Fourth Comings

by Megan Mccafferty

  I refused to admit that I had been thinking along those same lines.

  “I get it, Mom,” I groaned. “You were married at twenty-two, so you think everyone should be married by twenty-two.”

  “You think I was ready to be a wife and mother at twenty-two? I hadn’t gone to college, hadn’t traveled anywhere outside New Jersey, hadn’t dated anyone, hadn’t slept with anyone besides your father!”

  I did everything I could to resist shouting, “TMI! TMI!” I had no idea that the confessional conversation would go even deeper within my discomfort zone.

  “I didn’t have the same choices that you have now. I chose from what was available to me, and dedicated myself to it for the next thirty-four years.”

  I was rattled by the word choice in this context. All these years, I have harbored dark, middle-of-the-night fears that I was the unwanted surprise child. But my mother was unmarried and pregnant in 1972, just a few months short of Roe v. Wade. If she’d been able, would she have made the capital-C Choice not to have Bethany? Would she have married my dad at all?

  “You say that you didn’t have as many choices back when you were my age,” I said. “Maybe that was a positive thing. I feel completely paralyzed by all the possibilities.”

  I’m not crazy for feeling this way, you know. I’ve read several studies for Think suggesting that more choices make people less happy. Why? Because there will always be more opportunities passed up than taken up. Ergo, as our options expand, so do our desires—and unmet desires in particular. And didn’t we establish in Buddhism 101 that desiring begets suffering?

  And yet, even with science and religion on my side, I was fully aware of how self-centered I sounded. But I was not sufficiently ashamed to shut up.

  “Should I say yes to Marcus and move to Princeton? Should I say yes and stay in New York and do the long-distance thing until he graduates? Should I say no but move to Princeton to be with him, anyway? Or say no, stay in New York, and try the long-distance thing again? Say no, stay in New York, and not try the long-distance thing again? Or should I just leave New York altogether and get a job as a waitress in, I don’t know, London?”

  “London?” my mom asked. “Why London?” I noticed then that her hairline was damp around the temples, and that her complexion was pinker than it had been before.

  “Why not London? Why not Lisbon? Or Lincoln, Nebraska? That’s my point! By choosing one option, I’m closing myself off to all the others that might be even better. I’m afraid of making the wrong decision. I’m afraid that the mistakes I make now in my twenties will lead to decades of regret.”

  I paused before asking, “How did you know you made the right decision at the time?”

  Note the switch from “choice” to “decision.”

  “I didn’t!”

  She punctuated her point by punching the air-conditioner button.

  I wanted her to elaborate here and say something inspiring, something about taking a huge leap of faith and never looking back, about how growing up means caring about and committing to something greater than oneself, and about how much she values our family, which is why, despite Bethany’s Signs, she has no intention of ever leaving it. I wanted her to rescind her declaration of neutrality and provide some hard-earned maternal wisdom regarding the specific decisions I have to make. That would have been a nice and comforting conclusion to this unsettling journey home.

  But it didn’t work out that way.

  “I’m overheating here,” she panted, craning her neck toward the rush of cold air coming out the vents. “I have to stop at this WaWa and get a bottle of water. Get yourself a cup of coffee. It’s the best in town….”

  My mouth dropped open. “What?! You don’t buy your coffee at the Wally D’s/Papa D’s right up the road?!”

  My mom gasped and clasped both hands to her mouth: busted.

  “To tell you the truth,” I said, “I always thought the coffee at Wally D’s/Papa D’s tasted like ass.”

  I had said this in the hope of providing some much-needed levity. It worked. She laughed.

  “I wouldn’t have put it in the same way,” she whispered, “but I agree.”

  As she rolled into the WaWa parking lot, I said, “I won’t tell Bethany if you won’t.”

  She extended her hand, and we shook on it. “It’ll be our little secret,” she said conspiratorially. “And while we’re on the subject of secrets, it would be best if you didn’t tell Bethany that you know she was conceived out of wedlock….”

  “It’s a touchy subject for her,” I said, repeating my dad’s words. “Best left untouched.”

  “Exactly!” my mother said brightly.

  And as we stepped around bent cigarette butts, shriveled straw wrappers, and cast-away scratch ’n’ lose games in the parking lot, I felt strangely unburdened, if still indecisive. Unless my mother suddenly confirmed the suspicions I’ve held for years—that I was not their biological daughter, but a squirming bundle abandoned on their doorstep—I figured my last minutes in Pineville would be boring and eventless.

  I’m sure that by the time you read this, you already know that this is not how it turned out.

  I was in the junk-food aisle, ready to make a joke to my mom about how I was totally ready to commit to Snickers over Baby Ruth, when I got the unnerving vibe that I was being gawked at from behind. I pretended to scratch my shoulder with my chin (à la Samantha Baker in the study hall scene in Sixteen Candles— you know, the movie I forced you to watch if you wanted to have any chance of ever understanding me), and sure enough, I caught a half-glance of a tall, dark-haired guy looking sleepy and undernourished in jeans and a gray thermal.

  “Are you Jessica Darling?” he asked.

  I slowly turned around and got a better look. I was in Pineville, after all, so it could have been someone who knew me from the Class of 2002. Judging by the wrinkles around his eyes and deep creases framing his smiling mouth, he looked to be a few years older. He had a broad, contagious smile, with straight teeth turned dingy with nicotine. In fact, one hand held a pack of Marlboro Reds, the other pointed in my direction, and both were dirty, though not necessarily unwashed. The grime appeared to be permanently embossed in every pore, and I pegged him as someone who worked on greasy engines for a living. And if I’m being perfectly honest, I thought he was hot in a sketchy auto-mechanic kind of way.

  “Yeah?” I was still wary.

  “I knew it!” he said, snapping his fingers. “I recognize you from the pictures.”

  “Uh, okay…,” I said, trying to make eye contact with my mom, who was too busy considering her bottled water options. I had no idea who he was, and yet there was something oddly familiar about him.

  He lunged forward, wrapped his arms around me, and enveloped me with the lived-in scent of gasoline, toothpaste, and chain-smoked cigarettes. I was about to yell for help when he introduced himself.

  “I’m Hugo,” he said. “Hugo Flutie.”

  fifty-nine

  “Jessie!” said my mom coquettishly. “Who is your friend?”

  Usually I’d be embarrassed by this sight of my menopausal mother flirting with someone half her age. But I was actually heartened to see signs of the gossipy person who raised me, the one who was more busybody than busy-busy.

  “You must be Jessica’s sister, Bethany.” Hugo said this with a wink in his voice, to let us know he was being intentionally cheesy. And yet the gesture still managed to charm the hell out of my mom.

  “Mother,” she replied, looking up at Hugo through her eyelashes. “Helen.”

  “Ah, a beauty like Helen of Troy…”

  While my mom got all girlish and giddy over his attentions, Hugo rolled his eyes in my direction. He was still on my side, you ee.

  “Mom, this is Marcus’s older brother,” I explained. “Hugo Flutie.”

  My mom jolted to attention. “An older brother? I didn’t even know Marcus had an older brother. Why didn’t you ever mention this before?”

&nb
sp; “We’ve never met,” Hugo and I replied at the same time.

  “Until right here,” I added.

  “Right now,” Hugo added.

  “Well,” my mom said, brushing make-believe dust off her sleeves.

  “How’s your dad?” To me. “Your husband?” To mom.

  “Hugo and Mr. Flutie saw Dad in the infusion room yesterday,” I clarified.

  Mom blanched dramatically, like a veteran stage actress overacting for the nosebleed seats. “How is your father?” She clutched Hugo’s sinewy forearm, a gesture that showed more concern than that which she had (not) expressed for her own husband.

  “Oh, he’s great for someone who had prostate cancer,” Hugo explained, the corners of his smile drooping just a bit. “He’s in remission for now.”

  “That’s a relief!” my mom gushed.

  “He was at the hospital to visit the nurses…,” I started.

  “Everyone promises to visit the nurses when they finish chemo, but none ever do…,” Hugo middled.

  “Mr. Flutie did,” I ended.

  We caught each other’s eyes, mutually struck by the effortlessness of our conversation. Within minutes of our introduction, your brother and I were finishing each other’s sentences. Then the skin pinched between my eyebrows with the reminder of how it used to be between you and me.

  “Oh,” my mom said. “That’s nice.”

  And there was an awkward moment of nonconversation that was filled by the noise of the morning rush for coffee and trans fats. Hugo fiddled with a small silver medal around his neck, making a faint zipzipzipping noise with each pull on the chain.

  “Jessie,” Mom said, darting a glance at her cell phone, “I’m running late and the bus station is in the opposite direction of where I need to be….”

  “Bus station?” Hugo asked.

  “I’m heading back to the city.”

  “I’ll take you,” he offered quickly.

  “You will?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he replied.

  My mom attempted to raise an eyebrow. “Jessie?”

  “Uh, if it’s okay with you,” I said to her.

  “I am running late….”

  “So I’ll take you!” Hugo said, clapping his hands together. “I like to be useful. And I’ve wanted to meet you forever….”

  FOREVER.

  I just remembered the final postcard. Did it arrive in Brooklyn during my absence? Is it on the kitchen table right now? Have Hope and Manda marveled over your romanticism as they turned it over in their hands, wishing that someone cared enough to do the same for them?

  “Pardon us for a moment.” She pulled me toward the roller grill, where three glistening and unnaturally red hot dogs spun around and around in their own grease. “Do you want to go with him? Because he’s practically a stranger. And how do you know for sure that he’s really Marcus’s brother?”

  “What, you think he’s a rapist who lurks around WaWas all day claiming to be Marcus Flutie’s brother in the hopes of luring unsuspecting women to his pickup truck?”

  We both attempted a surreptitious glance at your brother, who caught us in the act. He smiled and waved. We smiled and waved back.

  “Of course he’s Marcus’s brother.”

  Beyond the obvious reasoning was the undeniable resemblance between you two, which wasn’t so much physical as it was chemical. Charisma runs in the Flutie bloodline, and it’s a power that transcends mere appearances. I mean, it’s pretty uncommon for my mother to be so instantly besotted by the likes of a nicotine-stained grease monkey like Hugo.

  “I’ve always wanted to meet him,” I said.

  “As you should,” she said, taking my coffee out of her bag and handing it over.

  “Thanks.”

  She stood in front of me for a moment, inspecting my naked face in the unflattering fluorescent light. I assumed she was calculating the depth of my nasolabial folds, or counting the clogged pores on my nose.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Enjoy your youth,” she said simply.

  “I’ll try.”

  “Don’t try,” she said. “Do.” If she’d had a silk scarf, she would have tossed it smashingly around her neck. She didn’t, but her overall affect was the same.

  I promised her that I would. Then the electronic doors whooshed open, and she sailed through them.

  Hugo drifted over to me.

  “So there’s only one problem,” he said as if in mid-conversation. He held up a map of the tri-state area. “I have no idea how to get to New York City from here.”

  “You don’t have to drive me all the way to the city! Just to the bus station!”

  “Are you sure?” he asked as we walked toward the entrance.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Good,” he replied, putting the map back in the rack. “Because the drivers around here are crazy.” He said this just in time for me to witness my mother cutting off a Mini Cooper with her ginormous four-wheeled affront to all that is environmentally conscious.

  “You still live in Maine?” I asked quickly, to distract attention from my mother. “With…”

  “Charlotte,” he supplied. “Yes, and our three kids.”

  “Three?”

  “Two of hers, one of our own.”

  “I had no idea that you’d had a child together! Congratulations!” I shook my head in disbelief. “Marcus never told me much about you.”

  “Well, Marcus told me that you called us a ‘salt-of-the-earth Ashton and Demi.’” He guffawed. “That’s a pretty good one.”

  “He told you that?”

  You told him that?!

  “Among other things.”

  Among other things?

  Hugo led me to a banged-up blue pickup truck with Maine license plates referring to the state as “a national treasure.” I tried not to react when I spotted the Jesus fish affixed to the back bumper.

  “Um…what other things?”

  “Like how he asked you to marry him.”

  “Oh…,” I said, assuming an ironically casual air. “That.”

  “Based on your dad’s response to that,” he said, wrenching open the door to the passenger side, “I assumed that that was not something I should talk about. Which is why I didn’t mention that in front of the fair Helen.”

  I climbed in. “She knows about that now.”

  “And?”

  “And she thinks my indecisiveness reflects our generation’s refusal to grow up and take anything seriously.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think my indecisiveness reflects my own tendency to take things very seriously.”

  “Hmm.”

  And then nothing. Hugo twisted the key in the ignition, pulled the gearshift into reverse, then pushed it into drive. He pulled us out of the parking lot, the sound of gravel grinding under the four wheels. We didn’t speak.

  “This is weird,” I said uneasily.

  “It is a little weird, yes,” Hugo agreed.

  “I don’t know why Marcus never bothered to introduce us before.”

  “Marcus is…” Hugo shifted his lower jaw back and forth, as if he’d just gotten socked in the chin. “Predictable in his unpredictability.”

  “So true,” I replied.

  “It’s what our mom says, anyway. My dad subscribes to the theory that Marcus just likes to be a pain in the ass.”

  Another pause. In front of us was a tan minivan with one of those cause-supporting magnetic ribbons on the back. Only this multicolored ribbon didn’t support any cause per se, but merely claimed the driver’s love for a particular breed of dog: I MY JACK RUSSELL TERRIER. Seeing that magnet reminded me of the time I had an existential crisis at the sight of a Betty Boop decorative license plate cover. I can understand why your brother would put a Jesus fish on the back of his car—there’s two-thousand-plus years of Christianity behind his beliefs. But Betty Boop? Jack Russell Terriers? Are they better causes to believe in than nothing at all…?

&n
bsp; Zzzzzip. Zzzzip. Zzzzip. Hugo fiddled with the chain around his neck, needing something to do with his hands while we were stopped at a red light. Zzzzzip. Zzzzip. Zzzzip.

  I reached into my front pocket, pulled out the ring, and put it on my significant finger. “Marcus made my ring.” I held it up for him to see. He reached over, held my fingers in his, then let go. “Did he make your charm?”

  “This?” he asked, lifting it up again. “Oh, no. This is a St. Jude medal.”

  “Um,” I stammered, “who’s St. Jude?”

  “One of the apostles,” he explained.

  I tried to summon any Biblical information from my CCD days. “The one who betrayed Jesus?”

  “No,” Hugo said.

  “I’m not very religious,” I confessed, suddenly feeling really self-conscious about my atheism.

  “I understand,” he said. “If you had asked me about St. Jude five years ago, I would have said something about the Beatles song. A lot of people confuse Jude and Judas. In fact, so many early Christians mixed them up that hardly anyone ever prayed to the good guy for help. He was guilty by association, just because of his name.”

  “Sounds like Jude got a bum rap,” I said.

  “Yeah, he did,” Hugo said. “That’s why I like him. He’s considered the patron saint of lost causes. The Flutie family is full of lost causes. I was a lost cause until I was found. Until I met Charlotte. Until I was saved.”

  I squirmed in the seat, worried that Hugo would start preaching to me, trying to save my soul. But he didn’t.

  “My faith gave me strength, you know, when my dad…” His voice wobbled.

  I looked at Hugo’s profile and could see the muscles tensing in his jaw as he clenched back the tears. I thought about how your dad’s diagnosis inspired you to spend that many more silent hours on the floor of your closet.

  “Marcus didn’t want me there,” I said in a rush.

  “Where?”

  “There, here, in Pineville,” I said. “When your dad was getting treatment.”

  Hugo nodded somberly.

  “I just didn’t want you thinking that I didn’t care about your dad,” I said. “I offered to come, you know, for support, but Marcus insisted that I stay in the city.”