Give & Take (Redbeard Cove #2)

36. Raphael

Chapter 36

Raphael

“ O kay, Doctor Dooknuckle!” Mikey says.

“Doolittle, dumbass,” Charlie says, smacking him on the back of the head.

“Hey, that’s my move,” I say proudly. Charles, the oldest of my four little brothers, has really grown up this year. He’s going into his senior year, and taken over the mantle of wise older brother since I left.

Mostly. He still snorted with laughter when Will, the youngest, accidentally sucked a tapioca pearl up his nostril this afternoon.

I mean, I did too when Will finally managed to shoot it out—it hit a realtor photo on a bus bench we were walking by right on the cheek so it looked like a very unfortunate mole.

“Are they always like this?” Mom asks next to me. We’re at a large table at one of those big family-friendly restaurants off the I-5, halfway between Mom’s place and Dad’s, so nobody is really that concerned by a bunch of rowdy teens, but still, I clap my hands. “Dudes, manners.”

“Sorry,” Junior says.

Mom smiles, not unkindly. John Junior’s the quiet middle child, second youngest. He usually has his nose stuck in a book and is the last person who needs to apologize out of these four.

I love my brothers, but going out to celebrate successfully defending my thesis wasn’t my idea. It was my dad’s, of all people. He was the one who suggested I invite Mom, which is bizarre, since I don’t think they’ve seen each other in close to a decade.

But luckily neither he nor my stepmother are here. Dad called and said he was going to be late, surprise surprise. And his wife has a migraine. Another big surprise.

But it’s fine. I’ve spent my whole life trying to get his attention. What’s one more day without it?

Deanie waddles back from the bathroom, looking weary but beautiful. “My back is killing me,” she complains.

I get up and pull her chair out for her. “I booked you for three consecutive massages back in Vancouver the minute you get home,” I say.

“Don’t forget the postpartum ones too.”

“I would never.” I push her chair in.

I owe Deanie. Massages for life won’t even cut how much I owe her. She spent her vacation time this summer down here in California paying a personal visit to each one of my advisors, using her marketing expertise to sell them on the idea of reading my dissertation and allowing me to defend it all within the space of a month.

“You’re lucky they already loved you or my job would have been a hell of a lot harder. And it was hard as hell,” she told me.

Organizing academics in the summer really was a huge feat. I’d paid Deanie in flights, meals, hotel, and massages for a year.

Or at least I’d tried to. Once I told my whole story to her on the phone a few weeks ago—that I wasn’t messing around with Lana; that I’d fallen for her and was going to rearrange my whole life to try to be with her and the girls, with the very real risk she might still say no—she’d burst into tears. “I don’t know if it’s the hormones or what, but I need to see this win,” she told me.

I know she’d been struggling, having decided to have this baby on her own, and so far away from our family back in Cali. I told her if it was too much she didn’t need to do a thing. But she’d insisted. She loved Lana. But more than that, she loved that I’d “finally found my thing.”

This was a level of sappiness I’d never known in my sister. I could relate.

I wait until after our meal is served to give my little speech, just in case Dad arrives. He doesn’t not until we’re partway through dessert.

At that point, he shows up looking haggard; years older than he did when I saw him last at Easter. His suit’s rumpled, and I can’t help notice his wedding ring is missing.

“Did they—” I whisper to Deanie .

She gives me a dismissive shrug. “I don’t even care anymore.”

Truly, my sister is now even more Zen than I am.

Mom, on the other hand, looks furious. Not that most people could tell. Her face is slack, lips straight. But her hands are tight on the table, her knuckles white. Except, Deanie’s are too. I realize she’s just as upset as Mom, but trying not to show it.

I meet her eye for a moment, to see if she’s okay, and she smiles tightly, encouraging me to go on. Mom nods.

“Thanks everyone for coming,” I say, running my hand over the back of my neck. “And thanks Dad, for…footing the bill,” I say.

It’s one of those jokes with an edge. Because that’s been Dad’s MO for life. Financial support. That’s it.

There was a time I cared about it; that I felt like I’d missed out on having the kind of father-son relationships so many of my friends had. But then the boys had started coming, and I was too busy to care. I got to shower on them the love I never got from him.

Dad’s used to these barbs though. Or so I thought. Right now, the normally stoic, barely-there workaholic who’s apparently down another marriage, looks so pained, I wonder if I truly wounded him.

“Shit, Dad,” I say. “I?—”

But Dad shakes his head. His thinning salt and pepper hair is more salt than pepper now, I notice. Deep lines etch his face. “No. It’s fine.”

Everyone at the table is silent—every single one of the boys; mom, Deanie, and me.

“I almost didn’t come,” he says .

I hate how that feels like a little gut punch, even though it’s obvious. I laugh, but it’s stilted.

“It’s not funny, Raph,” Deanie says. But she’s defending me—I can tell because her eyes are trained on Dad.

“There’s a deal falling through at the office,” Dad says, “and they needed me to sign all these agreements before midnight, or we lose it all.”

His voice, I realize, has a strange note in it. One I’m not sure I’m hearing right.

“Dad are you seriously trying to guilt trip us for being late to Raph’s dinner?” Deanie asks, voicing the anger I didn’t know I was feeling until now.

“No,” he says, looking so taken aback I actually believe him.

“Then what is it?” I ask, my words clipped.

“Your sister,” Dad says. “She called me. Several times. She said you’ve fallen in love with someone, in BC. Said you might not be back here for a long time, that I better come.”

I snap my eyes to Deanie. She’d gone to the bathroom several times earlier in the night. I’d chalked it up to pregnancy.

Deanie’s never stood up for me with Dad, probably because she’s always fought so hard to get him to notice her. But she called him, over and over again. For me. Maybe I don’t only annoy the shit out of her.

“But even though she called me,” Dad says, “I still didn’t come. I figured there’d be another time. There’s always another time.” He laughs, looking down at his hands. Clasping and unclasping them. “I was holding this pen, about to sign my name. There was this assistant in front of me with this great big stack of agreements, and each one of them was… peppered with those little colored tabs on them. You know, ‘sign here’ and all that. But I had to read everything first. And each tab—” Dad looks at me. Then at Deanie. And then at each of his younger boys in turn.

A sound escapes him, like a little puff of air.

He’s crying . Our father. Crying.

He takes a bracing breath. “I was looking at those tabs, still irritated by all those phone calls.” He glances at Deanie, an apology in his eyes. “And I understood. Like a punch to the goddamned face.”

The younger boys snicker.

“Hey!” Charlie whispers. “Shh.”

“Each tab,” Dad continues “is like all the parts in a life you’re supposed to be at. All the parts I managed to show up for because I knew I couldn’t miss those, you know? The holidays. The birthdays. The graduations. But those tabs…” Once again he schools his features. “They?—”

“How we all doing here?” The server, a young, chipper guy wearing a hat with one of those motorcycle rotors on top and a pair of plaid suspenders, comes by with absolutely zero timing. It would be hilarious if Dad didn’t look like he’d been shot.

The waiter honks the clown nose inexplicably pinned to his right suspender.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “Our father—he’s kind of having a moment. ”

“Maybe you could bring him a hamburger or something?” Charlie says, helpfully.

The server seems to register all of us for the first time, his face dropping into horror. “Oh my, I?—”

“Not your fault,” I assure him.

“Hamburger good,” Dad says like a caveman.

The boys laugh again. Even Charlie smiles this time. They’re not as bothered by all this, I realize. And when I look at Deanie, her eyes are soft as she looks at me.

Because of me. They had a replacement dad.

The kids whisper as the server hurries away.

Mom speaks up for the first time, cutting them off. “Keep going.”

Dad looks over at her, and then he does start to cry. Tears spill from his eyes like a baby’s. “Oh Miriam,” he says.

But Mom shakes her head. She looks pointedly to me. “This is our son’s night, John.”

“You were saying?” Deanie says.

“Colored tabs?” Junior adds helpfully.

Dad grabs a napkin, mopping at his face. “Right.” He tucks it in his breast pocket, where it immediately falls out and onto the floor. “The point is, our lives—those are the rest of the documents. All that substance, all the special, minuscule moments—those are the notes and clauses. And by going straight for the tabs—I missed them all. With all of you.”

He looks at his six children in turn, each of us sober again.

“But most of all you, Raphael.” Dad turns to me, wringing his big hands again. “And that’s because you were your mother’s son. You treated her like she walked on stars. And I couldn’t handle that. I was—” he takes a shaky breath. “I saw the way you took after her. How you noticed all the pretty little things in life. How you’d make a day of counting sidewalk cracks and learning the life story of the bagger at the grocery store. I didn’t know how to…handle you.”

“Handle?” Mom says, breaking her silence. “John. All we wanted was for you to see the joy we saw. We wanted to share the pieces of our lives that overlapped with yours.”

“I thought I wasn’t good enough for that,” he barks. “I wasn’t charming or brilliant or kind. I couldn’t make Deandra smile the way you could.”

Deanie’s chin wobbles.

“I couldn’t make your mother laugh the way you did,” he says to me. “Or comfort her when she cried. All I knew was how to work to support you all. How to teach you all that providing for a family is the only way to show them love, because that’s all I knew.”

Mom opens her mouth again, but Dad shakes his head. “And that’s on me. I missed out on what’s clearly a most remarkable life, Raphael. On six remarkable lives. All because I was too focused on the tabs.”

For a moment, silence hangs over the table as this settles. I look at my dad, my head spinning. I can’t decide whether to be happy or pissed with him that it took him until now to figure this all out, when none of us are little kids anymore. It could go either way.

Instead, I let it all go. I see him for the sad, lonely man he made himself be, and I take in the goodness he created. The seven other people at the table who love each other, in one way or another. The brothers, who are as well-adjusted as I could have hoped.

Deanie, who’s going to do right, I know, by her own child.

And Mom. Mom, who looks at me and smiles so softly I feel my own tears backing up behind my eyes.

“Thank you,” I say to Dad. Maybe he doesn’t get forgiveness just yet, but I can be an adult and acknowledge this moment. “For coming here and saying that.”

Dad still looks morose. He knows it’ll take more than one impassioned speech to walk back the damage—maybe more than is possible to make up for. But I think he’s hating himself hard enough right now without needing anything else from me.

“Congratulations, son. Whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it exactly right.”

The server comes back then, teeth bared like he’s approaching a wild animal. “Am I interrupting?” he says.

“No,” I say, my throat thick. My dad’s eyes are still on me. “You’re all good.”

I decide to wait to tell everyone my own news, that I’m not coming back home to California. One bombshell tonight is enough. I’ll tell Mom and Deanie back at Mom’s place, where I’m staying. Deanie will roll her eyes but be happy I’m closer, I think. Mom will cry but pretend not to. I’ll start working on her to move too, maybe.

Outside, I see my father walking, head down, toward his SUV.

“Dad,” I say. He pauses, shoulders still slumped .

I reach out and shake my father’s hand.

I wish him the best of luck in his life moving forward. I also thank him for being a Canadian citizen—Deanie and I have dual citizenship thanks to him. And since I don’t know when the next time I’ll see him will be, I tell him the thing I’ve always wanted to say. The thing I learned when reading all those classics and philosophers, that I’ve held as a tenet my whole adult life.

“It’s not too late,” I tell him at the door of the restaurant. “To be something different.”

Dad’s jaw is tight, his eyes filled with sorrow.

“There’s a Chinese proverb I read once,” I tell him, and I see him bracing himself. “Don’t worry, it’s not bad. It’s that the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The next best time is right now.”

Dad blinks.

“It’s never too late to be the dad you wanted to be,” I say.

Then I look pointedly at his other sons, currently shoving themselves around the parking lot. I know they still need him in a way I don’t anymore.

“Thank you, Raph,” he says, his voice rough. “You’re going to be the best father there is.”

For a moment, I hesitate. I want to say I already am. But I’m not there yet.

Instead, I nod, my throat prickly. “Bye, Dad.”

Back in my car, which Charlie doesn’t know is going to become his after he drives me to the airport tomorrow, I don’t turn on the ignition. Instead, I pick up my phone.

While my first instinct is to call Lana—always Lana—right now, it’s not her I need to speak to about fatherhood. Not yet, anyway. Instead, I search for a number I put into my phone back that first night Lana laughed for me. Really laughed. The moment I knew for certain I was a fucking goner for her, and this would have to be dealt with.

The person on the other end picks up on the second ring. “Yeah?”

My skin goes prickly at the sound of his voice, but I remind myself I’m a mature adult.

“Hey, Mike. It’s Raphael. Do you have a few minutes?”

The next afternoon, as my plane circles over the Pacific, positioning itself for a landing in Vancouver, I feel filled with hope.

And longing. Fuck. I miss Lana and the girls so much my chest feels hollowed out.

From here I’ll drive up the coast, taking the ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Swan River, and from there, the forty minute coastal highway up to Redbeard Cove.

Cal did the reverse just this morning for a business trip, and he said he’d leave his truck for me in the short term parking lot to take home. When I argued I was leaving him without transport, he said he was happy. “Gives me an excuse to take the seaplane back to the Cove.”

The truck is perfect, because it solves the problem of the special guest I’m picking up along the way.

And it’s not fucking Mike. Initially, my thought had been to ask him on our call last night if I could stop into his office for a chat before I headed back up the coast. He’d been so perturbed by my call, though, that I’d spilled it all right then.

I told him Lana and I were together. That I wasn’t sure what exactly was going to happen, but that I was in it for the long haul. And we needed to talk about what that would mean for the two of us.

“I’m not looking to replace you, Mike,” I told him. “But I will if you don’t step up. And I do want to be some kind of father to your girls.”

It wasn’t a threat. It was a call to Jesus moment for him—I hope. We agreed to have coffee the next time he was in Redbeard Cove, which I see from the handful of texts popping up as we taxi into the gate he cleared his calendar for the week after next.

I swipe that away, feeling lighter about the other person I need to talk to. I text her as the plane pulls into its spot, giving her my ETA at her place in the city to the chorus of clinking seatbelts being removed.

She gives me a thumbs up.

Except when I reach the short-term parking forty minutes later after customs and baggage and a bumpy-ass shuttle ride, I freeze. I check the number on the pavement against the parking slip Cal took a picture of. It’s a match. Only Cal’s truck isn’t here. Something else is.

“What the hell, Cal?” I mutter.

When I text him, there’s no response. I call him and go straight to voicemail. He must be in transit. I try a few more times before giving up and entering a different number.

She picks up on the first ring. “Hello Raphael.”

It’s unnerving, how similar her voice is to her daughter’s.

“Lori, Hi.” I say after getting over the shock of her voice. “Nice to finally put a voice to the emails and texts.”

“You too.”

I scrape a hand over my hair, squinting at all the chrome in front of me. “Listen, there’s a bit of a hiccup.”

“What do you mean?”

“Uh, the vehicle I’ve got here—it only has two wheels.”

“That boy left you a bicycle?”

I nearly cough. “A Yamaha. But possibly just as unlikely to get us both up to Redbeard Cove.

“I’m so sorry, he said he was bringing the truck. He must have changed his mind at the last minute. I should have said?—”

“Have you got your license?”

“My motorcycle license? Yeah, I drove one for years. Nearly gave my mother a heart attack.” Regularly. I felt so bad for her—she called me so many times sobbing every time she heard of any kind of accident involving a bike I’d eventually given mine up. It was fun, but not worth prematurely aging my mom.

“Are there two helmets?” she asks.

I pause. “Lori…”

“Are there two helmets, Raphael?”

“Yes, but?—”

“Then, I don’t see the problem.”

I shut my mouth, trying not to smile. She’s straight to the point, just like her daughter .

“Lori. You’re telling me you’re okay with riding on the back of a motorbike all the way up to Redbeard Cove?”

“Honey, you should have seen the vehicles I’ve ridden in over the past year. With women in labor, no less. A motorcycle with a handsome young man will be a treat. Plus the highway up there is gorgeous.”

She’s right, it is. It hugs the coast in winding curves all the way to the ferry, where it does it again to Redbeard Cove.

I do a calculation in my head—Lori’s not exactly elderly, she’s only 56. 57 tops. I grin and say, “Okay, then, we’re back on. See you in thirty minutes.”