Page 23 of Lace

The line took passengers to the wealthier end of the city and had been nicknamed the ‘snob hill bus’ by the same kids in Caleb’s high school who had labelled him a freak.

Once, this ride had been an everyday thing. He’d practically lived on this bus, travelling to and from the school his mother had fought his father tooth and nail to get him into.

His father had been against him going downtown to school. Said it wasn’t fitting for someone of their standing. He could go to private school, like every other kid in their neighbourhood. But Caleb had wanted music, and if the downtown school might not have had much else to recommend it, it had Mr. Amos Bratcher, the best piano teacher in the city, and Caleb had wanted to learn from him.

The man had never taught private lessons, though Caleb knew his father had tried to buy the older man’s services for his son. Mr. Bratcher had never agreed. He’d told the Drivers Caleb could go to the school and take classes there, for free, like all his other students. If he was good enough, they would discuss things further.

Caleb had been good enough. He was damn good, and Bratcher had lavished a lot of attention on his growing abilities. Then halfway through high school Caleb had found himself homeless. It had been Mr. Bratcher who’d searched out Caleb’s uncle, long since estranged from his brother and his entire family, and convinced him to take Caleb in.

The teacher had saved his life and nurtured his love of music. In some ways, he’d been the father Robert Driver had never managed to be, despite all his money.

Now, back on that bus, watching the route slip past beyond the muddied, scratched window, Caleb wondered how so much had changed without really altering the feel of the ride at all. Shops he’d known all his life were gone, replaced by cyber cafes and kitchen novelty shops, groceries closed up, their window fronts filled by Asian and Indian restaurants and cellular phone franchises.

Until, of course, the bus left the commercial district and entered the residential area where his father still lived in the house Caleb had grown up in. The streets here were so familiar. There were bylaws—dictating the length of the grass on the lawns, how much flower garden was allowed and what colour the shingles on the roofs could be. It was a neighbourhood filled with houses too big for their lots and stamped with a kind of cookie-cutter sameness that turned Caleb’s stomach. He’d hated it when he was a kid and he still hated it.

The predominant grey-brown monotone, even brightened by afternoon sun, still conveyed a drab, tedious inability to standout, to shine. Caleb had once sworn he would never come back here. And yet, here he was.

Because he had to know.

He got off the bus at the stop two doors down from his father’s house. It didn’t surprise him a bit to note that the front door was still painted basic black, and the front curtains, a soft, sheer white, hung limp, secretive, hiding everything that went on inside that house.

It looked boring. Ordinary. Exactly like all its neighbours. Its one difference was the small rental unit in the basement, through which Caleb had seen dozens of lodgers pass as he’d been growing up.

They had always been handsome, he’d observed, especially when he started being of an age to notice these things. Always handsome, always young. Always very friendly to his parents. Sometimes more so with his mother.

But even in their handsome, friendly, too-knowing way, they had all been the same. Except one, Caleb suddenly realised. One of those now faceless, nameless men had been his father. And he didn’t know if it was amusing or disgusting that the man he’d always thought had sired him had known about and sanctioned the relationship, at least at first.

He settled on the concrete front step of the house, the fringed ends of his scarf slipping rhythmically through his fingers as he caressed it. Cross-dressing seemed almost normal when compared to the rest of his life now, but whereas usually the silky feel of the material served to calm his nerves, today it did nothing for him. Only the bright colours, passing in a never-ending kaleidoscope before his eyes, mesmerised him for a while. The swirling mimicked his thoughts, following his uncle’s revelations as they spiralled in his head in the same non-stop cascade of confusion.

He tried to check his phone for the time as the sun lowered and shone against the garage door and remembered he’d left it behind. It didn’t matter. He was certain he didn’t have long to wait. His father was a creature of habit.

Soon enough, a big, black sedan drifted almost soundlessly up the asphalt drive and stopped in front of the closed door.

Caleb didn’t go to the trouble of getting up as he watched his father exit the car, a wary look on his face.

“Is it true?” Caleb glared up into the sun from where he was seated, not even bothering with a greeting.

His father gently closed the car door and stepped away from the vehicle, apprehension scouring his face clean of every other emotion. “Caleb. What are you doing here?”

“I asked a question.”

“Is what true, son?”

A sneer snaked across Caleb’s face, drawing forth a sharp laugh that he cut off before it could turn hysterical or make him hyperventilate. He’d left home without his puffer, and Levi wasn’t at his side with an extra one in his pocket. He shook himself and brought his attention back to his father. “Funny you should call me that.” He did rise now; glad he could tower over the older man. “Is it true?”

As if startled into motion by Caleb’s own movement, Robert Driver shifted his shoulders, passed his briefcase from one hand to the other and proceeded up the walk towards his front door, keys jingling as he sorted through them for the one that would open his front door. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” His eyes flitted from Caleb’s face, past his shoulder, to the front door of the home Caleb had never missed.

“Don’t bullshit me.”

“Language.”

“Oh, fuck you and your language, asshole,” Caleb snapped. “You don’t get to tell me how to talk. I asked you a fuckingquestion!” He didn’t let his father pass, instead flinging out a hand to grab his arm and stop his progress into the house.

“And I don’t know what answer you want me to give you.” He shrugged off Caleb’s grip.

“The truth, Dad. For once in your miserable, fucked-up life, you can give me the goddamned truth. Because according to Uncle Jase, I shouldn’t even be calling you Dad at all.”

“And we all know how reliable your Uncle Jason is,” Robert muttered.

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