Page 42 of Center of Gravity
I kicked my feet up on the dashboard and adjusted the air vent to blow on my face. I’d entertained the notion of Tom a couple dozen times, but we’d grown into a solid friendship and his straightness seemed unwavering. He was good fodder for the occasional jerk fantasy, though lately it was images of Rob on top of me that kept populating my spank bank.
“So who was it?” I asked.
“Who was what?”
“You got laid on my birthday, you said. So was she hot? Lukewarm? Beer goggles required?”
“Eh.” Tom ran his fingers along his jaw then down the curve of his throat as if he was giving it some serious thought. His shoulder hitched up. “Just some chick on vacation.” He didn’t offer his usual extensive play-by-play, just put the truck into gear and started us back to the office.
* * *
“You wantme to help you to the dinner table?” I stood in the doorway of Dad’s room, watching him curled over one of the civil war figurines. He had a task lamp trained on his lap where a hardback copy of Ansel Adams photos rested. The paintbrush was tiny in his large hands, and he squinted, even through his reading glasses, but his brushstrokes were careful and patient as he applied paint from the small pots on the side table. He glanced up at me from one corner of his eye.
“Nope, going to pass tonight.”
Mom had already told me he hadn’t left his room all day. Lainey had brought him his pills and ginger ale and he kept the room dark. Even the TV was off.
I moved to the foot of his bed and sat gingerly, trying not to jostle him in case he was queasy. “Who is that?”
“Fella by the name of Jubal Early. Never heard of him until I looked him up today, but he was a Confederate general. Owned one slave in his entire life, had four children out of wedlock but was committed to the cause on the basis of conservatism, regardless. You believe that?” He arched a brow in my direction.
“I guess.” I shrugged. “People do all kinds of dumb shit if that’s the only thing they really know.”
“See, that’s something I’ve always admired about you, Alex. You think about things. Really think about them in ways I never did.” Dad cleaned his brush and dipped it into the red pot next. “Growing up, I always thought things were the way they were and that was that. Hopefully you were good at something, or you could learn to be if you worked hard enough. You put food on the table, that was the point. Everything was shifting, though. I was hardly aware of it. We were too broke, too country, too stuck in the survival loop to think bigger, I guess.” He trailed off and I was reluctant to interrupt the quiet peace of his brush moving back and forth and his mellow voice.
“I don’t want to sound like a broken record, son, but you need to finish school.” His eyes were fierce upon me. We didn’t fall into father-son moments often, but it looked like this was going to be one of them. “Because it’s easy to get stuck in the cycle of just providing and making ends meet. But it’s not a burden you’re supposed to be saddled with right now.”
“Dad—”
“Save your breath. We’re at a point now where—” He hesitated. “You can take out a loan, you can even still work if you want to, if it makes you and your mother feel better. But you need to finish what you started. The world runs on people like me, the ones who show up and work, but it thrives on people like you, who create.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was touched and saddened and uncomfortable all at the same time.
“You create, too.”
“In a limited way, I guess. But there are no limits for you yet, so don’t start creating them now.” He set down the paintbrush and examined the General in the light before touching up a button on the guy’s coat. “I want you to promise me that you’ll finish school, finish your senior project.”
Shit. He’d never straight out asked before and I was absolutely powerless to deny him. I thought of Tom in that moment. I didn’t know his whole story, just little bits he’d dropped here and there. I knew at one point he’d wanted to go to New York and that had fallen through. The only thing he talked about lately was maybe opening a Buffs franchise of his own in the future. My lips compressed and I nodded. “I’ll finish. Way to lay the fucking dad schtick on thick, dude.”
He chuckled and cuffed the back of my neck, pulling me forward to press a kiss into my hairline. “You can take it out on your own kids one day, if you go that route.”
I laughed and edged off the bed. “You want me to bring you anything?”
“A morphine drip, a bottle of tequila, and some dancing girls.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re like a broken record about the dancing girls. What would Mom think?”
“Well, I’m hoping she’d be one of them.”
God, this man. I’d always felt lucky to have parents like mine, who’d been more concerned with who I was than where I wanted to stick my dick. Max’s relationship with his dad had crumbled when he’d come out to him, and Sam’s parents still thought she was just going through a phase because they didn’t believe a thing like bisexual could exist. I’d told Dad I was gay when I was fifteen. I’d been nervous as hell, even if he hadn’t given me a reason to be. We were in the garage, which was where he’d been taking side jobs, building his business whenever he could. I remembered the scent of grease, how he’d wiped his hand with a dirty rag and ended up staining his hands further as I’d dropped to the bench. He’d listened and then, as he had tonight, sat there in thoughtful silence for a long minute before saying, “Well that’s a weight off my shoulders. No worries about becoming a grandfather too soon.” But he’d put his arm around me, stroked my hair, and the tension in my shoulders had eased as I’d leaned against him.
* * *
In the garage that night,I upended four different boxes of other peoples’ cast-offs I’d collected on the job along with one box of old art supplies—including a shit ton of charcoal, pencils, and fine tipped markers—and my carving tools, and fanned it all around me, waiting for inspiration to strike. Before Dad had gotten sick, I’d thought maybe I’d do something with wood carving. Some hyper-realistic renditions of flowers and plant life, meticulously detailed as a kind of commentary on art imitating life, except the medium was also natural.
Now it didn’t appeal to me. I wasn’t someone who believed all art had to be personal, but putting my focus on something impersonal just didn’t feel…right.
Lying on my stomach, my chin on my forearms, I studied my collection, dragging my fingers through it. A peacock feather, a wood carving of a sailor, a watercolor wash that Mrs. Kemper had thrown in the trash pile. There were a few jewel cases from Mrs. Ward. I deconstructed them and put the plastic frame right in front of my eyes, peering through it at all the junk scattered around me. And then I got my idea.