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Ray naked in his lap, and what could he do with her? Try giving a Bulgarian Gas Mask when you can’t even stand up. Maybe ten years ago he could’ve propped his legs on an ottoman. While Richie Sambora is pushing fifty and still banging Heather Locklear the last time I checked, Trev may not see twenty-five. Trev’s life is subtraction. At twenty, he’s aging in reverse. It’s only a matter of time before he’s helpless as an infant once more, and slicing his waffles into thirty-six pieces will no longer be enough. Eventually somebody will have to feed him the forkfuls. And yet what choice does he have but to mark the time?
    Around two, our routine is interrupted by the ringing of Trev’s cell phone. Retrieving the phone from the nylon pouch near his arm rest is no simple task for Trev, and it’s frustrating as hell to watch. But watch I must, for nowhere is it outlined in our service plan that I should answer his phone. It is among those tasks, technically speaking, that he can still perform on his own. In this way, I am helping Trev help himself—simply by sitting on my ass.
    For leverage, Trev is forced to arch his back and roll his head to one side and lean slightly forward before he can go fishing in his pouch with his inflexible right arm. Once he’s got a purchase on the phone, it dangles precariously in his clutches as he raises it to his ear like a human steam shovel. Trev hates talking on the phone. And watching the way he’s forced to bow his spine and loll his head to execute the task, it’s easy to see why. Everybody understands this implicitly, so nobody calls Trev unless it’s a logistical matter of some import. Nobody but his dad. Th e timing of his father’s calls adheres to no schedule or routine, which further irritates Trev. Th at his father does not know enough about Trev to accommodate his need for structure is irritating even to me. Trev could easily ignore these calls—he’s got caller ID. But he seems to savor these opportunities to make his father work. What’s more, he even seems to savor my audience.
    â€œHello?” he says, as though he doesn’t know who’s calling.
    â€œOh, it’s you,” he deadpans.
    And from there it is a stilted and awkward dance, all the more so because I am witness to only one side of the conversation—and it’s the mostly silent side. I can only imagine—as the cat sleeps curled in my lap, and Hurricane Dean sweeps silently across the screen in satellite—that his father’s part consists of false starts and errant stabs at small talk, inquiries into whether Trev got this message or that, whether he ate turkey for Th anksgiving, whether it’s humid in western Washington. And when his inquiries attempt to delve deeper into Trev’s life—yielding nothing but the most cursory yes or no answers—he is forced to share the details of his own life in Salt Lake City.
    Meanwhile, Trev’s end of the conversation consists of little more than the occasional withering commentary on his father’s failures, jagged remarks along the lines of “Well, that figures” or “Hmph, that’s a first” or “What did you expect?” And who can blame him? How dare a father deign to engender intimacy from halfway across the country with a child he forsook. How dare he grope around in the dark years after the fact, grasping for forgiveness. How dare he wish to undo what can’t be undone.

bernard and ruth

    M y real father, Benjamin Benjamin Sr., sired me at the venerable age of sixty-two. He died of natural causes two years before I dropped out of college. He was the father who threw the football underhanded, when he threw it at all. He was the father so far removed from the cultural currency of the day, so oblivious to the pulse of all things immediate, that you could smoke pot or steal his liquor or have sex right under his nose. I always