One Small Thing (16 page)

But he was right. Dan could see his son was not quite sure how to react, standing on the edge of the action, not able to push himself into the fun, not knowing how to belong. “Yeah.”

“Do you want to say goodbye?”

Dan cupped the back of his neck with a palm, sore, tired. No, he didn’t, he want to say goodbye. But he knew he should. It would make the visit next Wednesday easier, Daniel remembering him more clearly. “Okay.” He started to walk over to the children, feeling Jared move along with him. “No. I’ll go alone.”

Jared kept walking for a moment before stopping, looking at Dan. “Oh.”

“I should go. It should be me.” Dan reached out for Jared’s arm, holding him back.

“Fine. I’ll wait in the car.” Jared shrugged Dan off, turned, and went back to the car. Dan heard the door slam.

When he made it to the sidewalk by the lawn the children were playing on, he stopped to watch. Daniel was now in the pile of the “wrestling” match, yelling, “I’ll get you Mark,” his thin, high voice serious and not at all playful.

Dan waited until their bodies fell away from each other, and then he called out, “Daniel? I just wanted to say goodbye. Could you come here?”

Daniel pulled his legs out from under the blond boy’s and stared at Dan, his eyes squinting against the afternoon sun. “Okay.”

Swallowing, Dan waited as his son stood up and whisked grass off his jeans and put his cap back on his head.
Keep it off
, he thought, wanting to see the dark glint of Randi’s hair again. What had she looked like in those final months? Had she lost that angry spark that kept her beautiful? That also kept her an addict? Dan wanted to imagine her in her hospital bed, still beautiful, still angry, the energy current that was her personality live and on fire.

Daniel stood in front of him, and Dan stuck out his hand. “It was nice to meet you, Daniel.”

“Who are you?” Daniel asked, keeping his hands by his sides.

“Mr. Tacconi. Dan Tacconi.”

“I know that,” he said, shaking his head. “But why did you come here?” Under his hat, Daniel’s eyes looked like two polished chestnuts.

“I had some things to talk about with Liza, your foster mom.”

“I know who she is. You know I live there,” Daniel said, and in his voice, there was Randi, live wire, smart ass, know-it-all.

“I do know that. Anyway, I just wanted to say goodbye.” Dan moved his outstretched hand, and Daniel hesitated and then took it, squeezing back. His skin was so soft, with the fine texture of child, life not having left a mark there, at least. Dan closed his eyes, resisting the urge to pull this small boy to him, take him in his arms, put him in the car now, now, to save him and himself from the weeks of awkward talks and movie dates and Pizza Hut dinners. But he couldn’t scare Daniel, and he stared at the scrub jay flying overhead, watched it dive and then land on a fence, bobbing its head and then standing still.

“Okay,” Daniel said, pulling back his hand. “I’m going to play now.”

“All right. Bye, Daniel.”

“Bye.” Daniel turned back to the kids who were watching them, and by the time Dan was halfway to the car, the court was a swirl of laughter and teasing, Dan as meaningless and unreal as Martin Adam’s miniature bridges.

Going home, the traffic was light, all the commuters streaming home the other direction, pushing up over the hills and into the valley from jobs in San Jose, Fremont, San Francisco. Jared sat quiet in the passenger’s seat, as Dan tried to find the perfect sentences. “Thanks for coming,” he imagined saying. “You were a big help. I really needed you.” But he said nothing, breathing in and out into the silence.

Finally as they passed through Manteca, Jared turned from the window and stared at Dan, who could feel his brother’s gaze, as he always had, even from across a darkened bedroom.

“What?” Dan asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I don’t know if you understand how hard this is going to be. How hard anything—Never mind.” Jared let a hand fall hard on his knee, the flesh/fabric sound echoing in the car.

“Well, just say it. Nothing’s stopped you before.” Dan turned on his signal light and passed a middle-aged man doing 55 in a red Porsche Spider.

“What’s that mean?”

“You always say what you want. Like at the Fourth. Blurting out everything, even when I’ve told you not to.” Dan moved back into the slow lane, watching the red car fall far behind them.

“Wouldn’t this have been a hell of a lot easier if Avery had known the truth? If she’d known about Randi and what went on with her? And you? And the folks?”

Dan moved his tongue through his mouth, feeling the sharp edges of his molars. He shook his head and glanced at Jared. “It must be nice to be the right one.”

“Dan, that’s not what this is about. I don’t want to be right. I want things to—work out. For a change. I want to have my family together.”

And then it was Dan’s hands on the steering wheel, the heat and asphalt under the car, the whir of the air-conditioner in the car, the dashboard and all its numbers: 75, 76, 80. 25,179. 4:59. ¼. 40. Whoosh went the road, Shell station, farm for sale, Target, Arby’s. Whoosh went the past twenty years. His cheeks felt heavy, his eyes ached. The hair on his knuckles tingled. When Daniel had pushed his bike across the cul-de-sac, he’d seen Randi in him, the white skin, the thick, dark hair. But he’d also seen Jared. They both had the same look in their eyes. Dan had seen it night after night at the dinner table, in the living room as he left with Randi, when the cops came, at every meal and holiday since. He’d abandoned his brother, just as he’d abandoned his son, leaving them both to clean up the terrible mess.

Breathing in, Dan shook his head. “I—I’m sorry.”

“That’s what you always say, Dan. But nothing’s changed.”

“I know.”

Dan could see Jared nodding, the nod he must give his patients. Sometimes, Dan couldn’t believe that’s what Jared did all day, listening and giving advice, advice people took. Advice that changed people’s lives. “Okay.” Jared settled back in his seat. “Well, I’m still here.”

Dan nodded, pushed on the accelerator, and pulled down the sun visor. “Thanks,” he said, the word so full on his tongue, bigger in feeling than sound. “I mean it.”

Jared sighed and pushed on the radio, tuning into KCBS and the weather and traffic report. Heavy back-ups on the Sunol grade, the San Mateo Bridge, West 680. Delays at the Bay Bridge and Caldecott Tunnel. Partial clouds, chance of rain, early clearing.

After dropping Jared off and driving home, Dan sat in the backyard, the sky full of afternoon heat and purple finches that landed on Avery’s birdfeeder, pecked at the empty plastic, and then flew away. No diners tonight at Avery’s bird restaurant, he thought, remembering how excited she’d been when Dan had put it up. He’d gone to Orchard Nursery and asked for the special anti-squirrel, anti-Jay feeder, a baffle and a metal cage around it. He’d also bought a heavy, expensive sack of peanuts, pumpkin and sunflower seeds that looked good enough to set on the table during a poker game at Luis’. When he brought everything home, Avery’s face lit up as it hadn’t for a long while during those months of shots and tests, and she refilled it every other day. She’d gone out and bought a bird book, whispering, “A grosbeak! A nuthatch. Let’s see. A pygmy nuthatch. Oh, look. That one’s yellow. A Lesser Goldfinch,” as she stood by the window, the book open in her hands. Until the Fourth of July, she’d actually kept a list of all the different birds that came to eat, excited by the permutations of male, female, breeding, summer, and juvenile markings.

As he sat in the chair, the portable telephone in his lap, he knew he should fill up the birdfeeder. At the very least, it would make him feel that something was normal in this day of abnormalities. But he couldn’t. His body felt drained by the long car rides and the pinched, angry look on Daniel’s face and the sad set of his dark eyes. When he leaned back and stared into the dark blue sky, he heard Midori Nolan’s voice, “99% conclusive of paternity.” He heard her say, “If you want him,” and remembered the expression on Jared’s face, the look that said, “Don’t fuck this one up, bro. This time, don’t drop the ball.”

Part of Dan wanted to drop kick the past, including the boy and all of his baggage, out into space. He wanted to fly to St. Louis and lie to Avery, tell her that it was all a big mistake. Randi, in her drugged out, desperately ill state, had written a drastic note to try to save her son. Yes, the boy was in foster care, but he could tell her that the foster mother was all right. Liza had said he was doing better. Daniel needed help, and he would get it there, in Turlock, in that school district, with Liza and her eccentric engineer husband. Dan and Avery wouldn’t have to do a thing but send monthly support checks and maybe big Christmas presents every year. Case closed, crisis averted.

But that wasn’t what happened, and Dan knew that Avery needed to know the truth. He looked at the phone in his lap, and dialed her hotel number that he’d written out before he came outside.

“Hello,” Avery said, the clip of work in her voice.

“It’s me.” He heard the hum of a hotel room—lights, television, air conditioning—and something else, like muffled conversation.

“What happened? Did you go?” She seemed more interested than she had on Monday. She’d given him a quick, absent kiss that just missed his forehead and whispered, “I’ll call you,” before walking outside to get into the Bay Porter van. Maybe she did care.

“I went. I took Jared with me. We met him, Aves,” he said, the dark eyes in front of him as he spoke. “And he’s mine.”

“Oh. Oh.” She paused, and he heard a door or a drawer open and close. “God.”

“I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do. And I don’t know how you feel really, either. We aren’t in this together in the way we would have been if I got pregnant.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying that! No you don’t. You don’t know what this is like for me. You barely know what this is like for you. You just met him, for Christ’s sake. You have no idea what the future will be like for us, for him. Oh, God.”

Dan sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry Aves.”

“So am I. God . . . So what is going to happen? How does this whole thing fit into our lives?”

“He’s not a thing, he’s a little boy,” Dan said, heat fluming his cheeks the way it had the night he bashed up the crib. He blinked, trying to push that memory of the splintered wood out of his head.

“That’s not what I meant. I meant how does the process unfold? Jeez, Dan. What do you have to do?”

“I’ve set up some meetings with Daniel. Midori and I have to tell him the story. He doesn’t know anything yet. He’ll be very shocked.”

Avery breathed in deeply. “Like the rest of us.”

“Yeah.”

There was sound in the room again, and he heard Avery’s earrings clank against the receiver. “Is someone there with you?”

“No. I just turned off the TV. Look, I’ll be home Friday. We have got to figure all of this out. We have a lot to discuss.”

Dan nodded, knowing that as of this second, he wished Friday would never come. “I kn—right. Right. Um, well, how’s it going out there?”

“I don’t want to talk about that. I’ll see you then, okay?” Avery’s voice was back to her brisk, get-it-done cadence.

“All right,” Dan said, hanging up.

Resting the phone on his thigh, he watched a scrub jay land on top of the feeder, cocking its head down, trying to figure out how to land.

“Hey,” Dan said, but his voice was too low to scare anything, all his pointed words used up in the phone call. Neither of them had said one soft word to each other, the space between them now as cold as the empty plateau in their bed, mattress and blankets smoothed to silence since the fourth of July.



After work on Wednesday, Dan stopped home to take some measurements, the same way he had measured a year earlier before Avery and Valerie went out to buy the crib and changing table. But now, he had to find out how wide and long the bed could be. A single bed. He hadn’t bought a single bed ever, leaving the one his parents bought for him years ago. When he went home to Sacramento, he’d walk up the stairs and push open the door of the room he and Jared shared, his old little bed looking just that. Little. He’d never fit in that room or in his parents’ house, chafing under all the strict lines his father drew in the sand. “Be home by 12 midnight, God Dammit, or you’re grounded! And I mean it this time,” his father would say behind the slammed front door.

“Please drive carefully,” his mother would whine as she opened the garage door to watch him drive away. “Don’t get into any trouble tonight, Danny. He’s at the end of his rope.”

Even though those years had been terrible for his parents, his mother had left his room as it had been when he was in high school, a testament to trouble. When he went home for the holidays while he was at Cal, he’d found old stash taped to the bottom of his dresser drawers and in the shoe box in the left-hand corner of the closet. Thank God, he thought then, he hadn’t remembered his hidden loot one strung-out night with Randi, breaking into his own house, his parents having to call the police again. If he’d remembered, he would have.