Page 83 of The Story of You

“Legs?”

He nodded. “See?”

He held his glass closer to my eyes, and I watched as wine climbed down the sides of the glass in rivulets. “What does that tell me?”

“Alcohol content and sweetness. Sweeter wines have thicker legs, but so do wines with higher alcohol content.” He inhaled and pulled a sip through pursed lips.

I copied his actions. It felt like a father-son teaching moment even though I was well under the age for alcohol consumption, but when the server returned, he ordered everything instead of allowing me to choose and that brought me back to reality. He didn’t want us to be father and son anymore.

I didn’t do more than wrinkle my nose. I wasn’t going to make a scene in public—Randalls don’t do that.

“Are you still opposed to being a doctor?”

The soothing tones of his voice were like finding an island after years of swimming to exhaustion. I collapsed on the shore.

I took a breath. “I don’t want to be a doctor, but I’d still like to go to school.”

“You know that if you do, you wouldn’t be able to look after a child.”

“I’m not giving up Oliver.”

He kept his expression neutral. I was surprised by the lack of violence, but that didn’t erase the deadly charge of the night.

“I wasn’t suggesting that. I’m wondering if you’ve thought about that. You want to go to school, but how will you with a child?”

I had thought about it, and I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t want to leave Oliver at a daycare. It was hard enough to leave him with Mrs. Brandywine for a night.

“Perhaps when Oliver’s off to school?” I suggested. I liked the thought of Oliver leaving for school just as much, but I would have to find a way to be okay with that.

“Mmhmm. If you can promise me that you’ll still be able to look after our home.” He leaned back as if to watch how those words would settle over me. I knew what they meant.

I’d lost my grip on reality, his voice the only thing tethering me to my body.

“I can do that, Father.”

He looked around. “I think it would be prudent for you to call me Aleksander. I don’t like it shortened as you know.”

I wiped away a tear. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

He nudged the wine glass in front of me. “Drink your wine, Silas. It will calm you down. You’re shaking.”

Of course, I was shaking. I gulped the wine.

ChapterTwenty-Seven

Silas ~ 1986

While I grew anxious, he got sunnier, reminding me of who he was when Mama was alive. I missed her so badly. My heart ached. I cried into the laundry until Oliver noticed.

“Baba, sad?” he said.

I didn’t want him to see me sad.

We went for dinner the next Friday too, but nothing else and it was easy to live in denial. The outings were innocent enough that they could still be construed as father and son bonding rituals.

And maybe they were. It was hard to tell.

One night he came in the door with tote bags filled to the brim with magazines. They turned out to be dated copies of Good Housekeeping and other home-care-type publications. Some were as old as nineteen fifty-five.