by Allen, Dylan
When it’s our turn, I shake the sobbing lady’s hand. She clutches my hand and tilts her head upward so her face is turned toward mine. I can’t see her face clearly through the veil, but I smile awkwardly. “Sorry for your loss,” I say, and she nods and starts to cry again.
She lets go of my hand and reaches for my father’s. I shake Mr. Wolfe’s hand. He doesn’t look up at me as he says, “Thank you for coming.”
I step in front of Beth, and she puts her hand out automatically.
“Thank you for coming,” she says numbly without looking up.
I take her hand and squeeze it.
“Beth, I’m so sorry,” I say, and her head snaps up. Her eyes widen with surprise and then fill with tears.
“Carter,” she mouths my name and squeezes my hand. Before I can respond, my father stumbles and hits me with shoulder, knocking me off balance.
“You idiot,” her father snarls and shoots to his feet.
His snowy white shirt collar is smeared with what looks like chocolate.
“I’m so sorry Drew, I didn’t realize I was still holding that Hershey bar,” my dad uses his best awe shucks voice.
Mr. Wolfe glares daggers at him. “Who are you?”
“Lorin Bosh, we went to high school—” My dad sticks his hand out, chocolate covered palm and all.
Mr. Wolfe curls his lip in disgust and turns to head to the exit.
“Fiona, ring up to Luke and tell him to have another shirt ready.”
The people in line behind us shoot daggers at my dad, but don’t say anything.
“Dad, what the hell was that?” I ask.
“Carter, what are you doing here?” Beth’s urgent whisper and tug on my hand pull my eyes back to her.
“I wanted to see you.”
My father nudges me, and when I look at him, he’s looking at our joined hands with a look of warning in his eyes.
Beth drops my hand and clutches hers together in her lap. Her eyes soften and a small smile lifts the left corner of her mouth.
“Are you okay?”
“No. But you’re a sight for sore eyes.”
“Can we go talk somewhere?”
She shakes her head vigorously.
“Meet me at the church on Friday. My dad has a meeting in Austin; he should be gone all day,” she whispers urgently.
“The chur—"
“Why has the line stopped moving?” Her father’s voice booms behind us. How could he have changed shirts so quickly?
Liz pales even further and shrinks back into her chair.
“Sorry, Daddy. This is one of James’s friends from Baylor. He was just asking about the funeral.”
“There’s a flyer by the door. You can grab one on your way out,” her father nearly snarls as he takes his seat. He doesn’t even spare me a glance.
“Thank you. I’ll see you then.” I give her a small smile and nod.
Her expression shutters and then her eyes move to the person behind my father. I hate leaving her here. She is alone. She looks wrecked.
“She’ll be okay.” My father puts a hand on my shoulder as if he can read my mind.
When we get to the front door, I look back at her one more time. She’s shaking hands. I start to turn back when I see a man watching me with open contempt on his face. He looks away when we make eye contact, the muscle jumping in his cheek tells me I didn’t imagine the anger. But I can’t understand why it would be directed at me.
We’re walking down the porch steps when my father says casually, “So, what’d ya do to piss off Biff Tannen’s doppelgänger?”
I stop short and stare at him.
“You saw that, too? I haven’t done anything. I’ve never even seen him before.”
He looks back over his shoulder quickly and then frowns as we step through the doorway. “Maybe we misread it. It’s a funeral, right? People aren’t exactly in a jovial mood.”
I shrug, but I’m not convinced.
“Who’s Biff Tannen?” I ask when we’re back in the car.
“God, I’ve failed as a father. There’s a video store in town; let’s stop and pick up a copy of Back to the Future. I have some atoning to do.”
“Dad, we have Apple TV; we don’t need to rent a video.”
“Shut up, Carter. It won’t be the same streaming.”
“Yeah, it’ll be better and clearer and we don’t have to stop to get it.”
“I need to stop anyway. Your mother asked me to get her some anti-nausea pills. The drugstore is just a couple of doors down.”
At his mention of the drugstore, my encounter with the lady behind the cash register comes back to me. I never mentioned it to my father because we had more pressing things to address.
“Dad…” I start and then stop when I realize that I have no idea what I really want to ask.
“You okay?” my father asks, and I glance over at him and start the car.
“Yeah, it’s just…something weird happened when I was in the drugstore.”
“What?”
“The woman behind the counter looked at me like she’d seen a ghost, and then basically threw me out of the store. I went back for something I forgot a minute later and she’d closed up.”
“Hmm, that’s odd. Think maybe she recognized you from the press?”
“I mean, I don’t think she was a fan. She looked like she recognized me. And she didn’t seem happy about it.”
“Hmm….” is all my father says in response, and I slide a glance over at him. He’s looking out of the window like he doesn’t have a care in the world, but his leg is bouncing. When he sees me notice, he says, “I love this song,” and turns the radio up.
I raise my eyebrows. “I wouldn’t call a GEICO commercial a song, but who am I to judge?” I say.
“Fuck off, son,” he grumbles and then turns the radio off.
“Why did that story make you nervous?”
“Because, I don’t want you thinking about your adoption,” he snaps angrily.
I’m incredulous.
“Why not? It’s my fucking right to know. You can’t keep lying to me.”
“We’re not!” he roars, and his hands slam down on the dashboard. His face is red, and he breathes fast and hard like he’s trying to cool down.
I’ve never once seen my father get anything beyond annoyed. My heart pounds in my ears as I wait for him to speak. How did things escalate so quickly? A minute ago, we were both laughing.
He smooths his hair back in place and sits up straight. I glance at him and he’s staring straight ahead.
“Please, I need you to listen and not interrupt me, Carter,” he says in an uncharacteristically hard voice.
I nod tersely.
“We didn’t tell you about being adopted for all of those years because we knew you wouldn’t take it well. We wanted you to be old enough to handle the emotional turmoil it would cause. We hoped you’d be mature enough to ask us for help. We hoped you would trust us enough to know that we would do anything to help you. But, that’s not what happened.”
“Are you going to throw that back in my face for the rest of my life?”
“Only until you stop behaving like you need to be reminded.” He says in a low clipped voice. “If you want answers to questions about your biological family, you have to be brave enough to ask them. We’ve told you all we know. We’re not going to go looking on your behalf. You’ve got to own this.”
I growl in frustration at how flippant he is. He’s talking about this gaping hole in my life story like it’s a menu item a restaurant ran out of.
“Why didn’t you try to find out more about my mother when you got me?” I demand.
“Why would we? You were healthy and there was no reason for us to go above and beyond to find the people who looked at your face and still managed to walk away from you. We took you home, we loved you, end of story.” His voice is tense and his lips are drawn in a thin line as he stares straight ahead.
“That’s not go
od enough, dad”
He deflates a little.
“I know. I know. I’m sorry.” He looks at me and his eyes are red and glassy with unshed tears. I’ve never seen my father cry and it renders me speechless.
“We love you more than we love breathing. And to know that you feel like there is a gaping hole in your life story…and to watch you destroy yourself because the one thing I can’t give you is the one thing you need to feel complete.” He looks back from the window.
The silence is weighted with echoes of his words.
I hate that my parents feel that way. I’ve made a mess of this because I forgot that they’re going through this, too.
“Dad. That’s not it. At all. I would have lived my whole life feeling complete if I hadn’t known that there were other people with pieces of me out in the world. That woman recognizing me was scary. I’ve never looked like anyone to anyone. I just wanted to know if it was possible that my birth mother or father was from here. It’s possible.”
He sighs wearily and nods to himself.
“Anything is possible. When we get home, we can look into it. Put your information in one of the DNA databases and see if we get a hit.” His voice is perfunctory, just shy of robotic, like he’s said this same sequence of words dozens of times before.
“Dad, are you okay? I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you and Mom, and I don’t wonder what it would have been like to have other parents. You are the parents that were meant to raise me. I just wonder what else there is to know about me. If my mother had cancer, will I have it, too?”
If she was crazy, will I be crazy, too? I couldn’t say that out loud. Because it’s a shitty thing to say. But I want to know what’s coming.
“I want the same certainty that Nixon has about not going bald because the men in mom’s family all still have their hair.”
“Hey, I still have my hair,” he protests.
“Baldness is inherited from your mother. I think.”
“That’s a myth,” he says irritably.
“Whatever…it’s things like that. I want a picture. I want a fucking name.” My knuckles have turned white around the steering wheel.
My father puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes it. And then, he turns the radio back on and we ride home with Faith Hill muffling the tension between us.
It wouldn’t be terrible to have another reason to come back here. The way Beth’s eyes went from vacant to bright when she saw me; man, it tugged at my heart.
She’s sweet and direct and seems to care deeply about people. I don’t understand how she can be so alone. I’m glad I didn’t let my worry about intruding stop me from going to see her today.
We pull in front of the drugstore, and I tell my dad I’ll wait in the car. I don’t want to see that woman again.
“Sure. And son, when we get back, I promise, we’ll start looking, but I need you to make me a promise.”
“Anything.”
“No, don’t say that until you hear what I’m going to ask. And then, I want you to think about it for at least a day before you answer me.”
“Okay. I can do that.”
“When you find out all the biological stuff, if you decide to try and forge a relationship with these people, I want you to promise you won’t tell your mother.”
I’m not sure what I expected him to ask, but this was the very last thing I could have imagined.
He doesn’t give me a chance to respond at all. He climbs out of the car and then leans in through the open door. “I’m going to walk home. You go on ahead.”
And then I watch as he walks past the movie rental place and into the drugstore.
11
SWEET MOTHER
ELISABETH
There have been four sunsets since my brother died. It’s rained twice. Our prize hydrangeas finally hit full bloom. The world hasn’t stopped turning.
But I have.
The only thing that’s kept me going is knowing that I’m going to see Carter today.
My chest expands with anticipation, and I trap the flutter happiness before it disappears and stow it away for later.
It’s a fool’s errand to build these fragile castles of hope on a person I’ve only spent one day with.
And I’m no fool.
I know that this is more about the idea of him than anything else.
But what an idea it is.
I’ve seen Frozen. I know he could be another Prince Hans.
But I’m no Anna. I’m not pinning my hopes on love. I know better. I just want something to cling to while I navigate the next few months.
My father told me he needs to talk to me about my role at Wolfe when he gets back. I’m terrified, but ready to step up wherever he needs me. I’ve been reading the latest annual report, just to try and be ahead of the game when he asks me to step up.
James said all of those things when he thought he would be there to work with my father. He would expect me to do the right thing.
New York and Art School will all have to wait. The next few months, I expect to be focused on learning the business.
It also means Carter will have to wait. But before I say bye to him, I want to squeeze as much out of our time together as possible and have memories like the ones from his house to remind me of what I have to look forward to.
His visit to the house touched me so much. He’d only known me for two days and he’d done more than any of the girls I called friends my whole life. None of them even called once the news got out. And until he squeezed my hand, no one but Dina had touched me with any real kindness in days.
I’ve clung to that and him over the last few hellish days.
The funeral was yesterday morning, and I have never been so tired in my life. Everything has moved so fast. Erin and Ziggy left town last night for the set of her latest film. My father left this morning for three days of meetings in Austin. Fiona fainted at the funeral and has been put on full bed rest.
After a few days of too much face time with my family, it feels like a luxury to be able to eat breakfast by myself.
I spread the homemade marmalade my grandmother sends a crate of every fall onto a thick slice of honey wheat toast and sigh in relief.
The door swings open, and the perfume that trails into the room shatters the peaceful solitude of the moment.
Resignation settles like a boulder in my gut. Besides watching them lower my brother’s body into the ground, the worst part of my week was walking into the church and seeing her there.
It’s been almost two years since I saw her last, but all of the loathing and resentment I feel for her is as fresh as it was the day I found out she chose her criminal lover over her husband and children.
“Hello, Elisabeth.” Her voice is as cool and clear as a winter stream. It’s her secret weapon because it hides the toxic, narcissistic bubbling brew that makes up about seventy percent of her blood.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” I say without looking up from my plate.
“Well, here I am.” She slides into the chair across from me. My nerves prickle, but I feign nonchalance as I eat.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I asked the girl who answered the door to have a place set for me.”
“I thought you’d be flying back to Switzerland as soon as the service was over.”
“I’m leaving in the morning. I wanted to see you first.”
“Well, now that you’ve seen me, there’s no need for you to stay.” I say to my plate.
“Please look at me,” she says in a stern voice.
I grit my teeth and take a deep breath before I obey. She’s smiling, and so beautiful and I think how unfair that she gets to look like that when she’s caused so much pain. Her dark hair cascades over her slim shoulders and frames her face in a way that highlights her high cheekbones and wide set brown eyes. She looks like she hasn’t aged a day since the last time I saw her. I feel like I’ve aged a hundred years.
She takes me in, her gaze critical and intense.
“Do you wear your hair short because mine is long?” she asks suddenly.
I flush hot, but my heart whirs as her missile hits its target.
“Of course not,” I deny fiercely.
“I know I haven’t been around for a long time, but I still know my daughter. And you’ve always been crazy about your father. When you were five, he told you blue was his favorite color. And then, it became yours.”
“That’s not true,” I gasp.
“Of course, it is. You always loved your long hair. But now, your father hates me and you want him to not hate you, too. Am I right?” she presses.
“Mother, can you please not do this now?” I put my fork down on the table and fix her with an angry stare.
“I’m just honest,” she says in her English that has become more heavily accented after nearly seven years of living in France.
It’s my turn to laugh humorlessly. “Right. You’re honest. At least he’s here.”
“You know what your father thinks about when he looks at you?”
“His future!” I snap.
“Your pussy.”
I turn around and look at her then, my disgust and anger undisguised. “That’s disgusting.”
“Oh, you Americans. Everything is sex.”
She’s always called us you Americans.
When we were children and she and my father still got along, it was a term of endearment. Now, it’s an epithet.
“Sorry, does pussy, when used in reference to a woman’s body part have a different meaning in France?” I ask sarcastically.
“God. How my own daughter has such a stick up her ass, I’ll never know.” She rolls her eyes upward in a plea, as if in search of a divine response.
My patience snaps.
“I don’t know how my mother is such a selfish, irresponsible, narcissist.”
I stand and walk over to the window. I don’t know.
She follows me and we stand there in contemplative silence, both of us lost in our thoughts.
“Come back to France with me. You can start fresh.” She says.
I turn my head sharply in surprise and find her still looking out at the lake, her demeanor nearly serene.
