Rating: PG

Summary: Poor Melvin...he just can't stop worrying.

Spoilers: Nah.
 

He's not calm for a long time, he clutches on to me like it's the only thing that's gonna save him.

Maybe he said enough for one night.

I want to know more, but I'm not gonna press him.

No wonder the dude had a heart attack at 55. He's like so locked down.

He's way different than me that way. I mean, I bet he never started a fire in the apartment when he was seven. Like I did.

I don't know why I think of that now. Certainly not one of my better moments. I bet Mom told him about it, so he probably knows.

I used to set fires when I was a little kid. All the time, after my dad left. Why do you think I got so acquainted with so many therapists?

I did stop setting fires, finally. I think my mom was afraid I'd be a full-fledged arsonist by the time I was ten.

Now I'm real afraid of fire, tell the truth. I told Brian, my therapist one time, this, and he says he's not real surprised about that. But he's the only person that knows.

I wonder if Dad's afraid of it. I'm tempted to ask him, but not now. He needs to get it back together, so he can sleep it off. Maybe if he gets a decent night's sleep he'll feel better. He's always ragging on me about that when I'm sick.

And he's right, of course, even if I don't admit it to him.

I'm sort of amazed. I mean, he's like had all these rotten experiences. He gets taken to war, taken away from his own kids, people die on him and let him down...

And he's like still so there for all of us.

He's the greatest.

I want him to know it, and I'll say it, over and over, until he gets the drift.

Maybe he's starting to. Next thing I know, he's snoring away on my shoulder.

I pull the glasses off again, and throw a blanket over him.

I don't go to sleep for a long time.
 

April 2, 2001

MELVIN, IN THE LIGHT OF DAY:

I actually slept well last night. I didn't get perhaps as many hours as I could have used, but I wake up, and I feel strangely better.

I am so goddamned lucky to have my son.

I wish I were a better father to him. Hell, I just wish I was a better human being.

But he loves me in spite of it.

I take a lot of comfort in that fact. That I can be so horrible in so many ways, and yet, my child still loves me.

I wonder where he got such a good heart.
 

He's still snoring away-he might not believe it, but yes, he snores as well, although I think I can beat him out on volume any night of the week.

I was in 'Nam at his age. God, I never looked that innocent. Did I?

And he looks like the very picture of innocence right now. He's sound asleep, blankets pulled up to his nose, I can tell from the way he's lying that he's curled himself into a fetal position, and all I can see is a mop of brown hair flying over the pillow and those long eyelashes he got from his mother.

Were it not for the stubble on his face, he could be six again.

How he's maintained this, in spite of his being the type of child he was-and he was no angel-and for all he's been through at his young age, I have no idea. I wish I had his resilience.

I'm standing on the porch, I pull my robe over my blue bunny jammies-my favorite. So what if they came from the women's department at Goodwill. They fit. There's a light breeze out here, big fluffy clouds in the sky, lots of sunlight sparkling on the water.

Jo walks out a short time later, she hands me a cup of coffee, says good morning, and watches the water with me, not saying a word. She is smiling in a most mysterious way.

Perhaps she dreamed of Terry.

How she has made peace with her reality, I have no idea. Her love for Terry is not bound by time or space or the corporeal body. She takes comfort in it.

She is truly an amazing woman. And a wonderful friend.

"Were you up late?" I ask her, she's yawning hard.

"Little bit. The kids came and paid me a visit. We ended up talking for a long time. Just telling old stories."

She told them about Terry. I knew it.

"They enjoy hearing about it, Melvin. And they want to know."

I guess maybe they do.

But I have yet to tell Michael some of the uglier parts...he may change his mind if I ever do.

"You know, Melvin, I wasn't sure how it would be, having the kids along...but it's been a delight. And good for both of us."

She is probably right. I'm just not totally certain at this moment.

But when I do look out upon the water, I feel something that hasn't touched me in a long time.

Peace.
 

Kelly's the next one to filter out. She's got a lightness in her step, a big smile on her young face.

"Hi, Mr. Frohike," she says to me, sounding about twelve years old.

"I think your young man is still dead to the world."

"He'll get up soon. Or I'll make him." She laughs a little.

She is luminous.

She and Michael have had another encounter. And the second was better than the first.

I remember the first with Dee for its power, its urgency, its sheer need.

I remember the second one for the total feeling of love and tenderness I have for her. Had for her.

No, have. Present tense.

"You ought to go in the water, Mr. Frohike. It's so great."

No, sweetheart. I don't do water. I did enough water in hell. I never voluntarily enter the water unless it's the shower.

And I don't drink the stuff. Christ, every time I drank water in country, I'd be sick with Montezuma's revenge for days.

And, as W.C. Fields once said, fish fuck in it.
 

It's my turn to prepare breakfast today. I concoct some ham and cheese omelets and cottage potatoes-simple but tasty. And the smell finally gets my boy to shake the slumber off him.

And while I'm throwing peppers and onion into the potatoes, he shocks the hell out of me by just coming over to me and throwing his arms around me.

He's such a sweet child. I could have saved him so much pain...

No. I can't think about that now. He's here now. Present tense.

He's in the moment. I need to get there.
 

The kids are going swimming, and Jo decides she'll join them. I decline when asked again by Miss Kelly.

I haven't gone in the water since Michael and Leslie were little. I hated it, but how do you refuse little children who are begging you?

Water makes me think of rice, of mud, of fear. You'd step into a trench, you never knew how deep it was going to be, or what was going to be in it.

I shudder at this memory. The only thing that made me even go near the shore was the pleading of my children.

Sometimes being a father is not all it's cracked up to be.

And sometimes, like when your son just hugs you for no earthly reason, it surpasses all expectations.

With Michael, it's a combination of both.

I am a father. Again.

There is peace in that.
 

The kids race into the water-my God, how can they do that? They're shrieking and laughing and carrying on and splashing each other.

It could be Michael and Leslie a hundred years ago. Minus the name-calling. There was always affection between them when they were small, and plenty of rivalry, too.

I think my departure hastened their alienation from one another, if it was not in fact responsible for it. Perhaps had I been there, their rivalry would have been within bounds, normal sibling arguments, eventually budding to friendship.

In one sense, this makes me ashamed that I had to leave them. And in another sense, I am equally ashamed for my arrogance, that I could have so much influence on them. How dare I think that.

Kelly is an awkward swimmer, but a determined one. I can hear my son prodding her, cajoling her, praising, demonstrating. And without rancor or temper.

Perhaps Kelly is right. He is born to be a teacher. He has all the requisite personality traits, it would seem, including a voice that can wake the dead when he chooses to. Which he is using right now as they have lapsed into another splashing war.

Jo has arrived, carrying her bag of goodies-towel, sunblock, trashy fiction. She's wearing a blue maillot suit that looks excellent on her. Although my relationship to Jo is anything but sexual, I can appreciate her reality-based good looks. She is a real woman, and that's her beauty.

Like Dee was. Dee always felt she was too heavy and too well-endowed on top.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. She was perfect. I remember the way the sun would enhance the auburn highlights in her hair, how it would dance across the spray of freckles on her nose and light up those magnificent green eyes. How she looked with water on her cleavage. The curve of her lovely ass...

Oh, don't even go there, Frohike. Jo and the kids are fifty feet away.

And besides, the video collection is tucked away in its cabinet in Virginia.
 

Jo doesn't stay in very long; she says she used to enjoy swimming when she was a girl, but it doesn't have the same allure these days.

I can understand that.

But Michael and Kelly are true water babies, especially Michael. When he was a little boy, he'd be blue and shivering, but he'd say, I'm not cold, I don't wanna get out. More than a few times I had to drag him kicking and screaming from a neighbor's pool or the beach.

I'm surprised my hearing is still intact from that experience.

"That water is cold. I think they should come in soon," Jo comments, popping her sunglasses back on.

I agree. Michael had a hard winter. He needs to take care of himself. I'm doing the best I can. But I can't do it all for him.

We bask in the sun, Jo reads, I watch the kids playing and racing. I can see them at one point come together in the water for a kiss that must be one of the reasons my son is still in the water.

He's getting very tan. One of the better legacies I passed on to him.

At least I didn't get sunburned in 'Nam. Some of the fair-haired boys suffered quite a lot from it.

Langly and Byers would have been lobsters over there.

I am grateful that neither of them ever were old enough to have suffered through that. And they had enough of their own private hells back here in civilian land.

They're good friends. I'm lucky to have them. We tolerate each other's quirks, and no matter how pissed off we become at one another-and we do at times-we are always there for one another. We're equal parts Three Stooges and Three Musketeers.

Except there will be a fourth.

And I fear he's right out in front of me.

Playing tag in the water.
 

They've been in the water far too long. They're going to get chilled. I don't know how Kelly's resistance is, but I know Michael's is low. I hope that changes, but I'm not all that hopeful. He was constantly sick as a little guy. And this winter didn't do anything to dispel that image.

I call to them to get out, it's been over two hours. They yell back, soon. I shout at them, NOW.

Kelly comes in, but Michael turns and starts swimming out to sea.

"What in the hell does he think he's doing?" I sound as though I am scolding Kelly, when in fact I'm upset that my son thinks he can, at every turn, willfully disobey me.

"Says he wanted to do a really hard swim, he hasn't done it in a while," she explains.

"He's been out too long. He needs to come back in. MICHAEL!"

He doesn't hear me, or doesn't want to. Either way, he's moving farther away from me.

I'm going to kill that kid.

I tell Kelly to go back to the house, I'll wait for her wayward boyfriend to get his ass back to shore. She follows up with Jo, and I can tell she's shivering.

At least one of them has a modicum of sense.
 

MICHAEL:

I used to swim every summer, real hard. I hated day care at the Y, but in the summer, they had swimming, and if they'd have let me, I'd have stayed in the water 24/7.

And I got real good. Did some junior fish teams for a while. Mom had some troubles at work and it cost money to be on them, so I didn't get to do it as much as I liked.

Dad's yelling for us to come back in, and Kelly's cold, she wants to go.

I'm kind of cold, but I really haven't stretched my legs in the water yet, so to speak. And I'm dying to do it.

Dying is sort of like it for a while. You start off, you're revved, you're all amped up and you're hauling. Then you get a little bit tired, you level off. Then you think oh man, I can't swim anymore.

But once you break through that wall, you can swim forever.

I sort of get the feeling my dad's kind of afraid of the water. I don't even know if he can swim or not. Never seen him do it. Not now, and not when I was little, don't know what he did in between.

Anyway, I don't have the lung capacity I had before I had pneumonia for so long, and I'm starting to hurt real fast.

I am like SO majorly out of this, it's not funny. I gotta start doing it again.

I don't want to turn back, but I have to, or I'm gonna get too tired, and I'm not gonna make it in.

God, I used to be so much better at this.

Do I sound old or what?

I sound just like the old man when I start thinking like this. This scares the hell out of me way more than a riptide. I know how to deal with a riptide. But being like my dad, well, it's like, it's sort of like I'm so bound up, I wouldn't know what I'd do to get away from that.

Even if I wanted to.
 

I can't believe he's still at the beach when I get there!

Jesus, did he think I was gonna drown or something?

I got to admit, okay, I might have overdone it. I'm so fucking cold, I'm shaking, my side hurts like hell.

Hope Kelly didn't take my towel. No, that would be Miranda, and she's not here. Thank God.

He's not too happy with me, to put it mildly.

"Are you an idiot?" This is how he greets me. "You had pneumonia all winter, you had surgery four weeks ago, and God knows how long it's been since you swam like that!"

"Jesus, Dad, I didn't go that far!" I've gone LOTS farther before. I'm almost embarrassed at how lame I really was.

"Sometimes, Michael Andrew Frohike, you don't have the sense God gave a hamster!"

He has GOT to stop worrying so much.

In the meantime, I'm freezing.

And as pissed as he is, he still manages to throw the beach towel over me.

"Get inside. NOW."

Like I needed to be told that.
 

I really am fucking cold. I'm in the shower, trying to warm my sorry ass up.

Maybe if Kelly got in here with me, but she's been there and done that. I had to wait a couple minutes for her to finish up.

God, she looks gorgeous. She's got a little sunburn on her face, just enough to make her pink, and she is so damn cute.

That ass of hers...oh man. I've seen it naked, clothed, and wet now, and I like it every way I've seen it.

You'd think that thinking about her, I could get a little warmer a little faster.

At least my sweats are in here. I usually save them to wear to bed, but right now, I could stand to be warmer than I'd be in my T-shirt and shorts.

Better, but goddamn, I'm still cold. I notice I can't get my hands too steady when I'm trying to brush out my hair. Forget the contacts. I pop my glasses on. My eyes kind of sting from the salt, anyway.

Everyone else is out on the porch, soaking up the rays and kicking back. It's probably nice and warm out there, but just in case, I grab one of the blankets I've been using at night, wrap myself up in it.

Kelly smiles, then frowns at me. "Michael, your lips are still blue."

"Maybe you should try to warm them up." I make her blush a little, and she really looks kind of cute.

Dad glares at me.

Jo doesn't really change her face, she says, let me see your hands.

What the hell for, I have no idea, but she takes them in hers for a second, lets them go.

"You got colder than you should. Go inside and get wrapped up."

Jo doesn't tell me what to do, so I'm sort of surprised.

Dad says, "Do what she tells you."

Kelly follows me in. I don't think Dad's gonna bitch.

"Christ, do they overreact or what?" I whisper to Kelly conspiratorially.

"Sometimes, but you're kind of pale," she says. "Come on, I'll tuck you in my bed. I bet it's warmer than down here."

Especially if she'd get in it with me.
 

Kelly's bed is nice and warm, and I'd really like it if she'd get in with me, but she just lies on top of the blankets for a bit, she's bundled me under about five of them.

Any thoughts I had about getting up close and personal with Kelly under the blankets gets sort of trashed a few minutes later when Jo comes up, she's brought some coffee for me, which is cool. I'm starting to stop shivering so much, and I'm starting to get tired as I get warmer.

Kelly's bed is nice. It's real comfy. I mean, the sofas here, they're real nice and all, but this is where Kelly sleeps, it's a great bed, and I can smell her on the pillows.

I remember Ally writing about how important smells were to her. How she used to sleep with one of her first husband's shirts after he died. And then how she came to crave Langly's scent, which I thought was pretty weird, but now I understand what she was talking about.

Dad comes up a little while later to check on me, and I'm almost asleep when he does. He doesn't say anything, just shakes his head and closes the door.

Kelly bends over to kiss me, and I'm drifting out now.
 

MELVIN, PERPETUALLY IN A QUANDARY

That boy is such an idiot sometimes.

He should have known better than to go for a swim like he did.

"Melvin, he'll be fine," Jo assures me.

That's the problem. He'll be fine. He'll just figure whatever he does, he does it with impunity.

This is not the message I'm trying to get across to him.

He needs to learn that actions have consequences.

Kelly seems to understand this, I think. I hope she does. I hope she understands the implications of her involvement with my son. I doubt she fully does, but I think she is clearer-headed on the subject than he is.

If I express this concern to Jo, she'll just tell me, Melvin, he'll be fine.

And she'll probably be right, but I seem to have this need to worry.

Kelly comes out on the porch again. I sense she is enjoying this vacation with a vengeance. There is, of course, her bliss at her newfound dimension she's enjoying with Michael in the physical, but I think everything has been a pleasure for her on this journey.

Still, she's reality-based; she's brought out one of her texts.

"I haven't studied since Friday, and I have a test Wednesday when I get back," she explains.

That's one week from today. We'll be leaving Saturday.

For all my fretting, I'm not the least bit sorry we came. It hasn't been free of distress, but I do feel some closeness with my son and his young lady I hadn't felt before. For that alone, it's been well worth it.

And Jo has had such pleasure on this trip. She totally loses herself when she is on vacation. She is grounded enough that she has no fear of doing this. She knows her concerns will all be there when she gets back, and she takes the idea of vacation beyond physically getting out of town.

I envy her ability to do this.

I'm going to check on my boy.
 

He's curled up in the blankets, not shivering anymore. I hear him sniffling. I hope he didn't catch cold doing this.

I bend down and kiss him on the forehead.

I think I see him stir a little, but he settles back in.

Jo is right. He'll be fine.

Will I?

END OF PART 86