He Gets That from Me

by Jacqueline Friedland

  “Now let’s talk about witnesses,” Lorraine is saying. “Other family members, parents of Kai’s friends who can attest to the positive impacts of the home environment, perhaps a teacher or coach?” She looks at us hopefully.

  I run a mental tally through the many family members and friends I’m sure would be more than happy to testify on our behalf.

  “Yeah, sure, that’s no problem, but what about us being gay? Isn’t that a big issue?”

  “Yes and no.” She closes her laptop. “A judge is not permitted to consider your sexual orientation in a custody case. Plus, modern families are old news, especially in New York. That said, there’s nothing we can do about unconscious bias.”

  “So, we’re just at the mercy of the judge’s emotional response to our lifestyle choices?” Chip asks.

  “Not entirely. If you present the more compelling case as to why you’re providing Kai with a better home environment overall, even a bigoted judge might see past his personal prejudices. The laws are clear.”

  Might. I let that word settle into me, and suddenly I know we are going to lose. Maggie and Nick are the birth parents. They never intended to give up their biological child. Kai has a natural sibling and a traditional, intact family ready to take him back. What judge would say no to that?

  Lorraine must see something on my face, because she leans across the table and covers my hand with her own. “Look,” she says softly, “one thing at a time. First, we respond to the petition. We’ll go to the initial appearance, see who our judge is. Maybe we’ll get a nice young man who’s a father himself and an adamant champion of LGBQT rights. There’s no reason to panic, not yet.”

  Chapter 29

  MAGGIE

  SEPTEMBER 2018

  When I emerge from Penn Station into the bright sunshine and the swell of the Manhattan streets, I still have two hours to squander before lunch. The midmorning air is so warm and humid that I feel like I’m walking through a swamp. On impulse, I head toward the air conditioning of Macy’s flagship store, a behemoth retail establishment that attracts tourists from around the world, and which was once a favorite shopping destination of my mother’s.

  The doors have only just opened for the day, and the store has yet to fill with the sort of crowds I remember. I wander past the makeup counters and perfume sellers who are dabbing fresh scents onto paper samples to hand to passing customers. It occurs to me that I could pick up a couple of things for my dad, like my mom would have done. Or some souvenirs to bring home for Wyatt. Instead, I ride the escalator toward the higher floors, stepping on and then off at each landing until I reach the fifth floor, where I make my way toward ladies’ dresses. I packed a long, floral skirt to wear to court, hoping to project my most wholesome, upstanding schoolteacher/mom vibe, but now I wonder if I would do better in something more serious or sophisticated. I’m not sure which look would encourage a judge to favor us over the Rigsdales. Logically, I understand that a judge shouldn’t be making decisions based on my fashion sense, but emotionally, I feel desperate to get this all completely right.

  I make my way past sparkly party frocks and sales racks full of flouncy, patterned beach rompers until I reach an area that looks like workwear. The dresses here are serious, sharp. These are dresses with agendas. My eyes land on a cobalt blue fitted sheath. The design is bold and unapologetic. I lift the hanger and picture the thick fabric of the dress hugging my curves and making me brave.

  A saleswoman appears and helps me to a fitting room. As she hangs the dress on the back of the door, she asks where I’m visiting from. I’m about to answer that I’m not a tourist, that this is my hometown, but then I’m jolted by the realization that I don’t actually consider myself much of a New Yorker anymore. The sense of attachment I feel to Arizona is something I never experienced living here. I offer her a few details about the wonders of Sedona before she goes, and then I take a seat on the fabric-covered bench behind me to rummage in my tote for my phone.

  Tiffany Thompson picks up after two rings.

  “Hey,” she says, sounding slightly out of breath. “The boys just left.”

  I glance down at my watch and adjust for the time difference. It’s only 7:20 a.m. in Sedona.

  “Oh. I thought I’d just check in, but . . .” I feel a need to apologize. It’s the first time we’ve left Wyatt like this to go out of town. We didn’t want him missing school, and he swore that he’d be fine staying with his friend Chester’s family. Chester’s mom, Tiffany, works as a concierge at the biggest resort in town, so she’s particularly comfortable with company coming and going.

  “We’re all good over here,” she says. “Don’t you worry. You just enjoy your time with Nick’s folks, and we’ll see you when you’re back.” We haven’t told her the true reason we’re in New York. “You could try his cell,” she adds, “but I’d let him just get on and start his day. There’s nothing he needs you for.”

  “Oh. Right. Okay. Okay, good.” I thank her again and end the call.

  The dress stares back at me from the hanger, and I’m suddenly too weary to try it on, to put in the effort required for curating my best self. Tiffany’s comments have my mind on overdrive. Do I need Wyatt more than he needs me? Does Kai need me at all?

  As I leave the store and wander down Seventh Avenue, I wonder if it’s always the parents who need their children more than vice versa, if parenting is a more selfish endeavor than any of us really let on. I pull my phone from bag again, and this time, I dial my dad.

  Twenty minutes later, I walk into the Starbucks near my parents’ apartment to find my father standing at the counter, collecting two blended drinks from the barista.

  “Just in time,” he says. He hands me an icy Frappucino, then leans in for a quick peck on the cheek.

  He looks different from when I saw him just a few weeks ago. His weathered skin is tan, and his thick white hair seems recently cut. The cornflower blue golf shirt he’s wearing is tucked neatly into a pair of navy-blue Bermuda shorts.

  “Walk and talk?” He looks toward the street.

  “Really?” I grimace at the idea of returning to the muggy streets.

  “I have to do my steps.” He taps the digital watch on his wrist. “Ten thousand a day doesn’t just happen.”

  I roll my eyes and motion for him to lead the way.

  As we walk out and head toward Seventy-Eighth Street, I find myself heartened to be with my dad, nostalgic, and delightfully needy. A child who still needs her parent, even as an adult.

  “You look good,” I tell him. “I was a little worried last time we were here.”

  He furrows his brow as we both step around a UPS delivery man and the large stack of boxes he’s creating on a dolly on the sidewalk. The man is scanning each box with a handheld device and doesn’t look up as we pass.

  “You seemed . . .” I don’t want to tell him that he had appeared suddenly so much older, lonely, abandoned. “Tired?”

  He lets out a small chuckle and takes a sip from his green straw.

  “What?”

  He gives me a sheepish look before stepping into the crosswalk and waiting for me to follow him across Second Avenue. “Dare I admit that I might have been hung over?”

  “Hung over?” There are many names I might have called Gail and Leon Fisher over the years, but “drunks” was never one of them.

  “I’ve gotten into this card game,” he starts to explain, “with Paul Witzler and Jerry Stein. A few other guys. Poker.”

  I stop walking and turn to face him head-on. “Poker?” My head tilts as I say it.

  He points again to the step counter on his wrist and turns back toward First Avenue. “Let’s make that traffic light.” I know that when we reach First Avenue, we’ll turn left and continue north toward Carl Schurz Park. This walk, at least, is familiar to me.

  “Look,” my dad says with a long sigh as he tosses his empty cup into a metal trash basket and continues walking. “Ever since your mother . . . Well, as much as
I miss her, all that time taking care of someone—it was an eternity sometimes. And now that I don’t have the responsibility, I like to blow off steam now and again.”

  “All that time?” I bristle. “Relative to most cancers, I think hers moved pretty quick, Dad.”

  “Not the cancer. No, of course that was too fast. Way too fast. I meant the manic depression.” He stops at the corner of Eighty-First Street as the light changes and traffic moves into our path.

  “The . . .” My voice seems to stall, and then it fails me completely as a window begins to open in my brain. The window becomes a door, then a long hallway that continues into an enormous stadium, an arena, filled with evidence to support what my father has just said. I grab on to my father’s forearm as I process his words. It’s something that’s so incredibly obvious yet has never, not once, crossed my mind.

  A small crowd of pedestrians is building around us as we all wait for the light to change. People are making their way about their daily business. Heading out for midday appointments, a bite to eat.

  My father studies me for a moment and then a look of surprise flashes across his features.

  “You didn’t know?” He sounds stunned.

  “Know?” My voice is rising. “How would I know?”

  The traffic light changes but we stay where we are.

  “The mood swings,” he says. “The highs, the way she’d keep you up into the middle of the night baking batch after batch of cupcakes for a bake sale or when she’d start reorganizing the living room at four in the morning?”

  “I was a child! I was supposed to start making a clinical diagnosis?”

  “Not then. But you’re not a child now—haven’t been one for years. I assumed you’d have figured it out.”

  “Was she on medication?”

  “Sometimes.” He nods. “A lot of the time.” He starts walking again, and I follow.

  “Does Tess know?” I ask, even though I’m sure she must.

  “Your mother loved you girls more than anything. If she made any mistakes, it was only in loving you too hard sometimes. You don’t need to hash it out with Tess. There’s nothing your mother would hate more than the two of you sitting around dissecting her mental fragility. Anyhow.” He says this last word like a punctuation mark, a signal that we, too, are finished discussing my mom’s mental health.

  We continue toward the park in silence, and I’m grateful for a moment to digest the information he’s shared with me. I’m not sure whether I feel increased responsibility for the strife in our relationship, for my lack of understanding of her illness, or outrage that I was kept in the dark for so long.

  After my father and I say good-bye, I realize that if I don’t hurry, I’m going to be late to meet my sister for lunch. At least the cab I land in for the journey back to Midtown is air-conditioned.

  When I arrive at the restaurant, it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. Tess is waiting at the bar, her attention focused on the viewing screen of her small digital camera. She’s wearing a bone-colored pencil skirt and a matching short-sleeved blouse. Her blond hair is loose and youthful, and it falls over the camera as she studies the screen. Even with all the hours she spends at her desk doing lawyerly things, she can’t seem to surrender her passion for photography. I keep encouraging her to participate in a couple of exhibitions, or even to try selling her work online, but she’s happy just to look at the beautiful photos and know that she was responsible for creating them. At least, that’s what she claims.

  “That’s stunning,” I say, looking over her shoulder at the black-and-white photo of large male hands covered in some sort of chalk or powder, maybe a gymnast or some other athlete preparing.

  “You’re here!” she exclaims with typical Tess exuberance as she half-stands and extends her long arms, beckoning me for a hug. I breathe in her familiar flowery scent and squeeze tightly, letting my big sister hold me up for just a moment before I let go.

  I’m bursting to discuss the conversation with my father, but in a rare effort to respect my mother, I hold my tongue.

  Once we’re settled in a booth, I ask about the photo Tess was studying.

  “Oh, it’s an old one. I took it just a few minutes before I met Isaac for the first time, actually,” she says wistfully, referring to her biomedical engineer husband of the past fourteen months.

  I’m jealous of the way she says this, how her eyes get all big and dreamy at the mention of Isaac’s name. He has Tess totally smitten. Maybe it’s the fact that she was the last one in her group of friends to get married, so he became all the more valuable to her, or maybe being soul mates is sometimes a real thing. I try not to roll my eyes at the thought. Either way, she won’t credit a bad word about him. As I think back, I can’t remember if I ever felt so positively about Nick, if he ever made my face go all pink and moony like hers is right now.

  “I was just killing time because my client meeting ended earlier than I expected. Can you please update me, though? Are you ready for tomorrow?”

  “Tom’s been very patient with us,” I tell her, referring to the lawyer she found for us. “He thinks we have a legit shot of winning this. I don’t know, I’m less confident.” I open the menu and start scanning the choices, feeling uncomfortable for reasons I can’t quite articulate.

  “What is it?” Tess asks, and her perceptiveness annoys me.

  “What? Nothing.” I motion to her menu with my eyes. “What are you going to get?”

  “Maggie.” She waits. It’s just like our mom used to do.

  “What? Stop it.”

  She raises her eyebrows at me, and I know she’s not going to let me off the hook until I open up.

  “Nick wants to drop the case,” I finally confess.

  She gasps slightly and then releases her breath in a loud sigh.

  “I’m not sure what this case is going to do to our marriage,” I add.

  “Is there ever a moment where you and Nick actually want the same thing?” she asks.

  I know where this is going. It’s not the first time we’ve had one of these conversations.

  “I’m not divorcing him,” I say, exasperated, trying to get to the end of where these discussions always land. We’ve skipped the in-between, where I tell her all the things Nick does wrong, but then I defend him and the life we’ve built together. Then she tells me how I deserve more.

  “You could be so much happier,” she says, but I already hear the defeat in her voice. She knows that she is not winning this debate.

  “You used to be Nick’s biggest cheerleader,” I remind her, thinking of how she lobbied in his favor after I moved to LA on my own so many years ago, when I tried to leave him.

  “Because I knew you loved him back then. Now . . .” She studies my face for a moment. “I’m just not so sure anymore.”

  I let out a deep breath before I answer. “Look, I won’t say I haven’t been thinking about it,” I admit. “But I’ve come to the conclusion that I just don’t want to be a divorced person, and I don’t want Wyatt to suffer through whatever fallout it would create.” She opens her mouth to say something, but I continue. “This one custody battle is enough. I don’t want to get involved in custody questions about Wyatt, too, the whole ‘weekends and every other Wednesday’ thing. I’d rather just stay in my mediocre marriage and have an intact family, keep raising Wyatt as we are, socializing with other couples. Unraveling the whole thing just seems like more trouble than it’s worth. My marriage doesn’t have to be my main priority. Wyatt’s good, I love what I do for a living, and things with Nick are fine. Sometimes it’s even affirmatively good with him, like really good. But when it’s not, well, fine is good enough for me. It’s fine. It’s all fine.”

  The waitress arrives to take our order, and I’m saved from whatever response was waiting on Tess’s lips. As soon as she’s gone, I steer us back toward the topic of Kai.

  “Anyway, I think Nick is just nervous about losing.”

  Tess n
ods, her eyes shifting to the side a little, like she’s thinking, strategizing. “You should start figuring out who’s going to testify on your behalf at the hearing. Besides me, obviously.” She smiles. “I wonder if you’ll also want the doctors from the fertility clinic, and that surrogacy matchmaker you used, just to show what your original intention was here.”

  I shake my head. “Tom said the other side would probably stipulate that we all thought both babies were genetically linked to the Rigsdales. The real issue now is just what’s best for Kai going forward.”

  “And you think that what’s best for him is coming to live in your house with your mediocre marriage?” she asks.

  “Now you suddenly think I’m making the wrong choice?”

  “No.” She shakes her head. “I’m just trying to help you see the big picture here.”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  The waitress is back, sliding our glasses of iced tea into place on the table as Tess and I pause our conversation.

  “Look,” Tess says when the waitress disappears, “let’s not fight. I want what you want, okay? Whatever you want to do, I will support you.”

  I take the olive branch she’s offering, and instead of fighting about Nick, we talk about what it would be like to have two boys in the house, which bedroom would become Kai’s, how they’d get along.

  I don’t tell her that I’m a little overwhelmed by the thought of integrating an additional child into our daily lives, especially one who’s already ten years old. I worry that he’ll have trouble acclimating, that he won’t have the same tastes or hobbies as the rest of us, that his presence will change everything. But I worry more that if we give up on him, we might break his innocent little heart and also my own bigger, bruised one.