CHAPTER THIRTEEN #3
This took a second to hit them, and then they both reacted in similar ways: Doug brought his hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes, and Nora dropped her face into her hands.
No one spoke for a long moment. Carver stood still with his hands in the pockets of his shorts, willing to wait as long as it took for one of them to issue a counter.
There was no sound but the steady tick of the grandfather clock in the corner.
Finally, Doug said in a thin voice, “What did he tell you?”
“He told me that Mom had an affair with a friend of yours who was supposed to be infertile, and he told me the guy died a few years later. He said he confronted you two about this after Aaron was born, and you confirmed it, but ordered him not to tell me.”
“Oh my God,” Nora moaned into her hands. “Oh, my God. Why? Why would he tell you that?”
“I sort of asked,” Carver said, rocking back and forth on his heels and marveling at how calm he felt. “I asked him if he knew why it’s always been so hard for us to get along, why I can’t seem to please you, and he said he did.”
Doug dropped his hand. “We get along,” he said, staring into space. “You do please us. We’re very proud of you.”
“Ehh,” Carver said, wiggling his palm.
“Can you sit down?” Doug said.
“I’m okay standing.”
“I’d feel more comfortable if you sat.”
“I feel more comfortable standing,” Carver said, offering a smile that neither of them saw.
They wore stricken rictuses of guilt and grief as they refused to look at him, like he was a manslaughter they’d committed.
“Look, I just want to talk. I’m not planning to melt down, or stand here and browbeat you.
I have a lot of questions. I think I’m entitled to answers. ”
Neither of his parents spoke. His mother remained bent, her forearms against her knees and her palms pressed to her face, swaying slightly.
His father continued to stare into space, frozen.
Tears formed in his eyes, then fell and cut a path down his cheeks once the surface tension broke.
Carver again felt sick, and pushed it down.
Over the beat of the ticking clock came the sound of canine nails on hardwood in the hallway.
The golden retriever came into the room and sniffed him, then went to Nora for attention, then Doug.
Doug patted the dog on the head in such a stiff, slow way that he looked like a Parkinson’s patient petting a therapy animal.
The dog trotted back out into the hall as if unnerved.
“Okay,” Carver finally said, “look, this is thirty-six fucking years of my life I’ve been in the dark.
” Don’t browbeat them, don’t browbeat them.
“And I understand this is devastating, and it isn’t the conversation you expected to have tonight, and we’ve already been having, frankly, a shitty night interpersonally.
But this is my life.” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat.
“This is — you get it, don’t you, what you did to me here?
You understand it’s not just about the lie, it’s about the way I’ve felt my whole life, without ever knowing why?
Do you get that I —” His voice broke again, and he thumped his fist against his chest and resumed more bassily: “Do you get that I always knew something was wrong, and I always blamed myself?”
His mother began to weep into her hands. Carver hadn’t heard her cry like this since her own mother died. Doug got up and went over to her, sitting down beside her and stroking her back.
“I don’t know what to say,” Doug said to him.
“Truly anything would be welcome.”
Doug nodded, glanced at him for a split second with a tearful red-eyed gaze, then looked away immediately. “I’m your father,” he said.
Carver shook his head in confusion. “Biologically?”
Doug exhaled. He looked like he was grappling internally with something so large that it left him with very little energy for making noises and expressions. “I am your father legally, and in every other way that matters.”
“But who am I,” Carver burst out. “Why do I exist? Who was he? Why didn’t you tell me? Please. Please. I am fucking begging you, if you just talk to me right now you never have to do anything for me ever again.”
Nora wept more loudly. Doug looked at him with profound sadness. “Please don’t threaten us with that unless you mean it,” he said.
“Threaten you with what?” Carver said, dumbfounded.
“Cutting us out of your life.”
“What? That wasn’t a threat, Dad, I was just being hyperbolic.”
Doug gave him a small nod. “Well, we always thought you might not forgive us for this.”
“How about you tell me the details of what this even is? God, guys, I’m giving you the opportunity to present your case. Please. Please just talk to me for once.”
Doug continued to rub Nora, then nodded at the chair he’d just vacated. “Do you want to sit, please?”
They had folded so instantly and profoundly that Carver saw no point in continuing to maintain a dominant posture. He went over and sat in the chair, looking across the room at his parents, separated from them by the coffee table and a few feet of a pearl and silver-colored Persian rug.
“I’m not really willing or able to talk about this,” Doug said to Carver in a detached, explanatory tone, as if instructing him on how to use the leaf blower. “So you’re going to have to wait for your mother to calm down and get herself together. Do you mind waiting?”
Carver felt as unnerved as the dog. He got the urge to text Chip and beg him to come back. Shouting and anger would be preferable to whatever this was. “Uh, no?”
Doug handed Nora a box of tissues from the table. She lifted her head to mop her face and blow her nose. Mascara had puddled around her eyes.
Carver crossed one leg over his lap and tried not to look impatient. He still felt quite calm, although the strangeness of this scene was tipping the calm toward disassociation.
“What happened to your knee?” Doug said, pointing.
“Oh, I, uh, fell when I was running away from you guys in the parking lot.”
“You should put some Neosporin on that.”
“Yep, I’ll get to it.”
Nora blew her nose again. “Could you get me some water, sweetheart?” she said to Doug.
Carver found the sweetheart distasteful.
“Water,” Doug said, getting to his feet, “and the first aid kit.”
“Dad, I’m alright.”
“Half the skin on your knee is gone.”
“Just the epidermis.”
Doug exhaled and walked out of the room.
Carver felt awkward being alone with his mother, and looked away, pretending to study the photos and keepsakes on the mantelpiece over the fireplace.
One of the photos was from his wedding to Lillian — the two of them flanked on each side by his paired siblings and parents.
Carver realized suddenly just what a fucking aberration he was.
How many times had his parents said they wanted one boy and one girl?
He always thought his gender was an accident, not his conception, but no.
He’d been a catastrophic five-alarm accident.
His existence had sliced his family in half.
No wonder he’d always felt the way he did.
No wonder! He couldn’t help marveling at this explanation, like he’d discovered gravity.
“Would it be easier for you to talk to me if Dad stayed out of the room?” Carver said.
“Oh,” Nora sighed, and shook her head. “No, no.”
“Really?”
“Yes, honey. It’s not like this is something that just came up last week.”
“Right,” Carver said, running his tongue over his teeth. “Or, say, fifteen minutes ago.”
Nora dabbed her eyes again. “I was speaking in regard to your father and myself.”
“Okay. And when do we involve Carver? Any day now would be fantastic.”
“Please don’t be spiteful.”
“I’m really, really trying,” Carver said.
Nora was still not looking him in the eye. She turned her head and gazed out through the open French doors, into the empty hallway. “I know,” she said in a voice full of grief. “I know you are.”
There seemed to be more coming, but she went quiet. Carver waited.
“It just got away from us,” Nora said, her voice barely audible.
“Who’s us?”
“Your father and I.”
Carver swallowed. “Which —”
“My husband,” she snapped.
“Okay. Got it.”
“God,” Nora said, and put her face in her hands again. “That’s what I mean. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. What do you mean, that’s what you mean?”
“I meant we thought we could handle this better than we did. We got through the awful part, we discussed it, and we committed to a plan. And I really believed we could do it.”
“Do what?”
Nora shrugged helplessly. “Raise you as if you were our own. Raise you as if nothing had happened.”
Carver bounced his leg. “There are some immediately obvious flaws with that plan?”
Nora finally looked at him, and surprised him by letting out a rueful laugh. “You think this is the first time you’ve said that to me? You’ve been saying that to me your entire life.”
“I’ve what?”
“Not consciously. Not in so many words. But… God. I’m sorry.
None of this is your fault.” She exhaled and twisted the tissue in her hand.
Her engagement ring caught the light and sparkled.
“You didn’t have to tell us that you’ve felt it your entire life.
We knew that. You’ve always known something wasn’t right.
It was like a cosmic joke. Your father could never settle you when you were a newborn, you screamed in his arms. And when you got older you — you could be so sullen and spiteful.
And always so, so smart. Brilliant, really.
” For a moment she sounded proud. “Even as a baby you stared right into us as if you knew. It was terrifying. That sounds so silly and horrible to say. I can’t even imagine what you think of me right now.
” She let out another laugh, this one choked with tears.
“I can’t believe Preston figured it out, and you didn’t.
I always thought you would. It was like living with unexploded ordnance. ”