She understands that her mom was trying to protect her. But she’s mad. She doesn’t know how she feels about her dad paying child support all this time. Or how he hid it from his wife. Is she glad that he cares enough to do that? Or does he only pay so her mom won’t tell his wife? She just doesn’t know. What she does know is that she’s not sorry if she ruined his marriage. Vivi understands secrets. But not ones like this. Not when you fail to tell your wife that you have an extramarital daughter.
“God, he’s such a rat; I can’t believe it, Jonah. I really can’t believe it.” She’s shaking her head. She’s still upset, but it’s a relief to see her animated. “You know, some people act like every kid is entitled to two responsible, loving parents. I don’t feel like that’s a given. We’re born alone, and we die alone. If you get an adult who’s genuinely there for you, that’s pretty lucky. So I’m not bitter about having grown up with a single mom—I’m really not. She’s enough and I’m proud of everything she does for us, even when I’m so mad at her that I want to set her canvases on fire. So it’s not that. It’s that I’ve lived my whole seventeen years so far thinking I had this rocker dad who wasn’t cut out for fatherhood, and it took me a while, but I understood that he didn’t try to create me and couldn’t handle responsibility or whatever. Instead, my father is this guy who is, like, a responsible and stable citizen, who has a family, who has lived on the same coast as me my entire life. How hard would it have been for him to know me? He’s already a dad, so why not be a dad for me, you know? God, now I have to come to grips with the fact that he sucks as a person, and that’s half of where I came from.”
There’s a pause, a spot for a reply. A thought pops into my mind so quickly that it doesn’t feel like it’s my own. After all these weeks with Vivi, I sometimes feel as though Vivi has changed the chemistry of my brain. Like she rearranged neurons.
“I’m not convinced that he’s your real dad.” In my peripheral vision, I see her face turn to mine. Her interest piqued. “Modern science would disagree, but they don’t know you. I think maybe your mom is your mom but your dad is the Man in the Moon. I’m just saying. I wouldn’t put it past you to be half-Lunar.”
There is a quiet that settles between us.
“Jonah Daniels.” She says my full name, as she often does, only this time in a whisper. She’s shaking her head. “I don’t deserve you.”
She’s quiet again, but this time she grabs for my hand, gripping onto me for the miles and miles toward home. I steer one-handed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Vivi
Time all but stops inside my room. My phone died yesterday, and I haven’t bothered to recharge it. I haven’t left except to use the bathroom nearest to my room. But at least I showered, so nobody mind the sad blonde drawing all-black ensembles and sewing black netting onto a headband like I’m attending a funeral for the dad of my daydreams, the one who possibly lived on a houseboat with tapestries hung on the walls.
Today I’m sketching my own expressionless face, reflected back by my full-length mirror—wide-set eyes and unremarkable nose. I define my jaw, shading and erasing, my hair, my shoulders and the sweater that is slipping off on one side. The details have to be perfect. The shape of my lips, the yarn of my sweater. It takes minutes or hours or days.
When it looks like me, blank but sullen, I clip my self-portrait to the easel. Swipe two curves of runny black paint under my eyes, dripping down my cheeks. I blend purple and black and white, painting blooms of bruises on my shoulders. Like smudgy violets. I paint my lips ruby. Ruby—the word bites at me, and I push it away while I use too much paint, and it drips like blood from my mouth.
Then I cross out my eyes unceremoniously with black pencil.
Maybe I’ll glue things to it later.
Most mothers would, I assume, be terrified of this little portrait. Mine checks on me and, last time, put her hand on my shoulder, saying, “I’m so proud of you for using creative expression to handle these emotions.”
I know that.
Here is what also I know: my father is not a musician. My father was a graduate student, nearly finished with his PhD when he met my mother at a concert in Berkeley. He was almost ten years older than her, and she thought he was cerebral but in a very cool way. He had hair to his ears and a scruffy beard. He was out with the other econ almost-doctorates to celebrate one of their birthdays.
He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring that night. He should have been.