What I Loved

all, I didn't wake them. I stood up quietly and left the room.
    I didn't forget that Mark had stolen my money, but after Bill died the theft seemed to belong to another era, to a time when Mark's criminal behavior took up more room inside me. The truth was that my rage had already been dissipated by Bill's suffering. He had done penance instead of Mark, had taken on the guilt as if it were his own. Through his self-flagellating atonements, Bill had managed to turn my missing $7,000 into his paternal failure. I hadn't wanted his contrition. I had wanted an apology from Mark, but he had never come to me and asked for forgiveness. He had made his weekly payments, delivered in increments of ten, twenty, or thirty dollars, but when Bill was no longer there to supervise the transaction, the money stopped coming, and I couldn't bring myself to ask for it. So when Mark showed up at my door one Friday in early August and handed me a hundred dollars, I was surprised.
    Mark didn't sit down after he gave me the bills; he leaned against my table and looked at the floor. I waited for him to say something, and after a long pause he looked up at me and said, "I'm going to pay you back every penny. I've been thinking about it a lot."
    Again he was silent, and I decided not to help him out by responding.
    "I want to do what Dad would want," he said finally. "I can't believe I'm never going to see him again. I didn't think he'd die before I changed."
    "Changed?" I said. "What are you talking about?"
    "I've always known that I would change. You know, do the right thing and go to college and get married and everything, that Dad would be proud of me and we could forget all the bad stuff that happened and go back to the way we used to be. I know I hurt him, and it bothers me now. I can't sleep sometimes."
    "You're always sleeping," I said.
    "Not at night. I lie in bed and think about Dad and it gets to me. He was the best thing in my life. Violet's really nice to me, but she's not like Dad. He believed in me and he knew that deep down I have a lot of good in me and it made all the difference. I thought I was going to have time to prove myself."
    Mark's eyes began to leak tears. They ran down his cheeks in two continuous clear streams. He didn't make any noise and his expression didn't change. I realized that I'd never seen anyone cry quite like that. He didn't sniffle or sob, but he produced a lot of liquid. "Dad loved me a lot," he said.
    I nodded at Mark then. Up until that moment, I had kept my distance, maintaining the hard, suspicious attitude I had learned to adopt with him, but I could feel myself beginning to weaken.
    "I'm going to show you," he said in a loud determined voice. "I'm going to show you because I can't show Dad, and you're going to see ..." He dropped his head to his chest and squinted through his tears at the floor. "Please believe me," he said, his voice shaking with emotion. "Please believe me."
    I stood up from my chair and walked over to him. When he lifted his head to look at me, I saw Bill. The resemblance came suddenly, a flare of recognition that called up the father in the son. The likeness caught me off guard, and during the seconds that followed it, I felt the loss of Bill in my body, as a pain in my gut that rose into my chest and lungs and seemed to choke off my breath. Both Mark and Violet had greater claims on Bill, and I had hidden my own pain out of deference to them, had suppressed the depths of my unhappiness even from myself, and then, like a revenant, Bill had appeared in Mark for an instant and vanished. Suddenly, I wanted him back and I was enraged that I couldn't have him. I wanted to pummel Mark with my fists and shout at him to return Bill. I felt that the kid had the power to do it, that he was the one who had worn his father to death, killed him with worry and anguish and fear, and now it was time to reverse the story and bring Bill to life again. These were insane thoughts, and I knew just how unhinged they were as I stood in front of Mark and realized that he had been telling me that he was guilty and wanted everything to be different from now on. I had a hundred dollars in my hand. He shook his head back and forth, repeating the refrain, "Please believe me." When I looked down, I saw that his sneakers had small pools of tears between the laces and the toes. "I believe you," I said in a voice that sounded peculiar, not because it was filled with emotion but because its tone was flat and