Fear Hope and Bread Pudding Read online

  It brought me up short, and I laughed before I could bother to wonder why it was funny. “Merry Christmas, Dad.”

  COLE already had his emotions under control again by the time I made it into the kitchen. He pretended nothing had happened at all, and I followed his lead. We generally had fun together when he cooked. In theory, I helped him. What I actually did was get in his way a lot, but it amused him to be forced to work around me. It was as if having me there reminded him that he wasn’t alone anymore. It gave him some kind of reassurance that he was needed and appreciated.

  “What’s all the bread for?” I asked when he began to cut a giant loaf of it into cubes. I also noticed he was consulting a cookbook, something I’d rarely seen him do. He seemed to keep most of his recipes in his head.

  “Bread pudding.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t even like bread pudding.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  I could barely keep from laughing. “Oh, let’s see. How about that time in New Orleans? I suggested it and you said, and I quote, ‘Darling, please! Who on Earth would want to eat a lump of soggy bread for dessert? It’s too dreadful to contemplate.’”

  He rolled his eyes, unimpressed by my imitation. “I’m sure you’re mistaken.”

  I wasn’t though, and we both knew it. There was a reason he hadn’t wanted bread pudding back then, just as there was a reason he was choosing to make it now. It undoubtedly involved Grace, but he didn’t want to talk about it, and pushing him would get me nowhere. Besides, for the moment he was smiling and happy, and I had no desire to change that.

  I kissed the side of his head. “You’re impossible.”

  “I know, but you find it endearing, so it all works out perfectly, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose it does.”

  Eventually my father and Grace joined us. They sat at the kitchen table, and we drank wine and talked about the trips Cole had planned for us. We were back on safe ground again, even if it did feel a bit tense. It wasn’t until hours later that things began to disintegrate again. We were just finishing dinner, and Cole was giving Grace a rundown of all the places we’d been through the course of the year.

  “Why so many?” she asked.

  “Why not?”

  She laughed. “You can’t hold still, can you? You’re just like your father.”

  It wasn’t an accusation. Her tone was light and conversational, but the light seemed to go out of Cole’s eyes. His smile turned wooden. “I don’t think I’m anything like Father.”

  “Honey, if that’s true, then what are we doing here? Why else would we have to fly halfway around the world to spend Christmas together?”

  “Most people like to travel.”

  “I suppose. Then again, most people don’t have your money, do they? It cost an arm and a leg to get here.”

  Cole slowly set his fork down as if he was afraid to keep it in his hand. He didn’t glance up again, but kept his eyes on his utensils when he answered. “I suppose I should have offered to pay your airfare.”

  “Well, it was awfully short notice. If I’d had more time to plan—”

  “Bullshit!” I said. I knew exactly how much money she received from him each month. I also knew how quickly she burned through it. It wasn’t as if she was draining him dry, but her cavalier attitude pissed me off. “He gives you plenty of money. It’s not his fault you can’t manage to hang on to any of it from one month to the next.”

  She blinked at me, surprised at my sudden attack. “I’ve never asked for a penny more. Not once.”

  “You’ve never asked for a penny less either, have you?”

  “Jon,” Cole said quietly, but I didn’t turn to him. I continued to glare at her across the table, waiting for an answer.

  She touched the diamond necklace she wore—not the one Cole had given her, I noticed—and closed her eyes as if contemplating her next move. When she opened them again, she looked at Cole. “It’s true that all this time, I’ve continued to think of it as your father’s money rather than yours. If you need to give me less—”

  “No,” Cole said to her. “It’s fine.” He glanced at me sideways rather than turn to face me. “Jon, stop. Please.”

  I slumped in defeat. I wanted to defend him, but in doing so, I was making things harder for him. I held up my hands in surrender, but I didn’t apologize to her. I wouldn’t go that far.

  Cole sat up straight to face Grace and let his hair fall away from his face. “Next year, we’ll stay in the States if you like.”

  She was still watching me, probably waiting for another argument. It was my father who spoke. “We might want to stay in Phoenix by that time anyway. After all, you might be parents by then. Trust me, traveling with a child isn’t as easy as you might think.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Grace said, picking up her wine glass. “That’s what nannies are for!”

  “There won’t be any nannies,” Cole said, his tone sharp enough to draw blood. “I’m not going through the heartache of adopting a child just so somebody else can raise him.”

  “I see.” She set the glass back down. She put her fingers on the base and swirled it in small circles. She kept her eyes on the tiny whirlwind of wine rather than face him. “I suppose only inadequate parents resort to such things.”

  Cole continued to watch her, a silent challenge in his eyes. “You said it. Not me.”

  She released her glass and let the wine settle again. “I see.” She dabbed at her lips with her napkin and began to stand. “If that’s how you feel—”

  “Sit down!” my father said. It brought Grace up short. He glared at her until she obeyed, then turned to address Cole. “Isn’t it time for dessert?”

  Cole nodded stiffly. He pushed his chair back and stood up slowly, as if it pained him. He was stalling, although I wasn’t sure why.

  “I’ll help you,” I said. Together we gathered the dishes and took them into the kitchen. The room smelled like fresh brewed coffee. The bread pudding waited on the countertop. He already had bowls out. A pan of warm whiskey sauce sat on the stove. Cole stood in front of it, staring at it as if it had betrayed him. He made no move to dish it up.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “It’s ruined.”

  I glanced down at the pan. “It looks perfect to me.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”

  That was true. I had no idea what was going on in his head. “I’ll get this. Why don’t you get the coffee?”

  He nodded and went to do it, but it was like he was sleepwalking. His mind was on something else entirely. We were only in the kitchen for a minute or two, and when we came back out, his mother’s expression was still angry.

  “Bread pudding?” my father asked. “That’s a change.”

  “I think he made it for Grace.”

  Cole froze, and I knew I’d made a mistake by saying it out loud. Grace stared down at the dish in front of her. She contemplated it silently for a long moment. Then, she pushed it aside. She looked directly at Cole and said, “I have no idea why. I’ve never cared for it, myself.”

  She probably didn’t notice that he winced, because he covered it by flipping his hair out of the way. He sat down and picked up his spoon, although he made no move to eat.

  My father either didn’t notice or didn’t want to acknowledge the strange battle going on in front of us. He reached over and took Grace’s dessert. “Suit yourself. More for me.”

  The bread pudding was good, the best I’d ever had, but I could barely eat. I tried to watch Cole without being too obvious. He didn’t eat a single bite. My dad made up for us all by enthusiastically wolfing down both his own and Grace’s, and then getting himself a third helping.

  The rest of the afternoon was unbelievably awkward. Cole and Grace didn’t speak at all, avoiding not only each other, but my father and I as well. My dad overcompensated by babbling nonstop about the German progra
ms on TV. It wasn’t until the end of the day, as I was throwing away a lone curl of ribbon I’d found on my dad’s chair, that I saw the bread pudding. The pan of leftovers was in the garbage can, glass dish and all.

  I fished it out. The dessert itself was ruined, but I cleaned the dish and put it safely away in the cupboard. I found Cole in our room, getting ready for bed.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I’m fine. Are you excited about going to Salzburg tomorrow? It’s a lovely place.”

  “What’s the deal with the bread pudding?”

  “It’s where they filmed parts of The Sound of Music, you know, although I don’t think the Austrians particularly like being reminded of it.”

  “Stop avoiding the subject and talk to me.”

  “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  His shoulders fell and he sat down heavily on the bed. I’d never seen him so lost or so defeated. “I can’t, Jonny. If I try to talk about it, I’ll start blubbering, and neither of us wants that.”

  “I’d prefer you crying to shutting me out.”

  He looked down at his hands. He took a deep, quavering breath. “It was foolish of me, wasn’t it?” he whispered.

  “The bread pudding?”

  “No. Well, yes. That too. But that’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what?”

  “Thinking I’d ever get to be a father.”

  The change of topic threw me. It took me a second to redirect my thinking. “It’s not foolish. Thomas told us it might take a while.”

  “He did, but somehow, I didn’t believe him. I thought for sure somebody would choose us.”

  “We knew a gay couple wouldn’t get top priority.”

  “But we have everything else going for us.”

  Yes, we had a life most people would envy, but this was one case where money couldn’t get him what he wanted. Not by itself, at any rate. I sat next to him on the bed and pulled him into my arms. He came reluctantly, but at least he didn’t pull away. “Maybe we’ve limited ourselves too much.” At the time we’d made the decision, it had made sense to me, but I wasn’t sure it did anymore. “There are babies all over the world who need parents. Maybe it’s time to consider other options.”

  “You mean something overseas?”

  “Maybe. Or we could reconsider surrogacy.”

  “I don’t know what to do anymore. I wish somebody would just give me the answer.”

  I kissed the top of his head. “We’ll be home again in eight days. As soon as we’re over the jet lag, we’ll call Thomas. We’ll tell him we’re ready to discuss other options.”

  His head moved on my chest as he nodded. “Okay.”

  I wished there was something I could do to make him feel better. A way to lighten the burden he felt. But the truth was, we weren’t suffering in the same way. He wanted nothing more than to be a father, and although I’d come to share his desire, it was different for me. I didn’t long for a child so much as I wanted to make our family complete. To see my father with a grandchild and to see Cole happy. At that moment, it felt as if it would never happen.

  But the next morning, everything changed.

  Part Two:

  Interlude in Munich

  Chapter Five

  I DREAMT of Christmases past, and of Carol. I was lounging in my rickety old recliner, and Carol was on the floor in front of me, trying to put together a bicycle. It was Jon’s present from Santa. I knew it was a dream, not just because Carol was in it, but because we weren’t in our Phoenix home. We were in the condo in Munich, with the winter festival bright and loud outside the window. Our Christmas tree was at least ten feet tall, and it listed dangerously to the side, twisted and curved like something out of that Dr. Seuss cartoon Jon loved so much. Carol was in front of it, and I worried it would fall on her, but I was afraid that if I said anything, if I tried to warn her, she’d disappear again. She’d slip through the void to the other side where I couldn’t reach her.

  I desperately wanted her to stay, so even though I knew it was a dream, or maybe because I knew it was a dream, I sat very still. I concentrated on dwelling there with her as she bent over the instructions for the bicycle.

  “Dad! Dad, wake up!”

  For half a second, I waited for my young son to clamber over me into bed. I waited for him to curl up next to me in his dinosaur-print footy pajamas. It’s not quite morning yet, son, I wanted to say. Go back to sleep. Santa may not have come yet.

  “Dad!”

  He’d always been persistent. My eyes opened seemingly without my consent, and for a moment, I wondered who the man standing over me was. Certainly not my son—the one for whom Carol was quietly assembling a two-wheeled bicycle with a Spiderman banana seat.

  “What time is it?” I asked. It was still dark in the room, and he was mostly in shadow.

  “It’s five o’clock. Listen, we got a message from Thomas—”

  “At five in the morning?”

  “Well, he left it last night, Arizona time, so it came in around 1:00 a.m. our time.”

  I was still groggy, still trying to hang on to that surreal Christmas where my wife had been alive and my son thirty years younger. “And you had to wake me up before dawn to tell me about it?”

  “Dad, there might be a baby.”

  A baby. It wasn’t until that moment that the name Thomas fell into place in my mind. Jon and Cole avoided the subject so carefully, dancing silently around the quiet elephant in the room, that I’d nearly forgotten who Thomas even was. I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes, trying to be here, now, where my very grown-up son needed me. “Okay. What’s going on?”

  “Cole and I are going back. Our flight leaves in a few hours—”

  “I’ll get dressed—”

  “No, Dad. Stay, okay? It’s only an interview with a mom, and….”

  “And Cole’s trying not to get his hopes up.”

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  “What about Grace?”

  “Can you tell her?”

  “Don’t you think Cole should do that?”

  He sighed and rubbed his hand over his forehead. He was so tense. He’d been that way for years, but it had lessened as he’d fallen in love with Cole. It had nearly disappeared when he’d finally given up his old job and embraced the life they could have together. But now it was back, and it wasn’t about meeting this mom. It was about Cole. Between the adoption and Grace, Cole was more flustered than I’d ever seen him, and Jon was trying desperately to keep him from flying apart at the seams. “I’ll take care of it,” I said.

  He slumped in relief. “Thanks, Dad. The condo’s already paid up through the first of the year anyway, so the two of you may as well enjoy it, if you can.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  He nodded. He turned to go, but stopped halfway and stood there, looking uncertain, and suddenly the dream was back and real. He may have outgrown the banana-seat bike long ago, but he was still my son. “You’ll get through this, Jon.”

  He nodded, but I saw the way he stood a bit taller. It was what he needed to hear. “I know.”

  “You’ll let me know as soon as there’s news?”

  “Of course.”

  “Have a safe trip.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” He made it all the way to the doorway this time, but stopped there, silhouetted against the dim light of the hallway. He put his hand on the doorframe and turned back to face me. “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  He took a breath, but no words came out. The moment stretched out as he tried to say the words. Sometimes it amused me to watch him squirm a bit, but not now. I knew what he wanted to say. I knew what he needed me to say back. “I love you, son. And the fruitcake too.”

  I WENT back to sleep, hoping to return to that unreal Christmas with the tilting tree, but it wasn’t to be. I woke again at six thirty to the smell of coffee. I put on a robe and slippers and made sure what was left of my hair
wasn’t standing straight on end before leaving my room. The Christmas tree stood in the corner, normal height, not listing at all, taunting me with its absolute reality.

  Christmas was over, in more ways than one. Jon had learned to ride that damn banana-seat bike, but he’d begged for a BMX dirt bike because that was what all the other boys in the neighborhood had. Banana seats, he’d told me with the quiet solemnity of a six-year-old, were for girls.

  I found Grace sitting at the kitchen table. Like me, she wore a robe and slippers. She was bent over a newspaper. Her shoulder-length hair wasn’t pulled back as it had been every other time I’d seen her. Instead, it hung down, hiding her face. The kitchen was warm and rich with the smell of coffee, and the heartbreaking nostalgia of my lost dream came back to me. How many mornings had I spent like this with Carol? After Jon had left for college, we’d fallen into the habit of sitting in the kitchen on weekend mornings, drinking our coffee and passing the crossword puzzle back and forth between us. Neither of us could figure out a New York Times crossword alone, but together, we could usually finish all but the Sunday puzzle.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  She glanced up, and the spell was broken. It wasn’t my Carol sitting there. It was a woman I barely knew.

  She blushed and reached up to touch her hair—not a gesture of vanity, but one that betrayed how self-conscious she was. “Oh, my goodness. I didn’t expect anybody else to be up so early.” She pulled the collar of her robe closed, even though she’d been completely covered to begin with, and began to stand. “I should get dressed—”

  “Don’t be silly. Sit.”

  She settled nervously back into her seat. I crossed the small kitchen and watched her out of the corner of my eye as I took a mug out of the cabinet and poured steaming coffee into it. She was trying to smooth her hair down.

  “I must look a mess,” she said when I turned to face her.

  “You don’t.” In truth, I thought she was beautiful. Far more so than when she had her hair done and her makeup on, but then again, maybe it was only my loneliness that made me think so. Maybe it was nothing more than wanting to reclaim those mornings with my wife, contentedly passing the paper and an erasable pen across the table.