of being close to anyone.

The day of my return, though, we sat and ate and talked, and it felt good to be with him and Stan again, to be in that house, to be part of the small bedrock pleasures that bind a family—food, conversation, sharing time …

After dinner Stan went into the living room to watch a Spider-Man DVD and my father stood over the sink in the kitchen with his sleeves rolled and washed the dishes. He wouldn’t let me help so I sat at the kitchen table and watched him—a man in his late fifties wearing office clothes, working his way through a chore that in most other families someone else would be doing.

He spoke as he worked, about conditions at the office, the state of the housing market, various properties he was pushing. This was one of the few subjects he ever showed much interest in and to me it had always seemed faintly hilarious. Oakridge was a town that had seen constant growth. He sold real estate. Any other man in his position would have grown rich, but our family had only ever just scraped by and it had taken a small life insurance payout when my mother died to get anywhere close to paying off the house.

“Stanley has a job now, you know.”

“Yeah, he told me.”

“Makes him feel worthwhile.”

“I think he feels that way anyhow, Dad.”

“I mean in a community sense. Work is the oil that allows the wheels of life to turn, John. What are your plans, now that you’re back?”

“To spend time with Stan. And you. I haven’t thought beyond that.”

“And a job? I can’t support you, you know.”

“I’ll be okay for a while. I saved some money in the UK. I want to see Marla too.”

My father frowned. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Why not?”

“You’ve been away a long time.”

“Well, I have to at least say hello, don’t you think? I’m bound to run into her sooner or later.”

“Have you considered that it might be better for her if you didn’t go stirring up the past? You need to be careful not to be too selfish, John.”

Stan ran into the kitchen then, smelling of toothpaste, wearing pajamas with pictures of Batman on them. He hugged me tightly.

“Sorry, Johnny, I was going to come back in but I forgot because of the TV. Can you drive me to work in your car tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

“Awesome. All right, pardner, I gotta hit the hay.”

He turned abruptly and galloped from the room. At the foot of the stairs he yelled, “Yee Har!” then thundered on up to bed.

My father made small talk after he’d gone, papering over the cracks of our last exchange. But both of us, I think, were saddened by the fact that after so long apart it seemed that nothing had changed between us. In the end he went into the living room to watch the late news.

When I got up the next day I found Stan pacing quickly back and forth along the upstairs landing. He was wearing a full Superman costume and was trying to get the cape to billow out behind him.

“Hiya, Johnny. Dad already went to work.”

“Nice suit.”

Stan stopped and looked down at himself. He ran his hands over the blue material that covered his bulging stomach.

“Dad doesn’t like them … But I paid with money from my job, so it’s okay. I’m not allowed to wear them outside, though. One of the neighbors saw me in the backyard and told Dad I was weird.”

“Them?”

Stan beckoned me into his bedroom at the far end of the landing. He slid open the door of a large built-in ward-robe, reached into a rack of hanging clothes, and pulled out a black and gray outfit.

“Batman.”

He put it back and pulled out another.

“Captain America. Sometimes it’s good to be someone different.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You can feel the power more too.”

“Superhero power?”

Stan looked a little at a loss and shrugged.

Later that morning I drove him to work. The road took us through Back Town, Oakridge’s business and commercial district, and as we passed the shops there Stan stared dreamily out of the window.

“You think it would be fun having a shop, Johnny? Or a business? Doing stuff around town?”

“Be better than working for someone else, that’s for sure.”

“I think it would be great. People would come and ask you things and you’d tell them what was right and what they should have. And they’d know you were the guy for what they wanted.”

Bill