Chapter xxix
xxix
DARREN AND I DECIDED I WOULD COME OVER WITH the kids on Tuesday night so they could watch a movie with the twins, and we’d talk while they watched. Whenever I anticipate having a difficult conversation with someone, I run through the different possible responses in my mind so I have an expectation of where the conversation might go and know what to say in any eventuality. But I didn’t anticipate how badly Darren would react to what I said. Since our divorce, we hadn’t argued much. We both wanted to put what was best for the kids first; the trouble, of course, came when we didn’t agree on what that was.
I thought it was better for Sammy to know the truth.
Darren did not.
WHEN WE GOT TO HIS PLACE THAT NIGHT, COURTNEY had set up the living room with pizza, cut-up straw- berries, popcorn, chocolate-covered blueberries, water thermoses for each kid, and two huge fleece blankets.
The kids sat around the coffee table, and Sage climbed into Violet’s lap while Ivy sat as close to Sam as possible without actually being on his lap.
Darren and Courtney’s house was beautiful, and fancier than mine. All Miele appliances, mahogany floors, and designer-brand furniture. They’d had a decorator come in and do it all for them, and on the rare occasions I went inside, I felt like I was in a magazine or at a photo shoot or something.
“So you wanted to talk,” Darren said. “How about the study?”
I nodded.
Darren had a room on the first floor filled floor-to-ceiling with books that they called the study. There was a table in the center and a reading nook with two cushy chairs, a small table, and floor lamps. There was even a child-sized nook with a shelf of picture books for the girls, and a beanbag area with slightly older books for Sammy and Liam. I guess they figured Violet was old enough for the adult books now.
Darren sat down in one of the big chairs, and I sat down across from him.
“I want to talk about Samuel,” I said.
“I swear I was watching him when he cut himself,” Darren said. “It was a freak accident.”
I smiled briefly. “I wasn’t worried about that, Darren. I know you take great care of the kids.”
He let out a breath. “Okay,” he said. “I just I’ve been living that moment over and over, wondering if there’s anything I could’ve done to stop him from getting hurt. He was my responsibility, and I failed him.”
When Darren says things like this, it reminds me why I loved him, why I married him, why I feel so bad for hurting him.
“You’re a wonderful dad,” I said. “I doubt there was anything you could have done differently.” I cleared my throat and then looked up at Darren. “I think … I think it’s time to tell him the truth.”
“The truth?” Darren asked, his brow furrowing.
“The truth about Gabe,” I said. Darren’s whole demeanor changed; his face went cold and his back straightened—his body bracing for a fight. He started to protest, but I put up my hand. “Please. Just give me a second to explain.”
He nodded, but I could tell he wanted to walk out of the room. He was fidgeting, looking anywhere but at me.
“So the tenth anniversary of Gabe’s death is coming up. I’m working with his editor on a retrospective of his life, and they’re going to relaunch his book with updates, and put a new show up of his photographs at the Joseph Landis gallery. As the person who owns the copyright to all his work, I’ll have a say in what they show, but … regardless of whether I’m in it or not, with all the conversations coming up about Gabe, with all the time I’ll be working on this and thinking about this, I just think it’ll be better if Sam and the other kids know the truth. If I don’t have to keep more active secrets from them.”
Darren was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “So since this editor and publisher and gallery owner want to honor Gabe, you think we should tell Sam. You’re letting strangers make decisions for our family. That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it, though? The outside world forces people’s hands all the time. There are conversations we had with our kids about social justice, about racism, about antisemitism because of the outside world.”
I could feel my heart racing. You know how much I hate confrontation.
“That’s different,” Darren said. “Those conversations are about the world and our place in it. This is really personal.”
I tried another tack. “The longer we hide it, the longer we keep this secret, the bigger of a shock it will be when we tell it, and the more upset the kids will be that we lied to them,” I said. This was the main reason I hadn’t wanted to go down this road of secrets initially, the main reason I’d assumed that once I told Darren the truth, our whole family would know, the whole world, if we wanted to share.
“That’s operating under the expectation that we’re going to tell them at some point. What if we never do? Would it be so terrible for Sam to think I’m his biological dad for his whole life?” Darren responded, playing with a cuticle on his thumb.
I clenched my fists, though I couldn’t say I was surprised he’d brought up this option. “We always said we’d tell him,” I reminded him, doing my best to keep my voice steady, not to shout. “And what happens if he does a DNA thing for Ancestry.com or heaven forbid has a medical problem. That would force our hand, too.”
“So let it,” Darren said.
“Hmm?” I asked.
“Goddamn it, Lucy,” he said. “If there’s a medical crisis, and it would save his life, of course we’d tell him. But the likelihood of that happening is so small. You’re grasping at straws here.”
“Think about how that would feel: to have a medical crisis and then find out his life is a lie on top of that? I know this is right,” I said. “I know in my heart this will be better for him, for all our kids, in the long run. Secrets fester. They push people away. They’ve made me push people I love away. They’ve put a wall up between us and our kids.”
“So this is about you now?” Darren said. “You want to tell him because it’ll be better for you? Because it sure as hell won’t be better for me.”
“Are you even listening to anything I’ve been saying to you? A piece of this is about me, sure, but mostly it’s about Sammy. He should know where his talent comes from, his height, his blond hair. He shouldn’t be building his identity on a lie. This really is about him. You’re making it about you!” I was so angry I was shaking. I hated his hypocrisy, his self-righteousness, the way he completely glossed over the deal we’d made when we divorced—that we would tell Sammy one day. That we would find the right time. Now it seemed like Darren thought it would never be the right time.
“Of course I listened.” He was one step away from shouting. “Goddamn it, Lucy. Why do you always think I don’t listen to you?”
“Because you don’t!” I said. “You never think my thoughts or feelings are as important as yours.” I took a breath and looked him straight in the eyes, willing to draw a line, to take a stand for my happiness and for Sammy’s. Because it was, in part, about my own survival, but more than that, it was about the survival of our family in the future. I’d seen how this secret had degraded my relationship with my parents and brother; I couldn’t imagine what it would do to my relationships with my kids if I continued to keep it buried. “This was a courtesy,” I said, my voice filled with as much steel as I could muster. “I don’t need your permission to say anything I choose to my son.”
Darren’s face turned white. “You wouldn’t dare,” he said.
I shrugged, my heart pumping so hard, I could feel it in my neck.
“Just give me some time. You can’t spring something like this on me. It’s not right,” Darren said. “There’s no urgency here. We can talk again next week? We should do this together. We should make this choice together. We agreed when we separated—he is both of ours.”
I decided to quit while I had the upper hand. And before I said something I truly regretted. “I’ll call you after the kids are in bed next Tuesday,” I told him.
He nodded. “I need a minute,” he said. I could see his hands shaking now. “But feel free to go catch the end of the movie with the kids.”
I clearly had been dismissed, so I headed into the living room, grabbed a slice of cold pizza, and sat down on the edge of the couch.
I looked at Sam, cuddled up with Ivy, and it struck me that he actually wasn’t biologically related to the twins at all. Once we told Sam, there would be a huge ripple effect, not just in what he knew about himself, but in the contours of our entire family unit. He would still be their brother, of course, but his understanding about what they shared would shift.
I could understand why Darren wanted time, wanted to delay, but I knew that sooner or later, the truth would have to come out. It wasn’t fair to Sammy otherwise.