“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Denise said, her voice softening. “It’s your father.”
For a moment, neither woman spoke. The line between them was now weighted with meaning and consequence, and each one recomposed herself as she figured out the correct attitude with which to proceed.
“He had a heart attack, sweetie.”
“What?” Rachel said. “Are you crying?”
“It’s not an easy thing, Rachel.”
“I thought heart attacks were no big deal.”
“His heart just isn’t working right anymore. It’s all of the smoking,” Denise said. “Sweetheart, it’s not looking good. He’s on life support.”
At the words “life support,” Rachel let out a slight and, she hoped, inaudible gasp. “How do you know all of this?” She was trying to speak as little as possible for fear her voice might betray her.
“She called me today. She knows you’re at camp this summer.”
“She called you?”
“It’s really big of her,” Denise said, “that she would even keep us in the loop.”
“Gee,” Rachel said. “How generous.”
—
Denise was once a secretary at Rachel’s father’s law firm. Her mother was twenty-four when the relationship began; her father was forty-four. He was married—always had been, always would be, though Rachel was a young teenager when she finally understood this in a definitive way.
He had two children just a few years older than Rachel. Growing up, Rachel had been kept a secret from her father’s family. She had understood this unspoken truth as if it were part of the weather: because he wore a wedding ring, because the money always came in cash, because he took his phone calls outside, because their time together was always limited. They might have a nice weeknight dinner in the city, see a Broadway musical, take a day trip to the beach, but it was always just the two of them and never a week or a weekend, never an overnight. It worked for a while in its way, how he paid for the apartment and camp and gave Rachel whatever designer bag she asked for for her birthday. For an illegitimate father, he could have been worse.
It worked, until he thoughtlessly left her unmailed, unsealed sixteenth birthday card on his desk, in his family’s house in the suburbs, with the five hundred dollars cash inside.
The wife gave him an ultimatum: us or them. The kids, a boy and a girl, were away at college. Rachel imagined the wife—whom she’d never seen, whose name was never spoken—as a tiny, shrill lady, worn by her years of suspicions, becoming both scandalized and smug about having been proved right by the evidence at hand. Rachel imagined her standing in front of his home office, the money in her hand: “You can’t just keep bankrolling them when we have two Ivy tuitions to finish paying. What about our retirement? The home in Florida we’ve always wanted? How long could we have had that home by now?”
He gave Rachel and her mother one last wad of cash—a settlement of sorts—and went on his way.
Rachel’s secrecy had been so much a part of the deal that only when it was revealed as dirty, his presence revoked as a result of it, could she fully comprehend its power. How strange it was that she could threaten to ruin someone’s life—or several someones’ lives—by her mere existence.
The ultimatum happened just a week after Rachel had turned sixteen. Denise had only a high school diploma, but for Rachel, who went to a competitive New York City public school, college was around the corner. There was enough money for only one year’s tuition—maybe two, if she got a scholarship.
In a panic, Denise took a second job waitressing at an overpriced French restaurant on Columbus Avenue. The elderly Upper West Side couples were grumpy, but she made good money, especially on weekends.
One Sunday night about a month after her sixteenth birthday, Rachel was studying for her calculus midterm at the kitchen table when Denise came through the front door, slamming it behind her. Rachel looked up: Her mother’s white button-down was splattered with red sauce stains, and she was still wearing her apron around her waist. Denise dropped her purse loudly onto the kitchen counter and let out a frustrated groan.
When Rachel didn’t ask what was the matter, Denise took her jacket off and threw it on the floor. She untied her apron dramatically and threw that on the floor too.
“These fucking people,” she finally said, taking a wineglass from the cabinet above her head. “I wasn’t even supposed to work today. I cover for Sharon, of all people, and she doesn’t even tell me she was scheduled to work a double.” She took an unopened bottle of red wine from atop the fridge. Rachel waited with her pencil poised in her hand. She was averaging a B minus in calculus and needed an A on this test.
“And then”—Denise rummaged through a drawer to find a corkscrew—“one o’clock comes around, and get this: I get stuck with two four-tops, three two-tops, and a party of ten, including three fucking screaming kids flinging ketchup all over the goddamn place.” She poked the cork with the corkscrew and turned it hard. “They didn’t even make a reservation.”
She wriggled the cork until it came out of the bottle with a satisfying pop.
“I mean, what kind of French restaurant does brunch anyway? They don’t do brunch in France.” She poured the wine into the glass and lifted it to her mouth. “It’s a fucking rip-off, I’ll tell you that much,” she said, and took a sip.
Rachel looked down at her calculus textbook again. She could sense that Denise was standing with her hip against the counter, sipping her wine and looking at Rachel, and so she was not concentrating on the numbers in the book in front of her but instead feeling the profound annoyance of knowing her mother was watching her. Still, she did not look up.
“You eat yet?” Denise asked.
Rachel shook her head.
“You hungry? I brought back a burger. We could split it.”
“Go ahead,” Rachel said, standing. “I’ll eat later.” She closed her book and headed toward her room. “I’ve got to study.”
Rachel could feel that her mother had more to say. She waited on the threshold of her bedroom door for Denise to come after her, to yell, again, about how lucky Rachel was that she had a mother who didn’t make her get a part-time job, a mother who valued her daughter’s education, a mother who wanted her daughter to have all the opportunities that she hadn’t had herself. How lucky Rachel was that she had a mother who would work two jobs for her, despite that prick, that motherfucker, that dirty bastard who was trying to take away all their chances at something better.