He wished his thumbs could work as fast as a kid’s. But they poked at the keypad like sausages, and he had to rely on the auto-fill and auto-correct functions to get even a semblance of accurate spelling and punctuation into the message. He was tempted to type in ‘UR’ instead of the laboriously proper, and agonizingly lengthy ‘you are’, but resisted. It would only make him look foolish—an old guy pretending to be hip… “Hip!” When did anyone use that lingo anymore?
You are in my thoughts always, and so are Gloria and Robbie, he typed, so I want to work things out. If you’re ready, I’d like to come down next weekend and talk. Love Buddy.
So much that couldn’t be said in a text. Perhaps that’s good, he thought. Deliver nibbles of truth, get a sense of its shape and dimensions in short bursts of distracted driving, during layovers in airport lounges, pauses at your mural gazing mentor’s living-wake… then talk.
He’d known since… when? It wasn’t as if the thread of memory had been snipped. Rather, it had simply dissolved in the tunnel of his past tense—a lit fuse rendered to ash, sizzling after him as he hustled on, desperate to keep ahead of its igniting spark.
You think too much, White Raven observed from her perch on his left shoulder.
You talk too much!
She clacked appreciatively at his tart retort. Like mentor, like acolyte, she said, then took flight, gliding across the yard and alighting unobserved on Bernice’s shoulder.
Buddy couldn’t say when it had happened, but things had crystallized for him into a transparent, undeniable truth: I’m a something felt, not cast in words, except the simple phrase, “I am.”
That seemed sufficient for the time being…
No sense isn’t nonsense, as some philosopher should have said, Charlie Abbott offered. Buddy thanked him for his ‘input’, watching the Hermit amble off toward the perimeter of Harry’s ‘living wake’, hoping he hadn’t snubbed him… at least not too obviously.
One thing Buddy knew as Iam was that he would never be ‘getting back together’ with Leanne and that they had things needed working out. The house, RRSPs, their retirement incomes… make me an offer, any reasonable’settlement’, or just leave things as they are and sort them day-by-day, I don’t care, he figured.
“Keep saying that,” he told himself. Until she believes it.
“Saying what?”
He hadn’t noticed Jen suddenly standing beside him.
“Oh! Hi,” he started. “That things are going to work out, I guess. That it’s okay.”
“At this living-wake, you mean?”
Harry’d coined the term, Buddy thought it apt, Jen didn’t conceal her distaste.
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“Suppose?”
Buddy bridled, concealing his annoyance with a sad sigh. “It’s more than just this, Jen,” he nodded toward her father, sitting on his walker at the end of the yard, surrounded by well-wishers, chatting amicably. “It’s what happens tomorrow, when we’re the custodians of your father’s spirit.”
Her brows arched, as if she couldn’t open her eyes wide enough to take him in. Buddy braced himself.
“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice softened by what he could only interpret as compassion.
“Your dad has been a mentor to me, Jen. I’ve learned from him what it means to respect an elder—imagine that, at my age—and how to see the world in a wholly different way. I’ve also… I’ve also…”
The words wouldn’t come. Instead, a sob forced its way up from Buddy’s chest. He looked away, tried, but couldn’t keep the tears from welling, overflowing, and running down the furrows of his cheeks.
“I’m not supposed to be like this,” he struggled. “Not now.”
He felt her arm encircling him, her hand squeezing his shoulder. “I came over to apologize, Buddy,” she confided. “To tell you how much you’ve meant to Dad and how you’ve helped him share his inner-self. I should have acknowledged that sooner, but—to be honest—I was too jealous to get off my high horse. I hope it’s not too late.”
“So you’re not planning to run my balls up a flagpole?” he teased shakily.
She laughed. “I might beat you up from time to time, but that’s family. You’ll survive.”
Mingle! he reminded himself, watching her cross the yard.
Yeah, Steam Donkey John concurred. Stand there any longer, and you’ll take root.
Like tree! Hong Hing chimed in. Chop-chop!
Summoning the energy it took to heft himself into motion, he headed in the opposite direction to Jen. Andrea was standing at the edge of Harry’s ring of well-wishers, looking lonely. “Hi,” he said, standing next to her. “How you doing?”
“I still feel out of place,” she confessed. “Like a murderer at her victim’s funeral.”
Buddy drew her to him, his hand on her hip, remembering the contours of her body and the sound of her sighing… forgave himself for yearning.
“How’s Herim?”
“Shehe’s fine.” Reaching across, Andrea took his free hand and placed it on her belly. “She’s a miracle.”
“People might be watching,” he cautioned, happily.
“I don’t mind gossip when it’s the truth,” she said. “We’re conspirators in creation.”
“As I recall, one of the conspirators was sort of tricked…”
She laughed, and he smiled inquiringly. “You’re saying you were my trick!”
“Sometimes we stumble over our words.”
They looked up at each other, then at Harry sitting on his walker and Bernice standing beside him. Harry and Bernice both looked up at the same instant, spotting him through the circle of well-wishers. A sudden warmth flooded into Buddy, permeating his entire being—a flash of recognition he knew was shared and sacred and would forever remain unspoken.
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