“When Grethe died?” Grethe. “About one. My son remarried just a few months later. They had Greg soon after. You see, for the first few years, it was me who insisted that we tell Jack nothing about Grethe. I thought he could have a normal life, believing that Caroline was his mother and he had lost nothing. But Caroline was never fond of him, and . . . well, it was her right to refuse. I shouldn’t have interfered. Because I made it worse: a few years later he got into some trouble like children often do, and Caroline screamed at him, ‘Don’t call me Mom—I’m not your mother.’ It was a moment of weakness. And Caroline did feel guilty afterwards. But by then, Jack knew.” She sighs. “Hard to explain to a nine-year-old that everything he believes is a lie. That he shouldn’t call Mom the woman his brother calls Mom.” Millicent massages her temple. “Jack seemed to take it in stride. Except that he stopped calling his father Dad, too. I became Millicent. And ever since, he’s been very distrustful of lies. Very preoccupied with . . . boundaries. More than is healthy, I believe.” She busies herself stacking mugs on top of the empty cookie plate. For the first time since I met her, she looks her age. Frail, old, tired. Her mouth is downturned, bracketed by deep lines. “And yet Jack and Greg grew up thick as thieves, despite all that. The one saving grace.”
I remember Jack taking care of Greg after the dentist, and my heart squeezes. I try to picture them as kids, picture Jack being anything but his tall, assured, authoritative self, and fail miserably.
“Are you sure she . . . Grethe.” I want to ask if Turner was her last name. The reason Jack’s a Smith but not really a Smith. “Are you sure she was a theorist?” Physics runs in Jack’s family, when the only thing that runs in mine is eczema.
“Why do you ask?”
“Just . . . Jack doesn’t seem to like theorists very much.”
Millicent gives me a look. “He likes you, doesn’t he?”
She speaks like I’m the least sharp cookie in the jar, and I flush. “But he once wrote an article that—”
“Oh, that.” She chuckles, like it’s a fond family memory. First day of kindergarten, meeting Goofy at Disneyland, and that time her grandson sent an entire field of study into a tailspin. “That had nothing to do with theoretical physics. He was just a teenager acting out, angry because of what he’d found out about Grethe. But he’s a man now. A good one. Too bad I can’t leave him my money, or he’ll just divide it up between the rest of my ungrateful family.”
“What had he found out about Grethe?” Was the entire Smith-Turner Hoax about his mom? Did he . . . hate her? Was it some sort of revenge on her for . . . for what? Dying? It’s too ridiculous. “Did he write the article because of her?”
I must be asking too many questions. Millicent’s expression shifts, first to guarded, then to vacuous. “I forget,” she says with a ditzy shrug, even though she doesn’t. Millicent, I’m certain, hasn’t forgotten a single thing in her life—not Greg’s name, and certainly not what led Jack to be who he is today. “Jack will tell you. When you’ve been together long enough.”
“No, we . . . Really, Jack and I are not—we’re not doing it,” I say. My brain cringes so hard, it folds in on itself.
“Oh, I know. This is something else altogether, isn’t it?”
“It’s nothing at all. We’re not even friends.”
“Right.” Her tone is almost . . . pitying? “Well, you’ll figure it out in your own time.”
“Figure out what?”
“DVD player’s all set,” Jack announces, emerging in the doorway, “and I’ve left detailed instructions on how to switch to the next season, since the ones I wrote last week are gone.”
“Oh, yes. I had to throw the notepad at your aunt Maureen when she said my green pullover was too bright.”
“Of course, you had to. Can I drive Elsie home now? Or is the abduction still ongoing?”
Millicent huffs. “Do take her, please. I’m sick of both of you. You’re not nearly as entertaining as Jessica Fletcher.”
She kicks us out as unceremoniously as she welcomed us in, making a symphony of faux-irritated noises that are belied by how hard she clings to Jack’s hug.
“I’ll stop by later to shovel some snow,” he promises.
“Fine, but do not come in. I’ll be busy with my show.”
“I know.” He kisses her forehead. “Be good till next weekend. Have fun writing spite wills.”
“I shall,” she says defiantly before slamming the door in our faces.
“Does she really?” I ask on our way to the car. The snow crunches under our feet.
“What?”
“Write wills for spite.”
“Probably.”
“Why?”
“Pettiness. Boredom. Loneliness. When I was sixteen, my father made a comment about her roast being dry, and she pledged a million dollars to a bunny shelter.”
“God. Why?”
“It’s a vicious cycle. Most of my family does seem to gravitate around her because of the money, which is why Millicent wields it like a weapon. But that doesn’t endear her to the family members who are normal human beings and believe that threatening to vengefully pledge your estate to JPMorgan Chase just to make a point might be pushing it too far.”
“Is Greg one of the decent ones?”
“Greg’s the most decent, but he prefers to avoid Millicent altogether. He likes it when people get along, which cannot happen if she’s in a given quantum space.”
“Like Pauli’s exclusion principle.” We exchange a smile next to the passenger seat of the car. “You like her, though.”
“She’s an absolute monster. But she does burrow into you after thirty or so years,” he says fondly. “Like a tick.”
I laugh, my breath a gust of white in the space between us. “Should we explain to her that I wasn’t really dating Greg?”
“Nah. Millicent’s too busy launching feces wars to care about any of that.”
“You . . .” I try to sound casual. “Do you always call her Millicent?”
“It’s her name.”
“I mean, why not Grandma, or Gram, or Granny, or Mawmaw—”
“Mawmaw?”
“Whatever. Babushka. Maternal Forebear.”
Jack’s expression goes inscrutable. “It’s good, calling people by their names. It minimizes misunderstandings.” I think I see a split second of hesitation, like maybe he’s thinking of saying more, but it’s fleeting, swiftly gone in the glistening snow. “Come on. I’ll take you home before your roommate sends out an Amber Alert.”
I nod, because I do need to sort out the mess that is my life in a Smith-free space. But then something occurs to me: the rest of my life is going to be a Smith-free space.
A Jack-free space.
I’ll probably never see him again. Why would I? The circles we move in are a Venn diagram with little overlap. Maybe we’ll meet at a physics conference two years down the road, when I’m still an adjunct teaching forty classes a week and he’s workshopping his Nobel lecture. But my arrangement with Greg is likely over, which means that this is it. The last time I’ll see Jack. This man, this maddening, impossible, space-taking man who seems to know me despite all that I do to not be known, will be gone from my life.
I should be eager to go back to simpler times, when I used to spend zero hours a week in his company and my brain wasn’t made of guacamole, but . . . what a waste. What a surprisingly terrifying perspective.
And that’s why I stop him with a tug on the sleeve of his coat. Why I open my mouth and say with no forethought, no premeditation, and a lot of reckless panic, “Youcantakemeout.”
It comes out with no pauses or intonation, just a bunch of sounds smooshed together. Which Jack, judging by the knot between his brows, did not understand.
I clear my throat. Take a deep breath. “If you still want to. And if it’s okay with Greg. You can take me out.”
Jack just stares, motionless, reactionless, for way too long. “Take you out . . . in the mob way?”
“No. No! That’s not at all what I—” I blush. I’m cold and tired and my head hurts and I have no idea what I’m doing and why won’t he understand? “I can come to your place. I can take you out.”
He nods. Slowly. “In the mob way.”
“No, I—” I notice it, the amused gleam in his eyes, like he knows exactly what I’m trying to say. I press my lips together, because I don’t want to encourage him, I don’t want to smile, but I’m about to. “I hate you.”
“Sure you do.”
“Why is everything so difficult with you?”
“I like to keep you on your toes.”
“Listen—let’s hang out,” I say. This feels foolhardy. Ill advised. Exciting. “Just . . . try. See what happens. Would that be okay?”
“It would,” he says after a brief pause. “Under one condition.”
I frown. “Making demands already?”
“Always.” His mouth twitches, but he’s back to his opaque self. “If we do this . . . when you’re with me, I need you to be honest. No pretending you’re someone else. No trying to be whatever you think it is that I want. You say what you think. And when you can’t, at least let yourself think it. No lies, Elsie.” His jaw sets. “Just you.”
I nod. And then I realize that I have no idea how to do that, and I laugh, a little sad, a lot terrified. “I can try.”
He nods. “That’s enough for now.”
“You should be honest, too,” I add. “No lies on your end, either.”
“I don’t lie often,” he says simply. Hearing it makes me think of what Millicent said about his past, and my heart clenches. I’ve seen Jack being brutally, needlessly honest. Lying, not so much. “And I can’t see myself lying to you.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I don’t,” he admits. He studies my face for several moments, like he cannot stop on the cover or the first page, like he needs to read the whole book every time. Then he leans into me, and the icy chill of the morning melts away in his heat. My eyes catch on his cheekbones. The line of his jaw, so sharp it could cut a heart. His lips are full and upturned, a start of that lopsided smile of his that makes me angry and weak-kneed, and . . .