Read More: A brief Q&A with Laurence Klavan
“What do you mean, he doesn’t know who you are?”
“I have to introduce myself.”
“How often?”
“Every day.”
“Jeez.”
Hal hadn’t known it had gotten this bad. His father’s live-in nurse—whom the old man had employed for a year—was a familiar face.
“Sorry about this.”
“It’s my job,” Jalene shrugged.
Hal was surprised she didn’t have more of an investment in caring for his father. Still, maybe Jalene had steeled herself against the very thing starting to happen, the way you broke up with people before they broke up with you, hardened your heart, as it were.
“I’ll come by tomorrow,” he said.
“Okay. What time, though? I have to get my kid to the shrink.”
“From two to four? You can take off, don’t worry.”
“Thanks!”
Jalene’s tone said she thought Hal a great guy, which he appreciated. He knew it wasn’t true: he had become less likable as time had gone on, seen his wife leave (after he was unfaithful), lost the love of his kids, twelve and fourteen (whom he’d ignored). A little praise, even if unfelt, even if he had pandered to receive it, went a long way.
Jalene was devoted to a violent teenage son who needed treatment. Hal was aware that his motive for seeing his father would have struck her—struck many people—as indecent.
“Who are you?” his Dad asked him, the next day.
“Hal,” he said, and added to make sure: “Your son?”
“Never heard of you.”
Then his father turned away, as if from someone seeking to sell him something he would never in a million years buy.
“Good,” Hal thought.
The two of them were equally ornery. At forty-six, Hal had become even more like the old man, as if a drug he’d taken decades ago had finally taken effect or worn off. They were so alike now in fact that they loathed each other: it was more than the dislike that had been there from his birth.
“How was he?” Jalene asked, when she returned.
Hal shook his head, to imply, hopeless. Before she could express sympathy, he asked:
“And your son?”
“What?” She’d already forgotten about the therapist (or had fibbed in the first place, Hal thought). “Oh, he’s fine.”
“I’m glad!”
Jalene smiled, again expressing what a swell fellow she considered him. Hal did not say how he felt that his Dad no longer knew him: unbelievably relieved.
For a day, Hal celebrated that he would never have to see his father again. When his euphoria faded, he sensed it would be unseemly to simply stay away. This made him—and he was not proud of it—annoyed.
“I’m not proud of it,” he told his friend.
Robin was Hal’s oldest pal (he’d known him since high school) and probably his only one left, given how he had alienated all others. Hal didn’t know why Robin had stuck by him. Maybe because (unlike Hal) he had remained kind and nonjudgmental? Or was he simply interested in and observant of everyone, being an actor?
“Won’t you miss him?” Robin asked at this, their monthly lunch.
“I just feel guilt, honestly. And even that might simply be instinctive, I’m not sure.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Robin thought the best of him or merely remembered when he had been better. Hal marveled at how angry Robin wasn’t, how bitter he hadn’t become, even though his promising career had been derailed by the pandemic and never recovered. Robin did odd, non-acting gigs and always politely yet proudly denied Hal’s offers of loans.
“Believe it,” Hal said. “It’s true.”
Robin shook his head, adamantly, and as ever didn’t order a second drink when Hal did.
“I can see it in your eyes,” Robin said.
This stopped Hal, his hand fiddling in the air for the waiter. Did Robin really perceive Hal’s true spirit? No: that Hal was dead, he thought. It made him remember the lack of recognition in his father’s eyes.
“Let me run something by you,” Hal said, adding his first to his second finger to signal “two more,” before assuring his pal about to protest, “This will be on me.”
At last, Robin agreed that he would relieve Hal’s burden. He would tell Hal’s father that he was Hal. He didn’t approve of being paid for it, though.
“Why not?” Hal asked, exasperated he would even have to.
“It’s unseemly.”
“It’s helping me.”
“No,” Robin said. “Me.”
In the end, Robin stopped arguing. As an Uber pulled up to take Hal away, Robin suddenly hugged him. To convey his gratitude? Or to absorb Hal in a way before he went to work as him? Hal didn’t know, but he had to struggle a bit to get free.
“So. How’d it go?”
After the first day, Hal hadn’t heard anything, so—more interested than he was willing to admit—he’d called Robin.
“Um, fine.” The actor seemed to choose his words carefully.
“Dad didn’t know you, right?”
“Right.”
“Good.”
“At the beginning.”
“What do you mean?”
Robin paused, as if again trying to decide how to proceed. “I…often observe little gestures and actions.” The actor began warming to his subject. “That’s how I build a character. And something came back to me about you, from a long time ago.”
“What was that?”
“It was the way you once kindly moved a wayward hair from my forehead. It was right before I was about to meet someone, a woman, maybe, on a first date. I reached out and did that to your Dad. With what little hair he has left.”
“And what did he do?”
“He looked into my eyes, smiled, and said, ‘Hal?’”
Hal kept quiet long enough that Robin said…
“Hal?”
…just as his father had. This jolted Hal into replying:
“Was he confused?”
“Not for long.”
“Then what?”
“Relieved. Warm. Loving.”
“Oh.”
Hal said nothing more, and Robin followed his lead. At last, the actor jumped in (getting used to being employed, Hal dismissively imagined, later):
“So I’ll keep going?”
“Yes. Sure. If you’d like,” Hal said.
“I would. When should I…”
“When would you want to?”
“Friday?”
It was Wednesday. Hal thought: when he’d visited, it had been only once a week. Okay, he thought, every ten days. Sometimes, every two weeks. Three weeks.
“Sounds good,” Hal said.
“Great!”
“And how should I…I mean, is PayPal okay, or…”
“Sure.” Robin sounded genuinely indifferent.“Whatever.”
The next time, Hal called Jalene (whom he’d warned what would happen, hoping that her it’s-only-a-job attitude might make it okay) and said…
“Just checking in. Robin came? That’s the actor’s name.”
“He told me.” Jalene was eating: he’d called her at home and at dinnertime. She seemed miffed he wouldn’t have known she knew. “Actually, Robin asked me to call him ‘Hal.’ It was very something of him, he said. I can’t remember the term.”
“Very Method?”
“That’s it.”
Hal let it pass. “And how’d it go, all right?”
“Great.” She chewed more heartily. “They watched tennis together. Sat side by side on the sofa. Had a great time.”
“Tennis?”
Hal used to enjoy the sport, on court and on TV. His father had introduced him to it. He and Robin used to play together, once upon a time. That had been fun, he thought.
“Did he know Robin?” Hal asked. “My father?”
“Know him?”
“Recognize him.”
“As him?”
“As me.”
“Oh. Yes. Right away.” She swallowed.
“Huh. Okay. Thanks.”
Before hanging up, Jalene said something else, but her speech was still slurred.
“He evey kish him.”
Hal looked at his phone. Even kissed him? That couldn’t have been right, he thought. That was impossible.
Hal decided to show up, unannounced, on Robin’s “day off.” Jalene looked at him with alarm, as if he were an intruder, maybe a menace. It was different from when she’d believed him a great guy. Then she calmed down.
“He’s in there.” She pointed to his Dad’s closed door.
“Asleep?”
“I don’t know.”
Jalene sounded withholding, not unsure. Hal began to gently knock, then thought better of it and pushed the door open, as if breaking it down. […]
Subscribers can read the full version by logging in. |
___________________________________
Laurence Klavan has had short work published in The Alaska Quarterly, Conjunctions, The Literary Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Pank, Failbetter, Stickman Review, and Anomaly, among many others, and a collection, The Family Unit’ and Other Fantasies, was published by Chizine. His novels, The Cutting Room and The Shooting Script, were published by Ballantine Books. He won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. His graphic novels, City of Spies and Brain Camp, co-written with Susan Kim, were published by First Second Books at Macmillan and their Young Adult fiction series, Wasteland, was published by Harper Collins. He received two Drama Desk nominations for the book and lyrics of “Bed and Sofa,” the musical produced by the Vineyard Theater in New York and the Finborough Theater in London. His one-act, “The Summer Sublet,” is included Best American Short Plays 2000-2001, and his one-act, “The Show Must Go On,” was the most produced short play in American high schools in 2015-2016.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Laurence Klavan