“Do the honors, Duff?” Mr. Garrett calls. “Use the extra-long matches, you little firebug.”
“He always gets to light the fire! I never do!” Harry groans.
“You’re seven. You have years of pyromania ahead of you.” Jase claps him on the back, pulling him farther away from the leaping flames.
Mrs. Garrett stretches out a blanket on the grass and Cal kicks the air and grins while we grill hot dogs and burgers and Patsy climbs into my lap with extreme firmness, planting her butt like she’s hoping to grow roots. Every time I look at Cal, she claps her hands on my cheeks and turns my face away. Afterward, I put on the pussy front pack—Cal can look outward in it now—while everyone plays freeze tag. All these games I would have thought were completely lame—aren’t. Patsy, however, hates the kid in the front pack thing a lot.
“No!” she bellows at me, pointing her finger accusingly. “No no no, Hon. Off boy!” She hisses at Cal. A sharp crease in my heart for a moment. Deep breath, it’s gone. Thirty-six hours left still. Don’t have to think about it now. Not yet.
If life is fair, Cal will get this. To be close to something like this. “You’re not toasting,” Alice says, sitting down thigh-to-thigh with me and indicating the packs of marshmallows, graham crackers, and Hershey’s bars Sam just donated to the cause.
“Go. ’Way. Bye-bye, you,” Patsy tells her, not willing to compete further for my affections. “Mines.”
“No.” Alice fixes her with her fiercest glare. “Mines.”
Patsy looks disconcerted and begins to suck on her knuckles.
“No marshmallows?” Alice repeats to me, taking a bite of one, chewing.
“This is the moment where I say something about you being sweet enough?”
“This is the moment when I tell you that moment doesn’t actually exist.”
I check around, on the lookout for disapproving stares. None. Barely any attention at all, except from Patsy, dividing her glare between Alice and Cal.
So I bring Alice closer, kissing the corner of her lips, then her eyebrows, then returning to her mouth, holding on tight, until Cal gives a furious (and breathless) squawk from between us. Pulling away, I look over Alice’s shoulder, catch Mr. Garrett’s eye, feel the blood rush to my face. Mrs. G. is one thing, but him? But all he does is give me a quick smile, then turn his attention back to the fire.
“No shotgun, I guess,” I say.
Alice rolls her eyes. “Dad won’t be building an extension to the house just for us, but no, no shotgun.”
“Hey, no problem. We’ve got the luxury apartment. The tent can be our summer home.”
That night, the second we’re inside the apartment, the sky outside opens up and there are torrents of hard rain, the heavy-fall, near-nor’easter kind. The windows look like they’re surrounded by gray curtains, the sheets of water are so thick. Thunder rumbles. Alice holds Cal against her shoulder while I slam windows shut.
“Looks as though I’m stuck here.”
It’s twenty feet to her house, but I agree, “It is coming down pretty hard.”
She sits on the couch, kicking off her flats, pulling her knees up under the skirt of her dress, resting Cal against them.
The rain’s like white noise in the background, occasional flashes of lightning and low growls of thunder.
“You never dated at all, Tim?” Alice asks, flexing her toes. She has a little silver ring on one, with a turquoise stone. I slide my own foot against it.
“Nope. That would have taken too much focus.”
She shakes her head, looking at me. She’s got a fireball in her mouth and one cheek is bulging like a chipmunk’s with a nut. “Mmm-hhh.” She takes the fireball back out, holding it delicately between thumb and forefinger. “How can you stand these? My mouth is on fire.”
I edge closer, bumping her thigh with my knee. “I like to play with fire.”
Alice casts her eyes to the ceiling but then tips her forehead to mine. She smells like heat and cinnamon.
“They’re showing all three Evil Dead movies back-to-back. Want to hang out and watch ’em?”
Her face lights up. “I love The Evil Dead! Got popcorn?”
No, I do not, since I’m shopping impaired. So Alice runs through the rain back to the Garretts’, coming back with a few bags of Paul Newman’s Best shielded under a yellow slicker.
She comes in, slamming the door loudly, waking up the kid. He squawks and Alice apologizes, but it’s fine. I feed him his bottle while Alice makes popcorn in the microwave.
He finally crashes, resting against the crease of the couch to one side of me, and Alice puts her head in my lap, kicking out to the other side. Only a little while ago, none of this would have happened to me. I would never have spent time with a girl, much less one I was into, without doing more than curling my fingers in her hair. I wouldn’t have known to keep one hand on a baby so he wouldn’t roll over and fall off the couch. I wouldn’t have felt content just listening to the rain and being there. I didn’t even know what content was.
Chapter Forty-four
TIM
The next day’s a school day for most of the Garretts; Mr. and Mrs. G. head off to Live Oaks for the first sessions, George and Patsy along for the ride. Cal and I have already been out with Jase, tossing papers. Alice has class all day but comes up to say good-bye, stays so long she’s almost late and has to scramble, rushing around the apartment trying to chug coffee, pull her sweater back on and rebrush her hair, which I’ve completely messed up. Cal belly-laughs at her from beneath his baby-gym thing, and she tosses the dead duck toy at my head while I do bent rows with Joel’s weights.
It’s all good until things get quiet. Too quiet.
That’s when you hit a meeting, and I do, then get coffee with Jake and walk on the beach. But it’s cold and windy there, the sky harsh gray, this edge of winter in the air, even though it’s only October. Where will Cal have Christmas?
Plus, I’m supposed to have my freaking life solved by then, according to Pop’s line in the sand . . . this huge abyss at first—but nothing compared to now, to what I’m about to find out “with just a few EZ clicks to access paternity results.”
Make a list:
1. Deal with GED. I took the test last weekend, without taking a prep test online, but I figured the real thing would be a good warm-up. I think I’m still screwing up on the math portion, even though I’ve got language arts, science, and social studies nailed.
2. Check out local community colleges, course credits, and day care. Maybe I can transfer from two-year to four-year when he’s a little older. If that’s the way it goes.
3. Talk to Ben Christopher. Grace Reed’s opponent in the state senate election is a good guy. A shoo-in for the November election since she dropped out. And I actually liked politics before I realized I had to sell my soul if I was on board with Grace.
Oh, screw them and all the numbers that follow. It’s too quiet, except for the noise in my head.
Even if he’s not mine . . . maybe I could adopt him?
Yeah, because I look fantastic on paper.
Maybe my parents could . . .
Right. Give Cal a shot at being No One with the Nowhere Man. Not going to happen.
Maybe the Garretts could . . .
Then I’d get to see him all the time but have a safety net against screwing up.
Like they need a tenth kid.
Lunchtime at Hodges. Maybe she’ll have her phone on.
“Nan. Come over? I can’t be alone.”
“I only have PE this afternoon. I can skip it.”
“Spoken like a good delinquent. Thanks.”
“I’m trying to own it.” My twin’s voice is so loud in my ear, it’s like she’s already in the room. “Besides, I have something for you to take a look at.”
“Something” turns out to be the Ellery Apogee, last year’s yearbook, which Nan somehow unearthed from my room. Alex Robinson must have known someone on the staff and worked the c
onnection, because he’s freakin’ everywhere, but mostly as another little, white, prepped-out face in an interchangeable crowd. In his best close-up, in the Ellery newspaper office, settling back in a chair, all chiseled jaw and incisive stare, Hester’s standing next to him like she’s his secretary or office page or something.
“I don’t know,” Nan says slowly, holding up the yearbook close to Cal’s face.
“He’s so little, Timmy. His features are so . . . soft. He could be anyone’s baby. Yours, Alex’s, Leonardo DiCaprio’s . . .”
“I think we can safely eliminate the King of the World..”
Cal makes one of his little spastic jerky movements with his hands, clenching and unclenching his fists, but staying asleep. “Can I hold him?” Nan whispers.
She drops the Ellery Apogee and curls the baby into her lap awkwardly. I hover my hand nearby to fix the way she’s holding him, then let it drop to my side. Not going to be one of those control-freak dads.
If I am a dad.
Nan whispers, “Dad won’t help with Cal, you know. He just won’t. Unless you do go for adoption. Mom . . . maybe. She said she might come by later. But, Tim? My heart hurts every time I think what you’ll need to do to keep this baby. I know I couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t even want to.”
“You’d feel different if he was yours,” I say. Then get that twist, stab, burn in my stomach. Because who knows.
“Hellooo. Hell-ooo-oo,” calls a voice.
No knock, still, for Ma. “Everyone decent?”
An odd question since I’m here with my twin sister, but trying to figure Ma out is like trying to read fortunes at the bottom of a beer can. “Door’s open,” I call. Ma bustles in with a cardboard box of stuff and several bags from the Christmas Tree Shops. Oh help. “Here, let me get that.” I take the box from her. It’s got tons of baby stuff in it—books and stuffed animals and this seat with elastic attached at each side. It’s pink.
“I could only find Nan’s bouncy swing,” Ma tells me. “Now that I remember, I think you wrecked yours somehow. But I found some of your old things and washed them all—except the books, of course.”
She reaches into the box and pulls out the bouncy thing, glancing around. “It has to hang in a doorway.” She walks over to the bedroom door and reaches for the frame, bending apart this clamp to try to attach it. But she’s way too short to reach, so I go over and take it from her.
“You have to latch it around the wood and make it really secure,” she instructs. After a few minutes of wrestling, I get the clamp attached securely. Ma immediately grabs Cal and sits him in it. He looks stunned and instantly face-plants on the little tray in front.
“Ma, maybe he’s a little young for that. And you know he might not be staying long.”
Like the kid’s a hotel guest with an undetermined check-out date.
“No, he’s holding his head up fine now, aren’t you?” she says in a high-pitched voice. His forehead scrunches up like he’s trying to figure Ma out. Good luck with that, kid. Then he pushes his feet against the floor. The chair bobs up and down. He does it again and beams at us.
Ma smiles back at him. I wonder if she was like this with me and Nan when we were babies. She looks . . . relaxed. Calm, almost. Happy?
Because Dad’s got the adoption under control and this is all short-term?
“Ma, I might not have him for much longer . . .” I say again.
Less than twenty-four now.
“We shall see what we shall see,” she says enigmatically. “Look what else I brought. This was your favorite book when you were little. Busy Timmy.” She hands me a little yellow book with a redheaded kid on the cover. Since he’s, like, three or something, I can only hope Timmy wasn’t busy with the sorts of things I got busy with in later years.
Nan starts giggling. Cal’s now actually bouncing, pushing his legs down and bobbing in the air higher and higher.
“I bought him some clothes too,” Ma tells me. “Yours were pretty much all stained, so I don’t have many hand-me-downs from you.”
Yup, there’s a theme here. I trashed my bouncy swing and my wardrobe. Soon she’ll tell me I wrecked hotel rooms and smashed toy guitars.
“You could even coordinate your outfits.”
Uh, hell no. “Thanks, Ma. This was . . . this was awesome of you to do.”
She blinks at me for a second, her face startled, then says briskly, “Well . . . naturally. He’s just a baby. He can’t help how he got here, can you, Calvin?” She has that singsong voice. Cal’s into it, though. He pauses in his bouncing and gives her his smile, then goes back to hopping up and down and up and down.
“He pretty much got here the usual way, Mommy,” calls Nan from the kitchen.
“Nanette Bridget! We don’t need to discuss that sort of thing. You both know what I mean. The sins of the fathers shouldn’t be visited on the innocent.”
As it turns out, Ma has also brought food, some big sticky-roll-type things. They have about eight cups of sugar in a single bite, but they taste good with the coffee Nan’s made. Cal bounces and beams at us, and we eat. It feels like we’re a family. Surreal.
Chapter Forty-five
TIM
Hester being Hester, she doesn’t leave me be in my bubble-world with Cal and the good stuff. She texts:
NOT COMFORTABLE WITH THE WAY WE LEFT THINGS.
UNDERSTAND THAT YOU’RE ANGRY BUT THERE ARE TWO SIDES TO THIS.
WANT TO HAVE A CONVERSATION LIKE ADULTS.
After the last one, I text back, totally misspelling because I’m furious. Is that what we air? Not seenin huge materity level going on here.
The phone immediately rings as Alice is coming in the door with Chinese food.
“I am his mother,” Hester says in a low, trembling voice. “You don’t have the right to act like you have all the power here. Maybe you don’t have any at all.”
I slam the phone down.
Call Hester back. Apologize. Alienating her is stupid.
Twelve hours or so left, if there wasn’t some lab disaster or it didn’t get lost in the mail on the way.
Go to three meetings on Tuesday and that takes up four hours, when you factor in travel time to and from (which I do).
Take Mr. Garrett to physical therapy and a meeting afterward. Five hours.
Alice catches me checking my computer and drags me into the shower. Don’t know how much time that takes up, because it’s not long enough, even though the hot water comes to an end long before we do. We use up two bars of soap, though.
“You don’t actually have to do this, you know. No one’s making you,” Nan offers. We’re chowing down on ice cream at Doane’s, downtown in Stony Bay. Nan’s got some god-awfully large banana-split-type thing, and I’m all about the chocolate and coffee double scoop.
“Good thing, right? If someone was trying to make me, I definitely wouldn’t do it.” I position Cal, who’s slumped on my lap, away from Doane’s biggest draw, Vargas, the candy-corn-attacking robot-chicken. He gave me nightmares when I was little, worse ones when I was tripping. Cal keeps peeping around my shoulder, letting loose a blood-curdling yell, hiding, then peeping again.
Nan points with her spoon. “Seriously, no court is ordering a test. If you wind up keeping him, if you don’t have to prove parentage for some adoption deal, what does it matter?”
“Raaah!”
“Shh. Just don’t look, Cal. You were the freaking snake in the Garden of Eden about this, Nano. All ‘he could be anyone’s baby’. . . Now I’m not supposed to find out? Besides, it’s too late. They’ll send an e-mail tonight. Or tomorrow.”
She stirs her ice cream, reducing it to a mud-colored soup. “You could delete it. Without reading it.”
But the thing is? I couldn’t. The voices that have told me to make things easier on myself or avoid the truth—they’ve always lied to me.
Congratulations! It’s that E-Z! Double click on the link and follow our instructions to get the facts on your patern
ity relationship!!
Two exclamation points, seriously? They’re awfully cheery about this.
My mouse hovers over the link.
Then I push it away, off my mouse pad. Turn off the monitor.
I’m alone in the apartment, except for Cal, who’s crashed at the moment.
Jase is at school. Nan too. I could text and ask either of them to ditch—but that seems like bad karma.
I could take it over to the Garretts’, sit down with Mr. and Mrs. G.
I could even call Hester, since this involves her just as much as me. Maybe a whole lot more.
Meh. Or maybe not.
I move the mouse into position again. Move it down the screen. Click. Click again.
ALICE
The apartment’s dark and cold when I get in, at almost eleven o’clock at night. “Tim?”
No answer.
He’s fast asleep, curled on his side, Cal tucked against him. Tim doesn’t stir, but Cal’s eyes open and he stares at me. I rest my hand on his red curls.
“Good news,” Tim says, his voice thick with sleep. “He’s yours.”
I laugh quietly. “And?”
“Don’t know yet.” His hand catches mine. “I thought I might need a shoulder and his is not quite up to the job.”
“Very broad shoulders here,” I offer, sitting down on the bed beside him. “Freakishly, really. Joel used to tell me I’d make a great linebacker.”
“But I am officially a high school graduate. Passed the GED test . . . so there’s that.”
I’m kissing him and saying it’s great—and it is—and he stops me, fingers on my lips. “I need to just do it, don’t I, Alice?”
I nod.
“Just do this,” he repeats, slides up to a sitting position next to me, pulling Cal with him, standing up, moving to the computer. “One click. Simple. E-Z.”
He settles in the chair, shakes the mouse so the blue screen lights up.
His hands slide under the baby’s armpits. Cal strains toward him. Tim rests his forehead against the baby’s. Takes a breath. Hands Cal to me.