Jake and Rachel had that kind of happiness that doesn't notice time passing. Their house came to feel like the house they'd always had. Their marriage was comfortable and automatic. Jake got a haircut every four to six weeks, switched to 2% milk at Rachel's insistence, took in their Volvo for maintenance, exclaimed over every new garden plant Rachel purchased, insisted that he preferred her to stay home with Lily, and made his morning rounds to depixie the garden and see that all was well.
Lily was crawling, then walking, then running through the house as Rachel yelled at her not to run in the house, not to touch that, not to play around the fireplace, not to yell, while Jake said, "She's a kid. Kids do those things. She's not hurting anything." Rachel rolled her eyes at him and flipped through her parenting magazines, sure that somewhere she could find a cure for tantrums or a recipe for a quiet, respectful child. Jake rolled his eyes at her and pretended to be his daughter's puppy dog so that she would squeal with disgust and joy when he licked her forehead.
Those memories were the ones that mattered later, when everything broke and his daughter stood beside him while he kneeled on a wet lawn with his hands wrapped around a humphrey's neck.
Those were the ones that mattered later, much later, when he stood on the roof of his apartment building and looked longingly over the edge, at the long drop to the earth.
"You can't trust street vendors, Jake. Everyone knows that," Zeus said. He was examining Jake with a serious expression, actually taking his arm and turning it one way and then the other, leaning close to get a good look at his skin, which looked orange under the kitchen light.
"I was desperate," Jake said. His face was red with shame, as though he were a child caught doing something foolish, but his sunburn hid it fairly well. He tried to force the feeling away, but the anger that had ignited in Aphrodite's apartment blazed on the same fuel as shame.
He felt a magnification of the irritation he'd had as a senior in college. A week from graduation, each of his professors and all the administration had him engaged in a pointless hopscotch of tasks—paperwork, pop quizzes, signatures, robe fittings, class ring swindling—before they would give him his diploma and let him move on with his life. Again, he felt a desperate desire to move on to the next game.
Jake had only been out of the shower for four minutes when Zeus arrived, wondering, as E. E. had, where the hell he'd been for the past four days. Jake had stood in the kitchen in his towel, blissfully chilly and clean, eating chunks of French bread torn off the loaf with every kind of meat he could find in the refrigerator.
It was the first time Jake could remember not wanting to see his father since he was an absurdly egocentric teenager trying to learn to play the electric guitar. Jake didn't want to be reliving his stupidity right now. He wanted to eat and sleep and read a book good enough to distract him from his misery. And he wanted to see his daughter.
He'd called Lily as soon as he'd gotten home from meeting Mr. Florida and his amazing camel. She was happy. She said she remembered telling him about watching The Fairly OddParents but that she'd never been in a phone booth or a desert. He'd had to explain what a phone booth was and repeat that he was asking about a desert, not a beach. The sand factor had gotten everything confused.
"You should really have someone take a look at that sunburn," Zeus said.
"I'm fine."
"Do you have aloe? I've heard aloe's really good. It—"
"I have aloe. Have you found a way to make me mortal?"
Zeus looked away.
"You said you'd figure something out. Now I have community service and probation, and I'm still half-part of your impossible world." Jake heard his voice rising and thought again about his teenage self. "And as soon as the Fates realize that their plan didn't work, they're going to try again. Whose bedroom am I going to end up in next? Athena's? Hera's? Apollo's?" Zeus still didn't meet his eyes and his whole body seemed to droop as Jake yelled. "I don't know what else to do. I could have died out there. If I'd been sucked into the desert during the school year, I would've lost my job. And what if Lily had been with me? God, I'm so—" He opened the refrigerator, threw the salami back inside, and slammed it shut, and then slowly, "I don't know what else to do."
"Listen, I know this isn't what you want to hear, but I don't think there's a way to fix this. You have half my chromosomes, and I don't think there's a cure for that. And," Zeus paused, looking away. "I don't want you to do it."
"What?" Jake said in a long exhale, leaning against the counter. He was so tired. He wanted answers, wanted the cure, but at that moment it was second to his desire for clean sheets and a fluffy pillow. And maybe another shower.
Zeus glanced at Jake and then lowered his gaze again, as though he were about to reveal a shameful secret. "You're my son. I want you a part of my world. Actually, I want you more a part of my world than you are now. I want you and Lily to spend some time at my house. I want to have you both there to help me pick out a Christmas tree and decorate for Oktoberfest. I—"
"I don't belong there," Jake said, his voice now quiet, too.
"It's as much a part of your heritage as your mother's hometown is. Maybe more, since you've never been into livestock."
"Couldn't I still visit you? I mean, if I get mortalized?"
"I—" he slapped his hand on the counter, "that's not even the point. I don't understand why you don't want to be a part of my world. I know, I know all your reasons—naiads in the bathtub, etc. I just…and it's best for you, you know? Being half-immortal. I'll have you around longer. I've lost so many, and…and the parenting books forbid my saying this, but you're one of my favorite children."
Whatever anger Jake might still have had at his father died.
"I see so much of myself in you," Zeus said, putting an arm around Jake's shoulders, "and I didn't get to see you enough when you were growing up. I want another century or two to get to know you, to do all the things that we never could when you were younger and that you don't have time for now that you're an adult. I want to take family vacations. I want to go throw baseballs in the park and teach you to ride a bicycle. And there's this place on Via Cesare Sersale that really does have the world's best pizza. We have to go there."
"Dad, I've got to…."
"I know. You think you're doing what's best for your daughter and for your wife, and I admire that. I just think you're wrong." He squeezed Jake and stepped away. "I feel like an ass saying this, but I can't help you. If you want to give up my world, you're going to have to do it on your own."
Jake thought about it, nodding. "That's fair," he finally admitted. "You know I'm going to keep trying, though."
"Yeah, I know." Zeus opened the fridge and took a Dr. Pepper. "Just be safe, okay? And don't be stupid."
Jake barked a laugh. "I might not have any choice. I am a lot like you."
Zeus told him to go to bed not much later. He would hang out and wait for E. E. to come home so he could challenge him to a game of Speed Scrabble.
Jake went to his room, dropped his towel, and lay down, his eyes falling on the photograph on the table beside his bed. The frame was propped up against an overfootnoted American literature anthology. Jake couldn't remember now who had taken the picture, but he remembered finding it easy to smile with Rachel leaning against him and with two-year-old Lily just inches away, too entranced by a plastic spoon to notice the camera. A pale blue picnic blanket was spread across the grass, and the afternoon sunlight brought out the red in Rachel's hair, a luminescent copper in the vanilla curls that you couldn't see at all indoors. After the picture was taken, she'd turned her head to kiss him, a casual, friendly kiss, and then she'd begun clearing up the picnic supplies, bent over so that Jake got a delicious profile view of all her curves.
When he closed his eyes, he could still see her.
He managed to sleep half an hour before he snapped awake, sure that there was hot sand in his shoes, thinking he should try the phone again. When the reality of being home replaced the jerked-awake panic, Jake tried to sleep, but his heart was beating too fast, and he felt like he couldn't get enough air.
He got out of bed, ran his fingers over the box in the top of his closet, grateful it was still there and safe, wondering for the hundredth time what it could be. He pulled on a soft t-shirt and shorts over his sunburned arms and legs, grabbed a pair of socks, and left the room, turning the light out on the picture of his exquisite wife as he went.