Everybody's Son

by Thrity Umrigar

  She sat very erect in her chair and looked at him intently, the earlier girlishness having disappeared from her demeanor. He willed himself to stare back, not bothering to hide his disdain, his contempt, and, now that he was willing to acknowledge it, his fury. Hadn’t she mangled his life enough, all those years ago? Did she really have to appear in his life again, with her preposterous tales?

  He stood up and took a step toward her. “Enough,” he said. “You’ve done enough damage. Don’t you dream of maligning my dad’s name ever again. You hear me? Ever.” He stood towering over her, idly noticing the single strand of white hair on the top of her head.

  She raised her head slowly to meet his eyes. “You think I’m lying to you, Anton?” she said at last.

  “You bet,” he said. “You bet I think you’re lying, you . . .”

  She lifted her left eyebrow. “That’s how they teach you to talk to your elders up north?” she said.

  He snorted. “Please. Let’s not go into the old parental routine . . .”

  She got up quickly from her chair. “Wait here,” she said, and disappeared into what he assumed was the bedroom. He shuffled from foot to foot, anxious to get out of there. He stood in the middle of the room, his fists clenching and unclenching by his sides, debating whether to slip out into the yard and call Brad. He would know what to do, how to convince this woman that she’d better quit while she was ahead.

  But before he could move, Juanita strode back into the room, clutching a manila folder in her hand. “Anton,” she said in an authoritative voice that made him bristle, “sit down.”

  To his surprise, he lowered his body onto the rocker. She sat across from him, the folder in her lap. A sheet of paper flew out and onto the floor, and as he bent to pick it up, he saw that it was a cutout of the People magazine story from a few months ago. He handed it to her wordlessly, and she made a sheepish face. “I tore it out of the magazine at the dentist’s office,” she confessed. “I . . . I was so excited . . . It felt like a miracle when I saw your face.” She stared at the article, and when she looked up again, her eyes were red.

  “All this time, I believed what he told me. Mr. Coleman. Your . . . the man you call your daddy. That you choose him and his wife over me. And so I think you’re pleased with me, Anton, for respecting your decision. That’s the only way I survived all these years. Thinking I gave you what you wanted.” Her face collapsed. “But now I see you’ve been mad at me. All these long years. For letting you go. Now I see I truly am what the world says I am—an ignorant black woman. Who got fooled by the white man with the oldest trick in the world. It’s slavery, what he done to me, Anton. Slavery.”

  The tears rolled down her cheeks, and despite his confusion and a gathering sense of terror, Anton felt the urge to comfort her. He fought it down, unwilling to weaken, trying to figure out what game she was playing. After a few moments she stopped crying, rubbed her eyes on her sleeves, and continued rifling through the folder. She found what she wanted and held out a photograph to him. “Here,” she said simply. “He gave me this. To show me how happy you were with them.”

  Anton recognized the picture immediately. The family trip to Vail. Him, posing at the top of the hill in his brand-new parka and skis, his hands on his hips, looking for all the world like a young prince. “How did you get this?” he started, and then caught himself. “Did they—did my parents—mail it to you? In prison?”

  She shook her head impatiently. “No. I told you. He told me I could keep it. I wanted to keep all the pictures he showed me of you. One of them was you on a sailboat, I remember. I had to choose between that one or this, quick. Before they took me back to the facility.”

  He listened dumbly as she kept talking, telling him about the mysterious ride to the deserted office building and the tall, distinguished-looking man she met there. The stories David had told her about her baby boy, how well he was doing in school, how happy he was with his new life. And then the proof, the pictures of her own Anton, a little older now, the baby fat burned away, the clothes stylish and tailored to fit him, not the hand-me-downs she used to get at the Goodwill store. Her Anton, already a stranger, on ski slopes and on a sailboat and playing a sport whose name she didn’t know. What mother worth her salt would deny her only child such a life? She waited for him to answer, but he stared mutely at her, not wanting to believe her, believing her. “Why would he?” he said at last, his voice hoarse. “Why would he come to you? And how could he have gotten you out of prison?” Even as he asked the question, he knew the answer. And so he closed his eyes and sat back in the rocker, savoring that last minute of an intact world, his last brush with innocence, before he asked the next question. “The judge who sentenced you . . . who locked you away, do you remember his name?” As he asked, he was ashamed of the fact that he had never bothered to find out for himself. He had truly acted as if he had been hatched into the Coleman family as pristine as a chick from an eggshell, with no past and no curiosity about that past.

  Juanita gave the barest of smiles. “I sure do. Judge Bob Campbell. I know that name sure as I do the devil’s own. He gave me three times the sentence we plea-bargained for. My court-appointed lawyer said I got railroaded.” She was quiet for a moment and then she laughed. “I like Georgia,” she said. “Down here, you know exactly where you stand. White man is king here, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But up north, they talk sweet to your face. And then cut your throat when you ain’t looking.”

  He wished she would shut up so he could think. Find the flaw in the yarn she was spinning. But she kept on talking, and now she was pulling out something else, a piece of paper, no, a check, and pushing it at him. He took hold of it reluctantly, holding it between his thumb and index finger. He stared at the familiar address—their old Arborville address—and then at Delores Coleman’s signature. He saw the date, saw that it said “Cash” on the payee line, and saw that it was made out for the sum of five thousand dollars.

  “He sent me this,” she was saying. “After I was released. The man who delivered it said it was for me to start a new life. Your mam—his wife—sent a real nice note with it, thanking me for giving you up. She promised to provide a good life for you. And she hoped that I stay clean and have a great life. That’s what she said—‘I hope you have a great life.’”

  He stood up. “Excuse me,” he said. “The bathroom?”

  He bent over the toilet and retched a few times, though since he had not eaten anything but a few peanuts and a bite of the sandwich, there was nothing much to bring up. He stood up and splashed cold water on his face and then leaned against the door, trying to steady his breathing, wrestling with the weakness in his limbs, the queasiness in his gut. He forced himself to remember that day when David had taken him for ice cream and told him gravely that his birth mom wanted to surrender custody to David and Delores. “Try to understand, son,” David had said. “It’s not her fault. She’s just really sick and can’t care for you the way she knows we can.” Anton remembered again what he had felt in that moment, that orphaned, cut-off feeling, knowing that he had permanently lost not just his mom but his old apartment, his neighborhood, his old pals, his entire way of life. That he had been traded like a baseball card. And that he now belonged to this tall, handsome man who looked at him with such hope and longing that it terrified him, even though he admired him and wanted more and more to be like him. Anton had skipped school a week later and taken two buses to go back to his old apartment, hoping to find his mam and convince her that she was making a mistake, only to return home to the Colemans that evening, exhausted and defeated. As time went by, David and Delores had become his real family, and his real mother had become a phantom, a cautionary tale, an embarrassment.

  He sank to his knees, the green bathroom tile cool against his body. He was everybody’s son, but he belonged to no one. The three parents in his life had each betrayed him in his or her own way, and he had no idea how to weigh one betrayal against the other. Who had the better c
laim on him? Did he belong to any of these damaged people? He had no idea. Who would he be when he opened this cheap wooden door and walked back out into that small living room? He knew he had to come out of the bathroom at some point and face her, but he didn’t know how. His face flushed as he remembered how he had mocked her a short while ago, the contempt with which he had looked at her. And of course, his lawyer’s mind told him, there was always the possibility that he was misreading the situation, believing her too easily, not comprehending some fiction in what she was telling him. His father had been a judge, for God’s sake, at the time of her imprisonment. David would know better than to defraud an inmate, would think a million times before setting up a clandestine meeting in a deserted office building. Wasn’t he afraid that someone—a guard, a fellow inmate—would squeal? If Mam’s story was true, David had risked his legal license, his profession, his family name, for the sake of—for the sake of what? Him? A young, ignorant boy who, more often than not, was moody, sullen, withdrawn?

  It was all too confusing, the dimly remembered past closing in on him like a hand at his throat. With an effort, he struggled to his feet, bracing himself with a hand on the sink. He turned on the faucet again, splashed more water across his face, and glanced at the distraught, wild-eyed stranger looking back at him in the mirror. Who was this man? How long had he been here? He looked at his watch and blinked. How the hell had it gotten to be three o’clock?

  He walked back into the living room to find her sitting where she had been when he’d disappeared into the bathroom. “You okay?” she asked, but her voice was distant, with none of the maternal concern she had exhibited earlier. He nodded and sat down heavily on the rocker. “The check,” he began, as if resuming a conversation. “How come you didn’t cash it?”

  She smiled a wan smile. “Couldn’t. Dangerous to give that much money to a junkie. I was only a couple years sober, remember? So I mailed it to my mom. For safekeeping. She said she would hold it for me until I moved back down here. Which I did, a few months later.” She made a sweeping gesture with her hand. “This is your nana’s house, you know. You lived here until you were one. But you’re too young to remember.”

  “Is she dead?”

  Juanita nodded. “Yes, baby. Five years ago.”

  He wanted to ask a million more questions, but he couldn’t. He was beginning to feel a dangerous, grudging respect for the older woman that unnerved him. It was too risky, too hard, too confusing. He was almost thirty-five years old, mere months away from most likely becoming a governor, yet he was afraid to find out how his nana had died and how his mother had lived. Not wanting to know. Dying to know.

  He felt a familiar wave of nausea, but this time he made for the front door. “Air,” he said. “I need air.”

  She was about to say something, but he pulled the car keys from his pocket. “I’ll be back,” he said. “I need to make a business call.” And before she could respond, he was on the front porch and down the stone steps and getting into his car. He backed out and drove down the gravel road past her house, not turning around to see if she was watching him. He went down the road as far as he could to ensure that he was out of sight, to where she couldn’t even see the dust cloud his car made, and then he stopped. The heat of the afternoon assailed him, and even though his windows were down, he turned on the air-conditioning. He listened to the quarrels of the birds, heard the buzz of a bee hovering near the front of his car. Beyond this, silence, the green fields still and sleepy on either side of him. He rested his forehead on the wheel and shut his eyes. He thought of calling Katherine, but he knew that would only delay the inevitable. There was only one person in the world who could answer the questions churning in his mind.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Anton debated briefly whether to call on the home phone but decided not to risk Delores answering. And so he dialed his father’s cell phone, hoping that William would not pick up, as he sometimes did when his dad was resting. His wishes were answered when David answered on the second ring. “Hi, son,” he said. “How’d the stop at the retirement home go?”

  Shit. He’d forgotten that David had a copy of his campaign itinerary. “I didn’t go,” he said.

  “Why not?” David asked sharply. “We need those folks to show up at the polls.”

  “I’m not there,” he said. “I’m out of the state, actually.”

  “What do you mean?” He could hear the impatience in David’s voice and then a forced levity. “You and Katherine go away to the city for a quick rendezvous or something?”

  “I wish.” He took a deep breath and then said, “No, Dad. Actually, I’m in Georgia. Sitting on a dirt road in the middle of a field.”

  There was a slight pause and then David said, “What’re you talking about?” There was the slightest quiver in his voice, but Anton heard it—fear, dread, calculation—clear as a church confession.

  He gripped the phone tighter, his breathing now shallow. “I’m in Georgia, Dad. Sitting outside her house. Visiting with her.”

  Another pause, brief but infinite. “I see.” A sigh. “How’d you find her?”

  Anton was about to explain about the letter—how he’d distrusted her immediately, how he’d flown south to shut her up. And then he thought, I don’t owe him this. The explanations need to flow in the opposite direction.

  “I found her,” he said simply. “And she told me . . . the whole story.” He heard David make a sound, but he kept talking. “And she showed me the photograph. And the check that Mom made out to her. She never cashed it. Did you know that?”

  He heard David’s gasp. “Listen. I don’t know what shit this woman has been saying. I . . . She was your birth mom, dammit. So I decided to help her out. Get her situated.”

  “You gave five thousand dollars to a drug addict, Dad? What were you trying to do? Kill her?”

  “Anton. I won’t be talked to in this manner. I won’t. Now, listen, whatever you want to ask, you ask me straight. Like a man.”

  Despite his anger, Anton felt a grudging admiration for the old man. Even after the heart attack, David was steel, pure steel. “Okay, then. How’d you manage to sneak her out of prison for that impromptu meeting?”

  There was a painfully long silence, and for a wild moment Anton wondered if his father had hung up on him. He was about to say “Hello?” when David said, “I’m not doing this, Anton. I’m not subjecting myself to answering every charge that this woman is leveling at me.”

  Anton heard the admission of guilt. “Dad,” he said, incredulous. “You could’ve lost your law license. You could’ve gone to jail. It wasn’t just immoral what you did. It was illegal.”

  “Immoral? You’re going to give me morality from a woman who locked you up in an apartment for a week?” David scoffed. “Or have you forgotten that cold, hard fact, Anton? What we rescued you from?”

  Somehow, the word “rescue” stung. It objectified him, made him feel like a charity case. “I didn’t ask you to rescue me,” Anton said gruffly. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but—”

  “Son.” The distress in David’s voice was genuine. “Where are we going with this? Hell, how did we get here? I don’t want your gratitude, goddammit. I didn’t do you a favor. I . . . we . . . I love you. I’ve never regretted a second I’ve had with you. Never taken it for granted, either.”

  Anton had not known it was possible to have so many conflicting emotions slash at you at once and still be able to breathe. He heard David’s distress and it tore at him. He loved the man at the other end of the phone, worshipped him. He was close to Delores in ways that he wasn’t with anyone else. Pappy was the only grandparent he had known, the only death he had mourned. But there was another claim on him that he was now aware of. He couldn’t ignore this fact. And try as he might, he couldn’t leave out the racial element. She was a poor, unsophisticated black woman who had been railroaded by a bunch of powerful white men. One of whom happened to be the man who had made his entire life possible
.

  “Anton,” David said. “You still there?”

  “I’m here.” He gulped hard and then asked, “Did Mom know?”

  “Of course not. She knew what I told her. And I’d prefer to leave it that way.”

  Anton nodded, relief coursing through his body. “So she wrote the check because . . . ?”

  “Because I asked her to. To give your . . . that woman . . . a leg up. You know your mom. She’d do anything for anyone.” David’s voice took on a businesslike tone. “Look, it’s hard to do this on the phone. In any case, you need to get back home, son. There’s an election to be won, remember? This is the time to focus on the future, not on the past.”

  Anton shook his head. The last statement was so typically David. But then the image of the woman in the yellow cottage rose before his eyes, and he felt a deep reluctance at the thought of pivoting to the future. Not so fast. He knew how easily he would get caught up in the gears of the campaign from the moment he landed back home. How easily he and David would resume their normal relationship, how the lovely Katherine and the comforts of his life would blur the memory of the woman who had sat upright, without flinching, while he had falsely accused her of lying to him. He had been hero-worshipping the wrong parent, it turned out. The true steel was in the tiny girl-like woman who had battled drug addiction, poverty, false sentencing, abduction of her son, and God knew how many other injustices in order to arrive at the moment when her grown son had called her a liar.

  Something flashed in Anton’s mind right then, like a bright light, and he asked, “Does—did Uncle Connor know about this?” There was a long silence, and Anton felt the thudding of his heart reverberate through his entire body. “Dad?”