III.
Back
On Monday, Shawn started packing. Oftentimes, this was left until the last possible minute. He preferred to do anything but see the awesome blackness of an empty suitcase, to shift through the wares of his wardrobe for the proper things to take, to fold, stack, unfold, refold, stack a second, third, fourth time. If he had had his way, he would've packed for the trip the way he'd packed when he'd moved in: throwing objects together in one giant Hefty Cinch sack. He heard that airlines frowned on garbage bags being used as suitcases. One could only guess why.
Oh so reluctantly, he dragged from the closet in the Nautical Bedroom (the spare room, where Shawn used to crash before his world and Lassiter's snapped into place) the small and conspicuously floral suitcase his mother had given for Christmas. She thought he would get a kick out of the vintage 1980s floral pattern, with salmon and sea foam green and shreds of ivory ribbons.
He did like it. It was too ridiculous that he had to laugh at it. Not the reading material strewn about the house, or anything ever done to Carlton made Shawn feel gayer than that obnoxiously printed suitcase. Maddie had thought it a kind of tongue-and-cheek joke, combining Shawn's love for the 80s with Shawn's love for men. It didn't matter that she didn't get it, that it wasn't men in the plural, just one. He supposed it was an attribute of humanness, a kind of annoying habit they had to label everything. They were all living their life in a pantry, and must be labeled to be identified, with ingredients and a title, where they were manufactured and by whom, the date they were canned and the date they expired.
He heaved the suitcase to the bed. The room hadn't changed much since Juliet's initial reconstruction, with its fair green walls like frosted celery, the furniture mostly Carlton's but two things that were Shawn's taken from the old family homestead as gifts from Uncle Fenz. And the quilt on the bed, not really a "gift" from Henry, but more like, "Here, found this, thought you could use it." Henry never asked where they'd put it. The furthest he even walked down the main hall of the tiny house was the bathroom. He'd helped Shawn and Carlton do the tile, despite vociferous protests that he wouldn't lift a finger. Even Henry couldn't resist the award of Masculinity Points as he cut and set tile. They'd listened to classic rock, drank beers, at pizza—watched a baseball game after they were done, with one of them dribbling off to the bathroom again just to have a look at the handiwork and accomplishment. But Henry never tiptoed past the bathroom.
Shawn wished his dad was there to help him pack. Any time they went somewhere when he was a kid, Henry had to repack for Shawn. And he had to check the car's bags of snacks for anything that'd made it past initial customs, like candy cigarettes and umpteen packages of Big League Chew. Some were cleverly smuggled in as highly-prized contraband, and hidden around the vehicle, between cushions and under the seats, with ropes of red licorice and boxes of Mike and Ike. "Great Scott!" Shawn had once heard his dad exclaim to Maddie, who stood nearby, wanting to chide Shawn and far too amused to do so. "It's like we're riding in the god damn Good Humor truck." Sugar smelled a whole lot nicer than car, which always wound up smelling like Henry's feet with an undercurrent of Maddie's conditioner.
Shawn tossed bundles of uninteresting white cotton socks into the suitcase. Why couldn't he and Carlton drive to Indiana? It sounded much more romantic than a prosaic plane ride. Sure, it would take days, and a plane ride would be over in a matter of hours. But in a car, they could stop at weird roadside attractions, or maybe head way up north and go by Mt. Rushmore. Although, they were already planning to take a few days and roam around Ohio. Carlton wanted to see Civil War things, presidential things. Carlton had a tendency to drone on about the Civil War, and Shawn couldn't have cared less—until a letter from Uncle Fenz suggested that almost every male in their family alive at the time had been in that war. It mutated Shawn's interest. Carlton became obsessed with finding a connection between his relatives and Shawn's, and so far had only been able to produce the fact that Shawn's great-times-four grandfather and Carlton's great-times-three grandfather had marched with Sherman to the sea. So had thousands of other men.
Just then, and rather appropriately, Shawn shuffled aside a stack of three Civil War books then of interest to Carlton. He reached the Indiana and Ohio guidebooks beneath. They went in with the socks and underwear and t-shirts.
In the distance, the screen door slammed and a voice split the silence.
"Shawn, you here?"
Maybe Henry wanted to help him pack after all.
"I'll be out in a second, Dad." Because he knew full well that once his father knew that he was in the bedroom, they would not be able to talk. Dad wouldn't come down. No way. No how.
His head snapped up at a flash of blue in the doorway. Henry's typical loud shirts, worn on his off days, far more outlandish than his subdued work attire. The shirt was so blue that he clashed terribly with the room, making it seem more like a spa retreat, suggesting one should whisper.
Henry smirked a little. "Any Blow Pops or candy cigarettes in there?" He nodded at the suitcase. God, that thing was homely. But recognizable. Maddie had always understood Shawn's uniqueness of spirit better, able to support the flames rather than change their course the way he'd tried to do.
"I'm fresh out." Shawn pounced on the opportunity before it vanished. He wished his dad's shirt would vanish, too. "So, this is where we sleep. Juliet designed this room. You can see the quilt you gave—from you—it's under here somewhere." The bed was covered in disregarded shirts, underwear of uncertain cleanliness and socks likewise, books and magazines and no less than five of Shawn's favorite sunglasses.
Henry wasn't there to discuss decor. True, he'd never seen the bedroom and hadn't cared to. Shawn showed zilch interest in his dad's bedroom decor. Seemed tit-for-tat. "I heard from Sergeant Reyes that you're going to do something with the Citizens Police Academy?"
"You heard correctly. You want some tea? I want some tea."
He really wanted to get out of the bedroom. It was awkward. It was cramped. Never a big room, it barely fit Shawn and Carlton, and the two of them never seemed to roam around it at the same time of morning or night. It was certainly much smaller with Dad hanging out in the doorway like Shelob defending her lair.
Henry stalked Shawn five steps down the hall, turned left into the kitchen. "Why are you doing that? You never cared about it the last seven years, since it's been around."
"They asked me," Shawn replied stonily. From the cupboard, he retrieved sizable glasses, from the refrigerator came the pitcher of iced tea he'd made yesterday, recipe from Lady Olga. "Everyone in the police department realizes that I am something—somebody. That I've achieved a level of success. You're the only one who doesn't see it. You don't always see a lot of things."
"Hey, just because I don't acknowledge it doesn't mean I don't see it and that I don't know it's there!"
Shawn shoved a glass toward his dad. As far as he was concerned, their singular topic had bled into others. It had been this way with them lately. Their conversations spread out like invasive vines. Shawn went to the patio, sun drenched and salty smelling. The chair was warm, the sun just having left it. Henry sat in one of the others, still in the sun. It shone off his balding head.
"I took part in this new class," Henry admitted. He twirled the glass around on the chair's arm. It left behind a wet, dark ring of condensation. "Went in and talked to them about hostage situations. They're only there for the gore of it all."
"Not all of them. And so what if they are? So they all didn't become cops. You can't hold that against everyone."
They were doing it again. The dance of equivocations. Tchaikovsky's nightmare.
Shawn rubbed his brow. The way Lassie used to get headaches over him, Shawn got them now over his father. There was still too much sorrow, too much grief and mystery, too much was smeared. He couldn't even find his father's eyes to look at them now. "They just want to do a Question and Answer panel. I suppose if I were them I'd have a lot of questions about me, too."
"How are you going to pass this off?"
"Pass what off?"
"Being a psychic."
"I've been doing it this long." He didn't say the years. He'd forgotten to count them and they were still scattered. They hung as an odd collection of images and remembrances, like picture frames with the collywobbles. "It's just a lot of mumbo-jumbo about the moon," he borrowed it from Lassie, "about my feelings and the way I see things."
That was a double entendre he could hold to. He saw things. Henry had taught him how, and now it was second-nature, involuntary, and he couldn't wean himself free. He saw things, too. Like what he and Jules had talked about once, that they set their thoughts out in circles and fitted the unfinished rings together until they were whole. Their thoughts created woven tapestries. Other people tended to embroider: a piece there, a figure there. But they wove blankets. Their minds were covered with them. Rarely was he allowed the lay the shuttle aside, abandon the loom.
Shawn raised his eyes. "What are they like? The people in the class. Other than your usual belief that they're all just wannabe cops."
"I don't mean that," Henry said, pained, "not exactly. For some reason or another, when a kid wants to be a cop, something might stop him from doing it when he's a grownup. Not all of them changed their life-path by a few bad choices."
"And revenge," said Shawn. "Don't forget the revenge part, Dad. It's my favorite."
Henry growled—but it was fair. He had been hard on Shawn, but those choices in the past were still Shawn's, and those consequences were still Shawn's. "Not the least of which is the physical test—and the polygraph. It's hard to find anyone these days that can get through that thing without admitting to some youthful stupidity."
Shawn recalled the smoothness of freedom tasted when he knew he barred forever from legitimate law enforcement. It was harsh at first, struck him with fists of realization. He had wrecked his father's dream for him, and had lain a sloppy path to his own destiny. It hadn't landed him far from where he'd begun.
"Anyway," Shawn straightened in the chair, "the talk's on Wednesday, and then Lassie and I are heading to Indiana."
"When's your flight?"
"Five-thirty. It'll be late when we get there. I mean to Uncle Fenz's."
"Flying into Indianapolis or Cincinnati?"
"Indianapolis. We're renting a car and driving down to the farm. Uncle Fenz is leaving Wednesday morning. At least the cats and horses will be happy to see us."
"And where's Uncle Fenz's fishing reel taking him this time?"
"Florida. Mom might stop by, too. If she can get away." Shawn had been saving this bit for a time when he could dish it and watch it savoringly. Henry didn't tease him about Carlton. Dad wouldn't. He couldn't without stammering and blushing and wanting to run and hide. But Shawn could tease Dad about Mom.
"Well, have fun. And don't pack a suitcase full of candy, Shawn, like you did that one time we went out to Utah."
"I wasn't even thinking of doing that! And I was eight! And you'd, like, told me I couldn't have any candy that summer until I read all of the World Book Encyclopedia! Lucky for me, they have candy in Indiana. I assume there's no anti-sugar law in Ohio yet, either. They're dumb with their laws."
"Like California's so much better."
Shawn smirked, his snicker silent, his humor appreciative. Words that had been meaningless to Henry before, like Prop 8 and DOMA, were now etched in his personal dictionary.
"What's in Ohio?"
Mouth pushed together tightly, Shawn didn't want to say since he was sure he couldn't say it without sounding grumpy. But he'd promised he'd go and be serious about it. Before he could form words, Henry was shrugging it away.
"Never mind, I don't need to know. Just—be careful." The tap he gave Shawn's cheek was affectionate. "Always be careful."
"Are you talking about being careful on the trip, or being careful with what I say to a room full of curious cop wannabes?"
Henry used both hands to hold Shawn's face, tugged warmly at his earlobes like he used to do when Shawn was a baby. "Both. Deep down inside, Shawn," he turned to walk across the lawn, "people are mean sons of bitches."
"Thanks for that heartwarming humanity lesson. Just for that, I'm packing a whole bag of Blow Pops!"
How unusual for Dad to let him have the last word, unless the blurt of the truck's horn counted as a retort.
Shawn went back to the bedroom. The mess had stayed. In California, there were no fairies of the woods to come and help the lazy stuff suitcases to bursting.
"Crap," mumbled Shawn.
Mostly, he just wanted to stretch out on the bed and take a nap. He hadn't had a case in ages, hadn't even wanted one and no one had needed him. He'd composed a few astrological essays, had sent them off to blogs and magazines and e-zines for publication. Circumstance and personnel fiascos had left his job at the golf course hanging in uncertainty. But he hadn't really worked in two weeks. The less intellectual stimuli he had, the more listless his body became.
He resisted the bed and wove back to the kitchen. On the refrigerator, among his magnets of the Swedish alphabet, the back of a grocery receipt with a list penned on it. Shawn added "Blow Pops" below the necessities of Barbasol and Colgate.
Without thinking, he took up one of Lassie's Civil War books, sat on the patio with his tea, and read while he waited for inspiration to strike, perhaps with all the power of a fifteen-inch Rodman gun.