Out of Position (26 page)

Father adjusts his glasses. “I don’t think this is really the time or place,” he says. “And keep your voice down.”

“Do you see him here?” I look around, melodramatically. There’s a tiger at the bar, and for a moment I think about saying that that’s Dev, just to freak them out. “You’re so concerned about my life, I’d think you’d want to meet him.”

“But if you’re not graduating,” my mother says, “what are you going to do during the ceremony?”

My father and I look at her. “Don’t change the subject,” I say.

“We might say the same to you,” Father says.

“Well, what do you want me to say? It’s done, it’s over. I can’t go back and make up five credits this afternoon so I can march tomorrow.”

Mother picks apart her sandwich before eating it. I’m not really all that hungry, so I ignore the smell of my roast beef and spear one of the steamed veggies. It tastes boiled and could use salt, or pepper, or anything. Father cuts up his chicken strips. “We just want to know that you have a plan,” he says.

“You don’t want to know that I have a plan,” I say. “You want to know that I have your plan.”

“No,” Father says in that reasonable voice that I hate. “If you have another plan that’s going to work, that’s fine.”

“You’ve heard my plan,” I say. “I’m going to work for the Dragons. I’m going to pay you back for my education.”

“That’s not really a plan.” He starts eating the chickens strips, slowly, methodically. “It’s a goal. How do you plan to accomplish that?”

I look at Mother, who’s eating her sandwich and now looking at us again. “Well, I’d tell you, but it involves my boyfriend.”

Predictably, she drops her eyes. Father says, “You think he’s going to get drafted? Is that is? Then you’ll just mooch off of him?”

“Mooch?” My gut’s all knotted up. I couldn’t eat the sandwich even if I were hungry. “Do people still talk like that?”

“What happens when you break up?”

“What makes you think we’re going to break up?”

Father takes a breath. “Wiley, you’re in college.”

I can’t resist. “Not any more.”

He narrows his eyes. His ears go back. “You can’t pin all your hopes to this tiger. You’ve been together how long now, six months?”

“A year.” That’s stretching it, but technically accurate.

“Oh, this sandwich is no good.” Mother puts it down. “There’s mayonnaise all over it.”

“It’s P.J.’s,” I say. “There’s mayo on everything.”

“You’re young,” Father says. “We’re just trying to protect you.”

“Protecting me? From what, the catty remarks of the Vernaxes across the street?”

Now, Mother looks at us both. “Please, let’s not fight.”

“We’re not fighting,” Father says.

I raise an eyebrow and flick my ears back. “And you think I need relationship advice?”

“You’re still young. You should be exploring relationships, not pinning all your future hopes on them.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t giving me a hundred thousand dollars in debt to be responsible for.” The skunk at the next table half-turns at that. Her ears are all the way back now, and her boyfriend is listening to us too.

“You wouldn’t have that debt if you’d graduated!”

“Aren’t parents supposed to love their kids no matter what?”

“We do love you,” Mother protests.

Father leans across the table. “We know you’re smart enough to graduate. I didn’t raise you to be a quitter.”

I push my chair back and stand up. “Well, you made some mistakes, then, didn’t you?”

“Sit down,” he growls, his voice deep and slow. The skunks at the next table are openly staring. The coyote waiter stands about ten feet away at another table that’s staring. Even some of the people at the bar have turned around. The tiger I noticed before, dressed in a fine grey suit and green tie, is walking away from the bar, but not looking at us.

“Really,” I say, “I’m not hungry. I think I’ll just head home.” What else am I going to do but quit, walk away from things when they get too hard, right? That’s my new thing.

My mother’s looking up, her eyes wide as if she doesn’t quite get what’s going on. “Wiley Farrel,” my father says, “if you know what’s good for you, you’ll sit down.”

“Clearly, I don’t,” I say. My tail lashes against the chair. “If I did, I’d be graduating tomorrow. Introducing you to my girlfriend, a nice vixen who’s polite and says the right things and is expecting to be married in the fall and pregnant next year. Like cousin Amy, right? That’s how you wish I’d turned out.”

“We love you the way you are,” my mother says. My father doesn’t say anything.

I turn to leave, but a scent catches my nose. “Dev?”

A heavy paw comes to rest on my shoulder: the tiger in the grey suit and green tie. I didn’t even recognize him. “Lee,” he says, “I thought you wanted me to meet your parents.”

“I did,” I say. “But I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

“Why not? We’re all here.” He sits down at the empty place, his head coming up to around my chest, and smiles down at my parents. “Hi. I’m Devlin Miski. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Brenly Farrel,” my father says. “My wife Eileen.” My mother’s jaw is hanging slightly open. “So you’re Wiley’s…”

“Boyfriend, yes,” Dev says pleasantly, softly enough to be private. “Lee?”

Slowly, I sit, because as much as I want to leave, I don’t want to leave him alone with them. Plus, he just called himself my boyfriend. I can’t really walk out on him. As I pull my chair back up, the people around us go back to their own meals, though the skunks still look like they’re listening.

“I’d hoped to have a little more warning before meeting you,” my father says, with a pointed look at me.

“Hey, I didn’t set this up,” I say. “I figured I’d freak you out about graduation first, and save this one for tomorrow night. Dev just does things on his own sometimes. Without asking.”

“I just happened to be at the bar,” Dev says. “I like to grab a drink here sometimes.”

My mother’s ears are flicking forward and back. She keeps darting little glances at Dev. My father folds his paws together in front of his plate. “Well, now we’ve met you. If you don’t mind, we were in the middle of something with our son.”

“Actually,” I say, “It was pretty much over, as I recall.”

“It most certainly was not over,” Father says. “Don’t think you’ve gotten out of it by distracting us.”

Dev looks back and forth. “Your son’s really thought about his future a lot,” he says.

“Apparently.” My father focuses his ears on my tiger, looking up and leaning forward. “He says you’ve promised to provide for him so he can indulge this hobby of his without needing any money.”

“Not exactly,” Dev says, and now I stare at him too. He doesn’t look at me, but I see the faintest twitch of his whiskers at the corner of his mouth. “I mean, I’m gonna support him, yeah, but it ain’t a hobby. It’s a job, and he’s really good at it.”

“You’re going to support him,” Father has pushed the plate of chicken strips aside, leaning both elbows on the table now. “And what do you do now that football season’s over?”

“I’m going to play professionally,” Dev says, promptly.

“That’s your plan?”

“That’s our plan,” I cut in, edging closer to Dev. “I know a lot about what teams are looking for. I’ve helped him get prepared.”

“Why don’t you just plan to win the lottery?” Father says, not as acidly as I would have, but still.

“You don’t win the lottery with talent,” I say. “He’s got the talent to play pro, and the smarts too.”

“He goes to a D-II school.”

“Oh, really? Is that where we are? I thought this was North State. It must be the colors that threw me off.” See, acid like that.

Father glares. Dev says, “The point is, we’re working on it together. Lee’s helping me and I’m gonna help him. That’s because we care about each other.”

“And how long will that last?” Father says. “If you do get drafted, you’ll just leave him behind. If you don’t, you’ll start fighting over money and…”

The glasses and plates on the table rattle as my mother stands, her chair scraping loudly back. “I don’t feel good,” she says. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

“Eileen,” Father says, reaching out a paw.

“I’ll be right back!” Her voice is shrill. When she turns, I can see the bristling of her tail fur.

She walks away fast. My father turns and glares at me. “You know how this upsets your mother. How you could be so inconsiderate as to do this without any warning whatsoever…”

“I didn’t set this up.” I raise my voice, very slightly.

“Why is your mother upset?” Dev asks me.

“She wants grandchildren,” I say, without looking away from my father.

“You started this relationship,” he says.

Dev flinches. “You told him about that?”

Father’s nostrils widen, smelling the tension. “About what?”

Now they’re both staring at me. I want to say that we should do this another time, but that feels to me, again, like quitting. The only problem is, I can’t think of any other thing to do. “You know what? Let’s just forget it. I’m fine, I’m okay with my life. You don’t have to approve or even know about any of it. That make you happy?”

My father looks back at me. “Not really.”

I shrug. “That’s what you get. Come on, Dev. Let’s go get something at Goose’s.”

He shakes his head and leans forward. “Mister Farrel, your son’s told me a lot about you. He told me how you encouraged him to be a fireman, how you watched football with him, how you pushed for him to get a good education. I wanted to be a fireman when I was seven and my parents never got me a fire helmet.”

I want to stop him. I feel my own tail starting to bristle. I know what he’s trying to do and it just isn’t going to work, not with Father, who right now is giving me a sharp look, like a “how dare you share our memories with him” look. “Dev, it’s okay,” I say.

“No, no,” Father says, leaning back. He folds his arms, tapping one finger. “Let him talk.”

I kick Dev’s foot, trying to get him to stop, but he ignores me. “I just think you’re missing something pretty important here.”

Father arches an eyebrow. He glances toward the restroom, but there’s no sign of my mother. “Do tell.”

Dev takes a breath. “He talks about you guys all the time.” This is technically true, but I doubt they’d appreciate the words I use. “And it was really important to him that you meet me. He still wants you to be part of his life. And you want to be part of his. I mean, you haven’t walked out yet.” The ‘you’ being singular, obviously. “This ain’t easy for me either. You can guess what most of my friends would think. But Lee’s important to me, too. So can’t we… can’t we just work this out?”

I brace myself for my father’s reply. The noises of the restaurant seem preternaturally loud. Dev’s awkward sincerity seems so very small-town, so very Hilltown, that I start running through defenses in my mind. I imagine myself getting up and leaving with a lofty, “I won’t let you talk to him that way.” I imagine the various other things I could snap at him about not appreciating real emotions, being over-analytical, shut off and inaccessible—all the things I’ve been accused of myself by various people over the last few years. I’ve got all these remarks jostling for position in my head. And then a small miracle happens.

“I hadn’t really looked at it that way.”

I scrutinize the words, the tone, for any hint of sarcasm. Failing to find any, I look at Father’s expression. It’s thoughtful, ears cupped forward, muzzle resting in one paw. He’s looking at Dev with the concentration I’ve seen him use when we’re watching football and one of the coaches does something unexpected. I hold my breath through the silence, afraid that anything I say will disrupt the miracle, afraid even to call attention to myself in case I remind my father that we’re a family of foxes who live by mocking each other.

“So,” Dev says, a smile starting to brush the corners of his mouth. “You think we can talk?”

Father glances toward the bathrooms again. “Not today.” He looks at me, now, with that same concentration. “But soon, maybe. I’ll work on your mother.”

“Really?” I can’t keep the wonder out of my voice.

His expression changes to a more familiar combination of exasperation and resolve. He waves a finger between me and Dev, looking over the rim of his spectacles. “About this, yes. About you not graduating… that’s another story. I’m very disappointed by the lying, the deception…”

“But you think you can get Mother to talk to Dev?”

“Eileen misses little paws running around the house,” Father says. “That’s why we have to watch those damn movies every time you’re home.”

“Wait a minute,” I say. “You don’t like them either?”

He snorts. “We watch them sometimes when you’re not home, too. I’ve seen that barbecue ruined probably a hundred times since it happened. But,” he holds my eyes with his, “I watch them again, because it’s a small sacrifice and it makes your mother happy.”

“Some sacrifices aren’t so small,” I say.

“Of course not,” he says. “But, speaking of that…” He reaches down into a small bag and hands me a gift-wrapped DVD case. “This was going to be your graduation gift. Part of it, anyway. It’s your favorite home movies, on DVD so you can watch them anytime you want. Or share them.” His eyes flicker to Dev.