Family Affair (36 page)

“Ha,” I say.

“You weren’t there,” he goes on. “He said I was an idiot who’d missed out on watching an amazing girl grow up. A girl who deserved a family. He said, ‘Here’s this beautiful, brilliant girl that
you haven’t even bothered to get to know. Meet her. Get to know her. I dare you not to fall in love with her.’”

I feel like my heart is in my throat. Why is everything so freakin’ hard?

“That’s very sweet,” I admit.

“Brett’s a good guy,” he says. “He messed up. Royally. But at least he’s coming around months later instead of years.”

“Or never,” I add pointedly.

“See?” he smiles, ignoring my barb. “They say girls with daddy issues have broken pickers: They pick the wrong men or, worse, men like their fathers. Good to know your picker wasn’t broken.”

• • •

With a renewed sense of optimism I stop by the university to surprise Brett and see if he wants to have lunch. Instead of Brett, I find Heather.

“Hi, Layla,” she says, all chipper.

I’d never asked Brett what happened with Heather, why they ended things.
If
they ended things, I suppose. I’d like to think they did.

“Hi, Heather,” I say back. “Awkward question: Is Brett around?”

“I haven’t seen him recently,” she says.

“Recently” meaning what?
I wonder.
Recently, like, a week? An hour?

“Oh, sorry,” I say, not knowing if I should be sorry, not knowing what went down with them, and not wanting to ask, yet desperately wanting to know.

“Don’t be,” she says. “You had the right idea. Cutting off contact completely. I broke up with him on New Year’s and he took it so hard—poor thing. He won’t stop calling me, texting me. I mean, have some self-respect, right?”

“Right,” I say, suddenly feeling queasy.

“Men,” she says, and smiles and shakes her head as if we’re both in on the joke.

“Okay,” I manage to utter. “Well, sorry to have bothered you.”

“Oh, don’t be,” she says. “Honestly, it’s fun to have someone to compare notes with. Although you could have warned me what a loser he was. Girls are supposed to stick together.”

Normally, I’d jump down her throat. I’d tell her Brett’s not a loser. That he’s the best guy I know. But I can’t.

He’s been calling her? Texting her? Has he been writing her letters spelling out her name?

My mom doesn’t laugh anymore. Or smile, really. At least she doesn’t when nobody’s looking. I used to catch her smiling as she cooked or made a bed or fed the dog or took out the trash. My mom was a happy person. Now she only smiles if someone’s there and she’s expected to. And it looks fake and forced. Almost like she’s in pain. I’m afraid that she is.

They say it’s not a physically painful disease, but it is a disease. And in its base form—the word
disease
splits into
dis
and
ease
, meaning she’s not at ease. How can that be comfortable? How can that not be painful? Emotionally, at the very least. So my mom doesn’t laugh anymore. As a result, no one feels like saying or doing anything funny anymore.

I want to talk to her about Layla, but I can’t. I don’t want to burden her with my bullshit or, actually,
try
to burden her with it only to learn eventually that she has no idea what I’m talking about and maybe isn’t sure who Layla is, or who I am, for that matter. She’s not quite at that point, but it’s coming and it’s dreadful.

The shocking thing is, Scott is stepping up. He’s no longer wallowing in self-pity, and has taken to going on walks with Mom
every day. And when she asked recently if they were going to go for a walk just half an hour after they returned, Dad says Scott smiled, told her yes, and put his sneakers back on. So he’s becoming less selfish, and both of them are getting their cardio. He’s also been spending time with April. Turns out that in addition to being a bit of a photographer, her real talents lie in her imagination—or, rather, her dream of one day writing sci-fi and fantasy fiction. She’s got all these ideas that mesh perfectly with Scott’s flair for illustrating the fantastical, and the two of them are conceiving a comic book. If it’s autobiographical, it’s guaranteed to be good for some laughs.
DorkBoy and the Shutterbug
. He swears the sex is phenomenal, but I hope they don’t put that in.

I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. Or so desperate. I wish I could make Mom promise me she’ll get better. Promise me she’ll live at least another thirty years. Promise me she’ll know her grandkids and remember them from day to day. I’m about to give her a grandkid and I can’t even tell her. I don’t feel right about having good news when everything feels bad. And I don’t even know if it
is
good news. Layla’s saying it’s
her
baby. Like I had nothing to do with it.

I call Tommy Thames, the lawyer Layla brought to that screwy mediation thing, to see what she’s really thinking—and because Tim Ning isn’t calling me back these days. We set an appointment for the next day, and when I walk in I nearly choke on the smell of smoke in the office. It’s like everyone in the world who ever smoked came to this office to exhale.

About fifteen minutes after I complete reading the year-old
People
magazine in the waiting area (amazing how fast celebrity gossip gets stale), Thames pokes his head out and waves me toward him, almost like nobody else is supposed to see him there. “We’re moving,” he says. “It just got put off.”

It’s odd, being in his office. But he’s odd, from what I recall of my brief dealings with him. I tell him the whole story. Well, I tell
him the story from the point where the little mediation left off. I tell him how the whole joint-custody thing didn’t work so well and yet how, after all is said and done, I’m desperate to get Layla back—how I’m actively trying to win her back. I tell him how she dropped the baby bomb on me and how not for a second did I think it was bad news. How I thought it felt right. That it was perfect. That it was time. That it was exactly the reason for us to quit the crap and start picking out colors for the baby’s room. And how she basically told me to fuck off. That because I screwed up, she was trying to keep me as far away from her womb as possible, and the future taking shape inside it. And then I told Tommy how he fit in. Again.

“Huh,” Thames says. “I played along with that mediation—and the rest. Those phone calls from Layla during the whole thing, they sounded more like calls from my kids when they were five and seven and used to fight over who got to drink out of the backyard hose first. I am through,” he adds, “with the two of you and your back-and-forth. It’s clear you don’t hate each other, and neither one of you wants to take the other to the cleaners, so there’s really no money in it for me.”

“Obviously I don’t hate her. I love her,” I say. “I’m trying to get her back.”

“You two are ridiculous,” he says. “And she is my client. Not you. I’m crossing a serious ethical line just talking to you.”

“No argument from me. Layla and I are ridiculous. And you are unethical, but back to the business at hand. That baby is half mine. And I have every right to be in its life.”

“She wanted joint custody of your family,” he says. “You want joint custody of her fetus…. What’s next? She seeks joint custody of your football team and you want joint custody of her hair appointment?” He sighs and picks up a paperweight shaped like blind justice—though I can see in this version that she’s peeking out from under the blindfold.
Clever
.

“Look,” Thames continues, “you definitely have legal rights to any child you helped conceive. So does she. You also have the right to sue the supermarket when milk goes bad. But that doesn’t mean every damn dispute should land in court. I’m saying this not only because neither of you has money—although mainly for that reason—but also because in this case it’s true.”

I see his point, but the fact remains that this situation is out of hand and I need his help. So I tell him as much. But he just shakes his head.

“Let’s not lose sight of what you really want,” he says. “You were trying to win her back before you knew about the baby.”

“Right,” I say.

“So why are you here?” he asks. “Do you want half of her uterus or half of her heart?”

I stare at this walking anachronism, with his wild hair and wrinkled, stained shirt, sitting among the chaos of his professional life. And it seems to me appearances can sometimes be very dishonest, telling us lies about who really gives a damn about us. It seems to me this man has stopped chasing ambulances for at least a few minutes to actually give a damn about Layla and me, and that makes me grateful, and it makes me listen very carefully to what he’s saying.

“If it’s the former, you’ve got a case, but I can’t ethically represent you, and I’d rather not get disbarred, so I’ll have to refer you to my cousin, who’s an exceptional attorney, judging from his grades in law school last year.

“If it’s the latter,” he says, “you’ll have to make the case on your own.”

He stands, sending a strong hint that it’s time for me to go, but he stops me at the door, puts a hand on my shoulder, and smiles. “My advice? Whenever I faced a hostile judge and jury—and I’m afraid that’s what you’ve got here—I always tell my clients to be as honest and genuine as possible on the witness stand. To show
their humanity. If that doesn’t work, I start showing up for closing arguments in a chicken costume and try to get my client a mistrial.”

The door closes behind me, and I’m half tempted to ask his disinterested secretary if I can borrow the chicken costume.

February 5

Dearest Ev
,

I don’t know quite how to get to this so I’ll just come out and say it. I’m sick. And it’s not a cold or the flu or the chicken pox. Remember when we had the chicken pox? You had them first, and I slept next to you in the top bunk to make sure I got them, too. This is a sickness I wouldn’t share with you. I wouldn’t wish it on my dear sister—on
anyone.
They have me on medicine. It’s called Aricept, and I think it helps, but I’m not the best judge of myself lately. I do notice a difference if I miss a dose, so that says something
.

I have good days and bad days. We’ve been through a lot as a family, but Bill has shown me that he truly meant it when he said “forever.”

The kids are really being wonderful, but I’m still brokenhearted over Brett and Layla, who haven’t quite found their way back to each other yet. I’m hoping they do. But now I’m afraid you’ll never hear about it if or when it happens, and that’s made it all that much harder. Because as much as it pains me, it’s time I stop writing you. I’ll always miss you, but I’ll need all my strength and focus to wage
this fight, and where I’m going I don’t think you can help me. Bill and my doctors agree. In fact, Bill is insisting I stop writing these letters to you and I don’t have it in me to argue right now
.

You know I’ve always loved you and looked up to you, and you’ve helped me get through a lot—more than you could ever imagine. For the next stage of my life, I’ve got my family
.

See you in heaven. (I hope not too soon.)
Ginny

Macaroni and cheese. I didn’t eat it much as a kid, so it’s not like I’m regressing or reaching out to a comforting time. Yet it’s all I want. In various forms. Sure, Kraft straight out of the box, cooked as indicated, is the gold standard. But since all I have any interest in is mac and cheese, I have taken to spending countless hours researching new recipes. (I myself have invented at least three, and mac and Jack is currently my favorite—possibly because I just like saying the words. And that’s Jack as in cheese, not as in Daniel’s.) Anyhow, there’s an entire website dedicated to the foodstuff, http://macaroniandcheese.net, where I’ve found at least a dozen new versions, some of which include: four-cheese macaroni (A+), seven-cheese macaroni casserole (a little busy for my tastes, C-), Mexican mac and cheese (Olé A), spicy mac and cheese (F, spicy isn’t fun when you’re pregnant), beef and mac (C), chili cheese and mac (A+)—I mean, I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that all I want to do is eat macaroni and cheese, and when I’m not eating it, all I want to do is research new and exciting ways to eat it next. This is possibly a coping mechanism.

I haven’t seen Brett since he stormed out of my house. After I
told him to leave. After Heather and her breasts told me that she dumped him and that he’s been trying to win her back. Why do we say and do the exact opposite of what we want? Because we want to test people? Because we think they’re mind readers? Because there’s a corkscrew turn somewhere in the connection between our brains and mouths that takes perfectly civil, sensible thoughts and spins them around backward before they come out? Or because we really just love macaroni and cheese?

It sucks. I’m lonely and hormonal and I miss Trish and I don’t know how to balance our business with my distancing myself from the family. And my heart aches for Ginny.

And I truly, deep down, want Brett to be a part of this baby’s life.

I can’t say that to him, though, because I have too much pride. My cupboards are filled with pride, and I am considering building a shed out back where I can store the surplus, because every time I consider opening up to him and the family about what I’m going through, I immediately dump the thought in the trash, ashamed of how foolish and vulnerable I’d look. I’m tired of looking stupid and desperate and vulnerable.