Branch to Branch by Robert Earle

Before his stroke Dan’s father would flit from branch to branch so that he could keep his eyes fixed on Dan, never letting him out of his sight. After the stroke his father lay in the hospital bed, his lips twisted like his sheets, slurring his words, flitting nowhere.  He said he wanted Dan to come back to Philadelphia after law school in Boston, get a broker’s license, and take over his insurance business. When he got back on his feet, they could do it together.

His mother said maybe Dan could sell the business to someone. 

His father cocked his chin up, unhappy with that. “For a nickel,” he said.

“If that’s what it’s worth, why do you want me involved?” Dan asked. 

“With you involved it will be worth a hell of a lot more than a nickel.” 

“No, it won’t,” his mother said. “And he’s never wanted to be in the insurance business.”

“I’m his father,” his father said. “That’s not just the insurance business.”

Dan reached down to push the hair off his father’s forehead. “I didn’t go to law school for that. There’s a Boston firm offering me a lot.”

“Will you and Kerry will settle there?” his mother asked.

“The thing with Kerry is over.”

“Oh,” she said, hurt to hear it.  

His father studied him with his weak eyes. His mother sat on the chair by the night table with the Styrofoam water cup, a box of Kleenex, and a book about the Battle of the Bulge she had been reading to him.

“You’re a fool,” his father said. 

“Are you going to marry this other woman?” his mother asked.

“Why do you presume there’s another woman? I didn’t say there was one.” 

His mother ignored that. “Are you?”

“I can’t. She’s married.”

“Christ,” his father said.

“She’s going to get a divorce.”

He realized he was hovering above them as if he didn’t plan to stay, but there was no place for him to sit.

“Why is he in this Catholic hospital?” he asked his mother.

“They’re good with strokes,” his mother said.

“What do they do for him?”

“I get up and walk,” his father said.

“Do you?”

“Not yet, but that’s next.”

“And then?”

“Home.”

“We’ll put a bed in the dining room for him,” his mother said.

“I’ll go upstairs and sleep in my own bed,” his father said. “Period. End of discussion.” 

Dan returned to what he referred to as Boston, actually Newton. Kerry had moved everything out of the apartment that belonged to her. Lorna’s husband drove her over with her things because he was keeping their car. He didn’t get out to help unload. Lorna didn’t want Dan to help, either. 

“Let me do it. I don’t want you to meet him. It’s not going to be that way.”

Dan walked over to the window and looked down on her husband sitting behind the steering wheel. He was a broad-shouldered guy with short hair. When Lorna closed the trunk, he drove away. She banged upstairs, knocking her last suitcase against the wall. She dropped it as soon as she came through the door and stretched out on the couch.

Dan went ahead with it. “What if after I graduate, I look for something in Philadelphia so I could be closer to my parents?” 

“What? Philadelphia? That’s ridiculous. I’m staying here.”

“It’s only a thought that came to me after my father’s stroke.”

She gestured toward her suitcase by the door. “I just moved in. You can’t be doing this to me.”

“I’m not, I’m not.”

“Do I even unpack?”

“Of course, you unpack.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything. I can’t pull it all together, that’s all. There are pieces of my life over the place. None of them fit.”

“Like what pieces?”

“Like my parents, like your husband.”

“And like Kerry?”

“No, not Kerry.”

“I can go back. He’ll take me. Should I call him?”

“No. Hold on. That’s not what I mean.”

“Did you tell your parents you’re staying in Boston? Did you tell them about me?”

“Yes,” he lied.

And there she was, in Kerry’s place, using the spaces Kerry left behind, the kitchen, the bathroom, the bed. Soon his life wasn’t his anymore. His father, who died, wasn’t his anymore. His mother, who died, wasn’t his anymore. Kerry, who left him and married another guy, wasn’t his anymore. Lorna, whose husband took her back, wasn’t his anymore.

He told people who didn’t matter to him that he was happy. He broke up with new girlfriends for newer girlfriends. He moved across the river to Cambridge, from Cambridge to Somerville, and from Somerville back to Cambridge. Finally he stopped living in apartments in chopped-up old houses and bought a condo in Boston. On Sunday mornings, he made coffee and sat by the window and studied rooftops and trees and streets. He couldn’t see himself out there anymore. He didn’t know where he had gone.