Diving In

by Galway, Gretchen

  “Here I am.” Ansel noticed the deep grooves on either side of his father’s mouth, the worry lines above his brow. His dark brown hair was mostly gray now—thinning, but cut so short it was hard to tell. “I’ve figured a few things out. Not everything, but a few things.”

  “Your mother’s been mad at me. She thinks I don’t understand you.”

  “Do you think you do?” Ansel asked.

  “I thought I did.” He leaned back, sighing, and cast a glance at the crowd admiring Rachel’s rainbow-and-unicorn mural.

  Ansel tensed in the lengthening silence. He’d hoped his father would at least try to meet him halfway. “One thing I’ve figured out is that I’m never going to kill myself trying to get rich, just to make you happy.”

  Eyes snapping back to Ansel, his father said, “I never said I wanted you to—”

  “You implied it. You wanted me to devote myself to something serious—”

  “Which could be anything, even painting”—he pointed across the room— “unicorns.”

  “As if giving away money to people who have dreams isn’t serious,” Ansel finished. He leaned forward. “And now I know it is. I knew it before, but now I really know it.”

  His father pursed his lips and looked away.

  Ansel put his hand over his wrist. It wasn’t as big as he remembered, no bigger than his own.

  “I made a spreadsheet,” Ansel said. “You’ll like it. Think of it as your real birthday present. It has lots of numbers on it. Hard data. I’ve gone back through all my files”—this was an exaggeration, since his files consisted of emails, scraps of paper in a shoe box, and online bank statements—“and compiled a summary of all the people and organizations, profit and non-profit, I’ve given money to in the past decade.”

  His father shook his head. “You’ve got the wrong idea—”

  Ansel reached down and pulled out the manila folder he had in the messenger bag at his feet and slapped it on the table. “Read it.” He jabbed his finger against the card stock. “Every penny accounted for. Well, mostly.” He thought of all the forgotten bar tabs and restaurant checks he’d picked up over the years, which made him think of Nicki arguing about paying for the pizza, which made him pull open the folder and thrust the first page toward his dad. “Read it.”

  Kevin Jarski didn’t take his eyes off his son’s face. “I don’t need to.”

  “Yes! Yes, you do! Do you know how long this took me to put together?” Ansel gave the folder a firm shove across the table and then picked up a water glass and looked into it, wondering whose it was. “Like I told you,” he said, taking a sip, “I’ve been busy.”

  “I’m sixty years old.”

  “Happy birthday.”

  “I remember you and Rachel being born like it was yesterday.” His father shrugged. “It’s true. No other way to say it. I was a young man, I blinked, here I am.”

  “I know life goes quickly,” Ansel said, assuming his father was trying to lecture him again about how he had to seize the day. He picked up the folder and waved it. “Just look at it. I’ve got thirty-five businesses—okay, some are just people, but they’re just the kind of people you’d like, Dad, all serious and obsessive about something—”

  His dad held up his hands, shaking his head, refusing to touch the folder. “You’re not hearing me. Maybe it’s my fault. Your mother says I should stick to email, give up on verbal communication altogether.” He braced his palms on the table and leaned back. “I think it’s been a rough year for both of us.”

  Ansel popped up to his feet. “Read it!” He shook the folder so roughly that pages slipped out and fell into the peanut sauce for the spring roll. “It’s proof I’m not the loser you think I am. I’m not going to change, Dad, so you should read this. It’ll help you feel better about me. ” He picked up the paper and swiped at the sauce, blood pounding in his ears.

  “Ansel.” His father stood, reached across the table, and grabbed both of his arms. “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry—that’s what I’m telling you. I just didn’t see that everything I did was the same, did have a purpose, that having too much damn money didn’t ruin me the way you think it did.”

  His father came around the table, still gripping his forearms, and gave him a shake. “Will you shut up?” He glanced over Ansel’s shoulder, then back at him. “I’m trying to apologize.”

  Ansel looked behind him and saw his mother watching them hopefully.

  He turned back to his father. “Let’s talk in the kitchen. This needs to be between us.”

  His father grimaced. “All right.” With a loud sigh, he slapped Ansel on the back and walked toward the kitchen. “Come on, then.”

  Jordan was blocking a young bald guy with tattoos on his neck trying to carry a plate of sandwiches to the dining room. “What the hell is that?”

  The young guy, whose name Ansel recalled was Max, shot him and his father a pleading look. “She asked me.”

  “Who asked for what?” Jordan demanded. He peeled back the top piece of bread on one of the sandwiches, revealing tuna coated in glistening whiteness. He recoiled as if he’d found maggot-infested carrion. “Is that… mayonnaise?”

  Standing at attention, the scandalous plate on display in his trembling hands, Max nodded once.

  “Leave him alone,” Ansel’s father said, ushering Max past them out the swinging doors, out of Jordan’s reach. “My wife’s a force of nature—but has the palate of a second grader, unfortunately.”

  “Jordan, we need to borrow the kitchen for a minute,” Ansel said. “We’ll stay out of your way.”

  Jordan raised his empty hands, apparently still furious about the tuna salad. “No problem. I’m not needed here anyway,” he said, striding out the back door to the alley.

  “You’d think she’d learn how to eat more things, given all the traveling,” his father began.

  “Here, eight years ago,” Ansel said, holding up the spreadsheet and pointing at the first line, “was the first little chunk of money I ever gave away. It’s a job-training thing in Hayward, nothing fancy, but they needed a few computers—”

  His father plucked the paper out of his hands and crushed it between his palms. “You don’t have to justify anything to me.”

  Ansel gaped at his father’s clenched fist. “I know it’s your birthday, but don’t you think that was a bit rude?”

  “Ansel.”

  “I worked hard on that,” Ansel said dully.

  “Look at me.”

  Ansel finally processed what his father had said a minute earlier. He looked into his father’s face. “That’s not true. All you’ve ever wanted is for me to justify myself to you.”

  His father chewed on his lower lip, scowling. “I hate it when your mother is right, you know that?”

  “She’s always right.”

  “Maybe that’s why I’m in such a bad mood all the time,” his father said.

  “Is that it?”

  Kevin Jarski smiled. “No, that’s not fair. It’s my problem.” He put an arm around Ansel and crushed him against his chest. “You’re your mother’s son, you know that?”

  “She reminds me of it all the time.”

  “You’re just like her. Giving, feeling, giving some more. I don’t understand it. I couldn’t keep up if I tried.” His father whacked him on the back before embracing him. Compressed, Ansel’s lungs strained for air.

  “You’re confusing me, Dad,” he gasped.

  His father relaxed his grip. “You should just keep doing what you’re doing. If I’m jealous, it’s my own stupid fault.”

  “Jealous of what?”

  “Your mother has it too, that enthusiasm. When she inherited all that money, she didn’t lose any of her drive. She just got more excited. More alive.” His father released him completely and took a step back, his tone growing serious. “It’s done the opposite for me. I realized, not long ago, that it was killing me. Not having to work. Not having to care.”<
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  “But you’ve always kept so busy—”

  “Busy isn’t enough. I need more,” his father said. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m going back to school.”

  “What?”

  “Engineering. Or chemistry. I have to relearn about six years’ worth of mathematics before I can apply, but I’ve hired a tutor.” He made a face. “Money’s good for some things, no doubt about that.”

  “That’s great.”

  “I won’t need that book you got me. Or was that just a joke?”

  “It was something Diane gave me,” Ansel said. “I thought you’d like it more than I did.”

  “I’ve never wanted you to be like that. I’ve met assholes all over the world, just like that—why would I want you to be one of them?”

  “You said—”

  “I’m so sorry for what I said. I was talking to myself, not you. It’s me who needs to commit to something,” he said. “And that’s what I’m going to do.”

  Ansel stared, absorbing the shift in his father’s attitude. “Are you sure Mom didn’t put you up to this?”

  “Of course she did.” His father looked at the crumpled ball of paper in his fist, a half-smile forming on his lips. “Thirty-five, huh?”

  “At least.”

  Running his tongue along his lower lip, his father opened the ball of paper as if he were sectioning an orange. “You’re proud of yourself.”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “That’s what I wanted. I screwed up my messaging, but that’s what I meant.”

  Ansel retrieved the paper and smoothed it out on the counter next to a stainless steel bowl half-filled with tuna salad. “Seven of the businesses not only survived, they’ve paid me back the original loan. Not that I called it a loan, but people are pretty cool if you give them a chance.”

  They discussed each one: what they did, who they were, why he cared. When they finished with the thirty-fifth, his father patted his hands on the wrinkled paper before walking away to the dining room. “We done? I want to tease your sister about those unicorns.”

  Chapter 30

  WHEN HIS FATHER WAS OUT of sight, Ansel leaned against a counter and closed his eyes. That was good, but now that the conveniently distracting father issue was out of the way, his misery came over him at full blast.

  Would she let him into the condo if he showed up in the morning?

  He wouldn’t, if he were her.

  He had to try anyway.

  Jordan came into the kitchen looking slightly less homicidal. He was washing his hands in the sink when Rachel joined them.

  “Can I have my ride home now, Mr. Designated Driver?” she asked. “Mom’s so happy about you and Dad that she said she’ll survive if we make a run for it early. They’re breaking out the karaoke.”

  Jordan looked up from the sink. “You mean they’re leaving to go somewhere else to do karaoke,” he said flatly.

  Rachel shook her head. “Nope. They brought a machine with them.” Laughing, she rolled her eyes at Jordan. “Don’t worry. It’s not like the cool kids will find out. It’s a private party.”

  Ansel felt around in his jeans for his phone, wanting to know the time, but remembered his mother had confiscated it at the door. She had zero tolerance for phones that interrupted any actual living underway. Her children always handed them over like college kids turning in their keys at a kegger.

  The first week he’d been back from Hawaii, Ansel had always had his phone with him—in the bathroom, at the gym, by his bed all night, always on and charged. Just in case Nicki had something to say, even to yell at him for leaving.

  Jordan pointed at the dining room. “The walls are thin. People walking by will hear Joan Baez, and there goes my street cred, you know?”

  “Embrace it with irony like you do everything else,” Rachel said. She put a hand on Ansel’s arm. “You coming? It’s after eleven, and… hey, are you all right?”

  “I’m coming.” Ansel shoved the crumpled spreadsheet into a recycling bin. “Thanks, Jordan. Sorry about the mayo and the music. Spike the booze with Ambien if you have to.”

  “That will be great for business,” Jordan said. “Especially after I’ve been sentenced to a few years in prison.”

  Ansel squeezed his shoulder and turned to his sister. “Just need to get my bag and shake down Mom for my phone.”

  Out in the dining room, Mel Jury was blessedly too busy singing into a large pink microphone to stop and chat. They retrieved their things, said their good-byes—their father asked if he could come with them, but they made him stay—and escaped into a blast of cold San Francisco air whistling through the narrow streets.

  Since Rachel was living in London, she was sleeping on Ansel’s couch during her stay. They hiked up a forty-five-degree angle side street to his car, got in, and drove to his place, not speaking a word.

  He knew she was using her twin powers again, so he wasn’t surprised when she asked, “Why don’t you just fly out there and see the woman, you big dope?”

  “You don’t think it’ll ruin her vacation?”

  Rachel swatted him above his left ear. “Dumping her was much better.”

  “I didn’t dump her. I practically proposed, for God’s sake.”

  “Which was the perfect thing to do after knowing her for, like, two weeks.”

  “Three,” he said. “And actually, we met years and years go.”

  “Which was so pivotal to your life, you didn’t remember her face or her name.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You came on way too fast,” Rachel said.

  “Please shut up.”

  “You can’t blame her for freaking out.”

  He shifted into first to make it to the peak of the hill they were climbing. She hadn’t freaked out; he had. “I don’t blame her for anything.”

  “Then—”

  “I’ve already bought a ticket, all right? I’m flying out first thing in the morning.”

  Rachel exhaled. “Thank God. I won’t blame her if she kicks you out on your ass.”

  He swallowed, fearing the inevitable. “Thanks.”

  She held up two matching cell phones. “We did it again. Same model, same color case.”

  He glanced over and smiled. They didn’t have identical DNA, but they had odd moments of sharing identical taste.

  On a street near his apartment, he parallel parked with inches to spare before taking his phone from her. As they trudged down another hill to his building, he powered it on—his mother always turned them off—and checked his messages.

  When he heard Nicki’s voice, he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Rachel, not noticing, continued on.

  “Hey,” Nicki said. There was a long pause. “It’s me. Nicki. I don’t know if you want to hear from me, and I don’t care. I’m sitting in my car. I just saw Miles and his new wife, and I don’t care about that either. Do you get it? I don’t care. You were wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Yes, I’ve had a few drinks, but that’s not why I’m calling. I know I love you, and my love is much stronger than yours is even though it took me a while to figure it out—and I would never just run away without talking to you about it. Like you did. Everyone thinks I’m the coward, but I’m only afraid of stupid things. I think you’re stupid—”

  With a beep, the message was cut off.

  Rachel finally noticed he wasn’t moving and turned to yell up the street at him. “What’s the matter?”

  He shook his head, frantically looking up the time of the call—7:45p.m.—and put it back to his ear.

  Another message from Nicki.

  “And I think your phone is stupid for cutting me off. Where was I? I’m sitting in my car. I have your laptop. Not with me, at my apartment.” Loud sigh. “I can’t go there now, though, because I have to sober up first. I only got in the car to call you, and you didn’t even answer.” There was a long pause, then a click.

  Rachel was at his side. “What happened?”

  He swallo
wed with difficulty. “Nicki was trying to reach me.” He looked at his sister, lit up from one side by a lamp across the street. “Over four hours ago. I’m such an idiot. I never should’ve given Mom my phone. I’m thirty years old. What is my problem?”

  “It makes her happy,” Rachel said, “and you’re a people pleaser.”

  “Fuck that. Nicki wanted to talk to me. Now she’s pissed. Damn it!”

  “Call her back, Einstein,” Rachel said.

  He was already listening to the third ring on her line, waiting for her to pick up. “Nicki, Nicki,” he whispered.

  “Want me to try on mine? Maybe she’s screening her calls.”

  He ended the call and tried again as he started to march back to his car. “I’m going over there.”

  “Where?”

  “Her apartment.”

  “It’s kind of late,” Rachel said.

  “Don’t remind me,” he muttered.

  Rachel pulled out her own phone. “I’ll text you the address.”

  “I’ve already got it.” Back in Hawaii, he’d asked Nicki for it. He got behind the wheel, blinking fast, hating himself for everything he’d ever done to risk this shot at happiness, and slammed the door.

  Rachel ran after him and pulled it open. “You want me to come?”

  “No, I have to do this myself.” He revved the engine.

  “Then can I have a key to your apartment? I’d rather not sleep on the street.”

  He put the car back in park and detached his keys. “Right,” he said, handing them to her. “It’s 3C, last one on the left—”

  “I was there a few hours ago, bro. Good luck. Let me know if you need me to argue your case.”

  He waved, barely stopping himself from driving over his only twin sister in his desperation to get moving.

  Chapter 31

  SHE HEARD THE BUZZER THROUGH several layers of consciousness, a pillow, her left arm, and what was left of three glasses of wine—and one of champagne—swimming in her bloodstream.

  She’d had the sense to get a ride home from the wedding reception. Taxis, she’d told herself hours ago as she’d climbed out of the dented suburban cab, a station wagon from the 90s, existed for a reason. She’d have to retrieve her car in the morning.