NICK
BEFORE
As Kat waves at me from the corner booth of the bar, I’m transported back in time, to twelve years ago when Kat and I were a thing. There was a park back on the island that Kat and I always liked to go to, set on the northeast side of Bainbridge Island that overlooked both the Cascades and Puget Sound. It closed at dusk. When we went, always well past dusk, the place was empty. We had it to ourselves, and there, on the beach with its piles of driftwood and sand, we did things that I’d never done with anyone but Kat. Things that even now, twelve years later, made me blush.
I slide into the booth and feel my knee graze hers, and it’s instinct that makes me pull back. What happened between Kat and me all those years ago is over and done with.
On the wooden block between us sits a photograph, which she slides toward me as the waitress draws near to take our order.
“Who’s this?” I ask Kat before the waitress arrives, staring at a boy with shaggy blond hair, a school photograph with the standard blue backdrop, a boy who didn’t smile when he was told to smile. In the image, his face falls flat, his lips tugging downward at the edges, his eyes sad. He has that whole teenage ennui to him already, a clear dissatisfaction with the world around him, though he’s younger than a teenager, displaying evidence of adolescence.
“That’s Gus,” she says, and her eyes rise from the photograph to meet mine. “He’s your son.”
And with that the waitress arrives, and I ask for a Death in the Afternoon—Hemingway’s hybrid of absinthe and champagne—because it feels entirely fitting for this moment in my life.
“What do you mean he’s my son?” I ask in a forced whisper, hissing the words across the table so that only Kat can hear. I look around the bar to be sure that I don’t know anyone here, that a neighbor or Jan my hygienist isn’t sitting at the booth behind me, eavesdropping on my conversation with Kat. “He can’t possibly be my son,” I say, but I’m no idiot. I know in my heart that he can be my son. Kat and I were stupid teenagers, the kind who believed nothing bad could ever happen to us. Sometimes we got caught up in the moment; we didn’t always take precautions. We didn’t play things safe.
“That night,” she tells me, as under the table her knee presses into mine, and I pull back. “That night before you left for college. My parents had gone to the ballet,” she says, and she stops then. She need not say more. I nod my head slowly. I know. I remember. They’d gone to see Coppélia, and after they left I stopped by to say my goodbyes. It was Kat’s parents’ anniversary, and so they planned to stay in the city for the night, at the Four Seasons. It wasn’t the kind of thing they ever did, but that night they were celebrating twenty-five years, and so it was something out of the ordinary, something special, and Kat and I decided to celebrate something special, too. Kat had a bottle of Goldschläger that she’d taken from her parents’ liquor cabinet, knowing it was something they didn’t drink and wouldn’t miss. Kat and I had never been alone together for so long. We took the bottle to her bedroom, doing things slowly for once, feeling like we had all the time in the world. In the morning I awoke and boarded a plane bound for Chicago; three days later Steve took over my spot in Kat’s life.
“How can you be sure he’s mine?” I ask, and I hate the words even as they come out, this shirking of responsibility. It isn’t me. But twelve years ago is a long time. If Kat had called me up twelve years ago and told me she was pregnant, things would have been different.
I don’t wait for her reply. “Why now?” I ask, feeling irate. “Why are you telling me this now?”
In the corner of the room is a TV. On the screen are sportscasters, wagering their bets on tonight’s NBA finals game. My eyes putter to it to see that the odds are not in the Warriors’ favor. The favorite for tonight is the Cleveland Cavaliers, the team with the home advantage, and at this my hands turn clammy and my heart sinks. The room starts closing in on me as I think of the hole I’ve dug myself into, financial and otherwise. All these secrets I’ve kept from Clara that I can’t now confess, after the fact. The fiscal state of the business, firing Connor, my reunions with Kat. Two of them now. Two reunions with Kat. Two times I’ve seen a former girlfriend, the mother of my child—my other child—and I’ve never mentioned them to Clara.
The waitress meanders by, and I ask for another drink, Jack and Coke this time, which I down like it’s ice water and I’ve just been on a five mile run. I’ve begun to sweat. There is a countdown on the corner of the TV screen, reminding me that it’s eighteen minutes until tip-off. Eighteen minutes until I win or lose all that matters to me in the world.
“I don’t know if I can stay with Steve,” Kat tells me, adducing the number of arguments they’ve had lately as the reason she can’t stay. He’s under a lot of pressure, she says, with a new job, and he’s taking it out on her and Gus. “His temper,” she adds on. “He’s always short of patience, with me, with Gus. He has a short fuse. And he’s never home. He’s always gone. Always working.” She reaches a hand across the table to touch mine, and I quickly disengage, pulling back and placing my hands in my lap so that she can’t reach them. “Gus needs a father figure in his life. A father. He’s twelve years old. I don’t know the first thing about raising twelve-year-old boys.”
I shake my head quickly. I can’t do this. This can’t be happening to me. “I already have a family, Kat. A wife, and a child. Two children. I love them,” I say. “I love my wife—I love Clara. You kept this from me all these years, and now you just expect me to slip into the role of father? I can’t do that,” I insist, smacking my hands on the table too loudly, so that a man at the table behind us turns to see. “Don’t you get that? Don’t you see? I have a family.”
It’s all coming at me so quickly now, my life spiraling out of control. I place my head in my hands to make it stop, but it doesn’t stop. In fact, the world keeps spinning until I feel like I could be sick.
“We were happy once, Nick,” she says. “Don’t you remember?” she asks, but instead of replying right away, I yank my wallet out of my pocket, find a twenty in it and lay it on the table.
“We were kids, Kat. We were stupid kids,” I say as I stand quickly, telling her we’ll talk about this later, that I have to go. “I’m in love with Clara now,” I stammer. “Clara is my wife.”
I hurry away, mumbling over and over again to myself as I leave, I already have a family. I already have a family.
“Nick,” she calls after me as I push past people out of the bar and into the oppressive June air. I clamber into my car, the inside nearing a hundred degrees in the evening sun.
How will I tell this to Clara? How will I explain? Not only is Kat informing me of my paternity of a twelve-year-old boy, but she’s telling me she wants me to be a father figure—an actual father—in Gus’s life. What do I do? Give her money and tell her no? I have no money to give to her.
Clara will leave me. Clara will leave me if she knows.
I can’t live without Clara. Clara, Maisie and my baby boy. These are the only things that matter. I turn on the car and start to drive. I spin out of the parking lot, needing to get away, the tires skidding as I press down hard on the accelerator, the engine moving faster than the tires can go, leaving black marks on the concrete. I pull out onto the highway and floor it home, the world coming at me quickly, trees blending together into a mass of green, buildings and houses becoming one. All I want is to be home.
Evening traffic is a mess as always, scores of cars lined up at red lights going nowhere. I watch as other drivers check incoming texts on their phones. They listen to the radio, bebop music turned all the way up, the heavy bass making their cars shake. We sit frozen in a line, and my patience starts to thin. The train has no doubt stopped on the tracks again, making it impossible to get to the west end of town, where I need to go. Where Clara is, and where Maisie is. Home. I picture them sitting side by side on the sofa, waiting for me. I’m coming, I think, and then, when the traffic finally starts to clear, I gun the engine and press down hard on the gas. I swerve in and out of cars to get to Clara and Maisie.
The radio is tuned in to some AM sports station, and they’re giving the play-by-play of the basketball game. It isn’t going so well. It’s all I can do not to scream.
I drive past the grocery store, the library, the post office, the elementary school and a public park. The highway turns residential, but I don’t slow down my pace. The streets become pockmarked but wide, lined with dozens of full-grown trees. In the distance I spy my house. I keep my eyes on the house the entire time. I hold my breath and dig down deep onto the accelerator. The speedometer surpasses forty-five miles per hour, reaches for fifty. I close in on my house. The finish line.
What I fail to see is little Teddy from across the street, scampering out from behind a tree. Two steps ahead of him bounces a red rubber playground ball, which Teddy trails blindly into the middle of the street. It happens so fast. I don’t have time to react.
First there’s nothing, and then there’s a boy, a four-foot, forty-pound figure standing in the middle of the street with eyes terrified, his mouth formed into a silent scream. Staring at me.
If I hadn’t had two drinks at the bar my response time might have been quicker; if I weren’t under so much stress I wouldn’t have been driving so fast. But as it is, I’m slow, my movements asthenic, and it takes time to react. Time to raise my foot off the accelerator and move it to the brake. To press down hard on the brake pedal. To divert the steering wheel from its course. The car slips past Teddy by mere inches, and as it does, I hear the boy finally scream.
I come to a stop on the lawn of a neighboring home, missing their mailbox by a hair. My hands are shaking, my legs like sludge as I thrust the gearshift into Park and open the car door, tumbling out onto the street below, my feet barely making contact with the road. “Teddy,” I say, lurching around the side of the car to find the boy lying on the concrete in the fetal position, embracing the ball. For a moment I think he’s hurt, maybe even dead. I’ve hit him, and I start running to his side, saying his name over and over and over again, “Teddy, Teddy, Teddy,” and I fall to my knees to shake him awake, to bring him back to life. I’m about to employ my resuscitation skills, but then I notice that Teddy is breathing, and there is no blood. He’s okay, he’s okay, I tell myself, and I feel a smile cross my lips, a relieved, thankful smile. Thank God he’s okay.
“Get your fucking hands off my son,” says a voice, and my head rises sharply to see Theo marching into the middle of the street toward me, arms already swinging. His fist connects with the side of my head, and before I can react the world spins. I stagger, and Theo comes at me again, connecting this time with my gut so that I bowl over in excruciating pain, clutching my stomach. I’m apologizing profusely, spouting a surfeit of confessions and excuses. “I’m sorry,” I say and, “I didn’t see him,” and then I place the blame on Teddy and claim, “He came out of nowhere.”
“I saw you,” barks Theo as he lifts Teddy from the concrete. “You were driving too fucking fast, and you know it,” he says, and then he steps closer to me, and I prepare for another beating, in the mouth this time or maybe the nose, as his fist forms and he leans in close to me. By now Theo’s wife, Emily, has stepped from their house, and Teddy leaves his father’s arms to run to his mother, who collects him in a maternal embrace. My car, ten feet away, still idles, keys in the ignition, engine running. My own house is quiet; Clara hasn’t seen a thing.
“If I ever see you speeding again,” he says, face pressed so closely to mine that I can see the pores of his skin, the way he salivates in anger. His eyes are more than just angry, but irrational and deranged, the very same way I’d be if someone ever messed with my kid. Emily calls to him, “Theo, enough,” but like a belligerent dog disobeying its owner, Theo doesn’t come.
“If I ever see you speeding again on this street or anywhere ever again,” he says, stepping somehow even closer now so that his spittle flies into my eye, “so long as you shall live,” as Emily encroaches on the conversation now, tugging desperately on Theo’s arm to try to bring him inside, “I will kill you. I will fucking kill you, Solberg,” he says, and Emily’s and my eyes grow wide, fully dilated, at exactly the same time.
I have no doubt in the world that he means it.