At the side of the enclosed porch, bent over the propane tank fussing with a knob, was Nate’s father.
He straightened up, dusting his hands, and came toward the Jeep without waving.
“Really?” Cielle said breathlessly. “That’s him?”
He was grayer, a touch stooped, the years heavy on him, but he had good healthy color in his cheeks and his eyes were clear and sober. He wore a flannel shirt fastidiously buttoned to the throat, and it struck Nate that he had never seen the man in a T-shirt. In a flash Nate was five years old again, strapped to the foam backseat of the LeSabre convertible, his father’s elbow perched confidently on the windowsill ahead, holding the world together.
They climbed out, Casper bounding from the back and stretch-yawning with a curled tongue. Shuffling in the leaves, they confronted one another, Nate standing to favor his left foot.
“Cielle,” he said, “this is your grandfather.”
The old man’s eyes crinkled as he regarded her for the first time. “Hello, then.”
Cielle gave a self-conscious wave, all wrist. “Hi.”
Janie gave Nate’s father a quick hug, and then Jason strode forward. “I’m Jason. Her boyfriend.”
With minimal interest Nate’s father took the kid’s oversize hand, looking past him at Nate. “They’re not sleeping in the same room.”
“You’re telling me,” Nate said. They studied each other from a safe distance. “I suppose you’re wondering what the hell is going on.”
“In due time. It’s late. And you look tired.”
For the first time in his life, Nate was pleased at his father’s reticence. A rush of gratitude overtook him. “Thanks for coming, Dad.”
His father turned for the house without so much as a nod. “No use in standing around out here,” he said.
They showered and changed while Nate’s father pan-fried some elk steaks, which he served with over-easy eggs and mugs of hot cider. Drying his shaggy hair and staring down at his plate, Jason said, “I’m sort of a vegetarian,” and Nate’s father replied, “Eat the damn food, son.”
For a man’s getaway, the place was surprisingly cozy, with spongy carpeting, throw blankets over the chairs, and exposed wood beams bracing the vaulted ceiling. No television. Nate’s father threw some cedar logs in the fireplace, and they ate on the surrounding couches, breathing in the sweet fragrance, letting the flames warm them. Casper lapped meat from a mixing bowl with enough exuberance to push it across the linoleum. His tags dinged against the metal lip, and then he gave out a tragic whimper that the elk was no more.
Wearing a borrowed sweater three sizes too big, Janie leaned into Nate, and he rested his arm across her narrow shoulders, and Cielle looked at them and for once said nothing cynical. He stole looks at his father, not quite believing that they were here under the same vaulted ceiling, and damned if the old man didn’t almost smile a time or two. Nate felt his muscles relax by degrees; maybe it was the meds starting to leave his system, or maybe he just finally had the space to let go a little. Cielle cracked a stupid joke and then giggled at it herself, leaning into her mom. Janie started laughing, too, and then Nate. He caught their reflection off the glass fireplace screen, something about the arrangement of the three of them tugging at a thread of a memory. And it struck him: the family portrait. Same pose, eight long years later. The sight of them was all different but somehow the same. They finished eating and talking, then sat for a moment in silence, basking in the afterglow, no one wanting the gathering to break up. It was magical, a momentary respite from reality.
After a while, as Cielle and Jason, with some prompting, cleared the dishes, Nate took his cell phone and started outside.
Janie caught his arm. “Where you going?”
“Find a signal. Abara. After the hospital-”
She plucked the phone from his hand and turned it off. “Not tonight,” she said gently. “Just one night.”
He could give her that.
Later, though it took some doing, Nate climbed the ladder to the open loft where Cielle was bedding down. Beyond the dormer window, black fangs of treetops bit into the star-patterned sky. He combat-crawled a few feet toward her pillow.
“Are you
“Yes.” He leaned to kiss her on the forehead, but before he could, she hugged him around the neck, holding on.
“What’s gonna happen to us?” Her voice caught, and he felt her cheek growing hot against his.
He pulled away to answer, but she just squeezed tighter. He said, “I will let nothing happen to you.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“Yes. I can.”
“Are we ever gonna get home again?”
He thought,
He kissed her on the forehead and started to back out of the cramped space when she asked, “Why’d you and Mom split up?”
He halted, hunched beneath the low ceiling. “It took me a long time to come home from the war.”
“How long?”
He considered. “Till now.”
“So you fell out of love with her?”
“No. Never.”
“But you…?”
“Couldn’t figure out how to love her right either.”
“That’s really what men are like?
He smiled a little.
She said, “If you loved her-us-then how could you stand being away?”
“I couldn’t. I always thought tomorrow would be different.”
“And it wasn’t.”
“No. But today was.”
She smiled secretly and lowered her head to the pillow. “Dad? Will you…?”
“Of course.”
He inched forward and lay up there by her until she fell asleep.
After descending with difficulty, he searched out his father and spotted him just outside the back door, scraping leftovers into a composter. He started for him, but a neat row of framed photos hanging in the brief hall brought him up short-his own school pictures from preschool on, ending with his second-grade photo.
The year before his mother got sick.
He stared at the shrinelike display of himself. A collared shirt each time out, the neat side part, his small face not yet shadowed with loss. The abrupt end at second grade. He pictured those pen marks in Cielle’s doorway, her heights marked at various ages. Where was the line at which childhood ended? His mind drifted to Nastya in her VIP booth, an ash-heavy cigarette forked between manicured fingers.
And yet there was still so much to keep trying for.
At once his father was at his side, looking on with him at the four small frames. “You deserved to have that wall filled.”
By the time Nate could recover to reply, his father had moved on down the hall.
Nate stood for a while, leaning against the wall beside those pictures. He was about to start back when he heard the quiet plucking of guitar strings from the front of the house. He made his way through the kitchen and living room, Jason’s form drawing into view outside on the porch swing. The kid sat Indian style, large shoulders bowed, guitar across his lap. Nate drew near to the window. Jason was singing so softly that the words were barely audible, but the song slowly resolved: McCartney’s “Blackbird.” Jason’s voice was startlingly good, high-pitched and pure, almost feminine. Nate kept on toward the door, a snatch of lyrics coming clear-
