DANNY BOY
by
Susan
The front door
closed quietly. Starsky heard a muffled thud—something had been dropped on the
floor—then footsteps, then nothing. A thin band of light hovered under the
bedroom door.
“In
here,” he called from the bed and waited.
He’d been waiting for a week, it
seemed. Since Hutch had flown to Duluth alone for the funeral. Hutch had called each night as promised, but had filled the distance
between them with weather reports and dinner menus and stories of relatives
whose names Starsky never recognized.
Until two nights ago, when Hutch had quietly told him how he’d sung
Danny Boy at the service that morning.
“It was my father’s favorite song and my mother said he’d asked her once
if I . . . I wish you’d been there.”
Starsky had started to answer,
“I’m not the one who decided. . .” but had said instead, “I know. Me too.”
“Give me
a minute,” Hutch answered from the living room. His voice was flat, worn smooth
by grief and fatigue and a three hour delay at O’Hare. “I’ll take a cab,” he’d
told Starsky when he phoned from Chicago. “No point in both of us sitting
around waiting. Go to bed. We can talk in the morning.”
Starsky
gave him five minutes, then threw off the sheets and walked barefoot to the
living room. He stood at the door and rubbed his eyes, blinking against the
white light of the floor lamp. Hutch’s suitcase sat by the couch – it was new
and leather and a color the salesman had worshipfully referred to as umber.
After the phone call from his mother, with nothing to do but wait for the next
afternoon’s flight to Duluth, they had gone shopping for luggage. The suitcase
was too expensive, Hutch had admitted, but his father would have liked it. He’d
always hated the old duffel bag his son had left home with. At the register,
hands shaking, he’d fumbled with his wallet, swearing when he couldn’t find the
right credit card. He’d let Starsky take the wallet from him, and had gone to
wait in the car.
Now
Hutch sat in the worn red armchair by the bookcase, elbows on his knees, head
cradled in both hands. He was still wearing his raincoat – an old Burberry he
called his Minnesota Special. His father had sent it to him years before, a
birthday present as unexpected as it was extravagant. His father was like that,
he’d told Starsky later, complicated and moody and miserly and generous.
Starsky had just smiled and muttered something about the apple not falling far
from the tree.
“Hey,”
Starsky said from the doorway.
Hutch
looked up. “Sorry if I woke you.” His expression was tired and a little wary.
“You
didn’t. I wanted to know how it went yesterday at the lawyer’s. You didn’t say
much on the phone.”
Hutch
lifted one shoulder and let out a long breath, “Not much to say. Lawyers are
lawyers.”
Starsky
turned off the lamp as he passed. “How’s your mother?”
Hutch
slumped back in the chair. “Cooking, cleaning. coping. Hutchinsons are good at
that. Brave faces, stiff upper lips. We save our tears for dark and quiet
corners.”
The rain
made dancing shadows on the floor as the headlights of a passing car lit the
room. He stood behind the armchair and let his hands fall to Hutch’s shoulders.
His coat was still damp and smelled vaguely of wet wool and smoke and winter.
“Did you
settle everything? The legal stuff, I mean.”
“Mostly
. . .” He closed his eyes. “We can talk about it tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He wondered briefly if they ever would.
“Come to bed.” He leaned down
and kissed Hutch on his bare neck. His hair was shorter than it had been in
years – he guessed the haircut had been for Hutch’s father too.
Hutch
reached back with one arm and wrapped a hand around the back of Starsky’s neck.
He held him there, his fingers laced tightly in his curls. It was explanation
and apology and declaration. All the things Starsky knew Hutch could never say.
He let
go and stood stiffly, then shrugged off the coat and let it fall back onto the
chair. He turned and reached for Starsky’s outstretched hand and followed him
into the dark and quiet corners of the bedroom.