“Buckley,” Grandma Lynn said, “go get some towels.”
“Did you manage the bike in this?” Hal asked, incredulous.
“No, we ran,” Samuel said.
“You what?”
“Get into the family room,” my father said. “We’ll set a fire going.”
While the two of them sat with their backs to the fire, shivering at first and drinking the brandy shots Grandma Lynn had Buckley serve them on a silver tray, everyone heard the story of the bike and the house and the octagonal room with windows that had made Samuel euphoric.
“And the bike’s okay?” Hal asked.
“We did the best we could,” Samuel said, “but we’ll need a tow.”
“I’m just happy that the two of you are safe,” my father said.
“We ran home for you, Mr. Salmon.”
My grandmother and brother had taken seats at the far end of the room, away from the fire.
“We didn’t want anyone to worry,” Lindsey said.
“Lindsey didn’t want you to worry, specifically.”
The room was silent for a moment. What Samuel had said was true, of course, but it also pointed too clearly to a certain fact – that Lindsey and Buckley had come to live their lives in direct proportion to what effect it would have on a fragile father.
Grandma Lynn caught my sister’s eye and winked. “Hal and Buckley and I made brownies,” she said. “And I have some frozen lasagna I can break out if you’d like.” She stood and so did my brother – ready to help.
“I’d love some brownies, Lynn,” Samuel said.
“Lynn? I like that,” she said. “Are you going to start calling Jack ‘Jack’?”
“Maybe.”
Once Buckley and Grandma Lynn had left the room, Hal felt a new nervousness in the air. “I think I’ll pitch in,” he said.
Lindsey, Samuel, and my father listened to the busy noises of the kitchen. They could all hear the clock ticking in the corner, the one my mother had called our “rustic colonial clock.”
“I know I worry too much,” my father said.
“That’s not what Samuel meant,” Lindsey said.
Samuel was quiet and I was watching him.
“Mr. Salmon,” he finally said – he was not quite ready to try “Jack.” “I’ve asked Lindsey to marry me.”
Lindsey’s heart was in her throat, but she wasn’t looking at Samuel. She was looking at my father.
Buckley came in with a plate of brownies, and Hal followed him with champagne glasses hanging from his fingers and a bottle of 1978 Dom Perignon. “From your grandmother, on your graduation day,” Hal said.
Grandma Lynn came through next, empty-handed except for her highball. It caught the light and glittered like a jar of icy diamonds.
For Lindsey, it was as if no one but herself and my father were there. “What do you say, Dad?” she asked.
“I’d say,” he managed, standing up to shake Samuel’s hand, “that I couldn’t wish for a better son-in-law.”
Grandma Lynn exploded on the final word. “My God, oh, honey! Congratulations!”
Even Buckley let loose, slipping out of the knot that usually held him and into a rare joy. But I saw the fine, wavering line that still tied my sister to my father. The invisible cord that can kill.
The champagne cork popped.
“Like a master!” my grandmother said to Hal, who was pouring.
It was Buckley, as my father and sister joined the group and listened to Grandma Lynn’s countless toasts, who saw me. He saw me standing under the rustic colonial clock and stared. He was drinking champagne. There were strings coming out from all around me, reaching out, waving in the air. Someone passed him a brownie. He held it in his hands but did not eat. He saw my shape and face, which had not changed – the hair still parted down the middle, the chest still flat and hips undeveloped – and wanted to call out my name. It was only a moment, and then I was gone.
Over the years, when I grew tired of watching, I often sat in the back of the trains that went in and out of Suburban Station in Philadelphia. Passengers would get on and off as I listened to their conversations mix with the sounds of the train doors opening and closing, the conductors yelling their stops, and the shuffle and staccato of shoe soles and high heels going from pavement to metal to the soft thump thump on the carpeted train aisles. It was what Lindsey, in her workouts, called an active rest; my muscles were still engaged but my focus relaxed. I listened to the sounds and felt the train’s movement and sometimes, by doing this, I could hear the voices of those who no longer lived on Earth. Voices of others like me, the watchers.
