Family Affair (32 page)

I sit and force smiles through all four courses, checking my watch constantly, praying for time to move faster. Heather doesn’t include me in much of the conversation, or if she does, it’s to explain who this person is in this story that they are telling—a person I will never meet and a story that can’t end fast enough.

I sit next to Heather and really take her in. I’m usually so involved in the time we spend together, be it in conversation or activity, that I haven’t had a lot of time to sit back and assess all that is Heather. She’s pretty. She’s very pretty. And she has a fairly good sense of humor. Most of the time. But her laugh kind of bothers me. It’s not totally annoying, it’s just not Layla’s laugh. And she doesn’t laugh at my dad’s jokes the way Layla does. And it used to bug the shit out of me when Layla would humor my dad, because I felt like it encouraged him, but when Heather didn’t laugh at my dad’s jokes it really bummed me out.

“What do you get when you put together a brown chicken and a brown cow?” her friend Stacia asks when the ladies have clearly had a lot to drink.

“I don’t know,” they all say.

“You get a brownchickenbrowncow,” Stacia says, but she says it in the onomatopoeic imitation of the generic porn riff:
bown-chicka-wow-wow
.

I admit I have told this joke before, and I do get a kick out of it, but for the rest of the night I’m surrounded by four drunk women who think it is just high-larious to yell
brownchickenbrowncow
over and over. And over and over. It’s no longer funny. Or cute. And unless it’s going to lead to a fivesome upstairs in one of the hotel rooms, it is seriously working my last nerve.

The “celebration” part of the evening consists of me watching Heather dance with her friends, me losing Heather for the good
part of an hour, and Krista drunk-dialing her ex-boyfriend. When he refuses to meet her there, she melts down, resulting in Heather deciding that she should go home with Krista to be a good friend. And I should go home alone.

On my way home, some drunk idiot bumps into my car at a red light. Of course he does.

“I thought it was turning green,” he says.

“They all do eventually,” I reply, lacking the energy to throttle him.

After all is said and done I get home at three a.m. And I’m pretty clear in my head that I don’t want to go out with Heather again. I wrestle with whether or not to call her and end things tonight or wait until tomorrow to do it. Which is less assholeish? Ruining her New Year’s Eve? I mean, this way she can really bond with poor Krista. Or New Year’s Day? That seems worse somehow: It starts her year off on a bad note. I pick up the phone to call her.

“Heather?” I say.

“Hey, you …” she slurs.

“How’s Krista?”

“She’s okay,” she says. “You know, men are jerks.”

Funny you should mention that
, I think, but out loud I say, “That they are.”

“But not you.” She giggles.

“No, I’m one, too,” I correct.

“No, you’re not, you sillysilly,” she says.

Layla never would have called me a sillysilly. I feel even more strongly about what I need to do.

“Oh, but I am,” I say. “I can prove it.”

“How?” she asks.

“Well,” I say, “I think that maybe it’s too soon for me to be dating. And you’re such a great girl, you don’t want to be a rebound. You deserve better.”

“Oh my God, are you breaking up with me? On New Year’s Eve?”

“I did debate whether to do it tonight or tomorrow. I thought this was the lesser of two evils.”

“There’s only one evil on this phone call, and it’s you!” Heather shouts.

“Good one!” Krista screams in the background.

“Well,” I say, “okay, I’ll take that.”

“I can’t believe you, Brett,” she says. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. I already feel guilty enough about Layla. This is the last thing I need. I don’t say this to her, of course.

“Whatever,” she says, and hangs up. And I think it’s over. But then she and Krista prank-call me until six a.m. Which would have been much more effective if they’d been sober enough to use the code that blocks caller ID.

I’m woken by another call at seven a.m. on New Year’s Day. I’m certain it won’t be the Drunk-Dialing Duo, because the lull in calls for the past hour leads me to believe that they’ve finally passed out, so I answer.

“Top o’ the year to ya,” a chipper, unfamiliar male voice says.

“And to you?” I reply, my pitch raised to suggest I have no idea who I’m talking to.

“It’s Nick,” he clarifies. “Foxx. Layla’s—”

“Hi,” I cut him off. “Happy New Year.”

“Yes, it will be,” he says. “Listen—you got a business plan for that idea of yours?”

“Not a
plan
plan,” I say. “Not in writing or anything.”

“Get one,” he says. “And have it ready in a week for a meeting with a buddy of mine.”

“Okay,” I say, and we hang up.

I’m not sure why he’s taken such an interest in me and my idea, and if he wants a piece of it or if he’s really just trying to help his friend out. I do need something, anyway, some sort of business plan. I just hadn’t gotten that far. I make a mental note to put a call in to a buddy when it’s not seven a.m. to enlist his help in rushing
together a design package and a little market analysis, and to also get some basic financials from Katie Hu—Ms. Manziere—so it sounds like I actually know what I’m talking about.

• • •

Twenty minutes later there’s a pounding on my front door. I’m convinced that I was wrong about them having passed out and it’s going to be Heather and Krista, unable to sleep, still drunk, and pissed off. I open the door and to my surprise find Layla, with two cups of coffee in her hands and a bag from Western Bagels.

Western Bagels are an L. A. staple. There are actually eleven Western Bagel stores in L.A. but only one is open twenty-four hours. You can go there anytime, day or night, and their bagels are fresh out of the oven. I’d say at least once or twice a month we’d have bagels and a shmear from Western.

“This is a nice surprise,” I say.

Layla hands me the bag and one of the coffees.

“You want to come in?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “I’m sure you have company, and I don’t want to …I just wanted to say something to you, and I wanted to do it in person.”

“I don’t have company,” I say.

“I still don’t want to come in.”

“Okay.”

“Happy New Year,” she says. “You, too,” I answer.

Layla looks past me into my apartment and then back at me. “I want a divorce,” she says. “Yeah,” I say, confused. “We’re getting one.”

“No, I mean, I want it now. I want the divorce. From you, your family … everything.”

I feel like I just got the wind knocked out of me.

“Okay,” I manage to utter.

“You’re moving on,” she says. “I get it.”

“Well, actually—” I start to say, but she plows right through my sentence.

“I’ll agree to a no-fault divorce. We can forget everything I ever did. Forget my stupid case. My
custody
,” she says, with a derisive tone, as if she’s suddenly disgusted by herself.

“Well,” I say, “I’m sure you’ll still spend time with my family.”

“No,” she says with resolve. “I’m giving your family back to its rightful owner. You can have them back. They’re all yours.”

“They’re yours, too,” I say, so surprised I can’t pull together a coherent counterpoint. Suddenly, all I want is for her to still want my family.

“No,” she says. “They’re yours. You found mine for me, remember? So you win. I’m gone.” And with that she turns and walks away.

I stand there holding the bag of bagels and the coffee, wondering what just happened. Wondering if all this time I never realized that there was some reality where Layla wouldn’t be firmly entrenched in my life. Some awful unthinkable reality.

What the fuck just happened?

There was something so freeing about giving Brett his family back that for the first time I feel like I can breathe. I feel almost dizzy with freedom. Who was I kidding? They were never really mine to begin with.

I call Brooke and tell her to meet me at Runyon Canyon for a hike. It’s a new year. I can start it off healthfully, let go of the past, breathe in the fresh air, take in the beauty of the mountains. It all feels natural and cleansing, like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. Except the altitude mixed with the cardio makes me feel a little light-headed once we get halfway to the top. I used to hike Runyon all the time. Am I this out of shape? Have I let myself go in marriage?
Gah!
I swore I’d never be that person. Well, not anymore. I stop and take a drink from my water bottle, and we keep going.

“Where are all the hot single guys?” Brooke asks, as she steps over a pile of something brown and gooey. “And has every dog in Los Angeles come here to take a shit? Seriously. I’ve seen more piles of crap than trees!”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“It’s disgusting.”

“I guess I’m used to it, being around animals all the time.”

“I see no hot men.” She sighs. “This is a total waste.”

“We’re here to get exercise. To start the year off positively.”

Brooke looks at me like I’m possessed. “I was just near Vancouver, remember? Outdoorsy. Women, Lord help them, wear skirts and tennis shoes. I had plenty of positive healthiness. Wait a minute—are you on antidepressants?”

“No, you jerk,” I answer. “I’m just trying to start the new year off on the right foot.”

“Well, your right foot just stepped in dog shit.”

• • •

When I part ways with Brooke, I drive to Ralphs supermarket and seek out black-eyed peas and donuts. The black-eyed peas because of my Southern college roommate. She’d say, “Remember, eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day brings good luck for the entire year!” It’s apparently an American tradition down there. And me, being a sucker for traditions, always went along with it. But somewhere along the way I stopped. Now, feeling like it’s high time my luck changes, I’m all for it.

The donuts are because I once read somewhere that the Dutch believed that eating donuts on New Year’s Day would bring good fortune. The ring of the donut symbolizes “coming full circle,” completing a year’s cycle. I suppose by that logic I could have just taken one of the bagels that I brought Brett, but this feels better. I can say good-bye to last year—the last many years—by giving my past the bagel, and by giving myself the donut. Plus, who are we kidding? Donuts taste better.

I want to start this year with a clean slate. So it’s with that in mind that I decide to call my father. Ginny called me after I ran out of the house and left his information on my voice mail, “in case I changed my mind.” I’m not sure I have, but I am sure that I didn’t handle that situation at all well, and if he has something to say to me, I suppose I can listen.

“Yello,” he says, when he answers his phone. “Hello, Nick?” I say. “This is.”

“Hi,” I say. “It’s Layla.”

There’s a pause. I wonder if my crazy reaction pissed him off, if now he doesn’t want to talk to me. I probably wouldn’t want to talk to me, either.

“I’m really glad to hear from you,” he says.

“Okay,” I say.

And we arrange for him to come to my house.

• • •

It’s so odd to call this man my father. This man who’s looking around my house, picking up photographs—pictures from events that he damn well should have attended—and smiling at them. I watch him check the place out, and as he does this I check
him
out: his face, his posture, his wrinkles from not wearing sun-block.

He turns, holding a wedding photo of Brett and me.

“You look beautiful,” he says. “Was it a nice wedding?”

“It was everything I wanted.”
With the exception of having a father to walk me down the aisle
, I think to myself. But Bill did it, and the day was still every bit as perfect. There’s nothing to be gained from getting digs in.

“I’m glad,” he says, and he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a newspaper clipping. He holds it out to me and I see that it’s my wedding announcement.

“Hey, I remember that,” I say. I look at it, yellowed and torn.
He’s carried this with him all these years?

“As feeble as it sounds, I always loved you,” he says wistfully. “You were always my little girl.”

“Not so much a little girl anymore,” I say, and I walk to the kitchen, where my black-eyed peas are simmering.

“Not anymore,” he echoes. “It makes me feel old.”

I stir the peas. I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know if there’s something he wants to say to me, or if Brett simply badgered him into coming around so I’d get the hell away from the Fosters. I walk back out and see him holding another photograph, and it looks like he wipes a tear away from his right eye, but I could be wrong.

“I keep your wedding announcement in my wallet,” he says, “as a reminder that you turned out well, that you had a good life, but also as a reminder of my failure, so I don’t forget how I abandoned you.”

“Well,” I say. “Yeah.”

“I’m ashamed of myself. What I did.”

“You should be.”

“It was shitty,” he says. “It was selfish. And I’m sorry.”

I take this in. I don’t know what to say back. It’s okay? It
wasn’t
okay. It wasn’t okay for him to leave us. It wasn’t okay for me to lose my only other parent and have to deal with it on my own, when my father was potentially in the same zip code.

“You don’t have to forgive me,” he says. “I don’t forgive me, either.”

“I don’t see a point in holding on to anger,” I say. “Really, it’s been so long. I mean …”

“I know,” he says quietly. “But I’d like you to tell me how you feel. How you felt. I’d like you to have the opportunity to express what you feel.”

“I feel like it’s been twenty-five years,” I say, not wanting to get into anything heavy.

“It has, but I think I have twenty-five more in me,” he says. “Maybe we can start from here. I’m not saying I’m going to win any father-of-the-year awards, but I’d like to try to be in your life. If you’ll have me.”