Finding His Path

Jon, 15, stick-thin, hollow-cheeked, rips into garbage bags in a back alley on a freezing Detroit winter’s night to eat a restaurant’s throwaways. Around the corner, in that restaurant, Mike and Marjorie, professors nearing retirement, enjoy the finest of dining: warmth, wine, wedding anniversary. Mike and Marjorie entice the boy home with the promise of a warm bed. Jon turns their lives upside-down, but slowly Mike and Marjorie civilize this feral tiger by the tail. Ninety days of drug rehab, under the guidance of Jake Rowsey, First Gulf War veteran and newly-minted PhD psychologist. Private school. Braces. Marjorie spoils Jon. Mike scowls, writes the checks, arguments ensue, some Jon overhears. Jon feeds his starved powerful intellect and starts to explore his homosexuality as something other than getting on his knees in rancid public restrooms. Six years later, and Jon’s a new teacher, drama, when Harvey blows into his life. Before long, they move in together, everything seems great, then Jon’s let go because of budget cuts. He relapses, spews venom on Harvey and Mike and Marjorie. But they don’t throw him away. The years pass, and Harvey at last gets Jon to open up about his past. Harvey goes to comfort Jon, but Harvey doubles over and lets loose a torrent of vomit. He’s been sick for weeks. A doctor diagnoses Harvey with cancer. Six months, Harvey, 38, dies. That cold winter night, Jon comes across Callum, 14, starving, hard-eyed. Jon feeds the kid, then Callum enters a public restroom. We don’t know if Jon follows him in. Jake helps Jon land a drama teacher position at an arts school where Jake’s the head counselor. Jon settles down into his new life. One Saturday, Jake has Jon over to his house. Right off: “Twenty-seven years ago, two great people gave you a second chance. When the hell are you going to finally take it?” Jake shares two powerful flashbacks with Jon of his time in the First Gulf War, two events when Jake had lost sight of the message his sarge was always beating into them: it’s only together we get through anything, not just war, but life. Back to the present, Jake tells Jon it was only with his loved ones, together, he could finally let go of the guilt, pain, hurt, and shame and at last actually leave Iraq. That night Jon finds a note had left for him, Harvey tells Jon to always feel and feel big and most of all to be happy. Jon, whom we’ve never seen cry, not once, sobs the tears of a lifetime. Jon walks up to Marjorie’s hospital bed, where she lies dying. Jon takes out of his pocket the three bills he had stolen from her that first night they had welcomed him into their home, the ones she had refused to take back. Jon tells her he understands now all she wanted was the words, “I’m sorry.” Jon tells her them, Marjorie calls him her beautiful great blue heron one last time, and she slips away. Jon and Mike stand before her casket under a beautiful blue sky. Jon asks, “Why me?” and Mike explodes, “Why not you?!” Mike explains to Jon why Marjorie called him her beautiful great blue heron, that the sight of one once soaring majestically across the setting sun renewed her hope after she’d been told she couldn’t have children. Jon, in her maternal eyes, was as beautiful to her as that heron crossing the sun. Jon embraces Mike, whispers in his father's ear, “I’m sorry I never told you I love you, Pop.” Walking home, they come across Callum, and Jon tries to win the boy over. Callum takes the three bills and the slip of paper on which Jon has scribbled his and Mike’s numbers. Callum runs off. Months later, Jon sits with Mike in the restaurant where our story opened. Jon bounces his knee as he keeps looking at the clock. Five minutes to closing time. Three minutes to closing time. Closing time. Two minutes after closing. The owner takes out his keys, walks over to the door. The door chimes! There stands Callum: wild-haired, hard, broken, but — there!