The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman

by Meg Wolitzer

  April saw that one of the gymnasts, a girl, wore a blue T-shirt with red letters that read SEATTLE MARINERS.

  The words on the T-shirt did a little dance in April’s brain, the way words sometimes did. Usually, she just scrambled and unscrambled letters, and that was that. But now, the blue T-shirt reminded her of that other T-shirt belonging to the boy at the motel pool all those years ago—the T-shirt that had read SETTLE MARS.

  With a shocked laugh, April finally understood. Back at the motel pool three years earlier, the boy’s T-shirt had been briefly creased from wearing it in the water. The reason April hadn’t remembered the phrase SETTLE MARS was that the shirt hadn’t said that.

  It had said SEATTLE MARINERS.

  The vertical creases in the shirt had hidden some of the letters when her father took the photo. The A in SEATTLE wasn’t visible, and neither was the INER in MARINERS.

  For a few seconds it had read:

  SE TTLE MAR S

  Except the creases had pushed the letters together, so it seemed more like: SETTLE MARS

  April had always been bored by the names of sports teams, and so she hadn’t remembered what was really written on his T-shirt. But now she did remember, and her heart began to race. She was standing in the airport near a group of gymnasts from Seattle, and she couldn’t help but wonder something further. She stood very still and looked around.

  What were the chances?

  As she stood there, a boy walked toward her, eating one of those pretzels that people ate in airports and nowhere else. He was tall, with brownish hair and a serious face. He wore a white T-shirt that didn’t have anything written on it at all. He had an athletic bag over his shoulder, because he was with that group of kid gymnasts from Seattle. He looked at April, and then he looked at her again. She looked right back at him. She knew that it was him, after all this time. He wasn’t skinny anymore, but all at once she remembered his face.

  It was the boy from the motel pool.

  He lived in Seattle, which wasn’t very far from Portland, but April had had no idea, because she’d been confused by the photograph in her family’s album. SETTLE MARS meant nothing to him. He just liked the Mariners, his local team.

  The boy walked up to April, finishing his pretzel, and he said, “Wait, we know each other, right?”

  “I think so,” she said, but the words barely got out.

  “You’re that girl,” he said. “The one that I met.”

  April could only nod. “At the motel pool,” she finally said.

  The boy smiled and said, “SOMERSAULT. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s it.”

  SOMERSAULT was the solution to the anagram of ROAST MULES. He’d figured it out sometime over the past three years, and she was astonished that he’d remembered. But this whole experience was astonishing.

  “I was actually here in Florida this weekend for a word thing,” April said. “A Scrabble tournament.”

  “How’d you do?” he asked.

  “Second place.”

  “Nice. I was here for gymnastics. My group did so-so, but we’re going to come back next year.” He paused, then said, “You know, it’s funny. But that day at the pool?”

  “I taught you Scrabble,” said April. “That’s what you were going to say, right?”

  “No, I was going to say that you sort of got me moving around that day. Your family was out at a baseball game or something, I think. You went in the water, and you got me to go in, too, which was sort of a big deal for me. And we joked around a lot, and when your family got back, your brother did this somersault into the pool—”

  “Right. That’s what made me give you the anagram,” said April.

  “And I went back home,” he said, “and I thought how great it would be to be able to do stuff like that. Swimming. Somersaults. Physical stuff. I started doing gymnastics at school. Maybe it was sort of because of that day.”

  An announcement came over the loudspeaker for April’s flight to Portland. She had only just found him, and now she had to leave. “Listen, I’ve got to go,” she said. “But here’s my e-mail.” She quickly wrote it down on a little scrap of paper, and he wrote his down, and they swapped.

  His name was Jake Kennelly, and he was thirteen years old. Jake. That was his name, after all this time. He’d always been Jake Kennelly from Seattle, but she hadn’t known it.

  “Well, take it easy, April,” Jake said.

  “I have to ask you something,” she suddenly said. “Did you keep playing Scrabble?”

  Jake Kennelly shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve played it since. I’ve been pretty busy with the gymnastics team, and school.”

  Some of his friends called to him that it was time to go. He said to April, “We’ll be in touch,” and then he was gone.

  In the distance, April saw Lucy standing very still in the middle of the concourse, watching the scene. April was certain that Lucy had already figured out who she had been talking to.

  “Don’t tell me, Flink,” Lucy would say.

  Then April would tell her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE TRUTH ABOUT DUNCAN DORFMAN

  On the plane ride from Florida to Pennsylvania, Duncan kept a pair of earbuds in his ears, listening to the music channels that the airline offered. He wasn’t in the mood for music—he wasn’t like Nate, who often had music on—but he just couldn’t deal with his mother yet. The questions he needed to ask her couldn’t be asked on a plane.

  Once they started talking, though, and once he demanded the truth from her, he knew that he would have to tell her the truth, too. Soon she would learn why Carl had asked him to the tournament; soon she would learn about the ad for Smooth Moves cigarettes.

  What Duncan hadn’t counted on was how soon the ads would be up. Coming home from the airport, riding over the bumpy, slushy roads of Drilling Falls, the taxi stopped at a red light downtown, and that was when Duncan saw it. On the side of a bus shelter he made out the words SMOOTH MOVES, and below them was a photograph of two boys playing a board game.

  Duncan was horrified. But as he peered through the frosted, ice-crackled glass of the taxi window, he saw that something had been done to the ad. Frantically, he rubbed the window with his fingertips until the frost cleared. Someone had vandalized the ad; with thick magic marker, a cartoon face had been drawn over Duncan’s face, so that his identity was hidden. In the place of Duncan Dorfman’s face was the face of an alien with antennae.

  An alien who looked a lot like one of Andrew Tanizaki’s drawings.

  Andrew, Duncan understood, must have seen the ad when it had been put up this weekend, and he had gone downtown and drawn over it as a way to protect Duncan. He had suspected that Duncan would be ashamed to be in this ad, and so he’d done what he could in the freezing cold. Duncan hoped he’d at least worn gloves.

  He could just picture Andrew Tanizaki out there on a sleeting gray afternoon, looking around to make sure that no one saw him, then drawing over the ad.

  He would have to find a way to thank him.

  At home, Aunt Djuna flung the front door of the house wide open. “I watched you on the TV!” she cried as Duncan and his mother came up the porch steps. “I’ve never watched that little TV you brought when you moved in, but my neighbor Mrs. Gunvalson showed me how you get it to work. There are hundreds of channels, did you know that?”

  “Yes,” said Duncan. “I did.”

  “One of them is just about vegan cooking! Anyway, you were magnificent, Duncan.”

  Inside, he realized that the house was infused with a surprisingly inviting smell.

  “Aunt Djuna, what is that?” Duncan asked. “Chocolate?”

  Aunt Djuna smoothed down the edges of her green sweater. “Well, yes,” she said. “I thought I would make a treat in honor of our big Scrabble champion. Do you like brownies?”

  “Very much,” said Duncan.

  “I’m so glad,” said Aunt Djuna. “Because I b
aked four trays.”

  It wouldn’t be until much later, of course, after dinner was over and dessert had been put out on china plates, that Duncan discovered that Aunt Djuna’s brownies were made at least partly of yam. The dampness and texture and the little threads of orange color and bits of peel gave it away. But still he ate them, because it was only polite, and she was an extremely kind and generous person, and anyway, they weren’t bad.

  It also wasn’t until much later that Caroline Dorfman appeared in the doorway of Duncan’s room and said, “Hey, you. Have a second?”

  He had been arranging some objects in his tiny room: the certificate from the tournament, and the score sheets from the different games, and Andrew Tanizaki’s good-luck drawing, all of which he had carefully taped up on the wall over the bed.

  Duncan looked up, surprised. He’d been meaning to work up the courage to confront his mother, but the time still hadn’t been right. He worried that she would get a migraine. He worried that she would burst into tears when he asked her what he needed to ask. He worried most of all that she would tell him he was wrong.

  But here she was, confronting him. She came into his room and shut the door behind her. The place was so small that they stood only inches from each other. “Duncan,” she said. “I have a feeling that you were confused about some things this weekend.”

  Duncan couldn’t meet her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “When you fainted during the game, I had the sense that . . . it was for an emotional reason. Am I right?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “Wheels were turning in your head,” said his mother. “I could almost see them on the big screen.”

  “It was that obvious?”

  “To me it was,” she said. “Earlier, you’d asked me about panosis, and why it was no good.” Duncan nodded, and now he looked at her again. “You seemed suspicious about the trigger for my migraines,” she went on. “I love you so much, Duncan, and I’ve gone around and around in my head about this. I’ve tortured myself thinking about it. I’ve talked about it endlessly with Aunt Djuna. She was there in the beginning, you know.”

  “Go on,” was all he could say.

  “You probably think I’m a bad person, lying to you like that,” she said. “I just didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to protect you. Aunt Djuna thought it was a very bad idea. She said you deserved better than that, and she’s right.”

  “He’s alive?” Duncan asked, cutting her off.

  His mother didn’t say anything. She didn’t say, “Are you crazy?” or, “That’s ridiculous,” or, “Is who alive?” Finally she nodded. “Yes,” she said. “He is.”

  Duncan took a breath, and he felt himself trembling. “Is his name even Joe Wright?”

  “No,” she said quietly.

  “How could you have lied to me all these years, Mom?”

  “Because he asked me to,” said his mother, in tears now, throwing her hands up in the air. “I’m very ashamed of myself, but honestly, I didn’t know what else to do. He and I were so young when I found out I was pregnant with you. We were still teenagers. But I knew that if I was going to become your mom, then I’d have to grow up. But he couldn’t do that.”

  “Why not?” asked Duncan.

  “He knew, even before you were born, that he would be a bad father. He wasn’t done being a boy himself. That was why I liked him originally, I think. He was boyish and fun. As far as I can tell, he still isn’t done being a boy. I would have liked to marry him and give family life a try, but he said he couldn’t handle it. He didn’t want you to grow up thinking he had abandoned you—it wasn’t you he felt he was abandoning, just the idea of you, if that makes any sense—so he asked me to make something up. I hated it, but I knew it would be years before the question would ever arise, so I agreed. My parents were no help; they were too shocked that I was having a baby. I moved away from Drilling Falls and went to Michigan, where you were born. Aunt Djuna wrote me every day, and she came out to visit whenever she could. She was so kind, and she helped me start a new life with you, away from here. And that worked for a very long time. You were a wonderful baby, Duncan, and a marvelous little boy. The first time you asked me what your dad had died of—until then, I’d been vague about it—I was caught up short, and I made up something on the spot. I came up with ‘panosis’ because of Peter Pan. A disease of someone who doesn’t want to grow up.”

  “I can’t believe this,” said Duncan. “I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!” he said again, and he realized he was shouting, the way Nate Saviano sometimes did. It felt surprisingly good. He had barely known what his voice sounded like when it came out of him at such a high volume.

  “I know, honey, I know. It’s a big shock. A big betrayal. Not a day has passed when I haven’t felt bad about it. Can you see why I did it, and maybe start to forgive me?” she asked. “I’ll understand if you can’t.”

  He looked at her. There she was, the same person as ever. Her hair was blond and pulled back, and her eyes were blue. She was still his mother, his mom, the person who had raised him single-handedly. That hadn’t changed, and wasn’t going to.

  Three seconds passed. “Yeah,” he said. “I forgive you, Mom.”

  “Thank you, Duncan.” The conversation seemed to be coming to a close, but then she said, “One more thing. I know you think I responded strangely when you showed me that power of yours back in the fall. That funny fingertip thing; do you remember what I’m talking about?”

  “Yes,” Duncan said faintly. One of these days, when he was brave enough, he would tell her all his secrets. But not now.

  “The reason I was so worried about anyone else seeing it was that, after I lost my job in Michigan and we had to move back here, I just wanted to make sure we didn’t call too much attention to ourselves in town. I didn’t want people talking, bringing up the past. Mostly, I didn’t want him getting involved. I really appreciate that you respected my wishes and never showed your power to anyone else.”

  There was a pause. “He’s here?” Duncan said. “My father’s here in Drilling Falls?” Duncan’s mother nodded. “Who is he?” Duncan asked quietly.

  His mother took a breath and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Your father,” she said with a regretful little smile, “is Thriftee Mike.”

  Duncan and his mother sat in Aunt Djuna’s squirrel-colored living room and talked until midnight, and she answered as many of his questions as she could. “Am I anything like him?” Duncan wanted to know.

  “Well, neither of you is particularly tall, and you actually have similar hair,” she said. “But beyond that, no, I don’t think you have much in common. You’re a serious, thoughtful person, Duncan, and he’s just . . . a child. He’s more of a child than you are, in fact. No, I’ll go out on a limb here and say I don’t think you have anything in common at all. Which is a good thing, believe me,” she said.

  They sat by the light of the glued-tail mermaid lamp. His mother had cried so much that her eyes looked like two boiled things. Duncan tried to make her feel better, and he even told her that he wanted to give her the five thousand dollars that he’d won in the tournament, but she brushed away the idea.

  “Thank you, honey, that’s generous of you, but I can’t accept it,” she insisted. “We’ll get our own place eventually, I swear. We’ll figure it out. Hold on to that money. You’re going to need it.” His mother finally yawned and said it was time for bed. “We can keep talking about this,” she said. “I’m sure, someday, you’ll even want to meet him, and then we’ll have to find out if he’s willing. Not that I think you’d get much out of it. As I said, he’s entirely different from you.”

  A little later, after his mother had gone to sleep, Duncan sat up in his narrow bed, hugging his knees. His right knee still looked disgusting. He’d taken off the bandage in the shower that evening and was surprised to see how impressively ugly the gash was. Probably it would leave a scar. For the rest of his life, he would remember where it had come from.
The time I went flying off a skateboard. Or, more to the point, the first time I ever went on a skateboard.

  He longed to ride a skateboard again. Maybe he would take a little money from his winnings and buy himself one; there was a store in downtown Drilling Falls, right beside the pizza place. Duncan was very tired now, but his knee was aching and his mind was humming, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep at all. He had to go to school in the morning, and he would be a wreck.

  As he lay wide awake, there was soft knocking on his door. Duncan was surprised to see Aunt Djuna standing in the hall in her nightgown, the green sweater draped over her shoulders as always.

  “I saw the light under your door,” she said. “I wondered if you needed anything.”

  “Oh, no thanks, Aunt Djuna,” Duncan said. “The brownies were good. But I’m pretty full.”

  “I didn’t mean brownies,” Aunt Djuna said. “I meant a ride.”

  She had heard the entire conversation earlier between Duncan and his mother, Aunt Djuna explained as she drove him in the night down Main Street. She drove fast and dangerously; he worried that pieces of her little old car were going to fall off in the street. The car had a faulty heater, too, and Duncan was freezing as he sat beside her.

  “I listened to what your mother said to you,” Aunt Djuna said. “I’m sorry I eavesdropped, but in another way I’m not sorry one bit. You know, I was there years and years ago, when your mother was a teenager and first met Michael Scobee. I watched her fall in love with him. And when she found out she was pregnant, I was the one she came to talk to. Her own parents didn’t want to hear. She’s always been a brave woman, going through everything on her own. She had to grow up overnight.”

  “I know.”

  “It wasn’t right of her to lie to you. But she always said to me, ‘Djuna, if you know a better way, please tell me.’ I called Michael Scobee and got him to give her a job at the superstore this fall, after she lost her own job in Michigan. I love your mother to pieces, Duncan—she is my favorite niece—but I politely disagree with some of the things she said to you about him. I figured,” she said, “that you needed to find out some things for yourself. I know she told you that maybe you’d want to meet him ‘someday.’ But Duncan, you’re twelve years old. To a twelve-year-old, the only good ‘someday’ is today.”