She could tell from the look on my face.
When I told her we should wait for Clay, she squeezed my hand, and said I was right—and like that, the years climbed by. They climbed by and we had our daughters. We watched everything form and change, and though we feared he would never come back here, we thought waiting might just bring him to us. When you wait you start feeling deserved.
When five years had passed, though, we wondered.
We’d talk in the night, in our bedroom, which had once been Penny and Michael’s.
Eventually, we came to a decision, after Claudia finally asked me: “How about when you turn thirty?”
I agreed, and again, the years went by, and she even gave me one extra; but thirty-one, it seemed, was the limit. There hadn’t been a postcard for a long time by then, and Clay Dunbar could have been anywhere—and that was when finally I thought of it: I got in my car and drove there.
I arrived in the night in Silver.
I sat with our dad in his kitchen.
As he’d often done with Clay, we drank coffee, and I looked at that oven, and its digits, and I stayed and half bawled and I begged him. I looked out across the table: “You’ve gotta go out and find him.”
* * *
—
As soon as possible, Michael left the country.
He took a plane to a city and waited.
Every morning he went out at dawn.
He got to the place at opening, and left in the dark at closing.
It was snowing there then, it was freezing, and he got by with some phrases in Italian. He looked lovingly up at the David; and the Slaves were all he had dreamed of. They were fighting and struggling, and turning for air, as they argued from out of the marble. The Accademia staff got to know him, and they wondered if he might be insane. Being winter up there, there weren’t many tourists, so they noticed him after a week. Sometimes they gave him some lunch. One evening they’d had to ask— “Oh,” he said, “I’m just waiting….If I’m lucky he might just come.”
* * *
—
And so it was.
Every day for thirty-nine days, Michael Dunbar was in Florence, in the gallery. It was incredible to him, to be with them so long—for the David, those Slaves, were outrageous. There were times when he drifted off, too, just leaning as he sat by the stone. It was security who often woke him.
But then, on that thirty-ninth day, a hand had reached out for his shoulder, and a man was crouched above him. There was the shadow of Slave beside him, but the hand on his clothing was warm. His face was paler, and weathered, but there was no mistaking the boy. He was twenty-seven years old, but it was something like that moment, all those years ago—Clay and Penelope, the bright backyard—for he saw him how once he was. You’re the one who loved the stories, he thought—and it was suddenly just a kitchen, as Clay called out, his voice so quiet, from the dark toward the light.
He kneeled on the floor and said, “Hi, Dad.”
* * *
—
On the wedding day we couldn’t be sure.
Michael Dunbar had done his best, but we hoped out of sheer desperation, more than any real hope at all.
Rory would be the best man.
We all bought suits and nice shoes.
Our father was with us as well.
The bridge was a constant build.
The ceremony would be in the evening, and Claudia had taken the girls.
In late afternoon, we assembled—from oldest to youngest: me, Rory, Henry, Tommy. Then Michael had come soon after. It was all of us here on Archer Street, suited up, but ties were loosened. We were waiting, as we had to, in the kitchen.
There were moments, of course, when we heard things.
Whoever went out came back.
Each time was met with “Nothing,” but then, Rory, last hope, said: “That.”
He said:
“What the hell was that?”
* * *
—
He’d considered going mostly on foot, but he caught the train and bus. On Poseidon Road, he got out one stop early, and the sun was warm and friendly.
He walked and stopped, he leaned at the air—and quicker than he’d hoped or imagined, he stood at the mouth of Archer Street, and there was no relief, and no terror.
There was knowing he was here, he’d made it.
As always, there had to be pigeons.
They were perched up high on the power lines, as he came to our front yard. What else could he do but walk on?
He did and soon he stopped.
He stood on our lawn, and behind him, diagonally, was Carey’s house, where she’d stood with the cord of the toaster. He almost laughed when he thought of our struggle here—the violence of boys and brothers. He saw Henry, and himself, on the roof, like kids he once knew and had talked to.
Before he realized, he’d said the word “Matthew.”
Just my name and that was all.
So calm and so quiet—but Rory had heard—and we stood up, together, in the kitchen.
* * *
—
I’m not sure I can ever explain it, or have a hope or a Je-sus Christ.
God, how do I get this right?
So all I can do is punch harder here, to give you it all as it was: See, first we all ran to the hallway, and ripped the fly screen clean from its hinges—and there, from the porch, we saw him. He was down on the lawn, dressed up for a wedding, with tears in his eyes, but smiling. Yes, Clay, the smiler, was smiling.
Amazingly, no one moved closer:
All of us, totally still.
But then, quite quickly, we did.
Me, I took a step, and from there it was suddenly easy. I said Clay, and Clay, and Clay the boy, and the gusts of my brothers swept past me; they jumped the steps of the porch, they tackled him down to the lawn. They were a scrum of bodies and laughter.
And I wonder how it must have looked then, to our father, a mess at the railing. I wonder how he must have seen it, as Henry and Tommy, then Rory, all finally climbed off my brother. I wonder how it must have been to watch, as soon they helped him up, and he stood and dusted himself off, and I walked the last meters to meet him.
“Clay,” I said. “Hey, Clay—”
But there was nothing else now I could say to him—as this boy, who was also the man of this house, allowed himself finally to fall—and I held him, like love, in my arms.
“You came,” I said, “you came,” and I held him so hard, and all of us then, all men of us there, we smiled and cried, cried and smiled; and there had always been one thing known, or at least it was known to him: A Dunbar boy could do many things, but he should always be sure to come home.
There would be no Dunbar boys, no bridge, and no Clay without the toughness, laughter, and sheer collective heart of Cate Paterson, Erin Clarke, and Jane Lawson—all of them clear-eyed and truth-telling. All of them Dunbar boys themselves. Thank you for everything.
To my friends and colleagues: Catherine (the Great) Drayton, Fiona (Riverina) Inglis, and Grace (PP) Heifetz—thank you for hanging in. Thank you for your willingness to age a decade or so in those Spartan days of reading.
Tracey Cheetham: If 2016 could happen, so could this. The finest from across those bridges.
Judith Haut: Very few people have withstood my idiocy more than you. It’s the Arkansas in your blood. Thanks always for your love and friendship, no matter the river or city.
William Callahan: You may never know what you are to this book. You were there to carry me up. You bribed me out of Hades.
Georgia (GBAD) Douglas: Ultimate penultimate. I’ll miss our hart-to-harts. Infuriatingly right. T-shirts might yet be made.
Bri Collins and Alison Kolani: Both perennial saviors, both masters; irreplaceable.
To these stalwarts (a truly great word), thank you for helping this last decade, and in some cases more recently: Richard Pine, Jenny Brown (the Kindest of All Time), Kate Cooper, Clair Roberts, Larry Finlay, Praveen Naidoo, Katie Crawford, Kathy (the fixer of anything) Dunn, Adrienne Waintraub, Dominique Cimina, Noreen Herits, Christine Labov, John Adamo, Becky Green, Felicia Frazier, Kelly Delaney, Barbara Marcus, Cat Hillerton, Sophie Christopher, Alice Murphy-Pyle, and (geniuses) Sandy Cull, Jo Thomson, and Isabel Warren-Lynch.