Bella? Roberta?
Rang no bells. Not even the faintest little ding-dong .
Admitting the truth wasn’t as difficult as I might have imagined. I shook my head to indicate that I hadn’t known the girl’s name that night, but Thea’s earlier counsel about trying honesty continued to resonate, and I knew that although my headshake may have been truthful, it hadn’t been either sufficient, or honest.
“No, Adam. I don’t think I knew her name that night. I wish I could say I did.”
“Yeah.”
His “yeah” was dismissive. Nothing more than a polite version of “get the hell out of here.”
I said, “I’m not proud of who I was back then, Adam. It was … It’s hard to explain … Growing up is, I mean.”
“Yeah?”
“What happened when I was younger. It’s—”
He exhaled loudly through his nose to interrupt me. “I’m what happened when you were younger. I’m what happened.”
Ouch. “I never knew. That’s not an excuse. It’s not right that I didn’t know. But it’s who I was. I never gave a moment’s thought back then to anything about …”
I lost momentum as I struggled to figure out how to relate to a fourteen-year-old boy some context about being twenty-three, about being the center of the universe, or about the night I’d had anonymous sex with his mother in Georgia.
Bored with my nakedly self-serving act, waiting for me to crawl away with my tail between my legs, he started flicking through channels on the remote control. Whatever channel I was on as I fumbled for a way to finish my sentence and to rationalize away my behavior was the very first casualty of Adam’s attention.
Not too surprisingly, he’d had all of his dad that he could tolerate that night.
I watched Thea undress. First her pale pink pointes, then her satin pants. Finally she twisted the long-sleeve cotton top over her head in that one patented corkscrew motion I never tired of seeing. She curled next to me in our bed around midnight. Her flesh felt hot and lush with just a hint of sweat sticking her skin to mine. The draperies hung open, as they did most nights, and in the distance the purple-black outline of the craggy-topped Rockies made a shadowy silhouette against the midnight blue of the western sky. She kissed my shoulder once and then again, and right at the moment when I was steeling myself for the reality that she was about to press me for details about that fateful tryst with Adam’s mother—had Adam said something to her about the laundry room? I hoped not, Jesus —she said, “So why do you think Adam came today, babe?”
Adam hadn’t told either of us much—he was parsing out the details of his personal history as though they came from a ration that needed to last a long, long time—but since he’d reminded me about the washing machine in Buckhead I had managed to narrow down my recall enough to be pretty sure when the encounter had occurred. In my early twenties I’d only been to Georgia once—a trip that lasted a couple of days, total. I’d been visiting an old college friend who was in graduate school at Emory back in ’87. With some effort, prompted by the clues Adam had provided, I had also recalled a few foggy details about the pre-Halloween party at the Buckhead McMansion, and I’d pieced together some even foggier reminiscences about the young woman with whom I’d coupled—and whom I’d apparently impregnated—in the laundry room off the butler’s pantry during the height of the premature celebration of All Hallow’s Eve.
Bella had been tall and skinny. Back then she had short, blond hair and bright eyes. The washing machine had been a top loader. She and I had joked about getting it agitating without even starting it up.
Okay, I’d joked about getting it agitating without even starting it up.
Thea was surprised but not shocked by any of the day’s developments; she knew who I’d been when I was a twenty-three-year-old kid. It wasn’t a secret between us what kind of life I’d lived before we met. During our courtship, while I’d been busy trying to convince her of the sincerity of my affections, she’d made it clear that she’d pushed away plenty of guys like me during her single days. Guys who never, ever put a girl and a responsibility in the same sentence. And she’d told me about it in such a way that I was confident that despite her caution she had been ambushed by a few guys like me. The scars from those encounters were faint—Thea had made sure they healed well—but they were there. No doubt.
Despite that, all she was seeking from me at that moment together in our marital bed were my thoughts about why my apparent undiscovered progeny had arrived that day—that day—at our door in Colorado. The question perplexed me, too, once I got past how grateful I was that Thea was able to postpone the more prurient aspects of her curiosity. I was also insightful enough to know that I wasn’t ready to provide complicated answers to any inquiries that had to do with the teenage boy who was watching the History Channel in the guest room downstairs.
I said, “To see who his father is, I guess. That has to be a strong pull for a kid his age.”
“You think it’s that simple?” she said. Obviously she didn’t think it was that simple. Not even close to that simple. She threaded her long fingers through the sparse hair between the nipples on my chest. There was no seduction in her touch, just connection. Her voice was as understanding as could be, but I knew she was prodding me to dig a little deeper.
Okay, a lot deeper.
I said, “His mother’s told him all about the … time he was conceived. The details, I mean. Where we … you know. A kid his age? Don’t you think that’s odd for a parent to … I find that …”
“Inconceivable?” Thea said with a tiny laugh.
Although the humor was spot on, the joke was on me, and the word hurt a little bit as she said it. Recognizing that I’d just started a conversation I didn’t want to finish, I said, “Adam’s watching some history something on TV.” I knew at some level that I was trying to race through the channels with Thea as my son had done with me earlier.
She found the fact that my son was watching history ironic, of course. “Well, then,” she said.
“He’ll tell me why he’s here when he’s ready,” I said, trying to persuade her of my thoughtfulness, my tone swollen with pretense that I was drawing on a wealth of knowledge about the motivations of teenage boys. The reality was that I remembered only one particular adolescent motivation with any clarity. And that was the one that had endured far beyond my adolescence and had gotten me into trouble with Bella.
“Or when he senses that you are,” Thea replied.
Many honest words were spoken in our house that day, but perhaps none any more truthful than those.
Thea’s last thought that astonishing night? They were a mother’s words, nurturing words, all-inclusive words. Mostly, though, they were hopeful, surprising words. She said, “We have a son.”
Her breathing revealed that, within heartbeats, she was asleep.
Me? I wasn’t.
My new therapist’s reaction to my narrative? In a tone that had no inflection whatsoever, he said, “You had a daughter. Before that you had a son.”
I thought it was his way of letting me know that he knew there was much more to this story.
He was right, of course.
But he didn’t know the half of it.
TWENTY-TWO
I made sure my therapist was paying attention—truly paying attention—before I continued.
“While I was on the phone the next day and Thea was in the shower, Adam left. Just walked out the door, no note, no good-bye—nothing. I drove around the neighborhood looking for him for a while, but he was gone. His mother, Roberta—Bella—called our house a couple of hours later. Thea answered. Bella was concerned, but not frantic, and wondered if we’d seen Adam.”
“You’re saying his mother hadn’t known that he was visiting you?” Alan Gregory said.
“You’re quick,” I said to the shrink. My unkindness was reflexive. I didn’t give it a thought.
He did. “This makes you uncomfortable, talking about your so
n with me. When you’re uncomfortable you seem to get a little—what’s a good word—unpleasant? Testy?”
I was surprised to recognize the fact that his words didn’t add up to an accusation, just a question. I wasn’t accustomed to being confronted without being accused. In my family growing up they were Siamese twins.
“Yeah, I get unpleasant.” Left unsaid: That’s a problem?
“I wanted to be certain we both recognized the tendency. It may prove relevant, that’s all. Go on.”
“They were living outside Cincinnati. Bella was separated from her second husband. Thea said Bella sounded nice; she liked her. Friendly, unassuming, just like Adam had said. They talked about Adam’s time with us. They talked about Berk.”
I thought my psychologist would say something then—maybe hoped he would—but he didn’t.
I started talking about Berkeley, what a character she was, when I noticed my therapist’s eyes start to squint. “What?” I asked.
“Tangent?” he asked.
“Probably,” I admitted. “His mother said Adam had run before. A few times. She called them his ‘adventures’ and made them sound kind of romantic. But he’d always called and let her know where he was. This time he’d been gone for almost three days and she hadn’t heard from him. She was getting concerned.”
I paused to give my therapist a chance to impart some wisdom, or maybe to take a gratuitous shot at Roberta’s laissez-faire parenting philosophy, but he either didn’t have any wisdom for me, or any spare criticism for Bella, or maybe he was just one constipated son of a bitch.
“You got nothing?” I said.
He had a little something. “Bella thought of calling you. Despite the fact that she had no reason to think you even knew that Adam existed—literally—she must have sensed something to suspect you might know where he was. Why else would she call your house looking for him?”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
“No?”
“No.” I could have stopped there, but I knew I was already appearing petulant to him. I wanted to be petulant—I felt like being petulant—but I wanted to appear reasonable.
“Adam showed up in Ohio the next day. Bella called us back and said he was fine. I spoke with her that time. She asked me to let her know if he ever showed up again. She was curt. But her voice brought back memories from Buckhead. You ever notice that Southern girls sing when they talk?”
“Yeah?” my therapist said in reply, answering me without telling me a damn thing about his impression of the melody in Southern girls’ voices.
“Back then?” I said. “She was a nice girl. I was an asshole.”
Again, nothing. Why am I paying this guy?
I went on. “That day on the phone? Even though she wasn’t in the best mood, she was still a nice girl. I wasn’t as much of an asshole. I took some pride in that. I did.”
I didn’t know that’s where I was going with the conversation.
Did he?
I’m thinking he did.
Maybe that’s why he’d been so taciturn.
Maybe that’s why I was paying the guy.
TWENTY-THREE
Lizzie recovered quickly from the run-in with the woman in Papaya King.
“You have unfinished business. I don’t say that to be critical, but rather to acknowledge how difficult the situation is. I have a lot of empathy for your situation. Any parent would want to feel that his connection with his child was … secure before—”
“With Adam? You’re talking about Adam?”
“With Adam,” she confirmed.
“I go back to the question of relevance. Why is that important to you, your … organization?”
Her mood had darkened; the captivating brilliance was gone from her eyes, replaced by something brooding. “We’ve learned—sometimes the hard way—that this arrangement works best when our clients are at peace with the world. When we’ve run into resistance from clients in the past about carrying out end-of-life arrangements, the culprit is often unfinished business—occasionally a pending deal involving significant money or major work issues, but mostly it’s unfinished emotional business. Family business, usually. Doubts about living inevitably create doubts about dying. My experience is that the doubts about living that haunt us most are the ones about our children. Experience has taught our organization that for our service to be maximally effective, we must do everything in our power to ensure that our prospective clients are secure financially, secure emotionally, and secure … psychologically. Being in a settled place with your children is an important part of that.”
I wanted the sparkle back in her eyes. I gave her a sly grin and asked, “Financially, emotionally, psychologically.” I ticked off the three criteria on my fingers. “So what’s my score? One out of three? Two out of three?”
She brightened suddenly, poked me in the ribs, and skipped ahead of me. For a moment, I congratulated myself on flirting her back into a good mood, and then I stepped back and realized I’d done it without learning what monster had darkened her soul in the first place.
I thought I shouldn’t have let that go .
“I take it that’s a one,” I said. “So I get an F minus.”
She pirouetted and began walking backward, facing me. Doesn’t take a genius to know that it’s not a wise form of ambulation in Manhattan. “You have money,” she said. “We both know that. So you get a one, at least. Rich boys always get a one.”
“So do pretty girls,” I said.
“True. And pretty boys get a half.”
“So I’m a pretty boy?” I asked, too desperately wanting her to say “yes.”
She didn’t answer me.
“I’m up to one and a half, then. Trash can,” I said.
She swerved around it as though she had radar.
“Old lady, shopping cart.”
That time she turned and looked. The sidewalk behind her was clear.
“Liar.”
“Sometimes, yes. Trick is knowing when I’m lying, and figuring out why. Back at Papaya King you told me you don’t like to be pushed around. Well, I don’t like to be told no,” I said. “I’m not accustomed. My money’s good. And I’m a big boy; I know what I’m buying into.”
Once again, as though she had inborn, back-scanning radar, Lizzie stopped just before she would have smacked into a stack of flimsy wooden crates jammed with fresh fruits and vegetables that were on their way into the cellar chute of a restaurant kitchen. I closed the gap on the sidewalk between us so that I was close enough to lean over and kiss her.
She hadn’t refreshed her lipstick since Papaya King and I could still smell the tartness of kraut on her breath.
“I read your profile,” she said. “I know about your penchant for …”
I found it sweet that she was trying to find an uncritical way to complete her thought.
“You know about my penchants? I’ve been told that they’re, you know, larger than … most men’s … penchants.”
“You’re making this difficult,” she cooed.
“My penchants have always gotten me into trouble. But you probably know that, too. If you know about Adam.”
“We do thorough background … investigations.”
I decided to let her off the hook. “Then you must know everything about Antonio. You know about my brother, too? I bet you do.” But I didn’t give her any more space physically. I was still inches from her.
“Conrad?”
“Connie.”
“Connie then. MS, Princeton.”
“ALS, Yale.”
“What … ever.”
I realized from her tone that she’d known all along that Connie was ALS, Yale.
“Then you know that I have reasons—great reasons—for signing up with your company. Objective reasons.” I’d intentionally emphasized her word. “I know what dying slowly is like. I know the price of not planning for the unexpected. More than most men, I know the value … of living. The capital L kind. To the
fullest.”
She seemed to be considering my argument.
“Your brother would detest what we do.”
She was right.
I detested that she knew that about him. How the hell, I wondered, does she know that about Connie?
“What makes you so sure?” I said.
“You disagree?”
“No. I’m wondering whether you spoke with him.”
She shrugged.
She flitted her gaze down to my mouth. “Are you planning to kiss me?” she asked.
“I’m thinking about it,” I said. I hadn’t been, but I started.
“Don’t.”
Don’t think about it, I wondered, or don’t kiss you?
“You got sad before, when we were talking about Adam. What was that? Let me in a little, Lizzie.”
I hadn’t intended the double entendre that was inbred in my choice of words, and as soon as I recognized it, its presence unsettled me.
She either didn’t see the dual meanings, or she didn’t care. She didn’t yield an inch of space, either corporally or rhetorically. “We sell peace of mind. The fulfillment rate on our policies? It’s not that large. The percentage of our clientele that end up in situations requiring us to provide end-of-life services would surprise you.”
“Because it’s small?”
“Yes. Young people, like yourself, tend to die suddenly. Accidents, heart attacks, strokes. Some chronic health tragedies—cancers, cardiac illness—do linger long enough for us to intervene. But we don’t sell death. And, although we are prepared to provide end-of-life services in the case of a prolonged condition, we’re not in the euthanasia business. Don’t misunderstand that. We’re in the quality of life business. What we sell, and what we do very, very well, is we sell assurance that if the worst occurs, your last days will be on your own terms. That … is true peace of mind.”
“Yes?” I’d covered the rational parts of her argument already on my own. Despite her eloquence I wasn’t that impressed with her soliloquy.
I still wanted to kiss her, though.
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