He Gets That from Me

by Jacqueline Friedland

  “What?” I ask.

  She shakes her head without meeting my eyes as she returns to the fridge.

  “What?” I repeat, this time more forcefully.

  She tosses a packet of roast beef onto the counter and looks at me. “Next you’re going to tell me you don’t even want to tell Kai about any of this, am I right?” Now she has a hand on her hip.

  “Well?” I challenge her.

  At the sound of footfalls coming up the steps from the garage, we both turn to see Chip walking inside with Teddy close behind him. Gina always leaves the garage open for anyone to walk in, despite my reminders that she should be more careful. She insists that it’s safe because so many of her neighbors are cops and they all look out for their own. That may be, but it’s not like she has a twenty-four-hour detail outside her house. That surveillance ended two weeks after Pete was killed, when they finally caught the perp who’d shot him point-blank.

  “Linzer tarts,” Chip says, offering a shopping bag to Gina. She kisses his cheek before peeking into the bag and then shoving it into an empty spot beside her toaster.

  “You.” She tugs Teddy toward her and wraps his body in a hug. At just about five feet, Teddy is only a couple of inches shorter than my sister.

  “Hey, Aunt G,” he greets his aunt as he tolerates but does not reciprocate her embrace. His eyes are already focused on the back door.

  “Go ahead.” She gives him a gentle whack on the arm and turns to say something to Chip, but she’s interrupted by the doorbell.

  “Oh! That’s Graham,” she says, as if she momentarily forgot he was coming. She makes big eyes at Chip and me. “Good behavior, boys,” she warns as she pulls out her ponytail and hurries to the door.

  I rise out of my chair, gearing up to greet Gina’s new beau, relieved that she is finally, (finally!) starting to take seriously the idea of dating. Chip moves over to me and raises a hand to my hair line, as if to smooth a wayward lock.

  “Stop it.” I push his hand away.

  The corners of his mouth twist down and he steps back. We regard each other silently for a moment until Chip releases a puff of air and flicks his chin pointedly skyward. Then he marches away from me toward the happy chatter in the entryway.

  After a couple of minutes have elapsed with me standing aimlessly at the counter and the three of them still chatting in the foyer, I make my way out of the kitchen. I want neither to be rude to Gina’s first prospect in years nor to provoke my sister’s ire. I find them all looking at the television in the living room as Chip sits in the middle of the sofa, navigating the cable guide onscreen. Gina and the affable-looking man who must be Graham are standing behind him, watching the cursor move from title to title.

  “And here’s my little brother, Donny,” Gina says as she notices me approaching. Graham is a relatively nice-looking guy with broad shoulders and dark wavy hair, just a little extra padding around his middle. With his white polo shirt tucked neatly into his khaki cargo shorts, he reminds me of the wholesome-looking dad you’d see in a commercial for detergent or bars of soap. His plain-vanilla appearance is so different from Gina’s late husband, Pete, who favored leather jackets and snake tattoos. I wonder for a second if Pete would have eventually grown into a clean-cut every-dad like this guy, had he spent the last twelve years raising kids in suburbia instead of lying in the family plot at a cemetery out in Queens.

  “Donovan,” I say, extending my hand.

  Graham’s grip is extra firm in a way that is intended to send one of two possible messages. Either his vice-grip is meant to make clear that he is extra, extra straight, in case I was hoping to shove him up against a wall and have my way with him. Or, his firm grasp is meant in a kindly, if misguided, show of solidarity, to prove he has no problem touching a gay man. I squeeze hard in return, giving in for just a moment to my irritation at his “loaded shake,” before I release his hand, and my own annoyance along with it.

  “Chip said he was listening to the game in the car,” Graham says, “and my team was finally in the lead.”

  “Get a load of the Mariner’s fan,” Chip jokes as he points a thumb at Graham. Already, I can see this turning into another one of Chip’s bromosexual conquests. Straight guys can’t get enough of Chip, with his baseball obsession and his impressive memory for sports stats. Everywhere we go, supposedly enlightened men flock to Chip because he allows them to have a friendship with a gay man that feels nonthreatening. The alphas get their token gay friend, and Chip gets the validation of being adored by so many inhabitants of the straight world.

  “Are you from Seattle?” I ask. My baseball knowledge takes me far enough to know the states from which various teams hail, but that’s about it.

  “Born and raised.” Graham nods once with satisfaction as he rocks on his heels. “Moved here after law school, but I’ve still got my hometown pride.”

  Chip finds the appropriate television channel and emits a satisfied breath as he places the remote on the coffee table. Graham moves toward the couch.

  “You guys sit, watch the game, and lunch will be ready in a few,” Gina tells them.

  “I’ll help,” I say, following behind Gina to the kitchen, and Graham pauses en route to his seat, looking at Gina, clearly wondering if he should follow her as well.

  “It’s fine, Graham,” she says. “I’m almost finished. Donny will help; he hates baseball. Go.” She waves a hand toward the TV.

  When Gina and I are alone in the kitchen, she doesn’t even pretend to do any food prep before turning to confront me.

  “What the hell is going on with you and Chip?” she demands, her dark eyes burning.

  “Nothing. What do you mean?” I walk past her to the counter and pick up a platter to bring out to the deck.

  “Don’t ‘nothing’ me. Your whole demeanor changed as soon as he stepped into the house.”

  On the one hand, she is almost too perceptive, and on the other, it feels like she doesn’t understand at all.

  “You don’t get it, okay? You can’t know what it’s like— thinking a child is yours, finding out he’s not. And Chip doesn’t get it either. He never thought he was Kai’s bio dad. It’s a loss you can’t possibly understand.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” She says it so lightly that for a moment, I think she’s truly apologizing, until her next words come: “Don’t tell me I don’t know loss, that I don’t understand it.” Her voice is quiet so the guys won’t overhear from the other room, but it somehow feels like she’s shouting anyway. “You try picking up a call from your husband’s commanding officer, finding out that the thing you’ve been dreading since the day he took a job on the force has finally happened—that your man, who you live and die for, is never coming back. Then you talk to me about loss.” A look of disgust forms on her face, like she can’t believe she has to explain this to me, that I don’t see things from her perspective already. “You still have a living, breathing child. So his biological mother wants to meet him. So he’ll find out his genetics aren’t exactly what he thought they were. So the fuck what? She could be trying to take him back. She’s not. She could be making all sorts of problems for you. She’s not. So stop fucking pouting and looking for problems where they don’t exist.”

  “Just because he’s not dead, I don’t get to be upset?” I demand. “He was my child!” I’m yelling now, in spite of myself. Gina grabs my hand; her French-manicured nails dig into my palm as she drags me out to the garage, where we can shout at each other without Chip and Graham—or, worse, the kids—hearing everything.

  “He still is your child,” she says the moment the door closes behind us, her hands going back to her hips. “Is Teddy any less your child?” The anger on her face is so exaggerated that she looks like a caricature of herself.

  I pause before answering. I don’t love Teddy any less than I love Kai, but I love him differently. I had pinned different hopes and dreams on each boy, I suppose, and now I don’t know where those expectations, all that self-reflective
parenting, belongs. I would lie down on a bed of nails for Teddy. I’ve loved him since before we even brought him home. But I’d be lying if I said that over the years, I didn’t develop a different feeling for Kai. Seeing what I thought were my eyes in his pudgy baby face, wondering what other traits of mine he would or wouldn’t develop and pass on—does that mean I loved him more?

  “Don’t you say yes.” Gina’s pointing her finger in my face. “I know you better than that. It’s a shame you don’t know yourself, too.” She turns and climbs the four concrete steps back into the house.

  I take a minute to compose myself, and then I follow her inside, prepared to pretend that I’m not in a fight with Chip, not in a fight with Gina, and not in a fight to hold on to my life as I know it.

  Chapter 19

  MAGGIE

  AUGUST 2018

  When we step out of the wide automatic doors at LaGuardia, I’m hit by a wave of humidity so soupy and intense that any nostalgia I might have been feeling for my hometown is instantly extinguished. The scent of car exhaust is strong as we enter a sea of curbside shouts and whistles. Mid-afternoon air sizzles above the concrete, flush with fumes and energy, as travelers attempt to push and stumble toward their final destinations. I already feel a longing for the dry heat and quiet terrain of Sedona.

  I hear someone shout Nick’s name and turn to see his father, Roy, at the far end of the curb. He’s making his way through the clusters of travelers who are congesting the passenger pickup areas. Nick and I both raise our arms high and wave back, corralling Wyatt and our three suitcases, as we attempt to change course and make our way toward him.

  “Come here, you!” Grandpa Roy wraps his beefy arms around Wyatt first, and instead of shrugging off the embrace, like he would with me, Wyatt squeezes tightly and looks as if he doesn’t want to let go. Roy doesn’t seem to notice the way Wyatt clutches at him, hanging on as though this man is his only life preserver in stormy seas. Roy moves on quickly, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek and then giving Nick a strong wallop on the back. Roy’s been growing heavier with age, but I think the extra weight looks good on him, softening what were once harsh angles on his face into a rounded countenance so much cheerier that it makes me think of Santa with a clean shave.

  “I’m parked this way.” He motions with a thumb toward the crosswalk and then lifts the overstuffed tote bag off my arm to heave it over his own shoulder. There’s no rancor in his dark eyes, no trace of anger at me for creating this untenable situation with a surprise extra family member, for accidentally depriving him of the other biological grandson he could have had.

  When we called to tell them about Kai and his newly discovered genetics, both Roy and my mother-in-law, Nancy, seemed to have more trouble with the science of what we were telling them than with the fact that my get-rich-quick plans from ten years earlier had resulted in the unintentional abandonment of one of their descendants. Nancy finally started typing searches into Google while we talked by phone, only to discover that the biological phenomenon of superfetation is, indeed, an actual thing. I kept waiting for them to berate me in some way, but they—true to their generous, easy-going style—only asked how they could help.

  Nick and I have decided to stay in town for a full week, long enough to have time not only with Kai but also with Nick’s parents, Tess, and my widowed father. Wyatt didn’t meet my parents until he was five years old. He’s never seemed to favor one set of grandparents over the other, but I still always feel like I’m playing catch-up when it comes to Wyatt’s relationship with my own family. Especially now that my mom is gone.

  We slog through the muggy parking garage until we reach Roy’s SUV. All the while, Roy is peppering Wyatt with questions about soccer camp. We haven’t seen Nick’s parents since spring break, but these two seem to be picking up right where they left off. As Wyatt tells Roy about his hopes of getting called up to the junior varsity team in the fall, my eyes meet Nick’s, and I wonder if we’re both thinking the same thing. We had another son, another child, who could have been here telling his grandpa about his dreams. I don’t even know if Kai plays sports.

  “Grandma’s slaving away at the house, fussing up a storm over Shabbat tonight,” Roy says.

  When Nick was a kid, his family only celebrated the Jewish sabbath sporadically, more as a novelty than as a religious ritual. But ever since Nancy retired from her position as a nurse at a local pediatrician’s office, she and Roy seem to have found religion, Nancy especially. They’ve been attending synagogue every Saturday, keeping only strictly kosher food in their home, and they’ve started pulling together holiday-level feasts to celebrate Shabbat on a weekly basis. I sometimes question whether Nancy’s recent fixation on religion is a true spiritual awakening, like she says, or is simply a reaction to post-retirement ennui. I suppose that’s ungenerous of me; I should just be pleased she’s finding fulfillment.

  During the hour-long drive down to Scotch Plains, Wyatt continues to type away furiously on his phone. Normally I would admonish him to put the device away and participate in actual human-to-human conversation in the car instead, but he has been so testy with me this week that I don’t want to engage. My initial impression—that he was unconcerned by the case of his long-lost little brother—turned out to be dead wrong. As I think about his reaction again now, I berate myself yet again for projecting my own wishful thinking onto my son and misreading the situation entirely.

  Wyatt has become extremely defensive on behalf of Kai, arguing that we already made a huge mistake when we gave him away as a baby. We’re only making it worse now, he says, by invading the boy’s life and going to see him like he’s a circus show. Wyatt thinks that if we’re not trying to bring Kai home to his real family, we’re being selfish by going to see him at all. I’ve tried to explain to Wyatt that Kai already views Chip and Donovan as his “real family,” so he won’t be sad not to follow us home at the end of the visit. But Wyatt seems to equate what we’re doing with going to visit a puppy in an animal shelter, petting it up, and then leaving it behind in its cage. I don’t know who he’s texting so aggressively, but I’m glad something other than his anger at Nick and me is occupying his mental energy at the moment.

  “Everything okay over there?” I ask.

  “Mmmm.” Wyatt doesn’t look up from the screen, but his cheeks turn pink, and it occurs to me that perhaps all this texting has something to do with a girl. He could certainly use the distraction of a crush at this moment in time, so I don’t force the issue. Instead, I turn back toward the window and watch the traffic passing in the lanes beside us as we make our way down the Turnpike. I wonder where everyone else is going, if they are all moving toward life-changing events the way we are.

  When we finally arrive at the house, it’s nearly dinner time, and Nancy comes rushing out in a long white skirt and white fitted blouse to greet us in the driveway. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that it’s customary to wear white to usher in the Sabbath on Friday nights, but then I wonder if I’m confusing Shabbat with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. Either way, she looks lovely, and much younger than her sixty-nine years. She has the same dark hair as Nick, which I imagine she gets from a bottle these days, but her petite frame is nothing like her son’s bulkier physique.

  “I don’t know who to hug first!” she cries, bursting with an energy that seems too big for her diminutive size. She grabs Wyatt, then Nick, and finally me. When she wraps her arms around my shoulders, the urge to cry is instantaneous. Her warm body, her feminine scent—I suddenly miss my own mother so intensely that I feel I cannot bear it. I know grief can be like that, that it can come at you out of nowhere and knock you right off your feet. Even so, I’m unprepared in this moment, too raw. I step back and wipe at my eyes. Nancy takes one look at me, and it’s as if she knows, just like a mother would.

  “Oh, sweetie.” She reaches out and squeezes my arm. “Let’s get you some matzah ball soup.”

  I laugh out loud at that because nothing s
ays “Jewish mother” like insisting that a bowl of matzah ball soup will cure anything that ails you, whether it’s a stuffy nose, a bad breakup, a deceased parent, or the accidental sale of a newborn baby.

  We file into the house behind her, then disperse to drop our bags and settle into our rooms for the week. Nick and I are in the guest room, with the queen-size bed and en suite bathroom. Wyatt is delighted to set himself up in the rec room in the basement, where he will have significantly more privacy than he is generally afforded at home.

  After I’ve changed clothes and taken a moment to wash my face and hands, we all gather around the dining room table. Nancy has clearly put great effort into preparing for this evening, covering the table with a silver damask cloth and laying out floral-patterned china. Heirloom sterling silver cutlery and mother-of-pearl napkin rings complete the tableau.

  “So beautiful,” I remark as we each stand behind our chairs, waiting to pray. I wonder if this opulence, so different from Nancy and Roy’s typical come-as-you-are style, is intended to send a message; it feels like a show of solidarity as Nick and I confront the difficult situation our family has landed in.

  Nancy lights the candles and utters a Hebrew prayer, chanting out melodic, guttural words that conjure vague memories from my few summers at Jewish overnight camp during middle school. Next, Roy sings the kiddush, a blessing over the wine, the full version of which, it turns out, is much lengthier than the two-line version I learned as child. Nancy joins in to sing the second half of the prayer along with him from across the long table. I glance at Nick, who shrugs and smiles, like he doesn’t know where these religious people came from, like he finds their sudden devotion to tradition charmingly adorable, a symptom of old age. I wonder whether age brings some sort of connection to the past—a sense of obligation to commitments, or sacrifices, of your ancestors. Most of what my own parents taught me about Judaism had more to do with the Holocaust than anything else. I never learned the many rituals and prayers that Nancy and Roy seem to rattle off so easily now.