“You know how to run a Google search?”
“Sharon, I swear to God, do you think I’m stupid or something? Are you gonna explain this? Are you making some sort of cartoon out of us? Why’d they write this?”
I hold my hands out, take a deep breath. “This is a blog. The last movie did okay. They’ve been talking about us more. Someone caught wind of some gossip and they decided to post it. And our agent let them post it, because she figured it was good press.”
Her bifocals slip down her nose. She fumbles them off. “So they just made it up? Well, that ain’t legal, putting out lies like that about people.”
“Well, it’s not an out-and-out lie.”
“So you are making a movie out of us?”
“It’s not about you,” I tell her. “It’s about me.”
“That is making a movie out of us.”
“It is not. Why are you hell-bent on believing that anything that has to do with me also has to do with you?”
“Because it does.”
“That’s right. You’re the goddamn center of the universe.”
“Watch your mouth.”
“It’s not illegal,” I say. “Publishing a half-truth on a blog is sloppy, but it’s not illegal.”
She exhales hard through her nostrils. “You best stop correcting me. I don’t care if you’ve had a stroke or not, it don’t give you the right to come in here and set me straight wherever the hell you think I go wrong. And after you disappear for near on three months.”
I’d forgotten the bleeding, limping endurance race that is arguing with my mother. I raise my hands and let them slap down to my sides. “I don’t know what to say to you that’s not gonna hit a nerve, Mom. I piss you off with almost everything I do. Either that or I amuse you with how dumb, or weird, or pretentious I am. Why do you think I come home so rarely? Or why I didn’t call you when I almost died? ‘You had a stroke? Well, what’d you do that for?’?”
She blinks at me.
“Just once, I’d like to feel like I’m a part of this family. I’ve just had one of the worst weeks of my life. Would it kill you to ease up for once?”
“What happened,” she demands.
“Listen to you! My God, your tone, Mom. It’s like getting punched in the face.”
“I’ll talk if you quit yelling at me,” she says. “I’ll talk when you finish yelling at your mother.”
I stare at her.
“Four years,” she says. “That’s how long it had been since you were home, before this.”
“And I just outlined why.”
“If I’d spent four years away from home, your mamaw would have died of a broken heart.”
“Funny. You appear to be alive.”
“You best shut that smart mouth up.”
I feel my face flush. “Don’t talk to me that way,” I tell her. “And don’t you dare pretend your interest in my life and what I do is larger than it actually is. You didn’t come to my college graduation. You thought the first cartoons we ever made were a joke. There were second and third cousins who knew Dad was dead before I did. How was that supposed to make me feel? I never even got a fucking explanation from you for that.”
“He wasn’t your father,” she yells.
Everything stops. My stomach settles somewhere around my feet. “What?”
The glow from the laptop flickers out. She reaches over and smacks it shut. She’s gone too far to go back, and she knows it.
“What did you just say,” I repeat.
Mom goes recalcitrant, now, her voice small and wavery. “He was mad at me,” she says. “Daddy. But he loved you anyways. Loved you enough to sign the birth certificate.” She starts to fidget with her glasses.
I shift off my bad leg, wobbling. Stunned. I hear Mel cough in the next room. “Are you being serious,” I say.
“Sharon, please.” Mom’s voice breaks. “I’m so sorry.”
“Who else knows.”
“Nobody.”
It’s coming to me, in bits and pieces. I think of Allen, behind the church, during the funeral. I think of the great aunt who hugged Shauna, but merely grasped my hand, avoiding my eye. Dad at the dinner table, studying my face—at ten or eleven years old—as if trying to figure something out. His youngest, the most alien from him, the most distant. Whole worlds between us.
“No no,” I say slowly. “You know Dad told people. He could get pretty chatty when he was wasted, remember? He told Uncle Allen. That I do know. That stupid fuck had it written all over his face whenever I was in the room. Probably the rest of his brothers, too. That’s why they were always such dicks to me. They were fucking mean, Mom. They were downright ugly to me when I was a kid.”
“Buncha sleazy hillbilly assholes. You shouldnta paid them any attention.”
“I was a kid.”
“I wanted to protect you,” she says.
“Well, you did a crap job.”
“It was for your own good, to not know,” she says louder. “How would it feel to grow up a little girl, knowing your daddy maybe wasn’t yours?”
“It felt fairly fucking shitty, that’s how.”
She flaps a hand at me. “Oh, you didn’t know.”
“I always knew something was wrong,” I hiss.