Gina cringes and leans away from it in her chair. “Don’t pawn your trash off on me.”
“Miles promised he’d come in the water,” Flora says. “I don’t want any more.” She turns her head in a semi-circle until she spots a trash can in the sand and starts walking toward it.
When she’s out of earshot, Miles tells us, “I am not coming back to the beach with you guys again without Ethan. She’s like a suction cup.”
Their brother Ethan isn’t here because he was invited to go fishing with a friend from school and his family. Miles, accordingly, has become the primary object of his younger sister’s affection today. In his defense, Flora has been following him everywhere since we got out of the car, the family dynamic dramatically altered by Ethan’s absence. I noticed it from the moment we began rolling our beach gear through the tunnel from the parking lot onto the sand.
I watch Miles and Flora head in Teddy and Kai’s direction. Flora giggles as Miles pretends to push her toward the water. How different would our family be without Kai? How different would Maggie and Nick’s life have been if they’d had Kai with them from the beginning?
“I feel like I’ve stolen someone else’s child. I have stolen someone else’s child, but I’m not giving him back,” I blurt to Gina, surprised I’ve confessed this aloud.
I keep my gaze on Flora and Miles as they make their way toward their cousins in the waves. When Chip sees them coming, he smiles and glances up in our direction from the water. He looks all GQ with his aviator sunglasses and toned abs. I can’t tell from here, but I imagine his shoulders are beginning to burn. When he locates Gina and me, his expression changes—as if he knows what we’re talking about, as if the only thing he can feel toward me lately is frustration. I glance at Gina, and I can tell she saw it too.
“You want to breathe into the bag?” She holds the package of Fritos out toward me again.
I push her hand away with a forced smile. I haven’t mentioned to her how much Chip and I have still been arguing, but I can tell she knows. All those things I said about how he can’t understand what I’m going through—well, I won’t say I didn’t mean them. We just haven’t been able to find common ground. Every time I look at Teddy’s face and see Chip’s blue eyes staring back, I feel angry at Chip. Jealous.
“It helps to talk,” Gina says gently.
A small plane flies low over the ocean, a long yellow sign for a local car dealership trailing from the back of it. I wait for the noise to settle before I answer.
“I think I’m going to get fired,” I say, changing the subject.
“What?” She sits upright, startled. “They love you at your office.”
“Yeah. They did. Before I lost our biggest client.”
I tell her about how my junior associate, Erica, started meeting with our client, Wenzo, without me; about how the client loved her designs so much they decided to pursue an entirely different concept than the one I was advocating for; how they hired Erica away from us and then declined to engage our services.
“After all you’ve done to help develop her career. Doesn’t she have a non-compete or something?” Gina asks.
“If we were in banking, maybe,” I say. “Not in real estate. And honestly, I haven’t done all that much to advance her career. My head hasn’t been in the game since the beginning of the summer. I shouldn’t be surprised.” I run my fingers along the sand beside me, lifting a warm handful, then letting the grains drop slowly out from my closed fist.
“Well then you’re going to have to bring in some other big fish to make up for this, aren’t you?”
“That’s exactly what the managing partner said to me.” I look back at her and rub my palms together to get rid of the sand clinging to them. “He loves me, but they’re trying to cut costs, and I’m expensive.”
“Fish,” she repeats.
I know she’s right, I do have to recruit new business, but it’s hard to focus on client development while I’m panicking about my family being ripped apart. I lean my head back and close my eyes, letting the sun warm my cheeks.
The next thing I know, I’m waking up from having dozed, and I can feel that a long stretch of time has passed. The air has cooled, and the sun is lower in the sky. I sit up with a jolt and look out to the waves, but Chip and the boys are no longer there.
“I’m here,” Chip says from behind me, and I turn to see him sitting cross-legged on a towel in the sand. He’s wearing a dry T-shirt and picking his way through a plastic container of grapes.
“Where is everyone?” I ask, noting that the crowd around us has thinned considerably.
“Gina took the kids back to her house to shower. I told them we’d meet them.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?” My tone is accusatory as I stand, and I don’t even have the emotional energy to regret my shortness. I wipe the sand from the front of my swim trunks and glance around to assess what needs cleaning up before we can leave.
“Sit,” Chip says, and there is a pleading note in his tone that stops me.
I look back at my beach chair.
“Here.” He pats the space beside him on the oversize towel.
I sigh and sit across from him, crossing my legs like his and doing an internal eye roll as I brace for whatever vitriol is about to come my way.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Surprised, I wait for him to add more, but he seems to be waiting for me to say something in response.
“For?” I’m fully aware that I sound impatient, irritated, but we’ve barely said a kind word to each other in days. I don’t feel like playing at romance right now.
Chip looks up at the sky, thinking. Instead of admiring the chords of his neck as he tilts his head backwards, I watch a seagull in the sand beside him pick and poke at a breadcrust.
“For tossing your breakfast into the disposal before you were finished, for slamming the car door at Gina’s, for being a passive-aggressive, impatient prick.”
“Well. At least you’re honing your skills of self-description.” I’m only half joking. A group of teenagers walks past us with all their beach gear and carts, heading toward the parking lot. I wait until they’re out of earshot before adding, “I appreciate the effort. Can we go? I want to get the kids home before it gets late.” I stand and start folding down the beach chair.
“What the fuck is your problem?” Chip demands as he, too, stands.
“If you have to ask, I don’t even know where I would start.”
He steps toward me so that his face is right in front of mine, close enough to kiss.
“He’s my son, too,” Chip says, punctuating each word with anger. “I’m scared, too.” He’s nearly growling at me. “You’re the one who should be apologizing, not me. I’m doing everything I can here. You don’t get sole possession of this moment just because you have anxiety issues, or because Kai looks more like you than me, or because your childhood was rougher than mine, or whatever the fuck other reason you think makes you the victim in this situation.”
“I thought I had a biological son, Chip. My childhood? That’s really what you want to talk about right now? We’re adults now. What about Kai’s childhood? What about the fact that we finally had it all, and now everything’s going to shit? Everything is in jeopardy.” I eye him from across the blanket for a moment. “You want to make this about childhood? Fine. You weren’t there when I was panicking my way through adolescence. You don’t get to judge me for trying to protect Kai from suffering the same kind of angst, the dread, even if for him it’s for different reasons.” I continue my tirade even though we both know I’m about to start careening off topic. I’m grabbing anger from everywhere I can, ranting away. “You don’t know what it was like for me, in my neighborhood, while you were out there at your progressive prep school, owning your gaydom like a boss. You don’t know,” I repeat, driving the wedge of difference deeper. “How silly of me, how shameful that I believed anything would get better, that I could ever actually belong in a
place. How foolish of me to think it had all worked out.” I swallow hard. “I just want to go home.”
I don’t look at him as I bend down to lift the towel and shake out the sand. I can feel him glaring at me, but I keep moving, dismantling the remainder of our temporary camp, hurling items into our rolling cart with too much force. He’s waiting for me to look at him, to say something, but I won’t backpedal. I know I’m the asshole here, but I can’t stop. Chip can’t force me to be someone I’m not any more than I can force Kai to be my own flesh and blood.
Chapter 23
MAGGIE
AUGUST 2018
I roll over in the soft double bed at Nick’s parents’ house and find the back of Nick’s head. I wonder if he’s awake. The delicate white drapes in the room do little to keep out the morning sun, and I can see all the ways his hair has gotten out of line during the night.
“I can feel you looking at me,” he says, his voice thick and warm with the morning, and I can’t help but smile. It’s reflexive, the small burst of joy I experience at the sound of his voice, but then I remember where we are, deep in the middle of our own war. Before I have time to wonder whether we will begin our argument afresh this morning or try to move toward some sort of detente, there’s a soft knock at our door.
“Yeah?” Nick calls.
The door opens a crack and Wyatt pokes his head tentatively into the musty room. His eyes sweep over the scene before him—his parents, seemingly all cozied up in bed—and he asks, “Can I come in?”
“What’s up?” Nick asks as he scoots over, even closer to me on the mattress, so Wyatt can have room to climb in. Wyatt only takes a small step into the room though, shifting his weight as though he’s not sure he wants to stay. He’s in a T-shirt and boxer briefs, which leads me to believe he hasn’t been downstairs for breakfast yet.
“Mom, did you say something to Summer’s mother?”
It takes me a moment to realize that he’s asking about the situation with the tennis teacher.
“No. I promised you I wouldn’t.” I sit up in the bed, pulling the blanket with me. “Why?”
“Well, she’s not talking to me, and Aiden York told me that she wasn’t at work yesterday at the club. People are saying she quit.” He squints slightly, trying to determine if I’ve betrayed him.
After I conferred with Nick on Friday night, we sat Wyatt down and I confessed to reading his texts. I explained my concern about Summer and her interest in the tennis coach, and he promised he would tell me if it ever seemed like she might be in danger. He was forthright with us, as far as I could tell. He complained about how Summer fawns over the guy, but he also said the coach has never shown one iota of interest in a young girl, Summer included, and Wyatt doesn’t think she’s going to lose her innocence to him. When I suggested that I should reach out to Summer’s mom to prevent the situation from escalating, he freaked to such a degree that instead, I promised to hang back, as long as he agreed to keep talking sense into Summer and to come to me at the first sign of anything worrisome.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, but I don’t know anything about why it’s radio silence.” I amble out of the bed, feeling thirsty for some fresh air. I push aside the drapes to open a window. “Maybe give her a couple of days to get over whatever’s bothering her and then give it another try,” I suggest.
“Maybe,” he says halfheartedly before turning and leaving the room.
Nick gets out of bed then, too, and goes straight to the en suite bathroom to brush his teeth.
“I wonder what happened.” I’m thinking out loud, putting my anger at Nick on hold as I focus on Wyatt’s dismay.
“I know exactly what happened.” Nick emerges from the bathroom with his toothbrush dangling from his mouth. “I called Bill.”
“You called her father?” I demand. “After we promised Wyatt we wouldn’t say anything?”
“I didn’t promise a damn thing,” Nick says before heading back into the bathroom to spit in the sink. He returns to the bedroom and points his toothbrush at me. “That crap with your high school teacher almost destroyed your whole life, and now you want to sit back and do nothing while another teenager risks turning her life to shit? So that your own teenage kid doesn’t get mad at you? It’s the height of selfishness.” He goes into the bathroom again and turns on the faucet.
“Turning her life to shit? That’s what you think happened to me, what I did?” I’m yelling as I follow him into the bathroom. “And yes, of course I care if Wyatt gets angry. He trusts us!” I throw my arms in the air in a gesture of frustration, defeat. Then I catch sight of the bruises on my wrist, darker today than they were yesterday, purple at their center, yellowing at the edge. The damage to my skin forces me to reckon with how much Nick must hate me, how much I hate myself. Maybe I did turn my life to shit.
“This isn’t a pity party just for you. It’s not all about you this time. It’s never only about you. At some point you have to grow up and understand that.” I’m not sure whether we are still arguing about Summer or if he’s talking about Kai. My focus is on the latter now, and that’s where I decide to stay.
“What I understand,” I tell him, “is that we’ve both made mistakes over the years, starting with me giving away our child. I thought I could walk away, but I just can’t. All this time, the child we thought we couldn’t have was already out there. He has my mother’s face!” I let him digest that for a moment before I add more quietly, “I have to do everything in my power to get him back home. Even if it means losing you.” I say it as an empty threat, no real intention behind it—but as the statement hangs in the air, I start to realize that I actually mean it. Despite what was once my burning love for the man in front of me, it will never compete with the responsibility I feel as a parent, or the sacrifices I’m willing to make for one of my children.
“Don’t you think I want him, too?” Nick demands. “But it’s too late. You gave him away. Gave him a new life. We can’t just yank him out of that world because it’d be better for us to have him back now. It’s not fair, and it’s not right.” His voice has somehow gotten calmer as he’s been speaking, as if he’s ready to have a rational discussion now.
“What happened to all the crap you spouted when I was pregnant with those boys about not giving babies to a gay couple to raise? Now you’re just fine with it?”
“Yes!” he chirps, like he can’t even believe I would suggest otherwise, like he never uttered a homophobic statement. “How many times do I have to say it? It was never about them being gay. I was jealous, and I was a bastard. But when you, Maggie Wingate, make a decision in your head that something is one way or another, you can’t ever change your mind.”
He’s wrong, though. I’ve changed my mind a million times—about him, about my own life, and especially about Kai.
Chapter 24
DONOVAN
AUGUST 2018
I’ve just finished a call with John Rubes, the managing director of Bright Towers, a real estate investment trust that specializes in ownership of high-quality, net-leased restaurant properties. Like the last four groups I’ve spoken with, BT is fully leveraged at the moment and they’re not interested in leasing any new space. It didn’t matter how much I talked about the high-density population surrounding the properties I had in mind, the proximity to target demographics, the number of cars passing each of the spots on my list . . . these guys aren’t buying what I’m selling, and my ass is toast if I don’t figure out how to pull in another client.
I slide my desk chair closer to the computer screen and open another real estate firm’s website. This one, though, I’m thinking of calling about employment. I’ve been wondering if a preemptive lateral move might be better than waiting until I’ve been canned to try finding another firm that wants to pick me up out of the ashes. I scroll through the photos on CREM’s company pages, trying to be open-minded as I look at the different images the company uses to sell itself. There are photos of men and women in ultra-conservative
business suits nearly glowering as they stand idly in conference rooms. Those shots are followed by pictures of skyscrapers captured from surprising perspectives, hard edges and angles photographed from vantage points that make them particularly intimidating. I feel myself making ugly faces as I ponder a career in any office that would find a website like this appealing.
I close the site and return to my contacts folder, wondering what else I might do to avoid losing my job so I don’t have to subject myself to a place like CREM.
I’m scrolling through the different lists I’ve made over the years when a dialogue box appears on the screen. It’s an email from Maggie. I brace myself and then click, somehow knowing exactly what bad news I’m about to read.
Donovan,
Thank you for hosting us at your apartment on Saturday. It was nice to see you and Chip after all these years. You are clearly raising both Teddy and Kai as such little gentlemen already. I’m sending this email as a courtesy because I believe you deserve as much. Meeting Kai in person has changed everything for me. I realize now how much that child is a part of me, how his very existence screams my name. From the smallest details, like his fingers that are especially spindly, just like mine, to the more profound connections. Nick and I tried for so long to have a second child, Donovan. I never wanted you to feel guilty about the surrogacy and the impact it might have had on my ability to conceive again, but now, everything is different.
Looking at Kai was like seeing a snapshot of myself as a kid and my whole family’s history all at once. I need to know if he loves music like I did, if he’s unpredictable like me or more dependable like my sister, his Aunt Tess. He has the same smile as his brother, who’s been deprived of knowing him for too long already. I hope you can understand and that we might settle this quickly and amicably. I never agreed to hand over one of my own children to you and Chip. Of course, you should both stay involved in his life, but that sweet boy belongs with his real family. I have contacted an attorney, though I would much prefer to resolve this on our own. I am hoping for Kai to transition into sixth grade in Arizona while it’s still early in the school year, so time is of the essence. I look forward to hearing from you.
He Gets That from Me Page 18