“Are you kidding? If I catch him up, then he’ll be really worried.”
“You don’t talk much, then?” Tony’s voice is neutral, his face in shadow. It’s impossible to tell whether he’s making polite conversation or really cares about the answer.
“Generally only about Elle.”
Relationship or no relationship, the idea of calling Greg while I’m sitting here with Tony feels wrong in my belly. I’m staring at his questions on the text screen, thinking about how to word a summary that won’t send him into a meltdown, when the phone starts buzzing again. This time the screen lights up with a call.
Accepting the inevitable, I answer.
I needn’t have worried about trying to be tactful; Greg is already having a supersonic meltdown.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Take a breath, Greg. There’s no cause for—”
“There is cause! There is plenty of cause! There is so much cause I could fill a corporate brief with it.”
“I’m fine. Elle is fine. We’ve just been—”
“Out. At a concert. With a guy you don’t even know. Are you out of your senses?”
He’s shouting. I know Tony can hear every word, but it’s too late to get out of the car and keep this private. Greg, to my knowledge, doesn’t shout at anybody else. He’s quiet. Controlled. Polite. The rages I rouse in him have always been a secret between us.
Not the good kind of secret, like birthday presents and surprises. Ours is a cloying, stifling, suffocating secret.
Normally I retreat in the face of his anger, but the distance between us and the presence of a strong protective male in the car with me is ridiculously liberating. Instead of hurrying to soothe, smooth, and calm the storming beast, an unruly little part of me perks up its pointed ears and takes control. Without conscious intent, I find myself mimicking his usual ultracalm, annoyingly rational tone of voice.
“We have actually and factually been out on family business. I’m confused as to why you’re so angry.”
“Are you freaking kidding me? Family business? Is that what you call going out on a date? You didn’t answer your phone, so I tried to call Walter, and some woman answered. She told me you were out at a concert and who you were at the concert with. Elle affirmed the facts just now. So don’t bother to lie to me.”
“I hadn’t realized that a concert is anathema. It was country music. Not even hard rock. No bats, no kittens, no blood.”
Greg’s voice lowers, but every syllable is emphasized for effect. There is probably spit on his phone. “A concert is fine under normal circumstances. You are there for your mother’s funeral. You left Walter home alone with a stranger. You took Elle out with people you don’t even know.”
Each one of his phrases fans the already blazing fires of guilt in my psyche. I’m about to lapse into a standard apology, when he ruins his whole rhetoric with the one-liner guaranteed to fuel my rebellion.
“What are people going to think?”
My mother used to ask the same question. And my answer to her has been the same for years. “I don’t know. What are they going to think?”
I imagine saying these words to Greg. Imagine his face congested with responding fury, that twisty blue vein on his left temple all puffed up like it gets during rush-hour traffic. I see his fingers twitch at the top button of his meticulous shirt, adjusting his perfectly coordinated tie.
I think of the way he constantly natters vague disapproval about my lifestyle, my parenting, my choices, and my lack of choices. The way he followed me after we broke up, first to Seattle, and then to Kansas City, with the eminently reasonable rationale that it’s best for Elle if we parent her together. No matter where I go or what I do, Greg is always there to highlight my insufficiencies and failures.
But I’m here now, for the foreseeable future. And I’ll be staying here as long as Dad needs me. Greg has Linda now, and the baby. It won’t make sense for him to pack up his family and his thriving practice and move back to Smalltownsville to keep an eye on me.
This thought emboldens me to ignore the warning signs, to shush the guilt, to push on.
I match his tone, inflection for inflection. “I don’t know, Greg, what are they going to think? More importantly, what are they going to think when they find out that Walter isn’t actually my father, and that I have a twin sister named Marley who lives in the TriCities and sings in a country band?”
Silence on the other end of the phone. Carefully controlled breathing.
When he speaks again, he’s reverted to his courtroom voice, the one he uses on unreliable witnesses. I can picture him sending meaningful glances to the invisible jury presiding over my case. Perhaps a slight headshake before leaning toward me, a calm, condescendingly sympathetic expression plastered to his face.
“Listen, Maisey. I came down hard on you. I know you’re under a lot of stress. Do you think maybe your imagination is running away with you?”
What he means is, Have you finally lost your marbles? Are you batshit crazy insane? Would a little R&R in a mental institution help to restore you to reason?
I take a steadying breath and press on. “I found two birth certificates, one mine and one made out for my sister, Marley. Walter wasn’t the parental name on either of them. Oh, and I found a gun in my mother’s knitting bag, and I think that, yes, going to my sister’s concert and trying to talk to her counts as family business.”
Again with the silence and the controlled breathing. “I’ll have my mom come over, shall I? To check in on you? Just to be sure . . .”
“I’m not crazy, Greg. I resent the implication. Your mother disapproves of me, and she wasn’t precisely friendly with my mother. So please don’t.”
“Maisey . . .” His voice rises again.
Tony is quick, too quick for me to stop him. He grabs the phone from my shaking hand.
“Greg? Hi. This is Tony. You are not helping. Maybe call her back when you’re calmer.” Tony pushes End Call, cutting off Greg midsplutter. “You could block him,” he says.
“I could—what?” The idea is incomprehensible and foreign.
“Block him. If he’s harassing you.”
I shake my head to try and clear it. “It’s not harassment, really. He’s worried about Elle. We share custody. I can’t exactly not talk to him.”
The atmosphere in the car, despite the calm night outside, feels electric. My hair rises on the back of my neck.
“Give me my phone, Tony. I have to call him back and explain.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“You don’t understand! He’s an attorney. He could take Elle.” My voice breaks. I fan my face with my hand, waving back tears and trying to stop a weird gasping for air that my body has started, as if all the oxygen in the world will never be enough.
Tony deflates. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry. I just—God, I hate guys who do that shit to women. Can’t ever learn to keep my mouth shut.”
“It’s okay. I—it was nice to have somebody stand up for me. And I can see why you’d think that about him. But he’s a good father. And he doesn’t usually shout like that.”
“It’s just that tone he was using, making you feel stupid. You don’t deserve that.”
Which is when the memory hits me, right between the eyes with enough force to knock me backward against the seat.
It’s no longer Tony sitting behind the steering wheel. It’s Greg.
It’s late, winter late, and already dark by at least three hours. Snow gathers on the windshield faster than the wipers swish it away.
Chuff. Chuff. Chuff.
We’re parked at the corner of the lot, and the glare of the gas station lights stops short of me, in the passenger seat, illuminating only Greg’s face so that he looks disembodied, insubstantial.
“When, Maisey? You keep putting this off and the baby will be our flower girl.”
My hand goes automatically to my belly. In response I feel the flip, flip, of the baby growing in my womb. She feels like a fish, a tiny fish growing in a dark, private place that belongs, so far, only to me.