I’ll Give You the Sun(63)
Author: Jandy Nelson

“Ah,” Dad says, grinning. He opens his closet and pulls out a dark blue blazer. “This should do it, just a little snug on me.” He taps his non-existent belly.

I take off my jacket and slip his on. It fits perfectly. I can’t stop smiling.

“Told you,” he says. “Wouldn’t even think of wrestling you now, tough guy.”

Tough guy.

On my way out the door, I ask, “Where’s Mom?”

“Got me.”

Dad and I go to a restaurant on the water and sit by the window. The rain makes rivulets, distorting the view. My fingers twitch to draw it. We eat steaks. He orders a scotch, then another, and lets me have sips. We both get dessert. He doesn’t talk about sports or bad movies or loading the dishwasher properly or weird jazz. He talks about me. The whole time. He tells me that Mom showed him some of my sketchpads, he hoped that was all right, and he was blown away. He tells me he’s so excited I’m applying to CSA and that they’d be idiots not to take me. He said he can’t believe his one and only son is so talented and that he can’t wait to see my final portfolio. He said he’s so proud of me.

I’m not lying about any of this.

“Your mother thinks you’re both shoo-ins.”

I nod, wondering if I heard wrong. Last I knew, Jude wasn’t applying. I must’ve heard wrong. What would she even submit?

“You’re really lucky,” he says. “Your mom has so much passion for art. It’s contagious, isn’t it?” He smiles, but I can see his inside face and it isn’t smiling at all. “Ready to switch?”

I reluctantly lift my chocolate decadence to trade for his tiramisu.

“Nah, forget it,” he says. “Let’s get two more. How often do we do this?”

Over our second dessert, I gear up to say that the parasites and bacteria and viruses he studies are as cool as the art Mom studies, but then decide it’ll sound lame and phony, so I motor through the cake instead. I start to imagine people around us thinking to themselves, “Look at that father and son having dinner together, isn’t that nice?” It blows me up with pride. Dad and me. Buddies now. Chums. Bros. Oh, I’m feeling supernaturally good for once—it’s been so long—so good I start blabbing like I haven’t since Brian left. I tell Dad about these basilisk lizards I just found out about that can move so fast across the surface of water, they can go sixty-five feet without sinking. So Jesus isn’t the only one after all.

He tells me how the peregrine falcon hits speeds of 200 miles per hour in a dive. I raise my eyebrows in a wow to be polite, but hello, who doesn’t know that?

I tell him how giraffes eat up to seventy-five pounds of food a day, sleep for only thirty minutes a day, are not only the tallest animal on earth, but have the longest tail of any land mammal and tongues that are twenty inches long.

He tells me about these tiny microscopic water bears they’re thinking about sending into space because they can survive temperatures ranging from minus-328 Fahrenheit to 303 Fahrenheit, can cope with 1,000 times the radiation it would take to kill a human, and can be revived after being dried out for ten years.

For a moment, I want to kick the table over because I can’t tell Brian about the water bears in space, but then I climb right out of it by making Dad guess what the most deadly animal is to humans and totally stumping him after he goes for all the usual suspects: hippos, lions, crocs, etc. It’s the malaria-carrying mosquito.

We go back and forth exchanging facts about animals until the bill comes. It’s the most fun we’ve ever had together.

When he’s paying the check, I blurt out, “I didn’t know you like animal shows!”

“What do you mean? Why do you think you like them? That’s all you and I did together when you were little. Don’t you remember?”

I. Don’t. Remember.

I remember, It’s a sink-or-swim world, Noah. I remember, Act tough and you are tough. I remember every heart-stomping look of disappointment, of embarrassment, of bewilderment from him. I remember: If your twin sister wasn’t my spitting image I’d swear you came about from parthenogenesis. I remember the 49ers, the Miami Heat, the Giants, the World Cup. I do not remember Animal Planet.

When he pulls into the garage, I see Mom’s car’s still not there. He sighs. I sigh too. Like I’m catching him now.

“I had this dream last night,” he says, turning off the engine. He makes no move to get out of the car. I settle into my seat. We are so totally buddies now! “Your mother was walking through the house, and as she did, everything fell off the shelves and from the walls: books, pictures, knickknacks, everything. All I could do was follow her around the house trying to put everything back in its place.”

“Did you?” I ask. He looks at me, confused. I clarify, “Did you get everything back where it belonged.”

“Don’t know,” he says, shrugging. “Woke up.” He glides a finger around the steering wheel. “Sometimes you think you know things, know things very deeply, only to realize you don’t know a damn thing.”

“I totally get what you mean, Dad,” I say, thinking about what happened with Brian.

“You do? Already?”

I nod.

“Guess we have lots of catching up to do.”

I feel a springing in my chest. Could Dad and I be close? Like a real father and son? Like it could’ve been all along if I’d flown off his shoulder that day like Jude did? If I’d swum instead of sunk?

“Where the hell is Ralph? Where the hell is Ralph?” we hear and both laugh a little. Then he surprises me by saying, “You think we’ll ever find out where the hell Ralph is, kid?”

“I hope so,” I say.

“Me too.” A comfortable silence follows and I’m marveling at how supernaturally cool Dad’s being when he says, “So, you still seeing that Heather?” He nudges me. “Cute girl.” He gives my shoulder a squeeze of approval.

This sucks.

“Kind of,” I say, then add with more conviction because I have no choice, “Yeah, she’s my girlfriend.”

He gives me that dumb you-sly-dog expression. “We’re going to have to have a little talk, me and you, aren’t we, son? Fourteen years old.” He cuffs me on the head just like that sculptor did his students. And that gesture, plus the word son again, the way he keeps saying it: Yeah, I had no choice about Heather.