*
He woke to his father standing over him. “You were supposed to walk the dog earlier. She defecated in the kitchen.” He handed Gordon the dejected animal on the leash.
“Defecated? Do you mean shit, by any chance?”
His father blinked wearily. His face was lined but stony. “I spoke with Baranek earlier. He says you aren’t doing what he tells you to do, says you fool around. Is this true?”
“What? That’s so not true.” Fucking Baranek, a fink, definitely not on his side. Gordon had an instant flash of Fat John raking leaves in the backyard into piles the wind kept blowing apart, his father watching, nodding. Master and servant. He shook it out of his head, a strange misfiring of his memory.
“Gordon, listen to me. I am—we are—cutting you a break here.” His father was still in his suit, though he’d taken off his tie. He radiated a disheartening stink: something cheap and sweet, like soap from a gas station bathroom. His eyes were womanish, long-lashed and a deep, cold blue. “It’s important you hold up your end of the deal you made.”
“I didn’t make the deal,” Gordon said. “You made the deal, remember? You and Fat John. I’m doing everything I’m told. And anyway, why are you checking up on me?”
“Checking in, not checking up. Baranek claims you went where you weren’t supposed to be this afternoon.”
Gordon stood and nudged the dog with his foot. He hesitated. “Is this about the bone?” He felt its textured life against his fingertips again.
His father’s expression shuttled between neutrality and accusation. “I don’t know anything about a bone. This is about you.”
Gordon opened the front door and let the cold air stampede in. “I stopped by the river to watch the rowers for a minute, okay? I wanted to see if Ellen was out on the water.” He hoped to hear his father’s breath catch at her name, like a hangnail on his heart, but there was nothing.
“But you knew that wasn’t going to happen,” his father said, his expression blank.
“How would I know? How would I know anything?”
And maybe I did know, but I still wanted, Gordon told himself, and slammed the door behind him. Didn’t his father understand what longing was about, that it was not always about something real? From the sidewalk, he saw his father’s bedroom light go on, saw the man’s fastidious closing of the curtains. He didn’t know how patients or even the idiot Baranek could stand the man; his mother clearly couldn’t. Ellen couldn’t either, finally. No woman could. But his father kept souvenirs from the one’s he’d screwed, as though this was all he could keep of them; Gordon had found their panties, some with tiny bows or hearts, neatly rolled like pastel cigars and lined up behind his father’s socks. He was ashamed to have evidence of his father’s hidden desires and small crimes.
He dragged the dog around the neighborhood. Didn’t his father worry about him getting jumped at this hour? He passed the house where a wife had supposedly shot and killed her husband years before, though she never went to prison. The bushes creaked in front, the dog tiptoed and whined as though it knew to hurry past. Gordon recalled the sound of the rowers’ oars moving in and out of the water earlier, the sound of Ellen’s dipping oars on the days she’d taken him down to the river so he could watch her train. He’d been happy then, squinting at the sun sliding along her boat. Sleek-haired, athletic Ellen with her spandex rowing outfits and long legs. One day she was there in the house, teasing Gordon and letting him fall in love with her, letting her bare arm fall across his shoulders, letting him relax into her affection, a consolation for his motherless self for the first time, and the next she and her almond milk were gone. His father had offered no explanation. Ellen had left his father—that made sense, because who wouldn’t?—but she’d left Gordon as well, and that he would never understand. With her around, he’d thought he might actually survive.
Once, after he’d watched her race, she’d explained that her power came from her thighs, and she let him touch the muscles that bound her femur. The longest bone in the human body, she’d said, perfectly constructed, my secret weapon. The bone he’d found that afternoon: a femur. He knew it now. He shivered at the confluence of bones. Ahead of him a tunnel of black branches hung over the street, and he picked up the sad dog and ran.
*