Page 115 of Happy After All

“What does your dad’s house look like?” I ask Nathan as we sit there in front of the house.

“It’s nice,” he says. “He has the lawn cut every week. In fact, he has landscapers. He can afford to keep everything looking great.”

“Do your brothers help him with things? Projects?”

He shakes his head. “They’re busy with their own lives.”

“Have they helped you?”

“They’re busy with their own lives,” he reiterates.

Suddenly I’m just ... over it. Everything.

“It’s awful,” I say. “This isolation. For what? This ... this selfishness. In your case, this idea that a good son looks a certain way. Well, even your father’s good sons aren’t there for him, because they’re self-important just like he is. If they only knew you. Because I started reading your book, Nathan, and it’s amazing. The observations that you make about life in the military ... They’re so compelling.”

He snorts. “People don’t really read for that.”

“I do,” I say. “You’re smart about people. You pay attention to them. You write about them in interesting and compassionate ways, and it says so much about who you are. It is incredibly stupid that your dad doesn’t care about that. You could give your family insight into their own experiences that they probably don’t have.”

He barks a laugh. “They would just say I don’t actually understand because I only served four years.”

“Look what you did with it. Look what you’re doing with it still. You had a woman who loved you. Do they even have that?”

“My brothers are married,” he says.

“Well,” I say. “Still.”

“They have lives that are just like my dad’s,” he says. “My parents were married for forty-five years. I don’t think they knew each other. That’s a really scary thing, Amelia. Maybe you would have stayed with Christopher. If you had a child, maybe he would’ve cheated on you, and you would’ve stayed. Or maybe he would’ve hidden it, or you would have pretended to let him hide it because you didn’t want to break upthe family, because you didn’t want to destroy the facade. You can be married to somebody who doesn’t know you for a very, very long time. I saw that, in my parents’ marriage. People accept the worst kind of bullshit.”

“You’re better off,” I say. “You’re ...”

I start to say that he’shappier. But I’m not sure he is. He’s locked himself away from his family, and that’s a win. Except he’s locked away completely.

Not now, though. Right now, he’s with me.

“Well,” I say. “This is what my mother has. Because she’s alienated her only child. Looking at it ... I honestly just feel sorry for her. I don’t want this. If I have children someday, if I ... have children I actually get to ... raise, I don’t want this. I guess I should be glad I can look at her sad lawn, and her dilapidated house, and I can recognize what it means to not be a mother. I can recognize what I don’t want. I ... I was so lucky last night to get to sit and talk to Alice and Gladys. To get to listen to them share their wisdom with me, because I did not ever get maternal wisdom from this woman. Right now, this is wisdom of a kind. I know what I don’t want. I know who I can’t ever let myself become. I’ve been an observer for so many years. I have the people at the Pink Flamingo. I have to make sure I don’t isolate myself from the people who care for me.”

He looks grave. I realize I’ve stepped on something touchy here.

“People care about you,” I say.

“If they don’t anymore,” he says, “it is definitely my own fault.”

“Nathan,” I say. “You’re not a narcissist. You lost your wife. It’s different.”

“Maybe,” he says. “The end result might be the same, though.” He huffs a laugh. “I’m the crazy guy who lives alone on an island. I will be Old Man Hart before I know it. The kids will be afraid to get a ball off my lawn.”

“Well, they should get off your lawn,” I say.

“I’m sure I’ll be shouting that while shaking my fist in ... Hell, I probably only have ten years.”

Time.

Time just grinds relentlessly on.

And kills the grass and fades the paint. And turns your hair silver. And makes rifts widen. Makes pain turn into a dull ache.

Not now. Not with us.

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