by Lisa Tucker
“That photo was taken two years ago, the last time I saw my son.”
“You saw Billy often?” He hoped his voice wasn’t giving away how surprised he was. Could Lila have possibly known this and kept it a secret, too?
“Not often, no. The first time he needed money for his wife. She was in the hospital; he refused to tell me why. After that, he came back every year or two, always alone—he was adamant that I would have nothing to do with his family—and always with his hand out. He seemed to feel that I owed him and his sister, too, though Lila never asked for anything. I haven’t seen her since she was a teenager.”
Patrick set the picture down and came back to the couch. At least Lila wasn’t keeping any visits of her own a secret, but Billy’s behavior shocked him. What kind of man would ask his mother for money while simultaneously refusing her any contact with her grandchildren?
Barbara said, “So, tell me about my daughter.” She settled back in her chair. “Tell me everything.”
“I’ll try, but there isn’t a lot to say.” He took a long drink of water, still stalling. “She’s an English professor, specializing in American literature. She loves to teach. She’s had numerous articles published and one book about Herman Melville.” He paused, knowing he needed to add something a little more personal. “We’ll have been married eleven years this summer. We don’t have any children yet. We’re happier than most people, I think.” He nodded. “She’s really doing fine.”
Barbara waved her hand dismissively. “I know all this already. She went to grad school at Princeton. Met you there. You’re from St. Louis. Your father is an aviation engineer and your mother has passed on. You’re not particularly close to your father, but—unlike your wife—you do the good child thing and visit him once a year.”
Patrick was very surprised, but he only said, “What do you want to know then?”
“How she is. And don’t tell me ‘fine’ or ‘happy’ or any other platitude that I know is false.”
He forced a shrug. “She is happy, like I said. She has a great life and good friends and—”
“Oh, please. The person she loved above all others died less than a month ago. I knew she would be devastated, but it must be even worse than I feared. Why else would you have come to see me today?”
He wanted to leave then, but he was afraid of being rude. She was still his wife’s mother, despite how strange and incomprehensible she was to him.
When he didn’t speak for a long, uncomfortable moment, she said, “Forgive me.” Her voice had changed again. Now she sounded kind, or maybe even sorry for him? “I was under the impression that you were aware that my daughter loved her brother far more than any of the men she was involved with. You’re her husband. I thought this would have been abundantly obvious to you.”
Patrick felt his face grow warm. “I’d rather not discuss this.”
“Most of her boyfriends realized this at some point and broke it off with her. Even Nathan What’s-His-Name, the man she was engaged to right before she met you, eventually figured this out, though he was a bit dense, I think. He dropped out of med school after two years, but perhaps that wasn’t an academic failure. Perhaps he just gave up once he realized that our Lila’s heart had already been given away long before he came on the scene.”
Now Patrick was stunned. He knew about Nathan, but Lila said they’d only dated for a few months. There was nothing about an engagement, and certainly nothing about him breaking it off with her. Lila’s version was that Billy and Nathan hadn’t gotten along and so she dumped Nathan. She did mention that Nathan had left medical school shortly after; he’d never thought to ask why.
Even if Barbara had some of the details wrong—and there was no way to know about that—she was right that Lila had chosen her brother over Nathan. Just as Patrick had known she would have done in his own case, if he hadn’t gotten along with Billy. Why had this never struck him as wrong until this moment?
“But of course it wasn’t her fault that her brother was so vastly superior to every other man she encountered. Billy was like my grandfather. He was a genius, as I’m sure Lila never tired of telling you.”
Barbara was going on about Billy’s IQ scores but Patrick wasn’t listening. He was thinking about a discussion they’d had a few years ago, when he’d asked Lila why she was willing to listen to Billy for hours and yet she never asked Patrick questions about his research anymore. She said that math was outside her area of expertise, but as he pointed out, she could have at least asked about the basic ideas. He didn’t remember how the discussion ended, but he was positive it wasn’t with Lila saying that he, Patrick, was a genius. She’d never said that in all the time they’d been together. Apparently, she didn’t believe it.
“However,” Barbara was saying, “he hardly made use of his brain in the life he chose to live. No doubt he blamed me for that when he wasn’t blaming the poor white-trash woman he married only because he didn’t believe he would ever really fall in love with anyone.”
“Ashley is not white trash. That’s an unfair assessment.”
“Perhaps you’re right. I suppose I’ll find out myself soon enough, now that Billy isn’t here to keep me from her and his children.” She paused. “I wonder if he was afraid I would tell his wife that the only woman he ever really loved was his sister. Of course, I would never say such a thing, but he—”
“It’s not true,” Patrick said. Though he wasn’t sure about this. He wasn’t sure about anything at that moment.
“No, sadly enough, it is. He couldn’t love anyone but Lila, I’m afraid. The truth is my children had a most unnatural bond from before they were teenagers.” Barbara smiled. “Emphasis on the unnatural.”
It took him a minute to realize what she was implying, and when he did, he stood up. He no longer cared about being rude; he had to get outside, where he could breathe. This was becoming a revolting conversation, and if that opinion made him naïve, so be it. He would rather be the most naïve person in the world than someone who could talk as casually about this as Barbara Duval did.
He made it to the door, but before he could turn the knob, she was there, talking again. “You think I’m hinting that Lila and Billy had an affair? I don’t doubt that they wanted to, especially Lila, but—”
“Enough,” he hissed. The admonition was intended for her, but also for his own mind, which was bombarding him with the sudden relevance of the fact that his wife never seemed to want to have sex with him. But it wasn’t relevant. Of course it wasn’t. This was all a bizarre nightmare.
“What kind of mother do you take me for, that I would allow my children to do such a thing? Believe me, I tried everything to control my daughter. I’m sure she seems quite innocent now, but as a child—oh my god—she was the proverbial bad seed. You can’t imagine the havoc that girl wreaked on my—”
He managed to turn the knob, finally, and he raced outside and down the porch steps like he was escaping a fire. If Barbara said goodbye or anything else, he didn’t hear it. He was down the block before he realized he could stop now; she hadn’t followed him. At least he should slow down before somebody saw him running in panic like he’d just left the scene of a robbery.
He did manage to slow down, but not by much. He was still walking so fast that before he’d had a chance to catch his breath, he was at the beach. The sight of the ocean normally calmed him, but even the ocean couldn’t compete with the garbage that woman had spewed into his head. He wanted to cry or scream or break something, but instead he wandered up to the boardwalk and kept walking, trying to think his way out of what he felt, the way he always had before.
He wasn’t worried that Lila and Billy had ever done anything physical with each other. The thought nauseated him, but even their mother admitted it hadn’t happened. And he’d watched them together for years; they were very affectionate, but in an entirely innocent way.
But what about all the rest? What about the things he’d always known, but never understo
od the meaning of? That Lila wouldn’t have married him if Billy hadn’t approved. That Lila seemed to enjoy spending time with Billy more than with him. That Lila talked to Billy and laughed with Billy and obviously confided in Billy in ways she’d never done with him. And yes, that Lila loved Billy more than she had ever loved him. If she’d loved him at all. Even of that, he was no longer sure.
He didn’t really know his own wife. That was the other thing that kept stabbing him in the heart. She’d lied to him numerous times: about Nathan, about where she grew up, and of course about her mother being alive. That was still the worst lie, the one he couldn’t imagine ever forgiving her for.
He kept walking, and with each step, he felt like everything he’d believed about his marriage to Lila was coming unraveled, until all he could see were the losses. The children he’d wanted and they’d never had. The countless times he’d ached for her and kept it to himself, so she could keep working. The research he would have done if he hadn’t given up his own dreams so she could have her dream of living by Billy.
He wasn’t sure how far he’d wandered when he noticed Joyce sitting on the beach with her shoes off and her pants rolled up to her knees. She was bent over, writing something, probably lecture notes for tomorrow. That’s when he realized that it was already late afternoon; the sun was hanging low in the sky. By the time they got through Philly’s rush hour, she’d be lucky to be home by eight.
When he walked up behind her, he noticed she was writing a proof. He apologized for being gone so long and shrugged off her question about how it had gone with Lila’s mother with a quick “Okay.” He took a deep breath and forced his voice to sound light. “Working hard or hardly working?”
“I’m trying to prove Stone-Weierstrass,” she said, smiling. “I’m sure it’s trivial to you, but it’s not going well. I think I’ve forgotten too much from my courses in real analysis.”
“You’re a number theorist. Why are you bothering with that anyway?”
She stood up, brushing sand off her jeans. “No reason,” she said, but she sounded unaccountably shy. He didn’t understand what was going on until a sudden gust of wind blew her papers all over the sand. He leaned down to help her pick them up and that’s when he found a copy of his own latest article. She’d either xeroxed it from the obscure journal or downloaded it from their even more obscure website.
A few weeks before, one of the older secretaries had teased him that the “new girl professor” had a crush on him. At the time he hadn’t given it a moment’s thought because no one ever got a crush on him, not even his most impressionable students. He just wasn’t the type of man women had crushes on. And even holding the evidence in his hand, he still thought that perhaps Joyce just had an odd interest in the topic of his paper. She wouldn’t have to re-prove Stone-Weierstrass unless she wanted to understand it as completely as he did, but maybe she worked that way. He wasn’t like that himself, but he didn’t have time to be anymore.
But then he asked her why she was reading this, and she said, “It’s fascinating.” He knew she meant it, but he also knew it wasn’t true. His paper couldn’t be fascinating to someone with her background. It wasn’t even fascinating to anyone in his field, which was why it ended up in such a little-known journal. It was a minor result, and sure, he was proud of it, but it didn’t mean much in the scheme of mathematics.
He was so surprised he was speechless. And maybe he was blushing. And maybe he wanted her to do what she did next. Maybe that’s why he came a little too close to her when he was handing back her papers.
Still, even as she kissed him, he knew he would feel guilty later on. But right then, it seemed like the simplest, most normal thing in the world. Though most people would consider Joyce entirely ordinary—short and a little chubby, with a nose that was a little too big and a mouth that was a little too small—Patrick found her smart and incredibly easy to be with. She also had one thing his gorgeous wife didn’t. She actually wanted to spend time with him. She wanted to talk to him and listen to him and even kiss him. Such ordinary stuff, but it felt like the upending of all he’d believed about relationships.
He knew it couldn’t continue, but at that moment, he thought if only he could stay here forever, listening to the clean, normal sound of the waves breaking on the beach while she held him in her arms, as though he were worth holding, as though he were a person someone was capable of wanting most of all.
CHAPTER TEN
Even Ashley’s mother had to admit that Billy was turning out to be an amazing father. Her mom didn’t like that they named the child Pearl—she thought it sounded like an old lady’s name—but she said Ashley had obviously done the right thing letting Billy pick the name, because look how close that man was to that baby! It was a sight to see, especially as most men couldn’t care less about their kids until they were old enough to do things with. Even then, the things most men wanted to do, like hunting and fishing and throwing a ball, meant they were never as close to their girls as their boys. But not Billy Cole, or, as Ashley’s mom was now calling him, Super Dad. The name was partly tongue in cheek, but there was real affection, too, and not only from her mom, but from the rest of her family, who’d decided Billy Cole was all right. A real keeper.
By the time Pearl was two years old, Ashley’s mom seemed to be damn near in love with the man. On Saturday mornings, when Ashley and her mom went to the grocery store together, the same way they had for years, Ashley would listen as her mom went on and on about what a great provider Billy was—for getting a job and keeping it—what a great husband he was—for not cheating and not leaving—and what a great all-around catch he was for Ashley—smart and funny and good-looking to boot. Sometimes Ashley tried to hint that things weren’t as wonderful as they appeared, but the hints went nowhere. If she said, “I wish I was happier,” her mom would say, “Don’t we all?” When she tried, “I wonder sometimes if he loves me,” her mom said, “Welcome to marriage.” When she mentioned, “We never go out like we used to,” her mom snorted and said, “You got a child now. What did you expect?”
What did she expect? Not much, actually. If someone had told her, before she met Billy, that she’d end up with a man who would cheat or quit his job and stay home all day, drunk on his ass, she’d have been mad as hell, but deep down, she’d have known it was probably true. She never, ever expected to marry a man who would dance around in the living room with their daughter before he left to work at a dirty construction site for eight-or nine-hour days, sometimes longer if they were doing inside work. She never expected to marry a man who came home from work all smiles, asking how his “two favorite girls” were doing today.
It was only when Pearl went to bed that everything changed, almost like a curtain dropped and the perfect father was replaced by a completely different guy—not the Billy she’d known before their daughter was born, but another person who was quiet and strange and damn near impossible for Ashley to understand. Yeah, he was tired from working all day and Ashley was tired, too, from running around after little Pearl, who was always a real handful when her dad wasn’t around. “Daddy” had been Pearl’s first word, and by two, she was already saying whole sentences, many of which were screams as Billy left in the morning. “Don’t want you. I want Daddy!” “Don’t weave, Daddy!” “Play wif Pearl, Daddy!” Billy would respond with a smile and a kiss and a promise to come back as soon as he could. For Ashley, it was harder, because once Pearl heard Billy driving away, the little girl would throw a full-fledged tantrum, complete with fists pounding on the floor and earsplitting screams at her mother. And then Pearl would demand that Mommy play “moonbeam” or “catch the air people” or some other bizarre-o game that Billy had invented, and inevitably get mad when the game wasn’t “right.” It took Ashley months to figure out that these games were really nothing but Billy pretending that something exciting was going on, and it was his excitement that their little girl was missing, not some rule Ashley wasn’t following. No matter how often
Ashley opened her hand and showed their daughter that she had caught one of the “air people,” Pearl insisted her mommy’s hand had nothing in it. Daddy, though, could catch them anytime. Daddy could even catch the air people queen!
At night when Pearl was in bed, Ashley tried to talk to the stranger Billy about the way their daughter acted when he wasn’t home, but he shrugged it off as no big deal. Her mother did the same, saying all little girls have a thing for their daddies.
“I don’t remember being that way,” Ashley said.
Her mom rolled her eyes. “You were the worst of all my girls. You followed that loser everywhere, even when he yelled at you to go bug Mommy.” She looked at Ashley. “You got a husband that doesn’t yell or hit your child. What are you complaining about?”
She wasn’t complaining; she was just trying to figure out why she felt like an outsider in her own family. Sometimes on the weekends, when Pearl was happily playing with Billy, Ashley would go for long drives alone in the mountains outside Albuquerque, wondering who would care if she never came back. Trish would, for sure. Her mom, too, even though they weren’t close like they used to be. Billy, she had no idea, but it wasn’t him who bothered her most; it was her daughter. Would Pearl even notice that her mommy was gone? Would she remember anything good about her mom, or only the fights that had gotten so out of hand lately that Ashley was afraid to tell anyone about them?
Everyone in Ashley’s family believed in spanking. She’d been spanked herself many times, and it hadn’t caused her any harm. But what she was doing with Pearl, though it had started out as spanking, ended up being something that Ashley was deeply ashamed of. Because Pearl didn’t react like a normal kid when she was taken over her mother’s knee and swatted a few times. She didn’t cry and she certainly didn’t calm down. If anything, she was madder than before, flailing her chubby arms, kicking Ashley in the stomach and on the legs, even biting Ashley on the knee so hard it drew blood. It was the bite that caused Ashley to slap Pearl in the face. Ashley’s own mother believed in biting toddlers back, but Ashley couldn’t bring herself to do that; plus honestly, she was afraid of what Billy would say if he discovered marks on the little girl. So she slapped Pearl instead, not hard, but hard enough to make Ashley burst into tears at what she’d done. She was about to tell Pearl she was sorry, but the little girl was too furious to listen. She elbowed Ashley in the nose and proceeded to hit her mother again and again, all the while screaming that she wanted to go “back.” “Back” meant the tiny backyard they had now that they were living in a rental house a few miles from Ashley’s mother. But when Ashley took her daughter outside, Pearl immediately ran over to the hole in the coyote fence, squeezed herself through it, and took off toward the arroyo that led to the highway where she saw Billy disappear each day on the way to work. Ashley managed to grab her little girl before she got far enough to be in real danger, but when she picked up Pearl, hugged her to her chest, and said, “You scared Mommy,” her daughter looked right at her and said what sounded like “hate you.” Ashley was never sure about this—or at least she wasn’t until Pearl started saying it all the time, even when Ashley managed to keep her cool, even when she and her daughter hadn’t had any fights for days. Unfortunately, the “hate you” would often cause Ashley to blow it all over again.
