‘Relieved?’ He blinked.
‘Yeah.’ I sniffed through tears. This was the big secret he’d been keeping from me, the one I’d built and built and built up. This was the thing I’d worried about, the big evidence that glowed red and made everything in the experiment fall into place. I would look through a microscope, and there it would be, showing me everything. And this was it. It just didn’t seem that scary.
‘Huh.’ My father sounded pleasantly surprised, but also confused, uncertain, as if he wasn’t sure what emotion would erupt out of me next.
‘So, does she know she’s your…?’ I sounded out a d, but couldn’t finish the word.
He paused. ‘I don’t know. And I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter. She had a good childhood, a good life. Mark raised her. He remarried. She grew up in Colorado. Most of her childhood she was climbing mountains, breathing clean air.’
‘I thought you’d been talking to Mom. I thought that’s what this was about.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh. Oh.’
A few things floated down the river. A Coke can. Driftwood. Gum wrappers. We could hear the cars on the BQE rumbling beneath us, swishing to far-flung parts of Brooklyn. My father must have been thinking of the BQE, too, because he said, ‘Our first apartment here was right by a BQE overpass, out near the Tennis Bubble in Prospect Park. Your mother hated it.’
‘She did?’
He nodded. ‘She wanted to be in New York City proper, not Brooklyn. And especially that neighborhood. It was full of old Italian women wearing headscarves. And car thieves. Every morning, we would have coffee and look out the window, and we’d see these guys drive a car up to a spot in front of our building, get out, and start ravaging through the trunk. Sometimes they’d leave the car there. And then the car would sit there until someone finally towed it away. It would take days, but then the tow truck would come, and if we were home we’d both watch it. Once, the tow truck screwed up, and ripped a car’s fender right off. Your mom thought it was just awful. She always threatened to call the police but she never did.’
My father had a faraway look on his face. ‘She cried a lot, those first few years. She was so scared.’
‘She was scared?’
‘Everything about New York scared her. The subways, the people, the noise, the muggers, Times Square…everything. It was overwhelming to her.’
The idea of anything scaring my mother was unfathomable.
‘It was a big change,’ my father said. ‘Everyone’s afraid of big changes.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘We had fun, though. Once we moved here, to this apartment, and had Steven. He had the buildings on the skyline memorized by the time he was two. He knew exactly which companies occupied which building. He also knew the distance from the Promenade to the East River, down to the last inch.’
‘That sounds like Steven.’
‘Yeah,’ my father said. He swung his feet in front of him, almost kicking the Promenade’s wrought-iron fence. ‘There used to be times where I thought everything was perfect. Where I convinced myself nothing was wrong.’
I looked at him. ‘So you always knew something was wrong?’
‘I don’t know. No. Maybe. Maybe I was deluding myself. Maybe I do that a lot.’
I turned my hands over, considered my thoughts. ‘Do you think you’re deluding yourself with Rosemary?’
He thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think so. I guess I’m an optimist. I still believe things can work. It’s scary to try, but you have to try, don’t you think?’
I stared at him, my eyes frozen. ‘Maybe,’ I whispered.
A series of horns sounded out from the BQE. When they finished, I asked, ‘When Mom called you back when the towers were hit, did she tell you where she was living?’
He shook his head. ‘She just called to see if I was okay. She didn’t say anything else. Actually, I said I’d call her back. But I was in such a state that day, I didn’t get her number.’
‘It’ll probably be another ten years before she calls again.’
‘Probably.’ He stretched out, crossing his ankles. ‘It’s a strange way to live, surfacing only every once in a while to check in on this huge part of her life. It reminds me of dolphins, or maybe whales. One of those can remain under the water for huge amounts of time, holding and holding and holding their breath. It makes me claustrophobic just thinking about it.’
‘Me too,’ I said quietly.
‘But that’s her way of living. It’s not ours, is it?’