He Gets That from Me

by Jacqueline Friedland

  Fondly,

  Maggie

  The taste of copper fills my mouth, and I realize I’ve bitten into my lip so deeply that I’m bleeding. I’ve been holding my breath since Maggie and Nick’s visit, knowing this disaster would be coming, and it’s almost a relief that the battle is finally on.

  Rather than calling Chip, which might have been my first move a few months ago, I dial our attorney’s office, thankful now that Dr. Pillar at the clinic advised me to retain someone. As the phone rings, I keep telling myself that Chip and I are Kai’s legal guardians. Our names, not Maggie’s, are listed on his birth certificate, thanks to the pre-birth order from California.

  The call goes straight to voice mail, and I leave a hasty message asking for Lorraine to call me back the very second she hears the recording.

  I re-read the message from Maggie, wondering if I’m supposed to respond, knowing that any attorney would tell me not to, that I should let the lawyers take over from here. I grab for my cell again and tap over to the screen listing my “favorite” contacts. My finger hovers over Chip’s name. I need him now, we need each other, but I’m not sure if it’s too late. He was so very wrong when he told me I was worrying too much, that we should let Maggie come meet Kai. But I was in the wrong, too, when I set this whole process in motion with those godawful Relativity tests, when I couldn’t just leave everything alone after we got the results.

  I move my finger away from the phone without calling. Instead, I simply forward the email to Chip without adding any sort of message. Right after I click “send,” a knock sounds against my office door.

  “It’s open,” I call out.

  Paul, the managing partner, pokes his head in from the corridor. “Walter’s here,” he announces. “We’re meeting in my office.” He doesn’t wait for me to follow, just moves on, and I assume he’s heading toward the offices of the three other senior brokers at the firm to let them know that we’re meeting in Paul’s office instead of the conference room, like we usually do.

  Since Walter has arrived earlier than scheduled, I take my time collecting myself. I close out of the email on my computer and gather supplies. Once I have the memo pad with my handwritten notes about cultivating new business, a couple of printouts tallying recent exclusive listings, and a fresh cup of hot coffee, I knock on Paul’s door. I’m as ready as I can be to pretend I’m not completely distracted by the words of Maggie’s email still pounding through my skull.

  As I step into the corner office, I find only Paul and Walter Ruskin, the aging director of the board of our parent company.

  “We might as well get straight to business,” Walter says as he motions toward the small conference table in the corner of the room.

  “Aren’t we going to wait for the others?” I ask as I glance at Paul, who’s still standing awkwardly near his desk, tapping a fountain pen absentmindedly against his palm.

  “It’s just the three of us,” Paul answers without meeting my eyes.

  I look back at Walter. His deep-set eyes are sympathetic beneath the massive lenses of his spectacles as he watches my understanding dawn. He motions again for me to sit. I do as he asks and place my coffee mug on top of my notes. We’re obviously not going to be discussing those.

  “We’re letting you go.” Paul’s statement is firm, leaving no room to argue.

  Even though I had been worried this might be coming down the pike, now that it’s actually happening, it’s still a shock. “For losing one client?” I half yelp.

  “This isn’t about Wenzo.” Paul waves a hand dismissively. He shrugs out of his blazer and drapes it over the back of his chair without saying more.

  “Well what then?” I ask, mentally cataloguing what else I could have done wrong, thinking of my distraction and the other deals I’ve worked on with perhaps less enthusiasm than usual in recent months.

  “We’re trying to take the firm in a new direction. You know we’ve been having trouble with the finances—it’s hardly a secret. The biggest revenue generators have been the corporate clients. You don’t want to be here finding space for big-box chain stores, clients with ready-made, derivative layouts. You know it as much as we do.”

  “So I’m being phased out?”

  “With great regret,” Paul answers, and I believe he means it.

  I open my desk drawers one after another and conclude that most of their contents are items I will be leaving behind: paper clips, rubber bands, drafting paper. I have a few deal toys and framed pictures that I’d like to take with me, but it’s not a lot to carry. I start stacking up my plaques and the little sculpture-like gadgets I’ve been gifted by various clients over the years. Then my eyes drift to the framed photos. I only have three: One of me with Gina and our cousin Noelle, goofy, nearly identical smiles on our faces. A shot of Teddy and Kai in their little league uniforms, Teddy’s arm around Kai. And a picture of Chip and me, standing in the rain at the Cliffs of Moher.

  I take a moment to study the photo. It was the first trip we took on our own after becoming dads. We booked a room at an old Irish castle, dined on potatoes in every possible incarnation, played a little golf in the rain, and managed to come home even more attached to each other than when we’d left. Funnily enough, it was Chip, not me, who missed our four-year-old boys the most, calling home so often that my mother had to scold him to chill out. I thought it was sweet, though—that for all his big talk about the importance of taking time for ourselves away from the kids, he was even more of a softie than I was.

  I look now at our smiling faces in the photo, and I wonder if my relationship, just like my career, is all over too. I’ve pushed and shoved at Chip for so many weeks now, it’s a wonder he can even stand to be in the same room as me. And yet, I can’t make myself behave properly. I’m just so angry. Angry that Kai is not my biological son, angry that Chip got what he wanted in Teddy when I got robbed, angry that he can’t understand how that makes me feel.

  I don’t see how we can ever work ourselves back from the antagonism I’ve injected into our relationship. I’ve made our entire dynamic so different from how we’ve ever related to each other in the past. I won’t be surprised when he leaves me, nor when he tries to get primary custody of Teddy. Why wouldn’t the court give the biological father primary rights to a child? I’m just the gay man who has been playing pretend for the last decade.

  As I stare down at my own smile in the picture I’m holding, the grin a little too toothy, too happy, I ask myself: How is it possible that in the span of a few months I’ve gone from having a fairy tale life, a great job, a handsome husband, and two wonderful children to a place where I stand to lose absolutely everything?

  Four hours later, I’ve deposited my office clutter on the floor of our entryway, eaten my way through several days’ worth of leftovers, and taken an appallingly long shower. I’m now lying diagonally across the top of our bed, still wrapped in a towel, staring at the ceiling. Teddy and Kai are spending two nights with Chip’s parents up in Greenwich so they can swim and sail and “summer” in the tradition of Rigsdales of yore. I now regret making these arrangements, as any time that I can spend with Kai, and Teddy too, has become so much more precious, precarious.

  Tonight is the Trevor Prince annual dinner cruise, when everyone at Chip’s investment bank gets all collegial and debauched. This is a plus-one event for the firm, and I’m supposed to meet him at Chelsea Piers in forty minutes, but I feel like I can’t even get myself off the bed. I let my eyes fall shut as I ask myself why Chip would even want me there. I’ve become nothing but a nightmare lately, perma-stressed dead weight.

  I finally heave myself off the duvet and head for the closet. After running my hands absently over several garments, I settle on cream-colored linen pants and a fitted teal green button-down shirt, an outfit that will set me apart from the bankers in their business attire and allow me to effectively play my part as Chip’s fashionable, adorable husband. I wonder if this will be the last Trevor Prince event I attend, t
he last social outing of any sort I’ll have with Chip. I feel my chest tighten, the air becoming hard to find, as I imagine a life without Chip.

  Deep breaths, I remind myself. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Now is not the time for a panic attack.

  I dress hastily and give the mirror one final glance. As the front door closes behind me, I realize I’ve left my wet towel lying on the bedroom floor. I can’t even muster the energy to go back inside to pick it up. I must simply move forward.

  When I arrive at Pier 61, it’s almost 8:00 p.m., and the light in the sky has begun to soften to lavender. I walk myself through the large open space, the pungent scent of fresh fish enveloping me. As I reach the dock, I spot Chip waiting on a green Astroturf runner beside a large yacht bearing the name Celestial Spirit of Liberty.

  He’s looking at his phone and doesn’t see me. I slow my stride and study him. With his long, narrow frame, fair skin, and light hair, I still often think of glistening icicles when I look at him.

  As if he can sense the well of emotion swirling in his direction, Chip glances up and our gazes connect.

  To my horror, I instantly erupt into tears. Big, loud, ugly tears. Chip doesn’t hesitate; he dashes toward me before I even have a moment to contemplate what to do next. He wraps his arms around me and I cleave to him, burrowing my face into his shoulder, as my sobs grow even louder.

  “Hey, what? What is it?” His complete surprise tells me that he hasn’t seen the email I forwarded from Maggie. It’s just like him to ignore personal emails during the day. I keep crying, barely able to suck air into my body between my sobs. I can feel my tears soaking into Chip’s shirt, but I can’t seem to get a hold of myself.

  “What is it?” Chip asks again. “Donny! Come on, you’re scaring me.” He pushes me away so he can look into my face.

  “Oh. God.” I suddenly take in my surroundings, the random people passing us on all sides—tourists and teenagers, young women in business suits, couples holding hands, older men carrying coolers—and I pause in my hysteria, mortified. When I finally bring my eyes back to Chip’s, I tell him, “It’s everything. Now, even this.” I motion loosely into the air, indicating the spectacle I’ve made of myself.

  “This way.” He pulls me over to a covered stairwell where we’re out of the way. I wipe the dampness from my face onto the back of my hand. “What happened?” he asks in a soft voice, using the “I’ll fix this” tone I’ve been waiting to hear since we first got our Relativity results.

  “Everything is going to shit,” I declare on another sob, unable to articulate more eloquent sentiments at the moment.

  “Stop it. Talk to me,” he pleads, with the beautiful, beseeching kindness I’ve been pining for. Now, now, he’s offering it up; now, when it’s too late for everything.

  “Well, Kai,” I state flatly.

  Chip looks back at me expectantly.

  “You didn’t see my email?” I don’t know why I even bother to ask.

  He shakes his head in confusion. “It’s bad.” I let him digest that for a brief moment before I add, “And I’ve destroyed our relationship.”

  He looks surprised, but now I’m ready to keep going, to berate myself, to punish myself for all I’ve done wrong.

  “I’ve been petty, and jealous, and mean. I’ve walked all over you, and I know you’ve had enough. I got fired. And that was less than an hour after I got a letter from Maggie putting us on notice that she’s going to petition for custody of Kai.”

  “No!” He shouts it. Now he’s the one being loud and uncouth. I see genuine surprise on his face, as though he truly didn’t expect her to challenge our son’s guardianship. “What did she say?” He’s aghast, his cheeks reddening, a vein in his neck pulsing in anger.

  “That we’ll be hearing from her lawyer, but that she’d rather settle the matter between ourselves. I don’t know. I didn’t write back. I was too busy getting laid off, I guess.”

  “She is not taking our kid,” he says through gritted teeth as he looks up, behind me, like he’s scanning the dock for something. Then his eyes are back on mine. “We are going to sic our lawyer on her, make her sorry she ever challenged us. She handed that child over to us free and clear and she can’t come back here ten years later trying to take him back. We’ve been mother and father to that kid since the day he was born.”

  I just nod, relieved to finally have a teammate. If it’s possible, I feel even more regret over how I’ve been pushing Chip away.

  “I’m so sorry.” I have to say it out loud. I can’t help feeling like all of this is my fault. Well, because it is. The Relativity test was my idea. Following up on the cagey information, that was all me, too. Chip wanted to let it go, but I was the one who needed answers. Closure, I think I said. And now we’re at risk of losing our child.

  “No.” He puts his hand on my cheek. “You don’t get to blame yourself. Not for any of it. I don’t want to hear you say that again. You’ve been shitty the last few weeks, fine. I concede that. But I don’t know what you’re talking about, ‘destroying our relationship.’” He puts it in air quotes, says it like it’s an impossibility, like I might as well have been talking about abduction by aliens. “We took vows. You are my person, the love of my life, no matter what obstacles we face. A couple of months of fighting isn’t going to change that. I am not going anywhere, so shut up about that, and let’s focus on how we’re going to handle Maggie. Okay?” He wipes at a tear beneath my eye with his thumb. “What do you mean you got laid off?” he asks belatedly.

  I fill him in quickly. A horn blasts from the yacht across the way, a warning that the boat will soon be departing. I finish with, “Maggie and Nick both have good jobs, and now we’re fighting with one parent who is unemployed.”

  “Whatever.” Chip waves a dismissive hand in the air. His own monthly take-home pay easily eclipses the annual salaries of most Americans.

  I grab onto his bicep, holding his whole body close to mine. Then I step away and tug at him. “Come on. Let’s not literally miss the boat.”

  He searches my eyes for a moment without budging.

  “Fine,” he finally says. “But no more catastrophizing, ok? We share our thoughts out loud? Like grown people?”

  He waits until I finally give him a nod of assent, then lets me pull him toward the yacht.

  We hold hands as we board the boat, and the relief I feel at the state of our relationship is so strong that it almost reduces the dread I’m carrying about Kai.

  Almost.

  Chapter 25

  MAGGIE

  AUGUST 2018

  There are only two days remaining before we’re supposed to fly back to Arizona, and I haven’t told Nick that I’m feeling as if I can’t possibly leave New York, not yet. Part of why I haven’t mentioned anything to him is because we aren’t speaking to each other. We’re pretending that we’re speaking, passing information back and forth by making comments to other people in the room, but really, we’re just not talking. He knows how angry I am that he betrayed Wyatt by going to Summer’s dad about her interest in the tennis coach. What I don’t think he understands is my disappointment over his attitude toward my whole life. And none of this even scratches the surface of what happened at the Rigsdales’.

  My dad finishes the last sip of wine in his glass, and I push back my chair so I can start clearing the plates from the table.

  I stack Tess’s dish on top of my own and then reach for Wyatt’s while Tess pulls out her phone. She said she’s overseeing a big case at work and it’s been hard to get away, but I have a hunch she’s checking for texts from Isaac, still acting like the newlywed that she is.

  “Hang on,” she says, then she stands and walks out of the room, typing away on her phone.

  Wyatt, who’s been unusually quiet all afternoon, watches me heading toward the kitchen with the pile of plates and wanders in behind me. “Is there dessert?” he asks.

  Tess calls from the living room, “Why don’t I take
him downstairs to Frosty Delight for fro-yo?”

  “I’m in!” Wyatt calls back to her as I turn on the faucet to start the washing up.

  “But finish clearing the table first,” I call over my shoulder.

  Nick pokes his head into the galley kitchen, meeting my eyes directly for the first time tonight. “I’ll go, too.”

  “Okay.” I nod, as I scrub at a stubborn fragment of salmon skin.

  There’s a whirlwind of activity as the three of them make their way out of the apartment, and then it’s just me and my dad left in the kitchen. I continue cleaning dishes, placing one after another into the dishwasher, while my dad leans against the doorframe, watching me.

  “You want to talk about it?” he asks.

  I look over at him. His thick hair has lost all its color and it’s straighter now, so unlike the dark waves I remember from my childhood. I didn’t witness the gradual transition as his hair went from brown to salt and pepper to blizzard white. By the time I was ready to behave as an adult, my parents had already gone through so many changes. That’s on me, and I am trying to own it—first and foremost, by not repeating my past mistakes.

  “I’ve already lost ten years with my son,” I say as I close the dishwasher. “I don’t want to lose another day, not another second.” Looking into my father’s weathered face is a surprising comfort in the turbulence that has invaded my life. “Don’t you . . . aren’t you curious to meet him?” I ask, wondering again what it’s like to have a grandkid who’s been effectively misplaced.