Where We Belong

  Marian turns to look at her mother, who doesn’t appreciate the accusation. “We don’t have thin hair. We have fine hair. There is a difference.”

  “And what is that, exactly?” Marian asks.

  “The hairs are fine, but we have a lot of them,” Pamela says, turning toward the gift bag.

  I think of my mother and her thick, curly hair that my sister inherited, and realize how nice it is to finally know where I got mine. Then I think of how my mom has always told me she loves every hair on my head—and I feel an unexpected pang for her.

  “Oh, these are soo lovely,” Pamela says, exclaiming over the napkins.

  “My mother made them,” I say.

  “Well, they are beautiful. Just beautiful,” Pamela says, going a little too overboard.

  I tell her I’m glad she likes them, as she continues to gush. I watch her while tuning her out, recognizing her type. Then I realize that, ironically, she reminds me of a richer, more polished version of my dad. They are both chatty, friendly, and outgoing, yet there is something about her that makes me feel that I’d never really get to know her, that she’d always keep me at arm’s length in the same way my dad uses sports. No matter how close a friend he has, they never really seem to progress beyond the Cardinals and Rams. I can imagine that it is this way with Pamela, only with a different, narrow focus.

  “So what would you like to do today?” she says. “Go to the city? Have you been to Chicago?”

  “She was born here,” Marian says under her breath.

  I glance at her then look back at Pamela. “Not for a long time,” I say.

  “Well, there is so much to do. Museums, art galleries, shopping. Do you like to shop, Kirby?”

  “Sure. Sometimes,” I say, thinking the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

  “Honey. I don’t think this is a day to shop,” Jim says. “Wouldn’t you all just rather talk? Get to know one another?”

  Pamela holds up her hand as if to say my bad, then says, “Well, are we allowed to eat? Because I’ve prepared a feast!”

  “Yes,” Marian says. “We’re allowed to eat, Mom.”

  “Good,” she says. “Then let’s eat!”

  I smile, thinking that this is at least one thing my family has in common with this one, and maybe families everywhere. When in doubt, go ahead and eat.

  26

  marian

  The next morning, after Kirby and I successfully dodge my mother’s attempt to make us breakfast, we hop into my dad’s Land Rover, unshowered, and commence driving aimlessly around my hometown per her request to see where I grew up. She even has a list of all the places she wants to see, my high school, our church (although I told her we almost never went), Conrad’s childhood home, and Janie’s house.

  “So how’s Philip?” I ask her as we back out of my driveway. I don’t tell her that I heard her across the hall, talking and laughing until nearly midnight.

  “He’s good,” she says.

  “So things are going well?”

  “Yeah,” she says, smiling. “I think we’re kind of dating…”

  I wait for more details, but I can tell she is finished talking about her personal life, so I decide not to press.

  A few minutes later, we turn the corner, nearing my old stomping ground. “There’s New Trier High School,” I say, pointing to the familiar brick building. “Home of the proud and mighty Trevians.”

  She nods, as I reach for my travel mug, take a sip of black coffee, and take a one-handed turn onto the mostly empty school grounds. I pull around the school, then into a parking spot, staring down at the track, deluged with memories.

  “What are you thinking? About your cheerleading days?” she asks with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Ha,” I say, although I pretty much was. “I heard they got rid of the squad here. Not enough interest. It’s a good thing. I think girls should come up with something better to do than cheer for their male classmates.”

  She smirks. “You didn’t like being a cheerleader?”

  “It was okay. But I wish I had stuck with soccer. I loved the game but quit to cheer. For Todd. Ugh,” I say, rolling my eyes. “He was our quarterback.”

  “Of course he was,” Kirby says.

  “Hey! I’m telling you I regretted it. Doesn’t that redeem me?” I ask, although secretly I don’t altogether regret being on the squad. Janie and I had a blast—and that short, pleated skirt and those pom-poms really did make me feel pretty cool during a time when feeling cool seemed to matter so much.

  Kirby glances at me, then faces the track again, as we both watch a boy sprinting up and down the bleacher steps with Olympian determination. “Yeah, that redeems you … But Conrad redeems you more.”

  I nod, his name a Pavlovian bolt of electricity that I try to hide now by singing the cheer I can still say in my sleep: We say New Trier; you say Trevians! New Trier! I look at her, cueing her with my right hand.

  Kirby plays along and give me a less than rousing, “Trevians.”

  I smile and continue with the next stanza: We say green and you say blue. Green!

  “Blue,” she says with a lackluster fist pump.

  We drive to the front of the school as I point out a big red and white NO PARKING sign in an area reserved for buses. “You see that sign?” I ask.

  “Yeah?”

  “I ran up onto the curb and plowed it down just days after I got my driver’s license, right into a six-feet drift of snow.”

  “On purpose?” she asks, as if the story is part of my riveting, rebellious lore rather than a small mishap, albeit traumatic in that moment.

  “No,” I say. “It was an accident. I had a bag of McDonald’s on the dash. When I made the turn, it fell off the dash. I leaned down to grab it, and didn’t let go of the steering wheel to adjust after the turn. I rolled right up onto the curb. I was with Todd—who started yelling for me to brake, but I accidentally slammed down on the gas pedal. The whole thing unfolded right in front of the math team and the wrestling team, both loading up on buses. And of course, Todd promptly abandoned me to get on one himself.”

  “Lemme guess. He got on the math bus?”

  “Funny,” I say. “Wrestling of course. Second in state in the one-hundred-sixty-pound weight class.”

  “Only second?”

  “Yeah,” I say, then imitate his meathead voice. “But it was the worst call, dude! Highway robbery!”

  Kirby laughs and says, “So did you get in trouble? For hitting the sign?”

  “Yeah. The dean came out guns a-blazin’ until he saw it was me—I had a good reputation, so he mellowed a bit. But he gave me an extra two hours of driving practice with the driver’s ed teacher, who had the worst halitosis. That sucked.”

  “Was that the only time you ever got in trouble?” she asks, giving me another pointed look, as if she is thinking, Before you got knocked up.

  “Yes. That was it, pretty much. I didn’t even ditch on senior-ditch day,” I say, as I turn back onto Winnetka Avenue. “Pretty Goody Two-shoes vanilla.”

  Sure enough, she comes out with it. “Does a Goody Two-shoes really get herself pregnant?”

  “This one did,” I say. “Where to next?”

  “Conrad’s house,” she says.

  I can feel my hands growing tight and clammy on the steering wheel, my heart rate quickening as we drive toward the area of town known as the Presidents because all the streets are named after presidents. I take the long way, but we still get to Conrad’s old house in less than five minutes.

  “That’s it,” I say, slowing to a crawl and pointing at the ranch house, now painted a dusty blue with a brick-red front door. “It used to be white with green shutters,” I tell her.

  “Does it … bring back memories?” she says.

  “Yes,” I say, “that’s for sure. Good and bad. Mostly good.”

  I stare at the house, remembering the nights spent inside, listening to him strum the guitar, the two of us talking and laughing, watc
hing movies, making love. “That was his room,” I say, pointing to the right corner window. Then I tell her we pretty much broke up in his family room. “Right after I lied to him about my pregnancy test.”

  She nods, then swallows hard.

  “My only big regret,” I say.

  “Your only big one?” she says. “Really? What about … you know?… Getting pregnant in the first place?”

  “How can I regret that?” I say, looking at her.

  “Okay. Maybe not now. But then. It had to be a regret then.”

  I nod, making the difficult admission. “Of course. I wouldn’t wish that on any teenager … I wouldn’t want that for you. I think you should wait to have sex, if not until marriage, then at least for a long, long time. So that if you did get pregnant—you’d be ready to deal with it better than I was,” I say, hoping she’s still a virgin.

  “You mean able to keep the baby?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “That’s what I mean.”

  I turn to look at her and choose my words carefully. “I wish I could have kept you. I wish that had been the right decision for you.”

  “I wish that, too,” she says. “I love my parents and my sister—but I wish that, too.”

  My heart feels torn as I say her name, and then, “I’m not going to say things happen for a reason—because I really don’t believe that. I think much of life is random … But I will say this. I’m glad everything happened the way it did. I’m glad I got pregnant with you. I’m glad I had you. I’m glad you have a family who loves you. And most of all, I’m glad you’re here now.”

  She gives me a small smile as I continue, not letting myself off the hook.

  “But God … I shouldn’t have lied to him.” I shake my head and mumble, “That was so wrong.”

  “But you’re going to fix it,” she says. “Today. Right?”

  “I’m going to try,” I say, as my stomach drops, thinking that if driving by his old house is this hard, how will I ever make it to his actual doorstep?

  She says we can go whenever I’m ready, and I take a deep breath and pull away, headed back across the train tracks to Janie’s house, the last stop on her list. When we arrive, I spot Janie’s mother in the front yard, gardening in khaki Bermuda shorts and a straw hat. She flags down my car and hustles over to the window, too quickly for me to share with Kirby that I never liked her much. She is the type of person who says “I’m the type of person who” and then fills in the blank with a virtue that is either blandly universal or is downright self-congratulatory (“I’m the type of person who likes to help others”). She annoyed me when I was a kid—and more so the older I got, although I probably haven’t seen her in a good six or seven years.

  “Marian! I thought that was you! Your mother told me you were coming to town this weekend! How are you, dear?”

  “I’m well, thanks,” I say, noticing that she gives Kirby only a cursory glance, evidence that my mother did not divulge the true purpose of my visit. I wonder how long it will take for the barriers of our secret to completely crumble. Like the Berlin Wall—just a few openings here and there until the sledgehammers came out and the dancing began. Somehow, I can’t imagine my mother ever initiating an open conversation about Kirby, and I wonder why this is. To hide the underlying truth—or the fact that we lied in the first place? And is it really possible to separate the two after so many years?

  “How’s Janie?” I say, knowing that I will have to endure a twenty-minute monologue on Janie’s life in Cincinnati that will inevitably repeat all of the bullet points in the letter I received from Janie herself, stuffed into her holiday card adorned with a snapshot of the family donning summer whites on the shore of Lake Michigan. The letters are the same, year in and year out, exhaustively covering her three sons’ extracurriculars (“Cub Scouts! Chess club!!”) and athletic feats (“Brandon’s first homer!”), her myriad of volunteer do-gooding (“five hundred Easter baskets for underprivileged youth—a record!”), and of course, details of her husband Keith’s latest promotion and triathlon adventures (“I don’t know how he does it all!”). I tune in to Mrs. Wattenberg now, wrapping up her coverage of Janie’s life, with a general touting of the Midwest—including family values and a slower pace.

  “So how’s life in the big city?” she finally asks.

  Before I can answer, she shakes her head, says how proud she is of me, how much she loves my show. And even though it isn’t her husband’s cup of tea, he watches it, too, and that they’ve told all their friends to at least record the show, because it is good for my ratings. They’re doing their part!

  I thank her as she takes a deep breath, exhausted, then shifts gears. “So when have you and Janie last talked?”

  “It’s been a while, unfortunately,” I say, thinking that it had to have been around the ten-year reunion, which I told her I had to miss because of work when it actually had more to do with Conrad. I knew he wouldn’t come, but I didn’t want to hear his name. I didn’t want to be around anyone who knew him. I didn’t want to think about him at all.

  “But there are no hard feelings, right? You girls didn’t have a falling-out, did you?”

  “Oh, no, Mrs. Wattenberg, it was nothing like that. We just … grew apart. It happens.”

  “Well, you have such different lives—that is true,” she says, glancing at my left hand, as I notice that I’m still gripping the steering wheel.

  “Any wedding news? Getting closer to a ring?” she asks. “Your mother just loves that boyfriend of yours. I saw a photo. He looks like a young Richard Gere, who has always been my favorite. Ever since Pretty Woman. And who would think you could love a man who’d hire a hooker?”

  I smile and say, “Yeah. That’s a feat, all right.”

  “So?”

  I shake my head, hold up my naked left hand, and chirp, “No ring yet!”

  “Well, hang in there! It’ll come! And babies to follow. You still have time. And who knows? You could have twins. Do you know that your chance of twins increases with age? Older women are more likely to drop two eggs. Maybe you’d even have triplets! You could catch up to Janie in one fell swoop.”

  I have a fleeting fantasy of telling her that procreation isn’t a contest, any more than SAT scores and making the cheerleading squad and getting into a good college and all the other things, both big and small, that she turned into a contest when Janie and I were young, going all the way back to whose baby teeth came in first, according to my mother. I could never understand why she was so keen on keeping score between Janie and me when Janie herself refused to bite; if anything her mother’s efforts caused a reverse effect.

  But looking back, I can see that I was participating in the contest. Maybe that was why I was so acutely aware of Mrs. Wattenberg’s little remarks. And maybe that was part of the reason I didn’t want Janie or anyone else to know the truth—because I believed that she, and others like her, might have relished the drama. The girl voted most likely to succeed, going to Michigan on an academic scholarship, from a great family with a high-powered attorney for a father. Pregnant at eighteen, with Conrad Knight’s baby, no less. The ultimate shock and fall from grace.

  I can also see now how self-centered I was to think that my news would have made that much of a difference in anybody’s life. People would have talked about me for a few weeks, or perhaps just one night at the dinner table, before moving on to something else. And who cares, anyway, what they would have said? I realize now, years too late, how little it mattered. How much I sacrificed because of a mistake, including my friendship with Janie. Although too much time has gone by to miss her, I feel regret that I didn’t maintain our friendship. Even if we no longer have much in common, we would have always had the past, which, in some ways, is just as important as the present or future. It is where we come from, what makes us who we are.

  I glance over at Kirby, and catch her staring at Mrs. Wattenberg with faint disdain. I consider making a quick getaway, for both of our sakes, but
I know what I must do. So I clear my throat and take the plunge. “Oh, I’m sorry I haven’t introduced you … Mrs. W, this is Kirby Rose.”

  “Hi,” she says, without the slightest flash of curiosity. Yet this time, I decide I’m going to make her be interested.

  “Kirby is my daughter,” I say.

  Mrs. Wattenberg freezes, literally, the way we used to look like statues playing freeze tag. “Pardon? Your daughter?” she says with a nervous laugh. “You don’t have a daughter! Wait.” She peers around the car as if there might be a camera crew hiding in the hedges. “Is this a big-sister program type thing? A reality show?”

  “No. It’s not a show,” I say. “It’s real life.”

  “But … what do you mean?” she asks.

  “Kirby’s my daughter,” I say again. “Right, Kirby?”

  Kirby nods, smirking, seeming to follow right along with every emotional nuance. “Right, Mom.”

  “But…?” Mrs. Wattenberg says. “Is she a step—”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “She’s my biological daughter.”

  “But how? How old are you?” she asks, staring at Kirby with newfound fascination.

  “Eighteen,” Kirby says.

  “Yes, Mrs. Wattenberg. I got pregnant with her the summer after we graduated. That’s the real reason I deferred college a year. Then I had her—and made the difficult decision to give her up for adoption. I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. Fortunately, she came back and found me. We’re all getting to know each other.” I flatly deliver the news—because it isn’t really about the news. It’s about the act of telling it, finally. I feel strangely freed, basking in the feeling of utter openness and honesty. This is who I am. Take it or leave it.

  “Well. My stars. I had no idea,” Mrs. Wattenberg says. She looks not only flabbergasted but flustered, clearly not equipped to receive gossip this easily; usually it’s fought for, scrap by scrap.

  “Yeah. Don’t worry about it, Mrs. W. Nobody did. We kept it a secret … But we shouldn’t have. Please tell Janie—and tell her I’m sorry I lied to her. In fact, feel free to tell whomever you’d like,” I say as if, without my permission, she still wouldn’t have hit the pavement with the juiciest Maple Hill Road nugget since two neighbors switched spouses, the wives staying put, the husbands moving across the street, a seamless shift, the running joke that one husband got an uncomfortable couch but big, fake boobs in the trade. I start to tell her who the father is—as I know she’s dying to ask—but decide I should tell Conrad first.