“Well, you know—” Thomas stopped.
Maggie waited for him to finish his thought. When nothing came, she leaned in, knowing he couldn’t hear her but urging him on just the same. “C’mon, T,” she whispered. “You’re doing fine. Don’t let your nerves get the best of you.”
Savannah finally jumped in. “You’ll have to keep listening. That’s the question we dig into next.”
“Oh,” Blaise said. “I love a good show tease.”
“It’s important people understand...” Savannah continued slowly, as if giving Thomas a chance to jump back in. He didn’t. “Well, I guess we want people to know that we’re not on the hunt for a replacement parent. But we do hope to meet our father, especially now that our mom is gone.”
Blaise hmm’d and went where Savannah was taking her. “You understand, of course, that there’s a fair bit of debate on how you’re going about your search. That doing it in such a public fashion may prove harmful—to your biological father, and to your subsequent relationship with him.”
“It is remarkable, though, isn’t it?” said Savannah. “We had decent listener numbers when the podcast was just about two kids trying to find their dad. It wasn’t until one of the women we interviewed publicly scolded us that the podcast really took off.”
There. That was exactly what Maggie had been thinking. Savannah had nailed it. The bitter truth in a guileless endeavor. The controversy made them vulnerable, while also promoting their cause.
“How do you respond to the argument that such a public outing is unfair?”
“I say, what gives a man a level of privacy that our mother—or any woman—wasn’t granted? They were equal partners in conception. Why not in responsibility?”
“Though, of course,” said Blaise, “critics have compared your podcast as something akin to an episode of The Jerry Springer Show. Especially since your existence may very well blindside a complete stranger.”
“We don’t know that to be necessarily true,” Savannah said. “The way Thomas and I see it, there are only two people who know for sure what happened when Mom discovered she was pregnant. And one of those people—the one we knew—is gone.”
Thomas finally stepped in. “I think we should also be careful to say that just because we’re looking for our biological father doesn’t mean he has to become a public figure. We don’t have to release his name. How he chooses to associate with our search is up to him.”
“But some would argue,” Blaise said, “that being a public figure isn’t the only consideration when it comes to privacy. There is the issue of his personal and family life. What would you say to those who feel it’s potentially harmful to his family? What if he has children?”
“Who’s to say that he wouldn’t welcome us?” Savannah answered. “Or that his family, if he has one, wouldn’t want to meet their half siblings? Heck, one of his kids could be in desperate need of a kidney transplant right now and we could be the perfect matches.”
“You have to admit, though,” said Blaise. “You’ve gotten a lot of people asking whether you have the right to disrupt other lives.”
“Well, that’s not—” Thomas stammered, sounding desperate to pull his thoughts together. “It’s just—people need to remember what our mother did not do. She didn’t terminate her pregnancy. She raised us, had a career, gave us a good life. To us, it’s a matter of biology. Savannah and I are here, and we share his DNA. We just want to understand what that means.”
Blaise hmm’d again and ended the segment with a velvety, “We wish you well.”
Sam Tamblin called the house as soon as the interview aired, raving, “We’ll take the wave this creates and spin it into a hurricane of press.”
Isn’t it the hurricane that creates the wave? Maggie wanted to say.
Thirteen
Thomas
“Why did you have to be so—” Thomas searched for the word. “Combative?”
Savannah scoffed at him. “What are you talking about? I just answered her questions.”
They’d barely hung up from the interview and already, they were at each other. Which was weird because they’d been arguing slightly less lately. Working on the podcast, they’d fallen into a decent balance—Savannah did her stuff and Thomas did his. Thomas figured they’d split the load just right, fair and square. Being fair was a huge deal to Savannah.
And by huge, he meant huge.
In third grade, Thomas got invited to his first sleepover birthday party and Savannah threw a fit, crying all through dinner how it wasn’t fair she’d never gotten to sleep over at any of her friends’ houses.
Then later, Thomas was the first to buy his own laptop with money he’d saved from two years of birthdays, Christmases and mowing Mrs. Tellison’s yard down the street, but Savannah complained it was unfair because no one ever considered having a girl mow their lawn.
“The wage gap starts the day we’re born!” she wailed.
Maggie barely looked up from whatever she was doing. “There’s always babysitting, love.”
Which only made Savannah scream, “Oh right, because all girls love babysitting!”
With the way they’d planned the podcast work—researching and interviewing together, then splitting up the production tasks—Thomas and Savannah would learn the same information at the same time, which was about as fair as he could imagine. And the balance had been working. Mostly.
“I thought we agreed—I was going to take the hard questions.”
“Me, too. But then you had some sort of brain fart and couldn’t finish your sentences.” She gave him a smirk, then lifted the screen on her laptop. They still had a thousand calls to make today and the to-do list ran off the bottom of her screen. Then, her cell phone buzzed with a text and she had to waste the next eight thousand minutes going back and forth with Trigg.
“Savannah!”
She slammed her phone down. “Oh my god, Thomas! I don’t know why you’re griping at me. The interview went fine.”
Fine. Sometimes he wondered if Savannah could hear herself. Or if anyone had ever told her there was a major difference between the words you say in your head and the way they sound coming out of your mouth. His answers hadn’t been perfect, and yeah, he’d had a hiccup or two. But at least he’d done everything possible to sound reasonable. Levelheaded even on the hard questions. Taken his time, measuring his tone. Isn’t that what they’d agreed on from the very beginning? That they wanted to come across as the kind of people their dad would be proud to know. Savannah, though—no wonder she had the reputation she did at school. She answered every question in class like it was stupid the teacher even asked it. Today, she did exactly the same thing.
“You know why everyone gives you a hard time, right? Because you’re such an easy mark. You blow everything way out of proportion.”
“Ex-cuse me?”
“Like for the chemistry final—Mr. Philpot said we could prepare one note card to bring with us on the day of the test and you had to get all weird about it. But people can use that to cheat, Mr. Philpot! Like he doesn’t know that? Everyone just wanted you to shut up!”
“Why should I study if all those morons are just going to write the answers on their note cards?”
“How can you cheat if you don’t even know what questions are on the test?” His voice cracked and his head felt like it might split open, full enough to burst. “Van! You’re smart, we get it. That’s cool. But you don’t have to make everyone else feel stupid when they’re around you.” Being so honest made his stomach knot, but someone had to tell her.
Savannah gave him a look so blistering she could’ve shot lasers out her eyes. “I didn’t say anything you wouldn’t have said.”
“You got all uppity about our dad not taking responsibility!”
The lasers were suddenly hot enough to burn a hole in the wall behind his head. �
�Did you seriously just call me uppity?”
“No, I said you got all—”
“Uppity. You said I got all uppity.”
“And?”
“And? You may as well accuse me of getting all emotional, too.”
“Well, yeah. You kinda were.” How had this become his fault?
Savannah, though, was slamming her laptop closed and pounding up the stairs. “I can’t believe that you, of all people, have turned into a sexist pig!”
“You’re the one who said his kids probably needed a kidney transplant!”
Savannah slammed the door behind her, ensuring, as always, that she got the final say.
Trigg:
Guess who just texted me and said he’d been listening to your ittle wittle podcast? [microphone emoji]
Trigg:
His name might rhyme with Lyle Karson. And he might have just broken up with Olivia Jenkins. [broken heart emoji] [laughing emoji]
Trigg:
Oh, and did I forget to mention he asked if you were single? [screaming face emoji]
Fourteen
Maggie
Chef Bart poked his head into the family room one evening soon after the kids’ radio debut. The podcast was rapidly gaining attention and Sam Tamblin called more and more frequently with what Maggie had begun to think of as “Hype Updates.”
“Got a mention on Marc Maron. I’m talkin’ Marc Maron, Maggs! The number one podcast in the whole effing U-S-of-effing-A!”
“Really, Sam. Must I remind you?” He apologized for the language and hung up, only to call back a few minutes later with another Hype Update.
Tonight, Maggie had the TV on and a magazine in her lap, but her gaze was at the windows, staring out. Meteorologists were all over the airwaves warning about several days of oppressive heat on the way, and she was preparing herself for the reality she and Katherine Mansfield wouldn’t be leaving the air-conditioned house to walk for more than a few minutes at a time until it was over.
“Looks to me like you might need an escape,” Chef Bart said. “I’m done for the day, Nadine is at a friend’s house and it’s perfect weather to put the top down.”
Chef Bart owned a convertible gold Volkswagen Beetle, circa 1970-something, that he drove only in the summer and only when the sun was out. Maggie loved going for drives in his little gold bug. She batted her eyelashes and clasped her hands at her heart, the best Scarlett O’Hara she could muster. “My hero.”
“How about a quick spin around the lakes and then I’ll bring you back and mix you up a sour-plum manhattan?”
“Perfect.” There was no better cocktail in the upper Midwest. Chef Bart watched the farmers markets closely for the few days every summer when sour plums were available, then bought as many as the vendor would sell and spent the day canning the plums in a rich syrup laced with ginger and some other spice that Maggie could never identify and he wouldn’t tell.
“I hope you don’t expect me to drink alone, though.”
“Never!”
Maggie left a note for the kids and refreshed Katherine Mansfield’s water dish. Thomas and Savannah had each been squirreled away in their rooms all day, separately, no podcast. She’d checked in with them, tried to engage, but Thomas seemed to be working something out by exploding imaginary video game worlds on his laptop, and Savannah was either legitimately asleep or pretending to be every time she peeked in.
She could only imagine the quicksand pit of emotion they were trying to avoid.
“They’ll probably appreciate having the house to themselves for a bit.” She grabbed her purse. “Plus, you’re right. I could use the escape.”
Bart pulled away from the curb and they zipped up the parkway, convertible top down, making a loop around Lake Bde Maka Ska but opting not to turn right where the parkway connected to neighboring Lake Harriet. There was a concert at the Harriet Bandshell, and traffic had all but stopped.
“A shorter excursion than I’d planned,” Chef Bart said, already turning back into the neighborhood. “I guess we weren’t the only ones needing an escape tonight.”
“Oh well,” Maggie sighed. “I guess we’ll have to drink two cocktails, instead.”
They pulled back to the curb and made their way up the walk. Moments later, Chef Bart placed a chilled glass in Maggie’s hand, and swung his lanky legs across the piano bench. “Classical or heathen tonight?”
“I’m feeling positively heathen.” Maggie took a long sip. Chef Bart hadn’t been wrong. She had needed a change of plans.
“I call this my ‘All Things Rocky’ medley.” Chef Bart turned toward the keys and started in on “Dammit Janet” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He wasn’t a terribly precise pianist—Maggie would never pay him to play the way she paid him to cook—but he made up for his lack of skill with some surprising creativity. He transitioned from the Rocky Horror tune into John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” followed by—what else?—“Gonna Fly Now,” the theme to Rocky.
“Bravo!” Maggie cheered, pouring herself a second manhattan.
Chef Bart changed decades. “Chantilly Lace” and “Peggy Sue” and “Eleanor Rigby” and “Octopus’s Garden.” Maggie’s heart began to dance along, thoroughly entertained.
At the start of her third manhattan, Maggie topped off Bart’s nearly untouched drink and motioned him over to the couch. The cocktails made her feel just free enough to take a chance with the truth. “You are one of my dearest, most loyal friends, so I’m going to let you in on a secret. Or, not exactly a secret so much as...a magical mystery. A magical medical mystery.”
Chef Bart gestured as if he were putting a lock on his lips and throwing away the key.
She paused, gathering her thoughts. There wasn’t any way to put this that didn’t sound a bit batty. “Here’s the thing. You know I’ve had an unusual amount of time to myself lately. Savannah and Thomas are home, but rarely aboveground—down in their studio until well after I’m in bed.”
She took another moment to arrange her words. “And... I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon with my heart. The first time it happened was at the launch party. The kids were playing their new theme song and BAM! I felt it. Then last week I had the radio on during breakfast, and there it was again. Yesterday, when Katherine Mansfield and I were on the parkway, I was listening to Carole King on my iPod and it happened again.”
“What happened?”
“My heart can match itself to music.”
He said nothing and took another sip of his manhattan.
“No, listen to me. At first, I thought something was horribly wrong, but before leaping to conclusions I decided to do some research. Obviously, everyone has a heart that speeds up and slows down with music. Others, though, can adapt to rhythm. Like a conductor. That’s what mine does—like it’s listening. Do you see what I’m saying?”
He frowned.
“I’m not crazy.” She swatted his arm.
“You are crazy, but that’s not what I’m worried about. You’re talking about your heart—your heart, Maggie.”
He shook his head, then cleared their drinks to the kitchen.
She followed him, a hand on her still-swooning heart. “I know you think I’m just being crazy or imagining things or worse but I’m telling you, this is happening.”
“I’d drive you straight to the hospital if I didn’t think you’d jump out of the car at the first stoplight.” He turned on the faucet and rinsed the glasses before loading them into the dishwasher.
“In all of our years of friendship, Bart, have I ever been wrong?”
Turning back to her, he arched an eyebrow. “You believe you can lose five pounds by eating nothing but cucumbers and ginger slices.”
“How else do you think I’m able to wear those velvet pants every Christmas? I bought them the year Bess graduated from high school and I’m
still wearing them.”
“Make a doctor’s appointment,” Chef Bart said. “Tomorrow.”
<
The Kids Are Gonna Ask
A Guava Media Podcast
Season01—Episode05
Tuesday, June 30
THOMAS
Mr. Miller? Abe Miller?
ABE MILLER
Speaking.
THOMAS
Mr. Miller, hi. This is Thomas McClair calling. I sent you an email last week, and you said you’d be willing to speak with us about a bartender who used to work at your place?
ABE
Yuh.
THOMAS
I have my sister, Savannah, here with me and we’re recording, if you’ll give your consent?
ABE
Not sure how much I can tell you. But, sure. Shoot.
SAVANNAH
That’s your consent, correct? That you know we’re recording?
ABE
Yuh. Something else to it?
THOMAS
All right, so like I wrote in my email, we’re looking for our biological father, and we have a podcast where we’ve been broadcasting our search. We’re following a lead that one of your former waitresses—Andi Benson—sent us after listening to the show. Not sure if you remember her?
ABE
Andi was around for a few years. A waitress, I think. Long time ago, though.
THOMAS
Right. She said she was there from ’99 to 2002.
ABE
Yuh. Sounds like that could be right.
THOMAS
Great. So, like I said, she contacted us because we’re looking for a tall, good-looking blond guy who talked about wanting to save money for a trip to New Zealand and she said that sounded like a guy she used to work with at your bar, The Mine.
ABE
This town is full of good-looking blond kids. You know his name?
SAVANNAH
Andi said she thought his name was Thor. Does that ring a bell?
The Kids Are Gonna Ask Page 10