Julian kept his eyes trained on my face. “Wow. Holy shit. You look so much like your mother.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Shit. Wait. I probably shouldn’t curse in front of you, should I?” He smiled tentatively.
“I’m sixteen, not four,” I managed to say. My voice was sharper than I’d intended it to be.
“Right.” He nodded, clearly startled by my tone. “Is your mother home?”
The answer to his question was an easy no. Mom was across the Atlantic Ocean. She was speaking at the opening of some fancy new gallery in Paris, giving a talk on contemporary woven arts. So I should’ve been able to plainly tell him no, but I didn’t. Because normally, you see, if a stranger asked me if my mother was home, I would’ve quickly said yes, even if she wasn’t. I would’ve told the stranger that not only was my mother home, but so were ten other people, all armed with machetes and machine guns, thank you very much.
And the man standing before me was a stranger.
But he also wasn’t.
This was all very freaking confusing.
The silence stretched between us, and finally Harlow answered, “No. She’s actually not home right now.”
Julian rubbed the bottom of his chin and grimaced a little.
“You’re both relieved and disappointed?” I said without thinking.
“Yes.” He gave me the same tentative smile from earlier. “Exactly.”
I shook my head and squinted past him into the sunlight. “Why are you here now?”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his skinny black jeans. The pants were probably an inappropriate choice for most men of his age, but I guessed that the rules of fashion applied differently to rock stars, even aging ones. “Because, well . . . I don’t really know how to say this.”
“Just say it,” I said.
“Your grandfather is dying.”
“Um. That already happened. He died before I was born.” Jedde had passed before my mother even immigrated to the United States. I only knew about him from photographs and stories my mother told. He had her same soft brown eyes. He had liked mint tea and the way the light looked in the late afternoon—the golden hour.
Julian swayed from side to side, switching the weight of his body from his left to right foot and back again. He frequently rocked like that when he was onstage. It was very freaking weird to watch him do that on my doorstep. “Not that grandfather. My father.”
“Your father.”
“Yes.”
I widened my eyes. “Oh.”
“Oh,” Harlow echoed, the moment dawning on her too.
“So when you say my grandfather . . .”
“Yes,” Julian Oliver said with a nod. “I believe your theory is right.”
“My theory.”
“Jeez,” he said with a bit of a laugh. “You don’t make things easy for a guy.”
I watched him fidget on my doorstep. I didn’t think he deserved easy after sixteen years of silence. He deserved hard. Trench warfare hard. Siberian winter hard. Capital-H effing Hard. “Why would I?”
He bit his lip. I recognized the nervous gesture. It was one of mine. “Touché.”
After a few more beats of silence, he said, “But damn, kid, it is hot as hell out here. Can I at least come in and try to explain myself?”
“I guess,” I said, despite the warning bells ringing in my head. I motioned toward the living room. “Come on in.”
IV.
It was hard to reconcile all the conflicting emotions that were brewing inside of me. On one hand, I was pretty shocked and giddy that he had finally shown up. And even more giddy that all the suspicions I’d been harboring since I was thirteen years old seemed to be true and not just flights of adolescent fantasy.
I mean, I really was the daughter of a rock star. I allowed myself to have a Holy Hell moment before the anger set in. I was the daughter of a man who people camped out for hours outside of a venue to catch a glimpse of. People spent hours analyzing the lyrics to his iconic songs and then had those lyrics tattooed across their rib cages. People full-on worshipped him.
But the giddy surrealness of it all faded quickly to anger. Because if all my suspicions were correct, where had he been my whole life? Why had he abandoned my mother? Had he known she was pregnant? And why hadn’t he answered any of my letters? Not. A. Single. Response.
He sat on the floral upholstered couch Mom and I had picked out from the Anthropologie catalog two years ago. His knees bounced up and down like he was having difficulty controlling his energy. I remembered how one Rolling Stone interviewer had described him as “manic.”
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I said. I was still standing, which I knew probably made this insanely weird moment even weirder. But I couldn’t bring myself to sit.
Harlow, though, had plopped down in the wing-backed white leather chair that sat squarely across from the couch, folded her hands in her lap, and seemed to be perfectly content waiting for this conversation to unspool. She also took a not-so-discreet photograph of him with her phone and was presumably texting it to Quinn. I wanted to be mad, but I couldn’t really blame her.
“I know,” he said, not looking me in the eye. His focus darted around the room. He paused on a photograph of Mom and me taken on a trip to Hawaii last summer. “It must seem odd to you.”
“Uh, yeah. That’s an understatement. All of this seems beyond odd to me.”
He turned to stare at the framed Quran passage that hung on the left wall. The dark ink of the Arabic calligraphy contrasted with the creamy parchment paper. Mom wasn’t particularly religious. Actually, considering that she frequently had a glass of red wine with dinner, did not wear a hijab, and hardly ever attended a function at the mosque, it might be more precise to say Mom wasn’t religious at all, but she was a tricky woman to figure out. Because while she was not overtly religious, and she never fasted during Ramadan, she still hosted late-evening dinners for single Muslim women. When I was little, I used to slip out of bed and scoot down the stairs, spying on them as they broke their fast with dates and water, later moving on to the lamb-stuffed okra and mounds of rice my mother had uncharacteristically cooked.
I’d once brought up all these contradictions to Harlow and she’d squinted at me and said, “Tal. Faith is a complicated thing.” Which is a very Harlow thing to say.
I didn’t exactly know what the Quran passage said, since I couldn’t read Arabic. But ever since Harlow had said that, I’d translated the calligraphy to read: Faith is a complicated thing.
I glanced at Julian and thought: Paternity is an uncomplicated thing. Fatherhood is a complicated thing. Being a daughter is a complicated thing.
He met my gaze. I couldn’t quite get over how strange it was to stare back into eyes that mirrored my own. “I got all your letters.”
“When?”
“What?”
“When did you get the letters?” I pressed.
“About a year ago.”
I frowned. “I sent the first one over three years ago. You’re a little late.”
“I know.” His pale eyes widened in the same way mine do when I’m trying to cultivate sympathy. I looked away.
“But you have to understand—”
I interrupted him. “I don’t have to do anything.”
“Whoa.” He leaned back into the couch and put his hands up. “You have your mother’s temper.”
“How would you know?”
“Taliah,” he said softly. “I love that name, by the way.”
My skin felt itchy, like it was suddenly three sizes too small. “It was Mom’s grandma’s name.”
“I know.”
I heard a beeping sound and turned toward the kitchen.
“Oh!” Harlow said, jumping up from the chair. “That’s the cupcakes. I’m going to . . .” She trailed off and slinked away to the kitchen. Leaving me alone with Julian Oliver.
“I can’t believe it took you this long,” I said slowly.
?
??I know, and I can’t offer you any good excuses.” He stared at his hands. He had prominent knuckles. That was something I’d noticed one late night when I was Googling him and had zoomed in on one of the famous photographs that Annie Leibovitz had taken of him. “But in my defense, I didn’t even know your letters existed until a year ago.”
“So you say.”
“It’s the truth. The girl who . . .” He fidgeted on the couch.
“It’s okay. It’s not like I’m naive enough to think that people like you sit around all day reading letters from all the random people that adore you.” I realized my tone was bitter, but hell, I think I had the right to be bitter.
“People like me?”
“Famous people.”
He blanched. “It’s not like that.”
“Okay. Whatever you say.”
He nodded quickly. Another nervous tic. “So. As I was saying, the girl who reads the mail, she began to notice that we were getting a lot of letters from you. And she brought the letters to Mikey.”
“Mikey?”
“Our manager.”
I nodded. That’s right. I’d come across that name in my online sleuthing.
“And Mikey, of course, recognized the last name.”
“Mikey knew my mother?”
Julian bobbed his head quickly in agreement. “Oh yeah. Mikey grew up in Oak Falls with me. I used to work for his dad. He was there the day I met your mother. Heck, he was there for everything.”
“Everything,” I said. Something about the infiniteness of that word made me feel sad. And lonely. Mikey may have been around for everything, but I surely had not been. And no one had even bothered to give me the SparkNotes.
His eyes softened and I noticed he had a ring of green around his irises that I didn’t possess. “Yes, everything. And now that I’m here, Taliah, I want to share everything with you.”
I could feel my resolve fading, my anger giving way to melancholy. I crossed my arms. “Then why did it take you a year to get here?”
“I called Lena.” His eyes locked with mine. “I mean, your mother.”
Lena. It was unbelievably odd to hear that name coming out of his mouth. “What happened when you called her?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, I called her multiple times, actually.”
“Dude. This isn’t Little League softball or something. You don’t get points for participation.”
He gave me a small, sad smile. “I know.”
“But what did Mom say?”
“She demanded that I stay away.”
“Stay away,” I repeated. That was a finely tuned euphemism if I’d ever heard one.
“Yes. She begged me not to answer your letters. Not to call you. And certainly not to try and see you.”
I gripped the armrest of the chair that Harlow had recently vacated. “And you listened to her?”
“I felt like I had to. I owed her that at least.” Something crossed over his face. Guilt. Or maybe regret.
I could feel my face flushing with heat. “Why? Don’t you think I should have had some say in that decision?”
He was silent. I pressed, “Don’t you?”
He hung his head and stared at the woven carpet, a braided mix of teals and grays. Another item Mom and I had selected from the Anthro catalog a few years ago when we decided to redecorate most of the house to celebrate her promotion to the Dr. Jefferson Reynolds Chair of Art History at Bellwether University. This was a few months before my discovery of The Shoebox.
“Don’t you?” I said for the third time.
“Of course I do. That’s why I’m here now.”
“Three years too late.” Sixteen years too late.
“Haven’t you ever heard of better late than never?” he said in a sheepish tone.
I looked away.
“I was kidding,” he added.
“I know,” I said. “I just didn’t find it that funny.”
He let out a loud, awkward whistling sound. “Fair enough. But I’m here now. So can we at least . . .” He trailed off.
“At least?”
“At least talk. I want to get to know you.”
I cocked my eyebrows in a dramatic fashion. “Well, that’s a tall order, Mr. Oliver.”
He groaned. “Please don’t call me that.”
“I’m not going to call you ‘Dad.’” The word “Dad” left a bitter taste in my mouth. Like black coffee or dark chocolate—something that tasted a bit off now, but I knew I could learn to like if I worked at it. I swallowed a few times.
“Of course,” he said. “I’m not asking you to. Just, please don’t call me Mr. Oliver. Mr. Oliver is . . .” He paused. “My father.”
“Right,” I said, and suddenly felt like a huge asshat.
“The one who’s dying.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. “Sorry” was a free pass of a word. It cost nothing and bought you time.
“I wish you could’ve met him when he still had his wits about him.”
Something inside me stirred and I sank down into the white leather chair. Mom was a big fan of the type of furniture that envelops you and swallows you whole.
“It’s a big regret of mine,” he continued. “The second I found out about you, I should’ve fought harder. I should’ve begged Lena to let me introduce you to my family. Taliah—” He paused again. “Can I call you that?”
I nodded.
“You have a family in Oak Falls, Taliah. They would love to get to know you.” He tapped his fingers against his leg. I’d watched so many videos of him playing the guitar with those fingers. “They deserve to get to know you.”
“Like how I deserved to get to know you?”
“Yes.”
I stood back up. I brushed my hands against my acid-wash jeans, pressing out imaginary wrinkles. “I just don’t get why you’re here now.”
A loud clanking sound came from the kitchen. Then a rustling, and Harlow poked her head into the living room. “Sorry about that. Ignore me.” Before I could beg her to stay with us, she scurried back into the sanctuary of the kitchen.
“My father is dying,” he said, his voice registering in a lower octave than before. It reminded me of the tonal quality he used to sing “Your Life in the Rain,” one of his band’s most popular songs. It was supposed to inspire the listener to feel nostalgic and melancholy. But it usually made me feel furious.
How dare you try to break my heart? I’d want to scream when listening to the track. You don’t have the right.
“Your grandfather,” he added as if he wasn’t sure I would be able to piece together the connection. “And I don’t know.” He sighed and tugged at his hair. “The whole thing has really done a number on me.”
“Right,” I said softly. “Like, let me guess? It made you realize how fast life goes. Made you want to focus on what really matters.”
“Goddamn. You remind me so much of your mother. That biting wit.”
I shrugged. “She did raise me.”
“Taliah,” he said slowly, stretching my name out like it was something to savor. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“I didn’t realize we were fighting.”
“You know what I mean.”
I didn’t say anything. I focused on a framed photograph of Mom holding nine-year-old me on her shoulders on a trip we’d taken to Cambridge. We were dressed in matching ruby red wool sweaters. I was wearing a funny-looking brown corduroy beret. She’d been invited to give a series of lectures at Harvard on Ed Ruscha. It was a big deal, I remember, because she’d recently finished up her doctorate and this was one of the first prestigious speaking engagements she’d landed.
When I was first born, Mom had been a working artist. She’d actually had some of her sculptures shown at a few prominent galleries in New York. The showings had even garnered some favorable write-ups in big-time publications like the Village Voice. But before I turned two, she’d enrolled in graduate school with
the intention of earning her doctorate. And ever since she’d earned it, she hadn’t publicly shown her artwork. Not once.
I studied the photograph some more and zeroed in on her knowing wide brown eyes. I wondered what she would think of the situation currently unfolding in our living room.
I felt like a traitor.
I felt impossibly angry at her.
And I felt confused. My heart pulling me in one direction, my head pulling me in the other. There was a tectonic shift happening inside of me.
“I’m just going to come out and say it,” Julian announced. “That’s one thing I’ve learned over the years. To be direct.”
I frowned. That seemed like such a flimsy thing to have taken away from years of experience in the music industry. But I was curious, so I turned my attention from the photograph and back to him. “Okay.”
“I know this is a pretty wild and crazy idea, but I want you to come with me to meet your grandfather before he passes.”
I blinked. “What?”
“You heard me. I want you to come to Oak Falls with me right now. It’ll be a short trip. But it will give us a chance to get to know one another. And a chance for you to meet your aunts, cousins, and grandmother. And of course, your grandfather.”
I’d frequently fantasized about meeting my father. Even before I had the slightest inkling that my father was Julian Oliver. But my fantasies had never included the extended family that was likely to come with discovering the other half of me. Maybe that thought had never crossed my mind because most all of Mom’s extended family lived in Jordan. Or maybe my brain had never processed the fact that of course, even rock stars have mothers and fathers and siblings.
He broke the uncomfortable silence with a question. “Do you play?”
“What?” I said, startled. I followed Julian’s eyes to the piano that sat near the bay window in the living room.
“Oh. Yeah. But you know that.”
“Huh?”
“I wrote about that in my letters to you.”
In several of my letters to Julian, I’d mentioned that I played the piano. What I hadn’t mentioned, at least not directly, were my own musical ambitions. I loved writing songs. Since I was seven, I could remember hearing various melodies in my head or coming up with an interesting phrase, and then jotting it down in my journal. I’d spend days, months, years fiddling with those melodies and snippets—I loved the puzzle of songs. The rewarding feeling of placing all the pieces in just the right order.