Filthy Lucre

SEBASTIAN KNEW better than to drive his Ferrari, but his dad had his truck, so he rented a newish Toyota Corolla and headed home.

Home. The house where he grew up, where his keepsakes were tidily and safely packed away, and where he’d learned how to become a millionaire. Objectively, he thought as he parked behind his own dilapidated Ford pickup, it was actually a quite nice house, especially for the neighborhood, which had gone downhill.

He got out of the car, then went across the street to study the house he hadn’t seen in over ten years. It was a variation on a Kansas City Shirtwaist, two stories instead of three, a first floor clad in pristine brick instead of river stone, and a much smaller footprint. It had a deep porch with a swing and a beadboard ceiling painted haint blue, the clapboard siding above the porch around the second floor was a crisp white, and the shutters were the same haint blue as the porch ceiling. The roof had new light gray shingles. The lawn was lush and meticulously kept, the trees and yews were well pruned, and the box on the side of the house was bursting with irises and gladiolas.

It hadn’t always been this nice. He could remember when the paint was perpetually peeling and chipping, the brick was filthy, the porch ceiling was rotting and sagging and dripped when it rained. It didn’t just leak through the porch roof, either. He remembered the buckets and bowls strategically placed throughout the house during storms, and his dad spending two years on the roof re-shingling it when he could scrape enough money together to buy a couple of bundles of shingles. The lawn was patchy and laden with crabgrass, the trees young and struggling, and the yews barely filling out.

It was clean, though. His mother made sure of that. No matter how dilapidated it looked, it had always been clean and the crabgrass cropped.

“Sebastian! What’re doing? Come in!”

He raised his hand at his dad, whom he couldn’t see through the trees, and sighed, trudging toward what he suspected would be the last conversation he’d ever have with the man he loved, who loved him, and who’d influenced him so much—in what not to do.

“That your car?” he asked, seeming to be impressed. “Nice. Looks expensive, though.”

A Corolla. “Uh, just a loaner.”

“Prolly want your truck back, eh?”

“Not anytime soon. Don’t worry about it.”

His father welcomed him warmly, with bear hugs, excited chatter, and slaps on the back. Sebastian hugged his mother but traded a grim expression with her. This would not be a fun conversation.

His mother had suggested inviting more family, but Sebastian was uneasy with that, especially if Uncle Yves showed up to support Sebastian. It wouldn’t be a fair fight and it was already lopsided with just him and his mother. Sebastian didn’t want a dozen people down his dad’s throat.

His mother led them to the table and it was like Sebastian was twelve again. Pot roast with potatoes and carrots, brown gravy, plenty of ketchup, green beans with bacon. His dad was blustering about what was going on at the city parks department and what he’d said to his asshole boss, and got one over on him. He started talking about an investment idea now that their major expenses had been paid for finally—

“You’d be proud of me, Son!” he said excitedly. “Pork. That’s where it’s at.”

Sebastian listened to his plans about buying a couple of pigs and putting them on a vacant lot about three blocks over, raising them for meat. It might’ve been a good idea for a questionably cheap-ish way to feed two people for a couple of years if he’d looked into zoning first. Sebastian didn’t know how it was zoned, either, nor did he care, but he was pretty sure pigs wouldn’t fly.

“When’d you get in from Europe?” his dad finally asked, somewhere three-quarters of the way through the meal. It was irritating, that Charlie wasn’t much interested in what Sebastian was doing, but it was also the reason Sebastian had managed to make his nightly forays. If Charlie had been the least been interested or paying attention, the house would’ve been razed by now, like half the other houses on the block.

“Oh, well, I … I’ve been in Boston the last three years,” he said as coolly as he could muster. “I guess I thought you knew.”

His dad was quiet for a moment. “Boston?” he asked, clearly confused. “I thought— Weren’t you in art school in Paris?”

“I graduated four years ago, Dad,” Sebastian said a little more testily than he meant. “I sent graduation announcements and invitations.”

“Uh, oh.” He looked stymied. It wasn’t that his mind was slipping. It was that he deliberately blocked out any milestone successes that he couldn’t claim having had a part in—and his idea of success was an exceedingly low bar, so anything over that seemed like a fairy tale. “Well! We couldn’t have gone to Paris anyway, but congratulations! Been a starving artist in Boston, then?” He laughed with cheer and pride. He thought being a starving artist was an achievement.

“Well, um. Not … precisely. I’ve been going to school, and … ” It was time. “I came home to ask you personally this time if you would please come to my graduation.”

His father’s laughter had faded into even deeper confusion. “More school? To study what?”

“Business,” Sebastian replied tightly. “Harvard. I just got my MBA.”

The room went deathly still except for the drone of the window air conditioning unit.

Finally, his dad spoke. Growled. Low in his throat. A threat. “Business?” he asked in that tone that had occasionally preceded the hiss of a belt being pulled out of its loops.

“Yes. With honors. And I want you to come see me walk.”

More silence. Then, so suddenly it startled Sebastian, although it shouldn’t have, his father stood with a roar, his fists pounding on the ancient dining room table. “BUSINESS?! Why?! So you can learn how to make buckets of filthy lucre?!”

Sebastian sat looking at his plate, clenching his fork in his hand so hard it bent. He wasn’t ashamed. He was hurt. And furious.

“Answer me!”

This was where the rubber hit the road, he supposed. He dropped his fork and reached around to his back pocket to find his wallet—and his bank book. He calmly put his wallet on the table and opened his bank book, then handed it to his father, who snatched it and started to read.

Sebastian watched as his ruddy complexion paled and he almost collapsed into his seat once he grasped what he was looking at.

He stared at the numbers and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He closed his mouth. Opened it again. Still nothing.

“How … ?” he croaked.

“That,” Sebastian murmured, “is only the account where I put money I don’t know what I want to do with yet. I have a lot more than that.”

His dad slowly looked up at him, his face full of a rage Sebastian had never seen and a hatred he had seen, but never directed at him.

“Get out,” he said low, stabbing Sebastian in the heart. Well, really, what had he expected?

Sebastian got to his feet.

“Charles—”

“Not a word, Dianne! Five million dollars! And that’s just his savings?! Did you know about this?”

“I helped him,” Sebastian’s mother said quietly. Well, Sebastian wasn’t going to leave now. As far as he knew, his father had never hit his mother, but the arguments could get nasty and he wasn’t going to let his mother face this one alone. “I taught him. I was not going to allow my son to grow up in poverty without knowing he had a way out.”

“Poverty?! We aren’t poor! Look at this place!”

“Do you mean the place I have been paying for? Maintaining? Improving upon for the last thirty years?” she asked sharply. “Did you think your salary paid for any of this?”

“Whu—”

Sebastian sighed and reverted to his childhood habit—lying on the couch to listen to the latest screaming match about money, his presence forgotten.

This time, though, was different. Sebastian didn’t know what his mother had up her sleeve, but he knew she was at the end of her tether. He looked around at the place while the preamble shouting commenced. She really had made this place a showpiece and the couch was not cheap. Her taste in art was pedestrian, but it was all fairly well designed.

The fight went down the same path it always went: familial, philosophical, theological. But then—

“I want to see our books!”

Whatever Sebastian’s mother had been about to say didn’t get said. Instead, she snapped, “Fine.”

She ducked into the kitchen, but Sebastian Just lay there with his eyes closed and his arm over his face listening to his father’s rapid, angry breathing. He prepared himself for another rant, but his mother came back.

“What’s this?” his father snapped. “Doesn’t look like a checkbook to me.”

“It’s not. It’s a divorce.”

Sebastian nearly swallowed his tongue. He shot upright and stared at his parents facing off, a thick manila envelope in his father’s hand and his mother with her arms crossed over her chest.

His father finally croaked, “I—”

But that was all.

His mother’s expression was implacable. “I love you, Charlie, but I am done with this life, this neighborhood, this evil philosophy you’re so invested in that you’d disown our son over it. I’m leaving. You have two choices. You may move with me to a neighborhood I like and you can live in relative comfort, or you can stay here and manage your life on your own on your salary.”

“You’re choosing Sebastian over me?” he asked desperately.

“No. I’m choosing a house over you.”

That was harsh.

“You don’t have any money! You’ve never had a job!”

“And why is that?” she asked mildly.

“Because you needed to stay home and take care of the family, like the Prophet said!”

“Mmm hm. You know what else the Prophet said? For the father to provide for his family. You barely provided enough for basic living expenses, and then you gave a quarter of that away. So I had to figure out a way to keep us out of penury. I keep our cars running, I keep us in air conditioning, I put the roof on this house. Well, your son and I did. Without him, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything because you wouldn’t let me—” She was screaming now, and Sebastian had never heard this tone or volume. “—but also wouldn’t better yourself!”

Silence.

“What— What do you mean, Sebastian? What did he do?”

“I gave him a little money. I taught him how to use it to make more because I couldn’t associate with the people he could. He brought me seed money,” she hissed. “Seed money I used to invest, the only job I could get because you wouldn’t allow me to work. You’re so horrified by Sebastian’s bank account? I don’t have nearly as much as he does, but I had enough to buy a very nice house in a very nice neighborhood in cash and a very nice car to go with it. So, again. You can come with me, or you can let your pride keep my side of the bed warm at night, because I am not staying in this house one more minute.”

And with that, she grabbed her purse, her church bag, her crochet project bag, and the keys to Sebastian’s truck, and walked out, letting the storm door slam behind her.

Silence. Again. Before the roar of the pickup from outside pierced the walls.

Sebastian didn’t know what to do. It was the first time he’d been alone with his father in decades. They’d never done normal father-son things, never thrown baseballs or footballs around, never gone fishing, never gone hunting. Sebastian had done those things, but with his grandfather, Uncle Oliver. Uncle Yves had encouraged Sebastian’s money prowess and called upon him shamelessly to keep Étienne from making contract mistakes. Sebastian did have solid males in his life, guiding him, but not his father. In fact, he couldn’t remember what his father and he had been doing the last time they were actually alone together—probably helping move a church member into a new house.

He looked at the man now, standing in the broad opening between the dining room and living room, staring down at the envelope in his hands, his mouth slack, his eyes wide.

“What did she mean,” he finally asked low, “about not being able to associate with the people you could?”

“The dregs of society,” Sebastian said flatly, immediately. “I made loans and odds.”

“When?”

“I dunno. Ten, twelve. Something.”

“When?!” he roared, turning on Sebastian. “When did this happen?”

“At night. After you went to bed. You didn’t pay attention because you thought everything was hunky dory.”

“Get out,” he snarled again. “I didn’t raise you to become one of, of, of those evil people. No better than your grandfather.”

He stood and his heart ached, but it was a familiar ache. “At least he could feed his family,” Sebastian said quietly before leaving his childhood home, never to return.

OR SO HE THOUGHT, because six months later, he was asleep in a Spanish hotel after having mediated a fight between his cousin Victoria, her new husband, and her parents that took them from a nightclub, to his hotel room the next morning, to a restaurant, back to his hotel room, to the hotel bar, and back to his hotel room until everybody aired their grievances, made a tentative plan for future interactions, and hugged it out.

And that was after he’d spent a week orchestrating the world’s fastest wedding between the aforementioned cousin and Sebastian’s mentor Emilio, which had included a round trip from Sevilla to Gibraltar, back to Sevilla to attend a bullfight, an hour spent on the tarmac waiting for the new hole in Emilio’s leg to be stitched up, getting pain- and narcotic-laden Emilio dressed in a tux then to the altar, holding him up at the altar, getting him back on the plane to Sevilla, to his house, then up a long flight of stairs to dump him in his own bed.

Sebastian was so fucking exhausted, he ignored his ringing phone and went to sleep, too tired to get up and turn it off as he should have before he dropped into bed. It was probably Jack, wanting to know about office buildings in London because he had this bee in his bonnet and wouldn’t leave it alone until it was done.

Then he couldn’t ignore it anymore.

He laboriously rolled over, picked up his phone, turned the ringer off, then had to be stupid and open his eyes.

Aunt Lilly. She never called, and his heart started to race. “What happened?” he croaked.

“Your dad’s in the hospital,” she replied tightly. “Heart attack. Happened last week and he’s fine, but things are … tense. Between him and Dianne.”

“Like, tense how and why is this relevant to a heart attack and why am I only now hearing about this?”

She paused. “Yves didn’t tell you?”

“He’s got a lot on his mind right now. Like tense how?” he repeated impatiently.

“Like he’s starting to realize what he did—or didn’t do—for the family, but he’s blaming her.”

Sebastian laughed harshly. “Of course he is. If nobody saw fit to tell me for a week, then what’s it got to do with me now?”

“I think he could use your help.”

Sebastian was confused. “You mean my mom?”

“No. Your dad. He’s … I think he needs you.”

Sebastian didn’t know what to do with that. “In what way?”

She huffed. “Please just come home.”

“I’m in Spa—” Call ended.

The heart attack wasn’t a surprise. Charlie was in the hospital, yes, but he seemed to be relatively fine and resting. It was nine o’clock in the morning, Emilio was probably dead to the world, Victoria was—wherever, but Lydia had her in hand. He called down to the front desk and requested a charter flight, then dragged himself out of bed and took the elevator down two floors to find Yves and Harriet’s room and pound on the door because right now, Sebastian needed advice in the worst way.

It took a while before his uncle opened the door in a robe, bleary-eyed and still pissed off. “What,” he snarled in French.

“My dad?”

Yves heaved a sigh and rubbed his temples. “Oh. That.” He twisted to grab what looked like his room key and wallet, then stepped out into the hallway and trudged to the elevator bank. Sebastian accompanied him without speaking. Once in the lobby, Yves found a relatively secluded alcove and threw himself into a chair, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes. Sebastian dropped into the chair next to him, not really knowing what questions to ask.

“Señor Taight?”

Sebastian took the Bloody Mary the concierge offered (Sebastian had no idea how he knew to fetch him one), noted the travel plans as the man rattled them off, nodded, thanked him, and gave a few final instructions before turning back to his uncle, who surprised him.

“Your mother asked me to spend the night with him after he was discharged from ICU to the cardiac unit,” Yves began hoarsely. “I didn’t want to be there and he didn’t want me there, but he was a captive audience. I laid out some hard truths, albeit gently, that in his quest for virtue, he’d failed as a provider, husband, and father. He’s a good man. Solid, hard worker, honest, eager to provide, generous and moral, but unable to see what needs to be done to keep his house in order.”

Sebastian listened to this, stunned that, first, Yves would agree to spend time with Sebastian’s dad and second, be the one to knock sense into his head. For the first time, Sebastian was willing to cut his dad some slack.

“That’s likely the ADD,” Sebastian admitted reluctantly. “It’s … hard. To juggle your thoughts when interesting things are distracting you, but you don’t know how to grasp them to make them reality or make them go away so you can deal with your current reality.”

Yves was silent for a moment. “How do you do it?”

“I know what I want. I can ignore shiny things if they may get in the way of my goal. If they won’t go away, I write them down. I’ve never seen my dad write anything down, and I can’t get out of bed in the morning without having put it on a list somewhere so I can cross it off. As far as I know, my dad has never known what he wanted, or he never wanted anything at all beyond being seen as generous and virtuous. No forethought, no curiosity, no interest in anything but art, and he wouldn’t do that because then he might be gay.”

Yves shook his head wearily. “And here I am, after having spent twenty-four hours listening to how I also failed as a father.”

“You have seven kids,” Sebastian said with faint amusement. “Somebody’s gonna get left behind, and she would have preferred to be.” Yves snorted. “My flight’s in two hours. Wanna ride?”

“Absolutely not. If I leave now, especially in favor of the brother-in-law I don’t even like, Victoria will never speak to me again.” That was true. “I need to have a few conversations with this tomcat she married—” Sebastian growled. “Hrmph. I’ve had all I can take of your dad. I’ve done my part for the Dunham family and I need to prove to the daughter I have neglected most of her life that I’m prioritizing her. And now I’m going back to bed.”

SEBASTIAN WASN’T surprised to see Giselle in the hospital room with his father. They weren’t conversing, but that was no surprise. Charlie had never known what to make of Giselle, so he’d largely ignored her except for the well-timed protective instinct here and there. Sebastian knew why Giselle was here: Duty. She was holding Sebastian’s place until he could arrive, as per usual, so he nodded his thanks at her and she left with a soft “Bye, Uncle Charlie.”

“Bye, Giselle. Thanks for coming.”

“Uh huh.”

Sebastian took a deep breath and sat. He didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t ambivalent to the possibility his father could die, but he’d been disowned, so he’d begun his grieving the day he received his diploma with a good third of his family in the audience screaming his name—except for his father.

“I don’t know who you are,” his father said abruptly.

“Yup.”

More silence.

Then Sebastian said, “What do you want, Dad?”

“What do you mean, what do I want?” he asked testily. “From you? You know what I want from you.”

“No, not me, and you’re never going to get that. What did you want to be when you grew up? Did you have any goals, any dreams, feel any … purpose?”

He didn’t answer for so long Sebastian thought he was simply refusing to answer.

Then he took a deep breath. “We were too poor for dreams,” he finally muttered. “When you barely have food, barely a roof, you can’t afford dreams. It doesn’t even occur to you.”

“But … you were in Scouts. You went on a mission. You graduated from college.”

“I was in Scouts because it was run by the neighborhood messiah who grabbed me before I went bad. Then we joined the church and I went on a mission because it was expected and the church paid for it. I went to college because I didn’t want to go to ’nam and besides which, your grandfather told me not to bother because I wasn’t cut out for it.”

Sebastian pursed his lips. He probably hadn’t been, but he’d ground through it and gotten it done in four years, which was probably why Grandpa Dunham had said it. “What about art?”

“That’s for queers,” he sneered for the hundredth time.

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. Charlie wanted to hold a pencil so badly it hurt, but he was so afraid of being seen as gay he barely doodled.

“You would’ve said something if you thought I was gay, and you never did. Soooo, why were you cool with my going to art school?”

His mouth tightened and he looked away, which meant Sebastian wasn’t going to get an answer to the question.

“Okay, then. How’s single life treating you?”

“Talk to your mother.”

“I do. She’s having the time of her life.”

“Then what does she need me for?” he snarled. “She seems to have figured everything out without me.”

Sebastian shrugged. “Well, when you have a kid with a guy who can’t support you, but won’t let you get a job … ”

“Yeah, I know,” he snapped. “I’m useless.”

“You’re not useless,” Sebastian said matter-of-factly. “You’re afraid.”

“Of what.”

“Success. Or even having more than you think you need. But you also didn’t know how much you needed.”

“So to you, Mr. Bigshot MBA, I’m a failure.”

“Not a failure. A waste. A waste of talent, of potential. I’ve never met anyone with more natural talent than you, from what little I saw. You have a degree that you did nothing with after all that work.”

“You can’t make money with art or degrees in Russian history.”

“You didn’t make any digging ditches, either.”

“What do you want from me?” the old man demanded. “You just gonna take the opportunity to tell me everything I failed at? I’ve been hearing it for the last six months.”

“I want,” Sebastian said, still calmly, “for you to quit your job, move in with Mom, relax, and start drawing. Maybe take classes.”

His throat bobbed. “That’s for queers,” he repeated, but now with no conviction whatsoever.

“Answer the question. You know I’m not gay, but you had no problem with me going to art school. Why?”

“Don’t make me think about it,” he grumbled. “It just— It’s— It’s more useless than Russian history!” he blurted.

Sebastian’s head exploded in rage, but he held himself together—barely. “So, you would’ve been okay with your son doing worse in life than you just because you couldn’t stand him doing better than you.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he grumbled.

“Yes, it is. You just never actually thought about what it really means.”

“I know, because you’re smarter than me, too.”

“Nope. I just know my worth and I’m not going to squelch my talent and skill in favor of some vague ideal I think I’m supposed to chase.”

“Jesus said—”

“Don’t talk to me about Jesus!” Sebastian barked. “Almost nothing about how you’ve lived your life is what Christ taught! Your generosity was born of envy and pride. You missed the whole point of the parable of the talents and the parable of the ten virgins, come to think of it.”

“Get out.”

“You say that so often,” Sebastian said softly as he got to his feet. “It’s almost like you don’t think I’m your son.”

“You aren’t.”

Sebastian froze, then looked at his father, his brow wrinkled. “Are you being metaphorical or do you think I’m some other man’s son?”

His father looked suddenly wary. “I … I’ve … always wondered … ”

Sebastian’s soul tumbled over in anger and confusion. “Do you really think that little of Mom?”

“No,” he muttered, looking down and picking at his blanket. “She could have done so much better than me.”

Then Sebastian understood. It wasn’t about Dianne or her fidelity at all. It was about Charlie. He felt he deserved to be cuckolded and if he had been, then he could legitimately blame someone other than himself for his failures.

“Well, Dad,” Sebastian said as he left the room, “maybe you should stop thinking everything is about you.”

TWO MONTHS LATER, Sebastian stood next to his mother across the street from her very nice house in the Northland watching movers come and go from the front door carrying haphazardly packed boxes and bags into it.

To Sebastian, Dianne had never spoken of her marriage. She talked to Sebastian about his father’s philosophies and why they were wrong. She talked about money so she could teach Sebastian what he needed to know to get out of the neighborhood. She talked about the family’s finances so Sebastian could help. She didn’t mind fighting with his dad in front of Sebastian. But the topic of her marriage was off limits to him. He knew. He’d broached it once and damn near got his ears boxed.

And there was his father, hobbling around with a cane, being jovial with the movers, Knox hovering to make sure he didn’t fall, saying, “Be careful with that now!” about a bag of clothes, then laughing at his own joke. Sebastian didn’t know if he was performing, if he was happy, or if he was nervous or frightened and trying to hide it.

“What did you say to him?” she asked low, vaguely gesturing at Charlie. “He swerved.”

She hadn’t thought she was going to win that game of chicken, but she’d done it anyway. Sebastian could respect that, even if it had happened fifteen years too late.

Apparently, Charlie hadn’t accepted any more visitors after Sebastian left his hospital room, so Sebastian was the last family member, church member, friend, or coworker to talk to him while he was in the hospital and rehab. He hadn’t even wanted to talk to Dianne. He’d put Knox down as his emergency contact, durable power of attorney, executor (of what estate, Sebastian didn’t know), and caretaker.

So, Knox had been the one to spring him from cardiac rehab, sign all the discharge papers, get all the post-discharge instructions, gather all his possessions, and buckle him into his car. Knox had pointed the car east, and was promptly told to turn around and head north.

“I asked a lot of questions,” Sebastian said after some thought. “Don’t have any idea which one got him thinking.” He let that settle until he was sure she wasn’t going to grill him. “Mom,” he started hesitantly, “do you still love him?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied with alacrity, not seeming the least bit surprised by the question. “I just couldn’t live that way anymore, not when I have a fortune in the bank and the only thing I could see when I turned onto our street was the glories of gentrification.”

Sebastian chuckled. “You fixed up our house really nicely. You could try.”

“Already bought three lots,” she confessed, then sighed. “I did what I could with what I had at the time.” She leaned into him and gave him a side hug. “Thank you, Son. I couldn’t have gotten out without you.”

He hugged her back. “Yes, you would’ve, but it would’ve involved an ultimatum and a paycheck until Charles Schwab decided to drain the little people’s pockets with trading fees.”

She chuckled as she pulled away.

Charlie tripped over the curb, but Knox caught and steadied him, then helped him up onto the sidewalk. “I don’t … ” his mother began, “ … I don’t understand why he loves Knox so much. Knox is the epitome of everything he hates about rich people. He grew up in the most prestigious mansion on Ward Parkway and his name screams ‘generational wealth.’ Who names their kid Knox? Fort Knox, no less. My pretentious adulterous sister, that’s who.”

Sebastian shrugged. “He doesn’t care about money. He doesn’t think it’s important.”

“That’s because he’s always had it.”

Again Sebastian shrugged. “What does he think about the … you know … incident? It was like it never happened. Surely, cold-blooded murder would offend him, but he treats Knox like he always has.”

“He’s absolutely certain Knox would never do such a thing, and to be fair, on the surface, it seems so. But he was concerned about how Knox retreated from the family once he caught that case, and he did attempt to talk to him, to comfort him. Knox refused to listen to it. The rest of us … ” She sighed heavily. “Knox marches to the beat of his own drummer, and that drummer is justice. It was not out of character. Further,” Dianne said pointedly, “what is also in character is that he couldn’t have pulled that off alone without getting himself arrested.”

“All for one and one for all,” Sebastian deadpanned.

“Mmm hm.”

“So, is Dad actually as happy as he’s acting right now or is he putting on a show?”

She shrugged. “Guess we’ll find out by the end of dinner tonight.”

SEBASTIAN SMOOTHED the satin ribbon over his father’s left shoulder where it held the pleated white robe together. Yves and Étienne worked quietly with Sebastian to maneuver Charlie Taight’s body this way and that so that they could dress him in the robes of the holy priesthood.

Sebastian wasn’t supposed to be doing this, as he’d long since given up his membership in the church and only members in good standing were allowed to dress the dead in their ceremonial clothing. But Sebastian had been a bit resentful that he was left out, that it fell to his uncle and cousin to perform the last rite of being tended by their loved one. Yves had noticed, had drawn him into the empty chapel where his father’s body lay on a table, curved blocks under his head, neck, arms, hips, and feet.

The three of them worked quietly, with Yves quietly directing both him and Étienne, as neither of them had done this before.

It was the last thing Sebastian could do for his father, one he wouldn’t get yelled at for doing, but only because his father was dead. He would never have allowed Sebastian in the room to dress an endowed Latter-day Saint.

Sebastian almost smiled, a wistful, bittersweet one, at the thought of Charlie going to town on Sebastian for performing a ritual meant to honor a loved one—missing the point, as usual.

The robe was set and smoothed. The sash was in place. The bright green fig-leaf apron was straight and at a level that the closed half of the casket lid would hide it. Only the hat was missing, and Yves would put that on right before the casket was closed, never to be opened again.

They were finished.

Yves and Étienne quietly walked out, leaving Sebastian alone with his father for the first time since he’d come home from Spain to see him in the hospital three years ago.

It was enough, he thought as he stood there looking into a face that, in peace, looked a lot like his own, that the man’s last three years had been happy ones. Sebastian had wanted to lay it all out, the finances, the flow charts, the revenue streams, the expenses, all the pies and all the fingers in them, but his mother had put her foot down. Charlie had lived this long in financial ignorance. He didn’t need to know now. It would only hurt, only remind him of his misguided virtue and the harm it had done.

So he said nothing.

Once his father moved in with his mother, Sebastian was invited to dinner one month. Then twice the next month. And so on while slowly, Sebastian started hinting at Charlie to draw, showing him his latest doodles as if he were a child asking for approval, which he was shocked to learn he didn’t need. No, Sebastian was a master and didn’t need his daddy’s approval. His purpose was to tempt and to teach, to elicit the gifted artist Sebastian was pretty sure comprised his soul.

He put a pencil and a piece of paper on the table, then drew something relatively simple on his own pad for his father to copy. Child’s play. Sebastian drew something a little more complicated, but he did it fast, to see what his father could pick up. Again, Charlie duplicated it. Not as quickly, but perfectly.

His mother had told him that after a couple of Sunday afternoon and evening drawing sessions, after Sebastian had gone home, Charlie grew quiet, mopey. Lost. Looking longingly at the sketch pad and pencils Sebastian had left, as if he wanted to draw, but didn’t have permission if Sebastian weren’t there.

Sebastian left the small chapel when the morticians wheeled the empty casket in, then trudged down the hall to the chapel intended for his father’s viewing. There were few people here, as it was early yet. The viewing wouldn’t begin for another thirty minutes. The funeral would be tomorrow at church, then burial at Mt. Washington in Independence, relatively close to where Sebastian had grown up. Someone was timidly playing hymns on an organ, but it didn’t feel right. His dad wasn’t a hymn kind of guy, and this certainly wasn’t a hymn kind of viewing.

He strolled around with his hands behind his back, looking at the memorial display, getting out of the way when the casket was wheeled to the front and re-opened. The flowers were placed. The organ continued to bleed hymns, which really started to annoy him.

His mother gestured at him to join her at the front by the casket.

“I don’t like this music,” he muttered.

“I don’t, either, but Sister Nebbish offered to play and I didn’t give her any direction.”

Sebastian stared at her, trying not to laugh. “Her name is Nebbish?”

She looked at him as if he were nuts. “Yeah, so?”

“It’s Yiddish for ‘timid.’”

She caught her laugh in her hand just in time.

“Good thing I came prepared. Get her off that organ.”

Sebastian went to find a funeral director and made his request. By the time he returned to the front of the chapel, the organ was silent, and Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite began to wisp its way through the chapel. His mother nodded approvingly.

He almost smiled at the first gasp, but it was far from the last. Soon enough the first mourner reached them and began the endless litany of “Oh, Dianne! I am so sorry.” “Thank you.” “Sebastian Taight. Charlie’s son.” “Oh, I … don’t believe I’ve heard of you.” “Likely not.” “Well, nice to meet you, and I’m so sorry it had to be such an occasion.” “Likewise.”

Sebastian would never remember any of these people, much less what they said or how they knew his father.

But they did not leave. No.

This chapel had been turned into an art gallery, and once the niceties were done, visitors were treating it like one, going from painting to painting, oohing and aaahing.

The turning point in their relationship began the evening Charlie had said something appreciative about Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea.” He liked the sparse prose and did you know he worked at the Star?

Sebastian was about to nod wearily, but then it hit him. Yeah, but did you know he spent a lot of time in Spain?

No. Normally, Charlie would have been dismissive of that, but he loved Kansas City, everything about it, and he adored the Country Club Plaza, which absolutely reeked of Spain.

Yup. He spent a lot of time at bullfights, with Picasso.

His father said nothing, which meant he was intrigued, but didn’t know what questions to ask to keep Sebastian talking.

So Sebastian talked.

He spoke of Spain, bullfighting, Hemingway, Picasso, their adventures, their work, their conquests with women—decadent, wicked things Charlie had not wanted to hear while craving desperately to hear them. He told the stories casually, as if he were filling a silence, not as a pointed lecture on an aspect of art that Charlie could grasp.

The lesson had sunk in. Picasso and Hemingway were artists, but they were manly men, and that was what Charlie admired, respected. Wanted to be. But Picasso didn’t spur him the way Sebastian had hoped.

It was when Sebastian took him to the Truman Library to see Thomas Hart Benton’s mural that something just … clicked. It, too, was strong, masculine, embodying the American Everyman, the downtrodden, the forgotten, the workers. It was Midwestern, rural, knowing, empathetic, angry.

Sebastian watched his father’s eyes light up at the sight, then at the Capitol Building at more of Benton’s work. He’d chartered a jet—to make a point—and taken him to San Francisco to see a John Steuart Curry exhibit; the Figge in Davenport, Iowa for Grant Wood; to MOMA in New York for Edward Hopper.

It had taken him a while, but Sebastian had finally coaxed his father to a performance of Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite. He’d sat stiffly throughout, didn’t speak the entire way home, but Sebastian didn’t miss the quaking shoulders, the tears. He’d only seen his father cry once—when Charlie’s father died. This was the second time.

Charlie—with minimal instruction from Sebastian—started painting and didn’t stop until the day he died.

The work around this room was all Charlie’s, some mix of regionalism, impressionism, and pre-Raphaelite, imbued with the sorrow of a lifetime of hard work, heartache, and pain. Almost no training, little exposure to other people’s work, and absolutely no knowledge of art history.

The work was stunning.

He would’ve surpassed Sebastian’s mastery in a couple more years, and Sebastian ached that he’d never see what could have been. Sebastian had arranged for a long-term exhibition at the Nelson in a year, intending to surprise Charlie with it, but now …

He’d found his joy too late.

“Good God, the man was a genius!” came a boisterous voice from the back of the chapel. Sebastian started to laugh at the gasps and disapproving glares, but Jack didn’t notice. Lydia looked around with wide eyes, which pleased Sebastian. It was very hard to impress Lydia. Sebastian looked at his mother, who was dabbing at tears, but she was smiling. Victoria swanned in with Emilio. Mitch strolled through the doorway and took his time, which was fine. This was the way Sebastian and his mother had set it up.

Study the soul, not the body.

One by one, Sebastian’s friends from all over the world wandered in, wandered around, wandered to him, clapped him on the back, hugged him, said hi to his mom and sorry for your loss, then perused the exhibit.

Then it was midnight—long past when they were supposed to have wrapped it up—and the funeral director was quietly guiding people who did not want to leave to the door, explaining that the work would be exhibited at the gallery in the future, and please do take the opportunity then.

Viewing business and goodbyes concluded, and Sebastian went home to his Black Box, which his father really hadn’t liked, but understood. Finally.

Sebastian trudged down the stairs from the garage, opened the stairwell door to the dimly lit maple-clad expanse of hallway, dining room, living room, and kitchen, sat down on the raised dining room platform, buried his face in his hands, and began to sob.

★