Love Among Strangers

He sat beneath the apple tree in the back yard, staring out at the blue sky, at the slow crawl of the clouds, trying not to think or to feel anything, just waiting for everything to pass by, waiting for it all to blow over. Leaning forward, placing his forehead against his knees, feeling the brush of the worn blue denim warmed by the early morning sun, he tried to think about everything that had happened, about how he had got to where he was, as a parent, as a father. It wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened. Certainly, there were dramas in the little town of Bower Bliss that overshadowed his greatly, and yet when Jude Calohan had received the letter from Charlie’s school in Alexandros Hills, and when he had stopped to read what it actually said, he had acted…well, he had acted just like his father. With a sigh, he lifted his head back and rested it against the cool bark of the old apple tree. The Calohans had been in Bower Bliss for a generation or two, at least since before the war. There wasn’t much history to the arrival of Jude’s grandfather. They weren’t like the big Irish families that had documented the nation’s growth—no, Ronald Calohan, his grandfather, had simply been a man with a bit of money and a bit of sense; sense enough certainly to see the value in a property like the old house just outside of town, and sense enough to know that the war had changed things and that there were opportunities for a man like him, with the gift of the gab and a knack for convincing others to do the hard work for him. Jude had not known the old man very well—he had died when he was still a boy—but there was enough of him in his own father for him to have an idea of what he had been like; enough to make him swear, as a young man, that he wouldn’t stay in Bower Bliss, that he would move away at the first chance he got, and that he certainly would never raise his children here. But, well, time and circumstance had changed all that, and now, in his late forties with two kids—one seventeen and one fourteen—he felt differently about the town, felt differently about life. It was just…Charlie. He sighed again. Charlie, short for Charles—a good name, his wife Marta had said when the boy had been born, a royal sounding name—was the oldest of the two boys. He felt a sudden pang in his heart, and realized that, sooner or later, he might have to stop saying that, might have to stop calling Charlie his boy. He moved his head and then inclined it again, tapping it lightly against the bark and trying not to think of what had happened, of why Charlie had been sent home. Perhaps it wouldn’t come to anything bad. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as he thought. Perhaps it was just a phase that Charlie was going through, like the time he had cried when he was little because he wasn’t allowed to take his plush kitten to school—actually, the toy had been a bear which the boy insisted on carrying with him everywhere and lovingly referred to as Polar Kitten. The clouds continued to roll across the horizon. It wasn’t a phase, he knew that. Reaching into the pocket of his tired flannel shirt, Jude pulled the crumpled packet of cigarettes he had told his wife he hadn’t bought and fished out his cheap lighter from another pocket, and tried to not watch the clouds as he lit one of the cigarettes. Marta always complained whenever she even so much as sensed that he had been smoking, often taking to moving furniture around loudly and muttering things in Polish, and if he had been more mischievous, he might have considered doing it every now and then just to goad her into such a reaction—but he wasn’t that type of person, and he wouldn’t have been where he was, sitting in the shade of the apple tree, holding the crumpled red and white packet in his right hand and the cigarette between the fingers of his left hand if things hadn’t been getting to him. The apple tree, so his father had said, had been the reason his grandfather had bought the house. Older than the Calohans and their time in Bower Bliss, it was a sign, the old patriarch had insisted, that this is where they were meant to be, that this old tree would be something to come home to—and in a way, the old man had been right; the tree had become a sign that he was home, just as surely as it was a sign he would never leave. 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 he would 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. With the sun at his back, with the slow crawl of the clouds above him, Jude Calohan allowed himself to accept what the letter had told him: his son, Charlie, had been sent home for refusing to wear the boy’s uniform. * * * * In the kitchen, Marta Calohan, née Karaś, ran the selection of fresh vegetables she had picked up at the Bower Bliss Market on the way home under the cold water as it flowed steadily from the tap. Watching the water as it splashed against the sides of the steel sink, her expression was one of a woman trying awfully hard to concentrate on one thing and one thing alone; a woman trying to concentrate on something that really did not require such significant attention. She heard the back door open, sensed the faint, stale odor of cigarette smoke, but did not look up, her brow creased in a frown, her hands cold as she turned carrot after carrot, turnip after turnip, beneath the running water. Behind her, her husband waited for a moment, awkward and uncertain, unable to read her mood, and she tried not to smile because smiling would mean she wasn’t upset about what had happened. Not, of course, that she blamed Jude; not that she blamed anyone. None of this was something that you could assign blame for; it was just something that happened. Except maybe that wasn’t true. In some way, she blamed that uptight private school in Alexandros Hills, and when she thought of that, she became genuinely angry, and beneath the water, she turned the vegetables over again, more firmly this time, with more purpose. “Hey,” Jude said after a moment, “where are the kids?” She did not look up from the sink. “Charlie’s upstairs and Rowan’s at a friend’s house,” she answered, and then with a sigh, turned the tap off and dumped her handful of vegetables on the sideboard, turning to eye him with disapproval. “How was your cigarette?” Jude rolled his eyes. “Come on, Marta, don’t be hard on me; the day’s been tough enough as it is.” She raised an eyebrow. “Imagine how Charlie must be feeling then,” she answered, perhaps slightly sharper than she intended. Jude nodded, his eyes searching for something to focus on within the setting of the kitchen, anything to avoid making eye contact with his wife. Salvation came with the soft footfalls of the family cat, Cassidy, a large black and white tom who looked up at him with momentary disdain before deciding there might be more exciting prospects in the yard and wandering slowly between them in the direction of the cat flap. “Yeah,” Jude said, reaching up and pushing his fringe of warm red hair back from his eyes, “about that.” Tightening her grip on the surface behind her, his wife’s expression hardened. “I’m going to go up to that school tomorrow and tell that principal what I think of this nonsense. Can you believe they sent Charlie home because he ‘might confuse other pupils’? Confuse them how exactly? Most of those kids need help getting dressed as it is; what’s there to confuse?” He tried not to smile. Marta had always been critical of the kind of children who attended the private school but was often more critical of the parents. She had been against the idea of sending their two sons to the school; however, Jude had always been of the opinion that, whilst they had the money, it was worth trying to ensure both kids got the best education they could afford. That had been one of the few arguments he had ever won. He didn’t envision winning any more after this. “I think, maybe, it would be better if you didn’t go,” he said with hesitation, “maybe you should just, you know, let me handle this one.” His wife raised her eyebrows further. “What are you going to tell them?” Jude shrugged, watching Cassidy as he pushed his way, with some difficulty, through the cat flap. “I don’t know. Whatever Charlie wants me to tell them, I suppose.” Marta let out a small sound of frustration, something between a growl and a cough, something with a hard ch sound. “This is all just so stupid. He’s just a kid, and this is the kind of thing that kids do. It’s a…a…rock music thing. All of that music he listens to…it’s to do with that.” Jude laughed softly. “Marta, you know as well as I do that that music he’s listening to is the same stuff we had when we were kids.” “I didn’t listen to it,” his wife replied indignantly. “I was in Gdansk at the time.” Still laughing, he nodded. “Oh, that’s right, you only had those old Soviet marching bands to listen to, right?” With a look of playful frustration, she pretended to raise her fist, and gently, he caught her arm, pulling her towards him, placing one arm around her waist, kissing her gently on her forehead. She sighed and placed her head against his chest. “It’s not a phase, is it?” she asked quietly. “I don’t know,” he whispered into the curls of her hair. “I want to believe it is, because it seems really stupid if it’s not, if it’s all one big thing that we’ve just been ignoring all his life.” “He was so upset when you wouldn’t let him have that pony toy for his fifth birthday,” she remarked. “And you sneaked into his room with that picture you drew and told him you owed him one little pony.” She laughed, her breath warm against his chest. “I remember that,” she said, and then slowly, she lifted her head, looking up towards him, meeting his gaze, “but wanting to play with girls’ toys, that doesn’t mean anything, does it? He’s still a boy, right?” Jude was quiet as he held her. “He’s still Charlie,” he said, after a moment or two. Again, his wife buried her head in his chest. “Oh, Jude, I don’t want him to go through this; people are going to treat him so bad.” Jude swallowed hard, trying to push such thoughts from his mind. “Let’s…let’s find out what Charlie says and go from there.” He nodded, more to himself than for his wife, trying to convince himself that everything would make sense, that Charlie would say all the right things and all this would just blow over, and they could go back to business as usual. “I was thinking maybe I should go to Swanson’s and pick up some stuff, maybe try and teach the boys how to shoot straight over the weekend.” Marta snorted, partly with amusement yet mostly with scorn. “Shooting tin cans in the yard isn’t going to make Charlie any more of a boy, Jude.” “Then I’ll teach him to shoot rabbits or something. Lord knows there are enough of them hopping about in the yard this time of year—well, save for that one that Cassidy got last week.” Marta playfully attempted to push him away. “You’re such a brute sometimes. I don’t want you out in the yard shooting rabbits all weekend.” He smiled, keeping a hold of her waist. “Then I guess tin cans it is,” he smirked, “though don’t complain to me that you can’t make a stew out of cans.” She laughed, and, for a moment, all the concern faded from her face, just as surely as it returned when the laughter passed. “You’ll go up and talk to him first, though?” Not that he wanted to admit it, but Jude Calohan suddenly felt uncomfortable. “I was hoping you’d do that, to be honest.” Again, his wife frowned. “If you’re going to see that principal tomorrow, then you have to be the one to talk to him about this.” Not for the first time, Jude sighed. “Let’s take it one step at a time,” he said, more to himself than to her. “It’s not a big deal.” Gently, he relinquished his grip on her waist and, so that he could not see her face, Marta turned away to face the sink again. “It is,” she said softly, gently. * * * * The walk up the stairs seemed interminably long, each step a struggle to overcome as he followed the sound of songs that once he would have been so familiar with but now failed to recognize more than a line or two of. In less time than he would have liked, Jude Calohan reached the door of his eldest child, gently knocking once before pushing it open. “Hey, kid,” he said, forcing himself to smile, to assume an airy, breezy manner. “Echo Base, this is Rogue Two, and all that.” Sitting on the edge of the bed with a record in hand, Charlie looked up; with dyed, ashen hair and grey eyes, scrawny and awkward, he looked far more like Marta had when he first met her than like him. That’s good, kid, he thought, good that you escaped the old Calohan family curse. Charlie looked up at him but said nothing, the record player on top of the desk at the end of his bed rattling as the circle of black vinyl revolved beneath the needle’s reach. Jude nodded towards the awkward wooden box and its open plastic cover, the slow movement of the record. “Thought those things went out when I was a kid,” he smirked, and then sighed again, sitting down uninvited on the bed. “Listen, sorry about raising my voice earlier. I didn’t mean to get all bent out of shape.” Charlie shrugged, not looking in his direction. “It’s fine.” Jude grimaced. Not the best way to open a conversation. He glanced down at the record sleeve in the kid’s hands, looking at the familiar image—the shifting water, the naked baby. “Nirvana, huh? I had that record when I was maybe a couple of years older than you. Back when it came out, I mean.” A couple of years was an exaggeration, but, for the sake of getting some kind of response, Jude didn’t feel that he had to labor the point. “I remember when that Cobain kid shot himself too.” Again, he grimaced, firstly because he again realized he had probably said the wrong thing, and secondly, because it felt weird calling Kurt Cobain a kid, when, whilst he had been young, he had seen the man as someone to look up to. It’s weird, he thought, what getting older, what having kids does to you; it’s weird looking back at the past, at people who were in bands, who were on the television, who now seemed so much younger than you. “Yeah,” Charlie muttered, but offered no other sign of interest. Placing his hands on his knees, Jude moved from the bed, crouching, and looking at the storage box underneath the desk. “Let’s see what you’ve got, shall we?” He flicked through the records, smiling now and again at their garish covers, cringing a little at some of the more embarrassingly familiar ones, until at last, he came across an image of a woman in fancy shoes and black ball gown, one foot stepping defiantly forward on a plank of wood overhanging the ocean as a circus of flunkies and hangers-on followed behind, banging tambourines and throwing roses. “Barbēlō, huh?” he remarked in surprise. “Yeah, I remember, this came out in, what, 2001? 2002?” He turned to look at Charlie as if waiting for confirmation. “In 2001,” the other nodded, expression unchanging. Jude smiled. “I used to be able to play this track on the piano.” For the first time since he had attempted to engage the kid in conversation, Charlie’s eyes suddenly lit up. “You never play the piano anymore,” the kid said. Jude shrugged. “Your mother doesn’t like it. I think that’s because she has such terrible music taste.” There was a pause as Charlie smiled suddenly. “Soviet marching bands,” they both said at the same time. He laughed loudly, and from downstairs, he imagined he heard his wife slam down a pan on the stove in response. The laughter faded and Jude sighed again. “Listen, kid,” he said, feeling suddenly self-conscious, still crouched down by the box of records, “about the reason you got sent home from school…” Charlie quickly looked away, the smile abruptly gone, gaze fixed on some unspecified point beyond the glass of the window above the record player. “Don’t worry about it,” the kid said sharply, “it won’t happen again.” “Maybe you want to talk about it?” Jude gently pressed. “No,” Charlie answered quickly. “Because…if there’s something going on…” “It won’t happen again,” Charlie reaffirmed. “Kid, I’m not trying to make you feel uncomfortable or anything, and I’m sorry if you think you can’t talk to me after I shouted at you earlier, but…well…I’m your dad…and I want to help.” The words were awkward and cumbersome to say, the shape of them heavy in his mouth, ungainly, and the moment they had departed his tongue, he wished he had found a more graceful way of putting it. “It’s fine,” Charlie said again, and flopped back on the bed, “you don’t have to worry about me.” Silence descended between them. Why are you still here, Jude? he asked himself; this is what you wanted to hear, isn’t it? You wanted the kid to say that he’s a boy. You wanted this to just be a mistake, a misunderstanding. You wanted to feel like you were jumping the gun when you started wondering about all that other stuff, all that stuff that you didn’t want to talk about, didn’t want to think about. “Okay, kid,” he said, placing the record back in the box and standing up, his knees clicking as he did. He paused to look at Charlie, sprawled out on the bed, the sleeve of the record obscuring the child’s face, legs bent, feet still on the floor. He wondered briefly what it would have been like if Charlie had been born a girl, how life would have been different, and then, angrily, he chastised himself. Why are you thinking that? The kid said it was a joke, so leave him be. “Guess you know where I am if you need to talk,” Jude said, lingering one moment longer, waiting for a response that would never come. Staring up at the ceiling, Charlie Calohan made no reply.