Ablushing

Washing (n)

The front door slams and Barnaby wakes up to the sound of rain hitting the living room window. For a moment he doesn't know where he is or what he is doing, but as soon as he looks into the night and sees an old Time magazine on his chest he remembers: He is waiting for his teenage son Lawrence to come home.
Barnaby squints at a digital clock on a table and it reads 3:06 AM. Dull footsteps make their way toward the staircase in the foyer, but he intercepts them before their owner can sneak away. He walks around a corner and sees Lawrence and flicks on a light. Lawrence turns to face Barnaby, but not as quickly as Barnaby hoped he would. Lawrence's blue eyes catch the white light from the light bulb and Barnaby is mesmerized for a second by the white rings around his son's pupils and their contrast with the deep blue of his irises-- his son's eye's are stark and confident and calm. They make Barnaby feel caught.
"And where the hell where you all night?" he demands, "Do you know what time it is?"
At this Lawrence smiles and remembers an open field in the teeming rain and the feeling of his girlfriend's skin in his hands; the deep but comforting chill of the mud in the grass as they rolled around in it like children born of water and leaf; their laughter in the summer thunder and heat lightning; the feeling of the warm rainwater still on his young body--the water giving him the feeling that nothing could make him dirty, not even his father.
"Yes, I know what time it is, Dad," says Lawrence, the words coming from those white rings in his eyes, "and I was everywhere tonight."