“So what happened?” Apollo asked, his volume matching hers.
“One afternoon I came home and found him there,” Lillian said. “I couldn’t believe it. I sent him away.”
“Why?”
Lillian opened her left hand and pressed her ring finger. “I filed for divorce. I was leaving him.”
Apollo lunged for the bucket of water, spilling almost half as he pulled it from the tub. He grabbed the sponge mop, too, and left the bathroom. He returned to Brian’s room and set the bucket down. He felt outside himself, watching himself. He held the sponge mop with two hands, the head a full foot off the floor.
Lillian crept into the room carrying the wood cleaner. She brought the bottle to Apollo and offered it up.
“Why did you want a divorce?” Apollo asked.
She lowered her hand, bumping the bottle of wood cleaner against her thigh. “Your father was a good man. You saw how he saved everything, movie tickets, a headshot, that book. He could be a real romantic, and that was fun for a while. But I had to put you in daycare at two months old so I could go back to work. After a long day I pick you up, and your father is sitting on the couch watching television and asking me when dinner will be ready. The same at breakfast. Every damn day. Then he lost his job and it got even worse. He was around the house all day, but still was no help. It’s like I was married to two children. That’s what I came to America for? To be a servant?”
“So it was me,” Apollo said. “I made it too tough for you to stay together.” He held the mop handle with two hands and swayed faintly on his legs.
Lillian set the bottle of wood cleaner on the floor. She stepped closer to her son. She put a hand to his back and patted him lightly.
“You’re the reason we stayed together as long as we did,” she said. “And you’re the best thing to come out of that love. It was a choice I had to make. Leaving Brian was what I needed to do just to keep afloat.”
“What about me, though?” Apollo asked. “I needed both of you.”
“I know,” Lillian whispered.
“My whole life I’m just trying to figure out how to be a good man, and now you tell me you left one behind. When it was time for me to be a father, I didn’t have any example. A model. One I could learn from, compare myself to. So I’m stuck making it all up as I go along, feeling like I’m inventing everything and doing it badly. And look how fucked up it got. Because of some choice you made more than thirty years ago.”
Lillian left the bedroom. Apollo followed her, still gripping the sponge mop so tightly it seemed fused to his hands. “I tried my best,” she said. “That’s all I could do.” She walked through the kitchen, into the living room, and into Apollo and Emma’s bedroom. She slipped on her shoes. She walked back into the living room and found her purse by the couch. She took her coat from the front closet. She opened the front door, then looked back at him as if she might still be offered a reprieve.
“Why couldn’t you let him be a part of my life at least?” Apollo asked. “He could’ve picked me up every other week and dropped me off again. You two didn’t even have to speak to each other. Lots of my friends had families like that, and I envied them every day!”
“I couldn’t do that,” Lillian said.
“I’m not talking about you! I thought I was a monster. Like something must be wrong with me.”
“How could you ever think that?”
“My father left me without looking back. That’s what I thought. Why else would he leave unless I was worthless? And now I found out it’s just because you made some choice that was good for you? Maybe he wasn’t much help around the house because he lost his job. You couldn’t give him a little while to get back on his feet? Jesus.”
Lillian nodded softly, then stepped into the hallway. She unzipped her purse, found a card, and wrote quickly on the back. “This is the address for Nassau Knolls,” she said. “You don’t have to go there with me, but you should go to Brian’s grave.”
Apollo didn’t move, so she set the card on the floor. He shut the door and locked it. He double-checked that he’d done this. Triple-checked. He looked through the peephole to see Lillian on her phone, ordering a car back to Springfield Gardens. She stayed in the hallway, on the other side of his door, and he watched her until the phone bleeped that her ride had arrived. Apollo went to the windows in his bedroom and watched her get inside. The time was two-thirty in the morning.
HOLYROOD. AN EPISCOPAL church in the Gothic style. Opened in 1914, all steeples and sound planning. It sat in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge bus terminal. This was the church where Emma had wanted to baptize Brian.
The front doors of the church were open, but despite the daylight the interior stayed dark. Apollo entered slowly. Three women sat in the last pew praying quietly. A tall, slim man stood at a table of flyers and stacked hymnals. He held a small flip phone, jabbing at it angrily.
“Father Hagen?” Apollo asked.
The man’s face had gone red. He looked to be in his sixties. His eyes were vital, his hair thinning. He looked up at Apollo, exasperated. He shut the phone with a snap.
“Call me Jim,” he said. He waved the cellphone. “I was just trying to call you, but I couldn’t find your number. I’m no good with these things.”
He shrugged as if used to playing the role of the slightly befuddled old man. His wily grin suggested he was only playacting.
“Did you have any trouble finding us?” Father Hagen asked. The three women in the pew looked up from their silent prayers and Father Hagen raised a hand of apology. He waved for Apollo to follow, then led him through the nave and through a door leading down into the basement.
“I live around the corner,” Apollo said. “It wasn’t hard to find you.”
“Yes,” the priest said, as if this wasn’t a surprise. Apollo watched the old man cautiously. Father Hagen stopped him on the stairs and brought a hand to his shoulder.
“This is where I confess,” he said. “I know who you are.”
“Because of the news,” Apollo said.
Father Hagen dropped his hand. “Because of your wife.”
“Emma?”
“She came here,” he said. “She wanted to plan a baptism for your son. She made an appointment for her to come back with you. And with Brian.”
Apollo leaned back against the railing of the stairs but felt as if he might flip backward and fall to the bottom. “I remember that,” he said.
Father Hagen watched Apollo. The priest had the look of a basset hound, that drawn face and sense of sadness in the eyes. “She seemed to be having trouble,” he said. “But I never would’ve guessed that…I would’ve tried to help if I’d understood.”
Now it was Apollo who touched Father Hagen’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”