Here We Are Now by Jasmine Warga (3)

IV.

It was hard to reconcile all the conflicting emotions that were brewing inside of me. On one hand, I was pretty shocked and giddy that he had finally shown up. And even more giddy that all the suspicions I’d been harboring since I was thirteen years old seemed to be true and not just flights of adolescent fantasy.

I mean, I really was the daughter of a rock star. I allowed myself to have a Holy Hell moment before the anger set in. I was the daughter of a man who people camped out for hours outside of a venue to catch a glimpse of. People spent hours analyzing the lyrics to his iconic songs and then had those lyrics tattooed across their rib cages. People full-on worshipped him.

But the giddy surrealness of it all faded quickly to anger. Because if all my suspicions were correct, where had he been my whole life? Why had he abandoned my mother? Had he known she was pregnant? And why hadn’t he answered any of my letters? Not. A. Single. Response.

He sat on the floral upholstered couch Mom and I had picked out from the Anthropologie catalog two years ago. His knees bounced up and down like he was having difficulty controlling his energy. I remembered how one Rolling Stone interviewer had described him as “manic.”

“I can’t believe you’re here,” I said. I was still standing, which I knew probably made this insanely weird moment even weirder. But I couldn’t bring myself to sit.

Harlow, though, had plopped down in the wing-backed white leather chair that sat squarely across from the couch, folded her hands in her lap, and seemed to be perfectly content waiting for this conversation to unspool. She also took a not-so-discreet photograph of him with her phone and was presumably texting it to Quinn. I wanted to be mad, but I couldn’t really blame her.

“I know,” he said, not looking me in the eye. His focus darted around the room. He paused on a photograph of Mom and me taken on a trip to Hawaii last summer. “It must seem odd to you.”

“Uh, yeah. That’s an understatement. All of this seems beyond odd to me.”

He turned to stare at the framed Quran passage that hung on the left wall. The dark ink of the Arabic calligraphy contrasted with the creamy parchment paper. Mom wasn’t particularly religious. Actually, considering that she frequently had a glass of red wine with dinner, did not wear a hijab, and hardly ever attended a function at the mosque, it might be more precise to say Mom wasn’t religious at all, but she was a tricky woman to figure out. Because while she was not overtly religious, and she never fasted during Ramadan, she still hosted late-evening dinners for single Muslim women. When I was little, I used to slip out of bed and scoot down the stairs, spying on them as they broke their fast with dates and water, later moving on to the lamb-stuffed okra and mounds of rice my mother had uncharacteristically cooked.

I’d once brought up all these contradictions to Harlow and she’d squinted at me and said, “Tal. Faith is a complicated thing.” Which is a very Harlow thing to say.

I didn’t exactly know what the Quran passage said, since I couldn’t read Arabic. But ever since Harlow had said that, I’d translated the calligraphy to read: Faith is a complicated thing.

I glanced at Julian and thought: Paternity is an uncomplicated thing. Fatherhood is a complicated thing. Being a daughter is a complicated thing.

He met my gaze. I couldn’t quite get over how strange it was to stare back into eyes that mirrored my own. “I got all your letters.”

“When?”

“What?”

“When did you get the letters?” I pressed.

“About a year ago.”

I frowned. “I sent the first one over three years ago. You’re a little late.”

“I know.” His pale eyes widened in the same way mine do when I’m trying to cultivate sympathy. I looked away.

“But you have to understand—”

I interrupted him. “I don’t have to do anything.”

“Whoa.” He leaned back into the couch and put his hands up. “You have your mother’s temper.”

“How would you know?”

“Taliah,” he said softly. “I love that name, by the way.”

My skin felt itchy, like it was suddenly three sizes too small. “It was Mom’s grandma’s name.”

“I know.”

I heard a beeping sound and turned toward the kitchen.

“Oh!” Harlow said, jumping up from the chair. “That’s the cupcakes. I’m going to …” She trailed off and slinked away to the kitchen. Leaving me alone with Julian Oliver.

“I can’t believe it took you this long,” I said slowly.

“I know, and I can’t offer you any good excuses.” He stared at his hands. He had prominent knuckles. That was something I’d noticed one late night when I was Googling him and had zoomed in on one of the famous photographs that Annie Leibovitz had taken of him. “But in my defense, I didn’t even know your letters existed until a year ago.”

“So you say.”

“It’s the truth. The girl who …” He fidgeted on the couch.

“It’s okay. It’s not like I’m naive enough to think that people like you sit around all day reading letters from all the random people that adore you.” I realized my tone was bitter, but hell, I think I had the right to be bitter.

“People like me?”

“Famous people.”

He blanched. “It’s not like that.”

“Okay. Whatever you say.”

He nodded quickly. Another nervous tic. “So. As I was saying, the girl who reads the mail, she began to notice that we were getting a lot of letters from you. And she brought the letters to Mikey.”

“Mikey?”

“Our manager.”

I nodded. That’s right. I’d come across that name in my online sleuthing.

“And Mikey, of course, recognized the last name.”

“Mikey knew my mother?”

Julian bobbed his head quickly in agreement. “Oh yeah. Mikey grew up in Oak Falls with me. I used to work for his dad. He was there the day I met your mother. Heck, he was there for everything.”

“Everything,” I said. Something about the infiniteness of that word made me feel sad. And lonely. Mikey may have been around for everything, but I surely had not been. And no one had even bothered to give me the SparkNotes.

His eyes softened and I noticed he had a ring of green around his irises that I didn’t possess. “Yes, everything. And now that I’m here, Taliah, I want to share everything with you.”

I could feel my resolve fading, my anger giving way to melancholy. I crossed my arms. “Then why did it take you a year to get here?”

“I called Lena.” His eyes locked with mine. “I mean, your mother.”

Lena. It was unbelievably odd to hear that name coming out of his mouth. “What happened when you called her?”

He cleared his throat. “Well, I called her multiple times, actually.”

“Dude. This isn’t Little League softball or something. You don’t get points for participation.”

He gave me a small, sad smile. “I know.”

“But what did Mom say?”

“She demanded that I stay away.”

“Stay away,” I repeated. That was a finely tuned euphemism if I’d ever heard one.

“Yes. She begged me not to answer your letters. Not to call you. And certainly not to try and see you.”

I gripped the armrest of the chair that Harlow had recently vacated. “And you listened to her?”

“I felt like I had to. I owed her that at least.” Something crossed over his face. Guilt. Or maybe regret.

I could feel my face flushing with heat. “Why? Don’t you think I should have had some say in that decision?”

He was silent. I pressed, “Don’t you?”

He hung his head and stared at the woven carpet, a braided mix of teals and grays. Another item Mom and I had selected from the Anthro catalog a few years ago when we decided to redecorate most of the house to celebrate her promotion to the Dr. Jefferson Reynolds Chair of Art History at Bellwether University. This was a few months before my discovery of The Shoebox.

“Don’t you?” I said for the third time.

“Of course I do. That’s why I’m here now.”

“Three years too late.” Sixteen years too late.

“Haven’t you ever heard of better late than never?” he said in a sheepish tone.

I looked away.

“I was kidding,” he added.

“I know,” I said. “I just didn’t find it that funny.”

He let out a loud, awkward whistling sound. “Fair enough. But I’m here now. So can we at least …” He trailed off.

“At least?”

“At least talk. I want to get to know you.”

I cocked my eyebrows in a dramatic fashion. “Well, that’s a tall order, Mr. Oliver.”

He groaned. “Please don’t call me that.”

“I’m not going to call you ‘Dad.’” The word “Dad” left a bitter taste in my mouth. Like black coffee or dark chocolate—something that tasted a bit off now, but I knew I could learn to like if I worked at it. I swallowed a few times.

“Of course,” he said. “I’m not asking you to. Just, please don’t call me Mr. Oliver. Mr. Oliver is …” He paused. “My father.”

“Right,” I said, and suddenly felt like a huge asshat.

“The one who’s dying.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. “Sorry” was a free pass of a word. It cost nothing and bought you time.

“I wish you could’ve met him when he still had his wits about him.”

Something inside me stirred and I sank down into the white leather chair. Mom was a big fan of the type of furniture that envelops you and swallows you whole.

“It’s a big regret of mine,” he continued. “The second I found out about you, I should’ve fought harder. I should’ve begged Lena to let me introduce you to my family. Taliah—” He paused again. “Can I call you that?”

I nodded.

“You have a family in Oak Falls, Taliah. They would love to get to know you.” He tapped his fingers against his leg. I’d watched so many videos of him playing the guitar with those fingers. “They deserve to get to know you.”

“Like how I deserved to get to know you?”

“Yes.”

I stood back up. I brushed my hands against my acid-wash jeans, pressing out imaginary wrinkles. “I just don’t get why you’re here now.”

A loud clanking sound came from the kitchen. Then a rustling, and Harlow poked her head into the living room. “Sorry about that. Ignore me.” Before I could beg her to stay with us, she scurried back into the sanctuary of the kitchen.

“My father is dying,” he said, his voice registering in a lower octave than before. It reminded me of the tonal quality he used to sing “Your Life in the Rain,” one of his band’s most popular songs. It was supposed to inspire the listener to feel nostalgic and melancholy. But it usually made me feel furious.

How dare you try to break my heart? I’d want to scream when listening to the track. You don’t have the right.

“Your grandfather,” he added as if he wasn’t sure I would be able to piece together the connection. “And I don’t know.” He sighed and tugged at his hair. “The whole thing has really done a number on me.”

“Right,” I said softly. “Like, let me guess? It made you realize how fast life goes. Made you want to focus on what really matters.”

“Goddamn. You remind me so much of your mother. That biting wit.”

I shrugged. “She did raise me.”

“Taliah,” he said slowly, stretching my name out like it was something to savor. “I don’t want to fight with you.”

“I didn’t realize we were fighting.”

“You know what I mean.”

I didn’t say anything. I focused on a framed photograph of Mom holding nine-year-old me on her shoulders on a trip we’d taken to Cambridge. We were dressed in matching ruby red wool sweaters. I was wearing a funny-looking brown corduroy beret. She’d been invited to give a series of lectures at Harvard on Ed Ruscha. It was a big deal, I remember, because she’d recently finished up her doctorate and this was one of the first prestigious speaking engagements she’d landed.

When I was first born, Mom had been a working artist. She’d actually had some of her sculptures shown at a few prominent galleries in New York. The showings had even garnered some favorable write-ups in big-time publications like the Village Voice. But before I turned two, she’d enrolled in graduate school with the intention of earning her doctorate. And ever since she’d earned it, she hadn’t publicly shown her artwork. Not once.

I studied the photograph some more and zeroed in on her knowing wide brown eyes. I wondered what she would think of the situation currently unfolding in our living room.

I felt like a traitor.

I felt impossibly angry at her.

And I felt confused. My heart pulling me in one direction, my head pulling me in the other. There was a tectonic shift happening inside of me.

“I’m just going to come out and say it,” Julian announced. “That’s one thing I’ve learned over the years. To be direct.”

I frowned. That seemed like such a flimsy thing to have taken away from years of experience in the music industry. But I was curious, so I turned my attention from the photograph and back to him. “Okay.”

“I know this is a pretty wild and crazy idea, but I want you to come with me to meet your grandfather before he passes.”

I blinked. “What?”

“You heard me. I want you to come to Oak Falls with me right now. It’ll be a short trip. But it will give us a chance to get to know one another. And a chance for you to meet your aunts, cousins, and grandmother. And of course, your grandfather.”

I’d frequently fantasized about meeting my father. Even before I had the slightest inkling that my father was Julian Oliver. But my fantasies had never included the extended family that was likely to come with discovering the other half of me. Maybe that thought had never crossed my mind because most all of Mom’s extended family lived in Jordan. Or maybe my brain had never processed the fact that of course, even rock stars have mothers and fathers and siblings.

He broke the uncomfortable silence with a question. “Do you play?”

“What?” I said, startled. I followed Julian’s eyes to the piano that sat near the bay window in the living room.

“Oh. Yeah. But you know that.”

“Huh?”

“I wrote about that in my letters to you.”

In several of my letters to Julian, I’d mentioned that I played the piano. What I hadn’t mentioned, at least not directly, were my own musical ambitions. I loved writing songs. Since I was seven, I could remember hearing various melodies in my head or coming up with an interesting phrase, and then jotting it down in my journal. I’d spend days, months, years fiddling with those melodies and snippets—I loved the puzzle of songs. The rewarding feeling of placing all the pieces in just the right order.

But when I’d started to suspect that Julian Oliver was my father, I felt a slight panic. Sure, my own interest in music was just one more thing that made my suspicions seem more like truth than fiction, but I felt like a copycat. I hadn’t wanted to tell him about my own songwriting in case he would mistakenly think I wanted something from him. Which I didn’t. Or at least not like that.

What I’d wanted were answers.

He tapped his fingers against his leg again. “The piano. Of course. I remember that now. But it was a huge fight with Lena, right?”

I pinched my lips together. “A struggle for sure. She’s always been suspicious of my interest in music. I guess now I understand why.”

“Will you play something for me?”

I locked eyes with him. It was like staring at a fun-house version of myself. There was something so familiar about those eyes, but also something so alien. “You have a lot of nerve, you know that?”

“Yes,” he said plainly. “I do.”

“To come in here after years of absence and just start making all these requests,” I continued.

He grinned a little. “Well, I thought maybe you could play something for me while you thought about my other request.”

I considered this. “Okay. Fine.”

I knew I should’ve been nervous. It wasn’t every day that I was asked to play the piano for a full-fledged rock star. I mean, this dude was the recipient of a Grammy Award. Responsible for a multiplatinum album. But somehow, I wasn’t that nervous. The idea of playing the piano actually felt calming. Looking back, I’m sure this was some sort of mind trick on his part. He probably knew it would be calming because we shared half of the same genetics, and playing music was obviously cathartic for him.

Also, despite Julian Oliver’s frightening level of fame, there was no way he was as impossibly intimidating as my current piano teacher, a wrinkle-faced German man named Bruno—the most swelling praise I’d ever received from Bruno was “That didn’t make me want to claw my eyes out.” So there you have it. If I wrote for Rolling Stone, the headline of this moment would’ve been: “Julian Oliver Is No Bruno Kaufman.”

He was silent and still while I made my way to the piano. I slid my legs up onto the bench and scooted to find a comfortable seat. My fingers hovered above the keys as I contemplated what song I should play.

I knew Julian Oliver would want—would expect—me to play some rock anthem. Something that would confirm that I was his effortlessly cool offspring. But unfortunately, even if I wanted to play a rock ballad, my repertoire was severely limited.

It’s not like Bruno was teaching me how to play Nirvana or Radiohead or the Black Lips. Let alone something edgier or less mainstream. Bruno was sort of a strictly Bach and Rachmaninoff guy. And Mom followed Bruno’s suit, so she flipped if she ever heard me playing something that you wouldn’t hear lightly pouring out of the speakers at a fancy French restaurant. Of course I broke Mom’s rules and tinkered around behind Bruno’s back—loosely teaching myself how to play a handful of angry rock goddess songs—but none of my self-taught melodies seemed right for this moment.

I pressed down on the keys and began to play “Feeling Good.” I’d played the song so many times that my muscle memory basically took over. My fingers splayed out, moving back and forth almost as if an invisible puppeteer were controlling them.

For my fourteenth birthday, Mom had purchased the sheet music for me. It was a big deal that she brought music into our home that wasn’t classical. Yes, that’s right. To Mom, even Nina Simone was a stretch.

As I played the song, I smiled to myself thinking of the irony of the lyrics. I hummed under my breath. I loved how the song continued to build underneath my fingers. It felt like tossing gasoline on a fire. It literally smoldered. It made me feel powerful when I played it.

When I finished, I turned around to face Julian. He was beaming, but there was something off about it. There was an artificial brightness to him—his face was not a cloudless sky, but more like a fluorescent lightbulb.

He clapped once. “Bravo.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “That’s not exactly the reaction I was expecting.”

“What? I think you’re a really talented pianist.”

“But …?”

“No but.”

“Yes there is. I can tell there is most definitely a capital-B But. Just tell me.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Nina Simone. Really?”

“What’s wrong with Nina Simone? She’s a goddess. And it’s a classic.”

“It’s …” He stretched his legs out in front of him, dragging his heels along the woven carpet.

“It’s what? One of the most perfect songs in the entirety of the universe?”

He frowned teasingly. “You can’t really think that.”

“You can’t really think that it’s not.”

“It’s stuffy,” he argued.

“No way! It’s sophisticated.”

“Jesus.” He shook his head. “Lena raised you to be a snob. I should’ve figured.”

“‘Raised’ being the key word,” I said, not missing a beat.

He bristled. “I guess I walked right into that one.”

I nodded. “It’s not exactly like you were around to show me the dark side.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Yeah. If only I’d been able to supply you with Nevermind and Loose Nut and Goo.”

I played along. “If only. Maybe I would’ve even been cool enough to own White Light/White Heat on vinyl.”

His face lit up. “You are my daughter.”

I shrugged and stared at the woven carpet. If you looked at it long enough without blinking, the blues all started to run together.

“That’s kind of typical, though, isn’t it?” I finally said.

“What?”

“That you, as a white dude, decide to disparage the music of a black woman by calling it ‘stuffy.’”

The color drained from his face. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.” He squirmed as I stared at him. “You can’t possibly think … I mean, your mother.”

“My mother?”

“Well, you can’t think I’m, you know, prejudiced. You have to know …”

I felt my whole body stiffen with discomfort. “Because you slept with my mother to create me and she isn’t white, you think that somehow adds up to you not being ‘you know, prejudiced’?”

“Jesus!” he exclaimed again. He shoved a hand through his messy hair and shook his head. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes suddenly seemed more pronounced. For a brief moment, a sadness welled in me. I’d never seen him, known him without those wrinkles. He’d had lifetimes before this moment.

I’d missed out on lifetimes.

“Taliah,” he said, clearly trying to keep his voice calm. “I just don’t like that song. It’s not my type of music.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I know you’re angry with me. And you want to pick fights. But please.”

I shrugged. “I was just making an observation.”

A few long beats of silence.

“Come home with me,” he said. “It’ll give you the chance to make many more observations. And for me to hopefully redeem myself in some small way.”

“I am home.”

“You know what I mean.”

I glanced up. He was looking at me expectantly with those freakishly familiar eyes.

“Please,” he said. “We can spend the drive there fighting about music.”

“I don’t want to fight with you.”

“You know what I mean,” he repeated.

“You keep saying that. But I’m not sure I do ‘know what you mean,’ dude.” I didn’t mean to be so petulant, but I kept hearing my mother’s voice in my head.

“Be careful before you trust people, Taliah,” she would say. She’s an extremely guarded person, and I never quite understood why she put up such thick and tall walls. Part of me always wondered if it had to do with my absent dad, and the fact she’d unexpectedly gotten pregnant with me. Now, knowing about Julian, I wondered even more if it had something to do with how things had gone down in their relationship. Had he given her a reason to be so guarded?

I also think it had something to do with her being an immigrant. And an Arab, Muslim immigrant at that. Given the cultural climate, which only seemed to be growing more hostile, she protected herself and me by never divulging too much about herself to strangers or random acquaintances. But the problem with this strategy, as I knew all too well since Harlow was my only close friend, was that those random acquaintances never had the chance to develop into anything else. I understood why Mom always wanted to be cautious, but sometimes I wondered what that cost us.

“Sorry,” I said, staring at his face, which looked a little wounded. “I know I’m being difficult. It’s just this is … difficult.”

“I know,” he said sympathetically. “I understand.” He leaned forward, pressing his elbows against his knees. It was a childish posture for a man of his age to take, and that seemed fitting somehow. “Please come with me.”

“Mom would flip.”

“I want her to come too.”

“That’s going to be a little tough.”

He nodded in agreement. “But I think I can convince her.”

I paused for a moment and briefly enjoyed my position of possessing information that he clearly did not have. He seemed so confident. Like he knew that he had some sort of unearthly, magical pull over my mother. I wondered whether this magnetic confidence was a product of being a rock star, or the reason he had been able to become one. “Can you teleport her from Paris?”

He coughed and straightened his spine. “Paris?”

“Yeah. She’s currently in Paris.”

He exhaled. “Wow. Okay. I didn’t exactly expect that.”

“So does that mess up everything?” A sudden feeling of disappointment gripped me. I was worried he was just going to get up and leave.

He shook his head. “Not busted. Just different.” His face was blank and then a smile washed over it. “Maybe this is actually better.”

“What is?”

“You can come now without her permission. When does she get back?”

I momentarily thought about lying and then decided against it. “Sunday.”

His face scrunched up. “She left you alone for this long?”

I shrugged. “What’s wrong with that? Besides, she invited me. But I wanted to stay home.”

His eyes darted around the living room. “You wanted to stay here instead of going to Paris?”

“Yes.”

He smiled slightly. “Oh. That’s right. You are sixteen.”

I groaned. “Really? You’re going to mock me now?”

He quickly backpedaled. “Sorry, sorry.” His eyes met mine and he lowered his voice to that famous low-register octave of his. “Please come, Taliah.”

“Would you excuse me for a second?” I stood up from the chair. “I need a cupcake.”