Love Will (37 page)

“Not until March, Max. You know that. You can’t wait for me… I thought Jon hired a tutor for you.”

“I don’t like her.”

“Get a new one.”

“She
is
the new one.”

“Oh.” I watch through the window at Damon coordinating a chorus with his backup singers. “I’ll talk to Jon when I see him next week… but back to this family tree thing. What would you do if you left him off?” I ask.

“Just say I don’t know who my father is. There’re people like that, you know?”

“That’s… that’s not untrue. There
are
people like that. You know what? When’s it due?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

“Don’t put him on there. Just leave it blank. Don’t say you don’t know who he is, though. I’ll send you a message to give to your teacher… I’ll tell her all she needs to know about the situation, and why we have no father. Cool?”

“Cool.”

“Don’t mention it to anyone else, though.”

“‘kay.”

“How’s everything going, aside from school?”

“Decent.”

“Still no alone time with Callen?”

“No.” I laugh lightly through the phone. “It’s not funny.”

“I know it’s not.”

“I’ve still probably had sex more recently than you, right?” he asks.

“Oh, I don’t know, Mascot…”

“You fall off the wagon?” he asks, sounding a little disappointed.

“
I
wouldn’t say that.”

“Oh. But everyone else would?”

“Hey… I met a nice girl, buddy. I’ve had alone time with her… on a few occasions.”

“What?”

“You don’t need to mention this to anyone, either, but yeah.”

“Was she, a, uh… groupie?”

“No,” I answer, only a little annoyed with the question I probably should have anticipated, and
will
anticipate going forward. “She owned a restaurant in Minneapolis. I met her when we were stranded there. Her name is Shea. I’ll send you a picture.”

“Wow. Okay. That’s really… cool, Will. Have you seen her since?”

“She came out to LA last week… just that once. So not enough.”

“Well, I hope she’s, uh… what you want,” he says.

“Thanks.” It’s a little awkward after that, so I decide to follow up about the one chore I’d asked him to do for me. “Hey, Max, have you sent my bills yet?”

“Oh, shit… no. Is it too late?”

“Yeah, it’s too late to send them to LA. Do me a favor. Seal them up in a big envelope and give them to Jon to bring with him to San Diego, okay? Just make sure you seal it. I don’t need him snooping around in my shit.”

“I’m sorry, Will. I totally forgot about them this time.”

“Don’t worry about it. I can’t really ruin my credit any worse,” I admit to him. It’s sad, but true.

“Sure you’re not mad?”

“At you? I could never be mad at you. So, uh, check your email in the morning for your school project, okay? I swear I’ll go easy on the expletives.”

“Thanks, again, Will.”

“Anything for you. Take care.”

I return to the studio, squeezing out as much information as possible while Damon finishes up. After that, he and I go grab a bite to eat before heading back to the house, where Ben should be waiting with the tour bus by now. I have to admit, I’m not looking forward to getting back on that smelly thing, but I
am
excited to start playing shows again.

“So, lunch is on me today,” I tell him when we find a place to sit in the crowded cafe.

“Big spender! I’m going for the coconut pie… a
whole
one.”

“Whatever you want, man.”

“What’d I do?” he asks me.

“I never properly thanked you for last week.”

“Well, fuck, this ain’t enough to do that, either,” he says, looking at our surroundings. “Brun’s Cafe? No way. A steakhouse. A coupl’a trips, maybe.”

“We need to get back on the road then. I’m running outta cash–fast.”

“You need to sign that deal, is what needs to happen.”

“It’s still in the hands of a lawyer. Apparently, a pro-bono contract review isn’t top priority, for some reason,” I explain. “If I take the deal, you can pick any restaurant back home.”

“That’s better.”

He gulps down an entire large soda before getting up for a refill and ordering a chocolate shake. Someday, our metabolism’s gonna catch up with the both of us, but thankfully, it’s lagging behind us now.

“So Damon, thank you for flying out there for Shea, and helping her make that night such a success, and–most
importantly
–for bringing her back here. That was one of the coolest things you’ve ever done for me, and… there’s a string of awesome things you’ve done for me over the past eight years, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” he boasts. I chuckle. “See? Not only would I never take advantage of your girl, Will…” he starts, referring to my worry about him and Shea together, alone, “but I take care of my brother.”

“You do. You take really good care of me. Always have.” I scratch the back of my neck, embarrassed that I ever thought he would do anything to betray me. That’s not the kind of guy he is. “I’m grateful to you, I am. Grateful to get to play with you, to tour with you, to be friends with you… all of it.”

“You forgot to live with me,” he adds.

“Yeah, you’re not the
cleanest
roommate,” I joke with him. He blows the end of his straw wrapper at me. “Nice. See? That’s what I’m talking about.”

“They tell you about Europe?” he asks me over lunch.

It takes me a second to meet his eyes. “Yeah.”

“What do you think?”

“Extraordinary opportunity, man. When else would we get to see that part of the world, right? And they love you over there. Have you seen the charts?” I ask him. He nods. “Yeah, it’s just amazing, but… but you knew this was temporary.”

“Will, come on…”

“There are things out there to discover!” I tell him, pointing at the sky. “Big things! Tiny things! Things I have to know about before I die… we’re so close.”

“Then let your team back home make the discoveries.”

“I wanna be there. I have to go back to school, man. And it’ll take years to build the telescopes and satellites we need. I’ve gotta be a part of it.”

“Why’d you have to be such a fucking nerd?”

“I’m convinced that if I didn’t live and understand science and math like I do, I wouldn’t feel and play music like I do. I used to see music in colors, but as I learned more in school, it became colors and numbers. When I was teaching myself songs, they were their own intricate problems for me to solve, not always strictly by sound, either. So you take the nerd out of me, you take it all. You leave this lifeless shell of someone who can’t think or create. I’d be some kid you step over on the street corner–give him a few bucks from your pocket and walk on past.”

“I know all this, Will. Just trying to guilt you into it.”

“It won’t work,” I tell him.

“I know that, too. You must get your hard-headedness from your mom, because you and both your brothers all have it.”

“She
does
stand her ground…” I say pensively.

“Wow. That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said about her.” I glare at him. “And it’s sad, but…” We both acknowledge the truth in his statement by nodding our heads.

Once on the road to Claremont, I shut myself in my bunk with my headphones on and return to the solitude I’ve allowed myself to be without for the past few weeks. I feel bad for Max; that he’s faced with such an intrusive assignment in the first place. I’m sure years ago, a family tree was an innocuous thing that had merit and value, but these days, when there are so many broken homes, it has to cause pain to more families than just ours.

I text Max.

- “What’s your teacher’s name?”

- - “Mrs. Ernstwhile.”

This may be cathartic, or good therapy for me. It may be good preparation for the conversation I fully intend to have in person with my father in February: week twenty-five, when we’re in Colorado, even though no one knows and no one would approve. Maybe writing this would have been good for Max, and I should have let him handle it on his own. Maybe it’s selfish that I took this over. Regardless, I have to make it good enough for it to make an impression on my little brother, too.

I open my Notes app and start writing a draft of the email I intend to send:

Dear Mrs. Ernstwhile,

My younger brother, Max Scott, informed me earlier today of his family tree project for your class. Please forgive me for stepping in. I’m not his legal guardian, but I don’t believe anyone can relate to Max’s circumstance quite like I can.

After discussing my brother’s homework, we both decided to leave the space for our father empty. Therefore, any ancestors that came before him will also be missing. It’s not because Max didn’t want to put in the time to research. He has. In fact, he completed this same exact project two years ago at his old school, and it’s probably sitting in his closet at home. The blanks were filled in then. There were even accompanying photos of family members we’d never met.

I am Max’s only full-blood brother. We share the same parents. As you can see from his chart, our mother is Margie Scott, maiden name Phelps. We were grateful to have an older half-brother named Jon. You don’t have a line for “father figure,” I presume, but if you did, Jon would go there.

Our family doesn’t fit into the perfect little diagram. I know when I was in school, they handed out special, custom trees so kids could include their step-parents. Obviously, this homework wasn’t being done for any genealogical record. I think it was a decision the school-board made to appease some parents and make them sleep better with their second (or third or fourth) spouses at night.

The problem is that our tree was hacked down by an axe-wielding maniac when I was very young–before Max was even born. My father was such a disappointment to his parents for
choices he made
that they decided they didn’t want to see him anymore. I’m guessing he was in his early twenties when this happened, because it had already taken place from my earliest memory of him. There was already this “detached” quality to him. When he was clean, which wasn’t often, he would tell us he’d never be like his parents.

But he was never there for us, and for me, I made the same decision his parents made. I didn’t want to see him anymore.

Fuck.
How fucked up did my parents actually make me?
I tried to stay away from them both, but I somehow learned from him to push people away, and be somewhat of an addict from my mom.

Max was better than I was. He was the same kid back then that he is today. Outgoing and friends with everyone. Always making people laugh. Always seeing the good side of people. Our criminal father and alcoholic mother–they were no exception. I wanted to rip off his rose-colored glasses sometimes, but Jon would do everything short of tackling me to the ground and holding my hands behind my back to make sure I didn’t. And I’m grateful he did that, because I would have tampered with Max’s kind, funny, genuine soul, and I never would have forgiven myself.

This man that Max and I knew as our father for most of our life made the conscious decision to walk away from my little brother a few months ago. I could feel sorry for the man and say that he was just doing what he learned from his own parents, but he wasn’t. Max had never done anything to disappoint him.
No choices Max had made were bad ones.

He just doesn’t like who Max is.

And there’s something fundamentally
crazy
and
wrong
and
inhuman
about that.

For that, we don’t acknowledge him as our father, or as a human who exists on this planet, for that matter, because he doesn’t deserve to walk on the same soil that the rest of us do. I’d volunteer to ship him to another planet, but as an astrophysicist, I care too much about protecting the pristine nature of our vast universe to do that, either. We’ve decided not to be angry or to hate. We are just indifferent and we are moving forward with our lives and with the people who accept us and make us happy.