Leaving the Sea: Stories (3 page)

Paul leaned into Carl’s heat and musk. He would hold his breath and do it, because maybe Carl had hugged Carla today and Paul could get a contact high.

A scrum of kids crashed into them, then tore off laughing. An intentional attack on the overweight forty-year-olds at the drinks table? Paul and Carl watched them go, hug deferred.

“You got some of those?” Paul asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Carl said. “Afraid so.”

They caught up, if that’s what you called crunching twenty years into a reunion sound bite, and Paul found it easy to tell Carl about Andrea and little Jack. Carl blinked and maybe he was listening to Paul or maybe he didn’t care. Soon Carl was scanning the room, looking behind Paul as he spoke, raising his chin now and then at someone going by. Little smirks of hello from Cousin Carl, working the room while standing still.

“It was hard going for a while there,” Paul said, and Carl smiled and fist-pumped to someone across the room, doing a little bit of air guitar, then grabbed Paul by his shoulders.

“Dude, it was
amazing
to see you. I’ve got to go feed Louis or I’m going to catch serious hell.” And then Carl was gone and Paul went to the back of the drinks line, which was now very long, to get himself another glass of water.

Paul danced. He danced with his mother, who was beautiful in an emerald-green dress. When his mother tired, halfway through the first song, he walked her to their table and grabbed Alicia, who looked okay, too, and they danced to Marvin Gaye and Def Leppard and Poison and then, with Rick joining them, to Blondie’s “Heart of Glass.”

It wasn’t bad to dance. Dancing was better than not dancing. He was tired and sweaty and he felt good. Finally he collapsed at the family table, where his parents were already eating, along with some relatives he must have met before. They stared at Paul as if he were bleeding from the face.

“What do you say, Dad?” Paul shouted. “Are you going to dance?”

His father studied him. They all did.

“Paul here is doing quite well,” his father said to everyone at the table. “He’s become a professional woodworker, doing joinery at a high-end cabinet shop.”

“It’s not really a big deal,” Paul mumbled.

“It is, though,” his father said. “It takes years of training and a whole hell of a lot of skill to be a real woodworker.”

“It’s kind of automated now,” Paul said quietly. “They have jigs.”

“It’s great that they hired you,” some old man said, getting in his dig. Meaning
he’d
have never hired Paul.

“Used to be you had to cut twenty sets of dovetails to even get asked on a crew,” his father said.

“Wow,” Paul said.

“Twenty sets. By hand. Using a Jap saw.”

“I could never do that,” Paul admitted.

“No?” his father asked.

Was he leering at Paul? His own father?

“You’re a mortise-and-tenon man. My word. Those are even harder, though, right? Makes dovetails look easy. Or do I have my information wrong?”

“I do those, but, like I said, there’s a jig.”

“So not by hand?”

“God, no, Dad. No way.”

“I’d like to see one of these jugs sometime. You’ll have to show me. Show me how the whole thing works now that everything’s changed.”

Paul looked at his father, and at his mother, who was chewing her dinner with the care of a professional taster, and he looked at the other relatives around the table, who carried with them a narrative of Paul that he could never, no matter what, revise. A narrative that favored the outcome, a father with unexplained bruises after an argument gone really wrong, rather than the supporting architecture that fucking deeply informs single events—accidents!—that somehow get out of control. These people would have to die for Paul to be free. Which was bullshit, he knew. It was Paul who would have to die.

“I’d love to do that, Dad,” Paul said.

His father regarded him across the dinner table with a face that no longer showed any fear.
Who are you? Who are you, really?
his father’s face seemed to ask.

Paul excused himself to get another drink. He asked if he could get anything for anyone while he was up, drinks or food, but they were fine, they said, and waved him off.

From across the room, he saw his cousin Carla. She was circling a table of kids like a waitress, and she was still utterly lovely. What a girl she had been, and now she looked the same. Exactly the same. He watched her, amazed, wondering which kids were hers, or if, fuck, they all were, but he couldn’t stand not saying hello right away, so he ran up to her.

Carla beamed. Paul beamed. They said holy shit and hugged tight. She was small in his arms, so little and warm against his body, whereas Andrea was big, and taller than him, and incredible, of course, in her own way. This wasn’t knocking Andrea. He loved her. But Carla was tiny! Oh, my God. It felt good to hold her.

Paul wanted to get her alone, but that was ridiculous. They held hands down at their waists. Carla talked fast, smiling, radiant. She said that things were great and she lived in the Twin Cities. Just one of them! She assistant-nursed part-time at the children’s hospital and she had three kids and she’d finally gotten her master’s in something that Paul didn’t make out. It was hard to hear. It was loud and horrible and dark in there, and it was so hot that everyone stank. Plus he wanted her to himself.

“Let’s go have a cigarette,” Paul suggested. “We can sit on the steps out front.”

He didn’t usually smoke, didn’t even have cigarettes, but Carla followed.

Together they sat in front of the Holiday Inn, watching the valet wait for cars to pull up.

Carla laughed out of nowhere.

“What?” Paul said quietly. A voice inside him, very far away, was telling him, unpersuasively, not to seem so engrossed. It was unbecoming to fawn.

Carla covered her mouth, shook her head. A gesture of amused disbelief.

“I’ll never forget something you said to me, Paul. I still remember it.”

“What did I say?” He was proud in advance of this terribly clever thing he’d said as a kid. So clever that Carla had never forgotten it!

“You said, ‘What is a cousin for if you can’t put your finger in her vagina?’ ”

Paul closed his eyes. “I did not. Please tell me I didn’t say that.”

“Oh, you did.” Carla laughed. “Several times.”

He shook his head. “I am so sorry. What an asshole.”

“You were bad!” she yelled, and she slapped his leg, laughing.

He nodded. “I was bad. I think I still am.”

“Oh?”

Carla took this as flirtation rather than self-pity. Whatever Paul had once been—the rogue, troubled high schooler, doing stupid shit and justifying it with arcane philosophical arguments—he wasn’t those things anymore. No way.

“You still coming to blows with Daddy Morton?”

“No.”

Paul chuckled and shrugged it off. A real conversation was out of the question, and that was probably for the best.

“So,” she said. “Wife, kids? Wait, no, let me guess. You’re gay. You’re gay! Is that what you mean by being bad? Oh, my God, you’re not gay, are you? Jesus, Paul.”

The old Paul, the Cleveland Paul, would have said, Should I finger you to disprove it? But tonight’s Paul, new or old, disgusted with himself or just tired, tried to smile. He didn’t have to uphold any principles in front of a shitty hotel with a woman he’d never see again. Though hand sex with a cousin occupied an unassailable place in the erotic universe—he’d stand and testify to that if he had to, and he felt sorry for anyone who hadn’t tried it.

Paul looked up at the black tower with the shining portholes, the bright, glowing orbs rising into the sky like spotlights. He said how cool the tower was, how unusual. It was unlike any other building he’d seen.

Carla made a face and said, “Blech.”

“What?”

“That’s our hotel,” she said.

“It’s a
hotel
?”

“Yeah. We didn’t want to stay there, but there were no rooms anywhere else. I guess they can’t get any guests, so it’s empty. I kind of hate it, to be honest. It’s weird. But it’s cheap, and that’s good, because this trip cost us a fucking fortune. Holy smoke.”

“Oh,” Paul said.

They both looked at it again. If Andrea were here, she’d get it. Or maybe she wouldn’t. How could he know?

“Well, I guess I should be heading inside,” Carla said, and that was that, a big flameout.

“Yeah, back to the Bergers,” Paul said.

The Bergers. His mother and father. Alicia. Rick, who wasn’t a Berger in name but loved the Bergers more than the Bergers did. Paul’s son, Jack, was a Berger, too, of course, one of the youngest, and so was Andrea, even though she hadn’t changed her name. He could have been strolling through the reunion right now holding Jack and showing off Andrea to everyone. But the idea had been to test the waters. Even Andrea had agreed that Paul should visit Cleveland alone first. And when she’d said this he had been so relieved that he’d had to hide it from her. It wasn’t that he didn’t want his family to meet Andrea; it was that he didn’t want her to see
him
here. Him with his family. That was the concern. The Paul of Cleveland, with his mean tone and low aims. She’d hate him forever.

Just then an ambulance pulled up and some paramedics tumbled out. They sprang the stretcher and pushed it right at Carla and Paul, stopping to hoist it over their heads and carry it up the steps, into the Holiday Inn.

Paul and Carla watched it go.

“You think that’s for a Berger?” Paul cracked.

“It’d better not be,” Carla said. “If Beaner choked I’m going to rip my husband’s heart out.”

She disappeared inside and Paul remained on the steps, thinking maybe he’d call home. Or maybe he’d cross the street to the black hotel and ride the elevator to the top so he could look through one of those portholes. Except what was so special about that building, anyway? He’d forgotten.

That night, before getting into bed, he set his alarm, packed his bags, scheduled a car service. It had been easy enough to change his flight, but all they’d had was one leaving at 4:00 a.m. It didn’t really matter. He figured he’d sleep for two hours, then wait outside for the car, so that no one else would have to wake up. This way he’d skip the good-byes. With luck he’d be home by late morning. He could dismiss the sitter, take Jack to the park. He couldn’t decide what would be better, leaving Andrea a voice mail or surprising her when she came home from work.

Rick walked into the bathroom while Paul was brushing his teeth, then backed out, apologizing. Through a foam of toothpaste Paul told him it was okay, waved him in. This would be their peaceful encounter, Rick sitting on the toilet lid waiting for Paul to spit and rinse.

“That was fun tonight,” Paul said.

“It was so great.” Rick shook his head. “And the toasts, oh my gosh. Amazing.”

The toasts. Paul must have been outside.

“What your mom said. I mean, I choked up. That was just…”

Paul could only agree. What his mom said. Never in his life had he seen his mother make a toast.

“I love family,” Rick said. “All of that family, together.”

“Oh, hey, did someone get hurt tonight?” Paul asked.

Rick looked confused, as if this were one of Paul’s trick questions.

“I saw a stretcher go into the hotel,” Paul explained. “I thought maybe something happened.”

“Hmm, no,” Rick said. “I mean, not that I know of. But I was dancing it out pretty hard.”

“Okay, that’s good,” Paul said. “Tell my sister good night.”

“Will do, buddy. Good night yourself.”

The two hours of sleep didn’t happen. Paul lay awake and looked at the clock until eventually it was time to wait outside for the car. He crept downstairs with his bags, dropped them at the door. He’d get a drink of water in the kitchen, maybe grab some fruit for the trip.

At the kitchen table, shuffling an amber colony of pill bottles, sat his mother. She didn’t hear him come in, and he startled her.

She clutched her robe, looked past him into the dark hallway. Why was it that he still frightened her?

“Pauly, what are you doing?”

He mumbled, wishing he hadn’t come in. His car would be here in a few minutes, and now he’d have to say good-bye.

His mother noticed his coat, figured it out, and he couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or relieved. Why not both?

“I have to get back,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Paul, for what? Stay with us. Why do you have to go?”

She could not possibly want an answer. But maybe it was ugly of him to assume the worst. Maybe this was it. His sweet mother was sitting here asking. He would tell her.

“I’m a father, Mom. I’m married. We have a little boy. Jack. We call him Jackie. He’s two, Mom. He’s already two!”

His mother cried.

“Pauly, it’s okay, honey. I don’t know how else to tell you, but it’s okay and we love you and we will always love you, and I wish you believed us. You are our little Paul, always.”

She reached out to him across the table and he took her hands.

“But, Mom, it’s true.”

Had he really lied that much? Was his credibility gone forever?

“Sweetheart, I know it is. Of course it’s true. I would love to meet him, I mean, to see him. What was his name, your boy?”

Oh, God, did he yell. He yelled the most awful things. He hit the table, stood up too fast. Something fell over, and now his mother truly wept, and she threw her arms up as if he were about to strike her. But why would he hit his own mother?

For years he would attempt to dismantle this moment. It was among the most useless activities a mind could pursue, the revision of shit that had really fucking
happened,
yet somehow it became the activity his mind fell into the most.

He heard his name, barked by his father.

His dad was here now. Why not Alicia? Why not Rick? Get everyone together.

“Paul, you will not do this. Not to your mother.”

His father trembled, ready for battle.

“I’m not, Dad. I’m not doing anything.”

Paul backed away, giving his poor father courage.