And with that the waitress arrives, and I ask for a Death in the Afternoon—Hemingway’s hybrid of absinthe and champagne—because it feels entirely fitting for this moment in my life.
“What do you mean he’s my son?” I ask in a forced whisper, hissing the words across the table so that only Kat can hear. I look around the bar to be sure that I don’t know anyone here, that a neighbor or Jan my hygienist isn’t sitting at the booth behind me, eavesdropping on my conversation with Kat. “He can’t possibly be my son,” I say, but I’m no idiot. I know in my heart that he can be my son. Kat and I were stupid teenagers, the kind who believed nothing bad could ever happen to us. Sometimes we got caught up in the moment; we didn’t always take precautions. We didn’t play things safe.
“That night,” she tells me, as under the table her knee presses into mine, and I pull back. “That night before you left for college. My parents had gone to the ballet,” she says, and she stops then. She need not say more. I nod my head slowly. I know. I remember. They’d gone to see Coppélia, and after they left I stopped by to say my goodbyes. It was Kat’s parents’ anniversary, and so they planned to stay in the city for the night, at the Four Seasons. It wasn’t the kind of thing they ever did, but that night they were celebrating twenty-five years, and so it was something out of the ordinary, something special, and Kat and I decided to celebrate something special, too. Kat had a bottle of Goldschl?ger that she’d taken from her parents’ liquor cabinet, knowing it was something they didn’t drink and wouldn’t miss. Kat and I had never been alone together for so long. We took the bottle to her bedroom, doing things slowly for once, feeling like we had all the time in the world. In the morning I awoke and boarded a plane bound for Chicago; three days later Steve took over my spot in Kat’s life.
“How can you be sure he’s mine?” I ask, and I hate the words even as they come out, this shirking of responsibility. It isn’t me. But twelve years ago is a long time. If Kat had called me up twelve years ago and told me she was pregnant, things would have been different.
I don’t wait for her reply. “Why now?” I ask, feeling irate. “Why are you telling me this now?”
In the corner of the room is a TV. On the screen are sportscasters, wagering their bets on tonight’s NBA finals game. My eyes putter to it to see that the odds are not in the Warriors’ favor. The favorite for tonight is the Cleveland Cavaliers, the team with the home advantage, and at this my hands turn clammy and my heart sinks. The room starts closing in on me as I think of the hole I’ve dug myself into, financial and otherwise. All these secrets I’ve kept from Clara that I can’t now confess, after the fact. The fiscal state of the business, firing Connor, my reunions with Kat. Two of them now. Two reunions with Kat. Two times I’ve seen a former girlfriend, the mother of my child—my other child—and I’ve never mentioned them to Clara.
The waitress meanders by, and I ask for another drink, Jack and Coke this time, which I down like it’s ice water and I’ve just been on a five mile run. I’ve begun to sweat. There is a countdown on the corner of the TV screen, reminding me that it’s eighteen minutes until tip-off. Eighteen minutes until I win or lose all that matters to me in the world.
“I don’t know if I can stay with Steve,” Kat tells me, adducing the number of arguments they’ve had lately as the reason she can’t stay. He’s under a lot of pressure, she says, with a new job, and he’s taking it out on her and Gus. “His temper,” she adds on. “He’s always short of patience, with me, with Gus. He has a short fuse. And he’s never home. He’s always gone. Always working.” She reaches a hand across the table to touch mine, and I quickly disengage, pulling back and placing my hands in my lap so that she can’t reach them. “Gus needs a father figure in his life. A father. He’s twelve years old. I don’t know the first thing about raising twelve-year-old boys.”
I shake my head quickly. I can’t do this. This can’t be happening to me. “I already have a family, Kat. A wife, and a child. Two children. I love them,” I say. “I love my wife—I love Clara. You kept this from me all these years, and now you just expect me to slip into the role of father? I can’t do that,” I insist, smacking my hands on the table too loudly, so that a man at the table behind us turns to see. “Don’t you get that? Don’t you see? I have a family.”
It’s all coming at me so quickly now, my life spiraling out of control. I place my head in my hands to make it stop, but it doesn’t stop. In fact, the world keeps spinning until I feel like I could be sick.
“We were happy once, Nick,” she says. “Don’t you remember?” she asks, but instead of replying right away, I yank my wallet out of my pocket, find a twenty in it and lay it on the table.
“We were kids, Kat. We were stupid kids,” I say as I stand quickly, telling her we’ll talk about this later, that I have to go. “I’m in love with Clara now,” I stammer. “Clara is my wife.”
I hurry away, mumbling over and over again to myself as I leave, I already have a family. I already have a family.
“Nick,” she calls after me as I push past people out of the bar and into the oppressive June air. I clamber into my car, the inside nearing a hundred degrees in the evening sun.
How will I tell this to Clara? How will I explain? Not only is Kat informing me of my paternity of a twelve-year-old boy, but she’s telling me she wants me to be a father figure—an actual father—in Gus’s life. What do I do? Give her money and tell her no? I have no money to give to her.
Clara will leave me. Clara will leave me if she knows.
I can’t live without Clara. Clara, Maisie and my baby boy. These are the only things that matter. I turn on the car and start to drive. I spin out of the parking lot, needing to get away, the tires skidding as I press down hard on the accelerator, the engine moving faster than the tires can go, leaving black marks on the concrete. I pull out onto the highway and floor it home, the world coming at me quickly, trees blending together into a mass of green, buildings and houses becoming one. All I want is to be home.
Evening traffic is a mess as always, scores of cars lined up at red lights going nowhere. I watch as other drivers check incoming texts on their phones. They listen to the radio, bebop music turned all the way up, the heavy bass making their cars shake. We sit frozen in a line, and my patience starts to thin. The train has no doubt stopped on the tracks again, making it impossible to get to the west end of town, where I need to go. Where Clara is, and where Maisie is. Home. I picture them sitting side by side on the sofa, waiting for me. I’m coming, I think, and then, when the traffic finally starts to clear, I gun the engine and press down hard on the gas. I swerve in and out of cars to get to Clara and Maisie.