Chapter 7
America’s Roller Coast had had a water-flume ride. A big one. One that Will had never set foot on. Not because he was scared of it. But because he couldn’t imagine anything more unappealing, more revolting, than getting drenched and then standing there soaked through your shirt, drip-drying in amusement park swamp water.
What a quaint notion that had been.
“The bedroom at the top of the stairs,” came Henny’s voice from somewhere behind him, “you’ll see that it ... oh. Oh my God. Mr. Fiesterly, are you ... how ... what happened?”
Will wiped some of the semidigested breast milk off his face, wishing he could do the same with what had gone down his throat.
“Bit of an accident,” he said weakly.
“Felicity’s my burper!” Gwen added brightly, dabbing delicately at her daughter’s mouth with a cloth while seeming unfazed by what had just shot out of there. Will was too traumatized to respond, but Rachel was done humoring this family.
“Um, are you going to apologize to my husband or what?” she asked.
“I mean, I’m sorry he got in the way,” Gwen said, unafraid to look offended at the question. “But it’s just a natural part of life. You’ll understand that soon enough.”
“How someone can think their baby is so friggin’ special that it gives them a free pass to abandon any semblance of responsibility to the rest of society? No, I don’t think I’ll ever understand that.”
“Ladies, let’s all just calm down,” Ronald said. Will hadn’t noticed him and Ronnie Jr. brush past him, and he remembered a simpler time when the most disgusting thing in his life was an awareness of the toddler’s dirty diaper.
“Excuse me, guy I met thirty minutes ago,” Rachel said to him. “Did you just tell me to calm down?”
Even in his ... compromised state, Will was filled with appreciation for what a badass his wife was. And not just because it was his back that she had. It was more how self-possessed she was, even when he knew her adrenaline had to be flowing. She might play it back later, analyze how she felt about the situation after it was over, but he admired her ability to not let herself or those she cared about get pushed aside. It was a trait that he knew would make her a great parent and one that he worried he lacked.
“I didn’t mean ...,” Ronald started before trailing off. His face said he knew he had miscalculated once and that he had no interest in going two for two. He turned to Gwen. “Maybe we should just go. Ronnie Jr. needs a diaper, and I don’t think he was going to last much longer even if he didn’t.”
Gwen—who for some reason hadn’t stopped burping the baby even though there couldn’t possibly be anything left inside of her—had traded her carefree glow for cool disregard, which she trained on both Rachel and Will as she spoke.
“Fine. I don’t want to spend any more time around these Judgy McJudgersons anyway.”
“Was that supposed to be an insult?” Rachel said. “You really should try reading something that’s higher than a preschool level, Gwen.”
The woman of the couple from Iowa mouthed a “Damn,” and the mother and son expats traded glances while pretending to be distracted by something in the kitchen. Gwen’s cheeks reddened, and she turned with Felicity to follow her husband and son, who were already halfway out the door. For a moment, Rachel and Will both forgot that he looked like he’d been slimed by a hagfish—she because she’d vanquished a woman who gave unsolicited nursing-bra advice, and he because he was dumbfounded by the fact that they’d really left without apologizing.
“Well, since they wouldn’t say it,” Henny said, “I’m sorry that happened. If there were ever a case for an exception to our no-public-restroom policy, I’d say this is it.”
Rachel fully took in the extent of the damage to what had been Will’s favorite Michigan T-shirt for the first time. She was concerned for his well-being, although he wouldn’t have blamed her if she concluded that she could never kiss him again.
“I can’t believe this,” she said, careful to touch the arm that didn’t currently have breast milk drying in its hair. “I feel so bad for you.”
“It’s all good,” he lied while fantasizing about self-immolating. Then, to Henny: “I do think I’ll take you up on that bathroom offer, though.”
“Of course. Now unfortunately”—she cringed a little—“it’s not in this house. You’ll need to walk down to the end of the block to the building that looks like an old convenience store, which is our gift shop and visitor center. That’s where the tour ends, so we can meet you there. I’ll let them know you’re coming.”
Walking down the sidewalk covered in vomit—he hadn’t done that since that spring break trip with Ali when Will had had three too many Hurricanes. But he had been 22 and in Key West. In a way, it would’ve been like he hadn’t gotten his money’s worth if he hadn’t found himself in such a state at some point over the course of that week.
Okay, so it had never been like that. It was gross back then too. But knowing this was the first and almost assuredly not the last time he’d be covered in baby vomit put him right back to wondering if there was any way he could possibly be prepared for what was coming, if Rachel would still think the boring job was “the right job” once barf became a regular part of their lives. It felt like Felicity had spewed a spotlight onto his insecurities, making them harder to hide.
Shuffling down a leafy city street sober at 1:30 in the afternoon was also just a little more conspicuous than being drunk outside the Sloppy Seagull at 4:00 in the morning.
All was not lost, though. He could see his car in the distance, sitting right outside the visitor center that was his destination, and he realized that what 40 minutes earlier had just been a good parking spot now held the promise of a change of clothes and his toothbrush.
A baby on this T.M. Clemens tour just went all Sloppy Seagull on me, he texted Ali while he walked. Ali had seen Will at his best and at his worst—not just times like in Key West, but real stuff, too, like when it hit Will 15 minutes before his wedding that his dad, who hadn’t RSVP’d, really wasn’t going to show. Will broke down in the back of the church, and it was Ali who had been there to hug him and remind him that he was marrying Rachel and nothing else that day mattered. Theirs was one of those rare friendships where you didn’t have to be afraid to look stupid in front of the other person, and Will loved Ali for that.
You still haven’t answered my question, Ali wrote back before Will had taken another 10 steps. Also: What the hell are you talking about?
Right. Will owed him not one but two explanations.
First there was Rachel’s job situation, the subject of that ill-timed text on the drive. While the speed of Ali’s responses made you wonder if they’d been in progress even before you sent your message, Will had no such reputation, so he’d taken advantage of that to postpone formulating his answer to his friend’s question. That had meant stuffing his phone into his pocket, giving himself over to Rachel’s enthusiasm about the macaroni and cheese sandwich—a delicious decision, to nobody’s surprise—and then suggesting they use her phone to navigate across the city, which would keep his out of sight and offer extra insurance against any more close calls.
He didn’t feel good about it. But no worse than when he’d tested the definition of a lie with Rachel in the car.
Beyond all that, Ali had no idea about the trip itself, which Will had never gotten around to mentioning the night before.
I convinced Rachel to use our vacation to take a spontaneous road trip. Five cities in the next week, starting in Milwaukee. Hoping it cheers her up.
About the job?Ali asked.
Yeah.
Can I assume that means you’ve moved on from trying to figure out a way to intervene there?
Will unlocked the car but stopped short of opening the back door, weighing how much to divulge.
Define “intervene,”he sent back.
I knew it. Let the record show I tried to warn you.
Duly noted, Will typed after fishing his toiletry bag and a fresh Michigan tee out of his duffel. That his mid-30s wardrobe still bore a striking resemblance to how he’d dressed as an undergrad felt like almost as big of an indictment of his fitness to be a parent as the Dave Buster’s rewards card.
Almost.
Do me a favor though,he continued. It’s close quarters in the car, so no more unsolicited texting about how I may be destroying my marriage.
Got it. Trying to keep that spark alive, right?
Something like that, Will said, forcing himself to sound breezy and irreverent, like it would keep the fire he was playing with from blazing out of control.
He added a reusable shopping bag to his load before locking the car again and heading up to the visitor center. His plan was to strip off the stained shirt, completely soak it, and then store it in the shopping bag until they got to the hotel, at which point he would take a shower set as close to boiling as humanly tolerable and use every last ounce of the tiny bottle of shampoo on both him and his beloved crew neck.
The center was currently empty save for a much older man sitting at a table with his own cashbox and card reader.
“Jiminy Christmas,” he said, sizing Will up. “Henny wasn’t kidding.”
“No, I’m afraid she wasn’t.”
“Bathroom’s back there,” the man said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “Although you may need an exorcist.”
Will laughed out of surprise as much as anything else. He hadn’t expected an octogenarian working a T. M. Clemens gift shop to be so quick with the one-liner.
After pushing open the door with the NOT A PUBLIC RESTROOM sign, Will set his toiletry bag down on the little sink and unzipped it, deciding he’d start with everything above his neck before moving on to the shirt. Because his bottle of bodywash at home was big, he hadn’t packed any, choosing instead to rely on the complimentary offerings at the hotels, so all that was available to wash his face with was some Dial hand soap. He eyed it reluctantly but only for a second.
“Let’s do this, Citrus Sunburst,” he said, pumping the foam into his hand and proceeding to scrub his pores with the vigor of a man auditioning for a job at a day spa. With his eyes closed, he tried to distract himself from the grittier details of the cleansing task at hand, and his mind drifted back to Aunt Katie and something she’d once told him about his dad.
She’d taken Will to see the first Harry Potter movie, which stood out in his mind not only because he and Emma Watson were the same age and he’d proceeded to develop a massive crush on her, but also because it was November 2001 and his and Katie’s first trip to the movies after 9/11. He had gotten very clingy to his mom following the attacks, so it took a while to convince him to leave her for anything but school.
There had been a baby crying two rows in front of them from the moment the coming attractions started. If Will knew next to nothing about babies at 34, he’d had absolutely no clue at 11, but from the sound of the cries, he’d been able to tell this one was little. Really little. By the time Hagrid apparated on that rocky island on Harry’s 11th birthday to inform him that he was in fact a wizard, Katie had had enough and leaned forward.
“You know, your baby seems pretty upset,” she’d said, making no attempt to whisper.
“So?” the mom had fired back, equally loudly, her baby now up on her shoulder just like Felicity had been on Gwen’s. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Maybe take her outside? Or, you know, don’t take an infant to the movies in the first place?”
“So I’m supposed to rearrange my life around my kid’s schedule? You need to mind your own damn business.”
Will remembered his eyes going wide. There was a somewhat legendary, perhaps slightly apocryphal story in their family about a bar fight Katie had gotten into in college when a drunk sorority sister had made the mistake of calling her a word that she shouldn’t have. Had her nephew not been sitting there in the movie theater and the woman not been a young mother, there would have been a nonzero chance that a new chapter would’ve been added to that legacy. As it was, Katie had just sat back in her seat and tried to process what she’d heard. The baby had eventually quieted down—not until Harry, Hermione, and Ron reached Hogwarts, though—and the rest of the movie unfolded without incident. When it was over, he and his aunt had been sitting there, talking about the climactic scene with Voldemort, and the woman had muttered something as she walked out. Will hadn’t been able to hear it, but he’d guessed it wasn’t that far off from what had been said that night in the bar.
“Your child is lucky to have such a caring, committed mother,” Katie hollered after her. Under her breath, she added: “What a ...” She stopped and looked at Will. “I’m sorry. Your aunt shouldn’t let people rile her up like that.”
“It’s okay.” And then, because he was 11 and looking to expand his vocabulary of expressions that could get him in trouble: “What was that word she used again?”
“Nice try. I was actually talking about before. When she said the thing about not rearranging her life. It reminded me of something your ...” She checked herself again and took a different, sufficiently vague approach. “Some parents just don’t get it, is all. But, hey, at least that baby didn’t puke on us or anything.”
Will couldn’t remember if he’d consciously made the connection that “some parents” referred to his father right then or not. But on those few occasions when Will put himself out there and reached out—his high school graduation, when his dad had been “too busy at work” to come, or graduation from Michigan, when he had been “already going to Hawaii,” or Rachel’s and his wedding, when his dad’s absence had brought him to tears—that day at the movies came back to him. Will hadn’t tried contacting him since they’d gotten married, and he didn’t know if he ever would again. Not even to tell his dad he was going to be a grandpa.
But no amount of distance could put to bed Will’s fear that he’d inherited some sort of terrible dad gene that was just waiting for the opportunity to be exposed.
We’re almost at the gift shop, so get your clothes on, Rachel texted him.
Ha ha ha, he wrote back, although having gone straight from washing his face to brushing his teeth to soaking and wringing out the soiled shirt, he did find himself standing there bare chested at the moment.
You should know I contemplated drinking that entire bottle of hand sanitizer near the door, he typed after slipping the new, clean shirt over his head.
Look at it this way: It’s not like our baby will be able to do anything worse to you than this. It can only go up from here.
Her last sentence froze him for a second. There were all kinds of ways it could go down. Vomit was gross, but vomit was also nothing. What about pneumonia? What about SIDS? Hell, he’d just heard somewhere that honey was fatal to infants. Honey? Really? What else didn’t he know?
“All proceeds from the store go straight to the restoration project,” he heard Henny say to the group as they were walking through the front door. “But there’s also one last piece of the tour to show you in here.”
She saw Will reappear from the bathroom. “Ah, good to have you back, Mr. Fiesterly. You look good as new. All right, all, let’s head to that display case over there.”
Rachel let everyone pass by, and Will rejoined her at the back of the group.
“I think Henny kinda likes you, Mr. Fiesterly,” she said quietly, unable to contain a wink-wink of a smile.
“Don’t say that,” he said, still distracted. “She reminds me of Aunt Katie.”
“Oh wow. I can totally see it.”
Once they were all gathered around and peering down at the case, Henny explained what they were looking at: Clemens’s original blueprints for the Milwaukee Mistake, dated April 1922. The house in the drawing was referred to as the Crawford, her husband’s name, a loving gesture to the man who had acted as her business manager and who had frequently stood in for her at meetings with men who wouldn’t have worked with her if they’d known T. M. Clemens was a woman. He’d even pretended he was T. M. Clemens at times. It had been during the construction of the Milwaukee house that she’d discovered he’d been stealing large sums of her money to carry on affairs with a variety of mistresses. Henny said many scholars had come to believe that this, and not the house itself, was the true reason Clemens had abandoned the project and called the house a mistake.
“It’s an awful story,” she added, “but it also can’t take away from the beauty of what she did here. I think there’s a lesson in that. And in being really sure the people who say they love you mean it.”
Will looked down at Rachel. She loved him. He knew that.
It was everything on the horizon that scared him.