“And how was your day?” I asked as I picked up the dog, who looked utterly wiped out. I held Murphy, who seemed thrilled to get a little bit of a break, under my arm and scratched his ears as I headed up toward the house. “Did you do great things?”
The first thing I noticed as I headed up the porch steps was that there was music playing. And not one of my mother’s ballets or her classical music—old-school rock. I dropped the dog on the porch, unhooked his leash, and opened the screen door. Murphy trotted inside, making a beeline for his water dish; a second later I could hear the sound of him slurping.
I stepped inside the house, and the music got even louder. It sounded vaguely familiar, like maybe I’d heard it on an oldies station or in a movie soundtrack. I dropped the cookies and cupcake on the kitchen counter and continued on inside, noticing that the house seemed to be fairly empty, and turning some lights on as I went. I found the source of the music and my dad at the same time. He was sitting on the ground in the TV room, an old turntable in front of him and stacks of records surrounding him.
“Hi,” I said, turning on the light, and making us both wince slightly as the room lit up. He was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, but I noticed that his hair was parted as sharply as ever.
“Hi, kid,” he said, starting to cough. After it had passed, he cleared his throat and continued. “What’s the news?”
“No news,” I said, smiling at him. I looked around at the records, and at the one spinning on the turntable. I had to say, I liked this better than the opera. I knelt down and picked up one of the sleeves—it was for someone named Charlie Rich. The album art—and his beard—both looked very seventies. “What is all this?”
He smiled at me and turned down the volume of a song about California. “I was just puttering around the workshop,” he said, “and I found my old record player and albums. And I was just going to go through them, but then I started listening to them….” His voice trailed off as he picked up one of the albums and turned it over.
“So who is this?” I asked, as the song ended and the next one began, slower and softer this time.
“This,” my dad said, reaching behind him and wincing, picking up the album cover and handing it to me, “is Jackson Browne.”
“Did you used to listen to him?” I asked as I looked down at the album cover art, a car sitting under a single streetlight.
“All the time,” my dad said, smiling faintly, as though remembering it. “It drove my father crazy.”
“So turn it up,” I said, sitting next to him and leaning back against the couch leg.
My dad cleared his throat, then pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and coughed into it. He folded it carefully and replaced it. “You don’t have to listen to this,” he said, giving me a smile. “I know it’s not exactly your style.”
“I like it,” I protested. And I did—the lyrics seemed almost like real poetry, layered with meaning in a way that the Bentley Boys’ songs certainly weren’t. “Tell me about this song.”
My father leaned back against the couch leg as well and just listened for a moment. “This is a song that I always liked, but started to like a lot more after I met your mother,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “It’s called ‘For A Dancer.’”
I smiled at that, and we sat there as it got darker and darker outside, me and my father, listening to the music he’d loved when he was my age. I knew that soon, the moment would be over—my mother and Warren and Gelsey would return home, bringing with them noise and news and bustle. But for now, there was my father and me, and a moment that I didn’t try to preserve, but just let happen, as I sat next to him, listening to the song, as the record spun and the music played on.
chapter thirty-one
THE FOURTH OF JULY WAS SUNNY AND CLEAR, AND IT FELL ON A Saturday, which meant that the beach was packed. Lucy, Elliot, and I had run around all day and had sold out by noon of the tricolored Firecracker ice pops. Even Fred was there, hovering around, mostly getting in the way as he clearly just wanted to get back to his fish. But when the ice machine broke down in the middle of a rush, I was very glad that he was there, since he was the only one who knew how to fix it.