Chapter 15
“Make a right up here,” I say. “Just past the Rusty Bucket.”
“For someone who doesn’t drive, you definitely know your way around the city.”
“I grew up here.” I shrug, which about sums up my feelings for Columbus at the moment. “I thought adults could choose the perfect place to live. And instead I’m stuck.”
“You’re stuck?” Nick scoffs at that, shaking his head as he makes the right turn. “A young, single person with no one to support? With a great education?”
“With great education comes great financial responsibility.”
“I’m sorry but only one of us gets to be ‘stuck’ in Columbus, and it’s the person with a child and an ex and a house here,” he says. “I don’t mind this city. It’s the knowing I can’t leave that gets to me. Not for nine or ten years, at least. By that time, I’ll be almost fifty.”
“Holy shit,” I mutter as we stop at a red light.
“I know, right? Decrepit.” He chuckles at what must be a horrified expression on my face. “So I’ll be fifty, Kira will be starting college, and I’m going to be…regional manager at Chili’s?” He slaps his hand on the steering wheel. “These are the things I lie awake and think about at 3 a.m.”
“You have 3 a.m. existential crises? You seem like the kind of person who makes decisions and doesn’t waver.”
“That’s the thing about having a kid—they put things in perspective. I have this compass always pointing me in the direction that’s best for my child.”
It sounds too easy.
“What if it’s not the best direction for you?” I ask. “Don’t you lose some piece of yourself when your needs always come second?”
I fidget with the strap of the seatbelt, which feels too tight across my collarbone. In my effort to make polite conversation, I’ve inadvertently led us into territory that feels too personal. Too uncomfortable to explain to someone who chose parenthood, when I didn’t.
“When I’m lying in bed,” he says, “worrying about the rest of my life, thinking about Kira gives me that automatic why. I do everything for her and because of her. I don’t have an option not to.”
I’ve been desperately searching for various whys for most of my adult life, but I also made the decision not to have a baby at age twenty.
At that point, the only why in my mind was sort of a distraught “why is this happening to me now?” I’m certain it would have sent my life down a much worse path.
Maybe that’s not something you confide to a parent who’s completely devoted to their child.
The light turns green.
I stare at Nick’s profile, silhouetted in light from the streetlamps, trying to decide if this conversation adds a layer to his seemingly unflappable personality or further justifies my mom’s belief that he’s simply a “good man” in need of a Shawna.
Meanwhile, I’ve forgotten to watch out for our destination.
“Oh! Slow down,” I exclaim, inadvertently touching his arm. “It’s up here on the right.” I tap on the window. “The building that looks like a white cinder block castle.”
“You’re joking.” He turns his blinker on and slows down for the turn into the parking lot. “Is this punishment for springing a driving lesson on you?”
“I mean, the proper way to do this would be to wait until 2 a.m. and then eat the meal in the car. But we should go inside for the more elevated experience.”
He makes a sound that’s somewhere between a sigh and a laugh and pulls into a parking space in the mostly empty White Castle lot. I’ve never met anyone who laughs this easily.
“You’re a little close to the line on the right side here,” I say.
“Shut up.”
“See, they’re steamed,” I explain. “So it’s almost like they’re these little bao buns, not burgers. Free your mind of the traditional idea of a hamburger.”
The White Castle cashier taps on her point-of-sale monitor impatiently while Nick looks up at the menu board.
“We’ll have a ten sack with American cheese and two drinks,” I say. “Oh, and let’s do an order of chicken rings.” Nick looks downright concerned by this order, so I add clam strips, just to scare him.
I choose the only booth that doesn’t require us to brush crumbs off the tabletop.
It’s the first time we’ve sat face-to-face.
I find myself considering the way my mom paused before declaring Nick not traditionally handsome.
Not that the fluorescent light is doing either of us any favors, but I prefer offbeat faces.
My first fictional crush was Beetlejuice, for fuck’s sake.
“So if you could live anywhere you wanted,” I say, because I’ve inherited my mother’s anxiety about prolonged silences, “where would you go?”
He removes one of the sliders from its little container.
“When Nora and I got together, we talked about working for the National Parks Service or running a kayak rental place. She liked that I was untethered. When she was pregnant with Kira, we said we can move somewhere else, we can travel. Having a child doesn’t have to stop us.
But the thing is, it makes a lot of sense to live in the city where you have access to free childcare.
Nora’s parents live here, and that’s been great for Kira. ”
He finally takes a bite of the slider.
“I know I sound like a selfish childless heathen, but does it bother you that the last ten years of your life have been dictated by someone else’s needs?”
Nick gives me a surprised, almost offended look as he’s chewing, so I take the opportunity to rephrase: “What I mean is, don’t you ever want to put yourself first?”
“Oh, I did that,” he says, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “For most of my life. I spent about ten years on tour with bands.”
“Right.” I look at the U2 “LaundroMerch” shirt. “Are you a musician?”
“No. I mean, I’ve been in bands. Not professionally.” He laughs to himself. “I did a lot of different jobs on tours, but I was mostly a lighting tech.”
“Is that like…a roadie?” I open the chicken rings.
“That’s not the preferred term for the job, but basically, yeah. A member of the crew who travels with the tour and gets everything set up and plugged in and taken down.”
“So you’re like…not a member of the band but you’re band-adjacent? The fifth Beatle?”
“I probably would’ve been the eighty-seventh Beatle.
It sounds cool to be on tour, but the reality is that I spent the first couple gigs asking giant guys named Bob a lot of stupid questions about wrenches and tape and clamps.
There’s a steep learning curve, especially when you’re a twenty-five-year-old idiot who doesn’t know anything—”
My face must do something involuntary, because he catches himself.
“I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry—”
“It’s fine,” I say. “I’m twenty-six. It’s totally different.”
“Anyway, it taught me how to solve problems, say yes to every demand, and then figure out how to make it happen. How to properly coil cables. How to Tetris cases of gear into a truck. I learned to be on time, always. And keep my hangability factor medium high.”
“What’s ‘hangability’?”
“On the road, you need to be someone people like hanging out with. You’re crammed into these buses with six or eight tiny bunks, dealing with the same guys and their bullshit 24/7.
They don’t need to be your best friends—they probably shouldn’t be—but you have to be…
easy. The living arrangements will file down your rough edges real quick. ”
“Living with eight men in a bus sounds like a nightmare.”
“Not for someone who loves music. I got paid to travel the world to help put on a show every night. My parents hated it, every girlfriend I’ve ever had begged me to quit.
But I wouldn’t trade that gig for anything.
” He pauses as if he’s accidentally revealed another layer to his feelings than he’d let on a few minutes ago.
“Well, obviously, eventually I did. And it was the best thing I’ve ever done. ”
“Don’t you miss that lifestyle, though?”
He opens another tiny slider box, contemplating the question.
“I loved being part of a crew. Knowing I could rely on other people to work miracles in impossible situations. And some days, I was the one with a magic solution, and it felt fucking great.” He grins.
“I was helping to put on a show that people might remember for the rest of their lives. But I don’t get that feeling anymore, even though my entire day is solving problems. Of course, it doesn’t help that the problems involve leaky dishwashers or not selling enough of some seasonal drink special. ”
“You don’t think Chili’s changes lives?”
He takes a bite of the slider. “I think these are growing on me.”
“See?”
“I guess the thing is, I’m okay knowing that I’m making one little girl’s life as great as it can be every day. Yeah, it’s not like I get a rush from pulling off an epic stage show every night. But I feel this completely different sense of purpose now.”
I narrow my eyes.
“Parents always say stuff like that,” I say. “Like it’s this mysterious, unknowable thing that immediately gives your life a meaning it didn’t have before.”
“Well, it kind of is. We’re hardwired to feel those instincts.”
“Okay, but then why are there so many deadbeat dads?”
“Some people are also hardwired to be selfish assholes?” he suggests.
“I’m just saying, it’s okay to admit that you miss your old life. Just a little bit. I won’t tell anybody.”
Nick chuckles lightly. “Okay, yes, sometimes I miss it. There are times when Kira’s with her mom and I’m alone in the apartment and I realize how much…smaller my life is now. But I’d pick Kira every time. I don’t have any regrets.”
I seriously can’t imagine choosing a kid over my dream job.
After a few beats of silence, I tilt the cardboard sleeve of chicken rings toward him. “Don’t ask how they make these. Just try one.”
He makes a face but gamely reaches for one of the perfectly circular rings.
“What about you? Is that how you feel about…was it art history?” He examines the improbable shape of a chicken ring. “Does it give your life meaning?”
“When I was in grad school, I thought it did.” I’m not sure whether the hole in my heart is studying art history-shaped or having any kind of purpose-shaped. “I haven’t felt strongly about anything in a very long time,” I reply.
“Come on. There has to be something you’re so passionate about no one can stop you from doing it.”
For a long time, that answer would’ve been drawing.
There were times in my life when a pencil was affixed to my right hand.
When I would feel an intense satisfaction from executing a sketch on paper exactly as I pictured it in my mind.
When I’d show my dad or a teacher or the internet a drawing and bask in the glow of their approval.
But how passionate could I have been if one mediocre critique stopped me from pursuing it?
“I guess I haven’t found what I’m looking for yet,” I say.
He points at his shirt. “They have a song about that.” I stare at him blankly. “Oh, come on, you don’t know it? I’ll have to play it on the way home.”
We each take bites of our chicken rings. Nick valiantly pretends to enjoy them.
But I’m still thinking about his question. About being unstoppably passionate about something. What surfaces is my dad. The way nothing—including his own child—could stop him from doing the things he wanted to do. The way I admired that trait on some level, even when it hurt me.
I cannot picture my dad sitting in a White Castle, telling someone that having a kid was the best thing he’s ever done.
And I think my mom is probably right. Nick is a good man.