A/N: I told my sister to proofread for me and to try and guess who the father was. Her guesses: Lon'qu, Priam, or Yen'fay. That should say something about how similar those three characters are. I did have Priam in mind at the beginning of the story though, and then potatoes made their way in and I just said, fine. I like Lon'qu better anyways. Enjoy!

Quantity of Love

That day when my dad drove us, mom and me, to the Safeway, it's very embarrassing to say now, was the defining day of my jump from childhood into the nameless space before manhood. Maybe that's not how it happens, how it's supposed to happen to people I mean. Or maybe it is. It certainly felt like a huge, awkward leap for me. It felt like receiving a lot of information, embarrassing information, all at once and without warning. I thought the day would never end.

First I knew that day would be different because it was dad behind the wheel, when up until then he'd be the one who sat on the passenger's seat or simply stay home. He didn't go out much, so that meant we didn't go out much. It wasn't always like that though. Mom had told me about how dad took her out very often when they started dating and continued to do so after their wedding day. It's like he was proud of me, she had told me. Like he wanted people to see me with him.

I don't know why she had told me things like that. So I wouldn't get the wrong impression of him? It just seemed, those days, like dad didn't have energy left in him even just to stand up. He tried though. Changing light bulbs, he still did it, but he'd break a couple in the process. He was good at other chores that didn't require him to put too much pressure on the bad part of his body. It was his leg. He injured it, though when and how is still a mystery to me. We didn't treat him like a cripple, though. I suppose it would have hurt him if we had started saying things like, take it easy, or I don't need help. I'm fine. It would just have sounded as if we were rejecting him in specific. Like, I need help but not from you. Worse maybe, it would have sounded like we felt pity for him. You poor man.

Dad was a dependable man. Strong, stout, outstanding, intimidating even. Only to strangers though. Dad had this face. Multifaceted. You could see emotions dancing in it, changing and rippling like light reflected on the surface of restless water. To me he always showed a smiling face - though his lips could be flat and dry as our front yard - that made his eyes shine glossily. Like a pair of grey pebbles from our neighbor's stupid zen garden that he always bragged about but let nobody get near it.

One occasion that I can recall that exemplifies really well how varied my dad's face was is when I'd been in the kitchen with him and mom and we were making dinner. And I do mean that we all were helping out. I sat on this squat chair, small but sturdy, at the threshold between the kitchen and the dining room. The dining room was nothing but a small space in which only a round table for the three of us to sit at fit. I was being instructed by dad on how to properly peel with the paring knife. Don't be afraid to grab the potato firmly. You'll get yourself cut more often from being too careful or from hesitating, he'd told me. Good advice I think, not only for peeling food. I got scared though. I didn't know what was too loose a hold, or if my small hands were even proper for holding such a big potato. I was ten.

I ended up slashing a curved cut across four of my fingers, excepting the thumb, right over the joints. The cut on my pinky was closer to the tip though. Soon as I cried, when the flash of pain made me drop everything on my hands, my dad's face contorted from amused to angry and concerned. It was like a flash of lightning. Or like a blackout. Imagine that, you watching the tv or reading, and all of sudden the lights go out. It really scared me because usually dad looked so calm and happy, and now he was a golem. One of those monsters that you don't want people sending after you because they can't be reasoned with, and they don't feel. They're there to scare you breathless.

He was back to looking his usual self soon after my mom scolded him for yelling at me. Because he did and he'd been right to. He'd told me not to take my eyes off my hands, not to get distracted, and that's just what I did. I think I cried longer not because the cut hurt (though it did), but because I was ashamed.

That's another thing about dad; you didn't want to let him down. If you knew he trusted you with something, or expected something of you, though he wouldn't tell you this with words, you would also know that you couldn't disappoint. Failure wasn't an option when he's the one you'd have had to tell afterwards. That's because he was the type of person to invest himself and his effort in people he himself didn't want to let down.

I want to live the life of a good man, his words, not to reflect badly on you Morgan. One of those rare things that he used to say out of nowhere. It was hard taking him seriously when I was still just a kid, but over time I started realizing, little by little, that maybe I ought to listen to him and really think about what he said. There must come a time like this for everyone, I think. time for self-doubt and reconsideration.

As in that day, I was as unsure as I will never again be. The oddity was how mom took me aside to go and wander with the cart while dad looked at the magazine racks - not the magazines, but the racks. His eyes passed over things without much thought. He didn't want his limp to slow us down, he said. He wasn't in a hurry, but he'd get grumpy too if the leg started bothering him. So I was all alone with her when, maybe without thinking, she took me to the section where all the intimate things for women were. I didn't want to be seen in there with her, as she casually plucked whatever items she wanted. Or needed. I don't know. I wasn't looking. I wanted to look, and to know what all that stuff was, because I felt in me that prickling curiosity about women. Women and their things and their bodies. Like the fleshy bits I couldn't help thinking about all the time, and the areas without name. Places I hadn't seen for myself but felt like touching.

I felt ridiculous. All these questions and the namelessness. I was defective, I thought. Like a robot that jerks at the neck and whirs shrilly and starts smoking when water falls on it, except a bucketful of water wasn't doing that to me, it was my own imagination. Comical. That's how I felt. Mortified too. What if somebody saw me? Not just any other woman, but somebody from a class of mine. Lucy. What if she saw me? What if she was there, shopping with her parents? I was sure Lucy could be found in that section, since she had started wearing bras recently. I could tell because I caught sight of a yellowish strap on her shoulder once, when her shirt slipped during P.E. I couldn't have mistaken that strap. I knew what bra straps looked like because my mom left one of her own bras in a drawer of mine on accident after she'd finished the laundry. Lucy surely was already buying women's things. And what was worse, I liked her.

I liked a woman, as men like women. And just as that thought passed through my mind, I was replacing women with mom and men with dad. And how was it to like somebody like they liked each other? The ideas I had at the time of what people who like each other do together came from shows or movies, mostly. Dates. Flowers. Kisses. Hugs. Bites, sometimes. That's because my parents didn't do what one would imagine married couples do, and they were the closest example I had but still I couldn't picture the rest of the world working the way they did. I knew that was their way. They didn't go out on dates, and not just because of my dad's leg. We're not like the people you see on tv, do you notice?, my mom's question. You don't see me all made up. Or your father's hair slicked back? Most of the time you must think he's a bum, actually, with that hair. She laughed to let me know she was only joking. No, you see that real life is very different from those overacted parodies.

You could tell she didn't like watching tv. She didn't lecture me about it, but that's because she knew I was more into video games. Nobody else in the house watched tv as much as me, which was still only an hour or so, not even for the news, which, according to my dad, didn't give me any real information. It's all so distant, out there. Even the local news will mess with your head. And he said this to me while he carved figurines that my mom liked with his carving knife and a chunk of wood on either hand. You mind yourself, but don't mind much what others think of you. There's never just one version of things, but if you want to trust somebody, that somebody should be you.

I wanted to ask him then if he trusted mom, but it didn't seem right to do so. It was rude maybe. And even if I was his son, and her son too, I didn't feel like I had much right asking that sort of thing.

That was one of my questions. It had to do with how I belonged to them, if I did. It's only natural for me to say my mom, or my dad, but strangely I don't remember them ever calling me something other than Morgan. Either to my face or with strangers, that was what they always called me. Sometimes it made me sad. It got to the point that I wondered whether I was really theirs. But then, what did it really mean to be theirs? Who did I belong to more? Mom, probably. We liked similar things; books and games. Yeah. My mom played my games sometimes, but she was terrible at them. She didn't know what button did what on the gameboy, or even how to hold it in her hands. I used to sit by her side and occasionally mutter tips. She'd look at me with big eyes, like a kid's. Ask me, like that? Am I doing it? Sometimes I'd tell her, yeah, you are. Just out of politeness. She'd be satisfied that she'd done whatever she was trying to do and hand the game back to me. Enough fun for today, she'd say, and repeat, That was fun!

I think she was embarrassed.

My dad was never embarrassed. But, as mom had told me, that hadn't always been so. Dad used to get bashful about the smallest of things, which was hard to imagine for me, since I'd never witnessed such a thing. I've already described how my dad is, and people would agree with me that bashfulness isn't something that would fit a man like him. Oh, but when I asked him to dance with me he'd get red red like a tomato, my mom had told me. Not anymore though. You should ask him to teach you, how to hold a lady. Where and how we like- I can't remember what else she said. I forced myself not to listen, to shut out her voice because that's not the sort of conversation I wanted to have with her. I especially didn't want to imagine how if I did ask him I would picture him and mom together, as in how people of the opposite sex are in an intimate manner. It would be his voice telling me what he knew of how women liked to be held when dancing, but I'd know that was how mom liked it.

Can you guess where that led me? What if all his amassed knowledge of how to dance with a woman (and do other things with a woman) wasn't something he got from being with my mom alone? Had there been someone else before her, or maybe in between? People aren't like fairies, more advice from my mother. Real people feel many things at once, and sometimes, for many people at once. I was so young when she told me this. I don't know how I remember it. I was still crawling, perhaps. Doodling on the walls, speaking baby speech. Why did she say that to me? What was happening in our lives?

Actually, what is happening to my life? I don't get to say our lives anymore. It's been so long since they've been gone. First went my mom, to my surprise, since dad was much older than her. Almost a whole decade, I think. And I think I now remember that was what mom said, that he may have been proud to be seen with her, but he might have always thought that wasn't the case for her. He always belittled himself too much, when in fact nobody ever made her as happy as he. Well, nobody until she gave birth to me, she amended herself. I could tell though, that the way dad made her happy would never be matched by anything else in the world that I could offer. Dad loved her, and I loved her, but the way we did this was very different. And mom loved dad, and mom loved me, but again…

I still can't tell if ever there was a maximum or a minimum, in reference to how they loved me. There are many ways to love someone as well as manners you can let that show, but quantity of love can never be precise. I don't even know if a thing like that can be measured. Chemicals, sure, hormones, secretions, all those things are very measurable and easy to understand. I've seen in movies men, spies, who wear special colognes made from pheromones to make women crazy so they can steal jewels behind their backs. But that's an illusion, I know. That's a synthesized mockery. First, before passion, there has to be love. And though you can feel passion before love, there must, absolutely, always, no matter what, be comfort.

You can't be with somebody you don't feel comfortable with, said mom. Do you think your father is a stranger to me? Of course not. I know everything there is to know about him. I learn about him every day. He lets me. And I do the same for him. There is nothing we hide. And at this point, I don't think I'd ever want to have any secrets. It's the things you don't say but wish you could that keep you awake. So what's the use in shame? People would find love more easily if they could get rid of sheepishness. Ask you father, go on.

Not even this lesson from her could keep me from cringing through the aisles at the Safeway. Even when we were already past the section with the women's things, as I thought of them, I was acutely, painfully aware of the products in the cart she pushed. I stole glances, quick and fleeting. I must have looked ready to burst or to release steam from my ears when we went to the checkout. A nightmare: it was a girl who took the products from the conveyor belt as they went. I dared only to look to her hands, but nothing more. I knew from her hands that she must have been pretty, but I didn't want to think about that. I didn't want to think about the rest of her. I had already started to get that funny stiffness at times that I couldn't control and the more I thought about how I didn't want to think about her, about her body, the harder it got. Down there. I was distracted by the arm that I recognized as my dad's. He came up to us to add a couple of magazines to the groceries. Popular Woodworking. He let me read those on occasion. But it wasn't my thing exactly. At least it allowed me to speak of things that interested him without sounding too much like a dunce.

I thank his hairy arm for bringing me back down from that world of hazy heat. His presence had that effect on people, not just on me. There must be something about grounded people. It wasn't so crazy to think seriously on how my mom talked about him. There really was something, a quality of his that no other had. A sensibility. Is that what he did for me, that day? Did he sense, senselessly, what I was going through, and decided he'd pull me back? Many times after and before that day he did similar things. I can't tell for sure whether it's the same with other people's parents, but there were times when he'd put his hand on my shoulder, or ruffle my hair, or say a thing, or just stand there reclined against the doorframe of my room, where my height through the years had been marked by him and mom. And he'd make it all better.

And now that I think about it, it wasn't just Morgan. I don't know how I forgot. It was workmate. He'd also ask me to be his workmate, to help him reinstalling a hinge, driving screws or whatever that wasn't too difficult for me. You're a terrible workmate, worse than your mother even, it's what he said sometimes. He didn't waste his time in sugaring things up for me. But he also said, I wouldn't ask for another.

I miss dad, I miss mom. I miss us being the way we were, and I miss that day long ago when he drove us to the Safeway and his mere presence saved me from embarrassing myself in front of the pretty checkout girl. I miss that one moment before the big leap into a miserable not-quite-manhood, when I used to think that the day would never end.