Get over it — you have work to do. Introduce your father to Lloyd, and take a look at them as they shake hands to see what kind of first impressions they make. Your father is in his early sixties, hair the blond-gray of mummies. Otherwise, he looks healthy: he’s lost weight, and he’s wearing a new (creases still intact) polo shirt tucked into slacks. As for Lloyd, you’d convinced him to shave his green-dyed goatee and to discard his usual “à la David Foster Wallace” bandanna, but the rest was his choice — tight white jeans tucked into ’90s-style high-tops; a forest green deep-V; a decorative, lightweight navy scarf sporting white polka dots in the shape of terriers. The pale skin on his face is purple in the two spots where the sun comes through his tinted glasses. You hate those glasses. Hold your applause when he removes them. As he introduces himself, notice his lisp—“Greetingss, Misster Kushner”—for the first time in years.
Examine your father’s tone as he compliments Lloyd’s terrier scarf.
Follow the men into your childhood home. The living room is decorated almost exclusively with porcelain angels, the one exception to your mother’s hatred of the gaudy. Female angels in ballet poses, baby angels lifting children over a fallen bridge, male angels farming wheat — from the glass-encased shelves of curio cabinets, from the white-flecked bricks of the mantel, and from the sills of windows narrow and wide, the multitudes sing.
On the coffee table sit three plastic bottles of water and a bowl of pizza-flavored Chex Mix, the extent of your father’s efforts as host. Your mother would’ve sliced and salted cucumbers, tomatoes, and cheese. Flat, skinlike bread would splay in the belly of a wicker basket. Mention, in a light mood, your father’s relative ineptitude, and listen as your father agrees that yes, your mother was better than he, in more ways than this.
When Lloyd says the scene reminds him of a novel called The Left-Handed Woman, try to change the subject immediately. Your father is in the business of selling furniture. He does not want to talk about literature. Still, try to remember why you’re here. Have compassion. Take a seat with Lloyd on the floral couch you once wet as a child, and listen.
Watch Lloyd scoot forward on the cushion. “Well,” he says, “it’s about a couple — a hetero couple — and the woman, you guessed it, is left-handed. When she leaves, the man has to go to his cupboard and turn all the mugs so that the handles are on the right side. Isn’t that something?”
Now you’re depressed, but your father, having fallen into his favorite recliner, calls the image “lovely.” Conceal your confusion. Avoid asking aloud why this trip is going so smoothly.
Brace yourself when your father asks Lloyd about his novel, which you neglected to notice Lloyd mention just a moment ago, while you were busy concealing your confusion and avoiding et cetera, et cetera.
Watch Lloyd scoot even farther forward on the couch, so that the cushion comes up at a forty-five-degree angle behind him. As you listen to him talk, imagine the world of his novel entering the living room — Ottoman whalers, Argentine pirates, a Dixieland jazz band lost at sea after a New Orleans flood (working title: Moby Dixie). See these figments rush into the living room alongside the chorus of angels presiding over the father, the son, and the ridiculous boyfriend.
When your father responds by praising “the mind of a real writer,” resist the urge to defend blogging. Instead, offer an inquisitive smile as Lloyd asks your father if he’s ever done some writing of his own.
You’re surprised to hear he has. He understands the two of you are out this way to see a play. Well, a million years ago, when he was a member of his high school drama club in Dearborn, Michigan, he happened to write a few plays himself, believe it or not. Choose not to believe it, and then doubt your doubt as he goes on to say he probably has an old typewritten script stashed in a box somewhere in the garage.
Smile, smile, smile while Lloyd suggests the three of you spend the remaining daylight digging for the manuscript. Keep to yourself not only your skepticism regarding the prospects of finding the play but also your questions regarding what will be done with the play if it were, by some miracle, to be found.
Go along with the plan. Watch Lloyd open the garage door while you back the rental car out of the driveway into the street, making room for your father to back his car out of the garage. Join Lloyd there. Take note of how utterly full of boxes the garage has become, how the only free space is in the shape of your father’s car. Realize this is because your mother’s stuff has been added.
While your dad is in his car in the driveway, ask Lloyd quickly if he’s sure this is a good idea. And when Lloyd says looking for the play would make your father “probably happier than he’s been in a long while, Daley,” kiss him on the cheek. Think of the only time you met his parents, two years ago. You met at an expensive vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco. They were visiting from Denver, and Lloyd, an only child, called them by their first names. Remember the stilted conversation you had with Rayne, a ballet instructor, and Lloyd Senior, a lawyer. You knew they were paying Lloyd’s share of the rent, and this knowledge made you a bitter and unpleasant dinner guest. At the time, you didn’t feel as though you could be honest with your parents about your relationship with men. Your mother’s reaction, especially, concerned you. She was an immigrant, a devout Christian, and you feared her as much as you loved her, which is to say, as much as you’ve felt anything before or since. At dinner that night, you saw Lloyd’s friendliness with his parents, and you wondered enviously if money, the flow of it, served as some sort of conduit for their ease, and whether you might’ve been more honest with your parents if only there had been money — like a string between paper cups — keeping you tethered.
Return to the boxes. Begin unboxing. The three of you together can rummage through nine stacks of boxes per hour. No need to search through the top boxes — these are your mother’s things. Remind yourself that there is nothing for you to do with her clothes, her records, her wigs.
Drag the boxes you’ve already checked out to the driveway. When passersby slow down, anticipating a sale, wave them pleasantly along.
Find a strange box of clear liquor, and, because you’ve never known your father to be a drinker, ask about it. When he explains he’d been gifted the alcohol from your uncle Gaspar, examine the bottles more closely. Recognize the Armenian label. This is arak, a clear, absinthelike liquor. With water, the arak takes on a murky white color. Remember what Uncle Gaspar, at wedding receptions and engagement parties, always called it: aratzi gat, “lion’s milk.”
During the third hour, when Lloyd proclaims he’s found the play, allow yourself a moment of genuine, surprising joy. Your father wants to fact-check the discovery, and when he does, be sure to give each of your hunting partners a dusty high five.
Go inside. Bring along one of the bottles of arak, uncap it, and select three glasses. Find Lloyd and your father sitting in the backyard at the patio table near the swimming pool. Make a note to mention to Lloyd how pools in the desert don’t mean wealth, and often, because of maintenance, can actually lower a house’s value. Watch the sun set behind the tops of houses. A bright motion-sensor bulb gives enough light to read by, provided someone waves an arm every now and again. Lloyd has spread the manuscript across the patio table, using rocks as paperweights on each sheet. Glance at the title page: Snow Easy Way to Say It. Giggle. Hand out the glasses of lion’s milk, and make a small toast: To Dad, the Shakespeare of Dearborn, Michigan. Touch glasses.