Cold Feet

by Amy FitzHenry

  I quickly closed my phone before I could read the multiple texts from Sam. I also noticed that I had a couple missed calls from a 415 area code from that morning. They must have gotten mixed up in the dozens of missed calls from Sam that Liv initially thought (hoped) were evidence of a humiliating video of me trending on the Web. It was probably someone from the UC’s San Francisco fundraising office calling to ask for money. They tended to call obsessively for a few weeks every year until I gave in and made a pledge.

  The melodic clanking of the bridge’s planks against our tires abruptly stopped and we were deposited on the other side of the bay. The second we crossed, I started to feel different, like when you go on a tropical vacation, step out of the plane, and breathe in the humid air, instantly removed from your normal life. Maybe it was because the North Bay looks so physically different from San Francisco proper. Lush and dark, with pines and redwoods forming the thick green canopy of Muir Woods, it almost feels like a forest. A forest of really rich people, I thought as I spotted a lavish real estate property hidden among the trees.

  “Holy shit, look at some of these houses,” Liv exclaimed, reading my mind. “I hope your dad has a good view of the bay. Where are we heading?” She checked the gym’s address in the rental car GPS. “Tiburon? Isn’t that where we used to go and day drink on Sundays sometimes?”

  “The very same,” I answered. When we lived in the area, every once in a while, we would wake up early on a Sunday morning, drive over the Bay Bridge, rent bikes in the Marina and bike over the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a long, but very fun adventure. We would slowly make our way to the other side, past the sparsely beautiful beach and through the quirky town of Sausalito, until we found ourselves in Tiburon. A tiny town whose main attraction is a sprawling blue-painted stucco restaurant, Sam’s—which now felt like some kind of unreadable omen—standing firmly on the edge of the sea, crowded with dozens of picnic tables providing the best view of the water for miles. The tables were inevitably occupied by like-minded twenty-somethings shouting happily over their breakfasts. We would order mimosas and eggs, which we’d really earned at that point, rehash the same topics that we’d been rehashing for the previous ten years, and, hours later, ferry home with our bikes.

  “What exactly are we going to do when we get to Equinox?” I asked.

  “We are going to reason with them. And explain that one of their gym members is your long-lost father and you need a kidney.”

  “Liv!”

  “I feel good about this, Em. Maybe he’ll even be working out.”

  Despite the false starts, my confidence was back up. I was once again struck by the incredible idea that my dad could be physically at the place where we were headed. I just hoped he wouldn’t be on the elliptical. That felt like an awkward angle for a father-daughter reunion.

  “But first,” she added, “I really need some brunch. Do you mind?”

  “No, I’m starving. Let’s go to that place up ahead; it looks great.”

  Liv swung the car into the right lane and pulled up to a small diner housed in a cottage, the middle in a row of several equally tiny, equally adorable retail establishments. Something about the place looked delicious. Maybe it was the name, Bluegrass Diner, but I knew immediately that the scramble would be fabulous and the biscuits even better. We slowly climbed out of the car and took deep breaths of the bay breeze, stretching like we’d run a marathon.

  As we walked inside, it only got cozier. Brightly colored quilts hung on the walls, giving it a warm, welcoming feeling, almost like you were under the covers. The rustic hardwood floors were scuffed from age and wear, and the waitresses were huddled around the coffee machine gossiping. A sign sassily instructed us to order at the front so they could call our names when our meals were ready.

  Liv and I dutifully got in line and each ordered a BLTA with a side of fried potatoes, adding a thick piece of cornbread to split. It seemed only polite. We found a perfect table in the corner to plunk down our steaming cups of coffee and stretch our legs. I added a generous dose of cream to my cup, silently congratulating the establishment for not switching to milk and thus forcing me to choose the less healthy option. After they called my name and I grabbed our plates, we tucked in to our feasts for a few minutes, in pure eating bliss.

  “Moon?” the waitress called from the counter, startling us both.

  “Geez, what else did you get?” Liv teased. “Bulking up for winter?”

  My eyes shot up to meet Liv’s. “I didn’t give them ‘Moon.’”

  “What?”

  I started blinking nervously. “When I ordered. I gave them ‘Emma,’ remember? They’re talking about a different Moon.”

  We both glanced up quickly to see a man walking up to the counter to get his lunch. My mouth went dry. “The waitress called out ‘Moon’ and he answered. That guy’s name is Moon.” I looked at Liv for verification.

  “It’s gotta be,” she said with the same astonishment that I was feeling. I’ve heard of people feeling alertly aware of all of their senses but never really understood what that meant until now. It was as if I was zoomed in on the picture of us. I saw the pepper spilled on the red-and-white-checkered tablecloth, I smelled the bacon frying behind the counter, and I heard the customer apparently named Moon ask for sriracha sauce, but I didn’t feel connected to any of it.

  “Go talk to him,” Liv urged. “This is your chance. And it means we won’t have to stalk him at the gym. This almost looks like a coincidence!”

  “This is a coincidence,” I said robotically.

  “That’s true! Even better.” Liv gave me a look and I realized that I had to get it together, especially since Liv was acting kind of crazy herself. What was my problem? I’d already done this twice. This was why we’d come all this way. I stood up slowly and turned toward the man with my last name, who was now sitting at his table. I took my time to push in my chair and examine him.

  He was utterly normal looking, but at the same time strangely familiar, with brown hair, a mustache, of average height and build. He sat with a newspaper spread out before him. What was it about him that I recognized, I wondered, wracking my brain. Then I realized it with a start: He looked like a dad.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” I said faintly, after approaching his table and waiting for him to look up. He quickly skimmed the rest of the sentence he was reading.

  “Yes?”

  “I didn’t meant to overhear,” I started, unsure of how to start, “but is your last name Moon?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Is your first name Hunter?”

  He frowned. “Yes, although I usually go by my middle name. H. Collingsworth Moon, DDS,” he said, reaching out to shake my hand. “How can I help you?”

  I returned the handshake but felt my mouth go dry again and my breathing become shallow. This had to be it. I looked around to Liv for guidance, but instead made eye contact with the two women at the table next to us, who were watching the interaction unabashedly.

  “Can I sit down for a second?” When he nodded, bewildered, I sank down and lowered my voice. “This is going to sound very strange. It might even sound made up. But I promise this isn’t a practical joke or anything like that.” He closed his newspaper and waited for me to go on. “I think it’s possible that you’re my father.” I waited for some kind of reaction, but his facial muscles didn’t move an inch.

  “My name is Emma Moon, I’m Caroline Moon’s daughter, and my father is . . . well . . . he has your name, Hunter Moon. I came to San Francisco to look for him and found out that he—well, maybe you—belongs to Equinox and I was headed there now to see if we could get his address, but then I heard the waitress here call your name, Moon, and I thought I’d try my luck.” I trailed off, watching him for any look of recognition or familiarity, or perhaps the guilty realization that he’d been tracked down after all these years. His face was still
curiously blank. “So, could that be you?”

  “Caroline Moon?” he said, apparently still grappling with the facts.

  “Yes! Do you know her?” My already rapid heart rate doubled.

  “Are you asking if I was married to someone named Caroline Moon?” To my dismay, he did the last possible thing I expected. He laughed. “No, I’m sorry, but no. I don’t mean to laugh. It’s the absurdity of it all. No, I don’t know a Caroline Moon and I’ve never been married. What’s more, I can’t even have kids. I’m sterile,” he added bluntly. “Although I do belong to Equinox. So that’s me. At least you saved yourself a trip.”

  I was completely at a loss. Here was the magical gym member and the elusive dentist from the phone call, all wrapped up in one. And he wasn’t the guy. Something didn’t make sense, though. Why couldn’t we ever find him in any dental listings, even under the last name Moon alone? After all, he must have been licensed by the State of California. Were we doing something entirely wrong in our searches? Or was it possible he was lying?

  “If you need a dentist, though, my practice is right next store.” He pointed to a sign visible from the window: H. Collingsworth Moone, DDS.

  Moone—with an e. The one thing we hadn’t looked for, in any of our searches, ever, was a Dr. Moone. I cursed myself for not spelling out Moon for Frank, who’d inadvertently sent us on this fool’s errand to storm the wrong castle.

  The last Hunter was uncovered. The last stone unturned. And he wasn’t my dad. The hazy idea of finding my father, the fantasy I always hoped would gel into a solid reality, vanished up in smoke before my eyes. It was over.

  I felt like an utter failure. I’d been trying to prove them all wrong. Sam, Caroline, even Uncle Constantine. To prove my father was out there and wanted something to do with me. To show myself and everybody else that the last twenty-nine years of absence had been due to a mix-up, a lost telegram, a secret superhero identity—anything to give lie to the theory that my father simply didn’t care.

  When I was a kid, and I realized the significance of having a dad who’d abandoned you, I knew that I had a choice. I could wallow and long for him. I could ask my mother furtive questions about whether I had his nose, make curious inquires about their wedding, check the mail hopefully every year, longing for a Christmas card. Or I could choose not to care. Until age eleven, I’ll admit, I cared. I didn’t come out and ask direct questions about where he was, but I collected details on the sly, fantasized about all the fantastic adventures he was having, and dreamed about the day he would show up at the door of our apartment.

  Every year on my birthday, when it was time to blow out the candles on the cake, or pecan pie, whatever was on sale at Safeway that day, I would wish for my father. Then, on my eleventh birthday, I was sitting in front of a coffee cake with a slightly smushed right side, and my mother, tired from her shift at the pizza place but happy to be with me, told me to make a wish. I screwed up my face and realized that for ten straight years I had wished for Hunter Moon. And for ten straight years, I hadn’t gotten my wish. It was getting old. Instead, I wished for the new Baby-Sitters Club Super Special. And guess what? I got it.

  From that day until essentially the past few weeks of my life, I’d cut any longing for Hunter out of my system like a suspicious mole. If a new friend questioned where my dad was, I waved the question away and made a joke. When coworkers asked where my parents were from, I said Philadelphia, ignoring my California connection. The day my sixth grade art class made Father’s Day cards, I claimed I had a stomachache and spent the afternoon in the nurse’s office.

  As Dr. Majdi had declared, I told myself not to care, and for the most part I didn’t. It was only when my wedding started to creep up on me that the tug returned. The insistent tug that asked: Where did Moon come from anyway? Who is he? And what happened between him and my mother that made them both so hell-bent on pretending they’d never had a daughter?

  CHAPTER 19

  We need to talk, said an iMessage from Sam that lit up the screen.

  I don’t have anything to say, I quickly responded.

  I do. Answer me please. The phone rang.

  “Hello?” I said, picking up and quickly walking out of the apartment, where Liv and I were packing up our things. Our flight back to L.A. was in two hours and we had to leave for the airport any minute.

  “Emma, I need to tell you something. Something I should have said from the beginning.” He took a deep breath. “You don’t need to find Hunter, because you have me. I’m your family now.”

  “My family?”

  “Yes,” he said firmly. “You can come home because you don’t need to look for him to find that stability, the one you’ve always craved yet also always convinced yourself you’ll never find. You have it with me.”

  Something snapped when Sam said that. It was probably a combination of how true his words were, how deeply he understood me, and what he’d done to betray that understanding. I suddenly realized that I shouldn’t have been surprised that looking for Hunter was a failure. After all, my relationship with Sam was a failure. Our marriage surely would have been, too.

  “Let me ask you this, Sam. Do you think one family member would do this to another? Hurt them like this?” My voice was getting higher and louder and I had a sudden flash-forward. This was not going to go well.

  “I made one mistake. One!” he said forcefully, more upset than I’d heard him possibly ever.

  “One? Every single day that you lied to me about this was a mistake. One mistake? Every time you kissed me since then. Every time Val’s name came up and you didn’t tell me the truth.”

  “I see, so you’re going to use this to push me away? I get it.”

  “Use this?”

  “Emma, I’m talking about marriage, about spending our lives together. We said we would be together through thick and thin, that we would be there for each other for the rest of our lives, and you won’t even consider forgiving me for one mistake that I made, that I acknowledge was awful?”

  “Actually, we haven’t made those promises yet. We haven’t said our vows, Sam. Looks like I found out the truth about you just in time.”

  “I really hope you don’t mean that.”

  “I do mean it,” I said, gaining strength from the power of my words. “We could never be a real family now.”

  “And you think if you find Hunter, that’s real? He left your mom when you were a baby and hasn’t been in contact since. You know what, Emma? You’ve always had one foot out the door. You’ve always been waiting for me to screw up, to prove your theory that you will end up alone. This is just the newest way for you to push me away.”

  I exploded. “I knew you wouldn’t get it. And you never will.” Tears burst out of my eyes and streamed down my face, racing past my mouth and chin as I shouted. I could taste their salty warm familiarity. He would never understand what it was like to be abandoned. Or to be cheated on, I mentally added. The memory and pain associated with the loss of my father and with what had happened with Sam and Val Baby seemed at the moment to be one and the same.

  “It’s over, Sam. It’s done. I can’t forgive you. I can’t marry you. Good-bye.”

  Back in the rental car, packed up and heading toward the airport, I felt the full weight of the week’s emotions on my shoulders, pulling me down. I couldn’t begin to deal with any of it. I was relieved that Dusty and Carrick were out of the house when we left. Dusty had said to let him know when we were leaving, but I simply couldn’t imagine talking to anyone besides Liv at the moment, so I left without saying good-bye, which made me feel guilty on top of everything else.

  My phone began ringing loudly in my bag. Please, not Sam or Dusty, I prayed.

  “Hey, did you give anyone my number?” I asked Liv, staring at the same unfamiliar 415 number calling me once again. Liv gave me a blank look. “Like maybe at the bar or something? Or maybe
we left our card there? This San Francisco number keeps calling me but not leaving a message.”

  Liv shrugged. “Just answer. It’s probably someone asking for money for Berkeley. Those are the only mysterious Bay Area numbers that ever call me. Get it over with so they stop calling.”

  “Hello?” I said questioningly.

  “Emma?” said a slightly familiar voice that I couldn’t quite place.

  “Yes? Who’s this?”

  “This is Leo, from yesterday. We met at the gallery?”

  “Of course. Um, how are you?” I asked, mystified as to why he would be calling.

  “I’m really sorry to bother you, but you seemed like such a sweet girl, I had to call. I know it’s not really my business, but then again, isn’t it?”

  “What isn’t? Sorry, what’s going on?”

  “Okay, I’ll get to the point. I lied to you the other day. By accident, of course, but an accidental lie is a lie nonetheless, at least that’s what my Christian mama would say. But she also still insists on asking how my ‘roommate’ Hunter is when I call her every Sunday, so maybe we shouldn’t use her as a moral guidepost.” Leo laughed slightly at this.

  “Is this about Hunter?”

  “Yes!” Leo seemed thrilled that I guessed. “The thing is, Emma, after you left the gallery the other day I couldn’t stop thinking about you. As soon as Hunter came back I told him the story of the girl with the fabulous cheekbones who stopped by the gallery looking for her father. But he was busy, so we didn’t really have time to discuss it. Later that night I made a delicious osso buco. Immediately, I could tell that something wasn’t right. When Hunter lies, he can’t eat; that’s his tell. When we sat down, he didn’t touch his meal. That’s when I knew he was hiding something. We thought it would be easier if I called to explain, as we met in person and had a nice little connection, I thought. Thank God you left your business card!”