by Lance Rubin
“Now?” I say.
“I forgot to bring my teeth stuff last night.”
I shrug. We are all silent for a minute, the staccato of Paolo’s flossing the room’s only sound. I slowly get to my feet. I guess my next step is to leave the bathroom and figure out how to get in touch with Brian Blum. There’s no way Veronica’s gonna make out with me again now.
I remember what’s outside this room, and guilt rains down upon me. “You guys think Taryn could hear us in here?”
“Man up, dude!” Paolo has stopped flossing.
“What?”
“You know what.” Paolo is not someone who scolds, so it’s startling. “This is the end of your life. You gotta own that shit.” He takes a dramatic step toward me. “You are Denton Little, dammit, and I won’t let you go to the grave worried that people are angry at you. Who cares, dude.”
“Yeah, I completely agree,” I say. “I’ve—”
“I get it. You care about Taryn. You guys have developed this thing between you, these little jokes—‘Ooh, Denton, I very want to kiss you very much times.’ ”
“That’s not what we say.”
“It’s all very sweet, and in a perfect world you’d both go to college, take some time off to explore other short, exciting-but-ultimately-empty relationships, then realize you are meant to be, get married, have eighty kids, and live in a huge shoe on the edge of town.”
“A shoe?”
“But in a perfect world, you wouldn’t be dying today. And I wouldn’t be dying in less than a month. This is not a perfect world, make no mistakes about it, and we don’t have the gift of time that everyone else has. And it’s scary, and it’s confusing, and so maybe we mess up a little bit. Maybe we try to use butter to masturbate and it works out really bad. But you gotta own that shit.”
Paolo goes back to flossing. “I only say it because I love you, dude. You know that.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Pow.” I should own that shit. “You okay, Veronica?” I ask. “Paolo and I…That never happened. He probably just rubbed his face on my ball towel yesterday or something.”
She continues focusing on the toilet water and says nothing.
“Own that shit,” Paolo says in a melodic singsong, reaching far back into his mouth.
“I’m not gonna own it if it didn’t happen.”
“Yes! I just dislodged a piece of corned beef from my sandwich last night. That’ll hold me over till my next meal.”
“Okay. I’m gonna leave this room now.”
I walk out into the hallway as Paolo asks Veronica, “You want me to put my finger down your throat? Might help.” I close the door behind me.
I feel inspired.
I stand on the second-floor landing above the stairs and watch sunlight filter through the big foyer window, making dust particles glorious.
I construct a plan for whatever time I have left:
1. Find Brian Blum. Ask about my mom. And if she is Paolo’s mom.
2. Be real with Taryn.
3. Be real with everyone (i.e., be the opposite of my father).
4. Do something awesome and memorable.
5. Make out with—
“Yo,” Felix says from behind me, leaning out of his old bedroom, wearing glasses and a faded oversize T-shirt from some 5K race he ran for charity. “How you doing? Having fun in that bathroom, eh?” He grins like an idiot.
“What? No. Did it sound like we were having fun?”
“I don’t know what it sounded like. I was trying to take a nap, and then I was listening to you guys shouting at each other about sex.”
“Denton!” my stepmom calls from downstairs. “Your father and I are ready to head to the hospital whenever you are.”
Yeah, I won’t be doing that.
“Cool,” I shout back. “I just have to pee first.”
“Isn’t that what you were just doing for the past fifteen minutes?” my stepmom asks.
Oops. Good point. I never actually went when I was in there.
“Right,” I shout, “but I have to go again. My stomach is being really weird.”
“Nice cover,” Felix says.
“Okay,” my stepmom says, “we’ll have the hospital check that out, too. Come down when you’re ready.”
“Oh, Raquel,” Felix says under his breath, smirking and shaking his head.
We stand in silence for a moment. I wish I had more to say to him.
Own that shit.
“How come you never want to really talk to me?” I ask.
“What?” Felix says, a look on his face like that’s the last thing he expected me to say. “We talk.”
“Yeah, I mean, we joke around and stuff, but you don’t really know me. You don’t ask how I am.”
“Of course I ask how you are. I’m always keeping tabs on how you are.”
“Keeping tabs? That’s what I mean. I’m talking about having a conversation.”
Felix looks at me for a moment, then takes a few steps down the hallway and motions for me to follow. We walk into the shadows, away from the bright foyer.
“Hey, I know I haven’t always been the best brother,” he says, looking the most serious I’ve ever seen him. “And I’m sorry about that. I probably could have been around for you more.”
“No, I mean…Well, yeah, actually, you could have, but it’s okay. You saved my life this morning. That counts for something.”
Felix puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll always have your back. You know that, right?” He looks into my eyes, that same odd intensity from yesterday.
“I think so.”
“Good.” He pats my shoulder, then retracts his hand and heads back down the hall into his room. “I’m gonna go change.”
Not the most satisfying brotherly moment, but it’s something.
“Oh,” he says, leaning back out. “Almost forgot.” He reaches into the pocket of his shorts and hands me a business card.
“Thought you might want this.” He smiles and shuts the door.
I look at the card.
BRIAN BLUM, M.D.
Obstetrics & Gynecology
908.473.5689
“Wha—?”
I knock on Felix’s door.
“Hey,” I shout-whisper. “Feel, how did you get this? Do you know him?”
I hear him moving around, but he doesn’t respond.
“Felix, please,” I say.
His door opens again. He’s now wearing a button-down shirt over running shorts.
“You should call him.” Felix buttons as he talks. “Screw that hospital shit. It’s your life.”
“But—”
“Love you, Dent.” He shuts the door.
“What’s going on up there, sweetie?” my stepmom says.
I’m unsure how I can possibly put off this hospital visit for much longer, but I have to try.
“Oh, I’m, uh, I’m gonna lie down for a sec; I don’t feel great. But not in a death way. Just, like, a need-to-lie-down way.”
“But that’s why we need to take you to the hospital!”
I scamper down the hall and into my room, which is thankfully now empty.
I close the door and sit on the bed.
I stare at the card.
Felix knows Brian.
Felix has my back.
Felix isn’t telling me things.
I don’t have the mental energy to untangle more cryptic knots.
I take out my phone.
I push Brian’s number into my keypad.
I press call.
Brian picks up on the second ring. There’s jazz playing in the background.
“Hi,” I say. “Is this, um, Brian?”
“Denton,” he says. “You got my number.” He sounds genuinely relieved. “You okay? Feeling all right? Has anyone strange been following you?”
The barrage of questions throws me off. I’m reminded that I don’t even know this man.
“Yeah, uh, feeling fine, more or less,” I say. “But…Well,
I would love to ask you some questions about my mother. If that’s okay.”
“Yes, of course. Of course. We shouldn’t stay on this line too long, though. Can we talk in person?”
“Oh,” I say.
“Obviously wouldn’t work for me to come over there,” Brian says. “I don’t think your parents would be too happy about that.”
“No. You sure we can’t talk real quick on the phone?” Who does he think might be listening in?
“No, no. I mean, look, totally up to you, but I could…Well, I could swing by and pick you up? We could go somewhere to talk. If you feel all right with that.”
I’m not sure how I feel. I was thinking this would be a brief but enlightening phone conversation. Instead, this paranoid man, who I have no actual reason to trust, wants me to leave my Sitting to meet up with him.
“You still there? Denton?”
But if I don’t go, where does that leave me? Headed to the hospital with my parents and as ignorant as ever about my mother?
“Um,” I say.
I summon all of my untapped stealth skills as I creep down the steps.
Leaving the house on my deathdate to get into a stranger’s car probably qualifies as reaching the reckless life-endangering stage. But I need to do something.
I hear my stepmom, my dad, and Paolo’s mom chatting in the kitchen, so I swerve quietly into the laundry nook. I have a view of the family room, where Taryn and Millie are sitting on the couch watching some romantic comedy. Grandpa Sid is still in the big chair, now awake. “No, you shouldn’t, because you’re an ass!” he shouts at the screen.
Sit tight, Taryn. BRB. Maybe.
I crack open the back door and step outside. The day is still beautiful, almost tauntingly so. The smell of grass, flowers, and sun. I sneeze. Loud. I’m only three steps away from the house. I don’t think anyone heard. Please let my death not be a result of seasonal allergies.
I duck and run through the yard and out to the sidewalk. I’m meeting Brian two blocks from my house so that we won’t be seen. I keep a close eye on the power lines above me. If one of them falls or sparks, I am ready to weave and dodge.
You know, just a purple teenager stealth-running down the street, nothing unusual here.
A brazen squirrel skitters right into my path. I make a quick move so it’ll run away, but it doesn’t. It stares me down.
“Oh, fuck you, squirrel,” I say. “I’m not gonna die of rabies, all right?”
It steps closer.
“ALL RIGHT?” I shout. The squirrel bounds away.
Yeah, that’s right. I’m not so nice anymore, am I?
My moment of pride fades when I realize I’ve just yelled at a squirrel.
There’s a green Honda Civic parked curbside that matches the description Brian gave me. I get in.
“Hi,” I say.
“Pistachio?” Brian asks, holding out a handful of them. He’s wearing a scratchy brown-and-green-striped hand-woven shirt.
“Um, no thanks.”
“Okay.” He cracks one between his teeth. “Also got half a turkey sandwich here, if you want it. Didn’t know how hungry you’d be.”
“Oh, thanks.” I am pretty hungry, actually, but first I’ll take a few minutes to gauge if Brian’s the kind of guy who would poison a teenager.
“No prob. Seat belt?”
“Yup.” I buckle up.
We drive.
The car smells like salad.
“Thanks again for getting in touch,” he says. “You did the right thing.”
“Sure. Um, where are we going?”
“I was gonna ask you, actually. I don’t know this town too well. Anywhere under the radar we can park to talk?”
I’m about to mention me and Taryn’s spot, but that’s a little too off the beaten path to feel comfortable. Instead, I direct us toward Tensmore Shopping Center. We can park in the back, with the skaters and the druggies.
“So, let’s talk,” Brian says. “What’s up?”
“Um, well.” Where to begin? “A cop stopped me the other night for no reason.”
Brian’s head turns fast. “You serious? Like, a local cop?” He looks alarmed. “Why’d he say he was stopping you?”
“Said something about a deathdate statute to make sure I’m not planning on committing any end-of-life crimes. Then made me get out of the car and asked if I had a fever or, like, a virus or something.”
“Huh.”
“I mean, I wasn’t purple yet then, so he couldn’t have been referring to that.”
“Oh right, right.” Brian takes a quick glance at me. He’s not thrown at all by how I look. “The purple.”
“Do you know what this is?”
“Do I know? I mean…It’s probably, you know…Maybe it is some kind of virus.”
We pass HealthBuzz Gym, its muscular bee smirking at us from the sign.
“Do you think it’s fatal?”
“Look,” Brian says. “At the end of the day, I’m primarily a gynecologist. If you don’t have a vagina, there’s gonna be a limit to what I can do.”
“Sure, of course.”
“That was a joke,” Brian says. “Kind of.”
“Oh right.”
We pass Kool Kones Ice Cream.
“So you were stopped by a cop,” Brian says. “Any other unusual government types around?”
“Um…I don’t think so. But, like, what exactly makes you think the government would be following me around in the first place?”
“Oh.” Brian turns his head to look at me, then stares back at the road. “Well, I could tell you that, but then I’d have to kill you.”
I freeze in my seat. I shouldn’t be here.
“Ohmigod, that was totally a joke,” Brian says, seeing how freaked out I am. “I’m sorry, I…Under the circumstances, I could see how that would be the wrong thing to say.”
“Maybe,” I say.
“I promise I’m only trying to look out for you. But I’m in a tricky situation because there’s…Well, there’s some things I just can’t tell you.”
Brian seems like he’s being honest, but I’m still questioning my decision to be here. I need to get what I came for and then get home.
“You can tell me about my mom, though, right?”
“Her, yes.” Brian smiles nervously. “Absolutely. What do you want to know?”
“Oh, a lot.” I start big. “Like, did she have other kids?”
Brian chuckles. “What do you mean, like, besides you and Felix? Not that I know of.”
“Right, but…I mean, is it possible that my mom didn’t actually die and she’s, like, my best friend’s mom? Like, you guys made up this other woman Cheryl to, like…cover up…the fact that…this other lady…” I trail off. Now that I try to articulate it, this theory makes close to zero sense. Negative sense, maybe.
“Hmm,” Brian says, looking concerned. “No, Cheryl’s your biological mother. I’m very sure of this. Seeing as I delivered you. Out of her.”
My sense of self deflates. Brian must think I’m very stupid.
“Yeah, no, that does make sense.”
We slow-stop at a traffic light. Brian is a careful driver.
“I know it’s probably been hard,” he says, turning to look at me, “to have your actual mother gone your whole life, so of course it’d be easier to imagine that the woman who gave birth to you is someone you’ve always known.”
That was nice to imagine.
“I really get it, man,” Brian says. “It’s just not the case here.”
“Okay,” I say. I feel like crying, and I don’t even know why.
At least I didn’t have sex with my sister.
“But I think the real problem here is, it sounds like no one’s been telling you a thing about Cheryl. Now’s your chance.”
A car honks behind us. The light is green.
Brian drives.
“Um…” I finally have what I want, and I can’t think of a thing to ask. “So, like, yo
u were my mom’s best friend but also her gynecologist? Wasn’t that a little weird? Checking out all her…lady business?”
I’m ashamed that this is my first question; I don’t even know why I asked it.
Brian laughs. “Well, we were close, and that’s my job. It was nothing I hadn’t seen before.”
“You mean on other ladies?” A motorcycle passes us. It startles me.
“Yes, that, but also, well…Before I figured myself out, your mother and I were together for a little while.”
“You were…”
“We were a couple. During our freshman year of college. I was confused, and we got along really well, so, for six months, we convinced ourselves we could be a couple.” He clears his throat. “It didn’t work out. Obviously. Your mom’s not my type.” He chuckles again as he stops at another light.
“My mom was your girlfriend?” In all my thinking about my biological mother, I usually focused on the years after she had met my dad. So her relationship with Brian Blum is surprising in and of itself, but also because it makes me realize there are huge chunks of my mom’s life I never even bothered to consider. It’s embarrassing.
“Yep, she was.”
I think about my mom and Brian back then, as college freshmen, more or less the same age as I am now. “How did you meet?”
“We lived in the same dorm. Actually, your mother was the first person I met when I got to school. I was moving all my stuff into my room, my parents awkwardly standing around helping—God, I haven’t thought about any of this in years—and your mom popped her head in, this ball of energy with huge, springy brown hair. ‘Hey, I’m Cheryl! I’m trying to meet everybody today so I can get it over with.’ I liked her right away.” Talking about my mother has relaxed Brian considerably, which relaxes me, too. I can almost forget that he jokingly threatened to kill me a few minutes ago.
Green light. We drive.
“You know, I think your mother knew I was gay before I did,” he says, almost to himself.
Okay. Guess Brian’s gay.
“And even once she knew, we stayed together for five more months. She later told me she liked the challenge, that she really thought she could make me fall in love with her, in spite of the fact that I was attracted to men. I have to say, she sort of succeeded.”