Barefoot Beach (4 page)

Jack grunted, but to me it sounded like thunder on the horizon. Mothers read their kids like a weather map and I could feel his barometer drop.

“Don't bother with anything for me,” he said. “It's my first night back at Coneheads and I'm meeting a couple of friends at the Burger Shack before work.”

Jack had signed on again for the weekend evening shift, scooping the best ice cream on the Delmarva resort coast. “I haven't seen most of my Coney buds since last summer. And this morning I've got two first-timers for Sea Spot Run.” The dog-walking service he'd launched when he was sixteen was paying for his books at Duke. “I'm thinking of adding an extra half-hour session late afternoon.” He turned to me, his amber eyes clouded. Sunshine beat down on the deck, but I picked up electricity in the air. “The summer's really going to be jammed, like, killer busy,” he said. Then lightning struck. “Mom. We need to talk.”

Oh God, one of the most ominous phrases in the English language. I'd never known anything good to come of it.

“Sure,” I said. But the crop of goose bumps sprouting on my arms showed just how unsure I was.

“The thing is,” he began, but got stopped immediately by the ring of his iPhone. I looked over to see if Tiffanie's photo had surfaced, but he'd turned away to scan the screen. “Gotta take this.”

Instead of his usual casual greeting, I heard a serious, “Yes,” before he swung around to take the deck steps double time. Obviously a private call. I could only watch, wonder, and worry as he trotted down the path to the beach.

Throughout Jack's childhood, I'd played a game with him. With myself, really, because he didn't even know about it. What if my sweet child wasn't the biological offspring of donor #1659? What if, this one time, against all odds, the passionate coupling of Henry London Farrell and Nora Quinn Farrell had produced a pregnancy? Jack hadn't been test-tube generated, after all. My gynecologist had used a modern variation of the old turkey baster to introduce donor sperm to egg, so it was on the outer edge of possibility that Lon's feeble swimmers had suddenly and unaccountably turned into Olympic champions, beating out #1659 for the gold.

Could be, I'd told myself. Lon and I certainly had sex around the time I conceived. And anything could have happened within the deep, dark recesses of my inner passages and chambers. Who was to say we hadn't hit the lottery that one time? Maybe a miracle occurred, part of a divine plan to lure me back into the folds of the Mother Church. Stranger things had happened. People prayed to grilled cheese sandwiches embossed with the image of the Virgin Mary before selling them on eBay. Maybe, just maybe, Jack was
Lon's
genetic offspring.

For a long time—because it didn't seem fair that a love as potent as
Lon's and mine wouldn't create a fusion of the two of us—I wanted that to be true. Also, as the daughter of a biology teacher, I gave nature more power over nurture than it probably deserved.

So all through Jack's early childhood years, I looked for evidence of a genetic link between my husband and my son. And found none. Lon was black Irish: hair the color of coal, eyes green, complexion fair. Jack had been born bald, and when his hair finally arrived around his first birthday, it came in corn-silk blond. By adolescence, his hair and skin color almost matched, in summer a tawny gold. Jack didn't have Lon's dimpled hands or his square jaw, his big feet, or the cleft in his chin. Nothing. But I continued to hope.

Jack was six the first time we took him to the circus, and in the lobby we ran into a high school friend of mine. She backed off from our reunion hug, scanned the three of us, and said, “Oh my gosh, Nora, the child is your clone. Except for the hair, he's your total clone, down to the crazy arch of your eyebrows.” She glanced at Lon, back at Jack, and laughed. “I mean, you're sure he's not the Immaculate Conception?”

That night, after Jack was tucked in bed with his new stuffed elephant, Lon took a slug of Jameson and asked, “Your friend's comment today, that bothered you, didn't it?”

“No,” I lied.

“Please,” he said. “I saw your face.”

“Okay, but only because I didn't want you to be hurt.”

He slammed down his glass. “Now, you listen to me, Nora. I don't give a crap about his genes, designer or otherwise. In every way that counts, that boy is mine. If I weren't shooting blanks, if that DNA had been Farrell—handed down through a long line of drunks, mogs, chancers, wastrels, and highway robbers, by the way—I couldn't have made a better son or one I love more. In a couple of years, we're going to let Jack know how he was conceived. And you better get good with that before we tell him, because I'll be damned if I'll have him thinking he doesn't measure up for any reason. Especially not a bullshit one.”

The next morning, when Lon wasn't around, I opened the #1659 file on my laptop. Our fertility bank hadn't shared pictures of our donor as an adult, but we'd been able to look at him as a kid. I hadn't checked out the photo for a while. There he was at seven, the contributor of half my son's genetic material. And it showed. The hair as pale as buttercream, the light eyes, the pigeon-toed stance that had made my toddler trip over his own feet. And I got good with that.

Here's where the miracle really happened. Within a year, Jack's walk had taken on Lon's California cowboy swagger. By the time he was eight, he'd developed a beautiful singing voice that my mother-in-law swore was identical to Lon's when he'd been a choirboy at Saint Dominic's. For Jack's tenth birthday we went on a fishing trip to Lake Tahoe, and one night, under an ink black sky sprayed with stars, Lon spun the story, in ways only a man brilliant with words could, of a most-wanted son and how he came to be. When he was finished, Jack said, “No kidding. Wow. That is so cool.”

The questions came later. Mostly for me, because within the year, Lon was dead.

What reminded me of this, after more than a decade, was seeing Jack pace the beach as he talked into his iPhone that Friday morning in June. Lon had done that. Back and forth, back and forth, on the conversations with his editor when sales of his last book were flagging and he'd begun to refer to himself as Henrik Hasbeen. Back and forth, when his mother called to say his dad had been diagnosed with cancer.

As I watched from the deck, Jack walked his endless loop, his free hand slapping a quick tattoo against his thigh the way Lon's had done. And after Jack jammed the phone in his pocket, he sat down on the flat of Mooncussers Rock and sank his head in his hands. I'd never seen that before. From Lon, yes, during what he called “the bog times.” But not from Jack.

My instinct was to make it better, whatever
it
was. Kids grow up, but parents don't outgrow the need to chase monsters, soothe nightmares. The desire to rush to my son was almost irresistible.

No. Let him fall.
The phrase was one I'd learned from a pioneering movement-analysis professor in grad school. It was the mantra I repeated silently when one of my clients swayed wildly on a damaged leg or a new prosthesis.
Steady him if you can. But if he's out of control, don't try to catch him.
You're no good to him if you go down. And, worst case, even if he hits the floor, it won't be as hard as his fear of the fall. And he'll get up stronger and wiser.

I made myself wait on the deck until I saw Jack raise his head. Then I took the stairs slowly and, forcing a measured tempo, walked along the path to the beach. When I reached him, he was staring at the ocean, his arms wrapped around his knees. And he was laughing.

Walking on sand in bare feet makes no sound and Jack hadn't heard me approach, but when my shadow merged with his, he looked over at me and that single glance switched off his laughter.

I gulped a relieved breath. I thought he'd been bent over in anguish, but he'd been laughing.
See,
I told myself.
See, Nora. You worry too much.

“Good phone call?” I asked brightly.

“A funny call,” he said, gazing again at the ocean. “Not as in stand-up funny. Surprising funny. Good? I guess we'll see.”

“Tiffanie?”

That slipped out. I tried to be Switzerland when it came to her. Neutral. At least with Jack, because (a) I got more information that way and (b) she might, God forbid, be my daughter-in-law one day. But he had to have known what I thought of her. When he'd dated that sweet Carrie back in tenth grade, the one who made it to the semifinals of the
Jeopardy!
Teen Tournament, I sent the girl a congratulatory e-card and posted a photo of her with Alex Trebek on my Facebook page. With Tiffanie, I just listened and lost sleep.

“The call wasn't from Tiffanie. But yeah, she's involved in a way. You and I were going to talk,” he said. “We really have to, Mom. Now.”

My heart flipped. It bounced so high on the rebound it nudged a cough from my throat.

There was space next to Jack on Mooncussers Rock and I fervently hoped he'd pat an invitation to sit down, because my legs were suddenly too weak to hold me. But he stood up. “I've got pins and needles in my ass from this rock.” Wry smile. “Let's walk.”

It was going to be bad. He'd said Tiffanie was involved. He wanted us to be on the beach, among people, because he knew I wouldn't make a scene in public and he was afraid I'd scream and froth at the mouth when he told me she was pregnant and he was going to quit college and live with her and the triplets over her parents' garage. Or she'd written a sequel to
Fifty Shades of Grey
, only it wasn't fiction—it was autobiographical, and she'd named names and devices. Or she . . .

“This goes way back,” Jack was saying. Somehow I was walking. Alongside him. One bare foot in front of the other. I'd gotten a pedicure before leaving Baltimore, and on a whim I'd had my toenails painted blue. What had I been thinking? Beach equals carefree; that's what. Not this.

Jack took my arm as if I were an old lady in danger of toppling over. “The phone call was from the Baltimore Fertility Bank.”

It took me a moment to recognize a name that had once sounded like poetry.

“I called there yesterday before I left Durham. I asked them to start the process for me to contact my Donor Dad. My DD.”

Donor Dad! DD! Freshly minted phrases I didn't like the sound of.

It wasn't long after we told Jack about the circumstances surrounding his conception that he'd nicknamed #1659 “Sixteen.” For a while, after he'd helped scatter his dad's ashes on the ocean behind the Surf Avenue house, he didn't talk about Sixteen. Maybe he thought it would be disrespectful to Lon's memory. Then, a few years later, he did ask some questions. What state did Sixteen live in? I didn't know, I told him. I could only assume he'd been living in Maryland when he'd donated. The sperm bank wanted you close by. But the donation was immediately frozen to last for a long time, so by now he could be anywhere. What did he look
like? I stalled on that one, trying to decide what Lon would have done, then showed him the photo of the blond kid. “Cute,” he'd said, and printed out a copy that I never saw again. The bar mitzvah of his best friend set off a round of questions. What religion was Sixteen? Which led to: Was he athletic? Good in math?

I consulted my shrink friend. “Tell him everything you know,” Josh advised. So I did. And that seemed to satisfy Jack. But on his sixteenth birthday, after an impromptu party at a friend's house, he came home laughing-jag drunk on Goldschläger, cocked a finger at me, and said, “Here's a riddle for you. I'm sixteen, right? And my donor is Sixteen, right? So what's sixteen from sixteen? Zero, right? Oh boy, I am so shitfaced.” He got grounded for a week; I agonized for months.

“Does that mean he thinks he's a zero?” I'd asked the same psychiatrist.

“Every adolescent boy has self-esteem issues, Nora,” he said. “But soon they grow out of the acne and into their egos. Your son sounds pretty clever, by the way. The sixteen-from-sixteen riff. He was just showing off. I wouldn't make a big deal of it.”

Last year, after guzzling too many beers at a family cookout, my brother had taken Jack aside for a private conversation. Mick had been a nasty, snotty little kid and an out-of-control teen, and now he was a troubled man, probably alcoholic, thrice divorced, still ignorant and arrogant, a toxic mix. That afternoon, his decibel level had been magnified by the Guinness.

“So, Johnny-boy, you're eighteen next month. You gonna try to meet your . . . you know?” I'd be damned if he hadn't patted his crotch.

“Nah.” Jack had shrugged. “Not interested. Don't see the point. I've got family.”

“That you have,” Mick had slurred. “And we all love you.”

I'd followed up when we got home. “Jack, you know it's okay with me if you want to get in touch with Sixteen. I'd understand.” I'd meant it then.

“Sure. Thanks, but no, thanks.”

And now Sixteen was Donor Dad and Jack was hunting him down.

“What changed?” I asked him as we walked the beach with his hand gripping my arm.

“I did, I guess. A whole bunch of stuff got me thinking. I finally read Dad's second book over spring break.”
Banshee River
, which had received a lukewarm reception from the critics. “You know how the kid inherits his father's love for bears? The inherited part screwed with my brain. Dad writing about it. And we studied genetics in biology last semester. Plus in my psychology class, we covered Freud. Biology is destiny and all that.”

“A misquote,” I said. “Freud actually said
anatomy
is destiny. And he was wrong about that too.”

“Whatever.” Jack scowled at me. “You're missing the big picture.
You
have your total history. Grandma and Grandpa Quinn. How their grandparents survived the Irish potato famine. And the big Italian migration of the 1900s when Grandma Mimi's family came over. You've got both sides covered.

“And Dad had his connection to Jack London, how his great-grandfather was this famous guy's doctor and close friend back in Glen Ellen, what, a hundred years ago? I mean, look how even the name got passed on, which—don't get me wrong; I like my name—but I find that a little creepy. And Dad thought what he did, writing novels about mountains and rivers and the great outdoors, was some kind of legacy.”

“But not genetic,” I countered.

“Kind of, through Great-grandfather Farrell. The point is,” he insisted, “I've got missing pieces, big ones. I look in the mirror every morning and I wonder what parts came from where.”

Was that why the scruff of beard? Had he given up shaving to avoid the mirror?

“Anyway, it all piled up and started to bother me. Then yesterday in the midst of a . . . uh . . . discussion, Tiffanie said, ‘You know what your problem is? You don't know who you are.'”

I stopped short to face him while a furious flush washed over me. “That's ridiculous. Of course you know who you are.”

“Look, Mom, I get that you think Tiffanie's a bitch—”

“Did I ever say—?”

“Hold on. No, you've never said it. But you think it because we're always fighting and you want to protect me and all. But Tiffanie's smart. Really. She's dean's list. More than that, she thinks things through. She's deep.”
As deep as her cleavage in the glamour shot?
I wondered snarkily. But I forced myself to give her a Swiss-neutral passport. “Okay.”

“And she was right this time. I knew it in my gut. So”—deep breath—“I called the fertility bank. And they just called back. That was the call.” He let go of my arm, so I guessed I was on my own. “They're emailing me a form that I have to fill out and get notarized. And then they'll contact my DD and let him know I'm interested. And we'll see what happens from there.”

I kept nodding like the gulls at the water's edge. Gulls have brains the size of walnuts.

Jack stooped to pick up a shell, a pearlized abalone sculpted with an open spiral that ended in a curl. Like a wave. Something else to marvel at. “What was so funny was that I've been thinking about doing this for months and it took them less than a day to get back to me. How crazy is that?”

He started to laugh again. I didn't feel like laughing, but Jack's laugh had always been infectious, and I couldn't help myself. When we rumbled to a stop, he backed away to peer at me. “So you're cool with this?”

“I just want you to be happy,” I said. Which wasn't the worst answer on the fly, even if it wasn't the entire answer. The whole truth was that I wasn't cool with it; I was cold with it, shiveringly, shockingly cold, as if I'd been swamped by a splash of that frigid June ocean out there. I tried to hide my gulp for air. I needed oxygen to process what effect Sixteen's entrance, if he chose to make one, would have on Jack, on me, on Jack-and-me. If he chose not to, that was another issue.

“Thanks,” my son said, as if he hadn't just dropped me into deep water with a potential shark circling beneath the opaque surface.

I thanked God for the diversion as a swell of voices and laughter came surging at us. We turned to stare at a quartet of runners racing by. In their twenties, they had no idea what they were doing to their arches by pounding away on damp sand, no idea of how little Medicare would eventually cover for podiatric services.

“They're trying to get their run in before this afternoon,” Jack said. “It's supposed to go up to ninety with the humidity off the charts. Look where the sun is already. Crap! The time!” He checked his watch, Lon's TAG Heuer, handed down from
his
father. “Oh great. First run of the summer and I'm going to be late picking up the dogs. I don't even have the damn Frisbee with me.” And he sprinted off, calling behind him, “We'll touch base later.”

I stood for a moment, trying to take everything in. Everything.

In my direct line of sight, a ponytailed woman in a maternity swimsuit led a tow-haired toddler into the shallow lip of ocean, laced with foam. She pointed to a pod of dolphins, not far out, arcing and diving as if they were auditioning for Disney. The little boy followed her finger and, when he spotted the show, jumped up and down with excitement.
Enjoy it now,
I sent a telepathic message to the mom,
and
memorize these simply wonderful moments. It gets complicated later.

Just then, a purple sandpiper swooped down to land near my left foot, ambled around it on short yellow legs, and deposited a white spatter on my new blue pedicure. And I was only halfway through my colorful morning. I washed off the bird poop in the surf, took a final look at the sky shimmering even this early in the heat, and told myself,
Pull yourself together.
It was time to get on with my day. As my business card noted under my name and “Board-Certified Dance Movement Therapist,” my slogan was “One Step at a Time.” That's the way I'd take this new
revelation of Jack's: one slow, tentative, faltering, probably stumbling step at a time.
But you're a movement therapist, so move!
I ordered myself.

After the undrinkable instant coffee, and then the conversation with Jack that left me—I suddenly realized—drained, I craved a cup of Emine and Adnan's brew. “Black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love,” the Turkish proverb went. All that caffeine would perk me up, I told myself, and groaned at my own pun. More than coffee, though, I craved time with Em. She had a problem child. Maybe she could serve me a side of advice with the coffee.