A Necessary End (11 page)

My father wasn't home a lot. When he was, he wasn't very interested in either of us. But he was smart (a genius, according to my mother), and she probably thought that a high score on an IQ test would turn his head.

This was before he left, before she let herself eat Marshmallow Fluff and Wonder Bread like it comprised its own food group, before she started drinking herself to sleep every night. She wasn't fat yet, just sturdy. She wanted to be pretty and dressed like a pretty woman
in monochromatic clothes with lots of accessories: rings and necklaces and scarves. She flashed and jingled. Her voice was the kind that carried down rows in a theater, along supermarket aisles, to the next restaurant table. She was immune to other people's reactions, except for my father's. He ruled her with his withholding silences, though I'm not sure if that was deliberate. It may have been genuine apathy.

“It'll be fun,” she told me the day of the IQ test. “You'll just have to answer a bunch of questions.”

Questions to determine how smart I was? It didn't sound fun at all. “I don't want to go,” I said.

It wasn't merely that I didn't want to; I was quaking with fear. My insides were in revolt. I spent half the morning in the bathroom with diarrhea. Because I knew, on some level, what my mother was doing. I knew this wasn't just any test, and it wasn't for my own good either.

But a stinking bathroom was no get-out-of-jail-free card, not to a woman with my mother's determination. “What will it take?” she asked. She fingered her oversized gold hoop earrings. “A Barbie maybe? The one you've been wanting with the powder puff on her hand?”

My friend Alexis had that Barbie. You could push a button in her back and she'd powder her nose. I coveted that Barbie like no other. My mom was a hell of a negotiator, and I was buckled into the car within minutes.

“We'll stop at the toy store afterward,” she said, parking the car in front of a brick office building. It didn't seem quite fair, but I knew better than to argue. She could be an immovable object.

I can't recall exactly how long I was in there with the examiner. It seemed interminable. The promise of the Barbie receded, and the terror returned, full force. There were puzzles and blocks and, as my mother had said, lots of questions. Everyone said I had a good imagination, but the test didn't seem to be measuring that at all. As it wore
on, I felt more and more discouraged and less able to focus. I wasn't smart, after all, and now my parents were going to find out.

When I left the examiner's office, I couldn't look at my mother. I didn't even ask about the Barbie. I felt like I didn't deserve it.

I don't know why my mother didn't stop at the store to buy it for me. She generally made few promises but kept them. I took it as a sign that she knew what a disappointment I was. Maybe she just forgot, or she thought I forgot. If I'd cared, she could have reasoned, I would have reminded her to go to the store.

I hated that Barbie forever after. I wouldn't let Alexis play with her in my presence. And when the IQ test results came in the mail, my mother said, under her breath, “I knew it.” She tore the paper up and pushed it way down in the trash can. I'm sure she never said a thing to my father.

All night, instead of sleeping, I thought about fishing the paper out and taping it back together. But then I'd know the truth, and I decided imagining was better. I was good at that.

I could envision all sorts of scenarios: I was a genius, like my dad, but my mother didn't want me to know, she didn't want me to get a swelled head. She didn't want my father and me to have something in common. Or she realized the MG program would only have corrupted me anyway. Maybe I was supersmart in half my brain, and she didn't want me to find out which half. She thought effort was more important than intelligence, and she wanted to make sure I kept working hard.

The last one is actually my own belief. It's what I focus on with my students. I never praise anyone for being globally smart. Instead, I'm specific. I tell them exactly what they're good at, and what they're not, and that few things in life come down to innate ability. It's about effort and perseverance. By the time my second graders leave my class, they can all define “tenacity.” Some of them even possess it.

The IQ test became a turning point. I knew I couldn't trust my mother, that she wouldn't deliver on her promises, and that she didn't
really see much good in me. I was smart enough to realize that I was on my own in the world. It's always been up to me to make things happen, with creativity and cunning and perseverance.

Help Leah, and I help myself.

Win-win.

I
've started teaching Leah poker. She's got great instincts. She intuitively knows when to fold, when to bluff, and when to go all-in and put me to a hard decision. Or maybe I'm just easy to read in the middle of the night. Maybe the candelabra above the dining room table turns it into an interrogation room. Whatever it is, when it comes to Leah, I seem to have a tell.

Before I started playing poker, I watched on TV. There were
High Stakes Poker
and
World Series of Poker
and
World Poker Tour
and
Poker After Dark,
not to mention the random televised tournaments I'd frequently stumble across. Six or seven years ago, when I first got hooked, I tried to pull Adrienne along with me. She was tolerant, willing to “watch” while reading a magazine or doing her nails or playing, of all things, computerized Yahtzee, the tiny handheld kind made for airplanes. When I'd say, “You really need to see this hand,” she'd dutifully train her eyes on the TV, but it always ended up making me feel more alone than alone did. I could tell she just didn't get the appeal, and I'd turn self-conscious, thinking maybe it was a stupid thing to be excited about, one person outmaneuvering another with some cards and a bunch of chips.

But then I started to play live at the Pyramid, and I loved it so much that I didn't need her approval anymore. Sure, you fold most of your hands preflop, but even when you're not in the hand, there's still so much to pay attention to. The information is just out there, like a pocket begging to be picked. You watch people's faces and see how they match up with their betting patterns. You start to figure out your opponents' tendencies. Then, when you're in a hand, you exploit those tendencies. How often in life do you get the chance to fleece other people right out in the open?

The first night I played with Leah, I handicapped myself (no bluffing, which in heads-up play is a pretty huge handicap). So she won, even though I had tried. By the end of the second night, it was obvious she was a natural, which meant that on the third night, we just went at it. I didn't go to bed until four in the morning, and then I couldn't sleep right away. I was too busy replaying hands in my head, the way I do after a good session at the Pyramid.

“Where were you?” Adrienne murmured, eyes closed.

“Couldn't sleep,” I said, and fortunately, that was enough of an answer for her.

Tonight, Leah's eager to play. She spent the day reading my favorite poker tome: Dan Harrington's book on cash games.

“I'm thinking,” she says as we divvy up the poker chips, “that we should play for real money.”

“Can you afford to do that?”

“Maybe you could spot me a hundred dollars or two hundred dollars. What do people usually sit down with, at the Pyramid?”

“At the low-stakes table? Two hundred dollars.”

She smiles. “Then spot me two hundred dollars.”

“So if I win, I just get my own money back. If you win, I'm out four hundred dollars?”

“I'll give you back your initial investment.”

“So I'd be out two hundred dollars?”

Her face turns serious but her eyes are still on the chips. “Do you really think four hundred dollars is a fair allowance? I'm having your baby.”

I feel a certain creeping unease. “It's not ‘my' baby. It's our baby. Adrienne's and mine.”

The truth is, I still can't quite think of it as our baby, no matter how many times Adrienne presents the ultrasound. The first time, she was looking at me really closely, waiting for my reaction. The good news is, I finally felt something. The bad news is, I felt, strongly, “He's not mine.”

I mean, obviously. We're adopting. Intellectually, I've always known there's none of my genetic material in there. I assumed, though, that it wouldn't matter to me. I'm not a caveman; I'm enlightened, mostly. But I look at him, and while he's cute—well, he's not uncute—I just feel it, that oppressive not-mine-ness.

I read somewhere that newborns look more like their fathers. Evolutionary biologists theorize that it works that way so the father knows for sure it's his baby, and then he'll want to invest more of his resources in raising the child. He's ensnared by his own narcissism.

What that means is, I'm not unique. In general, men are more invested in their mirror reflections, the visible carriers of their DNA. If it is a universal male trait, then it could be insurmountable. What if I'm truly incapable of falling in love with this kid? What if I've got an alien in my house for the next eighteen years?

Adrienne fell in love at first sight. First kick, actually. I remind myself that's how she felt about me, and I didn't feel it for her. My love for Adrienne took time. Hell, it took more than just time. But when I felt it, it was seismic, an earthquake that tore down everything in its path. Or that's what Adrienne herself did. Earthquake Adrienne, a 9.5 on the Richter scale.

I guess I feel something else, too, when I look at the ultrasound. I'm not proud to admit it, but I'm jealous. Adrienne's like a cartoon character with big pulsing hearts in her eyes every time she stares at that kid. Sometimes it's like she barely sees me at all anymore. She only sees the future.

“Don't you love him already?” she asks me, her fingers lightly stroking his profile.

I don't answer, because I'd rather not lie.

“You will,” she says, her eyes still on the pictures. I hope she's right.

“Four hundred dollars a month for your baby—yours and Adrienne's—it's kind of chintzy, isn't it?” Leah continues.

“It's what we agreed to.” I start shuffling the cards. “Should I deal?”

“In Hal's office. I mean, he and Adrienne pretty much trapped me.”

“Look around. Look at the size of this house. You think I'm made of money?”

Leah fingers a chip contemplatively. “You've got a whole lot more than I do.” Her eyes are suddenly bright on mine. “This is my chance, Gabe. My fresh start. I need to save up for my future. Four hundred dollars a month? That's forty-eight hundred dollars I can save for going back to school and getting my own place to live, if I don't spend a single penny of it. If I have no life at all this year.”

Don't cry, Leah. I can't take it.

“I should have negotiated for more but you know Adrienne. She's fucking intimidating. My math skills are so bad that I thought it came to way more. It wasn't until we left the office that I figured it all out. I was shaking the whole time, could you tell?”

“No.” I was too busy shaking myself. But I can see what she means. “I want to help you, Leah. You know that. But we practically went broke on IVF. Do you even know what that is?” She nods. “Forty-eight hundred dollars doesn't sound like a lot, but on top of our paying your health insurance and medical expenses and food and—”

“I get it, Gabe.” She smiles beneficently. “I know you want to help. I get you. I see how Adrienne intimidates you, too.”

“Bullshit.”

“Gabe.” That unwavering smile. “Seriously. I get it. All I'm saying is, when we play poker, can you put up the two hundred dollars for me? Sometimes I'll win, sometimes I'll lose. You're willing to
put that money up for yourself when you go to the Pyramid, right? Every week, you can afford to lose that much.”

If there's a flaw in her logic, I'm too tired—or too guilty—to find it. “If you win, I'll give you the cash tomorrow. It's in the bedroom.” The unspoken: Adrienne's in the bedroom, and you don't rouse the sleeping giant. So yeah, I hate to admit it, but Adrienne can be intimidating.

“Thanks.” Leah doesn't look as appreciative as I would have expected, more like this is her due. “Adrienne's been acting different with me, you know?”

“I haven't noticed.”

She runs her fingers over a chip the way Adrienne touches the ultrasound. I realize I've never seen Leah stroke her belly like that. “She wants to take me to look at, like, art schools, and she keeps sending me all these links for scholarships and financial aid. She talks about my potential as an artist, even though she's never even seen anything I draw.”

“You should show her.”

“She should ask. If she's so interested in my potential, right?”

I'll never understand women. Leah doesn't like that Adrienne thinks she has potential? “That's between you and Adrienne.”

“I thought you could at least tell me what's up her ass.”

“Look,” I say irritably, “nothing's up her ass. She wants to help you build a life for yourself. How about a little appreciation?”

I deal the first hand.

I
spent hours disassembling, moving, and reassembling the pool table. Adrienne offered to help, but she's mechanically challenged and impatient and I didn't want any of the pieces broken.

“We” decided that the room that formerly housed the pool table will now be the nursery. So the lucky tyke will have dimmer lights, red walls, and sexy-but-classily-framed movie posters. Every baby should be raised in an upscale lounge setting.

Yeah, right. The posters are in exile with me, here in the garage, and Adrienne is off priming the walls. Once the primer's dry, she plans to have one green wall, one blue wall, one yellow wall, and one white wall (which will be Leah's canvas). I know she's hoping Leah will forget about the mural, but that's not going to happen.

In a few hours, once the nursery furniture is delivered, it'll be official. Our old life is dead.

I once asked Adrienne if the fact that we couldn't conceive was our answer. If we were meant to be parents together, wouldn't we be able to do it? She looked at me like I'd just stabbed her in the chest.

But I still wonder that sometimes. If her eggs are murdering my sperm, is someone trying to tell us something?

The pool table is now set up, surrounded by suitcases, workout equipment, broken fans, and other detritus we've been meaning to take to the dump. I sit on a hard-topped Samsonite—it was my parents', the thing's indestructible—and grimace. My joints are aching. I'm an old man, too old to be a father.

If Michael had lived, I'd probably be an uncle. Adrienne would have been an aunt. That might have been enough for her.

Adrienne, the aunt to Michael's kids. It's a perverse thought.

We weren't close, Michael and me. Maybe we would have become that way as adults. I was the golden boy, and he was the freak. That's to hear him tell it, though he always said it matter-of-factly, like you can't fight gravity. I tried to get closer; I tried to be his protector. Obviously, I failed.

If I couldn't be a decent brother, what chance do I have of being a decent father?

I don't even have a dad I can ask for advice. Adrienne never got to meet my mom, let alone learn from her. My mom would have had a lot to teach. I know she wasn't a saint, no one is, but in my recollections, she wasn't far off. Sure, she died when I was seven, before things got complicated. I like to think that if she'd lived, they'd be simpler. Michael would still be here.

My dad remarried quick, within a year, and I could never forgive
him for it. Replacing a woman that pure and good and loving with Jessica? Jessica kept up appearances, but in private, she didn't give a shit about Michael or me. Soon enough, my father saw her point.

After I left New Jersey, we rarely spoke. Six years ago, he died, and I thought about flying back for the funeral, but Adrienne said that would just be me keeping up appearances, pulling a Jessica. Sometimes, though, I wish I'd gone. I might have learned something about the old man, knowledge I could summon now.

“Hey,” Adrienne says. She's wearing a concerned expression as she wends her way to the Samsonite.

I want to stand but I feel like my knee's locked up.

Adrienne sits down next to me. She rests her hand on my thigh and her eyes on my face. “You okay?” she asks softly.

“Just feeling my age.”

She smiles. Her head tips sideways onto my shoulder, her hair spilling over my arm. I like that she doesn't say anything. I like that she knows me so well.

I kiss the top of her head, and close my eyes, and it's almost like dreaming.