Inukshuk by Gregory Spatz Page B

considering it a bona fide “interruption.” If Thomas had inherited all of Jane’s mysterious gloom, coupled with his own tendency to prefer, above anything else, hours alone lost in worlds of his own imagining, Devon had gotten both the more socially functional, calculating, outgoing, and observant self Franklin brought to his own teaching job and most of Jane’s analytical, technical smarts. All Devon didn’t have of their sunnier attributes was her music. She was gloom illuminated by and interpenetrated with string sound. Thomas was gloom, period. Fascinating gloom. Devon was . . . something else. He was almost like a kid from a TV show; sometimes, he was that perfectly, surprisingly apt in every social setting. A stranger. An (at times) overly energized, athletic stranger.
    Parts of what Devon had said to him now remained stuck in his head, forming a subcurrent of argumentation just beneath the poetry as he sat trying to hear his way back in. One thing in particular, which had to do with Jane and a catchphrase of hers he’d been
almost surprised to hear coming from Devon: Time to face facts, Dad. Shit or get off the pot, don’t you think? What it meant was, he and Jane had been talking about him. Of course. But what it also meant was that he had to examine, again, in response, his own rationales for not serving her with divorce papers until Thomas was out of the house. She, of course, was free at any time to file. He wasn’t sure how he’d respond if she did, but he was pretty sure she wouldn’t. It just didn’t make enough difference to her, one way or the other, no loss or gain, no contested custody, and she wasn’t one to waste time and money on inessential legal paperwork. Aside from needing to protect Thomas, stay in Canada, and keep the door open for her return, and aside from the fact that making their separation final and legal might involve more officially sharing with her his cash-out on their house in Calgary, he also knew that as long as he was still attached to the idea of a reconciliation (and he was), if he served her with divorce papers, it would be (a) only because he felt forced into doing so by her, or, worse, (b) because he was playing for a reaction from her (i.e., reconciliation). Once Thomas was grown and out of the house, if nothing had changed in the interim, then would be the time to serve. But Devon saw things otherwise. You’re stuck , Dad. File first; get over it later. Thomas can deal . He hadn’t said it in those words exactly, but Franklin knew him well enough to know it was how he saw things, what he meant. You need to move on already. As long as you hang on to a dead marriage, how can you go forward in your life? But I am going forward. I’m in a new house, new job. I’m working, writing. I’ve got prospects. Having hope is not the same thing as hanging on. But, Dad, in this case it kind of is. Time to face facts. Time to shit or get off the pot, I say . . . .
    He glanced at his watch—9:40. Bedtime anyway. Saved his files, shut down. Pushed back from the desk chair and stood stretching a moment before heading out of the room and up the darkened hallway.
    One foot on the staircase, he froze. Heard the exhaust fan running in the downstairs washroom and saw the bar of light shining beneath its closed door; again, the thing that had stopped him—the
unmistakable sound you didn’t ever want to identify but always had to, instantly: puking. Throat clearing. Curses. Private, repercussive coughs bursting against toilet porcelain, and more retching. Instinctively, until you were a parent and learned the care associated with it, learned the other response of needing immediately to go in and find out what was wrong, help if you could, you wanted to run. Still, there were the warring impulses in him: one, to swallow back his own bile and head upstairs fast, pretending not to have noticed; the other, to go in, see what he