“So? I brought you guys stuff. I brought you drinks and ice cream and all I wanted was to maybe play cards or listen to you talk or anything. But you and your friends never liked me. So I was wondering why. If it was something specific.”
Jack sat back and crossed his arms, grinning at Melody like she was telling a particularly excellent joke. He started to laugh, but her expression became so raw, so Melody-walking-wounded that he stopped. “Mel,” he said, putting a hand over hers. “They didn’t hate you. You were adorable, stumbling over the grass in your saggy two-piece bathing suit, carrying a pitcher of warm lemonade or melting Popsicles that tasted like freezer burn. You were adorable.”
Melody stared down at her half-eaten sandwich. She couldn’t look at Jack. She was mortified now that she’d brought the whole thing up and mortified to hear his take on her pilgrimages across the grass and particularly mortified that hearing him say “you were adorable” made her so happy.
He continued and his voice lost its usual sardonic edge. “Whatever happened—under the pines—it wasn’t about you or liking you or not liking you. That’s just crazy. I was seventeen. I didn’t want to have you around because I had a twenty-four-hour erection. I didn’t want my little sister there.”
“Gross.”
“Exactly. Think of it as a different form of brotherly love. Is that what you’ve been obsessing about because of Nora? Whether you have some kind of built-in gay repellent?”
“No. I’m just thinking. I want to do the right thing. I want to understand and be supportive, but I’m scared. I don’t know what she needs anymore, how she feels.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I don’t, Jack, I don’t. I never wanted a girl—”
“You do know,” he insisted. He stood and gathered the garbage from lunch and shoved it into an empty grocery bag. “You wish she weren’t gay,” he said, calmly.
“Yes. I’m sorry. I’m not saying that to be hurtful. I don’t want her life to be any harder than life already is. I don’t know how to smooth the way for this, make it easier. I don’t know what to say or what to think or how to behave and I don’t know who to talk to. Except you.”
Jack was staring out the window of the shop, tapping his fingers impatiently against a display case. “Walker wanted children,” he finally said.
“Really?”
“I was nervous about the whole thing. You know me. He wanted to adopt and all I could think about was how do we know what we’re getting? It seems like such a crapshoot. How does the kid know? Nobody signs up for two gay fathers. It seemed like such an easy thing to fuck up. Walker would always say I was overthinking. He would always say, ‘There’s a reason they call it giving custody. Parents are temporary custodians, keeping watch and offering love and trying to leave the child better than they found him. Do no harm.’ That’s what Walker would say anyway. I don’t know if it helps.”
“It helps a little,” she said.
“Just another example of my selfishness, according to Walker as he walked out the door.”
“Not wanting to adopt?”
“Yes.”
Melody thought for a minute. Why was it so easy to wound the people you loved the most? She pointed to an art deco bar cart a few feet away with crystal bottles filled with a dark liquid. “Is that real alcohol?” she said.
“It most certainly is,” Jack said. “Are you suggesting a drink? Because if you are, you are my favorite person in New York right now.”
“Yes,” she said.
Jack filled half their plastic cups with scotch and they sat and sipped in a companionable silence for a few minutes.
“I don’t think you were being selfish,” Melody said.
“About adopting?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think you were being thoughtful and cautious and honestly airing your concerns. Having kids isn’t easy.”
“I know!”
“Don’t get me wrong; it’s great and I think you and Walker would have been great parents—if you both wanted it. But it’s not for everyone.” She finished her scotch and poured a little more. She was building some alcohol-fueled momentum. “Do no harm.” She laughed. “It sounds so, so easy, but do you know what else is easy? Doing harm! Accidentally doing harm is distressingly easy. I don’t think you were being selfish. I think you were being realistic.”
Jack watched Melody, amused. He wasn’t surprised she was a cheap date in the booze department, but what she said also resonated with him—and made him feel better. “Tell that to Walker,” Jack said, joking.
“I’ll tell him.” Melody straightened. “Where is he? He thinks being a parent is so easy, such a cakewalk? Get him on the phone. I’ll tell Mr. Attorney just how easy it is. Where is he?”