How the Dead Dream by Lydia Millet

there behind him, though it took a few seconds to be sure, was his father.
    Newly blond, darkly tanned, his father wore a polo shirt and smiled whitely to a patron waving money at him as he shot soda into a highball glass with the bar gun. Both his father and mother, it struck him, had made themselves blonder: both of them had lightened their hair and darkened their skin—possibly, he thought, to attract attention through contrast, birds with bright plumage. They had turned themselves into summer people, as though they could stave off the winter ahead.
    Maybe, he thought hopefully, he had imagined his father’s coldness. Maybe his father was only reluctant to face him. He stepped toward the counter, waiting for a hole to clear between other patrons; he stood facing the bartender in the mesh, who nodded at him impatiently.
    “Actually, if I could talk to him ,” he said, and pointed to the other end of the bar, where his father stood, back turned, punching buttons on a cash register.
    “Davy!” called the bartender.
    As his father turned he felt his stomach flip—carnival rides from way back, the roller coaster that went upside down or the fixed platform that seemed to drop in free fall and then swooped up again. His father’s face remained blank for some time. Then he came around the end of the bar, unsmiling, and the first thing that T. noticed, looking for him as he pressed toward him through the close crowd, was his feet. At the bottom of his cream-colored slacks his father, who had always worn plain black leather lace-ups, battered sneakers or a pair of Redwing work boots, wore a snow-white pair of espadrilles.

    When they met the next morning for breakfast his father was late—five minutes, ten, then twenty. As he came in he offered a brief, reflexive smile, quickly dropped, and barely glanced at how T. waited for him: ramrod straight in his chair, holding his Wall Street Journal rolled up in his hand as though he might have to deploy it in the swatting of flies.
    As he approached T. understood in a rush that he was not the same man. His bearing was different, his movement, everything: a dog, for example, would not recognize him. Strange as this altered man was to T., the new self suited him,
    that was clear. At the same time this new parent was closed to T. Not even the awkward intimacy of confession lay between them anymore; his face was shut like a door. He had simply moved on.
    He waved at someone behind T.’s shoulder. Then he sat down and adjusted the chair several times, back and forth, tucking himself beneath the table edge.
    “You order yet?” he asked, and opened up a menu, signaling to a waiter. “Could I get a cappuccino here?”
    “Of course not. I was waiting for you,” said T.
    “Oh, you didn’t need to do that,” said his father distractedly. He did not look at him, tracing a finger down the list of menu items. “I’ll have the eggs Florentine.”
    “Huevos rancheros,” said T. “So. I ran into Stewart Albin a couple of months ago and he said he saw you in Atlanta.”
    “I always go to the reunions,” said his father, nodding. He seemed bored.
    “I know that. He said you were with some kid. He thought it was my brother.”
    “Stewart, Stewart. Oh yes. He was the one hitting us up for investments in a record or something.”
    “Aryan rap.”
    “No one had any idea what he was talking about. I think he’s insane.”
    “So then I got your postcard and then I was talking to Brad Deering and here I am. First off I want to tell you. My mother had a stroke.”
    “Oh dear,” said his father faintly, and clucked his tongue. He reached out and adjusted a daffodil.
    “We thought she was dead at first. It was an overdose and the stroke happened while she was unconscious. It happened in my bathtub.”
    “Oh dear,” repeated his father, still not meeting his eyes. “But she’s doing fine now?”
    “It depends what you mean. She’s all right physically,” said T. “As far as the