A Theory of Relativity (18 page)

“And indeed, that’s what we’d do at first. Diane, close your ears if you can’t bear this . . .” But Diane was smiling, as was Alison, who’d slipped into the seat beside her mother with her two combed and Eton-suited tots, “We would hit the ball out into the road, and take the distance and the penalty stroke. We would tee off into a tree. And it would be we who would at some point suggest six-point Scotch . . .” How long, Lorraine thought, had Mark been gone? Did anyone notice, in the blazing charm of this boy’s presence?

“I’m not playing well, Ray would admit, and this was not a false-hood. He was not playing well.

“It was on the fifth tee, I would stand back in awe, that Ray would gently, ever so gently, suggest that he and his buddy must catch up, that the fifty cents a point could be a dollar. Was that okay with me? My job was to shake my head, no, ever so emphatically, but by then, Mr. Plum and Mr. Iron River were in the thrall of competition. They didn’t need much pushing. And Ray would stand up then, and take about a ten-minute backswing, and send the ball three hundred yards, no more—

Pelican Point was a par four, three hundred and twenty off the tee—and Theory[001-112] 6/5/01 11:58 AM Page 112

112

JACQUELYN MITCHARD

it always seemed that we would play downwind . . . and there he would be, putting for the eagle. And he would say, God bless his heart, I’m feeling looser now, should we double?

“Ray Nye, Junior, never had to hustle golf, just as he never had to study to get a score of ninety-seven while the rest of us sweated our gentlemen’s Cs. He would not have to hustle heaven, because he was heaven’s draft choice.”

The smell caught Lorraine’s nose at the exact moment that Diane, her face upturned in rapture at Carl’s closing words, twitched and turned and grimaced delicately. Keefer’s tiny face was red with concentration, her chubby knees tucked up in her folding chair.

Whispering some foolish words of apology, Lorraine scooped the baby up and carried her, reeking, toward the ballroom door, chanting, thank you, Keefer, thank you. Mark was standing in the arch, just to the left of the giant floral boobs, and they ran. It did not seem to Lorraine that they stopped running for nine hours, until they turned the key in the lock of their house in Tall Trees and saw the message light on their answering machine blinking, blinking red in the dark.

Theory[113-221] 6/5/01 11:59 AM Page 113

The spot at Spirit Lake was their own. They had claimed it, how long before? Eight years? More? For both of them, that long-ago night had been the first time, and it was over before it started, Lindsay comforting him past her own pain and the blood they’d had to wash off her white sweater, past his hideous embarrassment
, it’s okay, Gordie, really,
it’s okay, I wanted it, I wanted to.
He had never been able to think of that except as “innocent,” as guileless and tender as a childhood Christmas.

He had been, well, not even sixteen, she two years older, the one “good girl” who’d stuck with Georgia as she’d begun her cheerful descent into disorderly conduct. Before that, the sum total of his sexual experience had been one quick handful of Annie Toffer’s sweatered boob on the pool table at Tim’s ninth-grade birthday party with Mrs. Upchurch fifty feet away in the kitchen preparing Sloppy Joes. As a junior, Lindsay had been sociologically well beyond his reach. “But she wants you,” his sister had assured him, and Georgia had come along with the two of them, to throw his parents off the scent.

The movie they’d gone to see was some Swedish thing with subti-tles, which, Georgia had convinced their mother, Gordon needed to see for his World Geography class. Just before they entered the the-ater, by a prearrangement that Gordon pretended not to notice, Georgia ditched them to join her fellow nail-heads at the mall. Partly because it was boring, partly because of the hot friction of their 113

Theory[113-221] 6/5/01 11:59 AM Page 114

114

JACQUELYN MITCHARD

entwined hands, Lindsay and Gordon had not stayed for the end.

When Lindsay agreed with Gordon’s suggestion of a walk at Spirit Lake, he froze, stabbed in the leg by the Empire-State–size erection.

The most he’d expected was the excuse to put his arm around her in the blue moonlight. Tim’s entirely theoretical opinion was that the best technique for the kiss was to open with a dry lipper, no tongue, and then, if all went well, settle down and explore.

But their first kiss had gone well indeed, and it had been Lindsay, like every other girl he’d ever loved, who upped the stakes, who nudged his shirt out of his pants, so that his softest skin made contact with her softest skin, and there had been no turning back. There had been no condom, either, which had given Gordon a bad . . . oh, sixty-five seconds or so, since everyone knew it was impossible for a girl to get pregnant the first time. He’d known as much about human biology, at the time, as he’d known about quarterly income taxes.

The giddy grin that split his face didn’t escape Tim’s notice the next day at church youth group. “Don’t tell me, McKenna,” he’d grimaced.

“Don’t tell me. I know you did. I can’t believe you did. Christallfucking-mighty, you did, didn’t you?”

Gordon was sure dozens of strolling couples, toddlers with buckets and shovels, old people with binoculars, teens with six-packs and blunts in their pockets tromped all over this tiny and sexually sacred spit of sand that made a pocket harbor. But he and Lindsay had never, not once, encountered another soul on their visits. Lindsay called that magic. Gordon called it luck. As teenagers, they’d done it there as naked as people could get and still have skin, backward and forward, mouth to breast, mouth to thigh. The first time Lindsay had put her lips to him, he’d exploded all over her chest and the layers of their clothing beneath them. (Another sweater. Another furtive purchase of Shout stain remover from the Smart-Mart, more scrubbing.) As they grew older and realized they might actually live long enough for another try, they’d thrown a sleeping bag over themselves, or left their tops on, saving the Cadillac screw for borrowed beds.

Now they had apartments. They were grown people, well into the fifth or sixth resurrection of their whatever-ship, and still, they came to Theory[113-221] 6/5/01 11:59 AM Page 115

A Theory of Relativity

115

the lake. Today, it was the Fourth of July, so early in the morning that even the birds still sounded confused.

And though Gordon didn’t feel dismal, precisely, it crossed his mind that their place might never be theirs again, in this way.

He had felt older by orders of magnitude in just the few weeks since the inevitability of death and legal struggle and fatherhood settled in.

Try, he’d told himself. Glory in each bachelor day left. Each day that Keefer lived at his folks’ and he could get up and lazily shuffle off to his run, read the newspaper front to back, play pickup with Church and the guys in the VFW parking lot; each of those days should be a vacation in a room at the top of the universe.

But the ominous opening chords of everlasting responsibility wouldn’t be silenced. His mother had played for him the message that Diane Nye left on the answering machine after they’d fled Ray’s memorial—a move that in Gordon’s opinion had been a bit hysterical. Diane had been smooth, but clearly enraged. “We’re sorry you had to leave so quickly, Lorraine,” she’d said, “but we’ll see you soon. What we would have told you, if we’d had the chance, is that Big Ray is going part-time, and Delia and Craig found us a nice little place in Madison so I can come for the summer. At least for the summer . . .” Big Ray’s voice, unintelligible, boomed in the background. “And we’re going to file for permanent custody—I don’t care, Ray—it’s no secret, and you know that was what Raymond wanted, and Georgia, too, we have the notes Mr. Liotis prepared for the will they were going to complete . . . she’s a Nye, Lorraine. You know that . . .” More muttering, and then Diane’s sharp, “I said I don’t care, Ray. Anyhow, you folks take care, and kiss our baby for us.”

His mom must have played the message ten times, searching for signs and portents in the inflections. Lorraine had been doing the Grandma Lena stuff big time these past days. Don’t put a hat on the bed, Gordie, it’s bad luck. Don’t open the window, Gordie, when those birds are in the crab apple tree. When a bird flies into the house it means someone in the family will fly out. She was driving him around the bend. His only comfort lay in seeing that the “case” seemed to ease some of the lethargy that had possessed his mother since Georgia’s Theory[113-221] 6/5/01 11:59 AM Page 116

116

JACQUELYN MITCHARD

death. Her desperate energy at least made her behave more like the mother he knew.

It was she, in fact, who did most of the communicating with Greg Katt. Gordon didn’t feel old or mature enough to “have” a lawyer anymore than he would have felt “having” an estate planner.

In fact, he probably needed an estate planner. But whatever. So far as Gordon could tell, all the worry was misplaced. Now that the cards were on the table, it was clear that all the Nyes could really do was delay the inevitable. Gordon would be Keefer’s father by September.

Madison condo or no, the Nyes, to Keefer, were older acquaintances from far away. The first will was the only will that had ever been signed, and it would have sway. Even when Katt phoned to tell Gordon and his parents that Delia and Craig Cady were making noises about filing a competing petition to adopt Keefer, Katt was quick to point out that this was actually good news. Friends, even if technically second cousins to a child, were not immediate family.

Flurries of documents began drifting down.

The Nyes filed, in Dane County, a petition for permanent guardianship. But Katt said the Nyes were not residents, so the McKennas’ petition, filed first, had precedence. Point, counterpoint.

Of course, Katt would have to motor on down there for a hearing . . .

even meaningless petitions needed to be heard, and a hearing was one of those things lawyers never did for free. . . . Some driving, some paying, and things stayed just as they were.

Next, the Cadys turned up with their request to adopt Keefer. Gordon had felt a tick of concern: He’d only just had his home study; he hadn’t even had a chance to file! But, Katt reminded Gordon and his parents, at least Gordon
had
a home study. That showed intent. Once an uncle stepped forward, and he had, already, done everything except formally step forward, all those other appeals would fade into expensive, mute irrelevance. Advantage, McKennas.

Katt had called him one night directly, bypassing Lorraine and Mark. Gordon had known instantly, from the sound of the line, that it was not someone he knew. The only person who owned a cell phone who called him regularly was Church, and Tim’s cell phone (county-Theory[113-221] 6/5/01 11:59 AM Page 117

A Theory of Relativity

117

provided) was such an exalted product Gordon could never tell it wasn’t a land line. By contrast, Katt’s cell phone made him sound like the blub-voices during underwater knife fights on
Sea Hunt,
voices he and Georgia would imitate, in their rubber blow-up pool, making a game of trying to guess what the other person was saying with a submerged head.

Katt had asked about Gordon’s relationship with the elder Nyes.

What was it like?

“Well,” Gordon said slowly, “first it was fine, and now it’s lousy.”

“I don’t mean how do you feel about them, Gordon,” Katt replied.

Gordon could hear the thwap of paper; what, did Katt have a desk in the car?

Would he have objections, Katt continued, that he hadn’t had before, to Ray and Diane maintaining a normal grandparent bond with Keefer? After everything was said and done? Katt would understand, fully understand, if Gordon had reservations—on the other hand, those assurances of the willingness to “be open” on Keefer’s behalf would strengthen their position in the eyes of the court.

Gordon, appalled, stammered first no, then yes, then how the hell should he know . . . if they were going to act like monsters, they sure as hell couldn’t be around her. But if they were going to be the nice people they had been before, if things settled down once everyone began to recover from their losses . . . “We’d have to wait and see whether things could get back to normal,” he said. We who, he thought? He was talking the way celebrities talked, referring to himself in the plural.

“Things will never be exactly normal,” Katt reminded him.

“I mean, normal for the way things are now.”

“Well, sure.”

“Then, yes, I could see them having some . . . contact with her.” Gordon felt again huge, regnant, an impostor, as if he were a guy who’d worked weekends doing ten-minute lubes and woke up one morning to learn he’d inherited the whole dealership and people were humbly approaching him, calling him boss. It was hard for him to even imagine himself with the words “access” and “reasonable visitation” in his mouth . . . shouldn’t someone be calling his father? Or his mother? But Theory[113-221] 6/5/01 11:59 AM Page 118

118

JACQUELYN MITCHARD

Gordon swallowed on no saliva and kept his voice level as he assured Katt that, yes, theoretically—theoretically!—he’d want Keefer to have access to all her family. Katt said softly, “We’ll see, we’ll see.” And when he put the phone down, Gordon wondered, had he really meant it?

Could this breach—deepening as precipitously as a sinkhole, sucking down family ties that had seemed immutable, as ruptured roads and houses and stores and telephone polls seem immutable—could it ever be filled in and covered over?

Could he trust—ever trust—Ray and Diane and Delia and her husband with Keefer?

Had he ever really trusted them with Keefer? Had he really—it stopped him physically, in the middle of the room, like a poke in the chest—given Ray his full due as Keefer’s father? It had been Gordon who’d done so many of the paternal chores. Had he thought of himself, long before Georgia died, as her father? As her surrogate father?