Chances Are . . .
Page 27
The rational part of her brain identified all this as magical thinking, so she gave herself a stern talking-to. After all, who graduates from college still believing that wishing will make anything come true? Six years without so much as a Christmas card, and her father would turn up now? How would he even know where she’d gone to college? For all she knew he lived in California. Or Switzerland. Or Australia. Worse, inherent in her magical thinking was an implied pact, an unenforceable if-then contract. If her father showed up for her graduation, then it would be a sign that she was meant to jettison the central falsehood of her life—that she was Jacy Calloway, daughter of Donald Calloway, of Greenwich, Connecticut. If Andy came to her graduation, then she would somehow (always somehow) find the strength to disavow not only Don and Viv but their entire universe, which of course included her fiancé, who not only wanted them to live in Greenwich but actually saw their parents’ lives as a template. (“Our folks didn’t get where they are by luck,” he liked to say, and invariably got pissed off when she asked what being born into wealth and privilege was if not pure fucking luck.) Anyway, screw Vance. The way Jacy saw it, if Andy came to her graduation, he wouldn’t just be claiming her as his daughter but also giving her permission to break off her engagement to a man who had little beyond material comfort to offer. If Andy, not Donald, was her father, then she got to be a whole new person. Armed with her new identity she would (again, somehow) become a girl (no, a woman) capable of charting her own course. Okay, she didn’t really need Andy’s permission for any of this. She was twenty-one and could do as she pleased, but there was comfort to be taken from genetic validation, wasn’t there?
Even so, as bargains went, she had to admit this one was piss-poor. If Andy’s showing up meant that she could be a whole new person, then his failure to show up, which was far more likely, must mean that she was Jacy Calloway after all and was therefore meant to do what was expected of her. Worse, it would mean that she’d just spent the last four years at Minerva playing at rebellion—drinking beer from kegs and smoking weed and burning (metaphorically) her bra and protesting the stupid war, when at the end of the day, because she lacked the courage to fight for a truer life, she’d meekly marry Vance and breed little Republicans.
Over graduation weekend Jacy learned something about loneliness that she hadn’t suspected before: that its most terrifying and virulent form could only be experienced in a crowd. Naturally, the campus was a mob scene of parents and siblings and alums, every single minute accounted for. In addition to a wide array of scheduled events, there were her sorority sisters and favorite professors to bid farewell to, all of which had to be done with Don and Viv, as well as Vance and his parents, in tow. Had she been able to hang out with Mickey and Teddy and Lincoln, she might’ve gotten through it unscathed, maybe even enjoyed some of it, but of course they had their own bizarre families to deal with (What a squirrelly little man Lincoln’s father was!) and they had no idea she was in crisis. Her own fault, of course. How many times had she considered confiding in one of them that Donald Calloway wasn’t really her father? But which one? Teddy would’ve been easiest because he was such a good, sympathetic listener, and of the three he was also the most obviously smitten with her. But so was Mickey, who would also have listened. The problem here was that he’d lost his own father the year before, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to share with him a tale of woe that involved her having a pair of them. Lincoln? Lately he’d seemed determined to tamp down any feelings he had for her, pivoting toward Anita, her sorority sister, a girl Jacy admired and was secretly jealous of, without knowing exactly why. More to the point, all three were best friends. If she confided in one, she would in effect be confiding in all three—all for one and one for all—and she wasn’t sure she could bear to have three people knowing this terrible truth. And of course there was that even-darker shame that she’d made up her mind never to tell anyone. What if she got started telling the truth and was unable to stop? So she’d let their final semester together slip away, and the window of opportunity to share her burden had shut. Face it, she told herself. She was alone.
Graduation itself was a blur. The whole weekend felt like a ride on a merry-go-round, where all her jubilant classmates straddled colorful horses that went up and down, while she alone was consigned to a stationary bench that resembled a church pew—on the same ride as everybody else but somehow not sharing the same experience. Would the circular motion, the hideous calliope music, never stop? Halfway through the commencement speaker’s address, the girl seated next to Jacy asked if she was okay, and only then did she realize she was crying. What a fool she’d been to hold out hope. Four years of college classes, some of them taught by feminist professors, yet here she was on graduation day waiting to be rescued by a man. Preposterous. Ridiculous. Time to pull herself together, to see things as they were. And not tomorrow, right fucking now. Wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her gown, she resolved that when it was her turn to cross the stage and receive her diploma, she would make a point of not scanning the audience for Andy, the father who had so clearly abandoned her.
Yet here, too, she was thwarted. An hour earlier, when they’d all paraded down the hill from the chapel, across the quad and into the auditorium, it’d been cloudy, gray and humid, but by the time the commencement speaker finally took his seat, the clouds were breaking up and a fresh breeze was blowing in through the hall’s wide-open doors. And wouldn’t you know it? Right when her row lined up at the foot of the stage, the sun broke through, shooting bright shafts of light down through the hall’s high windows, spotlighting the people standing along the back wall, exactly where, in her mind’s eye, Jacy had so often pictured her father. It was as if God was telling her right where to look. In that moment all her fears of not recognizing her father were dispelled. Of course she’d be able to pick him out! How could she fail to recognize her own father? He would be smiling, for one thing, and looking straight at her. And he would wave. Not wildly, mind you, nothing that would attract the attention of bellicose Donald. Just a subtle gesture to reveal who he was, what they were to each other, that he was there for her and always would be.
Later, when it was all over and they were making their way toward Donald’s Mercedes, she was still looking for Andy, scanning the crowd as it dispersed, panicked now, her fears redoubling just that quickly. Had he been there? Had she missed him? Until her mother grabbed her by the elbow and whispered, “Stop it. This instant. He’s gone.”
“I hate him,” Jacy whispered back, not sure if it was Andy she was referring to or Donald, who the night of the incident with Andy on the front lawn had come into her room. He was dressed, as always when he visited her, in his bathrobe, fresh from the shower, his hair glistening wet. “You see?” he said, sitting at the edge of her bed and taking her hand. “It’s like I’ve been telling you.” What he wanted her to understand was that what they’d done wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t like he was her real father. It wasn’t as if he was Andy.
* * *
—
THOUGH SHE’D TRIED to prepare herself for it, Andy’s nonappearance at graduation left Jacy empty of everything but the desire to drown Viv and Don, and, yes, Vance too, in a sea of sarcasm. She would become, she decided, a perfect bitch, a goal that struck her as both reasonable and attainable. The only thing slowing her progress was that something strange, something she wasn’t privy to, was going on at home. Donald, claiming to be working on a special project, hadn’t gone into the New York office all week. A new, dedicated phone line had been set up to his home office and it rang all hours of the day and night. Twice, men from the New York headquarters had driven out to see him, and earlier in the week Jacy had come upon her mother listening outside his office door. (“Wipe that smirk off your face, young lady.”) Then yesterday Viv announced that she and Don were going to an important meeting in Hartford that afternoon and that Jacy should wish them luck. “Why?” she said. “When have you ever been unl
ucky?”
At this, her mother closed her eyes and just stood there, refusing to open them for so long that Jacy wondered if she’d had a stroke. She really hoped not, because that would mean she’d have to stop tormenting her, at least until she recovered. Finally, eyes still shut, her mother said, “Okay, be like that.”
“I will. I am.”
“Maybe Vance will be able to do something with you.” They were flying him up from Durham for the weekend in the hopes of cheering her up. “Something your father and I can’t seem to.”
“By my father do you mean Donald?”
At last she opened her eyes. “You know what I’d like to do right now?” she said. “I’d like to slap you silly. You stupid, stupid, stupid girl.”
When they left for Hartford, Jacy took the opportunity to break into Donald’s office. When she opened the door to the safe, it was so full of money that several stacks of banded, large-denomination bills tumbled out onto the floor. Try as she might, she was unable to cram them all back in again. No matter. There was plenty of room under her mattress for the ones that didn’t fit and a few extras as well.
* * *
—
THAT SUNDAY, she and Vance and both sets of parents were meeting for brunch at the club, which was celebrating its centennial. The walls of the long entryway were hung with photographs of the clubhouse itself and its members over the years. Time Machine, it was called, and the photos were displayed in chronological order so that as you proceeded down the corridor you dove deeper into the past. Vance loved it. “So fascinating,” he enthused, stopping every few feet to examine another picture or newspaper article about renovations to the dining room or the construction of the Olympic-sized swimming pool. “So much history!”
“Right!” Jacy mocked back. “Find the Negro and win a prize!”
Brunch was a disaster. Jacy, monosyllabic throughout, drank two Bloody Marys, barely touched her eggs Florentine and insisted they leave before dessert, Vance’s favorite part of any lunch or dinner. Since their return from Hartford, Don and Viv had both been out of sorts, so it had fallen to Vance and his parents to carry the conversation for the entire table.
“Will you please tell me what’s wrong?” Vance begged, when the ordeal was finally over. There was a bottleneck in the corridor, people oohing and aahing over the Time Machine photos.
“Nothing is wrong,” she assured him, though everything would have been closer to the truth.
“Well, you obviously haven’t been yourself all weekend.”
Actually, she thought, I have been. This is the new me.
“You were disrespectful to our parents in there and, frankly, rude to me. In fact, you act as if you don’t love me at all.”
It’s not an act, Vance. I don’t love you. Not even a little.
“If you’re worried about the wedding, that’s understandable. The future’s always scary. I get it.”
The future with you is scary. And you don’t get it.
“But we’re going to be happy, Jace. We are. I promise.”
No, we’re going to be miserable. I’m going to see to it. You have no idea how completely devoted I am to our misery, now and till the end of time.
“We’re going to be just like those guys right there.”
He was pointing at one of the Time Machine pictures, of Don and Viv, together with Vance’s parents, all four in their twenties, raising champagne flutes, Vance’s mother clearly pregnant. The caption read: A Toast to the Future!
And there he was, behind them, the grinning tuxedoed bartender, champagne bottle raised, as if to top them all off. Young, dark skinned, curly haired, handsome. The only person in the picture not looking at the camera was Viv, whose head was turned so she could regard the bartender, and the expression on her young face was one Jacy had never seen before. The names of those in the photo were listed beneath. The bartender’s was Andres Demopoulos.
Andy.
* * *
—
THE NEXT DAY Jacy heard the phone ring in her father’s office. Her mother must’ve heard it, too, because when Don emerged she was waiting for him. From the top of the stairs Jacy was able to eavesdrop, though they kept their voices low.
“I just got a tip,” Donald said. “They’re on their way.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“Nothing. They’re fishing.”
“Fish get caught.”
“I’m not the fish they’re after. The worst that happens to me is a slap on the wrist.”
“Why not give them the fish they want?”
“How about you leave this to me.”
Ten minutes later a dark sedan pulled into their drive and two nondescript men wearing dark suits got out. Donald met them at the door and invited them in. When his office door closed behind them, Jacy joined her mother in the kitchen, where Viv sat staring into a cup of tea as if she were trying to read the leaves in the bottom. Jacy had considered confronting her yesterday when they returned from brunch, but decided that a perfect bitch would let her new discovery marinate. She would wait for the precise right moment, which had now arrived. With Don occupied behind his closed office door, her mother was alone and vulnerable, a sickly wildebeest culled from the herd. Sitting down across from her, Jacy said, “Andres Demopoulos.” When her mother blinked but said nothing, she repeated the name.
“Your father is being investigated for insider trading and money laundering,” her mother replied. A plea for sympathy? Good luck with that, lady. “He claims it’s not going to happen, but there’s a chance he might go to jail.”
“Your husband may go to jail. My father is Andres Demopoulos.”
Her mother lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply. “Exactly what is it that you want from me, little girl?”
“To start, it would be nice if you didn’t call me ‘little girl.’ ”
“It would be nice if you didn’t call me Viv. It would be nice if you didn’t call your father Donald.”
“I call my father Andy. And what I want is for you to tell me about him.”
Her mother appeared to ponder how to best respond, or maybe just whether to. Finally she said, “He’s just a man I once knew. He was handsome. Charming.”
“You loved him?”
“No.” But she looked away.
“He loved you?”
A pause. Then, “Yes.”
“This was before Donald?” And when Viv didn’t respond, “During?” When she didn’t respond to this either, “Okay, during. And for how long?”
“Not very.”
“How long?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Did Don know?”
“Of course not. Your father’s a narcissist. That I’d be interested in another man would never occur to him.”
“My father is Andy—”
“I know. You don’t have to keep saying his name.”
“I like the sound of it.”
Now her mother looked at her. “You can’t be serious.”
Jacy ignored this. “But eventually Don found out.”
“Well, you were born a month early, with olive skin and dark, curly hair.”
“And what was his reaction?”
She stubbed the half-smoked cigarette out in the ashtray, which contained several other butts. “It was a rough couple of weeks.”
“That’s all?”
“If your father understands anything it’s the importance of appearances. Divorcing me wouldn’t have looked good.”
“Okay,” Jacy said, “but you were lying before.”
“When?”
“When you said you didn’t love him. There’s a photo of you and Don and Vance’s parents at the club. And my father. Everybody is looking at the camera but you. You’re looking at Andy. You loved him.”
“Why can’t you admit you loved him?”
“What good would it do?”
“Do you still love him?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“What happened? If he loved you and you loved him—”
“He went away.” She picked up her coffee spoon and she used it to push the half-smoked cigarette around.
“Why?”
She shrugged. “He got fired. For drinking on the job.”
“Did he know you were pregnant?”
That got a nasty laugh. “I didn’t even know I was pregnant, little girl.”
“So he went away. Just like that. He loved you, but left anyway.”
“I told him to go.”
“Why?”
Her mother continued fooling around with the cigarette. “Because there was no future for us. He was an immigrant. He didn’t even have papers. He could barely speak English. I was engaged to your father. How many reasons do you need?”
“So, you just told him to go away and off he went?”
She looked up now, and Jacy saw that her cheeks were wet. “I had to be very, very cruel to him.”
“Tell me what you said.”
“The truth.”
“That he was an immigrant? That he could barely speak English?”
“That I could never introduce him to my parents. That if we married, we’d be poor. That I had no intention of being poor.”
“So instead you married a man you didn’t love,” Jacy said.