Page 60 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
Patrick wants to know why, of the two and a half decades of memories he has of Michael, it’s the dumb, mundane, slightly embarrassing ones that hurt the most. The other night he’d dreamed that he and Michael were sitting around, Michael whining about an overcooked burger while he stole all Patrick’s fries. “Pat.Pat. Are you listening to me? Patpatpat. It’scharcoal.” He’d woken up, remembered, and the whole next day felt like he was unfolding that telegram for the first time. How is a man supposed to sleep when he has that waiting for him?
He has an inkling that his grief might stay fresh if he keeps brushing aside every awful thought that occurs to him. Maybe, if he made himself think about how much he misses his brother, and how he’d started missing his brother long before he went to Vietnam, then he’d be less torn up when that kind of thought shows up out of the blue. But when he tries to think about it, everything in his mind slams shut.
Still. He can do something.
“Right before the two of you started dating,” he says, his voice steadier than he expects it to be, “he couldn’t shut up about you.” At that point, Patrick knew what was going to happen, but had no idea if Susan and Michael knew. They’d all been living in New York, Patrick on Astor Place, Susan on MacDougal Street, Michael finishing up at Columbia. “Once, he said, ‘You know what I really like about Susan’s music? It’s just socatchy.’”
Susan gasps and pulls away to stare at him. “He didn’t.”
“Hand on a bible,” Patrick says.
“You never told me!”
“I wanted you to keep liking him!”
“He had such a tin ear.”
“I think he wanted to say something nice about you, and catchy was legitimately the best compliment he could pay music.”
“Oh my god,” she says, incredulous. “What a dope.”
They both seem to realize, at the same time, that they won’t be able to mock Michael to his face. Susan opens another box of tissues. It’s too much for Patrick to expect some kind of catharsis after telling one anecdote. Nearly five months of stomping on practically every thought about Michael might have broken some part of him.
But now he can think about that one conversation, how open and hopeful and lovestruck Michael had been, how it had taken all Patrick’s self-control not to laugh in his face. He can hold that memory in his mind, and that has to be worth something.
18
Patrick’s not sure he can take the sight of people lighting fireworks and being festively patriotic, and he doubts Susan will be in the mood for that either, so his big plan for the Fourth of July is to draw the blinds, close the shop, and spend the day watching whatever they can get on Channel 13.
Nathaniel has a better idea. “Let’s go to the beach.”
“It’s supposed to rain tomorrow,” Susan says, checking the paper.
“Well, it’ll be that much less crowded, then,” Patrick says. Nathaniel catches his eye and gives him a minuscule nod, and Patrick catches on: Nathaniel wants to get Susan out of the city, someplace new and different where she won’t be tempted to turn on the television and see footage of either parades or flag-draped coffins.
Patrick hasn’t been to the beach since 1962. Susan was still living in New York. Michael had just graduated college and was working a summer job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and sleeping on the couch in Patrick’s first apartment, an illegal loft conversion. This was right before Michael and Susan got together, and he remembers it as the summer he had to watch two intelligent people exchange longing glances and come up with dumb pretexts for seeing one another.
What he mostly remembers from that summer was that they’d both asked for his permission.“I’m not secretly in lovewith you,” Susan said. “I’m not working through my feelings for you by falling in love with your much better-looking younger brother. Don’t flatter yourself.” Patrick had said that he loved the idea of his two favorite people being together, and he’d meant it.
Michael bluntly said that he was in love with Susan but wouldn’t do anything about it if it bothered Patrick. Patrick repeated exactly what he told Susan, then added that it definitely wouldn’t be a problem for him, as he wasn’t interested in women anyway. And then everything went to hell. Maybe Patrick just hasn’t met the right girl yet. Doesn’t Patrick want to have a family? What if he changes his mind? Isn’t he worried about getting arrested?
At that last question, Patrick had spat that it was too late to worry about that, and told him about the raid, about his aunt and uncle refusing to post bail, about how he didn’t know how to go home after that. Patrick expected—he didn’t know what he expected, but he’d been keeping that secret for years, never sure which would be worse: letting Michael think he’d abandoned him for no reason, or Michael knowing the truth.
But Michael had simply said that he hoped Patrick didn’t go to that kind of place anymore—it didn’t sound very safe. Patrick has never come so close to hitting another person as he did to hitting his brother that day.
But first they’d gone to the beach, Susan borrowing a friend’s car and driving them out of the city. Jones Beach was hot and crowded. They all got sunburned and then spent two hours in wet, sandy bathing suits in traffic back to the city.
Patrick, somehow, remembers it as a good day, one of the best days. He doesn’t know if that’s because it was one of the last good days, and he’s exaggerated it in hindsight, or if it was good in the uncomplicated way that things only can be when you don’t quite believe it will ever end. Even Patrick was capable of thatkind of hope at the age of twenty-two. Maybe everybody was in 1962.
None of them have bathing suits, so they all go to Macy’s, because it’s the easiest department store to reach on the subway.
“I can’t remember the last time I was in a department store,” Patrick says.
Susan glances sadly at his clothes. “Are we supposed to be surprised? I’ll meet you back here in half an hour.”
It takes Patrick and Nathaniel all of five minutes to find swim trunks, leaving them with plenty of time to visit the children’s department, where they discover that they make swimsuits for babies.
“I need to get it,” Nathaniel says, holding the hanger tight in his hand. “It has a matching sun hat. I’m getting it.”
