by Meg Napier
“Yes, but she only gave me half my genes. Where in Arlington are you?”
“Not far from the Washington Blvd. exit. And you obviously try to avoid certain topics as eagerly as I do. What in the world did your father do that was so terrible? Even if he cheated on your mother, or hurt her or you, that doesn’t mean you’d do anything like that.”
Evan shook his head slightly, then blew out a breath. “This is like one of those silly late night conversations in college where you blurt out things because it’s two in the morning, and you’ve had too much to drink. But we’ll likely never see each other again, and I assume you’ll want to get your car problem taken care of more than you’ll want to call the National Enquirer.”
He shot her another quick glance, and she just raised her eyebrows.
He shook his head again as if he couldn’t believe he was continuing. “My name is Evan Graves, but I was born Evan Balach. Peter Balach was my father.”
She continued to stare at him.
“Peter Balach. The pilot with three families.”
When she still said nothing, he looked at her, his eyes expressing disbelief.
“You never heard of him?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Not that I know of. Should I have?”
“Well... no. I guess not. It’s just that he was pretty well known when it all came out. We all were, unfortunately. He was called the flying bigamist. He wasn’t world-famous, like Charles Lindbergh, or as well-known in the country as Charles Kuralt, but it still was headline news for a while.”
She narrowed her eyes and bit her lip.
“I’ve heard of Charles Lindbergh. He crossed the Atlantic, right? And his kid was kidnapped? But I don’t know that other person, or what either one of them had to do with bigamy, and I never heard of Peter Balach.”
“Huh. That’s good. That’s nice to know. It gets kind of tiring looking over my shoulder all the time hoping no one will catch on.”
“Well, your secret is safe with me. So what exactly made this not-as-famous-as-you-think-he-was Peter Balach so famous? Or infamous?”
“Well, as I said, he turned out to have three families. That we know of, at least. My mother was wife number two. We were his DC area family; he had another one—a wife and three kids—in the Chicago area, and a third—a wife and one kid—outside Atlanta. All the women thought they were his one and only wife.” He shook his head again, and Lizzie noticed how tightly he was gripping the steering wheel.
“Pretty good, huh? I decided right then, when I was eight years old and saw our entire life disappear before our eyes, that I wasn’t going to marry anyone.”
She stared at him, perplexed. Finally she spoke.
“That’s really sad. And stupid. Your father was obviously kind of twisted, but that doesn’t mean you are.”
Evan said nothing, but the awkward movement of his shoulders conveyed his discomfort.
Lizzie shrugged. “I know it’s none of my business. As you said, we’ll never see each other after tonight. But I wouldn’t give up the twelve years I had with Miguel for anything. A marriage is supposed to be between two people who love each other. If the two people who are in that marriage are committed to it, and to each other, it works. It works, and it lasts. Lots of marriages go wrong because people make choices they aren’t ready to make with people they shouldn’t be with, and it sounds like your mother found herself in a horrible situation. But that doesn’t mean marriage is bad, or that you couldn’t have a perfectly normal marriage. One that could bring you joy, like I had with Miguel.”
Another jerk of his shoulders.
Lizzie turned her head back towards the window. Twenty minutes more, tops, and she’d be home, and this strange night would be over.
Evan’s phone rang through the car.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hello, sweetheart. Is the drive going okay?”
“Yes. We’re on 66, so we’ll be in Arlington fairly soon.”
“That’s why I’m calling. My shoulder’s been hurting, so I took a pill and am going to bed. You should spend the night there and come home in the morning.”
Evan tilted his head as if confused.
“What are you talking about, Mom? Of course I’m not going to spend the night in Arlington. I’ll drop Lizzie off and then it’ll only take me twenty minutes or less to get home.”
“No, no, honey. The alarm was acting up, and the men were here yesterday, and they changed the code.”
“So? What’s the new code?”
“How should I know? I wrote it down on a post-it and put it by the door.”
“Well, just read me what it says!”
Lizzie bit her lip, trying not to smile at Evan’s evident annoyance.
“I can’t do that, Evan. I just told you, I took a pill. I’m upstairs already, and I’m so tired that I’ll probably be asleep in five minutes.” The sound of an exaggerated yawn came through the speakers.
“Mother, this is ridiculous. I’ll be there in less than an hour, probably sooner. I either need the new code, or you have to turn the alarm off.”
Another yawn.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m going to bed. Are you there, Lizzie?”
“Uh... yes. I’m here.”
“You don’t mind putting Evan up for the night, do you?”
“Uh... no, of course not.”
“Mother, stop!”
“Thank you, my dear. Evan can come home in the morning, whenever you’re up. There’s no hurry.”
“Mother!”
“Goodnight, dear. Goodnight, Lizzie.”
The call ended. Evan took his left hand from the wheel and punched at his leg.
“I’m... I’m not even sure what to say. I am so sorry about all that. My mother is sometimes unpredictable. Of course, I won’t impose on you tonight.”
“It’s all right. It’s really no trouble. I have a guest room.”
“No. That’s kind of you. But I’ll drive back to Vienna and get a hotel room. This is all totally absurd. If it weren’t already so late, I’d just drive back to Charlottesville at this point.”
“Evan, stop. I’m sorry if I was rude before. It’s none of my business how you live your life. But there’s absolutely no need to get a hotel room. We’re almost at my house. It’s been a long night, and you saved me hours of time and probably oodles of money. The least I can do is give you a place to sleep.”
The seconds ticked by, and Lizzie could almost smell his indecision and frustration. Finally he sighed.
“Okay, if you’re sure. I’m terribly sorry about this.”
“It truly is fine. And I think if we weighed it all up, I’d still be in your debt. So you get a night’s sleep, and we can call it even.”
Evan shook his head again and sighed.
“My mother is really too much sometimes. I’ve never been afraid for her mental capacities—well, her judgement, at times—but maybe she’s starting to slip. That whole business about the alarm just doesn’t make sense.”
They rode in silence for a few minutes more, and then Lizzie spoke.
“I really do apologize for scolding you before. I get carried away, and all of this sickness and death, and then those horribly senseless killings, and the riots... life is just so precarious and unpredictable. It seems a shame to shut the door on happiness because of something that has nothing to do with you.”
“Nothing to do with me? It has everything to do with me.”
“But it doesn’t. You’re not your father. Even genetically, you only got half of yourself from him, as you said before. But you’re more than your genes. We all are. You said you were an epidemiologist, right?”
Evan nodded.
“Well, that says something right there. You’ve given your life to science. You study disease, which means, whether you want to or not, you’re working to improve the human condition. And you’ve never married, right?”
“No.”
“Then it’s pretty safe to say you’re never going t
o be a bigamist. Even if you threw all caution to the wind and took the plunge right now, the absolute worst that would happen is you might end up divorced.”
Another silence. Then Evan spoke slowly, as if carefully thinking about each word before he said it.
“I’m feeling a bit like I’ve landed in the Twilight Zone. We just met an hour or so ago, right? Because of a falling tree. And now you’re trying to get me married. My mother’s gone off the deep end, and I’m in a car going to spend the night with an amateur psychologist. I thought you said you were in advertising, didn’t you?”
“Ah-hah. But I was a psychology major. A lot of us end up in advertising. It’s kind of a hidden secret shame. We all go into the field full of idealism, and then we can’t get jobs, and advertisers hire us because we understand human weakness.”
“Oh. I never thought about that.”
“Yup. But I wasn’t psycho-analyzing you. I was just pointing out the truth.”
“Ahhh. Yes. The truth. And now we’re back in the Twilight Zone.”
Lizzie laughed.
“Okay, okay. I give up. We can agree to disagree.”
“I’m not sure I even know what we’re talking about at this point. But we’re getting close, I think, so maybe you could tell me how to get to your house?”
Lizzie gave directions as he drove, and five minutes later they were pulling up to her townhouse. Fortunately, a spot was open close to the door, and Evan parked and turned off the engine.
“I really can get a hotel room. I hate to impose.”
“We’re here at my house, aren’t we? I’m not standing in the road, soaked to the bone, in the middle of nowhere. So it’s no imposition.”
Blue seemed ecstatic when he jumped out from the car, and he shook himself vigorously.
“We’ll go in, and I’ll feed him his supper and show you your room. Then I’ll take him for a quick walk.”
“I’ll go with you. It’s late. You shouldn’t be out alone.”
“I’m out alone all the time.”
“Yes, but you don’t have to be tonight.”
Evan got his bags from the trunk. “It looks like a lot, but I don’t want to leave my laptop in the car. I’ll probably have to do some work before I turn in.”
Lizzie unlocked the door and moved inside, Blue pushing his way to precede them. Evan stepped in and looked around.
“This is nice. And the location is perfect—close to 66 and the Metro.”
“Yes. We were lucky. These were built just before the metro plans were finalized and we were fortunate to get one. Their value’s gone up terrifically over the years.”
She showed Evan the downstairs guest room and moved some bags off the bed.
“Everything’s clean, even though no one’s used it in months. I was going through stuff while Daniel was packing, and I left these here for the charity pick-up. I’ll just bring them upstairs. The bathroom’s right through there, and there are towels in the linen closet. Help yourself to whatever you need.”
“I’ll be right up. And I’ll walk the dog with you.”
“You really don’t have to.”
“I know. But what would I tell my mother?”
“Oh my goodness. When you put it that way, what can I say?”
Evan used the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror while washing his hands. What in the world was he doing here, in this stranger’s guest room? Was his mother actually losing it? She usually had a high tolerance for pain, so even the idea of her taking a pain pill was disconcerting. But it was already close to eleven, and she had sounded tired. He’d just have to get on the road early in the morning and hope she was herself by the time he got there.
He went up the stairs and found Lizzie in the kitchen. Her dog was eating with gusto, and Lizzie was staring into her refrigerator.
“Are you hungry? Daniel and I had take-out, but that was hours ago. I ended up leaving later than I had planned because it took longer than we had anticipated to put some of his furniture together.”
Evan chewed on his bottom lip. “I had something a few hours before I left, but I ended up answering emails for a while after that, which is why I left so late.”
She tilted her head as she glanced at him. “So if things had gone as planned, neither one of us would have been at the spot when the tree came down, and someone else might have been hit. This whole year has seemed like nothing but a random game of chance.” She sighed and then continued.
“But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m hungry. I’ve got some leftover lasagna I can heat up, or I can make sandwiches, or…” she looked at him, her eyebrows raised towards her forehead, “there’s Ben & Jerry’s.”
“I really don’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“Seriously? None of those choices involves putting me to any trouble. What’s your preference?”
“I’d guess from the tone of your voice that ice cream would be your choice, and that sounds fine with me.”
“Smart man. What kind do you like?”
“That depends on what you have, doesn’t it?”
“Ah, but I stock up on ice cream the way other people stock up on toilet paper.”
He looked at her skeptically. “I know it’s not politically correct to comment on a woman’s appearance, but you definitely do not look like someone who eats a lot of ice cream.”
She laughed. “Who says I do? But it helps tremendously to know it’s there. Because you never know. I don’t drink much either, but I make sure there’s always something around, just in case. Speaking of which, would you like a beer?”
“Beer and ice cream?”
“Blue’s done eating. You can open the beer now and have the ice cream after his walk—and again, you really don’t have to join us.”
He lowered his head at an angle and glared at her as she handed him a can from the fridge.
“I hope that’s okay. I don’t actually like beer myself. Daniel doesn’t drink too much, at least not in front of me, but I look the other way when he has a beer once in a while, and I obviously buy more when the supply runs down.”
Evan held the can in his hand, staring at it. She looked at him, and then at the can.
“Is something wrong?”
“You said you had been pretty much self-isolating?”
Comprehension dawned in her eyes.
“Yes, pretty much. No one besides Daniel—oh, and the plumber once—have been in the house since March. I go to the grocery store once or twice a week, and we usually get take-out every few days. I pick it up, but I always wear a mask.”
“Well, I’m the scientist here, and this goes against all I’ve been saying for months, but I guess I’m asking permission to take off my mask in your house. And I’m saying it’s okay with me if you take off yours, too—which is about as pompous and arrogant as it sounds. I’m sorry.”
Lizzie reached up and loosened the elastic around both ears and then held her mask by the band in her left hand and held out her right.
“If you give me yours, I can put it in the machine right now with Daniel’s sheets. I threw them in the laundry room before I left this morning and was going to do them tonight, anyway. In hot water,” she added, smiling.
Evan took off his mask and handed it to her with a nod and a sheepish smile.
“I’ll go throw these in the machine, and then we can walk Blue.” She paused for a moment and looked at him. “What about your mother? I thought people weren’t supposed to be visiting elderly relatives.”
“They’re not. But as in all things, my mother’s a special case. She needed help after her fall, and we didn’t want her in a rehab center. She could get by without people coming in as long as I visited frequently enough to take care of all the hard things, like moving garbage pails in and out and helping her with her hair. And traffic’s been light, so going back and forth hasn’t been that much of a problem.”
“You washed your mother’s hair?”
He nodded. “At
the beginning, yes. She can manage it now, but I still check in on her. I wear a mask until she yells at me to take ‘the damn thing off.’ Her words, not mine. These last few weeks I’ve had to worry about her trying to go join a protest march. I tell her she’s at high risk, and she tells me our country’s at high risk. I beg her to stay home, and she heaves a huge sigh and says she’ll think about it.”
“Huh.” Lizzie gave him a contemplative look, and then held up the masks. “I’ll be right back.”
She left the room, and Evan took in a deep breath. Not because of the enormity of the situation, although obviously being in close quarters, unmasked, with a total stranger went against everything he wrote and lectured about, but because she was so damn beautiful.
He might have passed her on the street in normal time and never given her a second glance. She was of average height, and her dark blonde hair curled softly against her shoulders. She probably usually kept it shorter and had let it grow out during the pandemic. Her eyes were brown, and she wore no makeup. But a glow of honesty and vitality seemed to shimmer around her, and everything about her face just seemed to fit together perfectly. He hadn’t really looked at her during their wet and prolonged ordeal, but he noticed now as she left the room that her figure was amazing. Not heavy, like so many people their age, but not stick-thin, either. In fact, in her short pants and t-shirt, she looked absolutely wonderful. When had he last looked at a woman like that?
His work before the pandemic often had him traveling to global hot spots where medical workers were overwhelmed and patients were desperate. When back in the States and at the university, he had long ago trained himself not to notice the often scantily-clad students. And his colleagues, male and female, even Stateside, were often overworked and continually exhausted from juggling professional and family lives. He moved among them, a solitary figure immersed in his work, who read mysteries and police procedurals and watched documentaries and soccer in his downtime. At the occasional social event, he always had humorous stories about his mother’s exploits to use as conversational cushions.
When had he last been alone with a woman socially? He had hung around with women in high school and college, even becoming part of a “couple” a few times, but his self-imposed prohibition against involvement kept anything from ever getting serious. In grad school he had had a relationship with a fellow student who had, in the end, thrown her glass of wine at him and told him he was an emotional robot who would die alone. After that he had kept to himself. He had never told anyone about his father, not even the woman in grad school, and now he had blurted it all out to this beautiful stranger.