Cold Feet

by Amy FitzHenry

  “Are you thinking we should call the organizations and ask if Hunter Moon is a member?” Liv said, quickly catching on.

  “Or ever has been. If so, they should have his contact information.”

  “It’s not a bad idea.” I marveled at the relative simplicity of the plan. “And it really might show us stuff that isn’t online.”

  “It definitely will. Groups like this don’t keep their membership records online. Especially past ones.” Rick looked back and forth between the two of us. “I think this is what they call good old-fashioned detective work.”

  Once Rick had set us up in a private reading room with two phones, we lugged the boxes of directories and spread them out to approach our task systematically. Rick was in and out for the rest of the day, helping us call, tending to the Lizard Lady, sneaking us sandwiches from the catered staff meeting. It was a slow-going, arduous process, but the fact that we were talking to real people made it at least entertaining.

  Like when the guy who answered the phone at the SF Food Adventure Club accused me of being a spy from the NSA. “Sir,” I explained reasonably, “if I were from the NSA, I would just tap your phone lines and be done with it. In fact, they’re probably listening to us right now.” He hung up shortly after that.

  Another woman, who worked the front office of the Humboldt County Green Party, said she knew a Hunter once, who used to frequent the interpretative art scene, but readily admitted she’d done too many drugs to provide much more information than that. She had no clue what his last name might be. There was even one helpful, slightly bored-sounding man, who found a Moon listing in the membership records of the San Francisco Opera’s Bravo! Club. When we called the number listed, however, Flowering explained that this was her chosen name, and she wasn’t related to any other Moons, “in this realm at least.”

  “Emma, come here,” Liv whispered loudly at one point, covering the receiver of the phone. She turned back to her call. “You don’t have any record of one, but you knew a Hunter Moon? Uh-huh. He was your dentist?” She looked at me when she said this, raising both eyebrows. “When was that? Do you know if he’s still practicing? Do you know his number or address, by any chance? Right, I understand. Let me give you our number in case you remember anything else after you talk to your wife. Thank you!” After scribbling down his number, she hung up and turned back to me dramatically.

  “Hunter Moon was the name of his dentist about ten years ago, he thinks.”

  “How do we contact him? Does he have his number?”

  “Oh. Well, no,” Liv said, slightly deflated. “He doesn’t remember any of that. And he said it might have been Harry. But it’s a start!”

  We scoured the Internet for every possible combination of dentist, Hunter, Harry, and Moon, but still nothing turned up.

  While Liv was getting us some more coffee, and I was aimlessly scrolling through different organizations on the Web, I searched for Sam on the Writers Guild of America website, and reread his IMDB page. I’d seen it a million times before, of course, but I wanted to see his name again. I wanted to see if I felt any differently when I saw it. I read the entry critically. It was only when I got to On the Royal Road that I started to feel slightly sick. Would I ever be able to think about that movie again without wondering what may have happened in Charleston?

  Val’s disappearance after that summer had been unexplained, yet in some ways, it made perfect sense. We’d never had that much in common, and besides I didn’t exactly match her effortless Hollywood style. No matter what kind of hair product/blow-dry combination I tried, my hair would never be as smooth as hers. When we hung out, we spent most of the night with her explaining who I’d been eating dinner across from for the last three hours—I had a serious problem with actor recognition—and the night usually ended with me begging off from the next bar because I had to cite-check a brief when I got home.

  Despite that, when Val first got back from South Carolina and was ignoring my texts religiously, I was convinced I had done something wrong, that maybe Sam had unintentionally passed on some kind of miscommunication from me. I wondered if I was too needy, always asking her for advice while struggling with my first ever long-distance relationship. I couldn’t figure out what I had done to upset her. I wondered if maybe something bad happened to her over the summer, if maybe she was going through something that had nothing to do with me and needed me to push through to show her I was there for her. So I did. I wrote her umpteen messages and e-mails to that end, all different versions of the question “Is everything okay?”

  I told myself to drop it, that sometimes we never know why people do the things they do. But something had arisen in me, the old familiar feeling of being summarily rejected for no reason. It drove a pit of fear and anxiety into the lining of my stomach. It made me wonder what I was doing to drive people away. This led me to do something I’d never thought I would do. I signed up for therapy.

  I attended for a grand total of three weeks. My therapist was named Dr. Majdi, a sexy Persian psychiatrist in Downtown Los Angeles who took my insurance and shouted at me while she posed meaningful hypotheticals that served only to confuse me.

  “Suppose my only familial relationship was with a person who wasn’t really capable of being there, who disappeared halfway through my adolescence. I would have an issue with abandonment,” she stressed during my second session. I wasn’t sure if she spoke this way because it was her general cadence, or because she was incredibly frustrated with me.

  “That sounds awful. That happened to you?” I asked, genuinely concerned, sipping my water cup and relieved the attention was off me for a minute. I studied a bowl of Nature Valley granola bars she had set out on the coffee table. Did anyone actually eat those during therapy? They were so crumbly, that had to be a gigantic mess. There weren’t even any napkins. It was a disaster waiting to happen. Although I supposed you could use a tissue if you were really desperate. There were certainly plenty of those.

  “This is an example, Emma. No, this did not happen to me. It happened to you. I am trying to explain why you always assume the worst, why you always think everyone around you will fail you, will let you down, will leave you. Why you are terrified of being, and yet convinced you will be, left.” As she spoke, she gestured wildly with her pen, but her carefully blown-out caramel-brown hair remained perfectly in place.

  “Oh, right. Definitely. I completely agree.” I wanted Dr. Majdi to know how much I appreciated her opinion and what a good job she was doing. I also wanted to ask her what wrinkle cream she used. She looked ridiculously young for a shrink. She stared back at me, as if I wasn’t quite getting it. I suspected this was the case.

  “Emma, when children experience any sort of trauma they blame themselves, because children cannot see the experience through any other perspective. They are not old enough to understand that people have other motivations, which have nothing to do with them.”

  “That makes a lot of sense.”

  Dr. Majdi stared at me and said, “Do you understand how this may relate to you?”

  I bit my lip, stumped.

  I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I was genuinely there because I wanted to feel better. I wanted to stop obsessing about how I’d lost my friend, about what was wrong with me. I’d given Dr. Majdi the entire backstory when I arrived. I told her that I’d never met my dad, that my mom and I were practically strangers, and that despite my relationship with Sam, I was convinced I would end up alone. I explained with clinical detachment that whenever something good happened, I was basically waiting for it to be taken away.

  Dr. Majdi looked concerned and even a little disappointed as I shared my background with her. I was pretty sure her reaction had something to do with my casual tone when I explained the situation, as if I were telling a story that had happened to someone else. As if I were reporting what had happened in the most recent season of Game of Thrones to someone
who hadn’t watched it. Not that I would hang out with an individual with such poor judgment.

  In any case, I told her everything. I was honest. When she asked questions, or asked for examples of memories, I offered them up. In our second session, I told her about the time I was in a school play that was going to be performed on Father’s Day. My teacher told our class that our dads would get to sit in the front row.

  “Do you remember how you felt when you heard this, Emma?” she asked.

  “Yes, I remember that moment exactly. I remember feeling sad and then saying to myself, Don’t be sad about this, Emma. And then I wasn’t,” I reported proudly to Dr. Majdi. “I told myself to stop caring, and I did. I was fine.”

  Dr. Majdi sighed audibly, turned to a fresh page in her notebook, and probably mentally reorganized her closet to account for all the new pairs of shoes she was going to buy with my forthcoming insurance checks. Then she tried to explain that I wasn’t really “fine.” I just told myself that I was fine.

  According to Dr. Majdi, we had two issues to tackle. I quickly organized them in my mind, like the lawyer on a lunch break that I was. There was one, my history with abandonment (father, physically; mother, emotionally, I subcategorized); and two, the neutral standpoint I’d adopted for coping with this history (in other words, my nonemotive explanation of the dad I’d never met and the mom who didn’t really like me). The fact that I’d told myself not to care, so, accordingly, I didn’t. Conclusion: This was unhealthy.

  “You have may have told yourself that you don’t care, Emma, and that you were fine. But this was simply a coping mechanism. The pain and hurt from those experiences, they went somewhere. A good one, I have to admit. You were a strong little girl. But that didn’t make the pain go away. You braced yourself from the pain. You held it at bay. This worked at the time. But this approach will not serve you well in the long run.”

  What she was saying made sense, and it was probably good advice, but it made me realize that therapy wasn’t what I needed, not at that moment, anyway. The ability to freeze my pain and tell myself not to be sad about my mom and dad was one of the things I was most proud of. Why would I want to break that habit?

  I was honest about this when I quit therapy, explaining to Dr. Majdi that I liked the coping mechanisms I had developed.

  “Why would I stop doing the thing that got me through life up until this point?”

  “Because you don’t need them anymore. You are not the same little girl. You have good friends, a job, a relationship. You have security. You need to face the bad things when they happen to you and when you recall the painful memories of your past, not push them away. Emma, you must turn into the wave of pain and let it wash over you. Because if not, someday after you have dived under these waves time after time, one will come along that is too big to avoid. And when it hits, you’re going to be flattened.”

  CHAPTER 10

  After Liv and I decided we’d done enough fruitless Hunter research for one day, we headed back, exhausted, to Carrick’s place. Liv wanted to take a long shower, so I decided to go out for a coffee. Fresh air and a minute of quiet time sounded nice.

  I walked to a nearby Italian coffee shop—the kind with a gorgeous awning and comfortable chairs that seem mandatory to San Francisco—and sat down at a wrought iron table by the window. Latte and scone in hand, I experienced an “I’m going to be okay” feeling, which I held on to desperately. The good news, I comforted myself, is that I’m on vacation and eating pastries at a lovely coffee shop, rather than in my office in Downtown L.A. with a Kind bar and a cup of lukewarm coffee, writing a motion for summary judgment, as I had spent so many weekends prior. I watched a mom at the next table silently hand pieces of croissant to her daughter, who was quietly reading a picture book. I briefly wondered what Caro would say if she knew what I was up to. I hadn’t told her about the search for the simple reason that it wasn’t any of her business. It would be like telling a current-day secret to someone who was your best friend in elementary school but you haven’t seen since. Sure, you once held hands and shared graham crackers during snack time, but it’s pointless if she doesn’t know you now, if she doesn’t know how much you hate your job or who the last ex-boyfriend to drunk text you was. It’s the little things.

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed someone familiar entering the café. He was wearing a blue-and-black-plaid shirt and looked almost too tall to make it under the fancy entrance.

  “Dusty?” I called over to him.

  “Hey! How are you?” he answered, heading over. This must be his local coffee shop, I figured quickly. It’s just a coincidence. Despite that, I felt a slight flush at his appearance. It’s because he’s an attractive guy you don’t know very well, I reminded myself. Don’t be weird.

  “I’m good,” I said, when he reached my table. “How’s your Sunday going?”

  “Great. So, I have to admit, this isn’t a random run-in,” he said. “I saw the note you left for Liv. I don’t have your phone number or I would have called.”

  “Oh, okay. What’s up?”

  “I wanted to tell you what I was thinking last night after we talked. About you—and your dad, the mythological Hunter Moon,” he quickly added. “I wanted to tell you, but I wasn’t sure if I should.” He paused then. I nodded encouragingly for him to go on. “The thing is, I’ve been there. I grew up with my mom and twin sister. I never knew my dad either. It’s not exactly the same because I finally met him when I was sixteen—unfortunately, since he turned out to be kind of a bastard—but I get the allure of wanting to fill out your family tree.” As he spoke, Dusty endearingly, if nervously, ran both hands through his hair and over the back of his neck.

  “I made this huge deal out of finding him, and then when I did, he took me out to dinner and gave me his business card, like we were at a stupid networking event or something. He said to let him know if I needed money, or a college recommendation,” Dusty recalled painfully. “He lives in Fairfield, Connecticut, with his new family. It’s such a cliché. But I guess those are around for a reason, right?”

  “Right,” I said quietly.

  “I never even told my mom or sister that I met him. Actually, I’ve never told anyone. It was too embarrassing. His reaction I mean.” He looked at me. His face read unhappy but composed. He had accepted that this was the hand he’d been dealt, and he had it under control. It was a look I recognized. Also familiar was the way he lightened the conversation and changed its focus to me immediately after sharing his story. “So anyway, about Hunter Moon, great name by the way.”

  “I know, it’s so silly,” I said, with an odd flush of delight. It was definitely more fun to have an absent father with a catchy name than a boring one.

  “Maybe it’s fake,” Dusty suggested. “And he’s some San Francisco celebrity operating under cover. George Lucas? Gavin Newsom?”

  “Maybe Gavin! I don’t want to brag but I was in student government.”

  Dusty laughed, surely relieved we were back on a more comfortable topic. “I can tell. You have leadership skills.”

  “What about your mom? Can she help?” It was the same question Liv had asked in the car. It was the obvious one. It also happened to be my least favorite. Explaining my relationship with my mom is an inevitably painful activity. For one, it’s semidepressing, and for another, it usually disappoints the person who’s asking. Usually when people find out I was raised by a single mother they assume we were best friends, that it was “us against the world.” It’s hard to explain to someone that for me, the experience was like two pieces of bone rubbing together, with no cartilage to operate as buffer. Tense, sharp edged, and often painful. Gilmore Girls, we were not.

  “We aren’t close. Honestly, I don’t even want her to know I’m doing this. Sorry, I know that’s not what you want to hear.”

  “I don’t want to hear anything,” Dusty said. “That came out wron
g.” He smiled. “What I mean is, I don’t have any expectations for anything you’re going to tell me. Whatever you say is okay.”

  “Thanks. And Dusty, thanks for telling me about your dad.”

  “Of course. And seriously, I don’t know if you need this, but I’d like to help you find him, however I can.”

  “Thanks, I really appreciate that.” It was nice to have another ally in the search for Hunter. That he was a computer whiz who’d been in my fatherless shoes was a nice bonus. I felt a sudden surge of optimism. Maybe I really would find Hunter. And if I could find Hunter and get some answers, maybe I could find some peace. Figure out what to do about Sam.

  “I still haven’t gotten to the reason I came to find you. Last night, I was thinking how we came up with nothing when we did our searches. No hits at all. There’s no record of this guy. Which isn’t that weird when you think about it. He’s old enough that everything he’s ever done isn’t online. Not like with us.”

  “Right. I mean, he could find me on the Internet in two seconds flat.” I tried not to think about what this implied about how much my birth father might want to meet me.

  “Exactly! That’s what I was thinking. Then I thought, if he has one daughter who’s easy to find, you know what else he might have . . .” He paused as it sank in.

  “Another one,” I answered slowly, taking in the realization. I was instantly filled with the same excitement reflected in Dusty’s eyes. “He might be off the grid . . .”

  “But maybe he has a kid who isn’t.” He sat back proudly.

  “We shouldn’t be looking for only Hunter, but for his potential offspring as well.” I looked at him expectantly, and Dusty nodded. “Wow. That’s a great idea, Dusty. But won’t looking for any Moon still get a lot of hits?”

  “Right, we have to run really specific searches. I was thinking, what about alumni or student databases? This guy could have a kid in college or grad school. And if he lives in California, where do you think he would send his kids?”