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December 23, 1974
Michael watches his father cross the kitchen, peer through the blinds and shake his head at the snow for the tenth time that hour. “Was he this bad when you were pregnant?” Michael asks his mother, handing her a cup of tea.
Peggy’s eyes flicker up from the report she’s reading at the table to follow her husband across the room. “Worse,” she says grimly. “Remember, I was on bed rest with your sister.”
“I don’t like how it looks out there,” Daniel declares, tapping the floor with his cane. “Peg, if she goes into labor tonight, I’m not sure we’ll be able to get her to the hospital. You know what? I’m going to – ”
“You’re going to do what, Daniel?” Peggy interrupts. “Boil some sheets?”
“I’m going to check on Colleen,” Michael announces loudly.
He finds his sister sprawled on the living room sofa, still sipping the glass of water he’d brought out the last time their parents started to bicker. Then again, that had only been 15 minutes ago. He reaches for her feet.
“Sit in the chair, Michael,” Colleen says, tone deadly.
“If I sit in the chair – ” Michael plops down and pulls her swollen ankles into his lap “ – I can’t very well rub your feet, can I?”
Colleen’s cheeks turn pink. “You don’t have to,” she says quietly, hand resting on her belly, and he knows she’s thinking of her husband, half a world away.
“David still at Da Nang?” Michael asks.
“As far as I know,” says Colleen. She bites her lip. “He hasn’t written since October.”
“Well,” says Michael, glancing at the tree with its twinkling lights and homemade ornaments, “it’s Christmas. I’m sure you’ll get a letter.”
“I’d rather have my husband home,” Colleen says waspishly.
Michael exhales slowly. “Colleen – ”
She sighs. “No, I’m sorry. You’re only trying to help. I just thought – I thought he’d be back by now, that’s all.”
Michael squeezes her foot. “We all did, Colleen.” He clears his throat. “So have you picked out names?”
Colleen shrugs. “If it’s a boy, he’ll be named after his father.” She tugs at the hem of her ugly floral maternity dress. “Only Mrs. Jarvis seems certain I’m having a girl.”
“Mom mentioned you’d all gone over there for Hanukkah.”
Colleen’s closed her eyes. “I’m not so sure Mrs. Jarvis should’ve been hosting. Poor dear had to excuse herself before Mr. Jarvis brought out dessert.”
They’d grown up celebrating Jewish holidays with the Jarvises, gorging themselves on rugelach and flodni and sufganiyot. One year Michael had wanted to leave a plate of the sweet-sticky jelly doughnuts for Santa, and he’d spent hours in the kitchen with Ana learning to make them. “They still don’t know what’s wrong with her?”
“No, but Mr. Stark is flying them out to Minnesota to meet with a specialist the second week of January. I guess people typically wait six months to a year for an appointment with this doctor? At least, that’s what Mr. Jarvis was saying to Mom when I walked in. I think he feels somewhat guilty having leapfrogged every other sick person in line.”
It’s serious, then, if the old butler has his employer calling in favors. “Did Mr. Jarvis say anything else?” he presses, like he’s talking to a source, not his sister.
Colleen snorts. “In case you haven’t noticed, Michael, I’m nine months pregnant. No one’s about to say anything upsetting in front of me.” Suddenly she grimaces.
“What is it?” Michael asks, alarmed. “Should I get – ”
“Don’t you dare.” With considerable effort, Colleen swings her feet off his lap. “I’m fine, Michael,” she says as he takes the empty water glass from her and sets it on the coffee table. “The baby’s up, that’s all.”
Michael’s social circle doesn’t exactly include pregnant women. “You can really feel the baby moving in there?” he asks. Colleen nods. “Huh.”
“Here,” she says, grabbing her brother’s hand and placing it on her rounded stomach. “Now you can, too.”
Michael undoubtedly touched their mother’s belly when she was pregnant with Colleen, but he doesn’t remember any of that. “Wow,” he breathes when he feels the first flutter. “That’s – wow, sis.”
“Mmm,” Colleen murmurs in agreement. Her hand slides over his. “That’s your Uncle Michael,” she says. She tilts her chin up. “Usually the baby only kicks like that for Dad.”
Michael feels an overwhelming urge to apologize to his sister. I’m sorry David’s not here. I’m sorry you’re having to go through this alone. In the kitchen, the phone rings. He can hear their mother’s crisp, “Sousa residence ... ”
“I’m sorry, Colleen,” he says quietly. “I’m sure you’d rather it be David’s hand here than mine or Dad’s.”
She shrugs. “What he’s doing over there, it’s important,” she says, though Michael can hear the strain in her voice.
“Michael!” Peggy calls, stepping into the living room. “Telephone for you.”
He groans. Of course his editor has a problem with his story. Of course. “I just don’t want you to think what you’re doing here isn’t important,” he tells Colleen, kissing her cheek before following Peggy into the kitchen.
“A Mr. Devereaux for you,” she informs him as she hands off the receiver.
Michael frowns, not sure why Chris would be calling him here . He decides to take the call in the hallway, just in case. “Chris?” he hisses.
The connection isn’t great, and the line crackles. “Mike?” Chris breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank God I called the right house.”
“What’s going on?” Michael demands, the phone cord stretched to its limit. “You’re supposed to be on your way to New York.”
“I am,” says Chris, “or I was.” He sighs, and Michael knows his boyfriend is pinching the bridge of his nose. “It was snowing so hard I decided I’d be better off taking Highway 1 up, only when I went to get off I-95, I must’ve taken a wrong turn because next I know I’m broken down outside of Millville.”
“How the hell – ” Michael starts, but he breaks off, shaking his head. “Never mind. Where are you now?”
“The Gulf station off Route 40.” There’s a plink as Chris feeds another coin into the pay phone. “That was my last dime.”
Michael isn’t surprised to find his mother leaning against the wall when he goes to hang up the receiver. “Something wrong with one of your stories?” she asks, crossing her arms.
It’s not like he’s going to be able to pull a fast one on her, so Michael admits, “I’m going to pick up a friend.”
Peggy’s brow shoots up. “In this weather?”
“His car broke down,” Michael explains. When she doesn’t look convinced, he mutters, “C’mon, Mom. He doesn’t know a lot of people in South Jersey. Who else is he going to call?”
He gets as far as the driveway before he’s stopped by his father. “What’s this I hear about you driving all the way to Millville to give someone a ride?” Daniel wants to know.
“Could you at least pretend you’re not eavesdropping on my calls?” Michael says irritably as he pours warm water over the ice that’s built up on his ’71 Chevy Vega. He tries the handle, but the door’s still frozen shut.
That’s when he notices his father’s wearing his heaviest coat. “We’ll take the Impala,” Daniel declares, already hobbling toward the detached garage.
“What about Colleen?” Michael hollers, but Daniel either ignores him or else can’t hear him over the wind. He jogs to catch up to his father. “What if Colleen goes into labor?”
“It’s your sister’s first baby, son.”
Michael helps his father with the garage door. “Yeah, so?”
“So your mother was in labor with you for 18 hours,” Daniel points out. “It’s what, 25 minutes to Millville? With a little luck, we’ll be back in an hour and a half. If we’re not, well, there’s not much your mother can’t handle.”
Michael offers to drive, but his father won’t hear of it. It occurs to Michael they haven’t spent this much time alone together since his car broke down his senior year of college and he’d needed a ride back to GW.
Before his dad had dashed his dreams of becoming a spy.
“So,” says Daniel after a long silence, drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel, “how are you liking the paper?”
Michael nods one, two, three times. It’s not like it’s a secret he’s not doing what he wants to be doing, so he answers honestly. “It’s OK. I like it more now that I’m not just writing obituaries.”
“They got you covering any of the lingering Watergate business?”
“Depends, are you asking me as as my dad or the Chief Operations Officer for the Clandestine Service?”
Daniel chuckles. “Technically, it’s the Directorate of Operations now.”
But he doesn’t answer Michael’s question, so Michael doesn’t answer his. No, he’s not covering the fallout from Watergate, he’s covering the new president’s administration.
Also sleeping with Ford’s junior speechwriter, not that his dad needs to know that.
“So your friend – ”
“Christopher,” Michael supplies.
“ – what’s he do?”
Busted. “Uh, he actually works for the administration.”
“No kidding? Christopher what, I’ll look him – ”
“I’d prefer you didn’t.”
They lapse into silence. Then, about a mile from the Millville exit, Daniel unexpectedly pulls off the road.
“What’s – ”
“Mikey,” his father says.
“Nobody calls me that anymore, Dad,” Michael mutters.
“I do.”
“Yeah, well,” Michael says bitterly, “maybe you should stop.”
But Daniel doesn’t. “I get it,” he says. “You hate me. I don’t blame you. It’s not like I’m proud of what I did. No father should – ” he breaks off, shaking his head, expression pained. “It eats at me, Mikey. What I did, I regret it. You’re the first thing I think about every morning and the last thing I think about every night. I wonder how your life’s going. But you don’t call home anymore, and I can’t call you. Because what if you actually picked up? What if you told me I really did ruin – ”
“I know Mom put you up to it,” Michael interjects. He quickly averts his eyes. “Yeah, uh, it took me longer than it should’ve – some spy, right? But I eventually worked it out.” He feels his dad squeeze his shoulder.
“Mikey,” Daniel says quietly, “you would’ve made a hell of a spy.”
Michael hadn’t even realized he needed to hear his father acknowledge he would’ve been good at intelligence work. “Thanks, Dad.”
The service plaza in Millville is already closed for the night, which means Chris is standing out in the snow waiting for them, a few flakes clinging to his bedraggled beard. He looks very wet, very cold and very miserable as he slides into the back of the Impala.
“Y-you m-must b-be M-Mike’s f-father,” he manages, teeth chattering. “C-Chris D-Devereaux.”
Once they’ve made it to Chris’ car, it takes Daniel all of four seconds to figure out what’s wrong. “Mikey – ” Michael cringes “ – grab me a wrench. Chris, you get back in the car where it’s warm while Mikey and I take care of this.”
Daniel at least waits until Chris is out of earshot to nudge his son. “And what would you’ve done without me, huh?” he whispers. “Like either of you boys knows how to fix an engine.”
“Do you know how to fix an engine?” Michael asks.
Daniel looks affronted. “What do you think I did during the war?” He plucks the wrench from his son’s hand. “Hold the flashlight.”
“Uh, you were a reconnaissance scout. Didn’t you defuse bombs?”
“Fine, your mother taught me. Happy?”
Michael laughs appreciatively. After a minute, he says, “Yeah, Dad, I am.”
“What was that, Mikey?”
“You asked me if I was happy. Well, I am. I love D.C. There’s so much energy at The Post right now. They have me covering the new administration. So far I like it. Well. It’s not obituaries. My friends are great, and I know I should call more, but I’m so busy.”
Daniel glances over his shoulder at the Impala, where Chris is surreptitiously trying to warm his hands over the register. “And Chris, he’s just a friend?”
Michael can feel the tips of his ears heat up beneath his stocking cap. “Dad,” he says uneasily.
Daniel slams the hood shut. “Have your friend see if she’ll start.”
The Trans Am does, and Chris stammers his thanks. “Mr. Sousa, I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry to have dragged you out on a night like this. I’ll just be on my – ”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Daniel interrupts. “You’re coming home with us. You don’t need to drive to New York tonight, not in this mess.”
“Oh no,” Chris insists. “I couldn’t possibly. Besides, my mother’s – ”
“You can call her when we get to the house, let her know when to expect you tomorrow. Mikey, why don’t you ride with Chris so he doesn’t get lost again?” And he all but shoves Michael into the passenger seat.
“Michael,” Chris says, “I’m so sorry.” He grips the steering wheel with both hands as the taillights of the Impala get smaller and smaller. “I shouldn’t have called you. I didn’t even stop to consider your parents might not – ”
Michael kisses him. “Chris, it’s fine. My mom found a stack of beefcake magazines under my mattress when I was 13, and Dad walked in on me blowing the captain of the football team a few years later. I’m pretty sure they know I’m gay.” He keeps his hand on Chris’ face until his boyfriend nods.
“I still feel bad,” he mumbles.
“Don’t,” Michael says firmly.
“Your dad seems pretty great,” Chris says once they’re on their way. He pauses. “I’m pretty sure if my dad caught me in a compromising position with another guy when I was 16, he would have thrown me out.”
Daniel had urged his son to think long and hard about his sexuality because life would be much harder if he decided he was gay. But he hadn’t threatened to kick Michael out, or even to tell his mother. “Yeah, sorry to disappoint, but my room shares a wall with my sister’s, and she’s about a million months pregnant.”
It’s late enough when they get back that Colleen’s already turned in for the night, but Michael introduces Chris to Peggy. (“And what do you do, Mrs. Sousa?” he asks politely as he drips all over the entryway.
“Oh, nothing interesting,” she lies, pressing a stack of clean sheets into his hands, “I just work for the phone company.”)
“You know,” says Chris, watching Michael make up the trundle bed, “I didn’t believe you at first when you said your dad worked for the CIA.”
Michael follows Chris’ gaze to the Captain America poster on the wall. “Then you’re definitely not going to believe me when I tell you Mom knew him during the war.”
Chris blinks. “You’re right. I definitely don’t believe you.”
Michael chuckles softly. “C’mon,” he says, tugging on the hem of Chris’ sweater, “let’s get you out of those wet clothes.”