“Why didn’t you call me,” I whisper.
There’s a pause, the creak of bedsprings. When he speaks again, he is in another part of the house with deeper acoustics. “I guess I really didn’t know what to say,” he says.
I feel a little of my anger slough off. He’s being sincere, and there’s no one as sincere as Teddy when he’s being straight with you. That’s the thing about sincerity. It never fails to feel like someone trusting you with a valuable.
“I’m sorry about Mel,” he says. “I really am. It’s absolutely miserable.”
“Thank you.”
“Does Tatum know you’re using his phone?” I hear him rise and move elsewhere. The old kitchen. A door closes.
“He’s asleep.”
“Are you okay?”
“Ugh.”
“I don’t know what ugh means.”
“Do you really care to know?”
“Did I not ask you, Sharon?” There’s an edge now.
“Why didn’t you call?”
“It’s interesting that you seem to feel I owe you something, Sharon,” he says, voice lowering to a hiss. “That’s why I didn’t call you. Your overwhelming sense of entitlement. Despite the fact that I was worried sick about you after you were arrested running through traffic in your goddamn bathrobe. You know, I actually went by the carriage house to apologize.”
My stomach shrivels.
“You were gone. And thank God you were. Because you didn’t deserve an apology. At the end of the day, it wouldn’t have been worth the trouble. It would have set a really dangerous precedent, letting you get away with something like that.”
“What did I do,” I cry.
He grows louder. “You—” There’s a pause, an intake of breath. A confirmation, if I ever needed one, that someone else is there, that he is engaged, that she is there with him and he doesn’t want her hearing any of this. “You made a movie and you put me in it against my wishes. And it is obviously me, Sharon.”
“Did you see it?” I ask him.
“I saw the parts I needed to.”
In Irrefutable Love, Teddy is my young, nameless co-conspirator in opening the trunk, and he is also the unnamed man I meet in my journey through the forest, the man the boy became, the one with whom I climb into an oak’s knothole and descend into a warm red cubbyhole, where we wrap our legs around each other and drift through the air, spinning lazily, a moment’s respite from being pursued. I couldn’t help it. He was, in a way, everywhere I looked; his face bloomed when I placed pencil to paper.
In the movie, he disappears, as if he were dreamed; I awaken outside the oak, the thunder of footsteps approaching, and am forced to run again. It was a section we’d considered cutting, of course, but at day’s end, even Mel, with a peculiar, grudging twist to her mouth, had to admit that the scene added a certain softness to the whole—that it gave the journey out of the woods some hope, some solace.
“There’s a version of me out there that I have no control over,” he finally says. “Even when I specifically told you no, you went ahead and did it anyway. And when you did that, you chose Mel. Okay? Which is what she wanted all along. She could talk you into dancing on burning coals, Sharon. You could never say no to her.”
I slide down to the floor, speechless. My mind flashes on him and Mel sitting across the table from each other in the kitchen, glowering behind their wineglasses. I know he’s not wrong. I put my head in my hands and say the only thing I can think of:
“I can hear her.”
“Hear who.”
“Your fiancée. When were you going to get around to telling me about her?”
“Never. Not if I could help it.”
I feel a cool wash of unpleasantness bleed through my belly. I can’t see for a moment. It hurts that badly.
“This is why I didn’t call,” he says. “We are at an impasse, Sharon. There’s nothing left to say.”
We’re at an impasse. If the man has one weakness, it is this: forever picking the wrong moment for sanctimony. I feel my temper spike through, hot and sharp. I go for the grenade. “You wanna know why I left Kentucky? My mother finally broke down and told me the truth. I’m illegitimate. And guess who my biological father is? Your dad. Because my life is just that much of a sideshow. We just committed biblical incest. You have a good one. Ted.”
He makes a choking noise. I hang up.
In the other room, Ryan and Tatum blink at me sleepily. I hand Tatum his phone. “Sorry,” I tell him.
“Is that true?” Ryan says.
“What, that Teddy’s dad is also my dad? Maybe.”
There’s a moment of quiet, then Tatum spouts an incredulous chain of dudes. Ryan yells, Gross, you did it with someone you’re related to and Tatum affirms, Dude.
I collapse into a chair, an empty gnawing in my chest. Teddy’s right. He doesn’t owe me anything.
—
Back in Park Slope, Mom comes into the living room and slaps my sketchbook down. “You’ve never drawn a picture of me.”
“I drew you from the eighties for Irrefutable Love.”
“I mean, like I am now.”
“I didn’t think you’d want me to draw you like you are now.”