“Dude, Liko, shut up,” Jed said, and I thought: Yes, please do.
“Can we take you boys out to lunch?” Chuck said. “Anywhere you want.” Chuck was trying to be Cool Dad, which was slightly sad and very sweet.
Liko was swinging his arms back and forth and rocking his head a little. Was he dancing?
“Nah, Dad, we’re going out with the team,” Cam said.
“We normally go to Denny’s,” Tom offered.
“Okay.” Chuck sounded a little deflated, so he tried again. “Have a great time.”
?
Chuck and I bought chicken wraps at Safeway and took them to the park at the Old Airport. Picnicking was something we had done a lot in the beginning of our relationship. We sat at a green picnic table under a tree. I faced the ocean. Chuck faced the mountain. “I can’t tell if those are clouds or if it’s vog,” he said, and took a bite.
“Do you remember how we used to have picnics?” I asked him.
“Of course.” Chuck smiled. The lines on his face. The age spots forming at his hairline. He looked so much older now. We both looked so much older now.
Chuck’s keychain was on the table. He pulled out the blade of his Swiss army knife.
“What are you doing?”
“Remember when we carved our names into the rocks in Point Loma?” With one stroke he scratched half a heart into the table.
“I remember,” I said.
Then he scratched the other half. Inside the heart, he wrote it simply: N + C. The C was the hardest part. It came out looking jagged. “There,” he said.
After lunch we looped around the walking path, which was surrounded by a community garden. Sections were divided according to the community groups that had planted them, and were marked with placards. There were succulents and plumeria trees and a tree with strange green orbs floating from its branches. Mongeese dashed across the path in front of us as we walked, always right in front of us like that, as if they’d been waiting to create a brush with disaster—adrenaline junkies. A few roosters had somehow made it up to the limbs of a high tree. Beneath them, feral cats rolled over in the shade. A group of old Japanese men sat in a circle, eating tangerines. Runners ran by. Women in sports bras and sweaty shirtless men. Two ladies power-walking reminded me that I should call Marcy.
One plot—not marked with a placard—had a sculpture on the ground of a dog swimming in a pool. Even with its glossy sheen of paint, meant to invoke life, the dog looked helpless, like it was drowning in cement. Its one big black eye was screaming out for help. But maybe—yes, okay, its paw was very close to the edge of the pool. It was poised for escape. This dog was definitely going to make it.
?
We got back into Sharkie and just sat there for a little while with the seats reclined. This was another thing we used to do in the beginning—just sit in cars for hours like time wasn’t a real thing. I thought of Ana, of sitting in her Jeep in the parking lot, of everything I had told her. I still couldn’t believe how much I had revealed.
“I’m glad you got this car,” Chuck said. He sounded relaxed, sleepy. He took off his hat and put it over his face. He reached for my hand without looking and found it. “And the name Sharkie is funny. Did Ana make that up or did you?”
“On-a,” I corrected.
“Right, On-a.”
“We both made it up,” I said. Was that true? I couldn’t remember now who had said Sharkie first.
Palm fronds rocking back and forth in the wind. The sound of waves, of birds.
Chuck yawned. “Jed’s game has improved at least ten percent.”
I tapped his hand. “I don’t like that Liko kid.”
“Oh? I thought he was nice.”
I almost told Chuck he was a terrible judge of character, but whenever I said this, he reminded me that I was his wife so how bad could his judgment be?
“What did you think of Tom?” I asked.
Chuck contemplated. “He’s very tall?”
The thought of asking him felt more comfortable in this position—with us lying back, not looking at each other, the center console between us. Maybe this was why I had revealed so much to Ana. There was something about the solidly front-facing nature of sitting in a car that made honesty easier.
“Chuck?”
“Nancy?”
“Do you think Cam is gay?”
Chuck sighed heavily, which bothered me. “I don’t know,” he said, “but no, not really. He’s sensitive, that’s all. But that doesn’t mean he is.” I could tell Chuck had gone over this in his head just like I had. “Do you think he is?”
“Gay?” I said. “Are you uncomfortable saying that word?”
“No.”
“Seems like you might be.” I tapped his hand again, coaxing him.
“Well,” Chuck shifted in the seat, “okay, maybe a little.”
“Would you be upset if your son turned out to be gay?” I was still annoyed by his sigh, but I managed to say this lovingly, with curiosity. Come at your life with curiosity instead of anger. Pema Ch?dr?n had written something like that.
“Honestly?” he asked. “Maybe a tiny bit.”
“That’s…” I wanted to say: That’s horrible. But, no, curiosity, not anger. Curiosity, not anger. I settled for: “That’s a little upsetting.”
“I’ll still love him. I just worry it’s an obstacle.” Chuck un-reclined his chair so he was sitting up again. “Don’t you think it might make his life harder?”
I un-reclined my chair. Would it make his life harder? I hated that I thought it might. “Maybe,” I said. “But we could never tell him that.”
Chuck nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“Okay,” I said firmly.
He looked at me sideways. “Are we fighting?” His face was adorably worried.
I shook my head in a way that said: Oh, Chuck, I love you. “No,” I said, “we’re not fighting.”
“Good.” He put his hand on my knee. “Because I don’t want to fight. It’s…” Chuck squinted at the sky. “It’s almost too nice to fight here, isn’t it? It’s so sunny.”
Without thinking, I said exactly what Ana had said to me. I used her intonation and her slightly deeper voice. And for the brief moment it took to say the words, I felt like I was Ana, or like I was becoming Ana, or like Ana had already become an essential part of me.
“Every day is sunny here, Chuck.”
12
“Target!”
It was an old man at the intersection. Short white beard, long heavy jacket, bright white shoes. His sign said VETERAN HUNRGY BROKE.
“I’ve never seen this one before,” Ana said, and pulled over.
The car behind us honked. “Sor-ry.” Ana waved and hit the emergency lights.
I held out the sandwich for the veteran. “Here you go, sir.”
His eyes were bloodshot. Trembling hands. He took the sandwich tentatively. Asked in a shaky voice, “What’s in it?”
“Skippy!” Ana exclaimed, leaning over me so her Wynonna hair spilled onto my arm.
“Darnit,” he said. The sandwich was shaking in his hand. I thought he might drop it. “I’m allergic to peanuts.”
“Oh no.” I held out my hand in case he wanted to give it back.
“I’ll eat the bread around,” he said, looking at the sandwich from a new angle, planning his surgery.