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The two others finally approached, having taken the longer way around to avoid the birds. Oliver knew Mac by his red hair and beard. He’d moved in about four years before Oliver left. But he didn’t know the other one, a short, bohemian blonde. “Mac, it’s good to see you again,” Oliver said.
“You, too, Oliver. Sorry I didn’t recognize you. You’ve grown up.”
“This is Charlotte,” Zoey said. “She lives in the condo beside your mother’s.”
Oliver figured she must be new. The unit beside theirs had never stayed occupied for long. But Oliver had loved when it was empty. He used to take a sleeping bag and sleep there in between owners, basking in the sheer emptiness of it.
Frasier suddenly opened his office door, as if he’d been watching. Although how, Oliver didn’t know. His office didn’t have windows. “That gate isn’t the Berlin Wall,” he called. “Let him in.”
Zoey punched in the key code and opened the gate for him. As he passed them, he thought how strange it was for everyone to be out of their condos like this, socializing. His mother would have come out long before now, telling them to stop loitering, spittle collecting in the corners of her mouth as she yelled that she had notes on all of them, that sheknew things.
This wasn’t the same place. It looked the same, but without his mother here it was as if a fog had lifted, revealing a place he’d always hoped he’d find.
Roscoe Frasier Avanger had been a wild boy because he thought no one loved him.
He’d turned into a dishonest young man because he thought no one cared.
Then he’d become an arrogant adult because he thought he deserved it when suddenly, because of his book, everyone did love and care.
He’d selfishly never wanted children, resenting even the thought of having to be responsible for someone else’s happiness. He’d enjoyed his share of relationships with women, but he’d had a vasectomy yearsago. He hadn’t realized until Oliver left just how much having him in his life made it better. How Oliver madehimbetter. He wished he’d done things differently now, but it was just another regret he’d collected.
He watched as Oliver walked through the garden, looking around as if seeing it for the first time. One of the birds landed on Oliver’s head, and Frasier smiled. He was obviously not the only one who had missed the boy.
He could remember the first time he’d ever set eyes on Oliver. It was when Lizbeth had recognized him as Roscoe Avanger that day at the bakery and had run up to him with Oliver in a ratty stroller. Frasier hadn’t needed anyone to go through his reader mail when he’d met Lizbeth. He’d always just thrown it away. But he’d offered her the job anyway, because he’d seen something in Oliver that he had always felt in himself, an in-betweenness. Oliver had been living in a gap that existed between Lizbeth’s mental illness and the real world, just like Frasier had always felt in between the living and the dead, sometimes losing sight of which was real.
He stepped back to let Oliver enter the office.
“How is Aunt Lucy?” Oliver asked as he stepped inside.
Frasier looked over to her condo before he closed the door. Her curtain moved, as if she’d been standing close by. “I talked to her on the phone after your mother died, but I haven’t set eyes on her in a while. The last time was when an electrical short made her lose power, probably three years ago. That’s when she told me her shower had stopped working and her refrigerator had been broken for over a year. I fixed it all at once. Having people in her space made her anxious. She had maybe three pieces of furniture, and the place reeked of cigarette smoke. She looked frail.”
“Why do you think they never talked?” Oliver asked.
“I don’t know. But I think your mother wanted to tell me.”
“Let me guess,” Oliver said. “The mysterious story you were looking for.”
“She always said she had a story she wanted me to know.” Frasier shrugged. “If I found it, I thought it might give her some peace.”
Oliver rolled his eyes. “If she had wanted you to know a story, it wouldn’t have been so she could’ve found peace. It would’ve been so she could’ve caused as much chaos as she possibly could, with her in the center of it. I’m glad you didn’t find anything, though I’m not surprised.”
Frasier glanced to the corner significantly, making sure Lizbeth heard that. Oliver saw the gesture and looked at him curiously.
“Otis remembers you,” Frasier said, by way of distraction.
Oliver laughed as if he’d forgotten, then reached up to take the bird off his head. “Normal birds don’t act this way,” he said as he set Otis on the desk, where he hopped around, picking up and dropping colored pencils.
“Who ever said they were normal? Have a seat. How did you sleep, son?”
“Good,” Oliver said, sitting in Frasier’s desk chair. His hair was longer than Frasier had ever seen it, falling into his green eyes. He looked tired. His skin had the kind of dull tone that bespoke not drinking enough water. This hadn’t been a trip he’d enjoyed making, that was for sure. “Rita made me lunch when I got up.”
Frasier leaned against the filing cabinets. “Any idea how long you’re going to stay?”
Oliver shook his head. “I’m going to find a job and make some money first, then decide what to do.” Frasier waited for him to say more, because he knew there was more. Lizbeth was hovering beside him, but her focus was not on Oliver. It was on something shethought was going to happen now that he was here, something she thought was going to benefit her in some way. She still couldn’t see what was right in front of her—an extraordinary child who was kind and smart and funny and who deserved all the love the world could give him. “I was counting on an environmental manager position at a resort in a small town outside Santa Barbara, a place that reminded me of Mallow Island, actually. But it fell through and I ended up without anywhere to stay after graduation.” He paused. “I never really found my footing out there. But I couldn’t come back while she was still alive, Frasier. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t.”
“I know that, son.” Frasier, too, had spent a long time away from Mallow Island as a young man. He’d run away to New York at seventeen. He’d been fed up with his grandfather, who was always drunk by noon and unable to deal with his wild grandson. Frasier hadn’t known it at the time, but his grandfather only drank to make the spirits go away, and Frasier had inherited his ability from him. Frasier had ended up working odd jobs around the city, barely getting by, sometimes having to leave in the middle of the night when rent was due and he couldn’t afford to pay. He’d made up names for every job he’d had, which had been an easy enough thing to do in those days, trying on new personas to see which one fit. His grandfather had died while he’d been away, but no one had known where Frasier was to tell him. But they didn’t need to tell him. His grandfather had found him. And his ghost hadn’t given Frasier a moment’s peace, keeping him awake at night with stories of Mallow Island and his time during World War I, stories he hadn’t stayed sober long enough tell Frasier as a boy. His was the only ghost Frasier had ever been able to hear, an experience he never wanted to repeat. Frasier had writtenSweet Mallowjust to make him go away, in an intense eight-week period when he’d slept little and ate less. Andsure enough, as soon as he had finished, his grandfather disappeared. Frasier had been as surprised as anyone by the book’s success when it had been published. But he’d quickly gotten used to the adoration. He had even come to expect it, which had led to the wholeDancing with the Dellawispsdebacle decades later. It had been so long since he’d writtenSweet Mallowthat he’d forgotten that his gift, and his curse, was that he could tell other people’s stories so much better than his own.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about your mother since it happened, and all the junk that came out of her condo,” Frasier said as he watched Oliver move a pencil around the desk and Otis chased it. “I knew it was bad. But I always thought, as long as I was there to watch out for you, you would be okay. I thought there was a way for you to live between the world your mother lived in and the real world. But there wasn’t, and it never should have been expected of you. I should have taken you and raised you myself, to hell with the ruckus Lizbeth would have made. If I had, maybe you wouldn’t have felt the need to go so far away. I’m sorry I failed you, son. I hope one day you’ll be able to forgive me. I hope that one day you’ll be able to forgive us all.”
