My mother is one of those ex-beauty queens who always acts casual about the most important things. The guy she was going to marry, Paul, had a brother in the priesthood who wouldn’t pronounce them man and wife until my dad signed annulment papers. Apparently sixteen years of divorce wasn’t enough. That was why she asked me to come over, not to trim the hedges or celebrate getting into law school or clean behind her fridge. I must have walked past the envelope fifty times—sitting unsealed on her kitchen table, collecting sandwich crumbs and tiny splatters of iced tea. MR. GERALD SCHAMERHORN, it said in the neatest letters I’d ever seen her write. Mom didn’t mention it until I’d loaded up the last bag of clothes from my old bedroom closet and started my car.

“Can you do me that favor?” she said, brushing the crumbs off the envelope and turning away from me to lick its flap. She pressed down on its seal and handed it to me like it was my problem, not hers. 

“No big deal, mom.” I tucked it under my arm with dad’s name against my ribs. “Might see him Saturday.”

“Oh, it’s no big hurry.” 

She smiled and waved at me the whole time I backed out of her torturous driveway, which took me forever because I had to smile and wave back. I would have respected her more if she’d come out and said Ryan, I can’t marry Paul until your father signs these, so take care of it soon. But she grew up in a world where women manipulated their men with twinkling eyes and oatmeal cookies, so I never expected much direct honesty from her. Plus I always got along with mom better if I just loved her, instead of worrying about respect.

Over the next week the envelope toured my entire apartment—by the TV, in my sock drawer, in the paper bag full of work clothes for my trip up to dad’s place. It felt about forty pages thick, but that seemed long for annulment papers. I wanted to see what they looked like. Brittle sheets of old parchment with watermarks and red wax seals, I guessed. I felt like steaming it open and finding out what split them up, since neither of them ever gave me a reason. I hadn’t seen them together since they sat in the first row watching my fifth-grade Christmas play, which starred me as a cotton-bearded Joseph. I only had one sign that anything was wrong before my dad left: the way he hugged me after the play and blubbered on my white tunic, which I had to give right back to my music teacher for next year’s Joseph to wear.

Ψ     Ψ     Ψ     Ψ     Ψ

Even with a week to open that envelope, I never felt alone enough until I was in a car wash halfway up to dad’s place in New Hampshire. Something about brushes whipping my windows and being surrounded by white foam made me stick my pinkie under the flap and almost start to tease it open. Or I could rip it open and read the papers, then go buy a fancy pen and some 9 x 12 envelopes. I’d keep writing MR. GERALD SCHAMERHORN until I got it perfect. Dad wouldn’t remember mom’s handwriting, and she wouldn’t call him to ask what he thought of the cute little tail on her S. 

I blew my chance, though, waffling until the hot waxer made its last pass and a green light flashed me forward. I knew I could get away with lying to dad if he asked whether or not I’d read the pages inside, because he didn’t know my face well enough to see dishonesty in it. He’d missed all my teenage years, when most of my lying happened. Sure, I’d embellished little things with him, like how I did on my LSATs and how much money I made, but I’d never flat-out lied to him. I could see his big, blocky face staring at me once he knew I read the papers, not getting mad on the outside but thinking You little shit behind eyes that would never trust me again. 

I couldn’t trust him either, because I couldn’t understand or trust the new way he lived his life. How does a Boston guy like him, a Dorchester street rat who laughed at country people all his life, end up raising sheep in New Hampshire? Maybe Cathy, his second ex-wife, had something to do with that. But in the pictures we threw out when I helped him move, she looked like just as much of a townie as he did. 

I looked at the directions, which I always had to ask for every time I went up. Two roads past Dublin Blvd. Stone walls both sides. Take left. The lane was lined with oaks and maples, blooming now that spring had decided to stay, and I knew that if I brought Sharon up there this summer like dad kept bugging me to, she’d fall in love with the countryside and maybe a bit more in love with me. We could all shear sheep together, and dad would joke with her about doing it with his grandkids someday. She’d never need to know that he spent his first twenty years bumming around on streetcorners, and the next forty crawling through ventilation pipes or kneeling in front of some furnace.

From the road, his house looked like exactly what it was: a ramshackle clump of additions, none with the same roof shingles, that overwhelmed the 1880s cabin they’d been tacked onto. Dad had replaced the front steps and braced the sagging porch, but didn’t seem in a hurry to do much else to the outside. When I parked behind his van he came around the corner in the same steel gray one-piece uniform that he’d always worn to work.

“Ryan.” He marched straight up to me, pumped my hand, and stared at my button-down office shirt. “You’re looking good.” 

“You too. This place is treating you nice.”

“Is this the new baby?” He ran a hand over the hot hood of my Jetta. “Shit, I was forty by the time I had a car this new. What’s first, work or food?”

“Work,” I said, knowing it was what he wanted to hear, then I followed him inside with my bag of clothes and my boots. From behind his limp showed—a hitch in his left hip that I felt in my own. 

“Replastered the walls, refinished the ceiling.” Dad showed me the two main rooms, patting an antique dining room table. “Put new legs on this old girl.”

He pointed me to my new bedroom at the end of a wing of additions, then walked over to the other side of the house, humming. My room had a squishy mattress on the floor and smelled like the junky, leftover cabinetry and baseboards he used to stash there. A buffalo rug added flair and dust. I changed clothes, lacing my boots tight, and got ready to show dad that desk work hadn’t made me soft. I looked strong in the dresser mirror. Taller and wirier than him, with my mother’s long neck and sloping shoulders. I was stronger than him for sure, more of an athlete. Just not so good fixing engine seals and shooting the shit with working stiffs.

I found him in the other wing, poking through the stuff that used to be in my new room. Why he moved it from one end of the house to the other, I still don’t know. Musty encyclopedias, taken-apart fans, random squares of tile, sawhorses, boxes of who knows what. A spot by the door sagged so badly I almost tripped. Dad took an old gramophone out of a box and cranked it. 

“This’ll be my music room,” he said without turning back to me. When he set the needle down on a crackly old 78 record, piano notes tinkled through the speaker. Dad fluttered his hands like a conductor, rocking back and forth from his toes to his heels. This was not the same man who’d yelled at me twenty years ago for dribbling a basketball while he was sleeping, or who wouldn’t let me get a five-speed bike because only rich kids rode them. Then a voice broke through.

“It’s Caruso,” dad shouted over it. “Found it in the barn when I built the shop.” 

“Let’s see that shop.” I took half a step out of the room as Caruso crooned on. Ready to go outside, ready to get away from this man who had either changed completely without me noticing, or was putting on a fantastic act. He waved me into a room down the hallway, empty except for three framed pictures on the wall of me during the years we didn’t know each other. First was the shot from the state soccer finals that made the Boston Herald, with me staring right at the goalie’s eyes as I dove to head the ball past him. Then came two I’d never seen. Me onstage in another fake beard, arms stretched wide and mouth hanging open in some awful high school musical. And me with my prom date, Hayley Norden, dressed to the hilt in front of the Ritz-Carlton. 

“Where’d you get these?” I asked him.

“Your Uncle Phil took that one, remember him? It was The Barber of Seville.” 

“Sure.” Uncle Phil was one of those quasi-relatives who show up whenever there’s free food and booze. I pointed to the prom picture. “How about that one?”

“Cathy knew Hayley’s mom pretty well. So, what do you think?”

“Is this going to be my bedroom when you’re done?”

“It’s for your pictures. Left plenty of room, for all the big stuff you’ll do.”

When I turned around to give him some bullshit answer, dad shot his arms under mine and hugged me. He’d never been a huggy kind of guy, so my first thought was Cancer, he’s dying. He buried his face on my shoulder and kept squeezing until I had to push him away to breathe. His hair smelled like oil and sawdust, and it reminded me of the day I rode home on his shoulders after helping him tear down a shed for Mr. Cartalemi up the street. I was nine and guided him home with my hands over his eyes. Turn right! Keep left! Curb coming up! 

“I’m glad you’re here.” Dad pulled back and clapped his hands on my shoulders, more like the father I was used to. “I’d like to say ‘Welcome home,’ but I can’t.”

“It’s your home, you can say it.” 

“All right. Welcome home.” He jabbed the side of his fist against my ribcage. “What do you feel like, work or food?”

I said, “Work” again, so he sent me out to load a pile of old shingles into his truck for a trip to the dump. I was glad he didn’t come up with some buddy project we had to do together, because I needed time to get used to this new dad who hugged and listened to Caruso. And the pictures freaked me out, too. What else did he have around that wasn’t framed yet? Snapshots of me partying in college, or getting it on with some girl? My reference letters for law school? I didn’t need a shrine. I didn’t need him listening to opera and standing in front of that wall, replaying memories he never had.

I hadn’t asked him for gloves, so I broke a few fingernails hauling the shingles and got tar jammed up under the rest. He’d probably say it was good for me, that I shouldn’t let my nails get that long anyway. On the way to the dump I chewed them down until I couldn’t taste anything but tar. 

Ψ     Ψ     Ψ     Ψ     Ψ

When I came out for dinner, all showered and dressed, I found two big shirt boxes from Filene’s on the dining room table. “They’re for you!” dad called from the kitchen when he heard me. The top box moved when I tapped at it, but the bottom one was heavy and solid. Both had stray bits of tape on them and ruffled edges where other thumbs had pried them open. Dad brought in a silver serving dish with a cover and handles, and I moved the boxes aside so he could set it down in the middle of the table. He had on an ironed white shirt, just like mine, and wool pants two sizes too big. 

“Fancy.” I pointed to the serving dish as he lifted the cover. When the steam cleared I saw medallions of meat and smelled a lemony cream sauce. Mom used to make that kind of sauce for him, but I didn’t want to remind him. 

“I found it under the sink in the kitchen.” He put the lid back on and tapped at it twice with a fingernail. “This is the freshest mutton you’ll ever have. Mike down the road butchers ‘em for me. Hey, get me the wine, will you?” 

He pointed to the kitchen, very rustic with raw hardwood paneling and cast iron skillets everywhere. I grabbed the wine, an Argentine Malbec with its $39.95 price tag still stuck on—even more than mom would spend on a bottle—plus a baguette and a bowl of cauliflower.

“You really went all out, dad,” I said when I set it all down.

“How often does your son come home, you know?” He jutted his chin at the boxes. 

“Aren’t you going to open ‘em up?”

“While we’re eating?”

“Sure. We don’t have to follow the Queen’s rules around here.”

The top box had a gray V-neck sweater with crimson trim. I pulled it out and held it against my shoulders, checking to make sure the sleeves were long enough. It felt like a silk and linen blend, thick and crinkly but soft to the touch. The label said M. Dodson, Cambridge, Mass. Nice, but it looked older than dad. I hate people who try to look like bluebloods when they aren’t, but put the sweater on to spite myself. 

“You don’t like it?” he asked.

“No, it’s great. Everybody’ll think I went to Harvard fifty years ago.”

“Or your grandpa did.” Dad reached across the table to flick away a chunk of fuzz on the sleeve. “Better to look like old money than new, right?”

Inside the second box sat a dark brown leather portfolio, like the black vinyl one dad kept his bank papers in when I was a kid. It was thick and tough and brand new, with a dull finish that would brighten to a shine with my fingers’ oil. 

“Remind you of anything?” he said. Sometimes he’d let me fill that portfolio with newspapers and strut around the house like somebody important.

“Sure.” I tucked it under my arm and stuck my chin in the air. “It’s perfect.”

“If you’re going to law school, you need something classy. It’s water buffalo.” Then he pointed to the silver dish. “And that’s mutton, if you feel like eating.”

I didn’t ask where he bought the portfolio or how much it cost. Three hundred? Four hundred? I watched him with my hands folded on the table, waiting to catch his eye so I could give him a real thank-you. Getting up and kissing him would have been silly, but that’s what I felt like doing. We both blushed when I finally did it, and then I got all talky about my law school and all the great things their alumni were doing. Dad looked happiest when I told him about another kid from Dorchester, a fireman’s son, who got his degree there and was working for the D.A.’s office in Lowell.

“Think you’d like that? D.A. work?”

“Could be. Seems like there’s already enough defense people out there already.”

“Yeah, all out to milk some superstar. You can’t get too greedy, that’s what screws people up.”

I nodded, but I didn’t feel like hearing his platitudes about money again. It took me sixteen years to tune out those platitudes, and if I felt like hearing more of them, I’d ask mom—somebody who’d come to terms with money, at least.  

“This is great,” I said about the mutton. “Tender. Did it give bad wool, or what?”

“Have to keep the flock down sometimes.” Dad wiped his mouth with a linen napkin. “So how’s things going with your girl?”

“Sharon?”

“Yeah. Unless one girl’s not enough for you.” 

“Fine. She’s thinking about law school too, but she still has to take the LSATs.”

“Is she a good-looking girl?”

“Wouldn’t you expect your son to nab a good-looking girl? C’mon”

“She’s not a model or anything, is she?”

“No, dad. I’m not a model, so I don’t date models.”

“I don’t mean a model model. I’m saying you’re better off without a glamour pus. Speaking of which—” He popped a chunk of baguette into his mouth. “How’s your mother?”

“Fine. She’s actually getting married again.” 

A medallion of mutton hung in midair at the end of my dad’s fork. He brought it back down to his plate and left it there. “Good for her. I don’t know why she waited so long, to be honest.”

“She didn’t want anybody acting like they were my dad, I guess.”

“Your mother had a lot of problems back then. I don’t think she could’ve gotten married again right away.”

“I know,” I said, though I didn’t know the first thing about their divorce. “After you left, she wasn’t real happy.” 

“Well, there’s reasons for that.” Dad speared another piece of mutton and plopped it onto my plate. “Eat, will you? Have you met this guy? Is he decent at least?”

“He’s okay. Name’s Paul, he’s a few years younger than her.”

“No surprise, I’m sure she’s still a catch. What’s he do?”

“He teaches history at a prep school, his whole family works there, practically. He’s got a brother who’s a priest.”

“Then I guess she’ll have to get Catholic again.”

“Maybe not. He’s not that uptight.” 

“You’ve met this guy? The priest brother, I mean.”

“Yeah, I’ve met him.”

“So when you say he’s not uptight, is that from looking at him or talking to him?”

“Talking to him, dad. But I just met him once, don’t quiz me on him.” 
I stuffed a whole medallion of mutton into my mouth, taking a bigger bite than dad ever dared to take in front of me when he and mom were together. He watched me chew, I watched him chew.

“Well good for her,” he said, swallowing before I did. “She won’t age so fast if she’s married. They’ve got medical proof.” 

“She actually sent something up for you. I’ll give it to you later.”

“Fine. Look forward to it.” Dad’s eyes flitted all around the table until they found the wine bottle. “Forgot about this,” he said, pouring us both a glass. I lifted mine, but he drank his up before I could make a toast to anything. What was I going to say? To marriage? To my mom? To irreconcilable differences you were both too stupid to notice? 

Ψ     Ψ     Ψ     Ψ     Ψ

For the rest of dinner we chatted about nothing. How much my first semester books would cost, what else dad wanted to do with the house—meaningless things that other people could have said for us. Then he put his overalls on, made me wear the Harvard sweater, and took me out to his shop in the barn so I could “see the old man in action.” The footpath took us by the sheep pen, where two dozen dirty balls of raw wool huddled together in a corner, like they expected somebody to come along and club them to death. 

“I still can’t get over you raising sheep,” I said. “You always used to say how stupid they were.” 

“Oh, I still think they’re stupid. Watch.” He ran a few steps and jumped toward the barbed-wire fence, yelling “Boo!” The sheep pattered down the fence line to the next corner in one big mass, like a folded-up centipede. When they got there, dad ran over to scare them again and send them back to me.

“See what I mean?” He came back to the path, out of breath but smiling. “I feed ‘em every night, and the next morning they don’t remember who I am.”

He laughed the last few steps to his barn, which desperately needed a paint job—freshly painted barns must be illegal in New Hampshire. The door groaned open on thick springs, and when dad snapped a lightswitch, a row of overhead fluorescents flickered on. The left side of the barn was a hill of clutter, all sorts of junk with no light shining on it, but in the middle sat a beautiful cherrywood bedframe with two tall posts as thick around as my thigh. A third post stood in a rack, varnished and drying. 

“This is great work, dad,” I said over my shoulder. He was already at the lathe he’d just bought, a silver thing that looked like a mini jet engine. He tightened the fourth bedpost, now just a rough beam on the spindle, into place.

“Special order for that one, real particular. I copied the pattern from a picture, some Italian thing they saw on vacation.” He put on goggles and handed me a safety visor, then turned on the lathe with a footswitch and patted the motor while it chugged to life. “This baby’s from the fifties. Tough.” 

Then his vacuum system kicked on and we couldn’t hear much else. Dad picked his broadest turning blade from a rack, adjusted the faceplate until it was almost touching the spinning wood, and eased the motor up to full speed. He’d had a lathe in the garage when I was a kid, and always worked on it when he needed to get away from mom and me, but that was a toy compared to this one. He looked as natural and in command of himself as I’d ever seen him. Dad braced his elbows against his sides, leaned his blade into the wood, and turned the first foot of square beam into a cylinder. He did another foot before he remembered I was there, then turned around to me.

“Fun, huh?” he shouted over the vacuum that sucked up the wood chips and sawdust. “I’d let you have a spin, but it’s special order. Maybe tomorrow, on some pine.”

“Sure, we’ll make something.” 

“How about a billy club for law school?” Dad leaned back toward the lathe, then turned around and took off his goggles. “I’m glad to hear about your mother. I wish her well, tell her I said so. All that stuff between us is old.”

“I’ll tell her you said that.”

“I’m surprised she wants to give me something. Never even sent me a postcard.”

“Actually they’re annulment papers,” I said. “For you to sign.”

Dad looked at my shoes. I lifted my visor so he could look at my eyes, or at my mouth if I had to say those words again. I watched his hands as he moved the blade from one fist to the other.

“Did you just say annulment papers?”

“Yes, I did.”

He nodded, put the goggles back on, and turned to the lathe, his back stiff this time as he set the blade to the beam. It caught in the gap between the wood and the faceplate, and for a second the motor stopped and gave off a hideous buzz. Dad jerked his elbows and yanked the blade free, letting the wood spin again. He slowed down the motor and ran his fingers over the spot where the blade got stuck, and since he didn’t swear I guess the damage wasn’t too bad. He looked over his shoulder as he brought the motor back up to speed.

“I might be at this awhile,” he said. “Maybe you can do the dishes or something.”

So I did. I left a clean glass and the leftover wine at his spot on the dining room table, then set the envelope down on his placemat. The light from the ceiling fell down at just the right angle on the fancy letters of his name, glinting against them so he couldn’t help but notice.

Ψ     Ψ     Ψ     Ψ     Ψ

I fell asleep reading before dad came in from the barn, and woke up dreaming about salamanders. I was in the same room, but it must have been winter because I had a thick wool overcoat draped over my shoulders. Everywhere I turned, little blue salamanders materialized out of nothing and stood where they were until I tried to touch them. When I did, they turned into chunks of dirt, leaves, nickels.   

I still had to brush my teeth, and as I was getting out my kit bag I heard dad grumbling in his bedroom and knocking something against a wall. We both opened our doors at the same time and stepped into the hallway, lit only by the greenish light that came from inside his room. 

“Go ahead,” he said, waving his hand at the bathroom door halfway between us.

“No, I’ll take awhile.” I held up my kit bag and he stumbled into the bathroom without looking at me. He hadn’t closed his bedroom door, so I popped my head in while he pissed and flushed. The envelope sat on his bed, face down with its flap ripped open and re-sealed with green duct tape. The room looked barely lived in: his bed, a dresser, and a nightstand with two prescription bottles on it. 

“See anything interesting you want to tell her about?” dad said. He stuck both hands in the pockets of his thick, black bathrobe and cocked his head back like a boxer’s. 

“I’ve just never seen where you slept, that’s all.” I stood there, squeezed between him and the doorjamb. “Not for sixteen years.” 

“Well now you have.” He stepped inside and stood by his bed, tightening the belt of his bathrobe. “Anything else you want to know?”

“You knew I was bringing those papers up, didn’t you?”

“Ask your mama.” He straightened his rumpled sheets like it was morning, then held out the envelope for me. “Maybe I’m just a good guesser.”

“So you were waiting to see how I’d weave it into the conversation”

“Yeah. Wanted to see what kind of lawyer you’d make.”

I took the envelope and fiddled with the tape. “Who cheated? I don’t wan—” 

“Cheated?” Dad laughed, turned his back to me, and let his bathrobe fall to the floor. In his pajamas, he looked thicker around the middle from behind than he did face to face. 

“Whose stories are you listening to, hers? Or are you just making shit up?” 

“Maybe I’m a good guesser.”

“You’re a lousy guesser.” He hiked up his pajamas and crawled into bed. “Turn off the light, will you?” 

“What happened, dad?”

“Ask your mother what happened. Turn off my goddam light.” 

“Door open, door closed?”

“Open. So I can hear you leaving in the middle of the night, if that’s what you feel like doing.” 

“Is that what you want?” I asked him. 

“Who knows what the fuck I want.” 

He rolled over without saying goodnight, so I turned his light off and closed his door. I locked myself in the bathroom and turned the shower on as hot as I could to steam up the room. The bottom flap of that envelope wasn’t taped up, so I could tease it open and read everything if I wanted to. The annulment papers. Her note to him, his note to her—if they bothered. 

Do it Ryan, I heard dad say. I absolutely do not give a shit about what you know and what you don’t. 

If I waited long enough in the steam, the bottom flap might come open by itself, and I could seal it back up in the morning. But if I didn’t use the same tape on the bottom that dad used on the top, mom would know I spied on her. She’d give me the angry face she learned from dad without knowing it—eyes narrowed down, the tips of her front teeth clamped together.  

What did you do to him, mom? I’d ask her.

That’s a silly question, she’d say, and in a half second she’d have her glamor-puss mask back on, her bullshit wholesomeness and her get-what’s-mine sincerity. Then we’d turn away from each other, with that question unanswered like all the other ones.  

I stayed in my dad’s bathroom until the hot water ran out, wondering if mom or dad thought I was the better son. The better man. I put my work clothes back in their bag, walked to the pen, and chased the sheep from one corner to another for half an hour, working up the guts to either leave or stick around until morning. I don’t know which one took more guts, or which kind of guts I was supposed to use. I batted it back and forth in my head so many times that I couldn’t even remember if I turned the shower off. 

Doesn’t matter, I heard dad say. Water’s cheap up here. You do what you need to do. Do what your mama tells you to. 

I’m done, Ryan, his voice told me as I chased the sheep one more time. I’m an old man, I’m done with women. You came all the way up here, you saw who I am now, and you still don’t get it?