After the Funeral

The morning after the funeral, Darius asked me to meet him for coffee near the highway. He had a flight to catch.

He arrived in a gray sweatshirt, looking younger than the dutiful son I had watched at the service. His eyes were swollen. A crescent of dried shaving cream clung beneath one ear.

The coffee shop occupied the end of a strip mall off the interstate. Laminated menus stood between the napkin dispensers; a television bolted near the ceiling showed silent traffic footage. Every few minutes a truck passed close enough to rattle the window. Our cups left rings on the table. Neither of us wiped them.

"How was it?" I asked.

"Crowded," Darius said.

I had asked about the funeral, not the room. I waited.

"Everybody had something to say about him," Darius continued. "People I'd never met, talking like they knew my father better than I did."

"Maybe they knew different parts of him," I said.

"That's the problem."

He watched the trucks pass beyond the window. His father had been many men, he said: charming when sober, unreachable when using, religious during recovery, full of plans after every relapse. He could mean a promise when he made it. That had never meant he would keep it.

Years later, I would remember how precisely he had described his father.

"What did you say at the funeral?" I asked.

"Nothing," Darius said.

"You didn't speak?"

"What was I supposed to say? That he taught me not to trust anybody?"

His voice rose on the last word. He pressed his palm flat against the table, and I laid my hand over it.

"You can love somebody and still tell the truth about what they did," I said.

He looked down at my hand over his. "Can you?"

"I think you have to. He was your father. You shouldn't have to pretend."

Darius turned his hand beneath mine and squeezed my fingers. "You always sound so sure."

"I'm sure about that."

His father, he told me, had spent years announcing fresh starts: a job, a church, a business, a city where no one knew his failures. He returned with gifts and explanations. When he disappeared again, the women in the family paid the bills and answered the questions.

"I hated him for making Grandma defend him," Darius said.

"Did she have to?" I asked.

"In her mind."

"And in yours?"

He slipped his hand out of mine.

It was the day after his father's funeral. I had pressed too far. But before I could withdraw the question, his face softened and he apologized. Later, I would miss how quickly he had returned to me.

"I don't want to be like him," he said again.

His ride to the airport pulled up outside, the engine running at the curb. Darius stood and reached for his bag, then left it on the floor.

"Come with me," he said.

"Where?" I asked.

"Just ride to the airport."

I went. In the back seat, he rested his head against my shoulder, and I kept still through the turns. At departures, cars idled beside us while he held me with an ease our brief acquaintance had not earned.

"I feel like I've known you for years," he said.

We had skipped the ordinary work of becoming familiar. He had let me see him grieving, and I thought he had let me know him.

He called as soon as he cleared security. I heard gate announcements behind his voice until it was time to board. After he landed, my phone rang again.

That was our beginning: Darius leaving, promising to return, his voice close against my ear.

At the time, I heard his one-word answer as grief, a son's refusal to describe what I had witnessed from another pew. Later, I understood how much I had supplied for him. His father's failures were real; so was the hurt in his voice. I took his account of them as evidence that he would choose differently. He had not said that. I had made the promise for him.

Miss Evelyn welcomed me with the confidence of someone who had already been told what I would mean to her grandson.

She hugged me in the doorway, then stepped back without releasing my hands. "So you the one bringing him back to himself."

I should have asked where he had gone.

Instead, I smiled and accepted the compliment.

Her house smelled of lemon polish and onions softening in butter. Darius occupied the walls and side tables: gap-toothed school photographs, military portraits, certificates, a framed poem he had written at twelve. Miss Evelyn straightened a frame as she talked, moving easily from his childhood to injuries she believed he had suffered as a man. Sensitive. Brilliant. Restless. Too trusting. Women had taken advantage of him; institutions had overlooked him. She lingered over his accomplishments and passed quickly over the years between them.

Darius sat nearby with a small, embarrassed smile, looking down whenever her praise grew expansive. When Miss Evelyn gave the wrong year for a certificate, he corrected her gently, then rose to kiss the top of her head. Her hand came up to cover his. The tenderness was real. He disputed the date, but nothing she said about the women.

Over dinner, Miss Evelyn asked about my work, my family, what I wanted next. She set down her fork to listen, nodding when I spoke of my plans. She liked discipline, she said. Darius needed a woman who would not let him waste his potential.

"He needs to not waste it," I said.

She laughed and reached for her fork, as though I had said something charming rather than disagreed.

Later, as Darius carried the plates into the kitchen, she laid two fingers on my wrist.

"Don't give up on him when he gets difficult. He pushes away what he needs," Miss Evelyn said.

The request arrived before the difficulty.

I was pleased that she trusted me enough to ask. In the kitchen, Darius set the plates beside the sink. I stayed at the table, Miss Evelyn's fingers still resting on my wrist.