Sons (6 page)

“Ouch! That hurt!”

Jan ignored her complaint.

“Hold it right there. You’re not going anywhere until I get some answers.”

As she struggled to free herself from Jan’s hard grip, Amal quickly positioned himself between the retreating woman and the door. At that moment, Jan reached out and pushed a button on a nearby control panel. A shoji screen, hidden in a slot in the wall, rolled out, bisecting the living room, leaving him with Elaine on one side and Amal and the boy on the other. Jan heard the youngster’s voice for the first time as he yelled, “Aunt Elaine!”

Four

E
LAINE
despised gay men and everything they stood for, rejection of her sagging charms chief among them. She loathed the idea that any handsome man would prefer another man to her. Her emotions alternated between hate and envy. In moments of reflection, she would jokingly admit to herself,
Well, one out of the seven deadly sins ain’t so bad.

She once confided to her therapist, “As much as I hate the picture of two guys together, what really galls me is they can be happy. Those sick bastards are actually happy! You know that’s just crazy!”

That Jan could be happy while her sister died a broken woman made Elaine furious.

She whirled around at Jan. “You faggot SOB! Let me outta here!”

“Believe me, Elaine, I want you out as soon as possible, but not until I get answers, so sit down!”

Elaine frantically looked for a way out. The living room door lay a few tantalizing steps beyond the paper wall that held her prisoner. Instinctively, she knew a breakout, however easy it looked, was bound to fail. She flopped onto a low bench in the center of the sparsely furnished space, scowled at Jan, and said, “Make it quick.”

As she waited for Jan to speak, a tense calm settled between them. Elaine stroked the sleek blue silk fabric on which she sat, resenting its luxury, luxury she envied with every inch of her soul.

Jan watched the woman, detesting her even more than he had before she stepped over the threshold of his home. Sweat poured down his back, rolling a warm creek into the waistband of his shorts.
God, I wish I’d finished
that
drink!

“Right,” he said. “Now, start at the beginning.”

Elaine craned her neck to look at her onetime brother-in-law.

“What’s to begin, Jan? It’s plain to a blind man. Angela was pregnant when you walked out on her. Colin’s your son. Just look at him, all pale and blond. He looks like he was picked out of your ass, for God’s sake!”

Jan thought,
Colin. My son’s name is Colin.

He liked it. As far as he knew, no one on either side of their families had that name. There’d be no unhappy associations to dog him or his son.

“I wish I had known. I wish I had been with her when she named him,” he muttered.

Elaine widened her eyes in mock sympathy. “Oh, poor, poor Jan. Well, life’s just tough all round! Huh?”

Eyeing the ebony lath and rice paper wall, she asked, “Can he hear us?”

“Not if we speak in a normal tone, but if you’ve noticed, you haven’t been doing that.”

Elaine shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. He knows the story anyway.”

“What story?” Jan asked. He felt as if his stomach were tying itself into a fancy knot, much like the one he needed to tie at his Boy Scout initiation.

“How you married my sister under false pretenses and then left her without a backward glance. He knows all about your prostitute past and all the men who’ve had you. Lucky for him he’s a red-blooded boy. No queer shit for him. We all saw to that!”

Elaine waited silently for the outburst any man would make, even a fag.

Dazed, Jan walked to the wide window and peered out at the silver-capped black water of the Delaware River.

How could this happen. Fourteen, almost fifteen years, and I didn’t know. Not even a hint. They cheated me out of years with my son. Rotten bastards! I could wring their lousy necks. Well, I’ve got him now!

Jan was not a violent man, far from it, but if any time was ripe for murder, it was now!

“Where’s Angela?” he whispered as he stared out into the darkness.

Elaine shook her head at Jan in disbelief.

“She’s dead, of course! Do you think you’d get your hands on Colin if she wasn’t?”

Jan hung his head and stood still. Once again, Angela’s voice filtered back to him. Not the angry voice of loss and despair, but the fresh, sweet murmur of their early days. He shook off the memory. Now was not the time—later perhaps, when, or if, Colin asked him about his relationship with his mother.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Where, umm, I mean how….”

Elaine frowned at Jan. She hated retelling the story, but if it would get her out of Jan’s sight, she could do it one more time.

“Angela was with Mom and Dad at the cabin on Thunderclap Mountain. Some idiot forest ranger started what they call a backfire to burn out underbrush. Of course, the fire got out of hand. By the time the fools realized what was happening, it was too late. No one made it out.”

Jan pulled up a chair, sat, and leaned forward.

“What about Colin? Where was he when all this was going on?”

Elaine glanced back at the closed shoji screen and lowered her voice.

“He was on his way up there for the weekend with a neighbor and her son when the state police turned them back. Colin was hysterical for days. After the funeral, I took him in, but it was supposed to be only temporary. I’ve had him for six months now, Jan, and I’ve got a life that doesn’t include a kid, not even him.”

Jan slipped his hands under his thighs to keep from hitting the woman.

They sat in silence for a while; then Elaine said, “Look, is that all? I have to get back to my hotel. They’re having a midnight champagne party in the penthouse, and I’ve got a taxi outside with the meter running!”

A New Year’s Eve party. So that’s what brought her out in a blizzard, not the boy,
Jan thought, as he tried to contain his fury.

“So you’re just going to leave him like an unwanted pet?”

“Yep. He’s not my responsibility, and you’re the only one left, unless you want the state to take him,
Daddy
!”

Jan stood and walked away. He needed to put space between them. He jammed his hands into his pockets and turned to face Elaine.

“I assume you brought his birth certificate with you, his school and medical records, that kind of thing?”

“What? Still don’t believe me?” Elaine sneered.

“Don’t fight me on this, Elaine. I can get what I need myself,” Jan shouted.

Elaine picked up a purse and rummaged through what looked more like a trash bag than a woman’s accessory.

“Here, asshole! I brought everything, just so I never have to see your sorry ass again. That is, if it’s all right with you!”

“Oh yeah!” Jan sneered.

Elaine stood and flung the documents on a side table. They slid off, splashing onto the polished oak floor. She stood, unsure if she should retrieve the papers and hand them to Jan. Confused, she turned to make her way out but realized once again the shoji wall blocked her retreat.

She asked, “How the hell do I get out of this place?”

Jan walked to the wall and opened a polished bronze door.

“This leads to a hall. There’s an elevator to the outside. Follow the walkway around to the front. You’ll know you went the wrong way if you fall into the river,” Jan said with unmasked sarcasm.

“Bastard! I never liked you!” Elaine spat.

With those parting words, Elaine pushed passed Jan and raced toward the elevator. Jan closed the door, locked it, and went to the security monitor. He watched as Elaine left the building, beating a hasty retreat across the snow-covered ground to a waiting taxi.

“What a pity she had a sense of direction,”
Jan’s devil whispered behind him.

Dismissing the troublesome imp, Jan’s thoughts turned to Colin.
He must believe everyone who should protect him has left him alone. God knows I know that feeling. Alone, with everything familiar ripped away. He didn’t deserve this. Well, at least I know the drill. He won’t have to make the same mistakes I made.

Bending down, Jan retrieved the papers Elaine so carelessly tossed at the table. Sadness swept over him as he realized these few typed lines and scrawled signatures were all he knew about his son, so far. He glanced briefly at the birth certificate and then slipped it and the rest of the papers into a table drawer. He sighed deeply. Behind the shoji screen, not forty feet from where he stood, was his son.

What is he like? Quiet or boisterous, playful or shy, as I was when I was that age, or is he angry? Is he frightened of what life will be like now?

For sure, Jan was afraid. Faced with a situation flung on him without warning, he felt as if his heart had frozen in his breast. He wished he had more time to absorb what all this would mean to him, to Michael, and especially to Colin. If only there was more time.

Five

J
AN
stood, head bowed, before the shoji screen. The events of the past forty minutes attacked him like a virus, sickening his aching heart. Poor Angela. He lifted his hand to the control button, hesitated, and then smashed his palm down. The partition silently retreated into its home in the wall. The living room was empty. Jan called Colin’s name softly, as if the entire event had been a bad dream that any sound might revive. “Hello?”

No answer.

The only place Colin could reasonably be was the kitchen or third floor guest bedroom. Jan knew Amal would never let him roam the house alone or leave on his own.

He headed toward the spiral stairs leading to the second floor of the three-story loft. Stopping in the broad hallway, he turned and walked to the end, where a window offered a panoramic view of the river.

Stray moonbeams jabbed through ragged clouds, turning the water into a glittering black and white ice-covered night. Jan watched the mini-icebergs bash against a red buoy, marking a now indistinct channel in the swollen river. Suddenly, he became aware that his own heart was pounding in rhythm with heaving ice.

“When did it happen?” he wondered aloud.

Jan strained his memory.
Oh, come on. We made love only once in those last six months. I was with her… when? Damn it! When?

His sole memory during those hideous days of fierce words, was Angela’s parting epithet.
You son of a bitch! I hate you!

Jan drove away the sound of his ex-wife’s angry words. Then he remembered. It was the night before he left. He had decided to tell Angela he wanted a divorce. Unaccountably, she was amorous. Why had he agreed to make love? To placate her? One more time for Old Glory? Who could say?

Jan leaned forward, his hands palm down on a long ebony table that stretched below the dark window. Soft light drizzled down through intricate grills set deep into the ceiling. A blast of wind slapped at the window’s thick glass with insolent fury, yet Jan heard nothing. He stared at his reflection in the wood’s highly polished surface.

If I could take that moment back, would I?

There was no answer to ease his mind.

Jan’s angel asked, “
What are you going to say to him? How are you going to explain it all to him without trashing his mother’s memory? He’s only fourteen. He can’t know what it was like married to a woman dominated by alcoholic parents who neither wanted nor liked their second daughter. She needed far more than just an attentive husband. You couldn’t have known that when you married her.”

Jan’s devil said,
“Look, that bitch gave you nothing but two years of hell. Why make her a martyr? Now’s your chance! You’ve got her kid. You can make him into anything you want!”

“Stop it, both of you, and let me think!” Jan shouted at his reflection.

“Effendi?”

Amal had joined Jan in the hallway. Puzzled, the Arab looked around to see if anyone else was there. Jan was not a man given to shouting at walls.

Composing himself as best he could, Jan slowly turned.

“Where’s the boy?”

“I took him upstairs to the guest bedroom. I thought it best for him not to hear the woman. Did I act correctly?”