Page 28 of ClickBack

“I intend to put it in my Christmas letter.”

He shifts my foot to make room, then rests his hand on my ankle. I let my head rest against the tub and close my eyes. He tells me about his mother calling after a road trip because she had seen him on television and thought he looked tired.

“Were you?”

“We’d been traveling.”

“That’s a yes.”

“I told her I was fine.”

“How did that go?”

He laughs to himself. “She said she didn’t ask what I told everybody else.”

“I like her.”

“You haven’t met her.”

“She has excellent follow-up questions.”

“I can see where this would become a problem for me.”

When I open my eyes, he is smiling, and I wonder whether Rae hears the same affection beneath my complaints about her. I hope she does. Yesterday she arranged an entire party around shifts and school and a child with extravagant birthday expectations, and I spent part of it wanting her to notice that I had a life beyond being available for hers.

“Your father live near her?” I ask.

Jarrett looks at me. I wish I had taken another second to consider the question.

“They aren’t together.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“You didn’t.” He looks down at the water. “He’d be around for a while when we were kids. Then he wouldn’t. Mom used to leave room in the plans in case he came. Eventually she stopped.”

I remember Zion yesterday, looking toward the door after Byron had gone. The small, foolish impulse to check again, even when you know nobody promised to come back. I almost tell Jarrett. Then I let the memory stay mine. He has answered a question about his father, and I don’t want to take the answer away from him by making it about what I recognize.

“Do you see him?”

“Sometimes.” He returns his attention to me. “Who else am I missing on your side?”

I tell him about the aunts and cousins who can turn one question about a tax form into a request to reorganize their lives. When I mention Di, he asks how long we have been friends.

“Since ninth grade. She runs a theater in Brooklyn now. Which means I get pictures of broken fixtures with questions about whether they count as emergencies.”

“Do they?”

“Depends on whether the audience can see them.”

“That your professional opinion?”

“That’s her professional opinion. Mine usually involves asking where the last donation went.”

I tell him about a school production in which Di gave herself the best part and then spent opening night helping the girl with the smaller one remember her lines. He asks whether I was in it.

“I sold tickets.”

“Of course you did.”