I Like You Just Fine When You're Not Around (33 page)

“For us. That's how.”

“For you, Pete. I don't really think I'm in that equation. You pulled the plug when I really needed you.” Then, in a moment of stellar airwaves magic, she said, “Geri's the one for you, Pete. You two will be beautifully needy together. And I mean that in the nicest of ways.”

As the applause sounded, she noticed Alec stepping through the double doors at the end of the theater. He waved. Diane furrowed her brow, while Sam and Jim glanced between Tig and the man in the back of the theater.

Tig removed her headset and moved to the corner of the stage where the steps led to the audience. Macie fumbled and hit the button she prepared for a moment like this, and the lovely vowels of Judy Garland floated into the room.

“Somewhere, over the rainbow . . . .”

When Tig reached Alec, he took her hand. Tig escorted him to the front row and gestured for him to take a seat.

Diane threw up her hands. “So much for expecting less.”

Sam spoke up. “For the listeners who don't have the benefit of seeing what's going on in this studio, our own Dr. Tig Monahan has reunited with someone who she appears to like very much. Not the someone on the phone.”

• • •

After the show and the debrief with the other counselors, Tig found Alec backstage. Her heart thumped against her esophagus so enthusiastically, she had to press her palm to her chest and swallow twice before she found her voice.

“I won't give you my kidney, because I'm working hard to promise fewer organs to people, but I will hand over all my Fogelberg tapes if you take me out to dinner and rub my feet.”

Alec lifted the corner of his mouth, weighing Tig's offer. “Got any George Strait? I'm partial to the country balladeers.”

“I could throw in a greatest hits CD.”

“Erin will be sure to get fingerprints all over them.”

“I certainly hope so.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

“Good. I'm not, either.” Alec pulled her to him gently, wrapping her in the white cotton of his work shirt. He smelled of grass and soap. Of nature and nurture. She tilted her head in time for him to catch her and hold her in a kiss. She swallowed, causing an awkward gurgle to emerge from her throat. She laughed and said, “Nothing magical about me. Give me a beautiful, poetic moment and I'll burp into it.”

“That is the definition of magic—making something real out of something fantastic. Speaking of that, I hear there is going to be an unveiling of the DNA test.”

“Yeah.”

“So how did you decide?”

Tig looked up, confused. “About you?”

“No, I don't think you've decided about me.” He laughed. “No, the DNA test.”

“I had to get over my usual bullshit.”

“Which bullshit?”

“If I find out he's my biological father, I'm stuck with him. I can't love the dream of my dead father from a distance anymore.”

“You think you can handle that?”

With the earnest expression of a child who swears her homework is done, Tig said, “I've changed.”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe.”

“You're an odd little bird.”

“You've always known that, yet here you are.”

“Yet, here I am.”

Growing up, the notion of a father had been a concept, not a reality, so visiting the grave of Dan Monahan as a child was a life-interruption rather than homage to the dead. Tig's father-images were not her own. They belonged to the mantle above the fireplace and her mother's bedside, where her parents stood smiling on their wedding day. Dan Monahan, young, handsome, gazing down lovingly at beautiful Hallie Monahan. The moon in love with the sun.

After the drama of the last few months, Tig could now see how she had worked for that look her entire life. What she didn't realize until now was what she needed—what everyone needed—was a chance to be on the receiving end of that look, instead of always being on the giving end.

Tig extracted the white business envelope from her purse and held it to her chest, shuffling leaves as she walked. Over the years she recalled listening carefully to father-lore. There was the tale of hiking a mountain trail and getting lost. Running low on water and sunlight, Dan had saved the day due to a miraculous compass inside his head. Or the glamorous stories of how he had paid his way through college by performing in a band fittingly named The Legends.

Tig strolled toward Dan Monahan's grave. It was marked with a nondescript headstone near a lilac bush that bloomed prettily in the spring and protected the site in the winter. This end-of-summer day, this fall-feeling morning, seemed to point to a season of clichés: things change. Time moves on.

Bits of life that felt solid and necessary, that caused panic if misplaced—keys, cell phones, relationships—would always be replaced by new phones, new panics, new fathers. She placed the envelope on the headstone, pressing the pristine paper onto the rough stone.

She smiled at Jeff Jenson as he made his way closer.

“Thanks for meeting me here. I know it seems overly dramatic.” She started to add a “but” to the sentence, but couldn't think of an adequate justification for the feelings she couldn't name. “DNA probably shouldn't be revealed at a McDonald's.”

“I've been here several times over the years. It's a peaceful place, and I've always had a lot of questions for Dan.”

“Really?”

“The Monahan women are not easy women. I asked for a lot of advice.”

“Did he have wise words from the grave for you?”

“Not from the grave, but sometimes when I was here I'd remember his life philosophies better.”

Tig pushed a fallen leaf bundle with her toe, releasing a smell like musty nutmeg. “What did he say?”

“We'd be having a beer and waiting for the burgers to grill. Hallie would be entertaining us with an outrageous story about who knows what, and Dan would shake his head and say, ‘Ya gotta love her.' And, you know, I always did.”

The loss of it hit Tig. She felt full, engorged with the realization that she just didn't know what she didn't know. She didn't know Dan Monahan. She knew only a version of her mother, and here in front of her was a man whose DNA might fill in all kinds of gaps, but ultimately, what would it really provide? “Did you spend your life feeling robbed?”

Jeff shook his head. “I've been able to spend my life with your mother. Maybe not in the traditional sense—breakfast every day, decorating Christmas trees—but who's to say we would have been successful at that? Half of the people in the world bet on the absolute belief that they will be, and they're not.”

“Dr. Jenson, you are a love.”

Jeff took off his glasses and cleaned them with the tail of his shirt, a mannerism Tig had begun to recognize. “I'm not being generous, nor am I rationalizing the past. I'm just saying what's true.”

“Didn't you want to shake her?”

“People are who they are, Tig. Danny was a good husband. He and Hallie fought about stupid things like all couples, like we would have if we had married. Instead, we never fought about the dandelions in the lawn. We never had to argue about money. Our time together was less fraught.” He replaced his glasses and said, “It's true. I had to learn to live my life without ownership of what I loved best, but is that such a bad thing? I didn't own you, but I surely loved you.” Forcing what Tig could clearly see was a stiff upper lip, he added, “As far as I was ever and always concerned, you were . . . .” He cleared his throat. “Excuse me, you
are
mine. Whatever that slip of paper says about us, it won't change a thing for me.”

A puff of a breeze ruffled Tig's hair, and the envelope perched on the top of the headstone fluttered. Lifting her face to him, she saw that hitching her wagon to the past could only mean a journey in the wrong direction. She bent and picked up a handful of white stones and placed them on the envelope, securing it until sometime in the future, when she wasn't around to see it, the weather would pull her story apart.

Tig slipped her arm around Jeff Jenson's waist, and as naturally as if he had spent years and years fitting his arm around the groove in her shoulder, he pulled her in tight.

Turning away from the gravestone, Tig said simply, “C'mon, Dad, let's go visit Mom.” Walking away from the markers of her past, she stopped, turned, and slipped away from Jeff Jenson's warm embrace. She jogged back to the gravestone and grabbed the envelope. “I know that would make a romantic end to this day, Goat, but I'm just not that kind of girl.”

Jeff cleared his throat and said, “Good. I was hoping you were more your mother than your father, whoever that father may be.”

This is my third book and yet there is still such a long list of people to thank.

My early readers who read drafts that were partially realized and filled with troubles. Thank you Christine Benedict, Wanda Dye, Amy Reichert, and Carolyn Bach; if not for you, I might have given this one up. For some reason, this book came harder; the characters were more difficult to pin down and I'm so grateful for your positive early enthusiasm. My later readers, Terri Osgood, Katie Moretti, and Holly Robinson gave such good feedback that I now feel like this book was no trouble at all. That kind of support is the kind that gets books written. That is the kind of support I needed.

My agent Jill Marr is, every day, full-on enthusiastic, and I always know she is in my corner. Additionally, I am so very thrilled to work with Tyrus Books and Ben Leroy on this publication. I went all over the world and there you were, right in my own backyard. Thank you, this means so much to me.

My girls Julie and Meghan never question my desire to continue to write, even though I miss a game or two and sometimes we eat nothing but noodles for dinner. I couldn't have written a word if I hadn't been your mother, and that is the truth. Finally, to my love Brian Osgood: oh, if I could tell you, I would let you know.

Photo credit: Matthew Boatright-Simon

Ann Garvin is the author of
The Dog Year
and
On Maggie's Watch
. She lives in Stoughton, WI and is a professor of sports psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and a MFA teacher in New Hampshire.