“I am. What’s your idea for a game plan?”
“Well, I can rent a car. I just want a navigator. I have no idea where I’m going. I have no idea what to expect when I get there.” The turkey suddenly looks limp and slimy. Oh, God. Tomorrow I’ll meet my mother. It feels so weird to think about, to say, because my whole life, my mother has been Evelyn, although I haven’t called her Mom since I was fifteen. The word mother gets twisted around on my tongue, snagged in its own connotations. Who is more my mother? Caroline, who birthed me and left me? Or Evelyn, who rescued me and raised me? Who bought me my first bra, taught me about love and sex, and later, death. Why are the words mother and love synonymous?
“Expect the best, prepare for the worst?”
“Ha. That’s a Henry-ism.” I almost laugh.
“He’s a smart man.” We sit in silence for a moment while Cash chews. He dabs his mouth with a napkin and wipes a splotch of mayonnaise off the table. “Have you told him?”
I shake my head, averting my eyes. I don’t want to talk to Cash about Henry. I’m not na?ve, you don’t talk to another man about your marriage. “No. Not yet. I will. He’s been stressed about work lately. If it amounts to anything, I’ll tell him.”
“What do you expect?”
“I don’t know. Probably nothing?” I feel the lie slip around my mouth.
He nods and presses his forefinger into the tines of the fork. “It’s okay to want something, Zoe. I knew a man, back in Texas, dying of AIDS. He had no one, not one single person in the world who cared about him. His friends didn’t know how to handle a sick guy, and this was in the late nineties. Anyway, he read my article and he called me. Wanted to find his mother. Not his father, just his mother. He was raised by his father, a real son of a bitch. Anyway, it took me a few months, and I was racing the clock with this guy. Finally, I found her. I had concrete proof that it was her, there was no doubt in my mind. There still isn’t. Anyway, I called her, explain the whole situation. I tell her that her son, her flesh and blood, is dying in hospice care, not fifty miles from her house. Her response? She denies the whole thing. Says she never had a son, to never call her again, and hangs up on me. I kept calling for days. She never picked up the phone. He died a week later.”
I push away the tray. “Why did you tell me this story?”
Cash taps the fork twice on the table. “I don’t know. I guess it’s the one that stuck with me the most. The way you can deny your own child that way.”
“Right. You’re not helping.”
He laughs. “I’m sorry. I have a bunch of wonderful reunion stories, too. Do you want me to tell you those?”
“No, it’s okay. I’m fine. I guess my goal is just to have a connection, that’s all. Just to know it’s there. Somewhere in the world, someone knows I exist.” That sounds overly dramatic and I shake my head. “Let’s talk about the plan. I’ll call the car service today and rent a car.”
“Don’t bother. I have a car.”
“You live in Manhattan and have a car? On a reporter’s salary?” I tease and pick at a potato chip.
“I’m secretly rich. But I find all my money repels the ladies.” He smirks at me. “No, seriously, it’s a used Honda. I park it in my mother’s garage. She lives in Queens. We can take the subway to her house and pick it up in the morning.”
Cash pulls out his phone and maps the route. We’ll meet at eight at the train station, and I wonder for a brief second what I’ll do when Henry calls at nine. If he calls. When Cash checks his watch and announces that his long lunch is over, I quell a stab of disappointment. With a quick tap on my hand and a “See ya tomorrow,” he’s gone and I’m left at the table alone.