by Meg Howrey
“You don’t know anything about it,” Sara says, sharply. “You don’t know what I was going through—”
“Yeah, what did you go through?”
Luke tosses this off, casually, but once it’s said, it seems to require something else.
“You got what you wanted,” Luke continues, gaining velocity. “You got pregnant. That was the plan, right? Get the third daughter and fulfill your destiny. Sorry I screwed that up. Sorry I wrecked your whole mystical ride. I apologize on behalf of my father for the chromosome that made me a boy. Maybe you should have been more careful.”
“Luke, you can’t possibly,” Sara stutters. “You don’t.…”
“You had two girls.” Luke shrugs. “You needed the third. You got my dad to get you pregnant.”
“You think my husband left me and I WHAT?” Sara’s voice starts to shake. “I just went out and found someone to get me pregnant?”
“What was I supposed to—”
“You don’t know what it was like.” Sara is fully shaking now. “Paul WALKED OUT ON ME. He turned to me one day and said, ‘This isn’t the life I need to be living,’ and twenty minutes later he was out the DOOR. My whole world … everything … just collapsed. And you think my family rushed in to help? Like, they didn’t just all take it as another opportunity to sit around and JUDGE ME?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything has to do with everything else, Luke. And I am trying to tell you what was going on with me—”
“Yeah, what the hell were you doing?” Luke backs away from Sara, from a Sara abandoned by Paul, holding the collapsed cocoon of a butterfly. “You didn’t even TRY to give me a father. And if you hadn’t run into my dad again on a … on a TRAIN, he wouldn’t even know he had a son.”
“So that’s it?” Sara is shouting now. “You’ve got all the answers now after spending ten weeks with some man—”
“Some man?” Luke says, shouting now too, because he wishes Sara would go away and maybe if he shouts that will happen.
“Some man? That man defended you! His stupid aunt and her stupid friends in Illinois, they were talking behind our backs, saying Dad should take a paternity test, and he defended you! He was ready to rip their heads off!”
“Maybe we should have started with a paternity test!” Sara throws up her hands. “And then we’d all know exactly what we were talking about.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Luke can’t believe Sara is still here. Doesn’t she notice that he is yelling? “I’m telling you he defended—”
“And I’m telling you, you don’t know everything,” Sara yells back. “You don’t know what it was like for me—”
“Stop saying that!” Luke kicks the bed again, but harder now, which hurts his foot, but he’ll deal with that later because … wait.
What?
“What do you mean we should have started with a paternity test? What’s that about?”
“Your father doesn’t know what I went through! He disappeared for seventeen years and thinks he can just show up and—”
“Don’t you—” Luke’s hands are in fists. Like he might hit someone. Like he might hit Sara. “Don’t you say ONE MORE WORD about my father. You don’t know my father!”
“No, YOU don’t know your father,” Sara shouts. “You don’t know that Mark is your father any more than I do!”
“Wait. Wait.” Luke starts to laugh. He feels strange. Is he laughing? No. No, he’s actually almost screaming. “WHAT?” shouts Luke. “WHAT? Mark is my father! Who else could he BE? What are you TALKING about?”
“There was someone else.”
Luke, who has never been punched in the stomach, feels as if he has been punched in the stomach. He tries to force another sound out of his throat, but nothing comes.
“There was someone else. And I knew … we knew … right away that it wasn’t right. And then there was … Mark.”
“SOMEONE ELSE?” Luke can barely hear himself over the pounding in his head. He can barely hear Sara’s next words.
“I know this is hard to hear, Luke, but you need to understand that this was a different … I … I was struggling and I thought I couldn’t do it on my own. Take care of my girls, myself. Everything. So there was someone that I thought … I was wrong, and then the thing with Mark happened. It was just a … I wasn’t planning ANYTHING, he was so young … But yes, it could have been … either one …”
“Either one,” Luke repeats. “EITHER ONE?”
Luke thinks for a moment, wildly and absurdly, that he would like to go back to bed now. He would like it to be the Moment Before he woke up, or any Moment Before this Moment. Luke decides that he will go back to bed. Except.
“So, what, you were like with one person one night, and then with my dad …”
“Things happen, Luke.” Sara’s jaw is clenched so tight there is barely enough space for the words to emerge and they come now jaggedly, between her teeth. “They just do. And I was wrong about that … other person … in one way, but he was a friend to me and he helped me so much … and what happened with Mark was like—”
“So this someone, this OTHER person …”
Luke stops. Luke stops because he feels something shift now, inside his brain. It happens so suddenly, so sharply, that he nearly sits down under the weight of it, almost covers his head with his hands to protect it.
“Luke—”
But Luke holds up a hand, stopping her. It almost hurts his arm to hold it up like this, like his arm is a metal rod, hit by another metal rod. Luke tastes iron on his tongue.
“This person was a friend to you.” There is something coming toward him now, something gaining speed, starting to stampede. He needs to keep his arm up. “Paul left you and you were scared and things just happen, and you had this person. But you had Uncle Louis to help you with all of that. The divorce. The apartment. The money. That’s what you’ve always said. Uncle Louis was your friend. You’ve always been like, ‘Oh, he held out a hand to me in a dark hour,’ you SAID that, and …”
Luke drops his arm. It’s too heavy. He thinks of falling, of bouncing off nails. Axons. Dendrites. Arrows. Symbols. Charges. There was a hand that was held out in a dark hour. The wrong hand. Luke feels this wrong hand descending toward his own head, slowly, inevitably. Don’t touch my head. Please don’t touch my head.
“It was one time,” Sara whispers. “One time with Louis. I thought … he would … but right away he said … he didn’t feel … and it was just one moment. He had already met Linny. But she was so much younger, I didn’t think. I … Caroline never knew. After awhile I saw that they were right for each other and I didn’t want to …”
“You’re making this up.” Luke thinks he’ll just go outside for awhile, maybe. So Sara can stop making things up. Then he’ll come back. He’ll come back later when it’s over.
“But at the time,” Sara continues, “I felt like … NOTHING. Invisible. I’d never … I felt so old, like I’d never be young again, and all of a sudden there was your … there was this beautiful young guy treating me for a moment like … he really was like an angel. I know that doesn’t make sense to you now. It all happened so fast—”
“No,” Luke says. “No.”
“Luke, I feel—”
The thing that was stampeding, falling, crushing Luke is now Luke himself. He stands up under the weight of it.
“Get out,” Luke says. “Because I don’t give a SHIT how you FEEL anymore. Get out.”
Sara doesn’t move.
“I told Louis that you weren’t his son. He asked me if I knew for sure and I said yes and he believed me. The timing … I wasn’t sure. I’m not sure. I don’t know if Louis is your father, but he is a good person, Luke, and he’s always—”
“I don’t want to hear what a good person your sister’s husband is,” Luke says. “I don’t want to hear another fucking thing. I want you to get out of my room.”
“They had just
met. I had no … I didn’t think … Luke, it has never mattered to me how you got here. Just that you did. You were a gift to me. You have to believe that. That is the truth.”
“That’s nothing.” It’s so nothing, Luke thinks, that it’s not even nothing.
“Belief is not truth,” Luke says. He cannot understand why Sara is standing there like she has a point.
“Belief is NOT TRUTH.” Luke wonders how he can make this really clear to Sara. Perfectly clear. Painfully clear.
“Everything,” Luke says, “EVERYTHING about you is a LIE. Get out of my room.”
“Luke—”
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY ROOM.”
“You are MY SON,” Sara says, covering her face with her hands. “MY SON.”
And then Sara looks up at Luke and she says, “Oh God,” and something in her face implodes, caves in, collapses, and Sara begins to sob. She doubles over, grabs her ribs, as if the force of her crying might crack them. Luke watches her in silence. Sara sobs violently for several minutes and then stops, still bent and shuddering: a boa who has lost the power to constrict.
Luke goes to his desk, grasps the glass sculpture of the banyan tree, turns, chooses a spot on the wall in between the poster of Earth and the one of deep space, takes a step back, aims, and hurls the sculpture as hard as he can. It hits the wall and shatters, instantly and completely, as if the molecules that bonded it together were expecting this to happen all along.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sara? Luke?”
It is Nana’s voice, in the hallway. Sara and Luke freeze, and look at each other.
“Don’t—” they say to each other, simultaneously.
“Luke?”
Nana appears in the doorway, one hand holding her maroon leather Bible to her chest.
“Mother.” Sara holds out a warning hand, stepping forward as if to push Nana out of the room. Nana catches Sara’s hand and looks at Luke, at the shards of glass on Luke’s floor, back at Luke’s face, and then at Sara.
“You told him,” Nana says, on a sigh.
“You know?” Luke asks, at the same time that Sara says, “Oh my God.”
“She knew?” Luke asks Sara, who shakes her head no and backs away from Nana’s grip.
“Oh, Sara,” Nana says.
“Who else—” Luke begins shakily, but Nana turns to him, fiercely.
“That’s enough now.” It is not the Sword of Silence. It is far heavier, and sharper: as if all previous swords have been mere practice for this moment. Luke steps backward onto a piece of glass, which cuts his foot.
“Careful,” says Sara, automatically.
“Come with me.” Nana puts her arm around Sara tenderly. Sara submits to this, her tall frame shrinking to fit under Nana’s arm. Nana puts her Bible down on Luke’s bed in order to put both arms around her daughter.
“Mom,” Sara says into Nana’s chest.
“Luke is going to stay right here,” Nana says. “Let’s go downstairs now.”
From below, the sounds of the front door, of Pearl’s laughter, of Nancy’s thick-heeled sandals, can now be heard.
“I don’t know what happened here just now,” Nana says to Luke. “But I suggest that whatever did stays in this room.”
“We’re home!” Aurora calls out. “Hellooo!”
“I’ll get the dustpan,” Nana says. “Sara, come with me.”
Sara lets herself be led out of the room. Nana shuts the door softly behind them.
Luke sits down on his bed. He examines the bottom of his foot. A piece of glass, not large, is stuck in the callus of his heel. He pulls it out, watches a tiny pool of A+ blood well up, and tosses the shard back into the pile under the posters. Luke presses his thumbs against the sides of the hole in his callus to force any remaining glass out that might be embedded. Blood spills over onto his thumbnails. He wipes this away on his sweatpants. Luke shuts his eyes.
“Hey.” It is Pearl, tapping at Luke’s door. “You in there?” Pearl opens the door. Luke bends quickly over his foot again.
“You missed it!” Pearl cries out. “You would not believe what—whoa, what happened? You drop something?”
Luke says nothing.
“Is Nana back? Oh yeah, I guess she must be.” Pearl picks up Nana’s Bible. “She left her instruction manual. You get sworded for missing Assembly?”
Luke begins to look around, for socks, for shoes, for a T-shirt. He needs to get out of this house.
“Did you and Nana have a fight?” Pearl asks. “She was going to wake you up but Sara was really adamant that you be allowed to sleep. I’m so used to getting up at the butt crack of dawn on Sundays that I couldn’t sleep in. So Rory and I hauled Aunt Nancy off to observe our local marketry. Please don’t tell me you had a fight with Nana and I missed it. Not even Aunt Nancy versus that really cranky Amish guy with the tomatoes is worth that.”
Luke turns to Pearl, takes a step toward her. Luke is taller than Pearl by several inches. He looks down at her, and he can tell, in an instant, that for the first time in his life he is making someone physically afraid of him. Pearl’s mouth opens, and she takes a step backwards.
“Leave. Me. Alone,” Luke says.
Pearl turns on her heel and runs out of Luke’s room.
Luke pulls a T-shirt over his head, shoves his feet into running shoes, and heads into the hallway, down the stairs, past Pearl on the landing, past Aurora at the foot of the stairs, past Nana, who is coming out of the kitchen holding a broom and dustpan, past Aunt Nancy, who is by the front door holding a cloth bag. Luke leaves his house and begins to run.
Luke knows these streets so well he runs without destination or direction. For lengths of time he runs and knows with absolute certainty that his Uncle Louis is actually his father. Louis is tall. Louis is thin. Louis has a precise, questioning sort of mind. Louis wanted to touch his head; Louis didn’t like the way he was being brought up. Louis looks to grocery-store clerks like he resembles Luke in some way.
Then this switches, and Luke knows with absolute certainty that Mark is his father. Mark is left-handed, Mark’s second toe is longer than his first. Mark has green eyes. Mark was once a skinny guy, and Mark hates cottage cheese. Mark was younger than Uncle Louis at the time of Luke’s conception, possessing more viably potent sperm. Mark has a sense of humor. Mark needs him. Mark loves him.
There is no evidence to suggest that handedness is genetic.
Luke thinks that he doesn’t need Uncle Louis. He doesn’t care if Uncle Louis needs him. He doesn’t love Uncle Louis. He never will.
“Mark is my father,” Luke says. He repeats this. Mark is my father. Mark’s my father. Mark’s my father. He’s my father, he’s my father, he’s my, he’s my, he’s my.
Luke stops running for a moment, sucks in air. He has no evidence. And without evidence you only have belief. Luke, panicked, wonders what else he is blindly believing, taking evidence for granted. He starts running again.
Luke thinks that he has had it all wrong, even from the very beginning, even from the Moment Before, and that he has never known what Sara was thinking. And that everything, every moment before every moment would have to be reconsidered. Every mandala swept away.
Luke thinks about the things he shouted at Sara. He would not have thought he was the sort of person who could say those things. He would not have thought it probable, based on the evidence of himself that he has. He would not have thought it probable that, having said those things, he would not regret saying them. Not totally. Not yet. Luke thinks of additional things he could have said. He continues the fight in his head, sometimes saying worse things, sometimes not.
He tries to argue rationally:
Was Mark using him?
Did Mark tell him he was gay because he felt guilty about using him, putting Luke on his website, talking about him to interviewers, taking him everywhere? Maybe Mark wanted to be honest about one thing, because he was being dishonest about everything else.
Kati could hav
e been in on it too. She asked him to do a walk-through. She wanted Mark to be “out there” but not “out.” The whole summer she and Mark could have been working together.
But Mark had made lists of things he thought might make Luke happy. Private things, for just the two of them. Like Hawaii.
Which had become a story that Mark told on television. “My son, my son, my son.”
But he was his son. Sara wanted him to doubt his father. He was not going to doubt his father. He was on his father’s team, forevermore. He would stand by his father, even if his father never knew it. His father could never know it.
Sara didn’t really want him to doubt his father, did she? She wasn’t that kind of person. Maybe he has no idea what kind of person she is. Maybe no one knows anyone at all.
Luke thinks of his mother sobbing, waves this thought away, continues his argument:
Sara taught him to be compassionate.
No, that was wrong. He was compassionate. He would have been a compassionate person no matter who raised him.
Mark was his father.
But that was just hope. It wasn’t truth.
Sara had slept with Louis. Apparently Nana knew this, or had guessed it. That was why Nana never wanted to know how Louis was. Nana didn’t blame Sara. She blamed Louis. For marrying Caroline instead of Sara? And Sara hadn’t known that Nana had known. And did Louis really believe Sara? Did Caroline really not know? Aunt Linny couldn’t find her own way to the bathroom, but maybe she just preferred not to know.
Mark slept with people who were married. People had sex. You might think you knew the reason why, but maybe you didn’t.
You could have sex even if you knew it was the wrong thing to do and would never stop being wrong.
So he wasn’t intended to be a girl. He wasn’t intended at all. He wasn’t the Chosen One. He was the Accident. He was the thing that made Sara feel she wasn’t invisible? He was something Mark could think about, and stop worrying for ten minutes?
It would be a simple thing, to know the truth. They swabbed the inside of your cheeks with a Q-tip and you could know your DNA. Soon they will have sequenced the entire genome and there will be no more mysteries.
