So Lyrical

by Trish Cook

  “I have something to tell you, too,” he said, looking completely uncomfortable now. “Mac had to go out of town unexpectedly. I’m Shamus.”

  “Shamus?” Tears sprang to my eyes. “Where did Mac go? When will he be back?”

  “He had to head to Europe to visit a sick family member and won’t be back until late next week, the earliest,” Shamus said, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead with an expensive-looking handkerchief. “But I can see now what you meant about your news being a big surprise. I knew that Mac and Bliss had a big thing going that summer, but I never realized they’d had a child together.”

  “Yup,” I said miserably. Then I had a thought. “Do you think we could call him together now?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Shamus said. “He’s in flight as we speak, and I have no idea where he’s staying once he gets there.”

  “Let’s e-mail him, then.”

  “He was in such a hurry to leave, I don’t think he brought his laptop.”

  “Oh, well,” I said, hitting probably the lowest point of my life. “I’ve already waited seventeen years to meet him. What’s a few more days?” The laugh I tried to force came out sounding more like a sob.

  Shamus put his arm around my shoulder. “I’m sure Mac will do his best to make up for lost time once he gets back.”

  I laid my head back against his chest. I felt completely drained, like there was nothing left inside of me. “How well do you know him?” I asked Shamus, hoping some crumbs of information would feed my need until my dad got back from his trip.

  “Very,” Shamus said. “I’d say I’m closer to him than anyone else in the world.”

  “Then can you tell me all about him? About his life?”

  “That wouldn’t be fair to Mac,” Shamus said. “I’m sure he’ll want to tell you everything himself.”

  “Fine,” I said miserably, getting up to leave. I stuck my hand out. “Thanks for all your help, Shamus. I really appreciate it.”

  Shamus stared at my hand and then wrapped me up in a big bear hug instead. “Mac’s one hell of a lucky guy,” he said. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

  I felt all safe and warm, like Shamus was my new guardian angel. “Maybe since you’re the one bringing us together, you could be his stand-in at the end of the race. I’m meeting my mom at the Bitter End after the marathon. It’s right near the finish line.”

  “I’ll see what I can do to clear my schedule, Trace,” Shamus said. “But I’m pretty booked up tomorrow with business.”

  When I got back to the hotel, I made some lame excuse to Bebe and Mr. Steve about being tired and locked myself in my room for the rest of the day. They didn’t seem to mind in the least bit and took off in search of fun.

  “Where are you going?” I asked them, just to be polite.

  “Buffalo Joe’s,” Mr. Steve said, pointing to a big ad in the Reader of five guys in humongous Afro wigs. “Some retro band called Dubble Bubble is playing there for happy hour.”

  “Looks like a blast,” I said, picking up the phone to order room service. “Have fun.”

  My weird combination of dishes—pasta, oatmeal, and beer—was delivered shortly after those two lovebirds left. I had totally lost my appetite after meeting with Shamus, but I hoped I could choke down at least one of my carbo-loaded selections. I needed energy for the big race tomorrow.

  I twirled spaghetti around my fork, trying to get out of my current funky state. I had been so close—this close—to meeting my dad. I even had his phone number in my hand. I could conceivably be talking to him in a week. So why did I feel so shitty?

  After a lot of thought, I realized what had happened wasn’t the end of the world. It’s not like I had met my dad and he had run away from me the same way he had run from my mom all those years ago. He was just on a trip, and I’d just have to dig down deep and muster one more week’s worth of patience.

  The next morning, Bebe and Mr. Steve were trying to sneak in the hotel room as I was getting ready to leave. Both had their pants legs rolled up to the knees, and they were wearing these wild Afros.

  “Good night?” I asked them.

  Bebe let out a little scream and put her hand to her heart. “You scared the crap out of me, Trace.”

  “Nice hair,” I said, patting her wig.

  “We paid the guys in the band for them,” Mr. Steve said. He and Bebe collapsed into a fit of giggles.

  “I just need an hour power nap and I’ll be as good as new,” Bebe said, crawling into bed.

  Mr. Steve wasn’t far behind her. “Me, too,” he said, snuggling up against her. “We’ll meet you at the finish line.”

  I gave Bebe a quick kiss and hopped a cab to Balboa Park. The place was already packed to the gills with people who looked like serious runners. I pushed my way through the crowd until I found my posse of nine-minute-milers.

  A gut-wrenching hour later, the starting horn sounded. It took a full five minutes before I could even move across the start line. “I hope they subtract that off our final time,” I told a guy standing next to me. He was dressed in a white satin jumpsuit, an Elvis wig, and blue suede sneakers.

  “Oh, please. I just hope I finish in one piece,” he said, pointing to his crazy outfit. “This seemed like such a good idea at the time.”

  “C’mon, you hunka hunka burnin’ love,” I said, grabbing his hand and pulling him along. “Let’s get moving.”

  I was so caught up in the excitement, I could practically feel the adrenaline coursing through my veins. I tried to contain myself because I knew I’d need to tap into that energy later, but I was totally out of control. “This rocks!” I screamed as I caught an earful of the first band. Elvis gave me a pained smile and a thumbs-up.

  I was feeling lighter than air and trying to etch everything about the experience onto my mind so I could remember it forever. The gorgeous scenery. The enthusiastic cheerleaders, encouraging us to keep going. The rockin’ bands that made me forget I would be running for the next four hours. My shoes flap-flap-flapped to the music and it all felt effortless. My training was certainly paying off.

  At mile thirteen, I caught sight of Bebe waving a sign that said Rock on, Trace. I was impressed. My mom could apparently still party like a high school kid and be fresh as a daisy the next day.

  “Where’s Mr. Steve?” I panted as I ran over for a hug.

  “Back at the hotel, trying to recover from last night,” she said, laughing. “He’s with you in spirit, though.”

  As I raced away, Bebe yelled after me, “You’re halfway there!”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the band launched into Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.” “ ‘Ohhh, we’re halfway there,’ ” I sang at the top of my lungs, not even caring that it was one of Bebe’s songs that I loved to hate. “ ‘Take my hand and we’ll make it, I swear . . .’ ”

  Elvis was holding his side and looking pained. “I don’t know if I’m gonna make it,” he told me. “I swear.”

  “Oh, you will. I’ll help you every step of the way,” I said, feeling magnanimous. A fleeting thought went through my mind—that it was Zander I should be in step with this entire race and not the King—but I pushed it out before it even had a chance to get settled in. I’d done enough crying, moping, and freaking out about Zander over the past few weeks. It was time to move ahead into my future.

  I didn’t see Bebe again until mile twenty. “You look amazing, honey. Like you’re not even hurting,” Bebe said, beaming with pride. “Only six miles left to go. I’ll see you at the finish line.”

  Only six more miles? I got totally revved. I had run twenty miles twice during training. What was six more? Less than an hour’s worth of running. No big deal.

  Elvis seemed to brighten, too. “I think I’m actually gonna make it,” he told me, smiling for the first time in hours.

  We slowed for a water stop, and that’s when I came toe-to-toe with the dreaded wall. “I’m just gonna walk while I drink this,” I to
ld Elvis.

  “Oh, no, you’re not. That’s the kiss of death.”

  “Smooch, smooch,” I said, pissed that this guy I didn’t know from a hole in the wall was telling me what to do. “My hips are about to fall out of their sockets. I need to stop for a second.”

  “No walking, girlfriend. Run! Run!” screamed a cheerleader in blue and gold, waving her pom-poms in my face.

  I grabbed one pom and then another, throwing the damn things across the road.

  “Bitch,” she muttered, picking her way through the runners to retrieve her precious pom-poms.

  “You got something against UCLA?” Elvis asked me. “It’s a pretty good school.”

  A crazy thought hit me just then—one that felt so good, I knew it must be the right decision. “Nope. I wouldn’t go there. I just realized it’s not for me.”

  “Where is for you, then?”

  “The land of the Beheaded Deer,” I said happily.

  “What?”

  “I’ll be a freshman at Fairfield University in the fall,” I said.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “That’s what they all say,” I told him, not caring at all that it lacked the same name recognition as UCLA.

  The exhilaration of making that momentous decision got me through the next mile or so. And then I got completely fed up. “Whose freakin’ brilliant idea was it to run this marathon anyway?”

  “Uhhhhh . . . I’m guessing now . . . yours?” Elvis said.

  “Well, I’m an idiot,” I said. “If I could find a wheelchair, I’d be so outta here it’s not funny.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Elvis said. “Just hang in there.”

  “I do, too. Can someone get me a wheelchair?” I yelled into the crowd.

  The paramedics started running my way, but Elvis waved them off. “You are not quitting on me now,” he told me. “You helped me. Now it’s my turn to help you.”

  “The finish line might as well be a million miles away,” I groaned to my table-turning friend.

  Now it was Elvis who grabbed my hand and forced me to run. I felt like a loping, lopsided, wounded animal. “Can’t you just shoot me and put me out of my misery?”

  He smiled and kept dragging me along. “Sorry, no.”

  Not nearly soon enough, the finish line came into sight. “Oh, my God, it’s finally here,” I said. Tears of relief streamed down my cheeks.

  “We did it, didn’t we?” Elvis said, sounding like he couldn’t believe it himself.

  The band launched into “Born to Run” and we started sprinting. Knowing someone was sitting in for Mac while he was away, I didn’t even bother to glance up at the stage.

  “ ‘Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run’!” Elvis and I sang as we crossed the finish line pumping our fists. The King singing the Boss with a Beheaded Deer—now, that was one for the photo album.

  I said my good-byes to my new best friend Elvis and grabbed one of those metallic race blankets, trying to get my body to stop shaking. Once I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to have an aneurysm, or embolism, or whatever it’s called, I started limping my way toward the Bitter End. Fitting name, I thought.

  Even though the restaurant was only three blocks away, I had totally underestimated how beat-up and exhausted I would feel after the race. With me gimping, it took a good fifteen minutes to get there.

  I walked in and pushed my way through the crowd, trying to spot Bebe. But the place was so packed, all I could actually see were other people’s heads and shoulders. I finally grabbed a chair and stood on top of it, scanning the crowd. Still no sight of her.

  I felt a tap on my leg. “I’ll be down in a sec,” I said, not even glancing at whoever it was. “I’ve just got to find someone first.”

  “You already found me.” I looked down. It was Shamus. And he was all sweaty and dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, Levi’s, and boots. The working-class hero look was such a contrast to his business attire the day before, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to give it a lot of thought.

  Hopping down from my perch, I gave him a huge hug. “Thanks so much for coming,” I said. “It means a lot to me to know a good friend of my dad’s was here to share this with me.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about that, Trace,” he said as Bebe finally spotted me and started winding her way through the throngs of people to get to us. As she got closer, I saw that her mouth was hanging open and she looked like she’d just seen a ghost.

  “Mac?” she said, her lips still formed into a perfect SpaghettiO. “Is that really you?”

  “Close but no cigar, Bebe,” I said, putting my arm around her. “This is his friend Shamus.”

  “Actually, you’re both kind of right,” Shamus said, staring at the ground and shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

  “What?” I screamed, furious. “You’re Mac?”

  “Well, technically . . . ,” he said, trailing off.

  I just lost it then. “You mean to tell me you lied to my face? That you ran away from me, just like you ran away from my mother?” I lunged at Shamus and started beating his chest with my fists. “You asshole! How could you do that to me?”

  Bebe pulled me off of him the best she could. When I finally stopped flailing my arms around, I buried my head in her shoulder and sobbed uncontrollably. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. Not by a long shot.

  “You were so right, Bebe,” I said. “We’ve made it this far without any testosterone interfering with our relationship. There’s no need to start now.”

  “Trace, you should be proud. You accomplished your goal. You found your dad,” she said, stroking my hair. “Don’t you at least want to hear his side of the story?”

  “No,” I said, still sniffling into her shoulder. “Because his side of the story is that he made up some stupid name and pretended he was someone else to get out of a mess he made a billion years ago at the Jersey Shore.”

  Shamus looked pleadingly at Bebe. “I did make a huge mess out of things, didn’t I, Bliss?”

  “That’s an understatement,” she said.

  “I could have kicked myself for breaking up with you that way,” Shamus told her. “I eventually swallowed my pride and called your dorm at Fairfield, but they said you never showed up at school. Then I tried you at your parents’ house, but they said you didn’t live there anymore and wouldn’t tell me where you’d gone.”

  “Bullshit, Mac,” Bebe said, as angry as I was now. “My mother definitely would have relayed the message that the father of her unborn grandchild called. In fact, she would’ve flown all the way to Europe to pick you up herself.”

  “But she wouldn’t have told you Shamus called, right?” he said. “And if she did, you wouldn’t have known who it was.”

  “That’s because it’s an alias,” I hissed. “The one you use to run away from your problems.”

  “It’s not an alias,” Shamus said gently. “It’s my real name. Shamus McDonohue.”

  “I was in love with a guy named Shamus?” Bebe said, and started to laugh. It really was a ridiculous name, especially for a twenty-one-year-old guy. I guess he had finally grown into it at forty-whatever.

  “Bebe, how could you be so . . . ?” I was going to say “stupid,” but then I remembered both Brina and I had been convinced until a week ago that Sully’s name was Peter Liam Sullivan and not Sullivan Liam Peterson. So if Bebe had thought her love was really named Mac Donohue instead of Shamus McDonohue, I couldn’t really blame her. I turned my attention to my dad instead. “How could you be so cruel, pretending you were someone else yesterday?”

  Shamus hung his head. “I . . . I guess I panicked,” he said. “I had no idea what you had to tell me, Trace. I was actually hoping all those e-mails were from you, Bliss. I thought maybe you were using a fake name to find me.”

  “Keep dreaming, lover boy,” Bebe said, looking pleased that she could deliver some hurt back to him after all this time. “Just
like I dreamed for years that you’d pick up one of my books, realize it was me, and come begging my forgiveness.”

  “Books?”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling incredibly protective of my mom now. “Didn’t you ever realize your Bliss was really Belinda Tillingham, the famous romance novelist?”

  “Bliss, that’s great,” Shamus said, looking truly happy for her. “I would have tried to contact you if I knew. But I’m afraid I don’t make it into that section of Borders very often.”

  “That’s OK,” she said, patting his hand. “The truth is, we both screwed up.”

  “I still want to know why you lied to me,” I said, interrupting their peacemaking.

  “When I figured out the surprise was you, Trace, and that you’re my daughter . . . ,” he said, “well, needless to say, I completely freaked out. So I misled you to buy some time until I could make sense of everything in my head.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you the next time we got together?”

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t thinking that far ahead.”

  “You were going to disappear again, just like you always do. Right?”

  “I promise I’ll never disappear again,” Shamus said fiercely. “I want to be a part of your life, Trace. I really do.”

  I stared at him, stone-faced.

  “Here, let’s try this,” he said, extending his hand toward me. “I’m Shamus, and I’m proud to be your dad. May I please be part of your life?”

  I felt so lost, I buried my face in Bebe’s shirt again and starting crying even harder than last time. “I don’t know what to do, Bebe. Help me,” I whispered.

  “She says she’d love to get to know you, Mac . . . I mean Shamus,” Bebe said. “She’d absolutely love to.”

  CHAPTER 18

  When my nervous breakdown was over, Bebe and I caught a cab back to the hotel, with Shamus promising to call me so we could plan an extended father-daughter visit when school was over. My muscles were screaming and my head was reeling from everything that had happened.

  “I can’t believe it,” I kept repeating over and over.