“It’s funny that Hunter lives in San Francisco and now we’re up here,” Liv said, ignoring my question. “He’s less than an hour away. Maybe we’ll even run into him. Would you recognize him, do you think? How smart was your little infant memory?”
Liv’s question stopped me in my tracks. We were in Napa. Hunter Moon was in San Francisco. We had the next five days free from reality. Nothing to do. No obligations. The seed of an idea that had been planted in my brain for who knows how long—maybe years—was taking root. I looked over at Liv, at the smile slowly spreading across her face.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, suddenly nervous.
“I’m thinking what you’re thinking. Let’s go find him.”
“I wasn’t—” I began.
“You wanted to find him, let’s find him. Maybe it will help you resolve some stuff.”
I started to shake my head, but Liv held up her hand. “I know one thing. We aren’t staying here eating grass and getting rubbed with Ayurvedic oil while your father is hanging out a few miles down the road.”
“But we don’t know that for sure. We don’t know anything!” I protested.
“We’re lawyers. All we do all day long is research. Emma, face it, we’re going to San Francisco.” She looked me straight in the eyes. “We’re going to find your dad.”
I instantly felt like I was going to cry, although I wasn’t entirely sure why. “Really? You think it’s a good idea? Are you sure? But weren’t you looking forward to Napa? What about the plunge pool?”
“Sure, it’s nice. Okay, it’s heaven. But we can come here whenever we want. Well, when we’ve saved up another small fortune for one of the biggest events of our lives. But who cares? That’s just stuff. Let’s go find your dad.”
I looked at my best friend, who wanted what was best for me. I thought about how long I’d wondered about my father. I thought about how much I might not know about Sam, and myself. I thought about the roller coaster of anxiety, fear, and inner chaos I’d been riding on for weeks.
“Okay,” I agreed, a warm feeling growing inside me as I spoke. Liv squealed in response. “If you’re sure you don’t mind, I guess it can’t hurt to look.”
“Yes!” she cheered. “Now, should you break the news to Siri or should I?”
Grabbing our bags, we booked it out of the lodge as if we knew we wouldn’t be able to leave if we looked back. When we got to reception we encountered a bewildered Siri, who was either performing meditation behind her glass desk or rarely blinked. We tossed the flimsy room key her way and sprinted to the door. I quickly explained that we were needed in San Francisco, and no, not to tell anyone where we went if they should call.
“Then what should I tell them?” Siri asked, her pale, slim shoulders raised in confusion, her face showing some kind of expression for the first time since we met.
“Nothing. I mean, take the messages and do whatever you want with them. But please don’t give any information back. Look at it this way: You could always double book the room, keep the money, and go shopping. We won’t tell the manager.” I attempted a conspiratorial wink.
“I am the manager,” Siri said, clearly insulted by our suggestion of insubordination.
“That’s awesome, Siri,” Liv said, jumping in. “You’re doing a great job.”
I took this as my cue to push us out the door.
“Um, bye,” Siri called as we hustled out to the parking lot. Before that moment, no one had ever hustled on the premises of the Calistoga Ranch, unless it was to snag the last green tea smoothie after forest yoga.
“Why are we running?” I gasped for breath as I opened the passenger door.
“I don’t know about you but I’m running from Siri,” Liv shouted. “She’s gotta be a robot. No actual human being looks that good in a jumper.” She slammed her door closed and started the rental car.
“I was thinking the same thing!”
Liv peeled out of the parking spot, opening her window and shouting, “Bye, organic pear and fig facial peel! Later, mustard seed body wrap with deep friction massage for an extra fifty bucks! Catch you on the flip side, organic milk bath!” I laughed at Liv’s good-bye to our five-minute five-star experience and felt a ripple of excitement. After living in California for seven years, I was finally looking for my dad, who had been there all along. I was finally looking for answers to the questions that had been skirting around the edge of my mind for weeks. And who knows, I might even find them.
CHAPTER 6
“Can I ask you a question?” Liv said, glancing at me in the warm car, her figure outlined by a slice of orange sun about to succumb to the horizon. We’d been driving for close to an hour. After pulling up directions to San Francisco and locating an oldies station playing “the Seventies at Seven,” we were on our way. In the background, Rod Stewart started to croon about Maggie May. I turned to face Liv to let her know I was listening.
“Why don’t you ask your mom where he is? Hunter, I mean. I know you guys aren’t close or anything, but maybe she could point us in the right direction. You know, ‘He lives in Pac Heights in the yellow house on Fillmore’—that kind of thing.”
“For one thing, she doesn’t know. I overheard her talking on the phone years ago. She said after Hunter moved back to San Francisco, she never heard from him. So really, this whole thing could be a crapshoot.” I looked out the window. “And secondly, there’s no way I’m getting her involved.”
“Gotcha,” Liv said lightly, turning up the music and singing along with Rod, who wished he’d never seen Maggie’s face. Any knowledge my mother may have had about Hunter wasn’t worth getting her two cents on this harebrained scheme, but I couldn’t help being slightly embarrassed. Although I knew Liv loved me unconditionally and, to a certain extent, she understood the cold war between my mother and me, it wasn’t exactly something I was proud of.
The funny part is, I vividly remember when my relationship with my mother went from best buddies to strained strangers. When I was little I would sit on the kitchen sink while she curled her hair for dates and we would dance around to Earth, Wind and Fire. When I was in kindergarten and I had a cat that seemed to have kittens every year, my mom let me keep the entire brood until I was able to give them away. In fifth grade, when my “friends” formed the I Hate Emma Club one day and told me I wasn’t allowed to sit with them anymore (preteen girls, the true Axis of Evil), I came home the next night and my mom had put up a banner that read, The I Love Emma Club. The club had only one member, but hey, it was better than nothing. But those were the days when Caro was still getting her degree, volunteering at the lobby on the weekends and squeezing in waitressing shifts at the local pizza place to pay the rent. Once she started working full time and I went to high school, things irrevocably changed.
It was the summer before I started high school, when my mom graduated from her master’s program and started as a paid staffer at the anti-tobacco lobby. She was able to quit her night shifts at the Italian restaurant on M Street, threw away her red linen apron—stiff from hundreds of washings—and lost the extra ten pounds created by the free pizza and calzones we subsisted on. Thanks to the new boost in income, we traded in the revolving door of temporary rentals and Georgetown apartments owned by friends who let us crash, for a small Cape Cod in Arlington, Virginia. For the first time, we had our own house, with a real backyard, replete with a dogwood tree and a hammock, where I could lie for hours in the shade and read. It was my own personal Glover Park, with fewer flashers.
This should have been good news, but for some reason as soon as we moved, this was when it seemed my mother morphed from Mom to Caro. All of a sudden she was out of the house all time, somehow even more than when she’d been waitressing, going to school, and passing out “Cough Twice for Philip Morris” flyers on Saturdays. Even though she finally had a salaried job and could presumably take a break from our ever-pres
ent money woes, she seemed more irritable than ever. Everything I did annoyed her, which wasn’t helped by the fact that I felt less and less comfortable in my own skin every day. That summer I shot up to five feet, nine inches, getting clumsier by the second, while Caro stayed cool, sleek, and Reese Witherspoon sized.
A child’s memory is biased, I know, but there are events from that time that stick out to this day, moments that I can point to and say, Look, there it is, there’s proof; my mother couldn’t stand me. One night when we first moved in, our neighbor and the father of three younger boys from down the street, Mike Madigan, came by to welcome us. In only a few days, I’d already become familiar with the Madigan boys, who were always kicking the soccer ball around their front yard or having races in the street. Mr. Madigan worked as a government consultant, had a kind smile, and wore tortoiseshell glasses. He offered to fix loose cabinets and set up our cable box, as generic men in the suburbs are prone to do. I remember how nervous I was when he came over, the first ever visitor to our first ever house, as I chattered to keep him entertained.
I told him a story about my middle-school gym class, describing the annual line dance instruction, even impersonating the boys choppily attempting to grapevine. Our neighbor chuckled and I glanced at Caroline to see her reaction. She was watching me stonily and all of a sudden I saw her—quickly, imperceptibly—roll her eyes. It’s subtle but powerful what an eye roll can do. Abruptly, I stopped speaking.
In the years following, when I wasn’t at my new friend Liv’s house, I hid in my room or outside on the hammock. I punished Caro by not telling her anything about my life. I didn’t tell her when I got elected to student government. I didn’t complain that I hated my chemistry teacher with a passion and I didn’t invite her over to take prom pictures with the other parents. Over the years we became more and more distant, until we were basically two strangers living in the same house, reconvening to discuss Chinese food take-out orders.
Liv’s family, on the other hand, was perfect. I idolized her parents, particularly Mr. Lucci, who in my mind was the perfect dad. He was the ultimate family man. He came home every night at 5:00 P.M. from his job at the State Department and cooked dinner for his family. I remember hearing a story about how he could have taken a job at a law firm and made ten times the salary, but he turned it down because he wouldn’t have been able to make homemade fajitas every Thursday night. Mr. Lucci spent virtually every weekend puttering around the house, drinking decaf coffee, and reading the newspaper, reciting aloud any article he thought Mrs. Lucci might enjoy. It took him two hours to get through the Style section.
For Caro and me, things went from bad to worse. When I left for college, and then law school, and finally settled in Los Angeles, I think we were both relieved. To this day, she’s never been to visit me, although the truth is she’s never really been invited. She’s only even met Sam a handful of times.
Of course, since I met Sam and the rest of the Powells, I haven’t minded my mother’s distance as much. My mind drifted unpleasantly to where I would be if I were to lose him. Back at square one, without a family, without anyone.
“Emma!” Liv shouted, interrupting my distress. “Look!” I looked up to see where Liv was wildly pointing. It was an exit for 280 South, toward H. Moon. I felt a sudden jolt of adrenaline, even though I had experienced this particular coincidence before.
“Yeah, that’s weird, right? It stands for Half Moon—it’s the freeway to Half Moon Bay. But that would be an awesome way to find him.”
“I know it doesn’t stand for Hunter Moon your dad,” Liv said, rolling her eyes, albeit in a nice way. “But it’s still a sign! We are heading toward H. Moon, literally!”
“Well, not literally literally, because that’s not our exit.”
“You know what I mean. Anyway, did you know they put the fake definition of literally in the dictionary? Now it says literally means either that something really happened or it didn’t really but it’s being used for exaggeratory effect. Isn’t that funny? The point is, we’re gonna find him!”
Despite being a practicing attorney with an eye for facts, Liv strongly believed in the power of positive thinking, and she gave a surprising amount of credit to signs, symbols, and other emblems of her destiny. I wasn’t usually convinced, but today her excitement was contagious. There was a small part of me that held hope that we might actually find Hunter. Maybe things would turn out well. I let out a gush of air, resolving to be present and enjoy the adventure. I hadn’t realized it, but I’d been holding my breath. “You’re right,” I said. “It’s a good sign. Literally.”
Liv laughed. “She’s back to telling the dorky puns, folks!”
I sat back and wondered what had really happened to Hunter. I was six months old when he left. Did he hate changing diapers? Did Caro ruin his life and drive him away? Was it the Beltway traffic? Soon, I hoped, I would know.
We wound our way north through the city, to the place I’d reserved through Airbnb on our drive in. After a quick search with my phone, I’d found a three-bedroom Victorian in the Marina. It had what looked like a beautiful bedroom with a king-sized bed and an en suite bathroom, and it was available for an immediate vacation rental. I was a little unsure about a place that would have availability so last minute, but if the pictures were any indication, it would be perfect.
I directed Liv to the address, lost in thought, turning over the few facts about Hunter, the bits and pieces I’d put together about him, and even the rare mention of his name, overheard and collected throughout the years.
In truth, the most concrete memory I had of my father wasn’t a memory at all. It was a story that my uncle Constantine told me, or rather, shouted near me, when I was nine years old. That year at Thanksgiving my mom decided that I should know more of her family, the majority of whom still lived in Pennsylvania. She invited them all to the small basement apartment we were subletting, while she was acting as temporary manager of the restaurant.
That day remains the only one I’ve ever spent with all of my mother’s family. When I picture it, I remember a lot of shouting relatives and enormous bowls of pasta. Marinara sauce simmering on the stove and meat being patted into balls. And wine, lots of wine. No one mentioned a turkey, and I wasn’t about to bring it up.
Uncle Constantine, who hadn’t fallen far from Mickey Rigazi’s tree, was drunk by noon, cursing the Steelers and the Raiders, which I realized years later were football teams, not a band of thieves committing breaking and entering. During grace, my grandmother gave a prayer for all the family who couldn’t be with us that day.
Showing off, I added, “Like my daddy, Hunter.” I didn’t quite grasp the concept of divorce yet, much less abandonment, but I knew I had a family member who wasn’t there, and figured pointing out his existence couldn’t hurt.
Constantine looked directly at me for the first time that day, his small, angry eyes rimmed with red, a streak of sauce on the lower right of his chin, and pointed his juice glass of Chianti in my direction. I wanted to hand him a napkin, but something told me the gesture wouldn’t be appreciated.
“Bite your tongue, Emily. Your father is nothing but a no-good, dick-eating louse!” he shouted. To this day, it was the oddest insult I’ve ever heard, which is probably why I still remember it. My grandmother tried to rein him in by patting his arm quickly and firmly in what appeared to be a Morse code pattern, but he wasn’t to be silenced. Apparently my father was as unwelcome in this house as those burglars he hated from Pittsburgh.
“I’ll never forgive him, Caroline,” he went on. “Neither should you. After what he done to me when I come to the hospital to see my baby niece.” He slammed down his glass. “That asshole kicks me out! Me!” he yelled, like the King of England thwarted from meeting his heir to the throne, rather than the uncle of baby Emily, who was, by the way, named Emma.
“Why?” I asked in a small voice. I couldn’t help it.
Caro looked wearily at her mother, who started dishing out the pasta and identifying meat versus eggplant as if a fat man sitting to her left wasn’t turning purple with rage.
“For no good reason is why! Because he’s a prick!” he shouted. “But I wasn’t about to let this loser kick me out of my sister’s hospital room, no sirree. I punched him right in the nose for that one. That taught him. Haven’t seen him around here since, have you?” Constantine finished with a flourish, before turning back to the more important business of shoving an olive oil–soaked piece of bread in his mouth, seemingly a reward for setting the story straight.
Later that night after everyone had left, sensing there was more to the story—as would anyone with an ounce of deductive reasoning skill—I asked my mom why my dad kicked Constantine out of the hospital room. She never talked about my dad, but she had no choice after that little tidbit. Caro sighed mightily and said, “Because he was smoking in the delivery room. Constantine walked into the room and lit up a cigarette right next to a day-old baby. Hunter kicked him out. He was . . . protective that way.”
I didn’t ask any of the obvious questions. What way? Why would someone who was willing to get into a physical fight to protect his baby’s tiny lungs leave said child mere months later? If he was so concerned about my well-being then, why hadn’t he contacted me since? Instead I said, “I can see why he got mad,” not clarifying whether I meant my father or Uncle Constantine, and continued bringing dishes in from the card table to the alcove kitchen, my mind swimming with questions and my heart hurting for a man who had once tried to protect me.
CHAPTER 7
We pulled up to a tall yellow Victorian with an unbelievably steep flight of narrow stairs, ensuring that all who lived there would curse themselves daily, and movers would charge them double their usual rate. Despite this, it was an incredible home, both historic and well kept. I reassured myself that this probably made the Airbnb somewhat legit.
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