Page 64 of Sublimate
“Did something happen on the way? Did something happen with your parents?”
“No. As I drove, I got antsy and it felt like I would never get here,” he said. “I used to travel so often but that never happened to me before. I never wanted to be home so much.”
“Before, you were traveling to places that were a lot more fun and less stressful.”
“Maybe that’s it,” he agreed. He hugged me a little tighter and the worry that I’d felt over the past two weeks eased away.
“I’m glad to see you, too,” I said. “It’s a relief.”
“Why a ‘relief?’ Did something happen here?”
I didn’t want to talk about my sense that someone had been behind me on the way home from the supermarket. It was just a weird feeling and easily could have been an attachment ghost instead of a human. “No, not really. I saw Kolter,” I mentioned.
Nolan let go, stepped back, and put his hands on my shoulders. “What did he do?”
“Nothing. I saw him in the grocery store and he’s too much of a coward to act out in public. I wouldn’t have put it past him to follow me into the parking lot and try something sneaky, but he was with his mom and she wouldn’t have let him. She does her best to keep him out of trouble, which is probably why she’s moving with them.”
He wanted to hear a complete rundown so I gave him one, as word for word as I could make it. “They’ll be gone, which is the good thing,” I finished.
“Why did his mother say that to you?”
“She called me ‘nose-blind’ because she hated both the candle and the perfume I got for her so she thinks I can’t pick out a good smell. There must be a better word for it.”
“Anosmic, but that wasn’t what I meant. Why did she think that you were bothering him? You haven’t seen him in months, correct?”
“Correct.” We were still standing very close and it seemed to be a great time to hug him again, which he didn’t say no to. “She thinks that he’s a magnet, like, all women should love him. She probably thought I engineered the meeting in front of the ice cream.”
“What ice cream?”
“It’s a surprise,” I said. “First, we can have dinner.”
We did that in the dining room because I wanted to make it fancy, since this was a celebration of his homecoming. But I didn’t do it like his parents, who sat on opposite ends of the table with about ten chairs on each side between them. I put our seats right next to each other so we could talk, and it was both fancy and fun.
But I also wanted to hear how things really were downstate, the un-fun part. “How were your mom and dad? Really?” I asked him.
“I’m not sure how they are,” Nolan admitted. “I can’t get a firm handle on things. You know my dad is home, you know that my mom took time off to be with him for the first few days. Shehired a nurse to keep an eye on him now that she’s back at the office. It’s a male nurse and my father’s assistant isn’t allowed in the house, so she could be more interested in monogamy now. He may not agree but at present, he’s too sick to do much.”
“Is he still feeling awful?”
“I think it’s what you would expect of someone who had two heart attacks, never took care of himself, and drank a fifth a day. It caught up, but the doctors repeat that he has years of life left if he makes better choices.” He looked down at his plate, frowning, and then repeated, “I’m not sure. I can’t tell whether these changes are permanent or somehow performative.”
“Why would they bother to put on a performance?”
“They always have, with everything,” he answered.
“I guess I get that. I used to tell people that my first boyfriend was an oilman.”
“As in, he owned an oil company?”
“Yeah, but it sounded more exciting when I said ‘oilman,’ like ‘engaged’ or “ahhhnt,’” I said. “In reality, he worked at a gas station and we were from a pretty small town. I wasn’t fooling anyone but I liked the idea that he was big and important because it made me important, too. I got over that when I grew up a little and realized that pretending something made you feel worse, even farther away it.”
Nolan was nodding. “I pretended that I didn’t need to drink but saying it made me furious, because I hated the need and I hated the lie.”
“So, that’s what your parents are doing? They’re lying? Or did they fall in love again and have personality transformations?”
“When you put it that way, it sounds even less believable,” he answered. “But I’m not sure. This was all traumatic enough to induce a course correction. We’ll have to see.”
“Are you going back at Christmas?”
