One Last Thing Before I Go

the question tells him he was right to ask it. “I guess I just wanted to feel like a regular teenager again, you know? I wanted to feel how it would have felt if I hadn’t gotten pregnant, if we’d kept fooling around for a little bit, you know, a summer fling, my first sexual relationship.”
    “I can understand that.”
    “Yeah, because, as far summer flings go, I screwed this one up pretty badly.”
    “There’ll be plenty of others.”
    “Plenty? You think I’m quite the whore, don’t you?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    She smiles. “You think Oliver’s son will forgive him?” she says.
    “I don’t know. Not everyone is as forgiving as you.”
    “True.”
    “Thank you,” Silver says. “For never giving up on me.”
    “Oh, I gave up on you,” she says, taking his hand. “I just don’t have any follow-through.”
    He smiles and they head down the beach at the leisurely pace of two people who have nothing to do and no particular destination in mind.
    * * *
    When they come to pick up Oliver, he is sitting on the front porch next to Tobey, with his grandson on his lap. Another boy, a few years older, sits on Oliver’s other side.
    “This looks promising,” Jack says.
    They watch as Oliver stands up, reluctantly putting his grandson down. He turns to Tobey and they exchange a few strained words and shake hands. Then Oliver reaches out and tentatively touches his son’s shoulder. It’s an awkward, almost lame gesture, and it makes Silver cringe inwardly in empathy. He knows the broken love that forces the need for contact like that.
    Oliver crouches down to hug each of his grandsons. The younger one pulls back and gives him a kiss on the cheek. Even in the car they can hear the kid’s sweet, high-pitched voice as he says, “Good-bye, Grandpa.”
    Oliver gets back into the car, and Jack pulls away. “So,” Jack says. “How did it go?”
    “He didn’t throw me out,” Oliver says.
    “Baby steps.”
    Oliver nods, then turns to look out the window as suburbia gives way to strip malls and traffic lights, and then the Garden State Parkway. Everyone is quiet, relaxing into the noisy wind stream of the convertible as Jack pilots it down the highway, and the occasional slight tremor in Oliver’s shoulders is the only indication that he is silently weeping against the car window.
    * * *
    They are driving out of a rest stop just north of Newark when Jack asks Oliver if his son is going to come in for the surgery.
    “He doesn’t know about that,” Oliver says.
    Jack looks over at Oliver, incredulous. “You didn’t think to mention that you’re having surgery?”
    “It didn’t come up.”
    “How about the cancer? Did that come up?”
    “I didn’t want to manipulate him.”
    Jack brakes hard enough that they all lurch forward in their seats. Then he turns in his seat to face them, oblivious to the fact that he is parked in the middle of the entrance ramp. “I just want to go on record as saying that the two of you are handling your respective illnesses with a degree of ineptitude that is staggering. This one can’t be bothered to have the operation that will save his life, and this one keeps his cancer a secret from his friends and family. I mean, Jesus Christ!”
    Behind them, a car honks, then swerves angrily around them. Jack stands up in his seat to yell an angry fuck-you at the driver.
    “Take it easy, Jack,” Silver says.
    “Fuck you, Silver,” Jack says angrily. “Fuck you and your torn aorta and your little emotional monologues that make everyone feel uncomfortable.”
    “Jack . . .” Oliver says as another car honks and swerves around them.
    “And fuck you too, Oliver,” Jack says, gathering steam. “Fuck you and your secret-ass cancer and your old-man platitudes. You’re fifty-six, for God’s sake. Get over yourself.” He stares back and forth at both of them, and then sits down, staring forward grimly. “I’ve got an ex-wife who wishes I was dead, and an eight-year-old bastard kid that has been raised to think I’m the antichrist,” he says. “I don’t have a family. You’re my goddamn family. And believe me, I know how pathetic that is, but that’s where I’m at. And I am sick and tired of you both acting all casual about dying. Death is the least casual thing there is. And if you two leave me alone out here because you couldn’t be bothered to take care of yourselves like normal people, I will make a point of visiting your goddamn graves on a