Reunion: A Novel (10 page)

T
he crickets are up in arms out here. They’re rubbing their forewings raw, like there’s no tomorrow. It’s not just kids who struggle with time, with the idea of tomorrow. It’s most of life, I think. The only things that don’t struggle to understand the concept are adult
Homo sapiens
. We don’t struggle with its idea. No. We struggle with its existence, with its certainty. We know tomorrow will come whether we want it to or not. That’s the problem. That’s the problem right there.

Miraculously, I have been left alone for the last thirty minutes. And in that time—sitting out here on Sasha’s homey back porch—and against my better judgment, I have sent Peter just over a dozen text messages. To my credit—
credit!
Ha!—I’ve only called him once. I hung up when it went to voice mail.

I have no idea what I’ll say to him if he does call me back or if he ever answers.
I’m sorry
isn’t seeming to cut it. What he wants, perhaps, is an explanation. What he wants is for me to be honest about what
I
want. But again, I’m struggling here, because I don’t really know what I want. I don’t know how to prove total transparency because I’m not sure what’s hidden or what needs to be revealed. There’s a story I read once about a magic hat that you could put on your head, let absorb every single one of your emotions—even the ones there aren’t yet words for—then take off, put on someone else’s head, and then sit back and watch as the understanding slowly oozes in. But that hat doesn’t exist. Not in real life. And besides, it might actually be too late. He might actually have gone through the process of un-loving me. In which case all these text messages and phone calls are completely fruitless. Still, I can’t help thinking his level of anger at the airport yesterday is a good sign. In country songs, complacency equals death; struggle, anger, jealousy—these are the telltale signs of enduring love. If only I were living in a country song. A country song or a chick flick.

Instead of texting Peter again, I text my agent.

Crazy how?
I write.

Ten seconds later my phone is ringing. It’s her. It’s Marcy.

“Hi,” she says. Marcy has this super-soft voice that refuses analysis, which is to say she is impossible to read.

“What’s up?” I say.

“Kate,” she says. “First. I’m sorry about your father.”

The crickets buzz happily in the yard.
Me too
, they’re saying.
We’re sorry too. Us too.
But they’re crickets, so they can’t help saying it with smiles on their faces, which makes them sound disingenuous.

“How do you know about my father?”

“Peter emailed.”

Peter emailed?
Peter emailed?
The crickets don’t like it, either. Since when does my husband email my agent?
Since when?
the crickets say.
Since when? Since when?

“He did?” I say.

“Of course he did.”

Of course, of course
, say the crickets.

“What else did he say?”

“What else
was
there to say? He just wanted me to know, and I’m
so
glad he did.”

“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”

“Can I ask?” she says. “Don’t be mad. But can I ask, was it really suicide?”

What
didn’t
Peter tell her?

“Yes,” I say.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.
These crickets are meddlesome little things.

“And can I ask also—” Her breathiness is getting away from her. Her voice is on the rise. “Was it—? What I mean is, did he—? With a—?”

“He shot himself, Marcy.”

The crickets are quiet.

But only for a moment.

“That’s what I thought,” she says. The breathiness is gone completely now, and I realize—holy shit—this is what excitement sounds like. This is the first time in my life I’ve heard my agent be excited.

“So listen,” she is saying.

Listen, listen, listen, listen.
Fickle crickets.

“I have an idea,” she says. I wait. “You should write it.”

“Write what?”

“Do you think you could?”

“A movie?” I say. “Dead dad? That’s been done.”

“Not a movie,” she says. “A memoir.”

Memoir?

“I don’t write memoirs.”

“Listen,” she says. “I pitched it.”

“You pitched it?”

“To a friend,” she says. “I got Peter’s email when I was having lunch with this editor and—”

“Where are you?”

“In New York,” she says.

“Why aren’t you in L.A.?”

“Will you listen to me, please?” she says. “Memoir is huge right now. Suicide is huger.”

“I barely knew my father.”

“You could use the trip as research.”

“No.”

“You could interview family members.”

“No.”

“Your brother and sister.”

“They’d hate me,” I say, which isn’t necessarily true. They’d probably like to be included.

“You could talk to all his wives,” she says.

Wives!
Now there’s a word the crickets like.
Wives! Wives!

“Weren’t there a million wives?”

Wives! Yes! Wives! Wives! Wives! We love veeeeeeees!

I’ve long suspected that agents keep notes about their clients—that before any phone call with any client, they get out their notes and read the meticulously kept mini biographies.

“I can’t talk to you anymore,” I say.

Sigh.

“Kate.” She’s recouped a smidgeon of softness. “Memoir pays,” she says. “There’s money in memoir. You might not like it, but there’s money in suicide.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Is it?”

Is it? Is it?

“I have to go,” I say.

“Just think about it,” she says. “You’re dead as a screenwriter. I’m not saying that to be manipulative. I’m saying it because we both know it’s true.”

She stops talking and I let the silence linger long enough to remind her that I’m in control, that she works for me.

And then, out of nowhere, I say, “Peter and I are trying to have a baby.”

“But I thought—”

“We’re looking into in vitro,” I say. “Maybe adoption.”

Veeeeetro!

“Wow,” she says, and I think for a minute that I’ve won. That I’ve stopped her in her tracks and we’ve nowhere left to go with this conversation. I’m wrong: “But still,” she says. “A baby. The money could only help.”

Sasha—lifesaver—appears at the screen door. “Knock knock,” she whispers.

“Marcy,” I say to the phone. “I really have to go.”

“Think about it,” she says.

I wait for the crickets to mimic her one final time, but they shake their heads.
We’re sticking with VEEEtro!

And so I hang up on my agent.

Sasha’s standing on the other side of the screen door, inside her house, knocking to be let out.

“Hey,” I say.

She’s changed into denim shorts and a T-shirt.

“Am I interrupting?” She pushes the screen door all the way open and walks onto the back porch.

“Nope,” I say. “Not at all.”

“You want some lemonade?”

“Something stronger maybe?”

“Ha,” she says. “That’s what Nell said you’d say.” She produces a glass from behind her back. “Here.” I take the glass. “She also said you don’t mind ice in your wine.”

“Not when I’m in Georgia, I don’t.”

I take a sip.

“Mind if I sit?”

I scoot over on the swing in answer and pocket my phone. Sasha says nothing, just pushes us back and forth, and I have this flash of a memory. It’s me and Stan. We’re on a porch swing just like this, but we’re at his mother’s house. He’s sitting next to me, rocking us back and forth. My feet are too short to touch the concrete floor and so I just sit and let us be rocked. Behind us is the roar of I-85, but before us is an untapped wooded area and a small creek. He’s got his hands in the air in front of us, but he’s not asking me to hit him. He’s making hand animals. “Giraffe,” he says, then brings his middle finger and pinkie together with his thumb so that a mouth is formed. His pointer and ring finger aim forward, the animal’s horns. “Rooster,” he says, then makes a fist of his left hand and presses it against his right, the fingers of which are splayed like a crown. He cocks his left pointer just slightly, and I can see where the eye would be. It’s just a flash, but I feel it in my gut before it vanishes.

“Listen to the crickets,” I say. Sasha is quiet a minute.

“Nuh-uh,” she says. “Those are cicadas.”

Now I listen. “For real?”

“Yeah, see, listen. Crickets are high-pitched, more staccato. But the cicadas are louder and they make a longer sound and go slow to fast. Like,
chicka-chicka-chicka-chickachickachicka-chiiiiiii-kah
.” Well, that’s not
quite
what they’re saying, but—

I listen again, and I can hear what she’s talking about immediately. “I never thought I’d forget the difference,” I say. “I never thought I’d lose the Georgian so thoroughly.” I give Atlanta a hard time and I certainly give my father’s people a hard time. When it comes right down to it, though, I like being from Georgia. But it requires being somewhere else for me to appreciate how special it is. It’s a bad re
lationsh
ip—or maybe the truest kind of relationship. Look. I’m trying to be honest. I like it best when it’s not around. Because it lives in my memory, completely malleable, completely disposed to my own fantasies and imaginations. It’s a cool thing to be able to say when I’m in Chicago—that I’m a Georgia peach—but when I’m here, the skin isn’t so fuzzy.

“So listen,” says Sasha.

Of course. This private moment between us is an orchestrated one. Ten to one, she has a favor to ask.

“I have a favor.”

Ha.

“I need to tell Mindy about her father—about your father,” she says. “If the viewing’s in two days, then I need to tell her soon.”

I nod. “Completely agree.”

“What I’d like…” She leans back against the swing and lifts her legs so she can hold them against her chest. She probably does yoga. “What I’d like is to do it at dinner. Tonight. And I’d like us all to be on the same page.”

“I’m listening.” Same page? Isn’t there only one? The man is dead.

“I’m not religious,” she says.

“Me neither.” I take a sip of wine and crunch down on a cube of ice. The advantage of sitting side by side like this is that I at least don’t have to maintain any kind of manic eye contact with her like I did earlier.

“Right, well, Mindy’s different,” she says. “She picked up some body-of-Christ, blood-of-heaven stuff at a particular friend’s house and at school and she’s latched on.”

I remember Wednesdays at Holy Innocents’—the cracker, the grape juice. We were allowed to take Communion whether we’d been baptized or not. Although, now that I think of it, it’s more likely it was an honor code type of thing. It was probably up to us to self-regulate, which seems like a pretty tall order for a second grader. I wonder if Stan knew what I was up to. I wonder if he sometimes looked down at me and thought,
This one. This one’s keeping secrets.

“Okay,” I say.

“So I was thinking I might couch his departure—just for her sake—as, well, just that. A departure.”

“Okay.”

“And I just wanted to give you a heads up.”

“Sounds totally fair.”

“And also, you know, if we could not say anything about his involvement in the process, that would also be great.”

“You mean his involvement in his death.”

“Right.”

“You mean the fact that he shot himself.”

“Right.”

“In the head.”

“Right.”

“Suicide.”

“Exactly,” she says, placing her feet back on the floor and steadying the swing. “If we could just avoid that word for the next few days, I’d really appreciate it.”

I crunch another cube and answer while I’m chewing: “You got it, chief. Mum’s the word.”

Tomorrow will come. So will the next day. These things are inevitable. One day Mindy will learn that her father put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. One day she will learn that
the blood of heaven
is just a scary-sounding group of words that’s had an uncanny effect on millions of people. One day Peter will call me back, and he’ll explain what he meant by emailing my agent behind my back. One day I’ll return to Chicago. These things are certain. As certain as tomorrow. The only thing that isn’t certain is, which tomorrow?

I
n the kitchen, Mindy is standing on a stool, watching water boil, and Nell is holding court over a pot of tomatoes. She’s stripped down to boxers and a wifebeater, on top of which she’s wearing an apron.

“Nice look,” I say.

“It’s too hot,” she says. “I didn’t think I’d offend anyone.”

“As long as we’re the only guests.” I open the refrigerator and look around until I’ve spotted the bottle of wine. “Ta-da,” I say, and pour another glass.

“Guests don’t arrive until tomorrow,” says Nell.

“Where’s Elliot?” I say. “Did he talk to Rita yet?”

“They’re talking now,” she says. “I think. Here.” She holds a wooden spoon in front of my mouth. “Try.”

“Good,” I say. “Really good.” I take a sip of wine. Mindy is staring at the water like her life depends on it. I’m tempted to say something, try out an old adage on her, but I like whatever spell the water’s working. Let sleeping dogs lie, right?

“Wait,” I say. “What guests?”

“It’s weird, right?” says Nell, her back to me now, her shoulder blades moving this way and that on either side of the tank top. It’s an unusual look for her. In San Francisco, she’s always so well put together. Even her pajamas look silky and ready for viewing. This is a fashion statement I’ve not seen Nell rock before. “The way Rita and Ell are being?”

I’m still puzzling over the boxers and beater, but I’m with it enough to be able to tell her about the texts Rita sent while we were in the parking lot at Holy Innocents’.

“And she didn’t say anything else?” says Nell, turning to face me.

“No,” I say. “But, seriously, what other guests are we expecting?”

“Ah,” says Nell. “I was hoping you weren’t paying attention.”

Mindy turns on her stool suddenly and looks at me. Like her mother, she picks unexpected moments for intense, direct eye contact. She’s like a dog trying desperately to tell me something. Only this dog can speak.

“What’s an angel?” she says, apropos—as far as I know—of nothing.

I gulp down some wine.

“Not the right person for that question, Little Bit,” I say.

“An angel is a fairy,” Mindy says.

Nell winks at me.

“Is that what they teach you in school?” The school wasn’t so intense with its religiosity when I was young.

“Fairies can fly,” says Mindy, whose cheeks have turned rosy with the heat of the boiling water and who, as a result, looks slightly more alive than when we picked her up. She’s a little less gray.

“Fairies can fly and angels can fly?” I say. “Is that the connection?”

Mindy looks at me like I’m the stupidest person she’s ever met. Maybe I am. “Angels can’t fly,” she says. “They aren’t real.”

I nod. Her logic is even goofier than mine.

“There are real fairies and fake fairies,” she says. “Angels are fake.”

“Whatever you say.” I look to Nell for help out of this conversation, but she’s gone back to her tomatoes.

“Like boxes,” says Mindy.

I cock my head. Now, maybe, we are getting somewhere.

“Not all boxes are squares,” says Mindy, “but all squares are boxes.”

“Not quite,” I say, “but I like where your brain is headed.” And truly, I do. There’s something odd at work in this little girl. She’s not exactly making foolproof connections, but I’ll be damned if there isn’t a little mind in there after all, furiously trying to make sense of the world around her. I know what it feels like—that rat wheel on high speed all the time. Nell’s right, maybe. I should give this one a chance. It’s not her fault—like it’s not my fault or Nell’s fault or Elliot’s—that Stan Pulaski is our biological father.
Was.
Was
our biological father.

But Mindy is bored with me and now she picks up a silicone spatula and begins stirring the pot of water slowly.
Witch’s brew
, I think.
Bubble bubble, toil and trouble
, but I don’t say any of that aloud.

I walk over and stand shoulder to shoulder with Nell. Well, not shoulder to shoulder, but her shoulder to my bicep. “Back to the guests,” I say quietly, so as not to distract Mindy on the other side of the stove top.

“Some people are coming over tomorrow,” says Nell.

“Like for a keening?” I whisper.

“Ha,” she says. “More like a wake.”

“For Stan.”

“Yes.”

I watch as Nell adds spices to her tomatoes and stirs them slowly. There are only so many people who would be interested in attending a wake for Stan Pulaski. They are the same people who would be interested in a funeral. I’m not anxious to see any of them.

“These
people
,” I say. “They’re coming
here
? To
this
house?”

“Yes.”

“A party?”

“Sasha thought it was the right thing to do,” she says. “To host something.”

“How many people are we talking about?”

“A dozen or so.” She’s turned away from me now. She’s turned to Mindy and is pretending to help her stir the boiling water.
A dozen or so
is how we talk about our father’s “extended” family—the wives and children he had after our mother died.

“A dozen or so?” I say. “Seriously? All of them?”

“You thought they wouldn’t come?” she says, finally looking at me. “For real, Kate. They’re part of the family.”

“What family?”

“
Our
family.”

I can’t even begin to formulate a coherent response to this suggestion—not one that won’t end in girl screams and hair pulling. So what I say is “Does Elliot know?” which is almost always my default objection when rational words fail me.

“Yes,” says Nell. “Just get on board already.”

I go to the fridge, pull the wine out again, and pour the last third of the bottle into my glass, knowing full well Nell is watching and therefore judging. She knows me for the cheap date I am.

Nell nudges Mindy in the side. “Check it out, kiddo,” she says.

Mindy turns and looks at me. They are both looking at me now.

“Somebody’s throwing a tantrum,” says Nell, and the two of them giggle and then go back to their respective pots.