All the Lasting Things by David Hopson Page B

mind that led her son to attempt a suicidal leap, turned back to busy herself with the dishes while Henry sat quietly by. At the end of Benji’s monologue, Roger reached for his godson’s hand and squeezed.
    “Life will always be disappointing,” he said with pressing emotion. “Even if everything looked exactly as you thought it would, even then, there would be disappointments. Deep, even ruinous disappointments. Compromises we think we can’t possibly live with. But we do. We do because we must. It’s the contract we sign for being here. We have to treat life like it’s precious. Even when we think it’s not. Especially then. Because then we see how easily it can be thrown away. Do you understand? We can’t have you doing anything like that ever again, Benji. Ever.” The few quiet tears that rolled down his face as he spoke surprised everyone, which was perhaps why he was in no hurry to wipe them away. They made a point that, in this family, whose silences and evasions Roger knew so well, needed making.
    Benji felt a dull throb of remorse, but he’d padded himself well against the knowledge that his lie was often a source of great pain, and the shame at causing it failed to reach him where he lived. He sat like a statue, unmoving.
    “We all have our to-be-or-not-to-be moment at one point or another,” Henry interrupted irascibly.
    “Henry,” Roger warned.
    “He’s here! Look, Leo, he’s sitting right here. With no complaints, except for me. Can we move on now?” Henry looked from his son to his wife to his oldest friend imploringly, as abashed as his character allowed him to be, which wasn’t very abashed at all. “Give me a break,” he said. “My watch is ticking twice as fast as everyone else’s; I don’t have the luxury of navel gazing.” But when no one answered, when no one so much as blinked, the sound of his fist coming down on the table rang out like cannon fire.
    “It’s done!” he shouted. There was a salvaged air of lordliness in the pronouncement, the imperious brevity of it, the missing antecedent, the pause. “It’s done. It’s done, and I want you to read it.”
    The stoical mask fell from Roger’s face first to reveal eyes ignited by the news, mouth agape. Neither he nor Evelyn nor Benji needed to be told what it was. It had lived among them, between them, sometimes on top of them, for the last eight years. “You said you’d given up on it.”
    “And it was true. True enough: I never thought I’d finish. This last year, I’ve been lucky to get an hour a day when I feel sharp enough. When my mind feels like mine. One, maybe two hours a day. I couldn’t spend it listening to you claw at the door. I worked better when everyone thought I wasn’t working. No offense.”
    Roger toasted Henry with his coffee mug.
    “I had to finish. I couldn’t reconcile myself to the thought that you’d find three different drafts after I died and cobble them together with one of those awful forewords. The book he might have written, if only he had more time.”
    “You know me better than that.”
    “I would have haunted you if you did.”
    “You finished the book, Henry. Christ!”
    “Said the Jewish atheist.”
    Roger clapped his hands together and bubbled over. “I’m thrilled. I couldn’t be happier. I’ll have it read by tomorrow. We’ll get Fanton on the phone. We’ll take care of the book. But, my God, man. I haven’t heard from you in months. I want to know how you are.”
    “I just told you how I am.”
    “You told me how the book is, Henry. You understand those are two different things? I’m asking about you .”
    “Me.” Henry nodded gamely. “I’m in what they call ‘moderately severe cognitive decline.’ I love that ‘moderately severe.’ Like ‘passionately indifferent’ or ‘blithely miserable.’ My long, last march into the dark. What this means exactly varies with the hour. The other day the doctor asked me to count backward from twenty by twos.