Page 81 of All That We Are Together

“Son, that’s, uh…whew…that’s not good.”

“Third problem is, I want her in the sack.”

“Axel!” my father said.

“Honestly, it’s all I ever think about. So you got any advice, Dad?”

“This is better than I thought,” Justin laughed, cracking up, and soon my father and I had joined him, even if Dad, a bit startled, was red-cheeked and coughing too.

“You’ve got a lot on your plate,” he said.

“Yeah. Not too bodacious,” I joked.

“Not at all.” He smiled.

“Let’s go take a walk.”

We said goodbye to Justin and left the café, heading toward the boardwalk, which we walked along in silence, enjoying the time together. When we sat on the wall, I looked at him, in his plastic glasses, with his eternal smile and the wind whipping through his hair, which was longer than my mother liked. I wanted a cigarette, but I abstained, knowing he wished I’d quit.

“Dad…”

“Spit it out, dude.”

“If I ever have kids, I hope I’m half as good with them as you were with us.”

“You both made it easy on me.”

He blinked, trying to hold his feelings in, and I put an arm over his shoulders while we looked out at the blue sea with the surfers looking for waves under a calm morning sun.

67

Leah

For some reason, when I thought of Paris, Claude Monet always came into my mind. My second year in college, I did my final project on him. His determination fascinated me, even if the upper classes rejected him at first because he broke with the artistic values of the time. I loved his obsession with color and the ethereal qualities of light. His free brushwork, with short, heavy strokes, his bright, vibrant tones. That interest in capturing the instant, the impalpable, the fleeting. It was comforting to me, like those moments you store in memory and that you know you’ll never experience again. He was magic. Representing the volatile in pure, juxtaposed colors.

His most important work, the one that gave impressionism its name, was calledImpression, Sunrise. I tried to pretend that wasn’t a sign. The sunrise. Him.

All I thought of in those days was Monet.

All I thought of was Paris…

68

Leah

We went out to eat and spent the night trying to act like nothing was going on, but we both knew we weren’t doing well. I wasn’t even sure what the problem was, but I could sense the uncomfortable silences, the topics we were avoiding, the looks that concealed doubts and fears.

I took off my shoes when we reached his apartment and walked barefoot to the kitchen for a glass of water. When I drank it and came back, Landon was leaning on the counter and watching me gravely.

“What?” I walked toward him.

“We need to talk about Paris.”

“You think I shouldn’t go?”

“That’s not it. Actually I think you should. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But it makes things harder…” He ran his hand through his hair, stressed. “I love you, Leah, but you’re going there, with him, thousands of miles away, and I’m not sure I can go on pretending nothing’s up.”

“What are you trying to say?”