give these a look,” she said portentously. “Get back to me.” When she was gone, Claudia cocked her fingers like a gun and shot herself in the head before gesturing for Benji to come in.

He held open the door with a “hell-o!” so jovial it sounded more like a magician’s “ta-da!”

“What are you doing here?” Claudia asked.

“It’s nice to see you too.”

“I didn’t mean that,” she said, standing. “I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

“I have a surprise that couldn’t wait.” Sticking his head into the hallway, he motioned his not entirely surprising surprise forward. Max. Claudia stood clear of her desk and held out her arms. The boy paused before moving past his uncle, taking stock of Claudia’s reaction with a small, worried smile on his face. He may have triumphed on some of the world’s biggest stages, but around Claudia he still tended to move like a kid caught in the spotlight at the high school talent show. Despite the easiness of their e-mails, even with a hug waiting for him, he looked like he wasn’t sure how to begin or that he belonged here. Like he might, if he didn’t take care, be met with a big, fat boo.

He and Claudia had met several times since January, but each time Claudia sensed the slightest apprehension in him. The visits themselves went fine, better than fine, she thought, with both of them eventually settling into a rhythm and harmony, but neither the rhythm nor the harmony seemed to last, so that seeing Max now left Claudia with the impression that she could register the smallest of irregularities in an otherwise strong pulse, an aberrant heartbeat that was probably nothing to be alarmed about but which alarmed her all the same.

Max stepped up for his hug and then, like a student delivered to the principal’s office, slouched into a chair across from her. He’d taken to wearing black nail polish on his thumbs, which he proceeded to peel. Benji sat down next to him.

“This is a nice surprise,” Claudia said, returning to her own chair and folding her hands on the repurposed lumber she’d turned into a desk. “Though someone looks unhappy.” Could she be more passive? Could she sound more like her mother? Someone looks unhappy?!

Benji waited for Max to answer. “Max?” Then, to Claudia: “He’s nervous.”

“I’m not nervous,” said Max petulantly.

“Nervous about what?”

Benji nudged gently with his elbow. “Show her.”

With an actorly display of exasperation, Max pulled a battered postcard from the pocket of his hoodie and handed it over. Claudia looked. On the front, the image of a turbulent blue-black sea and, in fat white letters (just the sort in which Jennie might find the “oomph” she’d been looking for), the word LIGHTHOUSE. On the back, an invitation to a workshop concert of Max’s opera, tomorrow night at eight. “It isn’t a real performance,” Max rushed to explain, his fingers moving from his nails to the silver barbell stabbed through his ear. He pulled on it with an intensity that made Claudia squirm. “It’s not finished. The first and third parts basically are, but the second is still a sketch. A mess. But I need to hear what it sounds like so I know, you know, what works. I shouldn’t have even told you about it.” He reached across the desk and snatched the postcard back.

“Stop it,” Claudia said. “Can I see, please?”

When Max didn’t move, Benji took the card from him. He handed it back to Claudia, who pored over the words more closely.

If she submitted herself to the same eagle-eyed study she made of Max, she could admit that his arrhythmic heart wasn’t alone. She recognized that initial pinprick of uneasiness. She felt it too. No matter how close their relationship became, part of her still sat in that Guilderland rest stop, hard and refusing, unable to imagine a son entering her life. Like husband or wife , the word wasn’t, even after ten years of marriage, part of her vocabulary. (She referred to Oliver as her “legally wedded boyfriend” until the day he left.) And although she and Nick and Max lived in a very different place now — on banks separated by a stream rather than a wide, uncrossable sea — she still worried whether they could ever completely close the distance between them. Would she ever truly make amends?

She placed the postcard down on her desk and turned to Benji. “Is this the work you had to be in the city for?”

He winked.

“Well, what better reason?”

“What does that mean?” Max asked.

“It means I can’t wait to see it.”

“There’s nothing to see,” he said. “I told you: it isn’t staged. It’s just a concert. It’s not even that. It’s a workshop. Seriously, neither of you have to come.”

“We want to come,” Benji and Claudia said in unison.

“What if it sucks?” the boy said miserably.

“Since when has anything you’ve done sucked?” Benji asked.

“Benji,” said Max warningly. He slouched deeper into his chair and attacked his piercing with renewed vigor.

“Are you okay?” Claudia asked. Uncertain whether the ground before her was allied or enemy land, she moved as if she might at any minute snag a tripwire.

“I’m fine.”

“Because you seem—”

“What?”

“Not yourself.”

“Who do I seem like?”

Claudia took a breath and tried again. “You seem — bothered.”

“Bothered?”

“Bothered.”

“Don’t give me a hard time.”

“I’m not.”

“You sound like Navi.”

“Well, Navi cares about you. So do I.”

No response.

Benji extended a hand to rub Max’s back. The boy bristled but bore it. “You don’t get to sweep onto the scene,” he announced hotly, looking not at Claudia but past her, to the immaculate shelves of oversized architecture books, the wall-sized corkboard on which she kept a rotating gallery of interests and inspiration, “and tell me I’m crazy.”

“I didn’t say crazy,” Claudia answered. “Do you hear me? I care.”

“We all do,” Benji echoed. “And you know it.”

Max relented with a sigh. He brushed a hand through the thick fall of his hair and apologized.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Claudia asked.

“You mean am I taking my meds?”

Claudia, suddenly surrounded by tripwires, stopped.

“It’s okay. It’s what everybody means when they ask if I’m okay.” He laughed. “Did Navi call you?”

“No.”

“Because that’s, like, his favorite song.” He strummed an electric air guitar and briefly rocked out. “Are you takin’ your meds? Are you takin’ your meds?”

“Are you?”

“That’s the whole problem. It’s why the second act is such a pile of — I can’t think right. I can’t write right. It’s like I’m walking around with a fishbowl over my head. I can’t hear the way any of it is supposed to sound.”

“You feel that way now,” Claudia ventured.

“I feel like that all the time. It’s like I’m betraying my work so I can sleep at night. I’m twenty-two. What do I need to sleep for?”

“You feel like you’re betraying your work, but you’re doing the best thing for it. You’re protecting—”

“I got it,” Max broke in. “Arnav is a broken record with that shit. No offense.”

Claudia smiled.

“Anyway, it doesn’t feel like I’m protecting it.”

Knowing how hollow any comfort she might speak would sound, she held out her hand to him. It waited in the air, waited the long minute while Max decided whether to take it. Lowering his eyes to his lap, he reached for Claudia’s hand and squeezed it.