Hothouse (9 page)

He takes a long time to answer. The heat off his hand increases more in the time.

“I am, son,” he says. “Of course I'm winnin'. Listen, you go to sleep now. I shouldn't have gotten you up.”

“It's okay,” I say. “I only have the crap classes in the morning. I can catch up then.”

“Ah,” he says, laughing. He pushes down on my chest, sinking me back into the mattress and back in the direction of sleepland.

He closes my bedroom door very gently, like trying not to wake the baby.

A minute further into sleep, I believe I hear him go back out into the night.

Old Mr. Kotsopolis had run a Greek coffee shop in the neighborhood forever. He ran it in the days when his wife was teaching and ringing that brass bell, and he ran it for years after she retired. Sometimes she would be behind the counter, but mostly he ran it on his own. My dad told me the primary business of the place was all the older Greek guys playing cards for money at the back, but he personally spent so much of his own cash gathering up dewy fresh baklava and powerful coffee for the Hothouse that no other business would ever be necessary.

It was a great location, that shop, with big front windows facing onto two big streets because it sat on a prominent corner, an arrowhead of a building shooting right through the heart of the intersection. Now it's a cell phone shop.

My mother went to see Mrs. Kotsopolis at the hospital, asked me if I wanted to go. I didn't. She brought a lemon cake she made from scratch, but they wouldn't let her in.

Every Labor Day I would go fishing with my father, if he were not on duty, and he was rarely on duty because that was our day. It was the one date he actually turned the world over to get away from the job because we decided that was our day—more than Christmas or my birthday—that was not to be broken. Labor Day meant summer was over and I was about to go back to school and so in a meaningful way the calendar was turning over and we were both noticing that. The one Labor Day I remember he did have to work, he wound up saving a kid's life, pulling him out of our very river and squeezing the water right up out of his lungs. It was on the news and everything. Christ, I hated that kid.

It was, and it is, the intake of breath before going back up into the outside world for another year.

“Another year,” he said to me, last year,
the
last year, as he cast his line way out over the churning river, in the shadow of Ozzie's Bridge.

“Another year, Dad,” I said, doing the same.

“Another step, further out there,” he said.

“Out where?”

“Out there,” he repeated, without any other signal.

“I guess,” I said.

“Soon enough, Russ, you're probably not going to want to do this anymore.”

“Don't be stupid,” I snapped.

I was really angry, that he said that. But he just laughed at me for being angry, for being a kid.

This year, the first year of
out there
, I wake up to a Labor Day I just want to skip. I feel like while I was sleeping somebody crept in and pressed a bazooka flush against my chest and just blew me out. I feel it, it is nothing there and it is also huge and it is a nothing that hurts brilliant and new like hurt was just concocted.

There is a knock at my door. I can't even recall the last time there was a knock at my door.

It sounds so strange, so foreign and out of place here, and now I sit up, stupid, staring, working out just exactly what a knock at a door is.

There is another knock, because I am taking too long working it out, so I haul myself over there and open the door with great effort.

DJ is standing there. With a fishing rod.

I should be ecstatic. Any normal person would be ecstatic.

I lose it instead. I am a seventeen-year-old male, a man, a fireman for christsake, and I cannot stop doing what I do not want to do. I want to say hello old friend. I want to say, what a pleasant surprise. I want to slap DJ on the shoulder and talk about stupid frigging fish. I try, actually, to do each of those things, but words don't come out of me and tears do, and I actually cover my mouth and stare at him for a while, silent and mental until it seems like half a day's good fishing has been lost.

DJ is patient. He has always been that.

“Got it together now?” he says as I dig in the back of the closet for my gear.

“Yeah,” I say, gesturing for him to lead the way out.

“Good, 'cause if you keep that shit up I'm not going fishing with you.”

“Why
are
you going fishing with me?”

“Somebody's got to go with you, right? It's the day. Labor Day, right? Can't have you sitting around crying all Labor Day can we?”

“No. We can't have that.”

And so we don't. DJ, who never went on these fishing dates with me and my dad, who never went fishing at all, as far as I know, who never even ate fish in my company, turns out to be about the second best fishing companion you could have. As we sit in the shadow of the amazing Ozzie's Bridge, it's obvious that he has no more interest in landing a fish than my dad ever did.

And like with my dad, it is about other stuff.

“Nice spot,” he says, casting out into the middle of the chopping, chipping water.

“Oh, you know this spot,” I say, because everyone knows this spot. We are at the bottom of the stone forty-foot rise of Ozzie's Bridge, which has stood over this river for a hundred and fifty years. The strong sunlight cuts this way and that, through the trees lining the river for miles. The water moves fast, and there could be fish splashing everywhere, or none at all.

“Yeah, but I don't know
this spot
,” he says to clarify. “This, right here, is a fine spot.”

I cast my line out, further, but the same. We're not even using bait, or flies.

He means
this spot.
My Dad spot. We are settled on a big mossy rock the size of a rowboat that extends right out into the river. Just about enough to fit two guys comfortably, close enough, not overclose, fishable, talkable and still just alone enough.

Being alone together.
That was how Dad looked at fishing. Organized aloneness. Being in the same place at the same time doing the same thing and doing it alone together. That was us. That is us.

“What happened to us, DJ?” I ask him as the fish practically mock us, jumping and splashing upriver, or not.

The bridge, four big arches in all, insists that you look up at it. I don't fight it.

“A lot of stuff happened to us, Russ.”

“Okay, right, but I mean, why did we just—”

“It was probably a lot better fishing with your dad, huh? Probably you'd have pulled in a bunch of fish by now.”

I suppose if he doesn't want to talk about himself, or us, he's entitled. I suppose talking about our fathers today is not such a bad thing.

“Sort of. He loved to be here. We loved to both be here, if the weather was nice, together whatever. He was lousy at the actual fishing of fish, however, and that last time, last year, I figured out that he was probably lousy on purpose.”

“How did you work that out?”

“Because he caught a fish.”

We listen to the rush of the water. The water is really persistent today.

“Finish the story, Russell.”

“It was the first and last time he ever caught a fish. Surprised himself half to death when the thing hit his line and when he finally brought it in, DJ, I swear I thought he was going to cry. The way he looked at it …”

At this moment, of course, I feel like my dad, looking at that fish, and it takes me some strength to finish this story, but I am going to finish it.

“And I had to take the hook out of the fish's mouth for my dad. And then when we released it and watched it squip away, it was like only then could he even go back to breathing again.”

“That's really nice, Russell. That is really very much your dad.”

“I know.”

“He was a great guy, you know.”

Listen to the river, Russ, listen to the river.

“I thought we wouldn't do this,” I say.

“I guess we're doing it.”

“Your dad was great too, you know that.”

“Mmm,” DJ says, weak.

Sounds like nothing, right?

“Huh?” I ask.

“I know he was, I know he was. We should just fish now.”

“All right,” I say, and turn sharpish back the other way, angling myself so DJ is just out of my view. I feel him do likewise as we give our attention completely to the water, to the fresh air, to the sun and the end of the summer and the beginning of what's next.

Until I have to turn back. “DJ, I have to show you something.”

He turns to me, waits.

I am wearing a big, loose-fitting button-down shirt that has geek sleeves reaching to the elbow. I place my fishing rod on the ground under my feet and with my right hand push the left sleeve up to the shoulder.

“Christ,” DJ says, his expression dead as dead.

It is a tattoo. Fresh enough to still hurt and have a few blistery scabby spots, but brilliant in color and design. It is the exact image of the memorial for our dads they unveiled at the Hothouse. Badges. Eagle. Russ, Dave. Outrageous Courageous.

“Where'd you get that?” he asks flatly.

“Straight from the designer,” I say, admiring the thing all over again and feeling even prouder because finally I am showing somebody and it is
the
somebody. “John DeVellis, from the Hothouse. His brother Steven has the tattoo shop in town, did the design for them. John told me just say the word, and I said the damn word before he could even catch his breath. And free, of course. The whole damn thing for free. My mother might kill me when she sees, but I had to have it. Isn't it gorgeous, DJ? You have to go down and—”

“No, thank you.” He smoothly pivots on his rock and gets back at the fish.

“DJ, man, you have to—”

“Did I tell you about Melanie? After the party?”

“What? What? No, listen—”

“You want to hear about her? There's loads to tell, no kidding, I'm happy to tell you every bit....”

“No,” I snap. “Thanks anyway.”

“You sure?” he asks, belligerent.

“I'm sure,” I say.

“Okay then, so I guess you just keep your little trophy to yourself, and I'll do the same, huh?”

All I can do is stare at him, my face trying to bridge this gap in ways words appear useless right now.

Unmoved, he just stares back.

Then a dog waggles up in between us on our rock, a houndy, satiny old slobberer doing that thing they do. He visits my face, making me jump, then goes to DJ, fanning me then with his hyperhappy tailworks. DJ pushes him off, but less unfriendly than he handled me.

“I'm sorry, boys,” comes the croaky voice behind us.

We both turn to see the old fisher guy, a man I have seen and waved at but that is the extent of knowing him. My dad might have said he was a retired cop. He carries a tackle bag and rod, and stands there in big brown rubber hip waders.

“That's okay,” DJ says, the dog having brought him back down, “he's friendly enough.”

“I was meaning about the news,” the man says. “I was sorry to hear the news. But it's none of your fault, so just don't even give it another thought.”

“Okay,” I say, puzzled, but, okay.

His dog back under control and on the trail again, the old guy gives us a small salute thing and heads off.

I salute back.

“For godsake, how is it even news anymore?” DJ asks, standing up and just dropping his rod on the ground. “And how would it ever be our fault?” He lets out a small roar of frustration through clenched teeth and starts walking away.

I follow him.

“Come on, DJ, we're not done here,” I say, catching up and grabbing his shoulder.

He shakes loose and turns to address me. “Yes we are. I've had enough. And I want to encourage you to let it all go now, too. Okay? Enough is enough. Let go, Russell, move on, grow up, right now, stop commemorating, stop crying. You'll be glad you did.”

I open my mouth to argue and like a shot his hand is out and covering my mouth.

“Please, Russell. Ol' pal. No.”

He removes his hand from my mouth, and I think we are both satisfied when nothing comes out. He nods, and goes.

I trudge back to the spot,
the
spot, where we were fishing, where the fishing always got done. I can't help looking up and all around, trying to recapture the notion of where, of who, I am. I am looking up at the greatness of Ozzie's Bridge, the immensity of carved stone high over the streaming water. I look up into the trees where the birds call and echo and never leave you as alone as you think you are. But now, unlike before, I am also looking up for who else is around, if there is anybody out there now or am I alone with the river from this point on.