IV.
After Julian and I left Tom’s room, Julian had me accompany him to the hospital cafeteria. We sat at a small round table by a large floor-to-ceiling window while Julian nursed a cup of coffee.
He wrinkled his nose as he took a sip.
“Not good?” I asked.
“Pretty stale,” he said. And then, “That was something else, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It was.” The memory of Tom’s attention hadn’t left me. It was such a strange sensation to have been recognized and acknowledged by someone who up until a few days ago I had no idea existed.
“He really liked your mother,” Julian offered, turning the coffee cup between his hands. Julian seemed mellower than he had been before the visit. Contemplative, even. “He thought she was a good influence on me.”
I leaned forward in my chair, resting my elbows on the table. “Really?”
“Yeah. He could tell she was motivated, whereas he thought I was aimless.” Julian laughed as though he were remembering something. “And he was right, I guess.”
“That you were aimless?”
Julian looked straight at me. “I wasn’t brave enough to admit to myself or anyone else what I wanted. Your mother changed that for me.”
I stared down at the table. “But I thought you wanting to be a rock star was what upset your dad. And if Mom is the one who convinced you to really go for it, why did he like her?”
Julian ran a hand through his messy hair and gave me a little smile. “Look, Dad and I were really close when I was a kid. I was the firstborn and the son.” He paused and then added, “The only son. That means something to men like my dad, you know?”
I gave him a noncommittal shrug.
“When I was younger, we used to build all sorts of cool shit in his workshop. Toy trains, airplanes. You name it. And I loved it, and he loved that I loved it. But around ten or eleven, I grew into my own person.” He met my eyes again. “Does that make sense?
“Like up until that point, I feel like I was just imitating my dad. I was interested in the things he was interested in because I wanted to be just like him. And then all of a sudden, I discovered interests of my own,” Julian continued. “And my dad, he didn’t handle it that well.”
I nodded because I wanted him to go on.
“I think he was hurt that I wasn’t interested in messing around in his workshop anymore. I actually realized I found woodworking to be super boring.” Julian laughed again and shook his head. “I bought a cheap used guitar and started spending hours in my room playing covers of old punk rock songs and fooling around trying to write my own melodies. My dad hated the noise, and even more he hated that he thought I was wasting my time fooling around, doing aimless things. So we started to argue all the time.” His eyes went hazy like he was reliving a memory. “We would snap at each other about the stupidest stuff. And we started saying worse and worse things. Before we knew it, we were locked in this cycle of resentment and silence.” He shook his head again. “And I just wish I had worked to make things right before …”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “But you couldn’t have known he was going to have a stroke.”
Julian sighed. “Yeah, well, I should’ve known I wasn’t going to have forever. But …” He trailed off and pinched the skin between his eyebrows, his forehead wrinkled with thought. “Life has a way of tricking you into thinking that you’re always going to have forever. But this, this has snapped me out of it. And I don’t want to make the same mistakes with you.” He looked at me earnestly. “I’ve lost enough time, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose any more.”
“You could’ve had a whole other year,” I said, half joking.
He hung his head. “I know. But I was a coward. An ashamed coward.” I could tell by the way he said that that there was something else there, but before I had the chance to push it, he said, “You know, I’ve written a lot of songs about death. And people have loved them.” He winced and his cheeks flushed red. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like a blowhard.”
“You didn’t,” I volunteered. “I know what you’re saying. ‘Watermelons and Clocks’ is one of your most popular songs.”
He nodded, a sense of relief on his face. “That’s ’cause people love to think about death. Or we love to think that we love to think about it. There’s something almost romantic about death that sort of intrigues everyone because of the terrifying knowledge that it’s coming for us all.”
I stared at him blankly, not quite sure where he was going with this.
“But it’s not exciting when it’s like this, is it?” he said, and I could tell he wasn’t really asking me, so I stayed quiet. “Like how it is with my dad? It’s just sad. Really fucking sad. Slow and sad and almost boring. Isn’t it awful that it’s boring? That it’s a morbid waiting game?” He shook his head, his lips pursed in disgust. “This shit, the real shit, it doesn’t make a good song. No one wants to hear or think about this.”
“I don’t know,” I said tentatively. “I bet you could come up with something meaningful. There are plenty of really, really sad songs that are also beautiful.”
“Yeah,” Julian agreed. “But now I’m not so sure how honest they are. Mine especially.” He tapped his fingers against the rim of the Styrofoam coffee cup.
“But that’s what I’m saying,” I said, less tentatively this time. “I think your newfound honesty and awareness is what would make the song beautiful. Brutal, but beautiful.”
A look crossed over his face and he gave me a tiny smile. “You’re right. And you know what? You should write it.”
My stomach dropped. I crossed my arms over my chest and sank down into the plastic cafeteria chair. “I don’t think so,” I finally said, my voice barely above a whisper.
“It was just a suggestion, since Harlow mentioned you write songs and—”
I cut him off. “Can we not talk about my songs?” I squeezed my arms tighter around myself.
He gave me a wounded look. He held his hands up in the universal gesture for surrender. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. It’s just …”
I knitted my eyebrows together. “It’s just what?”
“I’m sort of wondering when you’re going to let me in.”
I squirmed in my chair. An uneasiness that felt a little bit like anger was bubbling in my gut.
He gave me a desperate look. “Am I wrong? I just feel like since we’ve met, you’ve been holding back.” His eyes searched mine. “Your mom was like that.”
The uneasiness faded away as the anger took over. “And she was obviously right to be—considering what you did.”
“Tal …”
“Do you expect me to spill my guts out to a man I hardly know? A man who hasn’t been around for the entirety of my life?” I stood up from my chair. “You really have no idea.” I spun on my heel and headed toward the hospital cafeteria exit.
I heard him call out from behind me. “Tal. I made a lot of mistakes, but you don’t know the whole story.”
I shook my head, but I didn’t turn around. I kept on walking.
“Tal!” he shouted, this time louder. “I’m not the one who left.”