As I read and Jamie waits on the front step, I tell myself a series of half-truths:
1. Mrs. Swanpole never leaves her house and will tell my mom if I answer the door.
2. I’m still grounded. (Mostly.)
3. I didn’t hear her knocking until it was too late.
My pliers are too small and these wires are missing their coating; I can’t tell which is which. Fingers are aching down here in the frigid basement. I still can’t believe my dad built all this and it pushes me to turn the page in the book and read about adapters. Maybe it’s the adapter.
Putting the book down, I rub some heat back into my hands. I take a sip of black coffee from the mug I found buried way back in the cupboard that says WORLD’S GREATEST DAD and marvel at this tiny town. Wiring a train set shouldn’t be this hard, but it is.
I get another text.
My heart, it says. It’s breaking.
I glance around the spotless basement. My home of late. Everything is clean, I made sure of it. The door to the boiler room has brand-new hinges; it’s perfectly hung. All the broken glass is swept off the floor, and the larger pieces from the cracked mirrors are neatly placed in piles waiting for their proper disposal.
The wooden table the train set sits upon is repaired. Dad’s tiny town has all-new grass with little trees and flowers. It’s perpetual spring. The landscape is way more full than before because I added more hills. Bucolic and stuff. Underneath, I constructed the sheets of cardboard and glued them together like a cake before shaping them into a rolling meadow, just like my dad did.
He’s watching.
I can feel him these days. Hovering just beyond the borders.
I’m doing everything I can to get Dad to send me a message. He helps Mom find me in the middle of a city filled with thousands of people; he sends her to the mall. He should be able to send me one stupid sign. A lost ball, a bird, a talking cat, whatever. I don’t care. I need help to understand.
A line I never expected to see was crossed, and I need to know why.
It’s not that I didn’t have a great experience. It’s that I don’t know what to do with it.
Aphra Behn, the British writer who wrote the poem that broke up my English class, “The Disappointment,” would approve. Jamie had just as good a time as I did. I can see Aphra on her perch in the heavens, nodding proudly.
That’s all fine, but it’s my dad up there in the stratosphere that worries me most. He’s up there turning his back on her and looking down with disappointment. It’s starting to eat me up. His approval, however empyreal, is important to me. I always figured my dad would be on my side, but I can’t break through to him.
I know my dad is dead, but it feels like his silence speaks for him. Maybe the minute Jamie touched down on my thigh is when my dad officially gave up on me. I don’t know. That night has become very confusing.
Mom wants to welcome any and all of my relationships. She’s seen the light and is prepared to proudly support me in any number of various sexual inclinations as I see fit—just hand her the right flag.
There is no flag.
It makes all the zesty conversations Mom’s dying to have remain unspoken. Which I’m sure frustrates her no end. Seems like all she wants to do these days is talk about her gay/bisexual/lesbian/pansexual/queer/intersex/intergender/asexual/binary/nonbinary/cis/trans/genderless/hypersexed/skoliosexual/third-gender/transitioning son…if only he would pick something.
But I don’t have to pick anything. I am what I am—a straight guy. Same as always. Only difference is now a lot of items on the Firsts List have been checked off with Jamie.
Mom’s relentless need for clarification pushes me deeper into the basement. It’s like she can’t accept me being straight and finding Jamie under the covers with me. She wants a reason she can cross-reference with her book that she walks around with all the time. The more Mom talks, the more I want to listen for the quiet voice of a dead man. I can brush off all the dumb shit at school (mostly) because those are people who don’t know the whole story. All they’ve got is I kissed a girl on her cheek who was assigned male at birth. Big deal. Scandal wears off after a month when nothing else happens.
But more than that happened, and I need to know my dad is still with me.
And I wonder what might be next because honestly it scares me.