Текст книги "The Porcupine of Truth"

Автор книги: Bill Konigsberg

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

TURK HANDS ME a wad of Kleenexes.

“How much do you know about AIDS?” he asks as we stand in the entrance hall. I look up at the sign above the door to the room we were in. The exhibit we’ve just seen is called “The NAMES Project.”

“Not much,” I say, embarrassed. AIDS has never felt real to me, pertinent to my life as a dorky heterosexual virgin. “I know it’s a disease, and I know people used to die of it and that now there’s medicine for it. That’s about all.”

“Do you want to hear a story?” Turk asks.

I nod, and we walk in silence out of the cathedral. It’s nice to be outside. The exhibit was beautiful and awful, and it took all the air from my lungs. I need to just breathe a little.

Turk takes me across the street to a place called Huntington Park, which is sunny but windy. There’s a huge fountain in the middle – angels dancing on the heads of gargoyles who spit streams of water into stone seashells. We find a bench, and it takes him awhile to maneuver his wiry-thick frame down next to me.

Once he’s seated and comfortable, he turns to me.

“So once upon a time, there was a village,” he says. “It was hilly and sun-filled and all the interesting kids went there when they came of age. Through a confluence of many events – the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution – it just so happened that in the 1970s, these kids started to create a real community. A neighborhood formed called the Castro. In every way possible, they let their hair hang down. Men lived with men and women lived with women. They loved and danced and screwed and laughed and sang. It wasn’t just sex and drugs either. It was softball and square dancing and gardening and fixing up houses. They did it in ones or twos or sometimes even threes and fours. Never before in modern history had this been done, so there were no rules.

“And they were free – mostly – from the judgment of the outside world. The people who would have told them that they were going to hell for loving the wrong person were shut out of this party. They thrived on the outskirts, but they were not allowed in. The Castro was beautiful because it was pure. All these people, who had been alone in Iowa City and Spokane, here they were not alone. They celebrated their newfound freedom, and it was a joyous place.”

He turns away and I take in his profile. The weathered skin on his face looks like it’s been through a war.

“Then, one nippy day in the center of the neighborhood where they lived, a bunch of men stood in front of the pharmacy window, looking at photographs of a young man. These photos showed the purple blotches he had inside his mouth and on his chest. In Magic Marker he had written, ‘Careful, guys, there’s something out there.’

“Nobody thought much about it. Nobody knew what to think. Besides, only a few people were sick.

“But then, more young men began to come down with incredibly rare maladies. The florist took ill with a bird parasite in his brain that no medicine could touch. The first baseman for a softball team couldn’t keep food down and was told he had a cow parasite that normally would have required just a small course of antibiotics, but now was untreatable. The chef for a popular upscale eatery came down with a rare pneumonia that killed him within a week. A well-loved community theater actor contracted a typically benign cancer that invaded his organs. Soon, purple splotches covered his entire face. Then he died.

“Panic spread throughout the city where once there had been so much joy. How was it possible that so many healthy, beautiful men could age in appearance fifty years in two months, and die looking like concentration camp victims?”

I look at Turk’s face, and I realize he has it too. Something about his sunken cheekbones and those minus signs under his eyes. I saw it right away, but I didn’t know what it was. He’s probably had it a long time.

“Some people moved away, hoping to escape it. Some of those people died anyway. Others dug in and took care of the ill. The women, some of whom were friends with the men and others who felt excluded by them, came together and nursed their brothers.

“At first some of us decided it was only the most promiscuous who got it. That was just denial. A banker moved in with a painter in 1980, not knowing that one random night in 1978, the painter had enjoyed a perfectly delightful evening with an accountant and came home with a silent virus in his blood. The banker and the painter, monogamous and faithful, would perish within months of each other in 1986, and no one could make it stop.

“It tore us apart. The disease. The way people reacted to it. Nationally, there was no reaction. Only fear that it would cross over and start killing straights. Otherwise, it was barely mentioned in the media, and the president didn’t mention it at all. Six years went by and twenty thousand died before he said the word AIDS.

“Some claimed that AIDS was God’s punishment for being gay. That was particularly harsh, because many of the dying had been told all their lives that they were evil. They finally got past that only to be told, on their deathbeds, that God had decreed their deaths. Very cruel.”

“That’s horrible,” I say.

“Of course, other religious people came through and cared for the dying. It seems like the disease brought out the best and worst in people, and I sometimes wonder if that would be the case today, or if the world has changed. Do you think it would be different today?”

“Probably,” I say.

He smiles weakly. “Well, good. Progress. Can you handle another story?”

I nod.

“This one is about a man from Billings, Montana.”

“Right,” I say, looking back at the cathedral as if he’s still in there.

“His name was Russ Smith, and he was a tall, goofy man. Looked a lot like you, actually.”

I blush.

He smiles. “Russ was a religious man. He was also a man of music. He could hear a melody, and an hour later he would still be able to remember it and could create four or five different harmonies to it. And he knew scripture. Tons of scripture.

“But ever since he was a kid, he felt like a freak. Because it was the fifties, and he knew that other boys, not girls, interested him. And he lived in Montana, where those things were definitely not discussed.

“So he got married to a woman named Phyllis, and he had a son, and like many, many other men at the time, he coped with living the wrong life by drinking. A lot. Living the right life was impossible.”

I close my eyes and try to imagine a world in which I’m made to marry a guy. The idea is hard to fathom. I don’t think of guys the way I think of girls. Their bodies are just – not what I want to touch. What if I had to? Could I do it?

“So mostly he drank himself to sleep, and as the drinking got worse, he got mean. He yelled at his wife. He loved his son, but sometimes he ignored him. And because he was basically good inside, this tore him up further, and he thought about ending it all.

“One day in the mid-seventies, he heard about a choir director’s conference in San Francisco, and he convinced the pastor at his church to let him go. It was the first of several consecutive years in which he flew to San Francisco for a week.

“Those weeks were what he looked forward to through all the cold winters. The second week of April. A chance to be somewhere else. To be someone else. To follow his heart. And during those weeks, I feel strange saying this to you, but he —”

“I get it,” I say.

He nods and smiles. “You get it. Let’s just say he made many friends, friends he’d spend time with once a year.

“Sometime in the late spring of 1982, he was getting dressed and looked down and saw a purple spot on his shoulder. He rubbed it. It looked mostly like a pimple that had popped, but a little different than that. Over the course of the next few weeks, several more formed on his chest and one on his neck. He went to the doctor in Billings. The doctor had no idea what it was. He went for tests. They were worried he had skin cancer. The news came back good, in a way. It was a rare form of benign cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma. The only thing strange about it was that he wasn’t a sixty-year-old Mediterranean man. That’s who usually got the condition, and they’d put up with the unsightly lesions and die of something else, years later.

“Russ went to the library to do some research. He couldn’t find anything, until one day, a search turned up an article about Kaposi’s sarcoma cases in gay men. His heart flipped in his chest. He cried, because he knew that was him. He knew these things were related.

“Information was scarce, but he learned what he could about what was at the time called gay-related immune deficiency. He learned that it was fatal. He learned that it might be possible to pass it to sex partners, and even though he and Phyllis were no longer physical, he thought about how he’d kissed her on the cheek a few times, and he sobbed in the library. He stole the medical journal he was reading, and he played hooky from work for a week, wondering what he was supposed to do. No doctors in Montana would know anything about what was then called GRID.”

“GRID!” I yell. “That was in the letter. ‘The world’s most dangerous and expensive grid’! What’s KSREF?”

“Oh!” Turk blurts, like he’s been goosed. “Blast from the past! The … Kaposi’s Sarcoma Research and Education … Foundation, I suppose?”

“Wow,” I say. “So not a Kansas referee?”

He smiles. It’s a sad smile, but it makes me feel closer to him.

“So anyway, Montana doctors had no idea what was going on, since it was happening in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. And even if they did, this was Billings, Montana. Russ knew if anyone found out, he’d bring shame to his family.

“Finally he gathered up the courage to tell his boss.”

“Pastor John,” I interrupt him.

“Yes, you mentioned him earlier. A name I had enjoyed not thinking about for a long time. So he told this Pastor John fellow, his best friend, and the man was good to him. To some degree, anyway. Your grandfather didn’t have much money saved up, and he knew he had to get to San Francisco for treatment. The pastor helped him get here. He used church funds to pay for Russ’s trip, and he created something of an underground railroad of religious friends for him to stay with. It was quite a journey.”

“I know my granddad joined AA along the way.”

Turk smiles. “A good thing too. Because when Russ got to San Francisco, he called his friend Graham. Graham, God rest his soul, had one friend who was in AA, and that friend was me. So when Russ arrived in town, guess who got to take him to his first meeting here?”

Turk looks out into the distance. A serene expression passes over his face.

“We fell in love almost right away. He was such a big, goofy guy. I get that when he was an active drunk, he was awful to be around, and there were moments when it was awful here too. Not easy, giving up the booze. But mostly he was sweet and incredibly creative.

“One morning in bed, I asked him for some orange juice. He went to the kitchen and didn’t return, and I started to wonder if he’d heard me. Ten minutes later, he came back and handed me a piece of paper. He’d drawn three rabbis wearing orange coats in Magic Marker. At the bottom, he wrote, ‘Orange Jews.’ ”

I shiver. “Oh my God. I would do that,” I say.

“You poor kid,” he says.

“I know.”

“The thing is, his health got better. Thanks to AA, he certainly got happier. His face got brighter and you could see that he was shining through, because for the first time in his life, he was himself, totally.

“We set up house, and, well, I was sick too. A few times, he had to nurse me through stuff. Pneumonia, mostly. And I had to nurse him through some ugly stuff as well. But we persevered. We went to AA meetings five times a week, and we talked about life and I learned to understand his faith, and by the end, it became a much kinder faith. He was a lovely, lovely man.

“In the late summer of 1984, he came down with a cold. A simple cold. But it stayed. One night, he woke me up gasping for breath, and I just knew. I rushed him to the hospital. It was pneumocystis, which was the pneumonia that killed so many people early on in the epidemic. And like he had a ‘Kick me’ sign on him, as they were treating him for that, the spots activated. The KS. They attacked his mouth and then his lungs and then, well, then. He just …”

Turk wipes a tear out of his right eye.

“It was so fast. He was my life. When he died, my heart died. Somehow I survived long enough to get the cocktail of drugs that’s kept me alive, but that’s a part of me that didn’t make it. I’ve dated since, but never once have I allowed anyone to move in, because they couldn’t possibly take his place. He’s that one-of-a-kind person we all search for. He’d serenade me in the evening, making up nonsense songs that were so, so strange and so, so funny.”

“I just read his song ‘Three Sightless Rodents,’ ” I say.

He looks up at me, and I sing it to Turk.

“Three sightless rodents, three sightless rodents. See how they perambulate, see how they perambulate. They all perambulated after the agriculturist’s spouse. She cut off their lower extremities with a utensil designed for the dissection of meat. Have you ever seen such a spectacle in all your existence, as three sightless rodents, three sightless rodents.”

This makes him laugh, and the laugh soon turns to sobs, and he puts his head in his hands and his thick back heaves up and down. I don’t know what to do, so I put my hand on his neck. It feels interesting. Like I’m touching family, in a way. And I am.

He finally wipes away the wetness from his face and wipes his nose a few times too. I reach into my pocket and pull out one of the unused Kleenexes he handed me back in the church. He takes it and thanks me.

“His biggest regret was that he never made peace with your father,” he says. “Pastor Logan asked him not to tell anyone, even his wife. The help was conditional. The money came from the church, and the pastor was petrified of a scandal. What if his congregants found out that their money was going to someone with gay cancer?”

“Whoa,” I say.

“Yes, well. Anyhow, Russ disobeyed that and did tell Phyllis, and she was so angry and ashamed. She demanded that he not tell your father. And it tore him up that he couldn’t, but he promised her…. They got divorced by mail. Afterward, it plagued Russ, knowing that his son didn’t know where he was. And many times, he woke me up crying. He knew he’d hurt Phyllis, but he couldn’t understand why she’d punish Matthew. He wrote him a letter, telling him the truth. But he just couldn’t mail it, and that was a failing on his part. I still have trouble forgiving him for that, for leaving it untended and for leaving it on me.”

“What about all the letters we found?”

“The unreadable ones?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if they hadn’t been unreadable, you’d know that they were all birthday cards. The first two were from Russ. He decided that he’d keep it light and avoid any mention of what was going on, in the hopes that Phyllis would have a change of heart and let Matthew see them. A couple months after he died, I took over the practice and sent your father a birthday card. Mine was not so tame, as I hadn’t made any agreement with Phyllis, and I felt Matthew had the right to know. So in that first card, I explained to him what had happened. I hoped that by leaving off the return address, it might get past your grandmother, and for the first decade or so I included an address inside the notes, in case he wanted to write back. I so wanted to know your father, but he never responded. I was never sure if that was his choice or Phyllis’s. How long ago did she die?”

“Seven years ago.”

“Hmm,” Turk says. “Where did you find the letters?”

“In a box with all of his stuff, at the pastor’s place.”

“So if your grandmother was intercepting my notes before she died, apparently Pastor Logan took it on himself to keep up the practice.”

I think back to something weird my dad told me the first time I saw him back in Billings.

“My dad said the pastor always brought in my dad’s mail. He must have been funneling the letters out for years. Why would he do that?”

Turk looks angry. He shakes his head. “Beats the hell out of me. Did you know I went to Billings? Did you know I met your father and grandmother?”

“You did?”

“I did. Spring of ’85. It was torture, not knowing whether your father had even seen the notes, and at a certain point I figured I’d take a trip and meet Russ’s people. I found the house and rang the doorbell, and your grandmother answered. The moment I saw her face, I realized I couldn’t follow through. I pretended to ask for directions, and we spoke for maybe thirty seconds. When I lingered after, hoping to catch a glimpse of your father, I saw the pastor peek out through his blinds. I nodded at him, and he was very strange, kept looking out his blinds at me. One of them called the police on me, and I remember seeing your father come outside when the police car arrived. I had to tell them I had the wrong address and was sorry to have bothered anyone. Your father, he was maybe twenty by then, handsome beyond belief. I always felt, well – I always felt that in some way he knew who I was. I’m sure that’s crazy. It’s just a feeling I had and never got rid of. The way he looked at me.”

“He didn’t, I’m sure,” I say. “I’m pretty sure this will be news to him.”

“So we’re going to tell him?”

I put my hand on his back in a way that feels normal, now that I understand that he’s my blood. He is me, and I am him, and I am my grandfather. We’re the same. It’s freaky to think that someone who is just like me died of AIDS. That someday, I might get a disease because I’m a human and all humans get diseases and die. It’s part of life, I guess, and that makes me feel surprisingly alive.

“So can I call you Grandpa?” I ask.

The smile starts at his ears and lengthens the minus signs to full dashes, and I see his teeth, so small and a little browned out, and I love them.

“You must,” he says.

MY NEW GRANDPA and I have lunch at a pasta place in his neighborhood, and even though the news he just gave me is sad, I feel a little giddy. Maybe I haven’t found my grandfather, but I have found someone I like, who seems to understand me pretty darn well. I especially like telling Turk funny things, because of his reactions. I explain to him, for instance, how my mother says things like, “I need to own this feeling,” and then add, “I think it would be cool if there was some sort of business out there that bought and sold feelings, leased them, or allowed people to buy aftermarket feelings at reduced rates.” He looks at me with kind eyes and says, “Oh, Russ.”

It could be creepy. But it isn’t creepy. It makes me feel connected to my granddad.

When he goes to the restroom, I look at my phone. I have a bunch of text messages from Aisha. The most recent is all question marks. I know I should answer, but I just want to focus on Turk.

I write: Call you in a bit. All good.

Toward the end of lunch, I see someone with a beer walk by. I look at Turk and say, “Would it surprise you if I told you I’m a little too curious about alcohol?

“No,” he says. “It wouldn’t surprise me. Alcoholism can run in families, you know.”

“How would I know if I’m an alcoholic? If I should be going to meetings?”

“How much do you drink?”

“I had my first beers in Salt Lake City. Three of them. Pissed Aisha off big-time.”

He nods. “I think if you’re worried, you shouldn’t drink. It gets bad, Carson. And it happens fast. Once that train starts rolling, you can’t stop it. I promise.”

In that moment, I make a vow to myself. I may have a million other problems. I may make all sorts of mistakes in my life. But I will not become an alcoholic. I will not cross that line, and I’ll do it by never drinking, ever. It’s the only way I can be sure.

“Thanks. You may have just saved my life.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says, smiling.

He sees the waiter and asks for the check, and when the check comes, he motions for the waiter to bend down so he can whisper in the guy’s ear. The waiter looks confused, and then he smiles. And I’m like, Is he propositioning the waiter?

When the waiter walks away, I say, “What was that all about?”

Turk waves me off. The check comes, and Turk gives the guy his credit card.

We sit in awkward silence. “You’re really not going to tell me what that was?”

“Don’t you worry about it,” he says, giving me a quizzical look.

The guy brings back two credit card slips. Um, what’s happening here? Is he paying the guy? Is this like a prostitution thing? A drug thing? My stomach sinks.

“Now you really have to tell me,” I say.

“Carson,” my new grandfather says. “For God’s sake. Drop it.”

As we leave the restaurant, the waiter gives Turk a hug. Once outside, I stop walking. “No. You one hundred percent have to tell me what’s going on. I am freaking out here.”

He shakes his head at me. “Good God, you’re a drama queen. You really need to know?”

“Yes.”

“You’re very nosy,” he says.

“Just tell me,” I say.

He runs his craggy left hand through what’s left of his hair. “I just attempted to do a random act of kindness, if you must know. I paid the restaurant an extra sum of money, none of your business how much, so that the next few people could eat for free. But since it was supposed to be an anonymous random act of kindness, I suppose the anonymous part is null and void now.”

He walks on and I just stand there, feeling dirt low about what I suspected. “Sorry,” I mumble.

He waits for me to catch up, and we walk on together. “Don’t worry about it,” he says.

“No, really,” I say. “I’m sorry. I trust you. I won’t do that again.”

“You’re a sweet kid,” he says. “Like your grandpa.”

“He was, like, forty, right?”

“That’s a kid,” he says.

By the time we get back to his place, I feel like I’ve known Turk forever. I curl up on the couch, and Gomer sits next to me and rests his muzzle on my feet, which is cool. Maybe I’m beginning to get dogs.

“So what’s the average price of a present you would have given me, say, every birthday and Christmas?” I ask, patting Gomer’s head, which makes him turn around and pant, his mouth open wide, his tongue sticking out.

Turk laughs. “Is this a shakedown? On the very first day of my grandfatherhood?”

I nod. “Yep. Total shakedown.”

“What the hell do I care?” he says, throwing his hands in the air. “I got all the funds I’ll ever need, and a severe lack of family. Seems like a good trade. What do you need?”

When I explain to him the first thing I really want, he isn’t so sure he can do it.

“You sure? How about a nice sweater? I would happily improve your wardrobe. Because this,” he says, pointing up and down at my ratty T-shirt and Gareth’s baggy shorts. “This is unbecoming.”

“This is unbecoming because we left for a day trip a week ago and all I’ve had since then is what I was wearing that day, plus what a Wyoming oldster and a Salt Lake City boozer-in-training was willing to give me. And, of course, most of what I have is currently in Aisha’s car.”

He wrinkles his nose. Then he sits down and relents. “Fine. Dial for me.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I owe you on this one. And since this has no monetary value, we’ll start on the birthday and Christmas presents after, okay?”

He grins and mutters, “The kids these days.”

Turk takes the phone from me. He nods slightly when the call is picked up.

“Hi,” he says. “Would this be Aisha Stinson? I’m calling on behalf of a misguided child named Carson Smith. This is Turk Braverman, Carson’s late grandfather’s ex-lover.”

I can’t hear the words, but I can actually hear a happy shriek through the phone, and I realize how much I miss Aisha.

“Well, get on over here. I’ll catch you all up. And yes, you have a place to stay tonight.”

He listens more.

“I’m well aware you’re angry at him. As Carson’s newly minted grandfather and as someone who knows his bloodline a wee bit, I feel it’s my place to tell you he comes by his stubbornness honestly.”

“Hey!” I yell.

He ignores me. “And his selfishness, and his moodiness. Now, young lady, what part of this is on you?”

This I want to hear, but all I can do is watch and listen.

“Fair enough. Come on over and we’ll work things out. You have directions?”

She does, so they say good-bye. He hangs up and gives me an impish look, which is funny on an old guy. “All settled. She’s willing to consider forgiving you for being a jackass – her words – if you’re willing to consider forgiving her for being a janeass – my word.”

I laugh. I have liked a lot of people on this trip, but none of them so much as I like Turk right away.

While we wait for Aisha, we talk about what needs to happen next, and Turk is generous to a fault about it. No problem is too big. Everything has a solution. So when it’s all settled, I call my mom.

“So I’m coming home,” I say, by way of hello. Gomer sits up and licks my cheek. I wipe his slobber off my face. Gross.

“Good,” Mom says, her voice icy.

“Yeah,” I say. “Are you going to ask where I am or what I’m doing? Because it’s pretty big. I have big news.”

“Carson,” she says, “I just want you to come home. I really don’t care to hear any more stories. Your dad is doing very poorly today.”

“Tell him to hold on, please. Tell him I’m coming home and I have something for him. Tell him that exactly, okay?”

She exhales. “Just tell me when you’ll be here, please.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow evening. We’re flying in. As I said, we have a surprise. Okay?”

She hangs up on me.

I look at Turk. I don’t know what he sees, but he puts his arms around me.

“Well, that hurt,” I say.

He nods and nods. “Your mom is a tough one?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll work my Turk magic on her,” he says, and that makes me smile.

I call my dad, and my mom is right; he sounds rough. I keep it nice and short.

“I’m gonna be back tomorrow night.”

“Good,” he says. “Good.”

“I love you. Did you know that?”

“Wow,” he says. “That’s … nice, Carson.”

“I love you and I’m just sorry for everything that’s happened to you in your life.” I feel myself getting emotional, and Turk gives me a supportive nod.

“Thanks,” my dad says, sounding bewildered.

“When I come back tomorrow, I’m gonna have … some answers for you. It’s gonna be good. You’re gonna hear some things that you need to hear. It’s gonna be all right, okay?”

Long pause. “Okay.”

Nothing more.

“I’m scared,” he says.

“Don’t be scared. I’m done being scared. Just know I love you. You’re loved, Dad.”

“You’re freakin’ me out,” he says.

“I’m a little freaked out too. But good freaked out. Well. Yeah, good. Trust me. All will be revealed.”

And then I’m off the phone, and then everything hits me all at once, and I’m exhausted. I feel like I’ve climbed a mountain. Turk sets up the guest room, puts me to bed, and closes the door. Within seconds I’m deeply asleep.

The craziest thing happens while I’m sleeping. I open my eyes and focus on the ceiling, and I swear I see my grandfather’s face there. Hovering over me. Staring down at me. Calm, serene. Just there.

I don’t freak out. I don’t yell out to see if Turk can come in and see what I see. I just look. The more I look, the more I’m sure of it, that it’s the outline of his face. Once in a while, it’s like the face of the Burger King dude, and then it morphs back to my grandfather.

I think about mirages. I realize I don’t know. I want it to be him.

So it is him. Like Laurelei said. It’s true for me.

We smile at each other, me and my grandfather. And I decide that I will never share this with anyone. This secret I’ll carry with me the rest of my life.

When Grandpa fades, I close my eyes and sleep some more, and it’s a calm sleep. When I wake up, there are voices in the other room, amiable voices. I hear Aisha laughing, and then Turk laughing, and I wrap the blanket around me and feel this content feeling in my chest. It’s how I used to feel on days when I pretended to be sick and stayed home from school, and my grandparents would be in the living room and I’d be all cozy in bed. I would stare at a spot above the window, just stare at it, until the room became distorted and the window would lose all proportion and the spot would suddenly be so big, and me so small. I’d feel a buzz in my head as I breathed and stared, and I felt – safe. There was safety in being small. I knew in those moments it was all going to be okay, and it was delicious, that strange, distorted little place of my own, with the comfort of my grandparents just beyond the door.

I savor it for a while, and when I’m ready, I get up and walk out to the living room.

Aisha is sitting in my spot on the couch, sprawled out with her arms above her head and her feet on the floor. Gomer is lying on her stomach. When she sees me, she shoos Gomer away and looks at the floor in front of her. She says, “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Hey,” she says again, creating an imbalance of heys, two against one.

I study the floor too.

“Oh my God,” Turk says. “Do you have any idea how over the bickering children thing I am? I’ve had you both here for, what, three minutes? No wonder I didn’t have any kids. Exhausting.”

I steal a glance at Aisha just in time to see her stealing one at me.

Turk points to the door. “Out,” he says. “And no, I’m not abandoning you, because heaven knows there are enough abandonment issues here to sink the Titanic. You’re going out into the world to say what you need to say to each other. And then you’re coming back here, and I’m making dinner, and we’ll eat it like one big happy family, which we will be, because you’ll have your shit together. Understood? Understood.”

We tentatively walk toward the door.

“Go, go,” he says, waving his hand. “I’ll be eagerly awaiting the new and improved and made-up Carson and Aisha. God, do I hate conflict.”

I walk down the stairs behind her, a little bewildered by whatever that was. It’s funny getting to know a grandfather when you’re already seventeen. It’s like you should already know his quirks, but you just don’t.

“You okay?” she asks when we’re at the bottom of the stairs. She sits down, so I do too.