Think Twice

Myron and Emily sat on opposite ends of the couch and waited in silence while Jeremy quickly showered and changed into jeans and a T-shirt. When he was ready, he came tripping down the stairs fast. Myron watched him. His hair was military-cropped and that made his ears stick out a little. Myron’s ears stuck out a little too. When Jeremy hit the bottom step, he looked straight at his mother.

“Mom, do you mind if Myron and I talk alone for a minute?”

“Oh,” Emily said. “Uh, sure.”

“It’ll only be a second.”

“Okay, no rush. You two talk.”

Emily rose from the couch. She kissed her son on the cheek as she passed him. Jeremy gave her a hug in return.

“I love you,” she said to him.

“I love you too, Mom.”

“I’m happy you’re home.”

“Me too.”

She headed up the stairs. Jeremy watched her until he heard her bedroom door close. Then he turned back to Myron with the hazel eyes of Al Bolitar, his paternal grandfather. Myron tried to turn it off, his constant searching for genetic echoes. He hadn’t seen his biological son in three years. The rules of the relationship had been set when Jeremy first learned the truth at the tender age of thirteen:

“You’re not my dad. I mean you might be my father. But you’re not my dad. You know what I mean?”

Myron had managed to nod.

“But... but maybe you can still be around.”

“Around?”

“Yeah.” That winning smile. “Around. You know.”

Age thirteen. So damn wise already.

In the present day, Jeremy said, “Myron?”

“What?”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Huh?”

“Giving me those googly eyes.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“I get it. You can’t help it. It’s sweet, really. Except we need to make this fast.” He took the seat across from Myron and leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, just like...

“You look good,” Myron managed to say.

“So do you,” he said. “How’s Terese?”

“She’s good. Busy.”

Jeremy nodded. Then, as was his wont, he took over. “Tell me everything.”

Myron did. Jeremy had been a sickly kid. He’d been diagnosed with Fanconi anemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. That was the reason Emily had eventually been forced to confess the truth about Jeremy’s paternity — she’d been searching for a donor. For the first thirteen years of the boy’s life, Emily had kept Jeremy’s paternity a secret, neither telling Myron he had a son nor telling Greg the boy he was raising was biologically not. That wasn’t so much a secret as a lie, but the big shock was that Greg knew the truth:

“You remember my father?” Greg had asked Myron. “Screaming on the sidelines like a lunatic?”

“Yes.”

“I ended up looking just like him. Spitting image of my old man. He was my blood. And he was the cruelest son of a bitch I ever knew. Blood never meant much to me.”

It was a shocking moment for Myron — and maybe the beginning of the strange bond between the two men. Greg’s marriage unraveled; his role as Jeremy’s father did not.

But while the illness was purportedly gone, Fanconi anemia never fully leaves. There was still some paleness to Jeremy’s skin. He had to frequently screen for new cancers, and part of the kid’s wisdom and insight, Myron didn’t doubt, came with living his entire life under this mortality umbrella. So far, the bone marrow transplant had held. It might hold forever. But no one knew for sure.

When Myron finished filling him in, Jeremy had follow-up questions, drilling deeper into some of the crazier details. When he was done with that, Jeremy asked, “So what’s our next step?”

“There is no next step. Greg doesn’t want to see me.”

“Forget that. He’ll see us.” Then he called up. “Mom?”

Emily appeared at the top of the stairs. “Everything okay?”

“Can Myron stay tonight in the guest room?”

“I guess so, sure.”

“Great. You can borrow some of my clothes. We’ll head in to see Dad in the morning.”

Emily had a guest wing more than a guest room. Right now it was too dark to see the ocean out the window, the moon barely a slit, but Myron could hear the waves crashing. He lay on his back and closed his eyes. A few minutes later, he heard the light knock on the door and before he could say, “Come in,” Emily opened it. The hall light was still behind her, so she stood in the doorway in perfect silhouette.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“Hey.”

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Tired.”

Emily stepped into the room and sat on the bed. “It’s lonely out here,” she said. “This big house.”

“I imagine you have a lot of guests.”

“Oh, I have my friends. And sure, I go on a lot of dates. But it’s been a long time since I felt a connection.”

She still wore the very-white nightgown. She looked down at him.

Myron said, “Emily.”