Now, when Lloyd pushes open the bedroom door and peeks in on you, pretend to sleep. Wait until he steps inside, and then say no. He doesn’t say anything, but comes closer. He bends down to kiss you. Smell the black licorice on his breath — lion’s milk. When he asks why you don’t want him, realize you don’t know the answer yourself. Do not lie. Do not improvise. Simply wait for him to step back until he’s out of the room and the door arcs slowly to a close.
In the morning, wake early and find, in the kitchen, a pot of coffee already brewed. Pour yourself a mug. At the counter, look out the window onto the backyard, and see your father and Lloyd at the edge of the pool, acting.
Join them outside and mumble a good morning. Your dad tells you to take a seat — they’re at the climactic scene. Ask how late they stayed up the night before, and feign surprise when they say, in unison, they still haven’t gone to bed. Listen to them recite lines they’ve spent all night revising.
“Love transcends language” is just another way to say love’s a bad listener.
But can love be frozen and thawed? [TEDDY picks up a fistful of snow.] Like snow?
And all this time I’ve been standing out here, freezing half to death, my life was driving right at me in a 1969 Buick LeSabre.
Ignore that these fragments of dialogue fall short of great literature. Instead, choose to love them. Not the particular words, really, and definitely not their delivery, but the simple fact that they exist. Love that you can walk out onto your back patio and spot the two most important men in your life building something together. Think, again, of your mother. Imagine her sitting next to you at the edge of the pool, feet in the water. For the first time, admit to yourself that you thought less of her for being religious, superstitious, for having an accent. You were ashamed of her. Regret that you were ashamed of her.
And know that clichés in English weren’t clichés to her. Know she would’ve been able to do gracefully what you’re working so hard to do now: love.
Realize you’re not capable. You may have been able to love Lloyd in San Francisco, but you can’t love him here. You can love only one man in the Antelope Valley, and Robert Karinger is gone. He always treated you like a little brother — someone to mock, someone to protect, someone to instruct. Bringing Lloyd home has helped you see that you’ve been using him to fill that role. Decide to break the pattern. Decide you don’t need an instructor. In fact, start instructing yourself, Daley. Instruct yourself.
Get Lloyd alone, away from your father and the script. Tell him the truth: you need to stay home for a while. When he says he doesn’t understand, say nothing. Grief transcends language, too.
When your father comes into the living room to find you and Lloyd crying quietly on the couch, let him do the talking. He’s put aside his discomfort and has treated Lloyd like a son. He’s earned this monologue.
“When Gaspar sent me that case of arak after your mom passed, he attached a note. He said he’d been lying to me all these years. Apparently, when I’d given that answer of mine about my father and my vow never to drink, Gaspar knew I’d be doomed. How could I handle a wife if I couldn’t handle a single drink? So he improvised. He told his father and the rest of the men that I’d given a speech about courage. About how I was already a brave man, and that my children — his grandchildren — would grow to be the smartest and strongest and bravest Armenians in the world, raised not on lion’s milk but on Lena’s milk.”
He lets out a single laugh of nostalgia that moves all the air in your lungs up to your throat. This is the most your father has ever said to you without asking a question. Now that your mother is gone, he has become the verbose, explicit man you’d wanted so badly as a boy. Now you have taken on the role he’d played, the man who asks questions, the man whose job it is to listen.
“Your uncle Gaspar lied,” he continues, “and that’s the only reason I was allowed to marry your mother. You owe your entire life, son, to the greatest lie ever told. And I guess that’s what my old play, or Lloyd’s novel, or any kind of fiction is trying to be — a lie that lets love exist. But I was a kid when I wrote that damn thing, and as much fun as I’ve had revisiting it, the kind of love between your mom and me was beyond what a kid — even a sensitive, tuned-in kid like me, like you two — could’ve got down on paper. A lie might allow love, but it can’t create it.”
After a moment, Lloyd wipes his eyes with his terrier scarf and asks, half crying and half laughing, if he can take the case of arak back with him to San Francisco. Laugh-cry along with him. When you help him load his suitcase and the box of liquor into the rental, arrange to meet in a few days or a week. Once back together in the city, you will get to the work of love. For now, tell him you need some time at home with your dad, who shakes Lloyd’s hand and tells him to drive safe in the same way he used to tell you: Stay above your tires.
At night, after Lloyd’s gone, your father falls asleep in his favorite recliner. Remember the reason — the false one — you are here. You almost forgot, didn’t you? Find your mother’s old car keys hanging by a pink plastic lanyard by the door, and take them into your bedroom. Take care to be quiet. Slowly, slide open the bedroom window and, as you did a million years ago, heave yourself through.
Feel the warm night cup your elbows and pad the back of your neck. Get into your mother’s old Corolla, and count it as a blessing to hear the engine start on the first try. Before you know if your father’s heard you, take off.
By the time you make it to the play, they’re in the third act. Ramón and Julio have just awoken. They argue about what type of bird is outside their window. Be sure to look around to count a surprising number of people. Many seats are still open, but many — more than you’d have guessed — are filled. Understand maybe a quarter of what is said onstage, and piece together the rest. Most of the play you remember from high school, when star-crossed love felt not only real but inevitable, too. Stop thinking so much and listen to the actor playing Ramón as he says something about wanting to stay in bed with Julio. He doesn’t care if the guards barge in. “Ven, muerte, y bienvenido,” he says, preferring death to leaving. Fool, you think. You will leave and you will die. There is no choice to be made.
SHELTER
We each carried a plastic grocery bag and a club. Karinger’s was an old 3-wood — so old, it was actually made out of wood, except for a little metal plate across the top of the head that had the number 3 painted on it in red. Mine was an impossibly long 2-iron that had a face as flat as a ruler. Karinger said even pros couldn’t use it right. Sometimes when the wind was low and if I got a ball that wasn’t cracked or yellowed, I could hit it pretty well. Problem was, the only golf balls we found in the desert by the old course had been lost there for a while. Some looked so old, they seemed just as natural as the California junipers. Good white golf balls were so rare, Karinger made me feel bad for using them. “We can sell them,” he’d say, but we never did.
We’d been ball-hunting out there for ten days straight. Karinger said he hadn’t seen anyone on the old golf course in a year. He had the idea to collect balls and take them to the new golf course on the other side of town, where crowds swarmed and the grass was kept nice. With the balls we collected in the desert and the clubs Karinger’s dad left behind, we could hit on the range there for free. It was something to do. The walk was a slog, though, and sometimes I’d pretend I didn’t see balls in the tumbleweeds that I normally would’ve gone for, just because my bag had already gotten so heavy. “I’ll get them tomorrow,” I’d tell myself, but it was always harder to find a ball I’d already found and let go.