Chapter 2

He inhaled deeply and blew a plume of blue smoke out through his nostrils, tickling the hair washing over the fair stubble, flecked now with black and white.

What would the old man have made of Charlie, he wondered; what would his father have thought of the boy?

He winced again, promising himself that he’d cross that bridge when he came to it, and not a moment before, because he already knew the kind of language both his father and his grandfather would have used, and it made him equally ashamed—and wasn’t he just ashamed of that shame—and angry, like he had to defend the kid to the older and departed members of his family.

Both men had been dramatically conservative in their thinking. His father had even resisted meeting Marta when first he had brought her home, but no one could really resist Marta, and he had known that when he had introduced her to his father. She was, as the old man had said on many an occasion, aggressively pleasant.

A smile crossed his lips. Marta was so determined, so disarming, that if she had put her mind to it, Jude thought she might have even convinced the old boy to celebrate Passover.

He inhaled again, and once more, blue smoke poured forth from his nostrils.

The clouds continued to crawl.

“Why’d it have to be you, Charlie?” he sighed again

And he felt ashamed of himself for thinking such a thing, felt ashamed that this wasn’t happening to someone else’s kid, someone else’s family. He could have been supportive if it was another kid. He would have weighed in and fought for any of Charlie’s friends, would have stood by the family, would have let the school know what he thought of their policy—heck, he would have even written a letter to the new Bower Bliss Sentinel. But knowing that it was Charlie, knowing that it was his own kid, left him feeling sad and guilty—and, like the shame, he felt guilty for feeling guilty.

Again, he inhaled, the paper amidst the ash burning bright red for the briefest moment.

He didn’t know how they would get through this, or rather, he didn’t know how hewould get through this, because he was sure Marta would get by in the same way she always did—by being aggressively charming—but what was he to do? How was he supposed to act? How was he supposed to talk about this, not just with Charlie, but with anyone else that asked?

How could he—a man in his forties, a man who had always taken a what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach to his interactions with everyone—even begin to address what Charlie was going through?

He had known this was going to happen; he had seen it when he had been a kid, and it had been those things that he had known was happening but thought that if he just ignored it, just nudged the kid in the direction he himself had naturally always been drawn to, then maybe Charlie might learn the ropes on the way.

He laughed when he recalled how bad the boy had been at sports when Jude had tried the old father-son bonding routine; he laughed, and then he almost cried.

Not that sports were something that every boy should be good at—he knew that; he wasn’t a complete Neanderthal—but he figured sports were certainly something every boy should try.

And yet every time he had thrown the old ball to Charlie, every time he had tried to teach the kid to hit a home run, he had got the distinct impression that Charlie was humoring him more than anything.

Kid was never going to win a sports scholarship, that much had been obvious, but nor had he had been particularly academic. What he had been good at, though, was reading books that weren’t on his school book list, and talking back to just about anyone who tried to tell him what they expected of him.

And now this; now him being sent home with this letter.

Jude Calohan wanted it to be a phase; he desperately wanted it to just be a part of Charlie’s fierce independence, but he knew it wasn’t. He knew that for Charlie, this was the most important thing he had done in his young life.

Another plume of smoke and he ground the cigarette out into the dirt at the foot of the apple tree.

He thought again of the letter and the reason Charlie had been sent home from school.

With a sigh, he rose and turned away from the horizon, looking back towards the house, the shape of Marta in the kitchen, her head bowed as she washed vegetables in the stainless-steel sink, the curls of her dark hair falling over her face.

Charlie looked a lot like her, he thought; a lot more like her than she did him. For the briefest moment, he wondered what Charlie would look like in a few years’ time, what Charlie would be like once all this was over.