That is what their words are doing, growing weeds in his mind, blotting out his perfect day at the quarry where he ditched his sisters and made out with Gina Jo. She will come over tonight, and he will take her shirt off. He will see things he has never seen before. And he will rid his mind of all their words; he will spray them down and dig them up. He will put Gina Jo’s face over every one of those weeds; he will feel her breasts pressed against him, not their spiny, furred leaves. He will lick her; he will put his tongue in her ear. He will gobble her up like a sundae, like a cigarette, like a nice strong drink.
Their father called the young man late last night, and now the two men stand beside his little Japanese car, just past the pump house and the bend in the road. The All-American is not easily convinced that it is over. Their father can only see the peaks of the roof, the chimneys. They stand there at five in the morning, the All-American in shorts and sandals, as usual. He always dresses for Florida even though they live in some misted Celtic hinterland, as if Hadrian’s Wall stretched right out under the Atlantic, crossed the Northwest Passage, rolled boulders down glaciers until they petered out, just forgotten farm walls, cow paths snaking the coasts of New England. They stand in the ruts of the drive, ferns weeping at the edge of the road. The All-American has come to convince him that it is just beginning, to laugh at the ridiculousness of being discovered, like guilty teenagers bare-assed behind the bleachers. His curls jounce as he shakes his head.
“At least she knows now,” the All-American says. “At least you can stop pretending.”
“What was I pretending?” their father asks.
He knows his lies have extended to everyone, to this young man, only eight years older than his son. What lies has he fed this boy to keep him coming back aboard his boat? What lies has he told to keep him away? Have I been pretending to love this boy? Have I been pretending to love my wife? Have I been pretending that I am a sailor and the sea is the keeper of all my secrets, of all my truest desires, and that no person can satisfy me like the high sun and a strong wind?
He wonders why the young man isn’t cold, his arms bare, the mist heavy in the skirts of the trees. Peeking through the foliage, the yellowed seaweed in the cove is a creeping jaundice. The seals have left; they sleep low by the spindle.
“You think you don’t love me?” the All-American asks.
“I know I do. But I can’t stay.”
The cove is sick, the house is sick, mold a cancer in its walls. She cares more for the mold than for him. She skirts around him, turns from him as she would from a draft, pulls her sweater tighter. She forgets to leave a light on for him, so he stumbles up the stairs in the dark. She complains of the cold, and he adds a log to the fire, then she complains of the sparks. But she makes coffee in the morning even though she only drinks tea. Her nails are short and rimmed with black dirt. She makes things grow. She coaxes faces, bodies from clay, fields and flowers from paint and canvas. She makes things beautiful. She smells like sugar. He wants to bask in her, devour her, crawl inside her skin and sleep. He would drink her, eat her, inject her. But she leaves him shuddering, sick, sitting on the edge of the tub in the middle of the night wondering when she last called him by name. He is losing sleep, losing weight. She is heroin, and the young man, methadone. Monitored and controlled, the All-American doesn’t make anyone sick, but calms nerves, settles stomachs. My love for him is not a cancer or a cure, he thinks; it is a delay, a putting off the inevitable withdrawal.
He encircles the young man’s wrist with his thumb and forefinger. Usually the young man is all angles, his wrist a square of tendons and sinews that widen and weave up his arms, moving into the wide planes of his back. Their father loved to think how easily this young thing could overpower him. But here in the mist the All-American is so slim, a wiry rabbit, and he, the father, the husband, a lumbering bear. Or maybe he is just a man after all, a man who has taken this little rabbit into his hands to feel its fluttering heart, its whispered breath, and now the bones are too small, too brittle in his hands. He can’t be gentle enough with any of them. Not with his wife, or with this boy. His love, his desire, is sprung and toothed and quick to snap. He has destroyed and devoured it all. There is nothing left for him on land. Maybe he is sick, loving too much, too many. Loving both of them, so none of them. Maybe he is the jaundice infecting the cove, the wet breath breeding mold in this house. He needs to be encased in fiberglass and sent singing down the Styx.
“Why don’t you let me come with you?” says the All-American. “This can be just another cruise. Please, Bob.”
He says this coming close, standing just inches from their father, from her husband. He can feel the heat come through the boy’s thin T-shirt. With the All-American he can be just a man. He sinks into the space between them, lets his arms go around the young man’s shoulders, lets his hands go to the back of his neck, the back of his head, his face. And for a moment they are at each other against the car. He wants to consume him, devour the All-American and keep him forever. He clutches at the young man’s face, and they are frantic, their mouths and hands. They are desperate. And his sweater is up and off, and the young man’s shorts are down, and then her husband is on his knees, worshiping the All-American. He is god of the water, and I am just a man on the sea. And every satisfaction is a prayer, the young man’s hand in his hair, a blessing, together, a gratitude. He has spent four years putting forth offerings, trying to keep this boy that he should lose. They have always had a tendency to pull and rip at each other, like lions, like children. It is one of the All-American’s best qualities, he thinks. But all that play is gone, now. They finish and come apart, pulling their clothes back on. Their father stands up, lichen stuck to his sleeve. The young man tugs at a tuft of hair that curls above the neck of her husband’s sweater.
“This is mine,” the All-American says. He holds their father’s hands in his as if reading his palms. “These are mine. You are mine.”
He feels as if he is shrinking. Before this thin reed of a man he is receding, growing bent. It is barely light out, the sun shining only on the sky now, not yet touching the land, not yet shining over the rise or the blueberry bushes. Only the sea and the sky are lit, one reflecting the other.
He needs to leave before they wake up. He should’ve left last night. But he couldn’t go without this, his forehead pressed into the dip of the young man’s collarbone, their fingers laced together. Their father shakes with sobs. Can he ask the young man to come with him? No. But God, how can he leave him behind? He has never left him behind. Every trip, every cruise, they were together. Maybe it is the young man that makes the wind blow, and without him her husband will drift and flounder. But he wants her. He wants him because he can’t have her. He wants her with him. He wants her to ask him to stay. He is happy to be loved, and destroyed to be loved, by the wrong person.