The Other Half

by Jess Whitecroft

“Like saying you screwed your way into her will, you mean?” he says.

  “Is that what she’s saying? Your sister?”

  There’s a silence, and this one is beyond ugly. It’s unforgivable.

  My throat aches when I speak. “Well, fuck your sister. And fuck you.”

  I should have known. I should have stayed in my place. I shouldn’t have messed with fancy folk like this, with tenure and doctorates and a working knowledge of which fork to use at dinner. Funny how he didn’t question Becky’s bequest when he thought we were just friends, but as soon as my dick entered the picture he flipped out. No wonder he didn’t lose his virginity until he was twenty-three. Picky? Picky, my ass. The guy who finally opened Chris’s legs must have had to use a goddamn crowbar.

  I won’t cry. I won’t.

  But my body has other ideas, and the first sob bursts out of me in a loud, honking noise, like someone startled an elephant seal. I bite my lip out of habit, listening to the dust settle throughout the house, because there are hardly any walls in the place and the only thing Jack loves more than free ketamine is an opportunity to get involved in someone else’s drama.

  I’m too late, though. The reaper may be haunting his ass, but his nose is as sharp as ever. He finds me crying on the stairs, and takes a seat beside me. He smells like death warmed over, but I’m actually grateful for him. For once.

  “What happened?” he says. “What’s the matter?”

  “Everything. I knew it couldn’t last. Deep down I always knew that one day he’d look down his nose at me, but I didn’t want to admit it.”

  Jack sighs hard enough to blow the dust off the banister rail. “Yeah, well. That happens. People always treated us like we were at the bottom of the food chain. If it wasn’t Andrew Jackson it was the goddamn Turks. You’re a child of multiple genocides, kiddo.”

  Jesus. Even now he can’t stop borrowing other people’s trouble at the wrong moments. “Dad, how does that have any fucking bearing on anything?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just saying. We have – historically – been crapped on a lot.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not talking about history. I’m talking about now.” How did I think he’d be good for anything but smearing his pet issues all over problems he knows nothing about? “I should have stayed away from him in the first place. He was too fucked up, but I went ahead and did it anyway, because I can’t…” Shit. I’m sobbing again. “I can’t stop trying to fix broken people.”

  I think of Chris, his hands, his mouth, and his voice whispering in my ear. And it hurts so much that my brain – maybe to protect me – bounces away and offers up another memory. Becky, this time. Becky listing towards the middle of her big, saggy bed, letting me trace the scar where her right breast used to be. I told her it was badass, that she was the fiercest Amazon in New Hampshire, and she laughed and swatted me playfully around the ear. Boy, you could sweet talk the bark off a fucking tree.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” says Jack, running a hand over my hair. “Shh…it’s okay. You’re a little nurturer. Always were. You remember how you got scratched to pieces trying to put flea powder on all those stray cats?”

  I sniff and swallow. “Flea powder was the easy part. Trying to make them take their worming pills…that was way worse.”

  “Yeah, but you kept trying, just the same,” he says. “Couldn’t just sit back and let things go to hell. That’s my Jody.”

  I can’t fix this. I can’t fix anything. “Everything’s fucked, Dad. Chris’s family is contesting the will, and he thinks I’m a greasy gigolo straight out of a Tennessee Williams play. And you’re dying…”

  “Well, actually…”

  I freeze and snort up a noseful of tears, because if the words ‘well, actually’ ever escape Jack’s lips, you can be sure a blizzard of bullshit is sure to follow. “Actually?”

  “I’m not exactly dying, per se…” he says.

  I get up from the stairs. “I knew it. I fucking knew it!”

  “No, I mean, I am dying…”

  “So you’re dying but not exactly dying? Are there degrees of dying I don’t know about? Can you be slightly dying?”

  “I’m dying,” says Jack. “Or at least my liver is dying, and that means I’m gonna die, because that’s why they call it a liver, I guess. It’s not like a gall bladder, you know? You can’t really get along without one.”

  Amazing. Every time my life goes to shit, every time I think things couldn’t possibly get worse, every time I think he can’t scrape the bottom of the barrel any harder, he still manages to find some new subterranean level of scummery hitherto unknown to humankind.

  “The DNA test,” I say.

  “Huh?” he says, already fronting. It’s such a pathetic attempt at innocence that I almost laugh.

  “You made Corey take a DNA test. Pretending it was closure? Closure? Or were you looking for compatible organs?”

  Jack looks at me like I’m a monster. “As a matter of fact, no,” he says. “DNA doesn’t mean much when you’re talking liver donation. It’s all about the blood group, and I happen to know your brother has a different blood group to me, so what do you make of that, smart-ass?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know when you found out Corey had the wrong blood group, but knowing you I’m guessing it was shortly before you decided to find me.”

  He gets to his feet, full blown defensive by now. Head shaking, fingers wagging, a full blown attack of the how-dare-yous. “I wanted to set things straight with you, Jody. I know we always had the most difficult relationship—”

  “—that’s one way of putting it—”

  “—and you know why that is, son. We butt heads because we’re alike, you and I. We’re two peas in a pod—”

  “—and hopefully a compatible tissue type match?”

  He’s busted. His shoulders sag, and my heart does likewise. This is it. This has got to be the lowest point. Even the fucking Marianas Trench doesn’t go this far down.

  “Look,” he says. “I gave you life.”

  “And that means I’m supposed to hand over my organs because your dick sneezed thirty years ago?” Was it Jules Verne? Journey To The Center Of The Earth? That’s how far down he’s gone. He’s drilling to the Earth’s core in some giant, steampunk looking apple-corer and he’s not going to stop, because there is literally no bottom to his bullshit.

  “Part of an organ,” he says. “Obviously they don’t take your whole liver. And you’re young. Yours will, like, regenerate.”

  “Get out.”

  “Son…”

  “No. Get. Out. Get your shit, and leave. Don’t you dare say another word. Leave this place, and forget you ever had children.”

  “Jody…”

  “If you stay, it’s murder. I swear to God, Jack. Get out.”

  *

  The mud is still ankle deep in the trailer park, and Dawn’s not exactly pleased to see me. “What?” she says, throwing the door wide. No sexy kimono this time. She’s bundled up a long robe, pulled tight around herself against the cold. “Well, don’t just stand there. It’s goddamn freezing.”

  “Rough night?” I ask. There are piles of paper and books everywhere. “Where’d you hide the eggplant this time?”

  She shakes her head and clears a space for me to sit. “No time for eggplants,” she says. “I’m trying to pass the bar here. Besides, after a while guys get really gross with that shit. They’re like ‘Hey, baby – why don’t you put that thing in your asshole?’ and I’m like ‘Hey, baby. It’s an anus.’ Two rounds with that thing and never mind The Full Monty. More like The Full Goatse.” She runs her hands through her hair – dark brown, the most normal I’ve ever seen it. “So what about you? What do you need?”

  “Legal advice.”

  Dawn exhales. “Good. Great. Because if you were gonna ask for anything anal…”

  “No. I’m good for anal. Thank you for asking.” My phone goes again. Jack has been blowing it up ever since I told him t
o leave. I pick up, yell, “Fuck off!” and hang up again.

  Dawn hesitates for a moment. “So…um…how’s the boyfriend?” she asks.

  “Uh…not so good for anal, actually.” I sigh. “He’s in New York right now, clutching his pearls because I fucked his aunt.”

  “What? Becky?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you two had a whole Mrs. Robinson thing going on,” she says. “Well, other than the part where she was a drunk and you stalked her daughter, but you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I know that, you know that and she knew that, but apparently I was attempting to dick my way into her will the whole time.”

  Dawn purses her lips. “They’re contesting?”

  “Fuck my life, right? Yes. But that’s not why I’m here.”

  “Okay?”

  “I need a restraining order,” I say, silencing the phone again. “Jack resurfaced and attempted to grift me for a liver.”

  She opens and closes her mouth a couple of times. I don’t blame her. It’s a lot.

  “Basically his is shot. And he needs a donor.”

  “Holy shit,” says Dawn. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m numb to it at this point. Also can you tell me if I’m allowed to kill him if he shows up on my property? Because I’m genuinely scared that one of these nights I’m gonna find out exactly what chloroform smells like and then wake up bleeding in a bathtub full of ice.”

  “Nah, you’re golden on that one,” she says. “New Hampshire switched from regular castle doctrine to Stand Your Ground in 2011.”

  “Good. At least, I think so.”

  “Did you say Chris’s family were contesting?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  She frowns. “I don’t know. Just seems real late in the probate process to me.”

  “Well, they had an investigator look into me recently, I guess.”

  “Oh shit. What did you do?”

  “I don’t know. Stuff. Nothing everyone else hasn’t done. Shoplifting. Little bit of drug dealing. Went through a pyromaniac phase. I mean, everyone does that, right?”

  “Totally,” says Dawn. “I used to set fire to old Kleenexes sometimes. Oh, and those Shrinky Dink things. I was always trying to melt those. What did you used to do?”

  “Uh…chemistry lab?” She tries to look non-judgmental and fails. Miserably. “It was fine. They put it out. What did they expect? Showcasing the effects of reactive metals to a bunch of teenage boys? We’re hard-wired to love explosions. It’s just fucking science.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Fourteen? Fifteen, maybe.”

  “Huh. That’s like, juvie records.”

  I reach for the phone again. It’s lighting up like a goddamn spaceship. Now he’s texting.

  —pick up + talk or regrett it

  Forget it. “It was one little fire,” I say. “It’s not like I had a history of arson. Not like Jack. He was a regular firebug. Any time things started going south for him, you could more or less guarantee that the next minute something was gonna be on…” Oh shit. “On fire.”

  16

  Chris

  I spent the night in Jo’s nursery on an air mattress, and the baby’s cutting teeth, so I’m not in the best of moods. The last thing I want to see in the morning is that bullshit private eye file on her coffee table, and she’s tiptoeing around looking guilty. Which she should.

  “Are you still mad at me?” she says.

  “Yep. The only reason I’m here is because it’s still preferable to dealing with Sebastian.”

  Jo jiggles the baby and sighs. Artemis, perched on her hip, is taking a short break from screaming to gnaw at a teething ring. There is drool everywhere. “I’m sorry,” Jo says. “He seems nice…Jody, I mean.”

  “Right. Apart from the whole…” I wave a hand at the file. “That. Which I have no intention of reading. And you’re right. Why is it acceptable if it’s an older man and a younger woman, but if it’s an older woman and a younger man it’s gross?” My head feels far too full. “Maybe I overreacted.”

  “Yeah, you kind of did.”

  “Oh, now you tell me?”

  Artemis spits out her teething ring and begins to fuss, her face crumpling. “Chris, you’ve always tended to overreact to the wrong things,” Jo says, speaking in that rushed, Mom tone – the one where you have to squeeze your sentences between child related emergencies. Artemis lets out a shriek and flails at Jo’s face with a tiny, starfish hand. All this pain has her pissed, and I don’t blame her.

  “Personally I’d be a little more concerned about the whole serial arsonist aspect of Jody’s past,” Jo says, and winces as Artemis grabs hold of her hair. “Wait…back in a minute.”

  She retreats. I stare at the file on the coffee table. I actually don’t care that he banged my aunt.

  He gives himself to people. It’s just what he does. The first night we were together as lovers he offered himself over and over again. He spread his legs for me and let me suck on him and got on his hands and knees so I could part his cheeks. He straddled me, slid down on my dick and made love to me with slow movements of his hips and ripples of his tight internal muscles. His cock stood up stiffly as he rode me, and I’ll never forget the way he invited me to touch him. He took my hand, delivered it to his dick – wine red tip, wet bead of precome – and whispered, “This is for you. You can have this. You can have everything you want.”

  I’m an idiot. It doesn’t matter who he was before. He’s still the same person who came laughing all over me in the front seat of a truck, the one who treated me to the sweetest night of love I’ve ever experienced. That snowy, no-tell motel, our shelter from the storm, Bob Dylan buzzing in my brain and Jody’s eyes black as sin, their brightness restored.

  He carved our initials into a tree, for God’s sake. How can anything else matter?

  The baby quiets down. I might not be alone for much longer, and its this thought that makes me reach out and sneak a peek at the thing I said I’d never ever look at. I flip open the file and my stomach flips in sympathy. I don’t even know why I’m reading it. I don’t want to, but it’s like pulling off a scab, even though you know it will bleed like hell. I breathe faster as I skim the charges – drugs, prostitution, burglary, arson – and then my eyes catch on something that doesn’t make sense.

  Jody’s date of birth. Maybe he lied about that, too, but I can’t deny he’s in remarkable shape for a man pushing fifty. My first thought is that it’s a typo, but it’s written in ink, on a Xerox of his arrest record for an arson charge in Pennsylvania. His birth year is almost twenty years out. And the date is wrong, too. June. Jody’s birthday is October, the twelfth. This says June seventeen.

  I shuffle through the file. More of them. The wrong birthday. I go back to the original, do the math and wonder why the private investigator hasn’t, because if she did she’d know that Jody was apparently such a precocious little firestarter that he was burning down houses when he was seven.

  Jo tiptoes backwards out of the baby’s room. “I thought you weren’t going to read that?” she says, in an undertone.

  I ignore the comment. “Tell me, Brosephine, did you meet this private eye?”

  She tiptoes round to join me on the big green couch. “The law firm investigator? Sure.”

  “And how were her eyes?”

  She frowns at the question. “Blue, I think. It was hard to tell. She had some serious Coke bottle glasses.”

  “Would you say she wasn’t in the best position to read the fine print?” I say, pointing out the date of birth on the arrest record copy.

  Josephine, who also needs glasses to read, squints at the page. “Nineteen sixty…what? How does he look that good for his age?”

  “Easily,” I say. “He’s twenty-nine.” It’s all falling into place now. Junior. He did. Jack called Jody Junior, on more than one occasion. “This is his dad’s arrest record. Look. There are more of them.”

&n
bsp; Jo covers her mouth with her hand. “Oh shit.”

  “Ms. Magoo done fucked up,” I say. “Looks like her eyesight’s the least of her problems as an investigator. Did it even occur to her that there might be two Jody Ohanians?”

  “But I thought his father’s name was Jack?”

  “Jack hasn’t always been a given name. It’s a diminutive. Of John, Jonathan…”

  “…Jody?”

  “Jack called him Junior. I heard him.”

  She reaches for my hand. “Chris, I am so sorry.”

  “You’re all idiots.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you realize what I’ve done?” That phone call. God, I’m going to have to grovel. I get up from the couch. “I’ve gotta go back to New Hampshire. Like, now.”

  “Go,” she says. “I’ll explain this to Dad. It’s the least I can do. Chris, I am so, so sorry.”

  Her eyes are full of tears, and I can’t stay mad at her for long. I wrap my arms around her and sigh into the tight braids of her hair. “And this is why you always need me to check your galley copies for typos.” I say.

  “I know. I suck at the small things.”

  There’s a joke somewhere there, about how motherhood worked a switch and set small things sucking at her for a change, but all I can think of right now is Jody. Hurt and alone and justifiably mad at me, all because a couple of people didn’t look too closely at the fine print.

  *

  It’s funny how the little things can make the biggest messes. The wrong three little words in the middle of making love, an error on an arrest report. It’s butterflies and tornados and all that pop science I never really grasped, and it’s all jumbled up in my head on the long drive back to New Hampshire. There are the beginnings of leaves on the trees, a dusting of virgin green at the tips of bare boughs, so that from a distance it looks more like a mist than anything solid. This time last year I was in New York, talking about invitations and seating plans and scowling at the bathroom scale every time it told me I’d gained another five pounds.

  Before Marco. Before Jody. Before my life exploded and I fell in love, even though I knew I shouldn’t.