Page 12 of Diamond Ring
“I’ll get plates.” Alex goes into the kitchen, gathers a butter knife and dishes. He finds a box of dusty herbal tea that Sofia gave him, then boils water in a pot on the stove.
The tea goes in mugs, along with some whiskey. They sit on Alex’s couch, Jake blowing on his tea to cool it and encouraging Alex to eat the Danish, which is overly sweet and kind of perfect. “What do we do with the candles?” Alex asks.
“They, uh, burn for the whole day for someone’s yahrzeit—their death anniversary. We don’t have to.” Like Jake’s somehow made him uncomfortable.
Alex has a long barbecue lighter for his building’s rooftop grill. He gets it, lights the candle. The wax around the wick begins to puddle. “Are we supposed to say anything?” Because he knows vaguely that Judaism involves prayers for various things, though he’s never heard Jake say one.
Jake says something in what Alex assumes is Hebrew, thechof various words in his throat. They stand there, shoulder to shoulder, like they did in the dugout, watching the candle flick and sputter.
“Did you want to do something else?” Jake asks.
Alex shrugs, because he doesn’t know what else there is to do. That if Jake wasn’t here, he might have a conversation with his walls and pretend like his dad is listening. “What do you normally do?”
“Eat, light a candle. Maybe talk about the person who died. We could, if you wanted.”
His hand brushes Alex’s, the edge of his pinky against his, and Alex feels momentarily like they’re encased in a thin bubble of glass away from the rest of the world. “Okay.”
He sits on one end of the couch and Jake sits on the other. “What was your dad’s name?” Jake asks.
Dad. Because that’s what Alex thinks of him as. “Evan. My cousin Evie’s named for him.” He takes the picture of his dad from his wallet, the edges of it cracked. “I should probably scan this or something.” He holds it up for Jake.
“You look alike.”
“Yeah, everyone says. Same nose, I guess.”
“Same expression.” Jake leans over, not touching the picture. “Like you’re gonna take on the world.”
“I don’t—” Alex’s voice gets caught in his throat. “I don’t remember a lot about him. I was eight when he died. They put me in foster care, even after my aunt wanted to adopt me. It took a while for them to convince the court I was fine living with her.”
Jake nods, edges of his mouth turning down.
“It was confusing, I guess,” Alex says. “My dad was there, then he was gone. All of a sudden, I had to pack my stuff up and live with strangers. They were fine. My aunt sends them holiday cards.”
A hard few months that seemed like a blur and like they went on forever—the funeral and the weeks after. How adults seemed concernedabouthim, but few wanted to listentohim when he said he wanted to live in his aunt’s house that felt like a haunted house but with more toys.
Jake hasn’t asked the question that everyone else usually does, one Alex wants to answer because he hasn’t—how Alex ended up with only his dad in the first place. “They found my mom after he died. She waived parental rights.”
Something that feels pried out of him to admit, even now. How he stopped talking entirely for a few months when it happened. How some days it feels like he never started up again. He brushes his eyes with his hands.
A box of tissues sits on his coffee table. Jake leans over and extracts a few. He hands one to Alex, but keeps one for himself, wadding it into his fist.
“He liked to sing,” Alex says. “That’s what I remember. He was a guitarist. He’d sing in the car, and I knew the words to every song the way some kids know Raffi or whatever.” He takes a long breath. “We used to play this game where we’d make up lyrics to songs on the radio. I guess he got distracted or I distracted him, singing. The car skidded on ice. They said it wasn’t anyone’s fault. But I don’t know.”
It feels both better and worse to talk about, without the patI’m so sorryand change of subject most people do. From outside, traffic, the distant call of car horns. Alex could put on music to fill the silence, something his dad loved, songs he knows all the words to almost two decades later. He wipes his face again, and breathes, and he might wish he was alone, without Jake witnessing this, except for how it feels easier with him here.
“Did he have a good voice?” Jake asks finally.
“No, he was terrible. I can’t sing, either. I got that from him.”
“I thought you said you were in a band.”
“Not agoodband.”
Jake laughs, then blows his nose.
“Mostly I remember snippets. Like you’re not purposefully remembering anything as a kid, you’re just being a kid. Then it’ll hit me, some smell or the way the light goes a certain way, and all of a sudden I miss him.”
“I know how that is,” Jake says. “A friend of mine died. When I was in high school. It’s not the same as a parent. Sometimes I feel like I can’t remember him at all. Like I’ve spent longer with him gone than when we were friends. His parents said it was a hunting accident. But he wasn’t happy. Not like being all goth or punk or whatever”—he waves a vague hand in Alex’s direction—“just unhappy. Sorry, this was supposed to be about you.”
