Page 73 of The Pansy Paradox
“Identity theft?” I suggest.
“Not even that. The cabinets were filled with references, resources, and all the notes my father made about his hobbies and nothing more.”
I consider the papers, books, and magazines scattered across the floor. “He must have had a lot of hobbies.”
“Gardening, bonsai, several different historical eras. He kept commonplace notebooks as well, not to mention the years of March Madness brackets, model railroad, coin and stamp collecting?—”
“Did they take those?”
“Locked up. Anything of value is either in a safe deposit box or with the…” Henry trails off, his mouth slightly agape. I can almost see the thoughts swirling behind his eyes. “Lawyers,” he finishes, at last. “Like the photographs my father left me.”
“You don’t think—” I begin, but we’re both heading for the front room where he—oh so casually—left the package of photographs yesterday morning.
My heart thumps, and I’m certain the photos will have vanished. But they’re still on the coffee table, tucked neatly away.
“I thought they might be a message.” Henry sits down hard on the couch. “Or perhaps a nudge, my father’s way of telling me to contact your mother. He was a man of few words, so this sort of thing wouldn’t be out of character.” He grips the package in his hands but doesn’t open it. “My parents divorced when I was young. I spent every other weekend with him. All those hobbies? I think they started out as a way for us to connect.”
Henry glances up at me. I’ve knelt opposite him, the coffee table between us. His eyes are dark with anguish. “Every other weekend, he’d show me how to do something. He taught me how to cook, how to make a three-point shot, even how to darn socks.”
He eases the photographs from the package. “He was a solitary man. Unlike my mother, he never remarried. He was always so stoic, so dignified.”
Much like his son? Henry’s expression is a combination of bewilderment and embarrassment.
“I’m telling you all this so you can understand my confusion about these photographs.”
He spills them across the coffee table, in an orderly fashion, mind you. Landscapes to one side, snapshots of people to the other. What strikes me, physically, is how young my mother looks. My chest constricts, and my eyes water just a bit.
The house, this house, is a disaster, as is the yard. The man at her side, who looks so much like his son, is helping her reclaim both. Yes, there’s my mother, clad in a barely-there halter top and some short-shorts that are even more revealing than a pair of Daisy Dukes.
My mother. She is shameless. Not that Harry Darnelle seems to mind.
In a montage of photos, they’re pulling up hideous shag carpeting, coating walls with fresh paint, and clearing the way for the garden. I wonder if it’s Henry’s father who’s chronicling this transformation. It seems like a family trait.
Then, post-transformation, come the parties.
“Oh.” I work to sort through these and put them in order, but honestly, I suspect it’s one nonstop celebration.
“Yes. I know.”
He sounds so chagrined, so pained by all this. Not that I blame him. I keep my gaze on the photographs in case he’s too embarrassed to meet my eyes, or possibly vice versa. Okay, so there’s nothing truly obscene in these photos. But there’s the irrefutable evidence that our parents weren’t always our parents. They were young. They had lives wholly separate from our own.
They were in love.
It’s there in the way Harry Darnelle is looking at my mother in every single photograph and how her gaze reflects his. The look goes beyond infatuation. If someone stared at me like that, I’m not sure what I’d do. Run away? Or possibly throw myself into their arms.
“You have to understand.” Henry pushes the photos around on the table as if he’s trying to bring order to the chaos. “I never knew this side of my father. I never saw him this…”
Happy. The word clogs the air between us.
He pushes a picture my way. “Do you know what he’s doing here?”
In the photo, colored lights brighten a dark corner, and Harrison Darnelle is master of his domain with two turntables and a microphone.
“It’s called scratching.”
Henry gives me a blank look.
“He’s DJ-ing.”
