NICK
BEFORE
We pick up the Chinese food first and then head home. As expected, traffic is a nightmare, stir-crazed drivers at the helm, ready to be home. They accelerate quickly and then slam on the brake, going nowhere. The sun is bright this evening, the day still hot. The thermometer on my car’s dashboard reads eighty-three degrees. As the sun sinks lower and lower into the evening sky, its glaring light lands in that cavity just beneath the visor’s edge so that there’s nothing there to dull the light. It disorients me as I drive on, having forgotten my sunglasses at home. I find that it’s hard to see. I use the rear tires of the car before me as a guide. I can’t see anything up above—not the houses or the trees—because the sun is there, turning the world into a sea of flames.
I take the back roads to avoid the gridlock of the highway, gliding down Douglas to Wolf Road. The car fills with the scent of ginger and soy sauce, and my stomach growls at the anticipation of food. Maisie sits in her car seat, kicking her little feet against the back of the passenger’s seat, asking, “When will we be home, Daddy?” and I tell her soon. “I want to be home now,” she pouts, and again I tell her, peering over my shoulder to look her in the eye, that we’ll be home soon. Her eyes are sad, pleading, desperate. “I’m hungry,” she complains, and I pat my stomach and say that I am hungry, too.
“I’m starving,” I tell Maisie. “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”
At this Maisie laughs, a high-pitched squeal, and comes back with, “I’m so hungry I could eat a sheep,” and we both laugh.
“I could eat a pig,” I say, and Maisie says, “I could eat a cow,” as the tires of the car in front of me come to a sudden halt, and I slam on the brakes, the car kicking up rocks as I swerve to the side of the road, missing the bumper by a mere three inches. I inwardly curse the logjam of evening traffic, this stop-and-go for no apparent reason at all. Car horns honk, and slowly, we begin to move.
And then my cell phone begins to ring. My first thought is that it’s Clara asking me to pick up milk on the way home, milk as well as Chinese, but when the Bluetooth display bears the name Kat, my heart skips a beat.
It’s Kat, calling finally to tell me if Gus is my son.
Just like that my hands begin to sweat, and I’m no longer thinking about evening traffic.
“Where are your books?” I ask Maisie before answering the call.
“Right here, Daddy,” she says, motioning to the basket of books by her side. Clara always keeps books inside her car for Maisie to read, something to keep her occupied so that Clara can drive. Maisie’s never-ending questions are often a distraction.
“Can you read your books?” I ask, and she says, “Okay, Daddy,” hoping that if she’s concentrating on the pages of her picture books, she won’t overhear the conversation that’s about to transpire between Kat and me, words like Gus and father and paternity breathed into the air. Maisie’s little hands reach clumsily into the basket, and she comes up with a red-and-green board book she’s had since she was Felix’s age. Goodnight Moon. She begins to read.
“Kat,” I say into the phone, answering it on the fourth ring. I disable the Bluetooth so I can speak to her through the phone, half the conversation muted so that Maisie can’t hear. “You’ve gotten the results,” I say. My voice is gasping, my heart beating fast.
This is the moment where everything changes.
“I got the results,” Kat begins, but Maisie is whining again from the back seat, claiming she’s so hungry, she’s starving, that she can eat a dog, a cat, a barn owl. She’s trying to sidetrack me, to start up a game that I’ve already put the kibosh on. Usually I’d give in, but not right now. Right now I need to speak to Kat, to find out if Gus is my son, and so I press a finger to my lips to quiet her down. I whisper in an aside, “Daddy’s on a work call,” hoping that it means something to her, whether or not it really is a work call. But no; Maisie continues to plead her case, clutching her stomach as if besieged by hunger pains. I relent only to quiet her down, digging deep into the bag of Chinese food for fortune cookies, and coming up with three in my hand. A bribe. I reach into the back seat and drop them all to her lap, and she smiles mischievously; she got her way.
“What is it, Kat?” I beg. “What did they say?”
She’s quiet.
“The results,” she says, her voice hard to hear as I roll through a stop sign. I think she’s crying.
“What is it, Kat?” I ask again, but before she can answer me, Maisie’s voice comes again, so that I have to tell Kat to hold on. Maisie is upset again, but this time it has nothing to do with hunger pains.
“Who’s that?” Maisie asks, her voice agitated as another car drifts past the median from behind, a little too close to my tail end for comfort, honking their horn and making a harebrained attempt to pass. What an idiot. He or she is going to get us all killed. It’s a no-passing zone, the solid yellow line I can clearly see even with the blinding sunlight. It’s not as if I’m driving slowly, but regardless I take the hint and pick up the pace, accelerating now down Harvey Road so that this jerk will get off my tail. But the car comes at me again, making a second attempt to pass, and this time Maisie is scared, truly freaked out, and she screams to me, “It’s the bad man, Daddy! The bad man is after us,” and I reach into the back seat and pat her kneecap, telling her everything will be fine. But I see it, too. I see exactly what Maisie sees as she says to me, “He’s going to get us, Daddy!” as a black vehicle soars around up from behind so that I have to tug on the steering wheel to get out of the car’s way, again hitting gravel. It’s Theo, Maisie thinks, but it’s not Theo. It’s just a black car. Just some driver in a hurry, trying like the rest of us to get home. I let up on the gas to let the driver pass, watching as he or she breezes by.
But before I can tell Maisie not to worry, Kat speaks.
“They were negative, Nick. Gus is not your son,” Kat says, and as she begins to sob on the other end of the line, I’m speechless. Gus is not my son.
I’m wondering what I should say to Kat. This wasn’t what I was expecting, a negative result. I thought for sure that Gus was my son. I’d convinced myself he was mine.
What I feel is an overwhelming sense of relief, the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders—again. A sense that for once in my life, I’m the luckiest man alive. The tide has turned. Good things are happening to me.
He is not my son.
“Are you sure?” I ask, and Kat gathers herself for a moment and says that she’s sure, but then she sobs through the phone, telling me how much she’d hoped it was true. How much she needed it to be true, and I placate her by saying, “Me, too,” though that’s the last thing in the world I was hoping for. If he was mine, I would have manned up and done the right thing. I would have told Clara, and she and I would have welcomed Gus into our lives. But without Gus around, life is much less complicated, less complex.
I press down on the gas pedal, suddenly excited to be home. To hold Clara in my arms and know for the first time in a long time that everything will be all right.
This is good news, I tell myself, smiling broadly as the car skids off the side of the road, hitting gravel, and I right it quickly, forcing both hands on the steering wheel. I tell myself to focus, to drive in a straight line. To slow down a bit.
Clara will still be there whether I get there in five minutes or ten.
I picture Clara holding Felix in her arms, both of them half asleep, waiting for Maisie and me.
I try hard to put Kat and Gus out of my mind, though it’s near impossible with Kat on the other end of the line crying.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say drily. “You and Steve,” I say, “you’ll be okay,” though what I’m thinking is how I will come clean to Clara about my meetings with Kat. Tonight. How I will wipe the slate clean with a confession, and then remove Kat forever from my life. There will no longer be secrets between Clara and me. It’s one of the cardinal rules of a happy marriage. No secrets. A promise I made to Clara long ago, and one I plan to keep.
All I can think about in that moment is getting home. Of being home. Of being with Clara and Maisie and Felix. The loves of my life. Of sitting on the sofa with the three of them and Harriet by our feet. Of telling Clara everything, every last secret I’ve been keeping from her, every last lie. And even though Clara won’t be happy about it, she’ll understand. Because that is Clara. Indulgent and understanding.
And in that moment I’m hardly able to contain my excitement, wanting nothing more in that split second than to be in Clara’s arms.