How to Walk Away

by Katherine Center

  Wait—was that right? The old me didn’t want to lose the old Chip. But now, thinking about it, I wasn’t totally clear on how the current me felt about the current Chip. Of course, in the face of my mom’s hyperbole, how I specifically felt about Chip was not exactly relevant. According to her, if I didn’t pull it together I would lose all guys, period.

  This was one of her signature moves. If a little teaspoonful of ice-cold terror could burn off the fog and inspire me to try, was that so bad?

  My mother sensed me cratering from across the room. For a lady so tone-deaf to others’ emotions, she could be remarkably astute. She put her half-eaten lunch back in its sack and came to stand by the bed and take my hand. “Sweetheart, I know you’ve had a shock.”

  I waited.

  “We all have.”

  I waited again.

  “Even Chip.”

  There it was.

  “I’m worried about him. He seems to be—” She glanced up to find the word. “Faltering.”

  “Faltering how?” I asked.

  “I think he’s lost his way. His mother says he’s been out drinking, coming in at all hours, not showering.”

  Chip always showered. He took three showers a day.

  My mom squeezed my hand. “What the two of you had was special.”

  “I agree.”

  “Don’t you want it back?”

  “Have I lost it?”

  “No,” she said, so emphatically she almost sang it. “Of course not. But—has he been to visit you?”

  “Some,” I said. Not really.

  “I’m just saying, it’s time to get better and put things right.”

  Why was this all on my shoulders? Why wasn’t it Chip’s job to get better and start visiting me? “By ‘get better,’” I asked, “do you mean ‘walk again’?”

  She pretended the idea had never occurred to her. “Well, wouldn’t that be ideal? Isn’t that worth a try?”

  Worth a try? I felt like my eyeballs were going to start spinning. What did she think I was doing over here? Playing Xbox and drinking beer? I was trying. Every morning that I woke up and remembered the wreckage of my life, I was trying. Every breath I took, I was trying. Every second of being conscious all day long, I was trying.

  I took a slow breath and held it. Then I said, “I’m just glad I can shit on the toilet.”

  My mother’s eyes widened, but before she could respond, someone knocked on the door.

  “Come in!” my mother and I both said at the same time, not dropping each other’s gaze.

  The door pushed open, and it was Kitty. Looking mad.

  * * *

  MY MOTHER HADN’T seen Kitty in three years. Hadn’t seen the spiky-blond new hair, or the tattoos, or the piercings. I’m not even sure she recognized her at first.

  But when she did, she went very still.

  Kitty held her gaze and walked straight in, stopping on the other side of my bed. She was a little out of breath. From below, I watched them eyeing each other.

  When my mom finally spoke, her voice was low. “I thought you only came here in the evenings.”

  “I wanted to see you,” Kit said.

  My mother lifted an eyebrow. “I can’t imagine that’s true.”

  “I have something to say.”

  “I think we’ve said it all.”

  “I haven’t.”

  With that, Kitty raised my curiosity—but not my mother’s.

  “As you can see,” my mother said, “I’m pretty busy right now.”

  “I want you to tell Margaret why I went away.”

  My mom looked at Kit dead-on. “No.”

  “She deserves to know.”

  “I disagree.”

  “She is angry at me for leaving. At me!”

  “I can’t tell her how to feel.”

  “But you can tell her why I had to go.”

  This was how they always were together—Kit pushing until my mother snapped. This time, it didn’t take long. My mother leaned closer, her voice like a hiss. “Hasn’t she been through enough?”

  The tone right there would have shut me right up. But Kit was always the braver one. “I don’t think it’s her you’re worried about. I think it’s you.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” my mother said, looking away. In that moment, I knew that whatever it was they were talking about, Kit was right.

  “Tell her,” Kit pressed. “Tell her right now. This has gone on too long.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Tell her—or I will.”

  My mother’s eyes looked wild. She had not expected this moment to rise up so fast—out of nowhere, really, like a flash flood: Kit showing up and making these sudden demands. One minute, my mother was trying to manipulate me—solid, comfortable ground for her—and the next, Kitty was manipulating her. I could see my mom’s mind spinning, trying to come up with a way to stop her.

  Kit turned to me. “On the night I left, it was because Mom and I fought.”

  “Stop it,” my mother said, her whole body tense.

  “I remember,” I said to Kit. “You pushed her into the pool.”

  “I pushed her into the pool because she wouldn’t answer a question.”

  “Stop!” my mother said again, eyes on Kit. “What do I have to threaten you with? Never speaking to you again?”

  “You already don’t speak to me. I’m not sure you ever did.”

  But my mom was still searching. “Cutting you out of my will! Not giving you Grandma’s ruby ring!”

  “I don’t need to be in your will,” Kit said. “I don’t need a ring. I need my only sister”—and here her voice rose to a shout—“to understand what the hell is going on here!”

  My mother blinked.

  Kit turned back to me. “Remember when I was working for that genealogist?”

  I shook my head. “Vaguely.”

  “She had that business helping people find their ancestors and trace their family histories?”

  I squinted. “Okay. Sort of.” I did not see where this was going.

  “She talked me into having my DNA analyzed. She had a bulk discount with a mail-in company. She was sending in several samples, and she had an extra kit, and so I just did it. On a whim.”

  I frowned. “I have no memory of that.”

  “I didn’t tell you,” Kit said. “I didn’t tell anybody. Why would I? The results weren’t going to be interesting.”

  True. We could recite our various heritages in that way that lots of Americans can. Our mom had a little bit of lots of places. Irish, English, German, Canadian, French, and even, rumor had it, some Huron. Our dad’s family, in contrast, was all Norwegian. His Norwegian ancestors had immigrated to an all-Norwegian town in Minnesota where Norwegians just married other Norwegians for generations—until one day, my dad’s dad moved their family to Texas and broke the trend.

  “Huh,” I said. “So you, like, sent in your blood?”

  “Saliva, actually.”

  Then there was a pause.

  Kit looked at my mother.

  My mother looked at Kit.

  “Did you learn anything?” I finally asked.

  “Yes,” Kit said.

  My mother shook her head at Kit. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, I do! Because you won’t!”

  My mother looked around the room, her eyes stretched and frantic in a way I’d never seen before—searching, it seemed, for some way to stop what was happening. But short of tackling Kit, there wasn’t much my mom could do. “Whatever comes of this,” my mom said to her then, “it’s all on you.”

  “Oh,” Kit said, narrowing her eyes, “I think it’s at least a little bit on you.”

  Everything about my mother’s expression and posture was pleading. She shook her head, like, Don’t.

  Kit tilted her head, like, You leave me no choice.

  At that, my mom sucked in her breath and, without another word, walked out of the room, clacking her heels, and lea
ving her purse and her sandwich behind.

  When she was gone, I looked at Kit. “Maybe you shouldn’t tell me,” I said. “Maybe we can agree that you had your reasons, and I’ll just promise not to be mad anymore.”

  “You need to know.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure I do.”

  But she nodded. “It’s time.”

  I sighed.

  “When the results came back, they were surprising.”

  I could not even fathom how something as random as this could have driven such a rift between my mom and Kit. “Surprising how?”

  “You know how proud Dad is of his Norwegian-ness?”

  “Yes,” I said. Anybody who’d known my dad five minutes knew that.

  “Well,” Kit said, taking a breath. “This lab breaks down the results by particular regions.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Kit went on. “My results came back with everything you’d expect from Mom: England, Ireland, Western Europe—exactly what we already knew. But I also have Italy and Greece.” She checked my expression.

  I shrugged. “So?”

  “Guess what I don’t have? Scandinavian.”

  I puffed out a little laugh at the idea: Kitty Jacobsen didn’t have any Scandinavian.

  But she just crossed her arms and waited for me to catch up. “I don’t have any Scandinavian in my ethnic heritage.”

  Now I frowned. I shook my head. “That can’t be right.”

  “Think about it,” Kit said.

  I couldn’t think about it. My brain refused to think about it.

  “If Dad is fully, or at least mostly, Norwegian,” Kit said, “and I don’t have any Norwegian in my genetic profile…” She waited.

  I shook my head. “That’s crazy. That’s wrong.”

  Kit’s eyes were very serious. “It’s not wrong.”

  “They must have mixed up the samples!” I said.

  “That’s what I thought,” Kit said. “So we sent another sample. Same results.”

  “This can’t be right. This is insane.”

  “Next, I confronted Mom about it. At the Fourth of July party three years ago.”

  The conversation was starting to feel like a rickety old mine cart on a downhill track. “And what did Mom say?” I asked.

  “What didn’t she say? She told me I was crazy and wrong and spoiled and selfish. She told me to back off, and it was none of my business. She told me to drop the whole subject and throw the test results in the trash. She told me I’d ruined her life. Then she plastered a big, false, Stepford smile on her face and walked out to the backyard to continue hosting her pool party.”

  I blinked at Kit.

  “And that was the moment when I knew for sure. Our dad is not my father.”

  Twelve

  I RUBBED MY eyes. “That can’t be right.”

  “I’m telling you,” Kit said. “It is. The minute I knew, I knew.”

  She had a patient look, like she didn’t really have to convince me. Like the facts would get me there, and all she had to do was wait.

  “But!” I protested. This was impossible. “You have his same smile! And his same sense of humor! And you both love sailing! And The Matrix! And popcorn!” Case closed!

  Kit gave me a look. “Everybody loves popcorn. That’s not genetic.”

  “There has to be a mistake.”

  “Mom was livid that night. She denied everything, but she did it so viciously, I knew I was right. I, of course, drank the entire margarita machine after that, because that’s what I used to do back then, and then I pushed her into the pool—not my finest moment. When she climbed out, sopping wet, I followed her and got in her face until she finally told me the truth.”

  I waited a long time before I said, “What was the truth?”

  Kit looked right into my eyes. “I was a mistake.”

  I did not look away.

  She went on, “I was an ‘unfortunate accident.’ With someone who was not Dad.”

  All the air leaked out of my lungs. I felt like a punctured tire.

  When my chest started to sting, I sucked in a big breath. “Does Dad know?”

  Kit shook her head.

  I tried to put the pieces together. Our mom knew, of course. Kit knew, and had for three years. Now I knew. Everybody except our dad.

  A long silence. Then at last I said, “That’s why you left.”

  Kit nodded. “I told her she had to choose. Either she told the truth, or I was gone.”

  “That’s a tough choice,” I said.

  Kit’s eyes snapped to mine. “Are you taking her side?”

  “I’m just saying that’s tough.”

  “Not for Linda,” Kit said. “She kicked me out in five seconds flat.” For just a second, I saw Kit’s expression sag—before she raised her shoulders, stood up a little taller, and said, “Whatever.”

  “Just think,” I said. “She carried that secret all those years.”

  Kit nodded.

  “It must have terrified her to be confronted with it.”

  “That’s why she wanted me gone,” Kit said. “I’m the evidence.”

  “Who was the guy?” I asked.

  Kit shook her head. “She wouldn’t say.”

  “Are you going to tell Dad?”

  “Never!”

  “But you told me.”

  “I told you because I needed you to understand.”

  It was a lot to process. My head was swirling. “Why did you wait so long?”

  Kit sighed. “I kept thinking she’d tell you, but she didn’t. I kept thinking she’d reach out and apologize to me, but she didn’t. At first, I had bigger fish to fry. I had to get through rehab and that whole first year of being sober. Then I was getting the Beauty Parlor going, and the time kind of flew. But the truth is, I was really, really, really angry. I thought I would never want to see any of you again.”

  “But I didn’t do anything!”

  “No,” Kit said. “But you got to be Dad’s real daughter—and I didn’t. I know this sounds crazy, but it felt like you’d stolen him from me.”

  “But I didn’t!”

  “My brain knew that,” Kit said. “But my heart was a different story.”

  I tried to put myself in Kit’s shoes. “You were just mad at everybody.”

  “Everybody. Everything. It stirred up a lot for me. Mainly about how I always thought she loved you better. Turns out, I was right.”

  “She does not love me better,” I said, but now I wondered—and not, actually, for the first time.

  Kit shrugged. “It’s okay. It’s hopeless with her. But I didn’t want to lose you, too.”

  “So the crash made you miss me?”

  “The crash made me want to stop wasting time.”

  “So you came home to see me.”

  “But then I just couldn’t explain. It didn’t feel like my secret to share. I wanted to give her a chance to say something, at least.”

  “Why today?” I asked. It was a fair question. She’d been here two weeks. Why come storming in now?

  “I ran into Piper McAllen at Starbucks this morning. Do you remember her?”

  I shook my head.

  Kit shrugged. “A mean girl from my grade, now a show-offy mother of two. She told me everybody says I went crazy and was put into a home. She said that to my face! In Starbucks! Apparently, the whole world just thinks I lost my marbles. And that was it for me. I was like, We’re done here. Time to set the record straight. I left my latte on the counter and stormed over.”

  I was about to suggest maybe Kit should go find our mom—she’d left her purse here, after all, and wouldn’t get too far without it—when there was a knock at the door. When it pushed open, it was our dad.

  In the instant I saw him I felt a rush of sympathy. He was my mother’s high school sweetheart. They got married the summer after they graduated, and Kit was born a few months later. My dad had been all set to go to college in California, but he joined the marines
instead. Of course, my mom gave up college altogether.

  Neither of them had gotten quite what they’d hoped for.

  These were facts I’d known for a long time, but they were only part of the story. What would my dad think now, if he knew everything? Would it change how he felt about his family? About Kit? About my mom? Would he leave if he knew? I couldn’t imagine our family without him. He was the best thing about it.

  Right then, I made a mental vow I would never tell him.

  “Hey, girls,” my dad said then, as he stepped into the room. “Look what I found!”

  Out from behind him, of all people, stepped Chip.

  * * *

  CHIP LOOKED LIKE hell, just like my mother had threatened.

  Even so, just seeing that face of his gave me jolt of pleasure. It was like some kind of Pavlovian response. See Chip; feel a thrill. Whether I wanted to or not. Whether he looked like hell or not. Whether he deserved it or not. It was quite a realization, and it reminded me of what Kit had just said. My brain knew one thing, but my heart was a different story.

  Plus, my mother had spent our lunch hour scaring the hell out of me.

  Chip hesitated in the doorway, sensing they had interrupted something.

  He looked like he’d slept in his clothes. He hadn’t shaved. He was holding a manila bubble envelope in one hand. He gave Kit a little wave, but then got down to business.

  He walked a little closer to the bed, his eyes on me, and we all watched him.

  “I just got this package from the FAA.” He held it up. “They’ve closed their investigation of the crash. ‘Pilot error.’” He put his head down and gave a breathy laugh. “We could’ve told ’em that.”

  “I thought it was a ‘senseless tragedy,’” I said, and Chip blinked at me.

  “What’s in the bag, son?” my dad asked then.

  Chip looked down at it. Back on track. “They’re scrapping the wreckage, and I’ll pay for the plane out of pocket. But they found this.”

  He pulled his grandmother’s engagement ring out of the envelope and held it out for us to see. It was, to put it gently, a little charred.

  “They found it,” I said.

  “They knew our story from the interview, so they knew what it was.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It was so strange to see Chip at all—especially like this. He had always, always been perfectly put together, and in control, and groomed like a male model. This disheveled guy was like his antimatter.