Jeremy Thrane (44 page)

“We have to,” Amanda said staunchly. “I have to go in less than an hour.”

“I think we need to have a drink first,” said Lola. “And don’t start about the baby.”

Amanda and I exchanged a look. “Beer okay?” I asked mildly.

We sat in the breeze coming in through the window screens and drank cold bottles of beer. It had been so many years since the three of us had been alone together, I couldn’t even remember when the last time had been.

“Maybe he’s got a whole new set of kids,” said Amanda warningly.

“He may not be home,” I said. “Or he could be the wrong Angus Thrane.”

“He might not remember who we are,” said Lola.

Juanita gave a soft peep, then flapped her clipped wings through the air across the room toward Lola’s head. The tiny claws dug into Lola’s scalp, scrabbling for purchase. Lola accepted the bird’s arrival with hardly a twitch or a recoil, totally unfazed by whatever came at her, as always.

“Why did you give her away?” Lola asked.

“She found a better owner,” I said.

“Who?” asked Amanda indignantly.

“My roommate Scott.”

“Why is he better?”

“For one thing, he bought her that cage.”

“Wait a minute,” said Amanda. “What do you mean, Scott’s a better owner just because he bought her a cage? She’s been your bird for years. Have you thought about how she’ll feel if you give her away?”

“She’s a bird, Amanda.”

“She’s a living being who’s completely imprinted on you. You can’t just foist her off on someone else because you’ve had enough of her.”

“Who said I’ve enough of her?” I said. “She wants to go. I can tell.”

“How can you tell?”

I looked at Juanita, who was deeply involved with something in Lola’s hair. “I can’t make her as happy as he can,” I said finally. “She has to go with him.”

“That sounds like one of those Motown songs where the guy talks all through the middle verse,” Amanda shot back. “You can’t give her away. I forbid it.”

“Amanda,” I said, “this is not a Motown song, and Juanita is not my lady. Should we call Angus now?”

The three of us looked at one another in a sudden panicky silence as the air in the room thickened perceptibly. It reminded me of the way it had been when we were kids, sealing ourselves off in an imaginary bubble whenever things got too unpredictable or confusing, all of our internal schisms and hostilities forgotten.

“You call him,” I said to Lola. “You’re the best at this kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing, exactly?”

“Well, dealing with strangers,” I said.

“Our father’s isn’t exactly a stranger,” said Lola, “at least not to you. You call. You knew him best.”

“You’re the oldest,” said Amanda as if that settled it. “And you’re the one who found him.”

They looked at me with obdurate, challenging expressions.

I picked up the phone and dialed Angus’s number swiftly, before my brain could get wind of what my fingers were doing and make them stop.

We all held what felt like a three-way staring contest as the phone rang once, then twice, then three times. Then there was the click of an answering machine, and then a recorded youngish-sounding woman’s voice saying, “Hello, Angus and Jennifer aren’t home, but if you’d like to leave a—” The machine clicked off as someone picked up the phone.

“Hello?” my father said.

“Is this Angus Thrane?”

“Who is this?” he asked brusquely, no doubt imagining that I was a
long-distance company telemarketer, or one of those salespeople who offered you all-expenses-paid trips to Florida and Hawaii in exchange for taking a two-hour tour of one of their horrid condominiums in Atlantic City.

“This is Jeremy Thrane,” I said. “Your son. I know this is out of the blue, but I found your number, and I thought I would call and say hello.”

There was a silence, during which Amanda and Lola leaned forward, side by side on the fainting couch, both of them almost exploding with curiosity. Juanita, as if sensing Lola’s agitation through her head, hopped nimbly onto the back of the couch, cocked her head, and dropped a wet green-white turd neatly onto the velvet, which made me very glad I’d already given her to Scott. His bird, his fainting couch. I thought this to keep myself from saying another word until Angus had said something to me; in the silence since I’d said my own name, I felt myself detaching from his response and this conversation and all my feelings through the decades about him: I had found him, here I was on the phone, and now he could take me or leave me. I had done my part.

“Well,” he said in a light, resonant baritone that was as familiar to me still as if I’d just spoken to him last week. “Jeremy. Well, I’ll be damned. Where the hell are you these days?”

“I’m in New York City,” I said, “with Amanda and Lola. We’re all right here.”

“All the ships at sea,” he said.

“That’s right,” I replied. For some reason, we both laughed.

“You should see where I’m standing,” he said. “I’m looking out my front door at the most beautiful sight you’ve ever seen. You know I’m on San Juan Island, in Washington State? Our house sits on a sort of cliff over the water; right now the sun is breaking through the clouds in the west and there’s a rainbow. It’s pretty amazing. Jennifer,” he called, “Are you seeing this?”

I heard a woman’s voice somewhere in the background.

“My wife,” Angus said breezily into the receiver as if he were making small talk with someone he’d just met. I felt a dull thud of rage whose source I didn’t entirely understand. How was he supposed to sound, hearing my voice out of the blue? What had I expected? I had
thought I didn’t expect anything at all, but apparently, I’d expected something very different from this easygoing, amused, elusive voice on the other end of the telephone. I’d expected him to act the way I would have acted in his position, but since he’d never done that, why did I expect him to start now? It made no sense.

“Oh,” I said. “Jennifer. The voice on the machine.”

“That’s right,” he said. There was a fleeting pause. “So, Jeremy, what’s going on with you now? You’re all grown up by now, I guess. You’re, what, thirty …”

“Thirty-five,” I said. “I’m thirty-five.”

“And your sisters?”

“Amanda got married yesterday,” I said. “Lola’s visiting with her husband from Australia. They’re right here. They want to talk to you too.”

“Is that right?” he asked. “What about you? Are you married?”

“I’m gay, actually,” I said, almost chuckling at the irony of telling my father this way. Amanda smiled at me; she saw the joke too. “And at the moment I’m single.”

“Well,” he said again, not seeming to care one way or another whether I was married, gay, or a registered sex offender, which made sense. Having a gay son probably meant no more or less to him than having no son at all, which was what he’d had all these years as far as he knew. “And what do you do there in New York City?”

“I’m a writer,” I said. “Actually, I might have sold my novel today. There’s an editor who’s interested in it.”

I heard Amanda’s sharp intake of breath at this news.

“Hey,” Angus was saying. “Good for you. What’s it called?”

Just then, for the first time in this conversation, I recalled that my novel was about my father, and that it wasn’t flattering, and he probably wouldn’t appreciate it much, assuming he ever read it.

“It’s called
Angus in Efes
,” I said. “It’s based on your life, after you disappeared. I heard you were in Turkey, so I set it in Turkey.”

There was another, briefer silence as he absorbed this. “That’s great,” he said delightedly. “Will you send me a copy?”

“Sure,” I said flatly. The old narcissist; didn’t he realize it might not be an entirely or even partially flattering portrait? What exactly did he
think I felt about his time in Turkey, or wherever the hell he’d been all those years? I pictured him, for some reason, in sandals, navy blue sweatshirt, and loose-fitting blue jeans, an older version of myself; he was sitting casually in a rattan chair, looking out at the view, half of his mind on the rainbow and the other half on this unexpected but not, apparently, totally unwelcome conversation with his son. “But were you really in Turkey after you—after you left?”

“What year did I leave the States?” He cleared his throat. “Wasn’t it the early seventies? My memories of that era are a little vague, but I can safely say that I spent some time in Turkey … I drove a truck. Didn’t spend much time in Ephesus though. So your book qualifies as fiction.”

“Do you have any other kids?” I asked; I’d always wondered.

He laughed. “No, I wasn’t exactly cut out for the whole daddy routine. I remember one time when one of you came into the room, it must have been Amanda, I think she was about two. She was calling, ‘Daddy, Daddy,’ and I had to think for a minute: who? Who’s that? Jennifer has kids from another marriage. We see them whenever they make their way out west. You three, and all your spouses and kids and whatever entourages you have, are always welcome. We have plenty of room.”

A flock of questions and accusations crowded into my throat and dissolved in a futile puddle of saliva. “Oh,” I said. “Thanks. Well, speaking of Amanda, do you want to talk to her? She’s right here.”

“Sure,” he said with a warmth I didn’t understand: If he really felt that way, why hadn’t he tried to find us? “I’d love to. Hey, before you go, Jeremy, what’s your phone number and address?”

As I gave him the information, he repeated everything under his breath at the speed of handwriting, so I assumed he was writing it all down.

When Amanda took the receiver, I stood up and went into the bathroom, got a wad of toilet paper, came back out to the living room and wiped Juanita’s poop off the fainting couch. It left a wet smudge I was pretty sure would dry without leaving a mark. Then I collected the three empty beer bottles and took them into the kitchen, rinsed them, and put them into the recycling can. I went back out to the living room and sat down in my chair again. Amanda was saying with strained enthusiasm, “How great. What’s your coalition called?” There was a protracted silence
on our end, during which Amanda listened to whatever Angus was saying, Lola and I watched her listen, and Juanita, who had hopped onto Lola’s shoulder, slid her wing feathers one by one through her beak, grooming herself in her energetic, persnickety way.

“And so will you get the legislation passed, or don’t you know yet?” Amanda asked a moment later in that same eager-to-please voice. She didn’t give a rat’s ass about politics, I knew very well, especially faraway grassroots politics that had nothing to do with her. As far as I could tell, Angus hadn’t asked her anything about herself or her life yet. He’d probably used up his entire supply of curiosity about his offspring in his conversation with me. I sent her silent waves of encouraging solidarity as I went to the kitchen to fetch her another beer, which she’d need the moment she handed the phone over to Lola. I got myself one too, but not Lola; my indulgence of her fetal-alcohol-syndrome mongering went only so far, and even then it was provisional. If my niece or nephew turned out to be brain damaged, I was going to have to fly to Australia and strangle her.

After she’d handed the receiver to Lola, Amanda took the cold bottle of beer I gave her and put it to her temple before she took a swig.

“Angus,” Lola was saying in her Australian accent. “This is Lola here. Yes, hello.” A moment later she gave a whooping, almost flirtatious peal of laughter at whatever Angus had said in reply; Juanita gave a shrill cheep, trying to join in. “That’s right,” she said. “I’m an Aussie now.” She listened to his reply with a wide grin on her face, then burst into laughter again. I had forgotten how beautiful Lola was, even more beautiful than Amanda, not in form or features, but because she was entirely unself-conscious and fully herself in every gesture and expression, every word she said. “No,” she said; it sounded like “noy.” “That’s not true; you know, my husband, Fletcher, says the same thing, but America was settled by Puritans, Australia by convicts. Makes all the difference in the world. Hey, now you’ve got a grandkid on the way. How does it feel to get all three of your kids back and a grandkid in one fell swoop?”

Amanda and I took simultaneous slugs of beer, our eyes meeting over our bottles.

Lola laughed again, put her hand loosely over the receiver, and said
to Amanda and me, shaking her head, “He said it seems like a normal thing to get a call from all three of us on a rainy afternoon, out of the blue. Normal!” she said into the receiver. “In whose life is that a normal thing?”

When she hung up a while later, there was a long silence as we all looked at one another like accident victims taking stock of the others’ injuries in order to assess our own. Amanda looked shaken and Lola looked victorious, so I imagined, judging by the differences in their expressions and demeanors, that I looked neither. I imagined that I looked pissed off, which was how I felt.

“That was weird,” I said flatly.

“I’ll say,” said Amanda.

“Weird isn’t really the word, is it?” Lola rejoined quizzically. “Like Angus said, it did seem sort of normal, and that’s the weird thing. We were all so calm. And he did sound familiar. But I haven’t got a clue who the guy is, have you?”

“What was he going on and on to you about?” I asked Amanda. “Did he ask you a single question about yourself?”

Amanda twisted her lips in a sort of smile. “When you were in the kitchen, he asked how my wedding was. What did he say when you asked whether he’d had any more kids since us?”

I rolled my eyes. “He said he’d learned his lesson from us, which was that he wasn’t cut out for ‘the whole daddy thing.’ ”

Amanda laughed. “That’s like saying you’re not cut out for surgery after you’ve cut the guy open and the nurses are handing you instruments and the clock is ticking away.”

“Not that it’s any surprise,” said Lola. “I mean, what other conclusion could we possibly draw from his behavior over the last thirty-odd years? What did he say about your being gay?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Not a thing.”

“Oh!” Amanda shouted. “You sold your novel? Why didn’t you say so right away when we got here?”