Everything Changes

“It doesn’t work that way. Besides, as the straight daughter, the world is pretty much my oyster. I’ve got some leeway.”
    “So I guess I’ve got that going for me.”
    “You’ve got me going for you.”
    She kissed me and I kissed her and soon we were making out on the couch like a couple of teenagers. “Let’s go to my room,” she whispered.
    “Are you serious? Your parents are sitting in the living room.”
    “I know,” she said, tongue in my ear, hand in my pants. “Hurry.”

Chapter 16
    I stagger into the brownstone at around seven, to find Jed sprawled in his usual position on the couch, shoveling Cap’n Crunch into his mouth and watching
Entertainment Tonight
. Living with Jed is like having a puppy. No matter what time of day or night you come home, he’ll be there to greet you. “Hey, man,” he says with his mouth full, taking in my haggard appearance. “What happened to you?”
    “I had a tube shoved up my dick,” I say, plopping down next to him.
    “A cystoscopy,” he says knowledgeably.
    “You’ve had one?”
    “Hell no. But I watched one on the Learning Channel.” Jed has become quite well-rounded since he took up television full-time. “Why’d you have it?”
    “Blood in my urine.”
    “Hematuria,” he says, nodding.
    “Very impressive,” I say.
    “If it’s out there”—he indicates the television and then points to his head—“it’s in here.”
    “Well, do you think you can pry yourself away long enough to get me some Tylenol?”
    “No need,” Jed says, reaching into a crack of the sofa and feeling around. His hand emerges a moment later, clutching a bottle of Aleve. “Sometimes I get headaches from watching,” he says in response to my incredulous look.
    I down three pills with one of the many half-finished Coke cans that litter the coffee table.
    “So, what’s the verdict?” Jed says.
    “They found a spot,” I say.
    Jed actually looks away from the television for a minute. “Oh, shit,” he says worriedly.
    “It’s probably nothing.”
    He nods. “Probably. They do a biopsy?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So when do you find out for sure?”
    “Friday.”
    “What’s today?”
    “Tuesday.”
    “That sucks, man.”
    “Yeah.”
    We sit together in glum silence, watching Mary Hart feverishly discuss the latest celebrity pregnancy. I’m thinking that Mary ought to cut down a bit on the caffeine before taping. She’s looking more and more like a
Saturday Night Live
sketch of herself.
    “Oh, hey,” Jed says after a few minutes. “Your dad’s here.”
    “What?”
    “He’s in your room.”
    I look at Jed. “What’s he doing there?”
    Jed shrugs. “He was tired. Said he wanted to lie down.”
    “So you just let him go up into my room?”
    “What’s he going to do, rob you?”
    I pull myself off the couch. “I can’t believe you let him upstairs.”
    “That’s right, Zack,” Jed says, getting annoyed. “I had the gall to let an older man rest in his son’s room.”
    “Don’t get all righteous with me, Jed. You have no idea what he’s like. What he did to us.”
    Jed nods. “You’re right. Sorry. I didn’t mean to come off like that.” He looks up at me. “I can barely remember my dad, Zack. He died when I was seven. But I still miss having one, you know? Those years when my company took off, you know, when I was so successful, I always missed having a father to be proud of me. It made the whole thing feel, I don’t know, hollow. And after Rael died, you know . . .”
    “I know,” I say softly.
    “I mean, I’ll get it together,” he says, looking back at the television. “I’m not going to watch television forever. But I sometimes wish I had a father, you know? Someone to just look to in all of this, to tell me to get off my ass. To set me straight, I guess.”
    “Mine is not really the kind of father who sets people straight,” I say.
    “So he’s a fuckup,” Jed says with a shrug. “What are we? The point is, he’s still here and you’re still here, and as we both know, that’s an equation that can change pretty quickly.” This is far and away the closest Jed’s ever come to discussing Rael’s death.
    “Jed,” I say.
    “Yeah.”
    “This is the first meaningful conversation we’ve had in over a year.”
    “You see, he’s already having a positive effect,” he says with a smirk, but his eyes dance purposefully away from mine, back to the television, and the moment is lost.

    My room is engulfed in the