“You really have to finish all my sentences? Look, after a certain age, communicating gets harder. And between love and friendship, things can get mixed up. Let’s play your theory out, and you’ll see it doesn’t fit. Imagine our mothers were in love and decided to have a child together through an anonymous donor. Your mum gets pregnant—and mine just abandons her?”
“What is it about this that doesn’t fit?” he asked, as a car honked behind us.
“Hey, step on it, will you? Don’t you hear the beeping behind you? I know men are no good at multitasking, but listening and driving at the same time isn’t exactly brain surgery. Even my dad can pull that off, and no one’s more easily distracted than him.”
George-Harrison stepped on the accelerator and crossed the junction, then quickly pulled over to the side of the road.
“How old are you?” I asked him.
“Thirty-five.”
“Date of birth?”
“July 4, 1981.”
“Well, then—there you have it. Your theory doesn’t work. My mother was already back in England when your mother got pregnant with you, by my calculations.”
“Men are no good at multitasking, huh? What else do you have against men?”
“Are you planning on parking, or are we just going sit here with the engine on?”
“We’re parked, right in front of the place where we’re having breakfast. Come on. A cup of coffee would do you a world of good.”
Without glancing at the menu, George-Harrison ordered eggs Benedict with extra toast, extra bacon, and a large orange juice. Something about that made me smile. I stuck with just tea, figuring I could scavenge some toast. There was no earthly way he would actually clean his plate.
“Since it turns out that I’m not the tragic mistake my mother was referring to,” he said, with a crooked grin, “just what do you think she meant? I’m guessing your mother never mentioned—”
“My mother never talked about that period of her life, and we knew better than to ask questions. She was an orphan and there was a lot of pain in her past. We tried to tread lightly, out of respect. Or, to tell you the truth, maybe it was more out of fear than respect.”
“Fear of what?”
“Of . . . pulling back the curtain and finding something else there.”
“Like what? I don’t understand.”
“Something other than her children. And how about you? What do you know of your mother’s past?”
“I know she was born in Oklahoma, that her dad was a mechanic and her mother was a housewife. My grandfather was as tough as nails, and a bit stingy when it came to affection. Mom told me that he would never hug or touch any of his kids, using all the grease and grit on his hands as an excuse, not wanting to get dirt on them. The only thing tougher than him was growing up in Oklahoma. Maybe people didn’t really know how to . . . show their feelings to their kids that well back in those days. Mom took off to New York when she was still young, her head buzzing with all the books she’d read as a kid. She made it sound like books were the best part of her childhood. She got a job as a secretary at a publishing house and went to night school for journalism at NYU. I know she applied to every newspaper up and down the East Coast and got work as an archivist. Then she left the United States and started a new life in Montreal—right around the time she had me.”
“Did you know she lived in Baltimore in the late seventies?”
“No, not at all. She only talked about New York. But if I asked even the slightest thing about the period just before she had me, she would clam up or lash out and we’d end up at each other’s throats. Where exactly are you going with this?”
“I don’t really know, just a tangent.”
“Is the treasure what you’re after?”
“I didn’t even know it existed until about halfway through the flight over here. Crazy as it may sound, I found your mother’s letter in my jacket pocket while I was going through security.”
“Well, if your poison-pen can manage to slip a letter in your pocket, you should turn around and go look for him in London.”
“The poison-pen didn’t slip me the letter—my brother did. And what are you after in all this?”
“I just want to find my father, like I told you.”
“Any idea where to find the letters my mother wrote to yours?”
“Not a clue. Maybe they’re gone. How about the rest of the letters from my mom?”
“Same story,” I fibbed. “No clue where to find them, or if they even still exist. And to be honest, I have no clue about what to do next either.”
A long silence followed, with both of us staring down at the table, until George-Harrison asked me to sit tight for a minute and got up. He went outside and I caught sight of him through the window opening the door to his pickup. If he hadn’t left his jacket behind, I would’ve been afraid he was about to make a run for it. But he came back soon after, sat down, and slid a framed picture onto the table—the photo of our mothers from Sailor’s Hideaway.
“The owner doesn’t know the first thing about any of the photos on the walls. They were already hanging there when he bought the place. The kitchen is the only part that ever got updated. Aside from a fresh coat of paint, the rest of the place hasn’t changed.”