by Neve Wilder
“But he wouldn’t, because it’s just accepted and because it’s a stupid fucking question in the first place and because it’s none of his business. Asking him makes it sound like his sexuality is some sideshow curiosity to you, and I know you’re not that stupid. And you know I’d sit here and answer all the cock-sucking questions that pop into your mind if you really were interested in how my sexuality works.”
“Fine. I was being a douche. I apologize. Can we just move on from the subject now?” He squirmed like he was uncomfortable. We’d never gotten in a real argument before.
I shrugged and we both left it alone. It was turning out to be a day of uncomfortable silences. Until I got home.
Lainey was out in the front yard, a bunch of Barbie groupies surrounding her. She had a shoebox full of clothes next to her and was dressing and undressing them, arranging them at a little wooden table set I’d made her for Christmas.
I sprawled on the grass next to her and she passed me a pink-haired Barbie, humming contentedly.
“Which one is this? I forgot.”
“Fuchsia. She’s trouble.”
“Yeah? Stealing from the closets of other girls?”
“Mm-hmm. And their money.”
I grinned. “Oh yeah, she sounds like trouble all right.” I rolled onto my side to sit her down in one of the little chairs. “Are they having a dinner party, or what?” I used to spend more time playing with her when I was home from school, but I didn’t have a lot of chances to now.
“Yeah.” She finished dressing a blonde-haired doll with a star painted over her eye and sat her down next to my doll. “Mom says we may have to move into an apartment.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” I unstuck my T-shirt from my chest and vented some air inside. “But if we do, apartments are really cool too, because it’s like a bunch of houses all squished together. You’d probably make some new friends.”
“I don’t need any new friends. I like the ones I have. I like this house.” She bit her lip and looked down. “It’s Dad’s fault. For getting sick.”
Fuck me. I was in no way prepared for the depth of this conversation, so I muddled through as best as I could. “It’s not his fault, I promise. And besides, you’ll probably live all over the place over the course of your life. Look at me. We lived in a totally different house until I was your age. Then this one. Then I lived in a dorm, and now I’m back here.”
“I like this house,” she said, unmoved by my attempt. “My room is just how I like it.”
Jesus, was this what Rob had felt like talking to me last night? I cringed at the thought.
After Dad retreated to his room for the night, I went out to the garage and got the box of unpainted Civil War figurines Rob had given me a couple of days ago. He’d kept them and then decided he didn’t want them.
Dad had Antiques Roadshow on when I came in with the box, which I set at my feet as I dropped into the chair next to his bed.
“Three thousand dollars for a fucking Chinese fan. Can you believe that?” he asked, flicking a glance to me.
“Doesn’t mean they’ll get that.” I shrugged.
“What’ve you got?” He nodded down at my feet.
“Civil War figurines. You paint them.”
He squinted at me. “What for?”
“I dunno. I think it’s supposed to be relaxing or something. That guy I told you about that I’m working for gave them to me.”
“He doesn’t want them?”
“They were his dad’s, and no.”
“This the one whose parents died in the same year?”
“That’s the one.”
“You’re giving me a dead guy’s stuff?”
“Well. Yeah, I guess I am. I didn’t think about it being morbid.”
“And if I knock off, you’ll just what, donate them? What’s the fucking point?” There was a vicious gleam in his eye and I couldn’t tell if he was about to go on a morose tear or a cynical one. But I thought it’d be one of those two.
“Jesus, Dad. I just thought it would be something different to do. Rob said his dad really enjoyed it.”
“All the way to the grave.”
God, the last twenty-four hours were characterized by me being way off-base. On everything.
I picked up the box and stood. “You’re right. Dumb idea. I’ll just stick them in the garage. Let them decay alongside my art career.”
Dad’s expression softened and he reached to catch me by the wrist.
“Hey, morbid is my job. Leave them. I’ll take a look.”
I set the box back down, but the look on my dad’s face said he wasn’t done.
“What?”
“You need to finish school. You need to go back when it starts up in the fall.”
I didn’t want to get into this discussion again. It came up at least once a week. Dad wanted to let the house go into foreclosure if necessary and move into a small apartment so I could finish school. Mom and I both agreed that the disruption and financial stress of that would be worse in the long run. Not just for Dad, but for everyone. I hated these discussions because they required me to try to think through my dad’s sickness in practical terms all the way to the possibility of him dying and it was just…it was fucking hard. Trust my dad to confront it head on, though.
“I just need to hurry up and either get better or kick the bucket so the life insurance will kick in.” My mom had started crying the first time he’d said it, and it was one of the few times since Dad had gotten sick that I’d been truly angry with him. Even if he was right.
“I’ll look into a loan or something,” I told him as he poked through the box. I’d told him this before, too, but I never did it. I had a hard time getting myself pumped up about finishing a stupid fucking senior project when my dad was dying, my mom was exhausted, and the financial situation was as volatile as a meth lab.
But when I left Dad to the figurines, I did go into the garage, both so I could wallow and stare at an empty sketchbook page.
I picked up a pencil and put a few aimless lines on the page, feeling the hesitation in my grip. I knew if I kept going, I’d start to lose myself, so I kept at it until my phone chimed a half hour later with a text from Rob: Can I ask a favor of you?
9
Rob
The call I’d gotten earlier had been from my boss, Richard.
“So how’s everything going there?” He asked it in a way that I could tell was more than just friendly concern for my welfare.
Richard hired me in my mid-twenties and was a huge factor in escorting me up the ladder toward partnership, which I expected to happen within the next year. He was in many ways a second father figure, but I’d always had an idea that the relationship was subject to fluctuation, based upon my performance. I was, by every account, a model employee. I’d always liked the reliability of my job and routine and was only just now wrestling with the strange feelings of discontent that had taken hold of me. They could’ve been easily attributable to my dad’s death, or Sean, but I wasn’t sure. It felt like more than that.
“It’s moving along all right. What’s up?”
“Sean said he’s tried to reach you several times and can’t.”
I shut my eyes, my jaw clenching.
“Cell service can be finicky out here, but I haven’t seen any emails or voicemails from him. Something wrong with my accounts?”
“Well, Sean had some questions about the handling of a few.” I heard Richard shut the door to his office, then his voice lowered. “I think he might be in over his head. You think you could come in and talk to him? Stabilize a few things?”
My sabbatical was supposed to be Sean’s trial run to track him into a higher position, the one I’d vacate when I got my promotion. I had no intention of trying to ruin his career just because I was bitter, but it sounded as if he was busy doing a fine job of it himself, if I was reading between the lines correctly.
Just what I needed. I pressed my knuckles to the ridge between my b
rows. It was my mess with Sean in the first place and I oversaw the accounts, which made his mess my mess as well.
“Sure thing. I’ll be in tomorrow morning and I can telecommute every day after that until I get back next week.”
“That’d probably be best.”
I hung up and thumbed through my call log. I was right, Sean hadn’t left any messages. All the calls had come late at night after his wife was asleep. I called his office line and got his voicemail, so I left a brusque message letting him know that I’d be in the following day and expected all of our accounts to be ready for me to pore over. It was more warning than he deserved.
After Alex left, I sat in the kitchen reading through the letters in the box he’d found. I was on my third cup of coffee and the fog was finally clearing. As expected, I’d been wobbly and off while Alex was there, going back and forth in my mind over just sleeping with him and being done with it and continuing to ignore the temptation of him.
It wasn’t as if I was afraid of casual affairs. I’d had plenty. And a number of those had come after Sean. They were impersonal, flash-in-the-pan encounters thanks to Grindr, like the one with Alex. I’d forced myself into them out of some idea that they’d help me get over Sean faster. Jury was still out on that. The first hook-up after Sean had been predictably depressing and left me wallowing in comparisons. Sean’s slender fingers to the other guy’s thick ones, Sean’s mouth, his cock, his…everything. But it had gotten easier after that. Satisfying in a sexual release kind of way, but lacking the oomph that came from real attraction and connection.
The problem was that I did feel a connection with Alex, or at least a strong attraction, but part of me remained tender from the fallout with Sean, even now, and I had no desire to start another relationship. I was afraid that sex with someone I liked but who made no sense having in my life might just spread the bruise instead. If I put our lives on a diagram, we’d be heading in opposite directions, so why tempt fate just because the sex would probably be amazing?
I pulled the shoebox back to me again. There was a three-inch stack of correspondence bound with a rubber band that appeared to be every letter my mom had sent my father early in their relationship when he’d been a teaching assistant and she a secretary in Jersey. The photographs were mostly ones I hadn’t seen before. There was Atlantic City, my dad’s arm draped loosely around my mom’s shoulder, her smiling face and fingers flashing a peace sign captured as she’d blinked. The better version where her eyes were open lay framed and wrapped in one of the boxes of stuff I was keeping. I remembered studying the picture as a teen, wondering over these kids who had become my parents. Now I saw myself in my father’s strong jawline, the straight brow that looked as if it was underlining my forehead. My eyes were my mother’s, at least in shape and coloring. The twinkle and lightness she’d had in hers, though, I didn’t think I’d inherited that.
I flipped through a few other stacks of photos. Mom and Dad in Yosemite. Dad receiving an award. Mom’s hands laid atop her swollen belly. Some group photos with a bunch of people I didn’t know. Dad with a lanky guy’s arm slung low around his waist standing in front of a podium in the auditorium of New City College in Jersey, where Dad had been a professor.
I studied that one. There was something vaguely familiar about the guy. But there was no information on the back of the photo, so I moved on to the other stack of letters. These, instead of being from a set decade, seemed to span several, the first envelopes yellowed and faded, the last one in the pack as fresh as if it had been mailed yesterday. There wasn’t a return address on any of them, but they were all addressed to my father in the same hand.
I started with the most recent, dated a month before my father died, then I went back to the first. Most of them were sent to my dad’s office at the college, but more recent ones were addressed directly to the house. I kept waiting for searing anger, for an overwhelming sense of hurt or betrayal, but neither came as I sat there.
After I’d read through all of them, I called Summer.
“Did you know Dad had an affair?”
“What? Hang on.” I heard a curse, a door shutting, then silence. “Okay. Now what?”
“I’ve got a box of letters on the table here that was in the air register. A bunch of them are from Mom when they were first dating, but there’s a whole stack from some other woman after he met Mom. After they were married. I mean, there’s one here from a month before he died.”
“Who is it?” she was whispering in the phone, though I wasn’t sure why.
“I have no idea. There’s no return address and there’s only a letter for the signature, an ‘M’. ”
“God, who do we know of their friends whose name starts with an ‘M’?”
“A lot of people, really.” It was far too late in life for this to be a devastating realization, but it still landed in my chest like a weight and not even necessarily because he’d cheated on my mother—though there was some part of that weighing on me—but because it meant I knew him even less than I thought I had.
My father had always fulfilled the role of Father, capital F, but there were pieces of him I’d never been able to cut through, layers to him that I sensed but was never given access to. My mom had been full of personality and quirks that made her breathe in my mind to this day. I could tell you what she’d say on any topic. Dad, he’d remained part mystery, a man composed by his dogma and dedication rather than characterization. Maybe that’s what all fathers were like. I didn’t know. When he’d started painting the Civil War figurines, I’d been surprised. Even though he had been a history professor, I’d never known him to be interested in the Civil War. The books on our bookshelves and the eras he’d talked about most often centered around Russia, the Cold War, and Nazi Germany.
And now here was another man, also my father, who’d had an extended affair, who’d cared enough to save all of his letters and photographs too shitty to earn a place on the mantel.
“Rob,” Summer prodded me, “what do the letters say?”
“Well, a lot. Apparently Dad was supposed to meet her at some conference in 1983 and didn’t show up. But then he must have seen her again, because in 1990 there’s a letter talking about what a good time she had with him in Atlanta. She talks about a roller coaster.”
“Dad went on a roller coaster?”
“I know.”
Then Summer gasped.
“Oh my god, I remember that trip, don’t you? It was for some research project. He brought us back some Braves pennants. I was so disappointed, like what a terrible souvenir.” She laughed. “God, this is weird, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“You think Mom knew?”
“Who knows?” I couldn’t recall ever seeing any sign of marital strife between them.
“I haven’t really studied everything and I don’t have time to right now, but just glancing over everything it looks like she was a professor too, maybe? But I’m not sure where.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter now, though, does it?”
“No, I guess not.”
After I got off the phone with Summer, I rested my chin on my hand, my foot idly running back and forth over Winslow’s tummy as he snoozed under the table. Flipping through the photographs once more, I searched for the mystery woman—or man, the longer I considered it—like they might have an ‘A’ stamped on their forehead. Winslow let out a contented groan.
Shit, Winslow. I’d forgotten about him when I’d said I’d return to work the next day. I didn’t want to take him with me yet—I hadn’t even talked to the HOA about getting him approved in my apartment complex, and barring the neighbors who’d kept him before, and who appeared to be on vacation, there was only Alex.
I insisted on dropping Winslow off.
Alex insisted on picking him up.
“I live with my parents. It’s kind of embarrassing,” he said when I gave up texting and finally called. My fing
ers were tired of trying to argue in tiny type.
“Plenty of people your age do. Hell, plenty of people my age do. How is that embarrassing?”
“I have posters on my wall and my room’s a mess.”
I closed my eyes and took a breath. “I’m not coming to have a slumber party with you, I’m dropping off a dog.”
“Too bad for you, then, I’m very entertaining at slumber parties.”
“You’re impossible.”
“Oh no, I’m definitely possible.”
I exhaled loud enough to transmit my exasperation through the line, though I was smiling on my end. Once again, I felt tongue tied. Not out of nervousness, but because of my vehement attraction to him and my equally vehement desire not to give in to it. I was starting to get the idea that Alex wasn’t only onto it, but exploiting this fact. The whole business between us was beginning to seem like a game of who would crack first. I had bad news for him, though. I’d had lots of practice at self-denial.
It was settled that he’d come get Winslow. I had Winslow’s carrier ready by the door because I’d learned the hard way that small packages had no trouble making large messes of a car they didn’t want to be in.
Alex had on an old Nirvana T-shirt and the paint-spattered jeans he usually wore that had enough holes in them to make the roads in New York City jealous.
“Have you been painting?”
He had a dark smear of what looked like ink or charcoal on the underside of his jaw.
“Oh. Yeah.” He lifted a hand to feel around his neck and jaw until my nod showed him the location and he wiped it clean. “Trying to get back in the habit of…anything creative, I guess. Look,” he said, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him. I let Winslow out of the chokehold I had him in and set him back on the floor. “Am I toeing the professional line too much?”
I gave him an appraising stare. There was open curiosity on his face and something else too, a kind of undercurrent of determination or defiance that seemed out of context. I didn’t understand it unless he was embarrassed about last night. But even if I thought he’d had part of his body over the line, nothing had happened between us that warranted me addressing it. It would just make things more awkward and with little more than a week left of working together, it didn’t seem worth it.