“No sir— I’ll be fine— You can leave— ”
“I can’t leave until you do. It’s dangerous for you to park on the side of the highway.”
“Okay. Please give me a few minutes.” Dieter raises his window without waiting to hear what the officer has to say. His chest doesn’t hurt at all. He is not out of breath. He sprinkles a little water on his handkerchief and wipes his face. Starts to compose himself for the evening ahead.
CHAPTER 5
It was to be a special evening and she had to leave school early to get ready. Lynn told Jules to catch a ride home from school with a friend. When Jules gets home, he finds her primping herself, getting her lashes and eyebrows perfect. In the morning she seldom does more than pull on a clean skirt and blouse and run a brush through her hair before driving to school. She’s out of practice, she says—hasn’t been out on a real date since they left Montreal. Maybe one, he says. The dinner with Ralph. Jules is happy that tonight won’t be a date of any kind, not with him hanging around and Dieter driving in from Montreal.
“Mum, I hardly ever see you in a dress. Trying to impress Ralph again?”
“He and Dieter are coming straight from work. They’ll be in suits.”
“Just so you know, I’m not dressing up. They’re not my guests.” He leaves her to her finishing touches and heads to his studio.
“Hey wait. How about changing into a nice pair of slacks? I’m not asking you to put on a sports jacket.”
Jules turns and crosses his arms over his chest to make it clear he has no intention of complying. “You won’t ever catch me in anything like that.”
“You’ll wear a tux to your prom, won’t you?”
“If I go.”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“Will you go with a boy or a girl?”
“What kind of question is that? I’ll probably go alone. If I go— I don’t want to talk about it.”
He enters the studio, but his mother won’t let the matter drop. “In my day, if you went by yourself it meant you couldn’t get a date.”
“Today’s different. And there’s a girl I’m interested in. Maybe her. Didn’t you hear me— I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You don’t have to get all prickly.”
He knows what she’s thinking. They talk about it all the time. Too much. Is it his job to help her through this or the other way around? He knows that she feels he’s sometimes more than she can handle, the transgender dimension of his life magnifying the usual teenage issues, she says. It’s at times like this he knows she’s most angry with his Dad for forcing her to raise him by herself. Jules has heard her grumble about it, Jean-Pierre leaving all the difficult situations to her then waltzing in from Montreal for his every-other-weekend time with his adolescent child. Jules puts down his backpack and returns to the kitchen. “You didn’t answer my question about Ralph.”
“We were childhood friends.”
“It must have been more than that.”
“We went to the senior prom together and then to McGill. It got complicated when I met your dad.”
“Is that when you dumped Ralph?”
“It didn’t happen that way. We sort of grew apart as I started seeing your father more.”
“Do you still have feelings for him?”
His mother hesitates. “I wouldn’t have called him unless I needed his help. I think he can advise us on filing a lawsuit against the wind farms.”
“That’s not all. You had a big smile on your face when you came back from dinner.” She smiles. This time he can’t tell what she’s thinking.
“What did you tell him about me?”
“That you’re my grandson and you’re building wind turbines for your science fair project and you want to be an engineer.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all— As you said, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay, but one more thing. Were you and Dieter ever together?”
“God, you’re full of questions tonight— ” She hesitates again. “ —No. We were merely friends\. He was interested in me, but I wasn’t interested in him.”
He can see there’s way more to it than that. Another of those situations when the truth is too complicated. She tells him that all the time. Especially when he wants to talk about his father and why they can’t get back together as a family. “That must have made him jealous of Ralph.”
“They didn’t get along in high school.”
“What about now?”
“I guess we’ll find out. Go change your clothes while I finish preparing dinner.”
There isn’t much left to prepare. She’s spent the last two evenings concocting a fine French offering—pistou, a vegetable stew, perfect, she says, in case Dieter is vegetarian, and tourtière, Montreal-style, a meat pie. Jules helped her with the tourtière by grinding the pork and adding cinnamon and cloves. There is Boursin and pepper crackers to start and her famous mille feuilles for dessert. The meal that is his father’s favorite. It’s not lost on him that she’s making a play for Ralph.
In dress slacks and dress shirt, his hair combed and parted as if he’s going for a college interview—he decided that his mother was right (though he certainly won’t tell her that) and he wants to make a favorable first impression—Jules greets Dieter at the door, takes his bottle of wine and calls out to his mother before realizing he hasn’t introduced himself properly. He shakes Dieter’s hand.
“Pleased to meet you, Dr. Graber. I’m Jules, Lynn’s grandson.”
“My pleasure, Jules. I’ve heard we have a common interest.”
“You’re working on a science fair project about wind energy, too?” Jules waits for the polite laugh from Dieter that doesn’t come.
“Oh yes—offshore turbines, floating platforms.”
Lynn appears and takes the bottle of wine from Jules. “Marvelous. Nuits-Saint-Georges, my favorite white.”
“As you requested.”
“Jules, why don’t you show Dieter your project while we wait for Ralph?”
In the studio, Dieter runs his hand along the edge of the thick plywood tabletop screwed into sawhorses placed every meter along the back wall of the room, a work area Jules reinforced solidly to support the weight of the large fish tank filled with water.
“Did you make this yourself?”
“I did.”
“Where did you get that tank?”
“From our school. They renovated the biology lab and replaced the aquarium.”
“How did you get it here?”
“In my friend’s father’s pickup truck. It took all three of us to carry it. Empty.”
“Is that clay on the bottom?”
“Yes— I couldn’t anchor anything in sand and gravel.”
“Why didn’t you use Plasticine?”
“That would’ve