Julie needed him, and Sam discovered that he liked feeling needed. Julie believed the world to be a terrible place full of unkind people, and Sam wanted to show her that it wasn’t. There was also Connor, who was curious and smart and affectionate and who would slip his hand into Sam’s when it was time to cross the street, or ask for help zipping his jacket.
“You’re sure you’re cool with the whole stepdad thing?” Marcus asked. Marcus and Aubrey had three kids of their own by then. Marcus had swapped his stoner ponytail for a gelled pompadour, and had traded his collection of ratty T-shirts and cargo shorts for thousand-dollar suits and raw silk ties. These days, he used his confidence—what he referred to, unironically, as his “raw animal magnetism”—to attract clients instead of bed partners. He was a devoted father to his daughters, a loving husband to his wife, and still Sam’s sensei when it came to all things female-related.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Raising another man’s kid…” Marcus’s voice trailed off.
“Connor’s father’s barely around,” Sam said. “And his grandfather’s terrifying.”
Marcus shook his head. “Dementia’s a bitch,” he said, and Sam, who thought that Saul Barringer was probably a terror even before he’d started losing his faculties, had nodded in agreement.
“And you love Julie? This isn’t about, you know, riding to the rescue? Slaying the dragon and rescuing the damsel in distress?”
“I love her,” Sam said, without hesitation. “And I love Connor.”
Marcus clapped him on the back. “Well, good for you, buddy. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”
Sam had moved in with Julie and Connor six weeks later. Julie had warned him that her father’s house was a horror show, but even her descriptions had left Sam unprepared for the place, an enormous, vaguely Italianate pile of white marble and pilasters and columns, all odd angles, ill-considered additions, and massive plate-glass windows that seemed to scowl down from the top of a serpentine driveway. “How many people lived here?” he asked after he’d gotten the tour. The house felt endless, full of rooms with pointlessly high ceilings and windows that caught the light at the wrong part of the day, which meant you were always either blinking through the glare or squinting in the gloom. Julie’s mother had liked Spanish architecture, so there were arched doorways and a tiled roof and a fountain inlaid with Moorish mosaics just off the kitchen. Her successor had preferred mid-century modern, so there was a boxy, flat-roofed addition that served as a guest house. Saul had insisted on a grand library, with a hulking antique rolltop desk and floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with leather-bound, gold-embossed books whose spines had never once been cracked, and a ladder, should anyone want to reach them. Just off the Art Deco kitchen, there was a solarium that could have been cheerful if it held anything besides a StairMaster that looked like it had been abandoned around the time Sam’s mother had published her last book. Finally, running the length of the house, there was a living room where giant canvases covered the walls, paintings done exclusively in smears of ocher and maroon and brown.
Saul Barringer ruled this kingdom from the throne of his hospital bed. Old age and poor health had taken his ability to walk; cataracts had stolen most of his vision. He’d started going deaf years ago, and refused to wear hearing aids （“because, according to him, nobody says anything he wants to hear,” Julie said）。 None of those ravages had touched his voice, a raspy, phlegmy, Brooklyn-inflected bellow, which he employed from early in the morning until very late at night, with the occasional break for naps.
Saul yelled at the nurses when they turned him, to prevent him from developing bedsores. He screamed at the home health aides when they helped him with toileting or tried to bathe him. He berated his daughter. “Stop treating me like an invalid!” he’d howl, and Julie would murmur apologies, while Sam thought, How else is she supposed to treat you? You are an invalid!
“Who are you? What are you doing in my house?” he’d holler every single time he caught sight of Sam （whether he genuinely failed to recognize his daughter’s partner or was making an existential point, Sam was never sure）。 Sometimes, Saul would think Sam was the housepainter employed by his first wife. （“I don’t care what Laurie wants, you paint that bathroom pink and I’m not paying you one single cent.”） Sometimes he thought Sam was a partner, or a client. One terrible night he’d thought Sam was his dead son, Jerry. “I don’t understand why it’s got to be heroin,” Sam said, in a bellow that somehow managed to be almost plaintive. “Can’t you just be a drunk?”