Blythe’s voice cut through mine. “You’ll never believe how he labels his . . .” Blythe froze when she saw me. I don’t know how my face said Guess what? Dad was gay, but she paled, then took the frame from me.
“You are freaking kidding me.” She slumped down beside me on the bed, cradling the photo. Then her mouth flattened, and her eyes snapped to mine. “What are you doing sitting there? Go through his stuff.”
I jumped up, my heart hammering as if now, and just now, I’d realized we were breaking into someone else’s—well, if not someone else’s house, someone else’s space. And that even though he was supposed to be working today, Charlie could come home at any minute. I yanked the bedside drawer open and started rifling through it.
And here was the mess. I pushed things aside without keeping it tidy: lip balm, hand lotion, checkbook, pens, receipts. I shoved my hands to the back of the drawer, closing my eyes against the possibility of sharp objects. I felt a familiar stack of papers, wrapped in raffia. I tugged the letters out. But I hesitated. At least some must contain information about their relationship; otherwise, why would Charlie have stolen them back? And I didn’t want to know more. I didn’t want to know that my dad had never loved my mom. Or that he’d never loved us. Or wanted us. That he’d wanted this other life in an apartment with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and a man who wore a reef tuck.
A very uncomfortable thought occurred to me then. We were his, weren’t we? I looked at Blythe to see his eyes/my eyes/her eyes/our eyes. We were his. We were. So what more could we learn from these letters? Nothing. I opened the drawer to put the letters back but stopped to brush my finger over my dad’s handwriting one more time. Then I yanked a single letter from near the bottom of the stack—the newer letters. I folded it into my palm. Then I tightened the raffia and returned the letters to the back of the drawer. I wasn’t going to read the letter. Not ever. I just didn’t want Charlie to have it.
“How often did Dad travel for work? Monthly?” Blythe asked, her eyes darting over the bedroom, to the living room and back to me.
“A lot,” I said. At least once a month.
“Some of the time, he came here.” She looked around in wonder. “He must have.”
I clenched the envelope in my hand. For one horrible minute, I was glad my dad had never gotten the chance to tell us this truth himself. I was glad whatever plans he’d had for his new and improved life were ruined. Almost glad that he’d died. I tried to push the thought out of my head, to take it back. But it was too late.
“He must have been planning to move here permanently,” Blythe said. “The permits. You know.”
Heat coursed into my cheeks. What would this have been like? To have a dad who left us for another life? In Thornewood? “Do you think Mom knew?” Did she know that her husband of almost twenty years was in love with someone else? And if so, how long did she know? I felt a pang for how awful that must have been. And was it awful now, to share a life with that someone?
Blythe stood slowly. “She’d have to, right?” I nodded, and suddenly I wanted to get out of there. I wanted to have never come at all. But before I could voice that, Blythe gestured for me to follow her out of the bedroom.
“I found out what Charlie’s big plan is.” Blythe showed me an architectural rendering of number six on eleven-by-fourteen paper, titled: Mission Project–sponsored Transitional Housing.
It was hard to tell from the drawings, but it looked like most of the house would be broken up into small studios. Number six was too much space for just one family, especially our small family, and I hated the long dark creaking hallways and the smell of basement that permeated most rooms in the house. But if number six became studios, where would we live? And if it was gutted, what would happen to the beautiful chandeliers? “They’re going to just tear out all the fixtures and the little signs and the telephone booth?” I pressed my lips together, thinking of the gold fleur-de-lis-patterned wallpaper. “Does Mom know about this?”
“We’d better tell her. Just in case she doesn’t feel like living in a studio apartment forever.” Blythe gave me a grim look and set the drawings back the way they’d been.
As we walked down to number six, I pushed my father’s letter deeper in my pocket. Back at the side-porch entrance, we rested our backs against the door. I tilted my head to Blythe’s, and she leaned against me. Her breath rose and fell with mine.
I wished we’d never gone up to Charlie’s; then I could forget that my whole life was a lie. Then I could pretend I still knew who my dad was. I could pretend I still knew who I was.
I guess that’s why people keep secrets. I guess that’s why no one told us who Charlie was. Maybe it was safer to keep doors closed and locked than to see what was on the other side.
10
ALL BUT DEATH CAN BE DISCUSSED
On Sunday morning, we walked into the kitchen planning to grab bowls of cereal and leave only to find my mom holding a whisk and frothing something at the stove. Behind her, Charlie was at the kitchen island, chopping purple cauliflower. I narrowed my eyes—we hadn’t eaten vegetables except on vegetarian pizza since before my dad died. Blythe leaned against the kitchen island. “Are we being Punk’d?”
“Stop it,” Mom said. “I can cook. Your dad was just a better chef.” As if in evidence, the milk boiled over and hissed onto the stovetop. She laughed like that was planned and turned down the heat. Charlie pulled fancy hot cocoa mix, fresh flour-dusted biscuits, baby tomatoes, and a bag of loose spinach from a Berry Market paper bag.
“What’s going on?” I asked. Since what we’d seen in Charlie’s apartment, I hadn’t been in a great mood. Blythe and I spent the rest of Saturday in our room, only emerging to order pizza. But we still hadn’t come up with a good plan for asking about what we now knew: that our whole family was a farce.
“We thought it would be nice to have a family breakfast,” Charlie said. “Maybe some small talk.”
“Mom, we . . .” I opened my mouth, but my tongue felt swollen. I should have planned what to say. Planned it and then written it down. And maybe had Blythe say it. “We know that Charlie was Dad’s boyfriend.”
Maryann Interiors flipped her jazz hands. “What are you talking about?”
Charlie coughed like he’d swallowed wrong. “So you did break into my apartment.” Blythe and I looked at each other. “I told you, Maryann. And I told you we should have told them the whole truth from the start.”
Mom dropped her whisk and whirled on us. “How could you violate Charlie’s privacy like that?” That was what she was choosing to focus on?
I huffed out a breath, meeting her furious gaze. “How could you lie to us about our dad like that?” Beside me, Blythe cleared her throat as Charlie opened the fridge door to pull out his precious Cool Whip, as if this were a normal brunch conversation.
Charlie slammed the fridge cubby shut with a heavy thud. “They’re almost adults, Maryann. I said, ‘Let’s treat them like adults. Let’s tell them everything.’ I’m tired of living with secrets, and now look. They’re breaking and entering.”
“Not technically,” Blythe said. “We got into the apartment. We didn’t break in.” I leaned into her shoulder as Charlie paced back and forth and Maryann Interiors resumed heating the milk.
“Technicalities do not make such a violation any better,” Mom said. Then she took a deep breath and turned back to the stove, as if that ended the conversation.
“Maryann,” Charlie said. “Tell them the rest.”
“What more do we need to know?” I asked. “Our dad wanted to leave us. So we’re unlovable, and you have a really cool apartment. Mom, did you do the décor?” I wasn’t thinking—the words were just coming out. Maryann Interiors sagged against the stove.
“I sent Charlie an initial design,” she said. Blythe and I looked at Charlie. Our mom decorated an apartment for her husband and his lover?
When
Mom turned from the stove, her face was ashen. “Girls, understand. Mick wasn’t planning to move until you were both in college.” She started to say more, encouraged by Charlie’s obvious throat-clearing. She made a sound, a hollow humming, but then nothing. My mom’s hair and makeup and nails all looked perfect, but it was as if it was just a pretty coating. As if one day, I would look over and she’d be nothing but a pile of face powder and glitter.
She shook her head. “I can’t.” Blythe and I looked at each other, then at Mom, whose blond hair flopped over her eyes. Her blouse wilted as she hunched into herself, wrapping her arms around her waist.
“I can’t do this for you, Maryann.” Charlie’s voice was low, breathy, as if he was talking to a wild animal and not a mom. The room fell silent, as if the walls held their breath. Finally, Mom uncrossed her arms and cleared her throat. She spoke so quickly that at first, I couldn’t tell what she’d said.
“Your father died of an HIV-related infection. And that’s why it was so fast, and that’s why they couldn’t do anything. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
My heart suspended for a beat. My dad died of AIDS? I looked at my mom. And even though I didn’t want to, I looked at Charlie. I thought of his well-worn The History of HIV/AIDS book. Did Charlie have HIV, too? Had my dad come up here for treatment?
“Don’t worry.” Mom wiped the sudden, sparse tears on her cheeks. “I was tested again just a week ago, and I’m negative. I even have a printout, if seeing it would make you feel safer. Your dad took a prescription drug that helped stop the transfer of the infection during intimate . . .” She covered her face with her hands. “I can’t believe I’m talking about this with my daughters.”
I couldn’t believe it, either. I felt Blythe press into my side, but I kept my eyes on the kitchen island. “You knew Dad was sick,” I said. “And you didn’t tell us.”
Blythe shifted away from me. “People live a long time with HIV. Why didn’t Dad?” I expected my mom to answer, but Charlie spoke.
“He broke his finger trimming a tree. Trimming that willow tree.” I remembered seeing tape around the index finger of my dad’s left hand. I hadn’t even asked about it. “He didn’t realize it was broken, and he got a staph infection. It didn’t respond to antibiotics.”
Is there anything worse than being told it’s just one of those things? We want reasons. We want answers. We want someone to blame. I wanted someone to blame. “How long did you know, Mom? How long did you know he was sick?”
She shrugged, sinking into her blouse again. “Years. Over ten years. But there wasn’t reason for concern.”
“Wasn’t reason for concern? He died.” I wanted to yell, but my voice was whispery. I gripped the edge of the kitchen island to stop myself from poeting, and felt Blythe’s arm around my waist.
“It’s okay.” But she was wrong. Nothing was okay. When I looked up, the room seemed brighter, louder. The sunlight angled in through the windows as if it were slicing through bread. Charlie scuffed his shoes over the linoleum. On the stove, a drop of milk popped. Maybe if they’d told us when he was alive, it would have made sense. But now the whole thing seemed insane. My dad was with Charlie while he was with my mom? And Dad was sick? And everyone knew but us?
And he was gone. He was gone, and nothing made it better. I swept my thumbnail over my lower lip. “All but death can be adjusted, discussed—disgusted. Discussed, adjust, discuss—all but death. All but death.” Blythe’s arm tightened on my waist, and I stopped. Then I looked up. “I wish you’d never met my dad.”
Charlie looked smacked. But I didn’t care. He’d stolen something from me, and I wanted to steal it back. I closed my eyes and took a breath. “Sometimes I do, too,” Charlie said, and took a long sip of coffee.
“So, is that it?” Blythe asked. “Just the fake marriage to announce?”
My mom and Charlie exchanged a look. “It wasn’t a fake marriage, Blythe. Your dad was bisexual, but he was also what’s called polyamorous. Our marriage wasn’t fake; it was nontraditional.”
“What are you saying?” I backed away from the kitchen island.
“Sabine, don’t walk away.” Mom’s face was close to the shade of the dish towel over her shoulder—a pallid gray. “Your dad had relationships with men and women. But being in love with two people is uncommon no matter your sexuality—that’s being polyamorous. He chose to love more than one person at a time. I know myself—rather, I knew myself—and I couldn’t share him forever. So we decided when you both went to college, he would move here. To be with Charlie.”
“But then he died,” Blythe said.
I lifted my thumb to my lower lip, but Blythe grabbed my hand in hers. “And you lied about it all. The whole time? Our whole lives?” I narrowed my eyes at Charlie. “We never had to know. If you’d sold the house, we could have never known. We could have stayed in Dana Point with our friends, in our house, with the memory of Dad—”
“You mean keep us in the closet?” Charlie said, barely sounding angry. “Keep our relationship a secret so you can feel better about how regular your life is? Would you prefer that, Sabine? Just because you don’t say a truth out loud doesn’t make it disappear.” Charlie’s eyes swam—a drowning pool of palest blue.
It wouldn’t have been true. Not for us. “Why didn’t you just sell the house?” Did they think keeping the house meant keeping my dad? My mom turned to Charlie.
“I told them,” Mom said, lifting her chin from her chest. “About the will. That we had to decide together.”
Charlie spoke through gritted teeth. “We’re not selling.”
Mom blanched. “We said we’d discuss all options. The new permit request was denied. Charlie, where does this leave us? We’re building without a permit.”
“We’re not selling this house,” he said. When I looked up, his blue eyes reflected the morning light. “Your dad’s dream was to build a safe, healing place for the LGBTQIA+ community. It was his dream—”
“But—where will we live?” Blythe said. Where would we live?
When Blythe and I were seven, my dad started building a dollhouse. He traveled so much, it took him two years, and by the time it was done, Blythe was too old for it. But I loved all its perfect shingles, its big front porch. I loved the little rooms where I imagined our life playing out. Now I wondered, as he glued those tiny pieces together, if he was thinking not of us, but of this other life he was building. Did he know that the dollhouse would lose its shingles and splinter front porch rails? And did he know that by that time, he would be living in a new, perfect house, while the one he left behind fell to pieces?
Charlie shrugged. “You’ll be in college by the time it’s done.” It was as if he really didn’t get why this completely sucked.
Mom wrung her hands. “The girls will need a place to come home to.” She looked between me and Blythe, trying to gauge how angry we were. “On breaks. It’s something we need to think about.”
“We’ll think about that if we get through this without Bernie McMichaels fining us so badly, we’ll be too poor to paint,” Charlie said. I imagined him thinking about paint swatches. And it made me really, really mad.
“So you’re illegally building. And you have no intention of even continuing to let us live here? Dad owned half this house. So half of it should be ours.” I imagined my mom taking one of her wide hot pink grosgrain ribbons and tacking it down one wall, across the floor, and up another until the house was in two pieces.
“Well, Charlie’s right. We’ll be going to college in two-point-seven years.” I heard the voice from beside me, but I couldn’t believe it was coming from Blythe.
“And until then?” I stared at her. “We live in a construction zone and then have no home at all?”
“Once I’m at MIT, I’m not planning to come home. Dad never did.” I didn’t know whether it was her mentioning Dad, or the fact t
hat she didn’t plan to come home again after she went to college, but suddenly, the brightness and silence were too much.
I covered my face with my hands, blocking out the sunlight, the squeak of shoes on linoleum, the pop of milk on the stove. I shook my head, trying to clear it, trying to find something to say, but without Blythe on my side, all I wanted to do was scream. I was afraid I would. I had to get out of there.
I pushed through the swinging door and rushed out of the house and up the driveway. I passed through the decimated rosebushes lining the empty pond, and ran up the brick stairs past the willow to Charlie’s apartment. My dad’s apartment.
Did my dad stand where I was standing and look out at his million-dollar view, and imagine how one day he wouldn’t have to come back to us? Did he imagine how he’d exchange his family for a house full of strangers who needed him more than we did? Were we nothing but an obligation to him? Time served as “Dad”?
I stumbled to the pile of two-by-fours and lifted the top piece. It was damp with morning dew. I leveraged it over my shoulder and almost lost my balance, but leaned forward just in time. Then I swung it in an arc right into the back window.
I flinched as the glass smashed and I dropped the two-by-four. A splinter broke off into my palm, and I yanked it out before I lost my nerve. A bubble of blood welled. I squeezed and a shooting pain went up my arm. But I kept at it. I squeezed drop after drop of blood onto the stack of wood, feeling like I’d been blind and stupid my whole life.
11
ONE AND ONE—ARE DONE
Blythe found me kicking around the willow tree a few hours later, still pumping pinpricks of blood out of my fingertip. I was surprised she hadn’t found me sooner. Maybe that’s what kept me outside.
“Are you mad because he was bisexual or because he had a secret?” Blythe was holding a scone in a floral napkin that Maryann Interiors had clearly chosen as the scone’s appropriate wrapper.
“Just the one secret?” I sat down below the tree and held out my hand for the scone. She gave it to me and sat down beside me.
Wider than the Sky Page 8