Where We Belong (15 page)

To the rapt amusement of everyone in the room, she continues through the next few verses, not missing a beat or syllable, the drumming becoming more rapid and complex, until she gets to the end and takes a little bow. It is the most understated performance I’ve seen in a long time, yet one of the best. I grin with relief and satisfaction as Jeanelle Chambers, an edgy writer from Queens, leads a round of applause and says, “Damn. Way to go, white girl.”

“Thanks,” Kirby mumbles, still standing but now looking down at her feet.

“Aren’t you about twenty years too young to know the Sugarhill Gang?” Alexandre asks. “Even the Def Squad version had to be before you were born?”

“‘Rapper’s Delight’ is a classic,” Kirby says to her toes. “The granddaddy of hip hop.”

Alexandre nods, impressed and intrigued. “Right on.”

I feel a burst of pride, wondering how a real parent must feel when their child overcomes an obstacle or achieves something big, as I point to the empty chair beside me. She shuffles over and sits, without looking at me or smiling, and I notice that her hands are shaking, her breathing irregular.

She’s just a little girl,
I think.
My age when I had her.
For a moment, I lose my train of thought, Conrad materializing again. I force him from my mind. Again.

“Okay,” I say, putting on my game face as I point to the whiteboard story wall covered with a diagram of ideas, characters, and plot lines. “We only have two hours for this notes meeting—so let’s make it count. Let’s pick up with Damien and Carrie. Sorry. Roger and Evvie,” I say, switching to their character names. “End of our first episode—Roger’s finally confessed his feelings to Evvie.”

“Heard he did that in real life, too,” Jeanelle says, the only writer on staff who has any sort of rapport with the cast. She takes a sip of her coffee, looking out over her cup for a reaction.

“No shit?” Alexandre says, drawing a big “Roger + Evvie” on our board with a red dry-erase marker. “I thought Damien was scoobin’ Angela?”

“He
was,
” Jeanelle says. “No longer.”

I glance at Kirby—her eyes huge, relishing every second—and, for her sake, allow the room to indulge in a few minutes of idle gossip, specifically how pissed Angela will be if she finds out.

“Tell them what else you heard,” Emily Grace says to Jeanelle, laughing.

“Oh, yeah. I heard he’s well endowed.”

Alexandre shakes his head and feigns a very homosexual accent. “You know what? This is making me uncomfortable,” he says, grinning at the mostly female staff. “I think I’m gonna sue the showrunner and the network for fostering an uncomfortable environment.”

“And that offends me,” Benjie Carr, the only other man in the room, who happens to actually be gay. He’s kidding, of course, as nothing offends Benjie. He then points to a box of pastries on the table and says to Alexandre, “See those? Don’t let me near them. I’m on a cleanse.”

“Okay, okay!” I say, glancing at my watch. “Let’s go. Off your phones. No more surfing. Let’s go! Ideas, people!”

Alexandre resumes his job as stenographer as the brainstorming commences, Kirby’s eyes darting around the room, taking everything in. For the most part, there is minimal conflict—other than a rather extensive debate about a character named Max, a buttoned-up Penn grad student who spends a lot of time in the bar, drinking Jameson, criticizing everyone’s jukebox selections, and generally pontificating while doing a poor job of hitting on our girl from Mississippi.

“He’s getting way too much face time. He’s a total Wesley,” Jeanelle says, referring to the phenomenon coined after the hated Wesley Crusher in
Star Trek: The Next Generation.
In other words, the fans hate him—and we, the writers, don’t realize they hate him. In fact, they hate him for the very transparent fact that we’re trying to
make
them like the character. Force him down their throats. Sure enough, she says, “He’s annoying and boring—and the fact that he keeps telling us how smart and interesting he is … is annoying and boring.”

“I totally disagree,” Emily Grace says.

“Um. Would that have anything to do with the fact that you created him?” Jeanelle asks. “Or wrote the script where he won’t shut up about how swell he is?”

Alexandre makes a sizzling sound, touches the table, and pulls his finger away. “Damn. That burned.”

I smile and say, “I think he’s interesting. And very well drawn.”

“Thanks,” Emily Grace says, shooting me a small, injured smile.

“Still. Dude’s a tool,” Alexandre says, doodling a large rifle. “Let’s kill him. I’m thinking a racially motivated mugging. Or maybe a murder suicide so we can take out that little slimy attorney while we’re at it.”

“Or at least we can put him on a bus,” Jeanelle says, employing another expression, this one used for temporarily writing off a character whom we might want to resurrect at a later date. “A Greyhound to nowhere, perhaps?”

Kirby and I exchange a knowing glance as she raises her eyebrows and sips orange juice through her straw, making a gurgling sound.

Or he can get on a Greyhound to go find his birth mother and then find out that she never told his birth father the truth about him. Yeah, that’s a good one.

9

kirby

“
Where did
you learn to sing … rap like that? And play the drums? That was amazing,” Marian asks me later that night as we sit in her office eating Chinese delivery. It has been a completely crazy day—I had no idea that people worked so hard or so long—and this has been the first real chance we’ve had to talk alone.

“Thanks,” I say. Then I tell her the story about how my elementary school music teacher said that the drums and the French horn were the two hardest instruments to play, and my dad said it was cheaper to bang on the table than buy a horn so I went with that.

Marian pushes aside her plate of shrimp fried rice that she’s barely touched (I’ve begun to notice she barely eats much of anything) and says, “Well, you were incredible. Very impressive.”

I thank her again, then stare her down for a long beat before I say, “So I guess I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right,” Marian says, pretending to be disappointed. “Are you sure you can’t stay longer?”

“I guess I could,” I say, wanting her to want me to stay—or at least actually
talk
to me. “I have school on Wednesday, but I could blow it off … But I should probably get back.”

She nods, and says she understands, folding easily. My heart drops but I tell myself not to be so soft and give a little shrug.

She continues, talking nervously. “This week is pretty hectic anyway. We’re back in the writers’ room tomorrow—and then I have a bunch of meetings with marketing and finance and interviews with new DPs … I wouldn’t want you to be bored. So tell me more about the drums?”

I stare at her a beat, then shake my head and tell her there’s not much more to say. I mean—how ridiculous is it to start talking about drumming when she’s yet to say a single word about my birth father? I don’t know if she’s trying to hide stuff from me—or if she just doesn’t want to talk about him—but after nearly forty-eight hours, it is clear that she’s not going to bring him up on her own.

So later that night, after we’re back in her apartment and she starts yawning and talking about bed, I tell myself it’s now or never. My heart is pounding in my ears as I hear myself say, “So. Can you please tell me about my father?”

She looks at me, confused, then surprised, as if it never occurred to her that I would ask such a question, then takes a deep breath and looks so stone-faced and anxious that I’m sure a long story is forthcoming. Instead, she simply says, “His name is Conrad. Conrad Knight.”

“Night?” I ask. “As in day and night?”

“As in the Round Table.”

For one second, I am stupidly enchanted by the romantic image of the Round Table, until I catch her frowning, and instantly start to worry about all the things I’ve always worried about. That there will be a story that I don’t want to hear, one of the scenarios I overheard my parents discussing: date rape, jail, drugs. Or simply what I always assumed, a notion that never bothered me until now: a loveless one-night stand that meant absolutely nothing to either of them. I mean, it seems pretty clear that I was an accident, but it would be nice, at least, to be an accident that came from genuine feelings as opposed to lust of the Belinda variety.

“How did you meet him?” I ask, my heart starting to race.

“We went to school together,” she says. Then she tells me she had known him since the fourth grade but that she didn’t
really
know him until the summer after they graduated. “I was exactly your age,” she says. “We both were. We ran into each other at a party…”

Marian draws a long breath. I can see in her frozen expression that her mind is racing, and I am determined to wait for her to speak. But when several more seconds of silence elapse, I lose my resolve and fire off another question. “So … what was he like?”

She takes a deep breath, then continues, carefully calibrating her words. “He was smart. Street-smart—although he could have done well in school if he had cared.”

I nod, feeling connected to my birth father for the first time, ever, in my life.

She continues, lost in thought. “He wasn’t exactly a rebel, but he did his own thing. He didn’t care what other people thought—and it wasn’t just an act. He really and
truly
didn’t care. Which wasn’t something I could relate to, but boy, did I admire it. We all did.”

“Was he a loner?” I ask.

“Yeah. Kind of. At least at school. He didn’t really have much use for anyone there. But he had friends outside of school—in his band. So I wouldn’t say he was a total loner … More just … independent.”

“He was in a band?” I say, both thrilled by this revelation and relieved that he wasn’t some dumb jock. Somehow, a football player looking to get laid seems more offensive than a musician doing the same.

“Yes,” she says. “He was a talented musician. He could play the guitar, the piano, and a little saxophone. He had a beautiful voice. Like yours.”

I can’t help giving her the smallest of smiles. “What did he look like?” I ask her.

She doesn’t hesitate. “He was gorgeous. Dark hair. Beautiful eyes. You have his eyes.”

“I do?” I say, my heart pounding even harder.

“Yes. The same exact blue-gray color, the same darker rim. The same shape and size.” She stares at the wall behind me as if trying to remember more details.

“Do you have any pictures of him?” I say, feeling dizzy.

“I have one,” she says, then stands and tells me she’ll be right back. Several minutes later, she returns with a dingy, once-white envelope. Inside there is a sheet of notebook paper, folded in thirds, covered with wild script. As she unfolds it, I crane to make out some of the words, burning with curiosity. She reads a few lines silently to herself, then refolds it, and returns it to the envelope before pulling out the photo. Biting her lower lip, she examines it, breathing fast. She finally hands it to me. “That’s him,” she says, looking as nervous as I feel, “and me.”

I look down at the photo of my biological parents, feeling stunned, although I’m not sure why. It is a close-up shot, off center, more of him than her—the kind that you snap with an outstretched arm. They are on their backs on a blanket, both of them wincing as if the sun is too bright. I can’t see the sky but I imagine that it is cobalt and cloudless, almost as if I can see it reflected in their eyes—at least his. Their cheeks are pressed together, and hers are flushed. His arm is around her, his fingers buried in a swirl of her long hair, bleached by the sun. The photo is grainy, a shadow across his face, but I can see clearly that he
is
dreamy in an artist-musician sort of way. Dark hair, fair skin, full lips, and large, domed eyelids, half closed over his eyes,
exactly
my shade, just as she said. Although he looks relaxed in this shot, there is an intensity in his eyes and face, something that tells me that he feels things deeply, loves completely. Or maybe I just want to see this. Maybe I just want to believe I have that in me, too, and so far I don’t really see it in Marian. I start to hand the photo back to her, but can’t stop looking at it, hoping she will give it to me.

“Were you in love?” I ask, feeling all my muscles tense, wanting her to say yes, although I have no idea why this is so important to me, what real difference it makes at this point.

She hesitates, and then says, “I don’t know. It feels like a million years ago … And it was a strange summer, Kirby. A really strange, complicated time.”

“Why? What made it strange?” I press, thinking of how often Belinda will deem a ridiculous romantic situation “complicated.” She and some idiot are going out, they’re not going out. They’re seeing other people. They’re on a break. They’re just hanging out. Is this the sort of crap Marian dubs
complicated
—or is it something more substantive?

“Our relationship happened suddenly,” she says as I focus on the word “relationship.” “Very suddenly. It was like—I didn’t know him at all—and then he became my whole world…”

I consider my next question, feeling that each one is critical, as if perhaps there is a limit and I might run out. What I really want is the full story, the
long
story about how they decided to have me—then give me away. So I finally blurt out, “Did he want you to have me? Or get an abortion?”

She flinches then takes several deep breaths before she finally meets my eyes. Then she takes my hands in hers and says my name as if ready to make a confession. And then she does.

“I never told him,” she says.

I know there is only one interpretation of her reply, but I still search for another as I look back down at the boy and girl in the photo. “You never told him you had me?”

She glances at me, then shakes her head, her cheeks turning as pink as they are in the picture but clearly from a very different emotion.

“So … did he even know you were pregnant?” I ask, the facts beginning to crystallize.