CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
“He died when you were little. And what happened was, he had, like, testicular cancer in his twenties, so he thought he was infertile. Apparently him and his wife tried for years before they split up. So Mom didn’t think you could be his.
And, um…” Chip ran his hand over his face.
The dark bruises under his eyes looked worse in the low light, almost black.
“The cancer came back a few years later, I guess. And he died from it, that time.”
Carver did actually need to vomit now. He did so over the edge of the roof, though at least a third of it didn’t actually clear the edge and splattered in the gutter. It was a vile mixture of vodka and salmon which both smelled and tasted like it.
Chip patted him on the back. Carver almost couldn’t stand how nice he was being. It was making this moment all the more intense and surreal.
“They told you all of this,” he said, spitting and wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his tux. “And never said shit to me. You all know. You fucking know, Conway fucking knows.”
“They don’t know she knows,” Chip said.
“So?”
“Yeah. No, yeah, it is fucked up. Sorry. It’s actually —” Chip cleared his throat.
“It’s gonna sound fucked, but I’ve almost been kind of pissed at you these last few years, ‘cause I just, like… I had to keep this to myself, and I’ve been, you know, kinda worried about you, and feeling bad for you, and you didn’t even know.
So whenever you pissed me off I was like… fuck you, more than usual.”
Carver was in such a state that he started laughing at this. He didn’t know what else to do. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, bud.”
Carver sat there for a moment with his thoughts, then started to feel nauseous again. He dropped his face into his hands. “He’s dead?”
“That’s what they told me.”
Carver nodded. The information wasn’t penetrating his mind. It just sat on top of it, like the noodle letters in alphabet soup. Y O U H A V E A D I F F E R E N T D A D H E I S D E A D.
“Look, Mom forbid me from telling you any of this,” Chip said.
“I’ve made my peace with how they’re gonna react, obviously, just ‘cause, like, you’re a mess right now, and I think this is something you needed to know.
I’m — honestly, I am sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.
I was being a pussy.” He blew out a breath.
“But Mom didn’t want you to feel like you’re less a part of the family. ”
“Is she fucking stupid?” Carver said, and Chip cracked up. “I’ve always felt like I’m less a part of the family.” He scrubbed at his face with his hands, rubbing his tired eyes. “As early as I can remember.”
“Well, now you know why.”
Carver started to laugh again. It was a tearful hyena laugh that hurt his lungs on the way out. “I guess I do! I guess I finally fucking know why.”
“Yeah,” Chip said. “Yeah. Can I say something about that, though?”
He sounded almost choked up, and Carver looked over at him. Chip cleared his throat and shook his head.
“Sorry,” he said. “Um… when I talked to them about this, I, uh…” His voice broke up again, and he blinked fast. “I… maybe I was just reacting badly to what I was hearing, but I kind of got this feeling that she was, uh, in love with that guy. And maybe had feelings about him that she —” A tear ran down Chip’s cheek, and he brushed it away with the force of an airstrike.
“Jesus Christ. I’m not doing this right now.
Uh, I think she might have had feelings for that guy that she’s never really had for Dad.
” He said this in a rush, then gave a forceful, tense shrug.
“So. Connie and I, you know we’re a lot like Dad, and it felt like, uh, just this big fuck you to the three of us. If that helps at all.”
Carver stared at him, feeling a depth of affection for his brother that he’d only felt a few times in his life. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Chip wheezed out a laugh. “Don’t be sorry.”
“I’m just saying, I don’t want you to feel that way.”
“Well, I don’t want to either, man. Yeah. It is fucked up, it fucked me up for a while. I finally ended up talking to Maggie —”
“Maggie knows?”
“No, I just told her Mom had an affair and apparently I kind of watched it happen as a kid. She’d just threatened to leave me unless I got my shit together, and we were talking, and I tried to open up some.”
So that was why things between Chip and Maggie had changed.
“I still don’t get why Dad didn’t leave her. I haven’t been able to wrap my head around that,” Chip said. “I mean, I’m glad he didn’t, I guess.”
Carver nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“I haven’t been able to look at them the same way,” Chip admitted. “Connie hasn’t either. It’s just — yeah. But it feels good to talk to you about this. I didn’t think I had that weight on my chest.”
“Yeah,” Carver said. “I don’t even know what I feel.”
“I wouldn’t either.”
“I want to brush my teeth. And change. And these shingles are hurting my ass.”
“We should go in,” Chip said. He glanced down the street, then craned his neck. “Shit. You won’t believe this — they’re pulling up.”
Carver’s stomach sank. “Right now?”
“Right now, yeah.”
They watched as the Range Rover glided down the street, half-obscured by trees, and pulled into the circular driveway.
Their parents stepped out of the car, looking like miniatures of themselves.
Carver stared at them, unable to reconcile their presence with what he’d just heard, unable to conceive of what they’d done to him.
After a moment they noticed their sons on the roof, waved and then pointed downward as if to say, get back in the house.
Chip patted Carver on the back again. Carver inhaled.
“I have to talk to them about this now,” he said.
“Yeah, understandable,” Chip said. “I think I’ll head out, go back to the wedding or something. I don’t feel like getting yelled at tonight.”
They climbed back through the window, into Chip’s dark and silent childhood bedroom.
Bailey had been sleeping in here while Chip, Maggie and Aaron slept in the king bed in the guest room; Carver accidentally stepped on a piece of American Girl Doll furniture as he walked across the floor.
The interior of the house now felt strange and dreamlike, as if it were a detailed recreation of itself.
The familiar smells were too potent, like they were being piped in.
In the hallway, Chip whispered to him, “You change and freshen up and shit, and I’ll tell them I’m going back over, then I’ll head out, alright? Just give me like five minutes.”
Carver nodded, and Chip patted him on the arm one last time before walking away and thundering down the staircase the way he always did.
Carver stood in the shadowed hallway like a ghost, listening to the muffled sounds of conversation downstairs, then crept into his own bedroom.
He didn’t turn on the big light or look in the mirror.
He brushed his teeth very hard and fast, threw his abused tuxedo into the laundry hamper, then retrieved some comfortable clothes and put them on.
His knee and palms were still bloody, but he didn’t feel like dealing with that now.
He heard the front door shut downstairs, and crossed the house back to Chip’s room to look out the window. He watched as Chip came into view, started the Range Rover, traversed the circular driveway and disappeared down the road into the night.
Carver, pitifully, wanted him to come back.
He knew it was better this way, that if Chip stayed he would just draw fire from their parents and muddle the conversation, but he didn’t know how to do what he was about to do.
He felt like he was about to point a loaded gun at his parents.
He’d never had power over them like this, not once, and it felt wrong.
He knew Chip hadn’t been lying, but he was afraid he was somehow mistaken, or that their entire conversation was a hallucination.
Carver was afraid of going downstairs and being told he was insane.
He was afraid of hurting his parents in an irrevocable way. He was afraid of seeing his father cry.
He paced the hallway, steadying himself. They knew he was up here. He could only put this off for so long. He needed to come from a position of strength, he needed to broach their space and make the first move.
Carver started down the stairs. He could hear them talking quietly in the living room.
He landed in the foyer and turned, continuing his dreamlike walk, staring at the seam between the curtained French doors which provided a sliver of view into the living room like a castle’s arrowslit. The conversation inside quieted. They could hear him walking up.
Carver pushed open the doors. His father was sitting in an armchair, his mother on the couch opposite. They were still in their wedding clothes, though somewhat disheveled. They were looking at him with apprehension and disappointment.
A great and wonderful calm fell over him. They were paper tigers; he was in charge now. He could handle that. It felt like he’d been waiting for this for a very long time.
“Are you feeling better?” Nora said, like she was visiting him in the psych ward.
Carver cleared his throat. “I had a conversation with Chip just now,” he said, glancing between them. His nausea momentarily returned, but he beat it back. “And he told me something that I think the three of us need to discuss immediately.”
They looked at each other, and Doug said, “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine,” Carver said. “It wasn’t about him, it was about me. It was about my biological father.”