Remembering my mother’s old boyfriend’s
cousin Gary’s unforgettable face, as I teach
my son to swim and feel the sun pressing its
fingertips on the place I always miss below
my armpit. Gary with his permanent racoon-
eyed sunburn, glazed beady eyes, and
bottomless drink lounging poolside at his
apartment complex where we hung out that
summer. Remembering Gary makes me
think of the boyfriend and the time I told
him to shut up in a restaurant. He took it.
Can’t remember what set me off. Thinking
I’d like to find him and take it back or go
back and make him untake it, help him with
the right words to put me in my place, but I
can’t because suddenly I’m thinking he’s
dead. My son’s life floating in my palms
and I’m certain that mom’s ex-boyfriend
Gene is dead. I can’t explain how you feel
the absence of someone you haven’t thought
about in years, seen in decades. It’s like a
thin blue thread running between you has
been cut. So thin you didn’t know it was
there, sewn to your chest where a
microscopic hole now rests. Later I discover
in the obit: it was the chest where his heart
gave out at 60. You know what stopped his
heart because you were there for the
intervention that was their undoing. You
remember how he and Gary created your
awareness of male drunkenness by the pool
that summer. Gene was what you would
come to know as a quiet, well-intending
drunk. Gene is survived by his son, Michael.
Thinking of his special-needs son spouting
an endless string of curse words followed by
gentle apologies and the way you egged him
on, wondering who’s taking care of him
now. He could have been your brother and
it’s for the best and the worst that he isn’t.

Yes, I’d like to go back to that restaurant and
make amends. Selfish really, but worst of all
the feeling: how euphoric to dip two simple
words into a nine-year-old’s cauldron rage
and fling them on his face: Shut! Up!
Thinking I’d like to tell him I was projecting
anger at the institution of divorce and its
endless epilogue, resulting in an outburst
directed at the actor portraying mom’s
boyfriend. I want to tell him that there’s still
no cure for the disease that’s been killing him,
will kill him, is killing him right now
with the glass perspiring in his hand at the
restaurant, in Gary’s hand, in my
grandfather’s hand, in so many hands.
Today in the pool my son floated on his own
with an accomplished smile. Thinking that’s
all we can really ask of anyone on any given
day: to float. His cousin, Gary, was like a
brother to him. Snip. Another thin blue
thread falls to the ground. Another five
minutes and the obit found: Gary stopped
floating 10 years ago for reasons unwritten
but understood. His grainy picture tells the
tale: that unforgettable face’s aged purple
hue. In Gene’s obit photo, his eyes are
covered by dark glasses the same way they
always were back then. But still you see the
kind sadness behind them. Or was it sad
kindness? Reminding yourself that you’re
remembering a memory and that memory
can be murky. Still you know they are where
you left them: boyhood’s pains and
mysteries. All you have to do is close your
eyes, open the door, and enter: the vast
warehouse filled with spools stacked to the
ceiling, threads of every thickness, length,
and colour.