Robby set the edges of his teeth together. His expression was hard. He too had linked his hands on his stomach, but the set of his shoulders looked uncompromising.
“So, what’s going on between you and Mom? Did you just tell her today, or what?”
“Yes, I just told her. Mom’s pretty upset. She’s been crying.” From the comer of his eye, he saw Claire fade away from her place in the doorway and slip around the corner. Robby swung around just as her shirttails disappeared. It was obvious he hadn’t known she was standing there, and that he was scared to death as he went on quizzing his father.
“So what’s between you and this woman? I mean, is there something going on, or what?”
“There’s nothing going on. She’s a total stranger to me now, and absolutely nothing is going on. Let’s say it straight out; you’re both old enough—no affair, nothing sexual, okay? On the occasions I’ve seen her and spoken to her, it was only to clear things up about Kent and how to handle it.”
Chelsea said, “Then why did Mom ask you if you were having an affair that night?”
Robby’s head snapped around. “When? You never told me that!”
“Dad?” She kept her attention riveted on Tom. “Why?”
“I don’t know why. Because I was tense and distracted, I guess. I found out about Kent and knew it was only a matter of time before I’d have to tell you, and I was afraid. Mom misread me, that’s all. If I’d been honest with her and told the truth as soon as I found out, this would be a week behind us by now and you’d never have heard that conversation.”
Their exchange was suddenly interrupted when a car came tearing into their driveway just beside the kitchen window. A car door slammed, footsteps pounded up the front walk, and the doorbell rang.
As Robby pushed his chair back it rang again and again, was still ringing when he reached the door and came to a surprised halt, gaping out through the screen.
Kent Arens stood there, glaring in at him. His voice carried clearly into the kitchen. “I want to see your father.” Without being invited, he opened the screen door and stepped inside just as Tom and Claire converged on the entry from two different parts of the house. Chelsea hovered at a distance, watching, and Robby stepped back out of Kent’s way.
Father and son faced off in the crackling silence, replicas in spite of their age difference. Kent stared, confronting the image he would look like in twenty-odd years. The dark skin, brown eyes, arched brows, full mouth, straight nose.
The cowlick.
His defiant eyes catalogued it all while he stood with outrage in his pose. No smile, no movement softened his bearing.
He said, “I just had to see for myself,” and stormed out as full of bluster as when he’d arrived.
“Kent!” Tom shouted, heading after him, hitting the door with both palms. “Wait!” When he sailed off the front stoop onto the sidewalk, Kent was standing on the far side of the Lexus with the driver’s door open, wearing a hard-bitten expression.
“You never even tried to find her! You never even asked!” he yelled. “You just screwed her and left! Well, I might be a bastard, but even a bastard has more scruples than that!”
The car door slammed and the Lexus roared down the driveway, barreling away at breakneck speed.
Tom watched it go, sighing, feeling laden by the weight of emotional weariness. This day, when would it end? It had been one scalding encounter after another until he actually felt like crying again. Instead, responsibility prodded and he squared his shoulders to go into the house and face it.
The kids were standing where he’d left them.
“Where’s your mother?”
“Upstairs.”
“Claire?” he called from the mouth of the stairs. “Claire, come here!”
He went halfway up the stairs until his eyes were level with the upper hall floor. She came out of their bedroom and stood at the far end of the hall, her arms crossed as if she were tied to a stake. It seemed as if she’d had her arms crossed that way for the last two hours.
“What?”
He shouted so the kids could hear, too. “He’s very upset. I’ve got to call his mother, and just so there’ll be no question about what I’m doing, I’m telling you first, all of you! I’ve worked with kids too long to mistake the emotional state he’s in.” He headed for the kitchen phone, passing Chelsea and Robby on the way. “You can all stand right here and listen if you want to, but I am going to call her.”
He dialed and Monica answered after a single ring. “Monica, this is Tom.”
“Oh, Tom, thank heavens. Kent took off with my car and—”
“I know. He was just here. He barged in and confronted me, then stormed away driving like a maniac. It might be the best thing if you’d call the police, have them pull him over for his own safety. He’s really worked up.”
“I was afraid of this.” She took only a moment to think. “All right, I will. Was he crying, Tom?”
“No, I don’t think so. He was angry.”
“Yes, that’s how he was when he left here. How did your family take it?”
“Not well.”
After a pause, she said, “Well, I’d better go ... make that call. Thank you, Tom.”
“It’s okay. Would you call me when he comes back and let me know he’s okay?”
“Sure.”
When he’d hung up, the house returned to its funereal somberness, everybody occupying their little square of space, keeping carefully separate, not speaking, hiding within themselves. The children crept off to their rooms. Claire stayed in her and Tom’s bedroom while he was left in the kitchen staring at a red mug that said DAD.
It was done. The secret unveiled. The guilt confessed. But now came this hopeless transition period when it felt as if his family’s unity would never be restored. The house remained quiet—no TV, no music, no footsteps, doors opening or closing, water running. Only silence. What were they doing, these three people he loved? Coiling on their beds hating him?
*****
Chelsea sat on her bed pillow, her spine curled against the headboard, knees drawn up, stocking feet overlapped, a red cheerleading pom-pom in her lap. Long-faced, she repeatedly straightened the crepe paper squiggles, scraping them flat with the edge of her middle fingernail as if unsnagging hair. The pad of her thumb was stained red. A few strands of crepe paper had accidentally snapped off. They collected at her hip in a trembling pile as she drew on the pom-pom again ... and again ... and again ... staring ... remembering ... mortified ...
She had kissed her own brother.
What would she say to him the next time she saw him? How could she ever face him again? And would she be forced to, maybe even in her home sometimes, now that he knew they had the same father? It would be bad enough seeing him at school without thinking about him coming back here again. She pictured herself walking into school on Monday morning and passing his bank of lockers, meeting his eyes above the crowd and trying to act normal. What was normal in a situation like this? How could she even tell her friends? Her dad was their principal. Their principal! The person they were supposed to look up to and respect. Whether she confided in them or not, the word would get out. It was bound to, the way Kent was acting, charging into their house, staring at her dad, yelling accusations at him. Then all her friends would find out that her dad had a kid he’d never accepted responsibility for. It didn’t matter what the circumstances were, he had two sons in the same grade, and only one was legitimate.
Chelsea doubled her arms across her knees and dropped her forehead to them. Her breath stirred the pom-pom in her lap. It rustled like wind through autumn leaves and brought as little comfort.
What would happen to her family? If she was upset by the news about Kent, her mother must be dying.
She knew her mom and dad's wedding anniversary. They’d been married in June, and Robby was born in December. What month was Kent born? It hardly mattered what month. If it was the same year—and it seemed to be—her dad
had some explaining to do. Chelsea tried to imagine being her mother and hearing the news, but the idea of her father’s unfaithfulness was too immense to ponder. Other kids’ parents had affairs. Not hers.
Please, she thought, please let Mom and Dad get over this. Let it not cause great big trouble because we’ve never had trouble in our family before, and I don’t know what I’d do if anything went wrong between my parents. Tell me what to do to make it easier on Mom and I’ll do it. Anything at all and I’ll do it.
But Mom was holed up in her room across the hall, and Dad was wandering around someplace in the rest of the house. And even though he’d said not to worry, it would take an idiot not to see how bad Mom felt, and how this had already caused tears and hurt and distance between them. Heck, between the whole family.
*****
Robby sat on a hard maple chair in his room, rotating a football in his hands. Ceiling-to-floor shelving surrounded his desk, where a computer thrust its blackened screen into the silent room. The bed was freshly made, the blue carpeting vacuumed, the collected junk stacked on the bookshelves and chest and piled in the comers. His letter jacket hung on a pegboard behind the door. Though dusk had fallen, his lights remained unlit.
He sat now much as his father had sat earlier on the swing, doubled forward, elbows to knees while the football flipped over and over in his outsized teenage hands.
A brother. No, a half-brother. Same age. Conceived when? Under what circumstances? Living clear across the country most of his life and never knowing his father. Finding him now, to do what? Make people whisper, tease, ask all kinds of questions Robby didn’t have the answers for? Horn in on the family and start hanging around here, making everybody uncomfortable? Be better than Robby on the football field? Look at him sideways as if to accuse him of having a dad all to himself all these years while Kent had none? Well, heck, it wasn’t his fault, was it?
But Dad—jeez, how could it happen? What was going on between Mom and Dad back then? Sometimes the two of them talked about old boyfriends and girlfriends, but Robby had never heard the name Monica before.
He remembered his dad saying, just this afternoon, “Every person you meet changes you.” Well, Kent Arens had already changed this family! And who knew how many more changes he’d make, and how serious they’d be? All that stuff Dad had said about facing moral dilemmas and that’s how character is developed—so what kind of character did that give his dad? Robby had figured out long ago that his mother was pregnant when she and Dad got married. Well, maybe he’d been pretty naive, but he’d always guessed that his mom and dad had never done it with any others, only with each other. Seemed like his own generation was the only one that had to sit through health classes about AIDS, and sermons about using condoms, and lectures from parents about being good. So what was good? He’d always thought his parents’ generation was naturally more good than his own, just because that was so long ago, when being good came easier. He ought to know. He and Brenda had come so close to doing it so many times that he was a wreck. Actually, under pressure, he’d told his friends he had done it, just because if you didn’t, you were a nerd. The truth was, he was scared as hell to go all the way, and so was Brenda, so they just sort of, well ... messed around a lot.
But his dad had gotten two girls pregnant at the same time. Bum-mer.
And anybody with gonads could scope out a calendar and figure out that if Robby and Kent were born the same year to two different women, their dad had been pretty busy.
Robby flipped the football into a metal wastebasket and threw himself onto his back on the bed.
Kent Arens. His illegitimate brother. And he had to hand off the football to this kid for the rest of the season while Mom watched from the stands.
Poor Mom. Gosh, what was it going to be like for her if word got around the school? What was it like for her right now, closed up in her room across the hall, thinking about what had happened today?
*****
Claire sat on the edge of her bed, a wide dresser drawer on the bedspread beside her. She pulled out a handful of tangled socks and sorted them into pairs, folded them neatly, and made organized piles. She dried her eyes with a thick pair of white ones, went on doggedly putting stockings, nylons, and underwear in precise order as if the new order in her dresser drawer would transmute into the same in her life.
Match a pair of anklets, fold them, stack them; check the pantyhose for runs, halve them, quarter them, roll them neat; double the bras upon themselves, lean them in a corner in a growing pile; fold the wrinkled nylon pants, press them with your hand, try to keep the stack from leaning, sliding out of order as her life suddenly had.
Abruptly she doubled forward, covering her face with a lump of white cotton.
I can’t ... I can’t ...
Can’t what? No answer came, only aftershocks and the picture of that boy faced off against Tom in the front hall, looking so much like the younger Tom that she’d felt agonized merely looking at him.
How could she have missed the similarity before? How could she deal with all this now? How could she walk into the kitchen and resume her duties as a wife and mother and maintain an air of normality when suddenly her faith in her husband had been shattered? How could she do the same at school on Monday?
I can't ... I can't...
She had no idea why it seemed so important to restore order to that dresser drawer, but she dragged her body upright and continued straightening its contents while her tears flowed faster and she began to sob. Her head hung and her hands fussed, fussed, fussed over a silly drawer that had been a mess for at least two years and could go on being messy for another two, and who cared?
Finally she gave up the needless task and toppled over on her side, her body bent around the wooden drawer, her forehead at its back panel while a high-pitched keening squeezed from her throat.
Ohh ... ohhh ... he didn't want to marry me ... he didn't love meee ...
She wanted him to come in and find her lying there in her misery, to witness what he’d reduced her to, because it was genuine and shattering, this state of weeping lethargy.
On the other hand, she didn’t want to face him yet because she didn’t know what she would say to him, how she would even be able to look at him.
He stayed away, and she lay for an hour while dark fell and the streetlights came on. The air coming in the cracked window grew chilly and tapped the tieback against the window frame. Occasionally a car droned by, and once a motorcycle.
After a long time she heard the phone ring and picked it up at the same moment Tom did on another extension. She held her breath and listened.
“Tom, it’s Monica.”
“Is he back?”
“Yes.”
An unburdening sigh. “Thank God. And he’s okay?”
“Yes.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“I tried, but he wouldn’t say much. He’s still too hurt and angry.”
“I guess he’s got a right to be, but I just wasn’t expecting it. When he came charging in here he really threw me.”
“What did he say?”
“He called me an unscrupulous bastard who just screwed you and left without bothering to find out afterwards if you were pregnant.”
“Oh, Tom, I’m sorry.”
“But he’s right. I should have at least given you a call.”
“Or I should have given you a call.”
“Oh, Monica, hell ...” Another exhausted sigh. “Who knows what we should have done.”
During the following silence Claire imagined the two of them clinging to their separate receivers. She wondered what Monica Arens looked like, what her house looked like, and what part of it he had seen.
“I imagine this is pure hell on your family.” Her voice held great empathy.
“It’s killing them. It’s ... oh, shit.” He sounded too emotional to go on.
“Tom, I’m sorry. So much of the blame is mine.” She sounded as if she cared very deeply a
bout him. “Is it going to work out, do you think?”
“I don’t know, Monica. Right now I really don’t know.”
“How did your wife take it?”
“She cried. She got angry. She hit me. Now nobody in the place is talking.”
“Oh, Tom.”
Claire listened to the two of them breathe for a while, then Tom cleared his throat and spoke hoarsely.
“I guess Claire said it best. She said, ‘Oh, God, what a mess.’ ”
“I don’t know what I can do at this point, but if there’s anything ...”
“Just try to get Kent to talk, and if you see any danger signs, call me. You know what to look for—depression, withdrawal, if he starts to smoke or drink, break curfew. I’ll watch him from this end and keep an eye on his grades.”
“All right. And Tom?”
“Yes?”
“You can call me too, you know. Anytime.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, I guess I’d better go.”
“Sure. Me too.”
“Well, goodbye then. Good luck.”
“Yeah, you too.”
When they’d hung up, so did Claire, to lie on her bed with her heartbeat jarring her entire body. I should not have listened, she thought, because now she’s real. Now I’ve heard the care in her voice for Tom. I’ve heard them speak with pauses as poignant as dialogue. I’ve been silent witness to the fact that Kent truly is their son, and I can never deny it: there will always be that tie between them.
And now I know this is not the last conversation they’ll have.
She waited for him to come to her and tell her about the call. When he didn’t, she grew certain there were feelings between him and Monica. How could there not be, she reasoned, when they were going through all this together?
A long time later another car went by, forcing her from her lethargy. She propped herself up and sat there feeling shaky, her hip against the dresser drawer, her cap fallen off, reading the aqua blue digits on the bedside clock. Not even nine. Too early for bed yet, but she would not impose herself into his half of the house, risk encountering him someplace out there and having to make decisions about how to act.