For Keeps (16 page)

And I don’t have a clue what to do with it.

I want to ask a million questions, but I don’t know where to start. I guess he’s feeling the same way, because he keeps clearing his throat, and there’s a nervous tic thing happening with his foot.

“How’s your dad?” I blurt, filling the silence.

“Good.” He nods, relieved. “Much better, thanks. The doctors say he can go home tomorrow, with some new kind of insulin pump. And, you know, swearing on the Holy Bible he’ll never eat chocolate again. . . .”

“Right,” I say, forcing a chuckle.

More silence.

Then, I have to ask. “So . . . did you tell him?”

Paul clears his throat, nods. “Yeah. . . . Last night, after you and your mom left. . . . You know what he said?” He imitates Big Nick’s big booming voice. “ ‘I
knew
there was a reason I liked that Josie girl.’ ”

“No, he didn’t.”

“He did. I swear to God.”

I snort at the sheer absurdity of what I’m hearing. “Right. He just
rolled with the news
that his son has been
lying his ass off
for sixteen years and now, suddenly, the kid who’s been serving him cocoa is his granddaughter! No big deal! . . . Give me a fucking break.”

Paul looks startled. Then embarrassed. Good.

“It
is
a big deal,” he says quietly. “It’s a very big deal. Believe me, I know that, and . . . I should have told my parents sooner.”

“You should have told your parents sooner?”
My voice is hard, furious. “That’s all you can say for yourself ?”

“No. No, it’s not . . .” He’s shaking his head. Shake, shake, shake. But no words come out of his mouth.

More throat clearing and foot jiggling.

Both of us stare out at the darkening yard.

Minutes tick by. Or are they hours?

Finally, he speaks. “You have no idea how many times I thought about coming back here.”

“Is that right.” My tone is cool. Neutral.

“I even bought a plane ticket once. I was in college by then, so you were probably, I don’t know . . . a year old?”

I look at him. “What?”

“Well, I was a freshman, it was spring semester . . . you were born in June . . . so you would have been . . .
not quite
one. . . . I bought a plane ticket, to come and see you and your mom, but I never—”

“Wait,” I say. My heart has stopped. Literally. It is no longer beating. “You knew about me then?”

He looks at me, surprised.

“You knew my mom didn’t go through with the abortion?”

He nods. “Yeah.”

“How?” I say. “How did you know?”

He hesitates, frowning slightly. “She sent me a letter. The only letter I ever got.”

I don’t know what to say. I am speechless. So I say nothing. I let him keep talking.

“Katie’s parents, your grandparents, they made it clear to me . . . even when we were dating . . . your grandmother, especially . . . they didn’t like me. . . .”

I stare at him.
“So?”

“
So
, the minute I got Katie’s letter telling me she’d decided to keep the baby, I called her house, and your grandmother was the one who answered. ‘Katie doesn’t want to talk to you, Paul,’ she told me. ‘She doesn’t want to see you. She doesn’t want you in this baby’s life now, or ever. We don’t need your help.’ I kept calling, though, even after she said, ‘If you continue to call here I will contact the police.’ I didn’t stop calling, though. Not until the phone was disconnected. And I didn’t stop writing, either, until the letters started coming back to me, address unknown.”

Letters? What letters?

“I didn’t know where they moved,” Paul Tucci says. He gestures to the front door. “Here, I guess.”

“What letters?” I say out loud.

He looks surprised, but then he shrugs. “Your mom probably threw them out a long time ago. She just didn’t tell you.”

I sit up straight. “No.”

He raises his eyebrows.

“We tell each other everything,” I say. “We share
everything
. We don’t keep secrets.” As I am saying this I am realizing that it’s not really true. It is, in fact, a bald-faced lie. My mother
has
been keeping secrets—lots of them. But I keep going. “I know all about your Arizona girlfriend, by the way, so don’t even pretend you’re the innocent victim here. . . .”

“My what?”

I scoff. “Please. Did you think she wouldn’t find out?”

Paul gives me a puzzled look. “Find out
what
?”

“That you ditched her, the minute you moved! The minute you got to Arizona you started dating some other girl! . . . Your best friend Sully told her everything. At least
he
had the decency—”

“My best friend Sully.”

“Yeah.”

“Uh-huh. Did your mom ever tell you what happened with her and my best friend Sully?”

“No,” I say. “What?” My stomach drops the tiniest bit. “Did they hook up or something?”

“Not exactly. . . . But he tried.”

I listen to Paul tell me the story of some high-school party, a few months before he moved. How he walked into a room to find Sully putting the moves on my mom. Her pushing him away.

“No
way
,” I say. “Did they see you?”

“Sully did,” Paul says. “Your mom was . . . well, she’d had a few drinks. . . . He was definitely taking advantage of the situation.”

“Asshole,” I mutter.

Paul gives me a wry smile. “Let’s just say that when it comes to Katie Gardner, Tom Sullivan has never been the most objective source of information.”

Oh my God.
That
explains Officer Eyebrows and his
No-way-are-you-still-single
comment. He wasn’t mocking my mom; he was flirting with her.

“He liked her!”

Paul snorts. “He
more
than liked her. He threw his best friend under a bus for her.”

I picture a PVTA, a Paul Tucci pancake covered in tire tracks.

“There wasn’t an Arizona girlfriend,” Paul says. “Just a girl that I was hanging out with. Platonically.”

“So Sully lied.”

“Sully exaggerated.”

“And my mom believed him.”

“Apparently.”

“Why?”

Paul shakes his head. “I don’t know. All I got was the one letter. I never heard from her after that.”

“But she loved you!”

“I know,” he says. Then, quietly, “I loved her too. I was . . . really happy when I heard she was keeping the baby. I wrote back right away, telling her so. I kept writing too. Even though she never wrote back.”

“You’re lying,” I say, although I’m not sure he is. “There were no letters.”

I stand up.

“Josie, wait.” He stands too. “I tried. I really did. . . . I called. I wrote. Fifty letters I must have written. But your mom, either she believed Sully, or . . . I don’t know . . . All I know is I never heard from her again.”

I shake my head. “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s the truth.”

I hate when you think your life is one way—when you spend sixteen years accepting certain facts—and it turns out that everything you believed was a myth. I particularly hate when that myth is standing right here next to you on your front porch, telling you something you weren’t prepared to hear.

“Why should I believe you?” I say. I’m directing my question to the floor, where the paint is peeling away in gray dandrufflike flakes. Every summer my mom says she’s going to scrape it all off and start over, but she never does. “I don’t even
know
you.”

“I know,” Paul says. Then, “Josie.”

His hand is on my elbow.

Paul Tucci’s hand
is on my elbow.

My dad’s hand
—

“I want you to leave.” The words come out strangled, like there’s glue in my throat. “Please.”

“OK.” He drops his hand, nods. “If you change your mind . . . if you want to reach me . . .” I hold my breath as he slides his hand into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out a business card. “Here,” he says.

I take it.

“Anytime, Josie. I mean that. I’ll be in town for the next week or so.”

I nod, silent. I can’t find the words.

He hesitates, then turns and walks down the stairs. Across the grass, onto the driveway, and into the red SUV.

I realize, watching him drive off, that he didn’t choose to leave. I’m the one who made him go.

Seventeen

IT TAKES A
long time for my mom and Jonathan to finish their conversation, but it finally happens. As soon as I hear the front door click shut I walk into the den, where she is sitting on the couch.

“I need the truth,” I say.

She looks up, surprised. “Josie.” Then, “Where’s Paul?”

“He left. I told him to.”

She nods slowly.

“Why did you believe Sully?” I ask.

“What?”

She looks confused, and I realize her mind is on this morning—Officer Sully, not High-School Sully. So I spell it out for her. “After Paul moved away. The Arizona-girlfriend story. Why did you believe Sully?”

My mom frowns. “Why wouldn’t I believe Sully? He was Paul’s best friend. . . . He’d been in touch with Paul and I hadn’t. . . . Why are you asking me this?”

“Paul said there was no girlfriend. Just some girl he was hanging out with, platonically.”

My mom shakes her head. “It was more than platonic.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know.”

“Did Sully give you any proof?”

“I didn’t need
proof
, Josie. Why would he make something like that up?”

“He was hot for you, Paul said.”

“Please.” My mom snorts. “As soon as the word got out I was pregnant, I was no longer
hot
to anyone. Least of all Sully. It was like I had the plague. No one at school would go near me.”

“So what—Sully never talked to you again?”

“Pretty much. Sure, he gave me some bullshit line about how Paul and I should try to work it out for the sake of the baby, but—”

“Why is that a bullshit line?”

“What?”

“Why was Sully telling you to work it out for my sake a
bullshit line
?”

My mother stares at me. “Because. It doesn’t change the fact that after I wrote to Paul, telling him I was keeping you, I never heard from him again. Ever. As you well know.”

She sounds remarkably sure about this, but I can’t be. There’s too much that doesn’t add up.

“I
know
about the letters,” I say.

“What letters?”

I look straight at her. “The letters Paul sent you from Arizona. . . . I also know how many times he called, and how you refused to talk to him.”

She’s shaking her head. “He never called.”

“Mom. He
told
me.”

“Well, he’s making it up.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“He said you didn’t want to see him again after he moved. You didn’t want
me
to see him.”

She stares at me. “He told you that?”

I nod.

“I don’t know why he would tell you that, Josie,” she says calmly, but I can see that underneath she’s starting to unravel. “He’s the one who ended things.
He
broke up with
me
.”

“Because he thought you were having an abortion.”

She hesitates. “Yes.”

“Which you conveniently failed to mention to me until today.”

“I know . . . and I’m sorry about that. . . . Josie, I am so very, very—”

“So you’re saying Paul never wrote to you after he moved.”

She shakes her head. “Not once.”

“And he never called.”

“No.”

“Well.” I flop down on the couch next to her. “Someone is lying. That much is clear.”

“I agree.”

“And you’re saying it’s not you.”

“It’s not.”

“And Paul says it’s not him.”

She presses her lips together, silent.

“So I guess the only thing left to do is bust out the Ouija board and have a séance.”

“Excuse me?”

“Grandma and Grandpa Gardner. We’ll just have to ask them to weigh in from the great beyond.” I know I sound ridiculous. But I have to say it.

“What are you
talking
about?” my mom says.

“Paul said your parents didn’t like him. Is he lying about that, too?”

She sighs. “They didn’t
not like him
. They were . . . protective, that’s all. I was their only child.”

“So?”

“So, after I told them I was pregnant, they were even more protective. They were . . . well OK, they
were
mad at Paul, for a while. They saw how hurt I was after he moved—after Sully told me what he knew. I was a mess, really. I couldn’t sleep . . . refused to eat. And they . . . my mom especially . . .” Her voice trails off.

“What?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing.”

I don’t let up.
“What?”

“Nothing. Just . . . she was always saying how I didn’t need Paul to raise this baby. I didn’t need the Tuccis or their money. She and my dad would take care of everything.”

“So, they
didn’t
want Paul to talk to you. Or write to you.”

“No, they . . .” My mother’s face has suddenly gone from pink to white. Her nose is pinched at the corners.

“What?”

She shakes her head. She shakes and shakes like she’s trying to physically extricate a thought.

“What?” I say again.

She lets out a shuddering sigh. “It’s too crazy.”

“Mom. This whole
thing
is crazy.”

“I know, but . . .”

“What?”

She shakes her head again.

“Mom.”

“OK, it’s . . . I need you to come with me, OK?”

“Where?”

“Just humor me, Josie. Can you do that?”

I stare at her. I don’t have any clue what she’s talking about. But is there any real reason to refuse?

“Fine,” I say.

“And grab a sweater,” she tells me.

“A sweater,” I repeat.

“Two sweaters, OK? One for me.”

I nod, start to leave the room, then turn back for a moment. I’m not finished with my questions. Not even close.

But I will wait.

I will go to the hall closet, where we keep our winter clothes, to see what we have for sweaters. And I will put in a call to Liv, telling her to come over, in case my mom is having a nervous breakdown. I just may need the reinforcement.

Fifteen minutes later, my mom and I are in the attic. She was right about the sweaters; it has to be twenty degrees colder up here than in the rest of the house. This is what happens when no one bothers to insulate beyond the pink fluff hanging off the ceiling.

There is also junk everywhere.

Junk, coated in dust.

Unless my grandparents had some sort of bizarre organizational system, it looks like they just dumped stuff every which way. My mother hasn’t gone through any of it since they died. At first she thought the process would be too painful. Then she just didn’t want to deal with it. And now all these years later, here we are. The most interesting thing I have unearthed so far is one of my grandmother’s wigs, which looks just the way I remember it: like a small, dead panther.

“I can’t believe she wore these things,” my mom says, when I put it in her hands.

“Well,” I say, “what would you wear if you were bald?”

“I don’t know . . . a kerchief or something.”

“I’d wear a baseball hat.”

“And
I
,” says a voice from the doorway, “would tattoo my entire head. . . . Peace signs, dragonflies—”

“Liv!” I jump up to hug her. I am so glad she’s here.

Liv unhooks my arms from her neck. She takes a step forward, staring around the room. “Holy
shite
.”

“That’s right,” my mom says dryly. “Piles and piles of shite.”

“Which is why we needed you,” I add.

Liv nods. “Clearly.”

We’ve been up here for more than an hour. It’s surreal, looking at this stuff—everything my grandparents held on to. Some things I vaguely remember: my grandfather’s catcher’s mitt, a clock with birds on it, the brown-and-purple afghan that used to lie at the foot of their bed.

My mom tears up a little when I hand it to her. She tells us about the Christmas she was seven, when she ate an entire bowl of maraschino cherries and threw up on that afghan. She tells us about the games her father used to play with her when she was sick—Tiddlywinks, Blockhead, Spit—and how he would always play left-handed, so she would win.

Now my mom is crouched under the glow of a lamp in one corner of the room, leafing through a stack of papers.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Your great-grandfather’s autobiography. Grandpa Gardner’s father, my grandfather Julian.”

“He wrote an
autobiography
?”

“Apparently.”

“Cool!” Liv says, glancing over from the trunk she’s been yanking stuff out of and flinging onto the floor. “I want to read it.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” my mother says suddenly. “This is ridiculous.”

“What is?” I say.

“This!” She gestures wildly around the room. “What we’re doing, pulling out all this crap! We’re not going to find anything!”

“OK, but . . . what if we did?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. . . . Maybe it doesn’t even matter.”

“OK,” I say, shrugging. “I’m freezing, anyway.”

“Well, let’s just do two more boxes. Since we’re already up here.”

From across the room we hear a huff of breath, then a
holy shite
. Then Liv says softly, “You guys?”

We look over, see the expression on her face.

There is a moment of quiet, an eternity of quiet, as my mom and I get up and walk across the room.

It’s an ordinary box. Brown cardboard, unremarkable in every way. But here is Liv, holding it out to my mom. “Katie Gardner?”

And here is my mom, with a gentleness I’ve only seen her use once in my life—the time we found a hummingbird in the backyard that had flown into our kitchen window and cracked its beak—lifting up an envelope.