I'll Give You the Sun (39 page)

“Don't.” He grabs my phone to stop me from taking any more pictures. “I don't want your spot. I don't want to go to CSA.”

“You don't?”

He shakes his head.

“Since when?”

“Since right this minute, I guess.”

“Noah?”

He kicks his foot into the ground. “It's like I forgot how awesome it was before I cared if I was any good or good enough to get into some stupid art school. I mean, seriously, like
who fucking cares?
” The sun's hitting his face. He looks clear, self-possessed, older, and for some reason, I think: We're going to be okay. “It's so not about that,” he continues. “It's about
magic
.” He shakes his head. “How could I have forgotten that?” His smile's as loopy as it was when he was drunk last night. I can't believe he's smiling at me like this. Why isn't he furious with me? He goes on. “When I figured out you were going to Garcia's”—Is that why he was going through my sketches that day?—“I knew everything was about to blow up, all my lies. And it's like
I
blew up.
Finally
. I couldn't just paint in my head anymore.” Aha! “I had to tell the truth out loud, somewhere, somehow. I had to let Mom know I heard her that day. I had to apologize to her, to Brian, to you and Dad, even to Garcia. I used the emergency money Dad left, bought all this spray paint, remembered this wall from running. I think I watched every video ever made on spray painting. First attempts have been painted over and over and—hey . . .” He tugs at my sleeve. “I'm not mad at you, Jude. I'm not going to be either.”

I can't believe this. “Why? You should be. How can you not be?”

He shrugs. “I don't know. I'm just not.”

He reaches for my hands, takes them in his. Our eyes meet and hold, and the world starts to fall away, time does, years rolling up like rugs, until everything that's happened unhappens, and for a moment, it's us again, more one than two.

“Wow,” Noah whispers. “IV Jude.”

“Yeah,” I say, the enchantment of him feeding my very cells. I feel a smile sweep across my face, remembering all the light showers, the dark showers, picking up rocks and finding spinning planets, days with thousands of pockets, grabbing moments like apples, hopping fences into forever.

“I forgot
this,
” I say, and remembering practically lifts me off my feet, lifts us both off our feet.

We. Are. Off. Our. Feet.

I look up. The air's shimmering with light. The world is.

Or I'm imagining this. Of course I am.

“Feel that?” Noah says.

Mothers are the parachutes.

I did not imagine it.

For the record, woohoo! Not just art, but life—
magic
.

“Let's go,” Noah says, and we're running together into the woods like we used to, and I can see how he'll draw it later, with the redwoods bowing, the flowers opening like houses for us to enter, the creek following behind us in winding wending color, our feet inches above the ground.

Or maybe he'll do it like this: the forest a blur of green over our heads while we lie on our backs, playing Rochambeau.

He picks rock. I pick scissors.

I pick paper. He picks scissors.

He picks rock. I pick paper.

We give up, happily. It's a new age.

Noah's looking up at the sky. “I'm not mad, because I could've just as easily done it to you,” he says. “I
did
do it to you. Just in smaller ways. Over and over again. I knew how you were feeling at the museum all those weekends with Mom and me. I knew how left out you felt all the time. And I know how much I didn't want Mom to see your sculptures. I made sure she didn't. I was always afraid you were better than me and she'd realize.” He sighs. “We got all messed up.
Both
of us.”

“Still, CSA was your—”

He interrupts. “Sometimes it felt like there wasn't enough of Mom to go around.”

This thought silences me and we're quiet for a long time after that, breathing in the scent of eucalyptus, watching the leaves fluttering all around us. I think about how Mom told Noah it was his responsibility to be true to his heart. Neither of us has been. Why is it so hard? Why is it so hard to know what that truth is?

“Does Heather know you're gay?” I ask.

“Yeah, but no one else.”

I roll on my side to face him. “So can you believe how weird I've gotten and how normal you've gotten?”

“It's astounding,” he says, which cracks us both up. “Except most of the time,” he adds, “I feel like I'm undercover.”

“Me too.” I pick up a stick, start digging with it. “Or maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people,” I say. “Maybe we're accumulating these new selves all the time.” Hauling them in as we make choices, good and bad, as we screw up, step up, lose our minds, find our minds, fall apart, fall in love, as we grieve, grow, retreat from the world, dive into the world, as we make things, as we break things.

He grins. “Each new self standing on the last one's shoulders until we're these wobbly people poles?”

I die of delight. “Yes, exactly! We're all just wobbly people poles!”

The sun's setting and the sky's filling with pink wispy clouds. We should be getting home. Dad returns tonight. I'm about to say so when Noah speaks.

“That painting in the hallway of his studio. The one of the kiss, I just saw it for a second, but I think Mom made it.”

“You do? I didn't know Mom painted.”

“Neither did I.”

Was that her secret? Another secret? “Like you,” I say, and something clicks into place, perfectly into place. Noah was Mom's
muse
. I feel certain of it, and unbelievably without jealousy, understand it.

I flop onto my back again, dig my fingers into the loamy soil and imagine Mom making that incredible painting, wishing with her hands, being that in love. How can I be mad at her for that? How can I be mad at her for finding her split-apart and wanting to be with him? As Guillermo said, the heart doesn't listen to reason. It doesn't abide by laws or conventions or other people's expectations either. At least her heart was full when she died. At least she was living her life, busting out of its seams, letting the horses gallop, before she had to leave.

Except, no.

Sorry.

How could it have been okay for her to break Dad's heart like that? To break all the promises she made to him? To break up our family? Then again, how could it not be okay if she was being true to herself? Argh. It was right and wrong both. Love does as it undoes. It goes after, with equal tenacity: joy and heartbreak.

Her happiness was his unhappiness and that's the unfair way it was.

But he still has life and time to fill it with more happiness.

“Noah, you have to tell Dad. Right away.”

“Tell Dad what?” And there is our footstep-less father looking down on us. “This is a sight for sore eyes, sore, tired, traveling eyes. I saw you two running into the woods hand in hand when I drove by in the cab. It was like a time warp.”

He joins us on the forest floor. I squeeze Noah's hand.

“What is it, son? What do you need to tell me?” Dad asks, and my heart spills over with love.

• • •

L
ater that evening, I'm sitting in a chair as Noah and Dad move swiftly around the kitchen making dinner. They won't let me help even though I've promised to retire the bible. Noah and I made a deal. He'll stop jumping off cliffs if I stop bible-thumping and suspend all medical research, effective immediately. I'm going to make a giant-size, paper flying woman sculpture out of each and every bible passage. Grandma's going to love it. It's the first idea I put in that blank idea pad I've been carrying around since I started CSA. I'm going to call the piece:
The History of Luck
.

When Noah told Dad the truth about Mom and Guillermo hours ago in the forest, Dad simply said, “Okay, yes. That makes more sense.” He didn't burst out of granite like Noah or have oceans break inside him like I did, but I can see that the storm in his face has quelled. He's a man of science and the unsolvable problem is solved. Things finally make sense. And sense to Dad is everything.

Or so I thought.

“Kids, I've been thinking about something.” He looks up from the tomato he's chopping. “How do you feel about moving? Not out of Lost Cove but to another house. Well, not to just any old house . . .” His smile is ridiculous. I have no idea what he's going to say. “A house
boat
.” I can't decide what's more amazing: the words coming out of Dad's mouth or the expression on his face. He looks like the unicycle-riding super-kook. “I think we need an adventure. The three of us together.”

“You want us to live on a boat?” I ask.

“He wants us to live on an
ark,
” Noah answers, awe in his voice.

“I do!” Dad laughs. “That's exactly right. I've always wanted to do this.” Really? News to me. Um, who is this man? “I just did some research and you will not believe what's for sale down by the marina.” He goes to his briefcase and pulls out some pictures he must've printed from the Internet.

“Oh wow,” I say. This is no rowboat. It
is
an ark.

“An architect owned it previously,” Dad tells us. “Renovated the whole thing, did all the woodwork and stained glass herself. Incredible, isn't it? Two stories, three bedrooms, two baths, great kitchen, skylights, wraparound decks on both floors. It's a floating paradise.”

Noah and I must register the name of the floating paradise at the exact same moment, because we both blurt out, imitating Mom, “Embrace the mystery, Professor.”

The name of this houseboat is
The Mystery
.

“I know. Was hoping you wouldn't catch that. And yes, if I weren't me, if I were you, for instance, Jude, I'd be certain it was a sign.”

“It
is
a sign,” I say. “I'm in and I'm not even going to mention one of the thousand potential hazards of houseboat living that have flown into my head.”

“What kind of Noah would I be?” Noah says to Dad.

“It's time,” Dad says, nodding at us.

Then, unbelievably, he puts on some jazz. The excitement in the room is palpable as Noah and Dad continue chopping and dicing. I can tell Noah's painting in his head while Dad rhapsodizes about what it will be like to dive off the deck for a swim and what an inspiring place it would be to live if only anyone in the family had artistic inclinations.

Somehow it's us again, with a few motley additions to our wobbly people poles, but us. The imposters have left the premises.

When we returned from the woods, I found Dad in his office and told him about Noah's CSA application. Let's just say, I'd rather spend the remainder of my life in a medieval torture chamber rotating from Head Crusher to Knee Splitter to The Rack than see that look on Dad's face again. I didn't think he was ever going to forgive me, but an hour or so later, after he talked to Noah, he asked me to go for a swim with him, our first in years. At one point when we were stroke for stroke in the setting sun's glinting path, I felt his hand squeeze my shoulder, and as soon as I concluded he wasn't trying to drown me, I realized he wanted me to stop.

Treading there in the middle of the ocean, he said, “I haven't exactly been there for—”

“No, Dad,” I said, not wanting him to apologize for anything.

“Please let me say this, honey. I'm sorry I haven't been better. I think I got a little lost. Like for a decade.” He laughed and took a mouthful of salt water in the process, then continued. “I think you can sort of slip out of your life and it can be hard to find a way back in. But you kids are my way back in.” His smile was full of sadness. “I know how crushed you've been. And what happened with Noah and CSA . . . well, sometimes a good person makes a bad decision.”

It felt like grace.

It felt like a way back in.

Because, as corny as it may be: I want to be a wobbly people pole that tries to bring joy into the world, not one that takes joy from it.

Bobbing there like buoys, Dad and I talked and talked about so many things, hard things, and after, we swam even farther toward the horizon.

“I'd like to help cook,” I tell the chefs. “I promise I'll add nothing bible-y.”

Dad looks at Noah. “What do you think?”

Noah throws me a pepper.

But that's the beginning and end of my culinary contribution, because Oscar has walked into the kitchen in his black leather jacket, hair more unruly than usual, face full of weather. “Sorry to interrupt,” he says. “I knocked, no one answered. The door was open . . .” I'm having déjà vu to the time Brian walked into the kitchen when Mom was baking. I look at Noah and know he's having it too. Brian still hasn't responded. Noah spent all afternoon with The Oracle, though. He knows Brian's at Stanford. I can feel all the news roiling inside him, the possibilities.

“It's okay. We never hear the door,” I say to Oscar, walking over to him and taking his arm. He stiffens at my touch. Or maybe I imagined it? “Dad, this is Oscar.”

Dad's once-over is not subtle or generous.

“Hello, Dr. Sweetwine,” Oscar says, back to being the English butler. “Oscar Ralph.” He's holding out his hand, which Dad shakes, tapping him on the back with the other.

“Hello, young man,” my father says like it's the 1950s. “And I'm emphasizing the
man
part intentionally.” Noah laughs into his hand and then tries to pass it off as a cough. Oh boy. Dad's back. Present and accounted for.

“About that.” Oscar looks at me. “Can we talk for a moment?”

I did not imagine it.

When I reach the doorway, I turn around because I'm hearing odd strangled noises. Dad and Noah are both doubled over behind the counter in hysterics. “What?” I ask.