please note the following content warning/tag for this chapter: portrayal of Gus's father with cancer.

 

Gus

Dad lined up at the tee: back straight, arms down and loose, feet parallel. After a few waggles, with his weight solidly on his back foot, his backswing looked good.

I blew out a breath of solidarity and nodded to the other man to my right. This was going to be the hole where it sailed down the green.

Mid-backstroke, his club wavered. He lost momentum. The disappointing arc in his swing ended up tipping the ball, sending it sailing for all of fifteen yards until it sputtered out with a few anemic bounces.

“You weren’t set up right.” Father Vasili waved his hand, dismissing the stroke. “Take a mulli—“

“No, no.” Dad walked toward the ball slowly, his breathing labored. “I’ve had enough exercise for one day. You two finish the course. I’m going to watch from the golf cart and look forward to the beer afterward.”

Dad had never been a strong driver. He played so rarely, no one would blame him. I could never convince him to get out to the range to practice. Taking a day off from the funeral home was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Or never allowed himself to afford. Golf was the one thing he’d always looked forward to—the fresh air, the long, relaxed walks—once things eventually slowed down.

I’d make an effort to learn the sport, anticipating this very moment, when we’d finally get to play together, no matter how poorly either of us played.

Finally, Dad had retired, but only because of a more nefarious thief of joy: a cancer diagnosis. In the last few months, both the disease and its treatments had robbed him of this joy for too long.

No more. I’d make it my duty to fill his life with all the things he’d never had the time to do. And I had to do it quickly, because as much as we all wanted to remain sunk as deeply in the pits of denial as Dad was with his handicap, the truth of it was, his health wasn’t getting better.

I glanced at Father Vasili, my spiritual father, before my eyes followed my actual father lumbering to the golf cart.

Vasili shook his head. We were all done for the day.

Shoving our bags in the back of the cart, we headed for the bar. It was only ten a.m., but I’d bribed Dad to come today by promising I’d let him sneak a beer after the game.

I winced. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought him out at all.

No treatment; not the chemo, not the immunotherapy, not even the sugar-free diet Ma had inflicted upon him, seemed to make any difference in his bloodwork or scans. And now the pain had started. Pain that radiated out from center mass, seeping into his shoulders, arms, fingertips. Infusing every capillary with an ache so deep, he thought his skin would burst.

I’d always hovered around death.

I had no real intimacy with loss. Even my octogenarian grandparents were still alive and probably would be for at least another decade if their blue zone genes held strong.

I wanted to think of anything beside my Dad getting worse, but it was a funeral kid’s occupational hazard. One day, Dad would be the one in the casket at the back of the chapel. He’d be the decedent on the embalming table. George would lovingly prepare his body, draining the excess fluids from his tissues after too many medications had bloated his face. The rest of us would assist with the washing and clothing and casketing, crying and laughing intermittently as we repeated his favorite stories, listening to Randy Travis and Garth Brooks because those were the only two cassette tapes Dad had for the embalming room boombox and until a few years ago, none of us had ever thought that was something that could be helped.

I’d officiate the service—as much of a Trisagion as I could, considering he wasn’t Orthodox. We’d sing Greek memorial hymns that Ma would insist on, and “Abide with Me” because Dad’s Episcopalian mother had loved it and that particular hymn had always given him a faraway look on his face whenever we played it for a client’s service.

She’d know how to help when the time came to become personally acquainted.

She knew death better than any of us. She knew it from all sides. Inside out. Upside down.

She knew the bones of it, and she knew the heartbreak. She knew what it looked like for someone to actively die in front of her eyes, telling them it was okay to let go, helping to ferry them into the afterlife. She knew what it looked like when someone was so dead, they were essentially a science fair project, exhumed when a company decided to put up a strip mall over an unmarked grave.

And she knew how it felt for all your family to die. One after another, everyone who ever mattered to her slipping away, leaving her behind to carry on alone. Always alone.

Decca. My . . . fiancé.

My heart raced at the thought. The word itself felt wrong. Bulky, like the hockey gear Waylon made me buy to join his beer league team. Gear that was designed for my protection in case I fell on the ice or caught a puck to the bridge of the nose, but that forced me off balance and sent me careening head first into the wall at our last clinic.

Decca would complete my family if she actually went through with what she’d proposed.

I shouldn’t say if. Shouldn’t even think it.

But things were . . . complicated, to say the least.

It wasn’t her that made me break out in a sweat, even with the wind from the open cart rushing through my hair and beard. It was the suddenness of my pairing. Soula had Waylon. George had Bethany.

I was alone. That was the way it was supposed to be.

It wouldn’t be a whole life. It would lack. But that was what I’d seen anytime I’d envisioned any kind of future for myself.

When Decca proposed, it felt like a storm had broken in me, like rain on a too humid night. More than relief, an exultation. Like a Christmas song. Not the Greek “Ta Kalanda” that the kids in church sang, but Nat King Cole backed by the full choir belting out “Adeste Fidelis” alongside a brass orchestra.

But the sudden joy of her proposal took a downshift once the idea had settled in.

I wasn’t supposed to be blessed with a wife.

The wretchedness of my youth should never be rewarded with a life partner,  especially not one like Decca. She was too kind, too giving, too selfless. Too good for a man like me.

I’d never dreamed of her and I . . . well, okay I dreamed it, but that’s where our relationship should have stayed. In my dreams.

The sudden sharp left turn of our relationship from good friends who flirted occasionally to partners for life had been the answer to a prayer I hadn’t dared offer, but it was also giving me whiplash.

It was so new, so raw, I’d barely begun to process it. I had yet to tell either of my fathers about my split-second answer to what—if I knew Decca—was surely a split-second, tarot-induced question on her part.

That was the other reason for today. The real reason I’d reserved a crack of dawn tee time on the hottest day of the year: to throw myself onto the tracks of their wisdom train and let it flatten me with the truth behind my idiotic life choice.

I could rely on Decca. I knew that. Part of what made her so . . . not easy, but exhilarating to talk to, was that no matter how much bad she’d seen in her life, nothing was more important than whatever conversation we were having at the time. It didn’t matter if we were discussing how to topple the patriarchy or what we like to add to our ramen (sliced, fried pork and a soft boiled egg for me, heaps of bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and hot sauce for her), that was the thing that held the utmost importance for her. She threw herself at her friends.

I knew she’d throw herself into this marriage, too. But I didn’t want it to be that way for her. To burden her right out of the gate.

My eye was drawn to Dad, his chest laboring with each breath in the passenger seat. He didn’t have much longer. I felt the days counting down.

I gritted my teeth and steeled myself against the days to come. I would not let this blindside me. I was determined to face his failing treatments, his final years/months/days, his eventual death head on. I’d be there for every minute I could. I’d refuse to lie to myself about his condition. It was the only way I could milk every moment I had left with him. And if, by the grace of God, some experimental treatment worked, the additional time would be a bonus.

Expect the worst. That way nothing could disappoint you.

Today was not about death, though. Today was about life. And love. Maybe . . . if that’s what Decca intended with her proposal. I was so excited when she asked, I basically ejaculated out the word yes with the same adolescent vigor I’d had when I came in my pants dreaming of her.

After the first cold, noxiously bitter pale ale at the golf bar, I was finally ready to make the announcement.

Well, maybe after the next round.

“Gus, spit it out,” Dad said after watching me twist my dripping glass in circles. “Why are we here?”

“From the looks of it, I’m the only golfer at this table, so I’ve been curious about that myself,” said Father Vasili. He was an old man. Much older than Dad, but despite his long hair, full beard, all-black clothing and clerical collar, he fit in anywhere and with anyone.

I chuffed out what was supposed to be a laugh, but even that was strained.

“Yeah, uh. Okay. I’m uh . . . getting married.”

“Bravo. Na Ziseis! Do it quickly so we can schedule your ordination. Great Lent will be here before you know it and it’d be a blessing to have some help with the forty-seven services of Holy Week.”

I was stunned. My forced smile froze. I wasn’t expecting them to accept the news. Not without so much as a question. “You aren’t even going to ask who?”

“Decca?” Dad asked quietly.

“How did you—”

“I’m not blind, son. I’ve seen you together. But you looked happier then than you do now. You look like you did when you bottomed-out the hearse and tried to break the news gently.”

“Seriously, neither one of you have any pushback? Maybe I should have told Ma first.”

“Your Ma will be happy to see you settled. She likes Decca.”

My eyes shot to him. Was he having a stroke?

He turned the corner of his mouth up in a small smile. Then we both burst out laughing. The thought of Ma liking any woman who’d marry one of her beloved sons was unthinkable.

At least Dad had lightened the mood. I spun the beer glass on the table, watching the condensation drip. “She proposed. I don’t even know if she meant it as a business transaction, or a real marriage. I know she’s doing me a favor, so I can become ordained as a married priest. I’d be an idiot not to take her up on her offer. She’s giving me everything I wanted, giving up her own chance at happiness in the process. I don’t think I can go through with it.”

“That’s bullshit. Excuse my language, Father,” Dad said.

Vasili shrugged.

“Should I start from the top? Because I didn’t raise my son to think that poorly of himself. I’ve seen the way her eyes go all soft whenever you’re in the room. She’s not marrying you as a favor. Unless it’s a favor for herself.”

I could lie to myself and maintain the myth that I hadn’t noticed the way she cleverly guarded her flirtations so she wouldn’t be obvious. Even still, her eyes were drawn to me when we were together. She did things. Un-Decca-like things, like playing with her hair and touching my arm when we found common ground in our arguments—which, was more frequent than not.

I noticed those things because I did them, too. I flirted back. Whatever room she was in felt ten degrees hotter. My fingers found ways to connect with her, reaching out, searching and desiring more than just a friendship. For as long as I’d known her.

I came in my fucking pants after she starred in my wet dream.

But it was just a crush, right? And crushes probably didn’t have a great conversion rate into marriages.

“But you love her?” asked Vasili. “You shouldn’t marry without some kind of love.”

Dad looked at me, curious to know the answer as well.

“I . . . yes. She’s my friend and a creation of God.”

“That’s not what I mean. You’re called to love those men at the table next to us, even though they keep making lewd comments about the waitress whenever she leaves. You’re called to love the kitchen staff you haven’t even seen, but that doesn’t mean you marry them. And before you ask, I’m not asking if it’s passion you’re feeling.”

Say yes. Say yes, you idiot. Even if you don’t know why it’s true, you know it is. Just be done with this. Sure, it’s too good to be true. The woman you definitely love as a friend and could easily love with a burning fiery passion threw herself at your mercy so that you could have the whole shebang, the family and the priesthood. And her. Just stop dithering. Stop second-guessing and be honest. Yes, you love her.

“It could grow into love. For sure. One day.”

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a liar.

“Is she Greek?”

Vasili really meant is she Orthodox? It would have been equally suitable for me to marry a Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, or hell, even a Southern Baptist . . . as long as she was willing to fulfill her role as presvytera, which . . . was a big gaping hole in the plot.

Decca enjoyed attending church with me. She was a very spiritual person who sought answers and wasn’t afraid of hard insight into her own assumptions and understandings. But that didn’t mean she was looking to convert. Or get rid of her witchy practices—not that I wanted her to. We were both personally convinced that her witchiness and my Orthodoxy were compatible, but the church wouldn’t see it that way.

I didn’t feel the need to bring that up to my spiritual father right now.

“Not Greek.” I stuck with the safe answer for now.

“Our wedding ceremony prays that God will yoke you in the oneness of mind and crown you in one flesh. Romantic love, eros, fades and re-blooms periodically with the seasons, but the oneness of mind, that’s a thing that is very difficult to cultivate. It’s the only absolute. The only thing that is fixed.”

He was right. I’d seen that in his own marriage before his presvytera had died.

That was why I’d said yes in the first place. I barely even needed to consider that Decca and I were of one mind. I knew we were.

It was what had drawn us to each other in the first place and what remained our common ground.

It wasn’t the flirtation; it was the oneness.

We each sought the other like two pools of mercury skating across a surface, looking for more particles so we could be something bigger than just us alone.

It was why I didn’t hesitate when she asked, why it didn’t seem uncharacteristic or out of the blue, it was like I’d been waiting for her to say those words, to offer herself in marriage.

“She’s . . . my Eve.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Father Vasili said.