CHAPTER SIX #3
“No, I’m going to do it. It’s important to me. I feel like I need to tell someone, and … here you are.”
“Do you think maybe Rube might … it’s just that he’s the oldest.”
“No, it’s you. I’m going to tell you.”
“Okay. Could I sit down on the bed? I feel a little dizzy.”
“Yes, sit.
Okay, here is the thing.
I met your dad at a very vulnerable time in my life, okay? I had a pretty bad childhood and I don’t want to get into it.
That’s not something I’m going to tell you about.
Not today, at least. But I had worked so hard and I majored in journalism and I got this great job at Channel Four, and I had become a reporter. It was a big deal.”
“Okay, yeah, I would think so. And I’m sorry about your childhood. God.”
“Yes, thank you. Okay, and there was this man. He was, well, I guess since you’re not from Salt Lake City it’s not going to be a big deal, but it was George Nielsen.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know who that is.”
“No, you wouldn’t if you aren’t from around here, but just take my word for it.
He’s the most famous news anchor in Utah.
And he comes from, well, just the richest family you can imagine.
Super handsome, like Tom Selleck.
And he liked me.
And, we had a thing.
And he was married with kids and all that.
And I guess I thought maybe he was going to leave them for me.
But of course, he wasn’t and I was so damn stupid and I think he thought I was some kind of con artist because he couldn’t believe that I truly thought he was going to leave his wife for me just because he got me pregnant.
And, well, you can imagine what that kind of guy wanted me to do, right?”
“I can guess,”
Mad offered.
“And I didn’t want to do that.
It was a very difficult time for me.
And I was doing well in my job and not because of George Nielsen, I’ll tell you that much, because it was so much harder because we had to hide it from everyone.
Anyways, I’m rushing through this, but Carl, your father? He was a cameraman at the station.
And he was so good and he was kind to me and he helped me and, god, I don’t know.
This handsome older man had just wrecked my life and then there was this handsome older man who was helping me on the job and I broke down and told him everything.
And he said that he’d help me if I wanted to keep the baby.
He said he’d claim paternity of the child if that would help.
He said he’d raise the kid as his own.
It was sudden, but I just kind of wanted something.
I’d been so close to getting what I wanted, and I didn’t get it, and then I didn’t want to have nothing, you know? I wanted to have something, even if it wasn’t exactly what I’d wanted.
So I said yes.
And we got together, but we never actually got married.
Neither one of us wanted to go that far.
It was more like pretend, you know? We pretended like Theron was his kid.
And I’m a little ashamed about this, but Carl, your dad, you understand? He went to George Nielsen and he got in his face one night in the parking lot, when no one else was around.
I knew nothing about that, but anyways, George ended up giving me just an obscene amount of money.
I had to sign all these legal papers to say that I’d never go after him for child support and that I’d never do anything to suggest that we’d had an affair.
Honestly, I think he’s done it before, because the lawyer didn’t seem all that surprised.
But that money set us up. And I had Theron. And I got to keep my name, because that was important, and Theron took my last name, too, which Carl was fine with, honestly.”
Mad couldn’t help herself and interrupted, because it seemed like maybe they had crested the wave of the worst stuff.
“Can I just ask if my dad came up with the name Theron, or …”
“No, I chose it.
It means ‘hunter’ and I liked that.
Of course, Carl started calling him Tom, and it stuck.
He liked to do that, just kind of tweaking things.
But, you know, he ended up quitting at the station and started doing commercial work and had a production company, but he also took care of Tom, which was huge for me.
Because pretty soon after that, George Nielsen got a really, really big job in Denver, and he left the station.
And I won two regional Emmys and then I got the Good Morning, Utah spot.
Pretty soon, I’ll be the evening news anchor, I’m fairly certain, or I might even look at something national, or that’s what the higher-ups are suggesting.
And I couldn’t have done that without Carl.
And I grew to love him in some kind of way.
And Tom loved him so much.
But I was just moving in a different direction, and it felt like my life was taking off, and Carl just seemed like nothing much was happening.
And, I hate saying it because I’m thirty-five in this industry and I know all about ageism, but he was getting so old.
He was working on his films, and a few of his shorts won some awards, but he seemed content to just kind of settle into life, and I think he wanted me to settle into life.
He was ready to retire, I guess.
And I couldn’t.
I can’t.
And we drifted apart and I told him that I needed more, and that I wanted to be on my own.
And, I don’t know.
He said he understood. And I assumed he’d stay here in Salt Lake. I thought we’d share custody of Tom. Our relationship was ending, but I didn’t understand what was going to happen. And a week or so later, he just disappeared. And that hurt Tom so much, but what could I do? We just kept going, without him. And I told people we’d separated, and, honestly, the single mother reporter was a much better hook. That’s crass, but it is what it is.”
It was so strange, to realize that their father had not left of his own accord, that Trista had asked him to leave.
Oh, if her mom or Pep’s mom found out, the jealousy they would have felt.
And Tom was not his biological child.
Which meant that Tom was not their biological half sibling.
Nothing was lining up in the way she’d expected, and now they had asked if they could take Tom with them to California.
“And then you show up.
And you tell me about Carl and that kind of makes sense, you know? And you want to take Tom to see him again.
It would be so good for Tom.
And for me, too, honestly.
I know that’s selfish, but I’m in this new relationship with someone.
His name is Mitch and—”
“Mitch Manning,”
Mad said without thinking.
“Wait, do you know Mitch?”
Trista asked, confused.
“No, not exactly. Tom told us about him. Said his favorite movie is Pearl Harbor .”
“Oh, yeah, Tom does not care for Mitch. And, honestly, it goes both ways. So maybe this is a good chance for all of us to get a little distance and just see where we stand when it’s over.”
“Wait, so you’d like us to take Tom to see our dad so that you and Mitch can have some time alone?”
“Mad, please. Don’t say it like that. I want Tom to get some closure. I didn’t know where Carl was. I had no idea. He just left. It will be good for Tom. And I’m with Tom all the time, except for when the housekeeper is with him in the mornings, you know, because I have to be at the studio at like three in the morning, but it’s just the two of us most of the time. And maybe without Tom around, I can figure out what it is that I want. I can just think for a little bit.”
“Well, Rube has this form for you to sign.”
“No, I know. I saw it. It looked pretty good. I’ll sign it.”
“And you’re going to let us take your son?”
“I’m going to let you take your half brother to visit his father.”
“I’m sorry,”
Mad said. “I don’t want … I don’t want to think you’re a bad mom.”
“Oh, why do this? We were getting somewhere.”
“No, I know you love Tom. And what do I even know? I don’t understand any of this. But Tom is so young. He’s a child. Why would you even allow it, considering what could go wrong?”
“You and your brother and your sister,”
Trista replied. “Do you feel like maybe you’ve been ruined by what happened with your dad?”
“Ruined? God, that’s pretty heavy. I feel like … maybe not Pep?”
“Mad? Do you wish you’d found your dad sooner? Do you think it would have been easier for you?”
“Yes, it would have been. Even if it had been awful, I don’t think it would have been worse than not knowing.”
“I left my family, okay? They were not good people. I don’t want to go back, ever. But your dad wasn’t bad like that. Tom loves him. I still love him, in my own way. I want Tom to see him. I just can’t do that yet. Maybe not ever. But Tom should find him.”
“You’re not a bad mom. I’m so sorry I said that.”
“I had a sister,”
Trista said. “I left her. She was so cruel to me. I’ve never seen her again. You found each other. You found Tom. I want to believe this is a good thing.”
“Okay,”
Mad finally allowed.
“And don’t tell Tom any of this, okay? Nothing about George Nielsen.”
“I mean, at some point you’ll tell him, right?”
“Of course I will. Someday. Just not now.”
Mad thought about how much it would crush Tom to find this out.
She couldn’t imagine it.
It was a pain that seemed impossible to fully accommodate at any age.
To be left by your father, only to learn that he wasn’t even your father, Mad tried to imagine it.
To have traveled so many miles in search of a person who hadn’t even made you.
But maybe that was the point.
How had he truly made any of them? He had left.
His absence is what had shaped them, and maybe the actual biology of it was second to that fact.
And what finally might have pushed Mad toward this possibility, to allow this young child to accompany them, was that, when he finally learned the truth, he would be less alone in the world because of this moment.
“Thank you,”
Mad said. “I’ll take care of him.”
“Please,”
Trista said. “He’s so good. He’s the best boy.”
Trista stood up and gestured for Mad to stand up as well.
And when she did, Trista embraced her firmly, and Mad stood there, frozen.
It was hard to understand what was being communicated in this hug, but it seemed important to receive it.
As they walked back into the living room, Mad saw Rube and Pep sitting on the sofa with Tom, all of them transfixed by the TV screen.
Rube was softly crying, one hand covering his mouth.
Pep noticed Mad and her eyes widened.
“Oh, Mad. Look.”
She gestured to the TV.
“It’s Tom’s movie.”
“It’s not finished,”
Tom said. “It’s a work in progress.”
Mad turned to see their father on the TV screen, sitting on a bucket in what looked to be a messy basement.
He was in profile, facing Tom, who was also sitting on a bucket.
She looked at her father, still so startlingly handsome, even though he had aged, his hair longer and now silver.
But it was her father. And he was right there, talking to Tom, gesturing with his hands.
She listened, the sound of her father’s voice, which she had not heard since she was a little girl, saying to Tom, “You just have to believe me, okay? I’m you. Do you understand? I’m you.”
“Dad,”
Mad said softly, and she realized that she was crying.
And she looked at Rube, and his eyes were red and filled with tears, though he was now smiling.
And she looked at Pep, who was trying very hard not to cry.
And she looked at Tom, who was beaming, so happy to have captured their father in this way, to show his brother and sisters the person that they had been searching for.
“I made this,”
Tom told Mad, and she smiled.
“It’s so good,”
she said. “It’s beautiful.”
TOM brOUGHT THE HANDYCAM WITH HIM.
HE DIDN’T LIKE DOCUMENTARIES , because he thought they were a little stuck-up about the truth, because, as his dad had told him, all stories are fiction and to pretend otherwise is an artistic failure.
But Tom decided that he wasn’t actually going to make a documentary.
He was going to record his brother and sisters and, whether they liked it or not, he was going to make them a part of his movie.
Or one of his movies.
He had some ideas.
That’s what he loved about being a low-budget independent filmmaker.
You could make it something completely different when you edited it.
After the thing had already happened, you could sit down, work it all out, and you could make it become what you really wanted it to be.
He’d packed a duffel bag with a half dozen gigantic T-shirts and some underwear and tube socks and high-top sneakers, his standard uniform.
His new sister, Pep, had helped him, marveling at his wardrobe choices.
“So you just, like, wear big, huge T-shirts? With, like, cartoons on them?”
He nodded.
It was hard to explain, but he’d always liked the bagginess of huge T-shirts, how they were basically dresses, and how nice it felt to know that, if danger arose, you could disappear inside your shirt, turn into a ball, and let it all pass by you.
The more garish the image on the T-shirt, the easier it was to get away with the fact that you didn’t have pants on.
And now he was in the backseat of this car with Pep while his oldest siblings drove and handled the map.
He liked Pep, who was handsome and stern and boyish, unlike himself, who was beautiful and wide-eyed and girlish.
In fact, all of his siblings were handsome and boyish, with square jaws and big hands and feet and skyscraper-tall, whereas he was so light that a huge gust of wind would get under his giant T-shirt and turn it into a parachute, sending him into the atmosphere.
That, he decided, would be a good image for a movie, these three sturdy siblings holding on to the leg of the youngest child as he hung in the air like a kite.
He took out his notebook and wrote down: bigfoot kids hold on to kite kid .
For the first hour or so of the trip, though they tried to be casual and to respect the fact that he was a little kid and they were all adults, they asked pointed questions about his dad, who was also, he guessed, their dad, but he didn’t think so.
They asked the following questions.
Rube: Did your dad like books? Did he like mysteries? Did he ever mention the city of Boston, Massachusetts? Did he ever use the name Harry Bucket or C. A. Hill?
Mad: Did your dad ever do any farming? Did he have a garden? Did he mention a preference for organic food over processed foods? Did he ever mention the city of Coalfield, Tennessee? Did he have a southern accent?
Pep: Did your dad like basketball? Did he mention a preference for zone defense or man-to-man? Did he ever eat at Sonic Drive-In? Did he ever mention the town of Pocola, Oklahoma? Did he say that girls could do anything that boys could do and maybe even better?
The answer to all of these questions was either “no,”
or “I’m not sure,”
or “ could we stop at a Sonic Drive-In so I could try a cherry limeade?”
And though he felt bad to see how his siblings tried to hide their disappointment, he was also a little happy. Their dad was his dad, but his dad wasn’t really their dad. He had been just Tom’s dad.
He turned on his camera and looked at Pep through the viewfinder.
She was reading one of their brother’s novels, a mystery.
Tom had skimmed it but felt like it wouldn’t make for an interesting film, or not the kind of film that Tom wanted to make.
But Pep seemed pretty invested, her mouth softly sounding out each syllable as she read, and he recorded her for about eight seconds.
He then turned the camera on Rube, the eldest sibling, who was staring straight ahead, but he was nodding and tilting his head from side to side, almost like he had water in his ears and was trying to get it out without anyone noticing.
He noticed that Rube had the most tics, whereas Pep and Mad were like stone, barely moving.
It would be nice to line them up so that they were all in profile, and film them for ten minutes and see how they blinked and breathed and gestured.
And then, if he put the camera on a tripod, and maybe got a step stool, he’d stand next to them, like Mount Rushmore.
Mad was the hardest for him to see, because she was in the passenger seat, directly in front of him, so he tried to catch her reflection in the window, but it wasn’t easy.
She was looking at a road map, then out at the landscape, as if making sure that the map wasn’t lying to her.
She was the most mysterious to him.
Rube was a little silly and Pep was young, like him, but Mad seemed like she held all of her weirdness so deeply inside of her that he would have to work hard with the camera to find it.
But he didn’t mind.
Mad noticed him holding the camera on her, and she turned around.
“Are you putting me in your movie?”
she asked.
“It’s more like I’m taking your picture,”
he said, “but it’s just a video.”
She nodded. “Okay,”
she told him, “but if the picture is longer than a minute, that feels like I’m in a movie and it’ll make me feel weird.”
Tom accepted that this made sense and agreed.
He and his father had been working on a film together, though, truth be told, it was mostly Tom. When Tom was way too young, his dad had shown him a bunch of No Wave films from the eight ies, low-budget and gritty. Tom had not known what to make of them, but his father seemed so intrigued. “All those years when I was dreaming of Hollywood, trying to think of some grand blockbuster,”
his dad told him, “I should have been doing this.”
His dad pointed to an image of a young, weird-looking woman with short curly hair and giant sunglasses, walking through New York City, which looked like a garbage dump to Tom.
It was like an alien planet to him. He could not imagine wandering around Salt Lake City with such a lack of purpose.
You’d get eaten by a black bear or a cougar would steal your hot dog right out of your hand.
He imagined that what his father liked was the idea of looking interesting while surrounded by dirty stuff, as opposed to looking boring while surrounded by mountains and red rocks.
And so Tom turned the basement into his own little studio, emptying box after box of old electronics and hand-me-down clothes and arranging them in a way that suggested that a very small bomb had gone off.
And then he set up his Handycam on a tripod and started digging through all the old stuff and talking to himself.
He wore his huge T-shirts and underwear and a pair of his mom’s old rhinestone cowboy boots, and he kept picking up a dead phone and placing orders for cars.
With a paisley tie as a headband, he’d bark into the phone that he wanted a “really fast car by tomorrow morning”
and then, pretending to hear a voice over the line, would reply, “They’re all on fire? Oh, no!”
and then hang up the phone. After he had about three hours of footage, he showed it to his dad, who smiled, clearly so happy.
His own dad’s work was mostly silent, abstract, with lots of jittery cuts after long periods of unbroken images, but he seemed to appreciate the frenetic energy of Tom’s work.
“Who are you playing?”
he asked Tom, who shrugged.
“Just me, I guess,”
he replied.
“Well, okay, so is this place in the film just your basement?”
“No, it’s, like, my bomb shelter, but way in the future, and I just appeared there like in a time machine. And everyone else is gone. And I can only talk to people on the phone.”
“Can I be in your movie?”
his father asked, and it made Tom so happy that he almost started crying.
“Yeah, you can be in it. Everyone else is gone but you.”
“But it’s your movie, okay?”
his dad told him. “So who can I be?”
“You’ll be me,”
Tom said, working it out in his head as he talked. “You’re me in the future. And sometimes you come into the room to check on me and talk to me, but if we’re in the same place too long, you’ll disappear, so you have to leave the bomb shelter sometimes so we don’t cancel each other out.”
“Okay,”
his dad said. “I like that. I can be you.”
“But,”
Tom continued, “I don’t believe that I’m you. I think maybe you might be lying to me. I think that maybe you’re someone else and you just want me to think that. So sometimes I pretend that you’re a stranger.”
“That’s good, Tom,”
his dad said, and Tom could tell that his father was thinking of his own version of this movie, how he would make it in his own style, but it made Tom feel a measure of pride to believe that his idea was one that his father would be compelled to steal.
And they had made the movie, improvising everything, his father looking at all the footage to see where he might come in and add something.
There would be a few scenes where his dad would try to convince him that they were the same person, but he would let it go if he sensed the boy getting agitated.
And then they had improvised a scene where his father had held on to Tom’s shoulders and said, “You just have to believe me, okay? I’m you.
Do you understand? I’m you.”
And then, when Tom pretended not to believe him, he continued.
“I’m going to go away for a bit.
I feel like I’m disappearing a little.
I think I’ve been here too long.
But when I come back, I’ll bring something that will prove that I’m you, okay?”
Tom had nodded.
He wondered what in the world his dad was going to bring into the basement, maybe a picture of Tom as a baby? Or maybe he would wear one of Tom’s giant T-shirts, with a special design, but it would look like a normal T-shirt on his dad’s body.
Maybe they would have the same shirt on in the scene.
That’s what he’d do, unless his dad had a better idea.
But later that week, his dad was gone, disappeared.
His mother said that their dad needed to sort some things out.
That they were taking a break from each other.
And that it didn’t mean that his dad didn’t still love Tom, which, like, Tom had never questioned for a single moment until his mom suggested as much.
“I think, Tom, it’s hard to explain, but it’s like me and your dad aren’t the same people we were when we got married, and that’s not a bad thing, but it’s not a good thing to stay together just because we used to be together.”
Tom thought that maybe people should stay together because they had a kid and that kid needed his mom and dad, but he could tell that his mother was struggling to explain her own feelings.
And she was still here.
She hadn’t left him.
For whatever reason, his dad had left them.
When Tom asked where his dad was, his mom shrugged.
“I honestly don’t know at the moment, sweetie,”
she said. And so Tom went into the basement, set up the camera, and picked up the telephone. “Hello?”
he said, but of course there was no answer. “Is anyone there? Is everyone dead? Am I still there? Am I coming back? You were going to show me something. I’m here. I’m waiting.”
He dug through boxes, turning back to the phone for a moment as if he’d heard a sound, but there was nothing. No one ever called him back.
HE HAD GONE FROM FEELING LIKE HE WAS ALL ALONE, ORPHANED BY HIS OWN father, to suddenly having three siblings, who were now ferrying him to meet his dad once more.
That felt like an interesting movie, but he had come in a little too late.
He didn’t know these three people.
They were, unfortunately, old.
They had all experienced a life before their father left and then a life after he left them.
But not Tom.
His father was still so fresh in his mind, and when he saw him again, it would make the brief absence feel worse, he thought.
Or would it be worse for Rube, to see his dad after thirty or forty or fifty (how old was his brother?) years and realize he was nothing like the man he’d remembered? It was messy, to think of things as a narrative.
He didn’t think of things as a beginning, a middle, and an ending.
In his life, he mostly didn’t know if things were ending or starting.
He was a kid, for crying out loud.
Everything felt like a beginning and an ending at the exact same time.
There was no middle.
It was all beginnings and endings, over and over, until you got old and had enough footage to determine what the story was about.
Life made him feel funny, honestly, and he didn’t feel comfortable in it.
He didn’t feel comfortable in his own body, even.
So instead, he imagined that someone was filming him , that he was in someone else’s movie, and he tried to act how he thought would make for a pleasing story.
His mother said this was worrying, but she spent most of her time on TV.
She walked through the world like a camera was always trained on her, so some of his weirdness had to be because of her.
But he didn’t know for sure.
He looked at his siblings, who were made of the things he was made of, and he wondered who made them the way that they were.
Maybe, when they all saw their dad again, all the versions of him wrapped up in a single body, it would make sense.
Whatever happened, he would film it.
They could all watch it later.