Seven #2
slipped his backpack off and unzipped it to place the Walkman inside. She had hoped for someone, anyone, else. She watched
in horror as he pulled the chair out opposite her.
“You can’t sit there,” she said. “I’m meeting someone.”
He looked amused. “Is it by any chance the person who has been leaving treats on your desk for the past three weeks?”
She frowned at him as it dawned on her. “You? Why? Why would you do that?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Didn’t you like them?”
“I . . .” She blushed. “I don’t know what to say.”
“How about starting with thank you?” He grinned then, and pulled something out of his pocket, putting it on the table. A macramé
bracelet with tiny beads woven into it, the sandy color of my mother’s hair, the beads chocolate brown like her eyes. “I got
you this.”
“Why do you keep buying me stuff?”
My father looked genuinely bewildered. “I don’t know. I saw this bracelet and the colors made me think of you, so I got it
for you.”
They slept together that night. That’s all I know. My father once started talking about it, and I had to walk into the other
room. I loved how my father treated me like an adult, but drew the line at hearing about his sex life, with my mother or anyone
else.
Now, as an adult, I am certain that my father fell for my mother because she didn’t seem interested in him. He has never been
able to resist a conquest. Every time he appeared to lose interest, my mother would play hard to get again, disappear for
a few days, stop returning his calls. My father kept coming back.
Of course my mother was drawn to my father. Everyone was drawn to my father. He was so charismatic, so magnetic; everyone who met him wanted to be in his orbit. My mother seemed
calm to him, a steadying, stable presence, the opposite of girls he was typically drawn to. He was at a time in his life in
which so much was uncertain, unknowable, and he needed, I think, to come home to his librarian/writer girlfriend, with her
sensible, pragmatic approach to life.
Until he didn’t.
My mother always says success changed my father. He went from being something of a nerd to a gym-obsessed entrepreneur in
faded jeans and vintage T-shirts, who everyone wanted to be near. Who women wanted to be near.
My mother watched how people changed around him once he created ipryy; how women gravitated toward him, tilted their heads and gazed up at him from under their eyelashes.
She knew she would be naive to think him immune.
As his success grew, the women became more beautiful.
Marty was the kid in the candy store, with a choice of whatever he desired and unlimited funds.
Of course he would be unfaithful. He was unfaithful.
And then he left, thinking he had fallen in love with a woman called Candy.
As a child living in my mother’s house, abandoned by a father I only knew from photographs I wasn’t supposed to have found,
I dreamed of them getting back together. My mother wanted me to be furious with him for leaving us, but all I felt was longing.
The fact that he abandoned me was irrelevant. I knew he was busy building his business, and that he’d be back, even though
I would overhear my mother asking friends what kind of a man would abandon his child.
The doorbell would ring one day, I thought, and I would go down and open the door to find that enigmatic handsome man from
the photographs.
“Peanut!” He would pick me up and hug me tight, tell me how sorry he was, how much he had missed me. “Look how big you are!
How grown-up! Tell me everything about school, and friends. I want to hear about Lucy, and Noah, and Caden.” And then, when
I had caught him up on my life, delighting him in everything I had ever done, I would picture his face growing serious. “Where
is your mother?” he would say, before I led him up the stairs and into the bedroom, where my mother would be lying in bed,
a notepad on her lap as she scribbled away.
“Letta?” he would whisper from the doorway. She would look up and drop her pen, throwing the covers aside and running into
his arms.
“Marty! You came back!”
And there it was. My happily ever after.
I had watched too many movies.
Did they, I wonder now, have moments of happiness? Of warmth and affection, of lazy Sunday mornings like this? Of loving each
other?
Jerome opens his eyes and yawns, his underarms pale and freckled where they have not seen the sun.
“Hungry?” he asks, and I nod, pushing the papers to one side and climbing out of bed. “Where are you going?”
“To get breakfast?”
“I’ll get it,” he says, leaping up, surprisingly alert for one who has just awoken. He leans over to kiss me, then pulls on
sweats and a T-shirt. I watch him leave the bedroom, admiring his body. His shoulders are broad, his waist small. He moves
as someone comfortable in his skin. I understand why my father employed him, how Jerome so quickly moved into the inner circles
of ipryy, ending up as my father’s trusted protégé. He is a young version of my father, if my father had been born into a
family of privilege rather than a blue-collar family who didn’t know what to do with their precocious child.
Jerome met my father after a talk he had given at Stanford. Jerome, about to be a graduating senior, engaged him in a discussion
that moved from the steps of the Lathrop Library to a restaurant, where they continued talking long into the evening. My father
offered Jerome a job on the spot.
I slip Jerome’s waffle robe on over my T-shirt and pad downstairs to the kitchen to help, but he sends me into the living
room to wait, trying to impress me with his breakfast skills, I think.
Twenty minutes later, he calls me in to steel-cut oats drizzled with the tiniest touch of maple syrup, a glistening bowl of
berries still wet in the middle of the table. A pile of crispy bacon sits on a plate, toasted whole wheat muffins beside them.
“What a feast!” I slide the chair out, laughing at Jerome who is puffed up with pride.
“You’re not the only one who can pull off an impromptu feast.” He busies himself spooning oatmeal into a bowl for me, setting
bacon on a small matte black plate that he pushes toward me.
“No bacon for me, thanks.” I push the plate away.
“No bacon? You’ve got to have the bacon. It’s the best bit of the meal.”
“I’m not eating pork anymore, remember?” Lucy’s friend, Karim, recently got a micro pig as a pet. I had never given a thought
to pigs before, but we had gone to Karim’s house for a drink, and Kevin Bacon (the pig) had run over to greet us at the door.
He was tiny, and stubborn, and very, very funny. He took a liking to me, particularly after I sat on the floor with my legs
extended so he could nuzzle into my lap, grunting with pleasure as I scratched his back. How could I ever eat a pig again?
There and then, I vowed off pork for good.
“Oh God! Kevin Bacon! I forgot! But bacon isn’t pork. Technically, it might be, but isn’t it its own food group? You can’t
give up bacon. Especially this bacon.” He picks up a piece and waves it under my nose. “Nitrate and nitrite-free, organic.
Look how thick and delicious it is. Have a small taste.”
I think about Kevin Bacon grunting, and my throat closes up. “I don’t want any bacon.”
“Just a tiny piece,” he continues, breaking off a piece of bacon and moving it toward my lips. “Taste how good this is.”
I don’t want any bacon, but before I know it my mouth is open, Jerome placing the bacon on my tongue. I chew and swallow,
forcing myself to concentrate on oatmeal and berries.
“See?” He watches me with delight. “Isn’t it delicious? I knew you’d like it.”
I don’t like it. All I taste is the flesh of a pig.
The flesh of Kevin Bacon, to be precise.
It takes everything I have not to gag. I quickly sip my coffee and take a spoonful of oatmeal, hoping to get rid of the taste of animal flesh, but it takes a while.
I am reminded of my father who has always insisted I eat whatever he wants me to eat, regardless of what I want.
When I was twelve, I announced I was vegetarian. My father nodded as if he was taking it seriously, as if he would respect
my decision, then called me down for dinner. On the table was a glistening steak, slick with juices, a circle of garlic butter
forming a melting pool around the plate. It looked and smelled delicious, and I ate the entire thing so as not to displease
him, throwing up when I was safely back home. I was vegetarian for years, but with him, I ate meat, to keep him happy.
Now I don’t eat octopus (thank you, My Octopus Teacher). When we are out for dinner and there is octopus on the menu, my father orders it for the table, spearing a piece and holding
it out to me, less than an inch from my lips, insisting I taste. I do not know how to say no.
The doorbell rings, breaking the silence. Jerome opens the app on his phone that is connected to the camera by the door. “Who
would be coming over here now?”
On the doorstep is my father, a bike helmet swinging from his hand. Flanking him, jiggling up and down with excitement, their
own bike helmets firmly on their pale blond heads, are Nico and Paloma, my siblings.
“Do we say we’re home?” Jerome is startled, unused to surprise visits from my father on a Sunday morning.
“He’s already seen my car. You let them in and I’ll put some clothes on.” I run upstairs and find myself smiling in the bathroom
mirror. My father, and my half siblings. I couldn’t have asked for a better Sunday morning.