The Paternity Test (31 page)

“Hey—where’s your shoe, silly? Why are you wearing
one
?”

A simple question that could have had a very simple answer.
Oh, I had to scratch an itchy toe.
Paula wouldn’t ever guess that I had just been naked.

But I went mute. How could I account for all I’d done?

“Mãe,” said Paula, “why’s he wearing just one shoe? How come?”

I heard Danny’s booming voice: “Surprise, surprise, we’re back.”

Behind him, Stu: “Ice-cream crew to the rescue. Are you hungry?”

My heart blasted buckshot at my chest; my brain was tattered. Paula stood there, staring at me. Staring.

She’d seemed, all day long, a kind of covert helper: pushing me and Debora together, clearing our path to closeness. But now I faced a crazy dread that she had just been teasing. Fooling us both into walking the plank.

Mindlessly, I grabbed at her. I almost knocked the ice cream from her hand.

“Shh!” I said, squeezing her wrist. “Okay? You hear me? Shh!”

What did I want her not to tell? About my missing shoe? About my having grabbed her, now, too hard?

What if she started to cry? Why had I made things worse?

Paula’s eyes went wide, the pupils polished, dancing. “Shh,” she mimicked, and puckered up, and sputtered against her index finger. She tip-tapped a happy little jig. “A secret,” she sang, “a secret, someone’s got a secret . . .”

Covert helper? Trickster? Of course not. I felt sick.

Just a girl she was. A little girl.

Fourth Fireworks Fizzle; None Hurt.”

That was the banner headline in the next day’s
Cape Cod Times
. Why did I suspect it was untrue?

The paper said that less than fve minutes into the gala, one of the mortars misfired, its shell exploding low, and scattered ash and panic through the crowd. With memories still too raw of the Station nightclub blaze (a botched pyrotechnics display during a band’s performance, a hundred dead, more than twice that injured), the fire department wasn’t taking chances. They stopped the show, and sent the throng packing.

And sent Danny, Stu, and Paula home, to not-quite-catch us.

I read the story sitting in the Cape Cod Mall food court, sipping a ginger ale I’d nursed all morning. In front of Sarku Japan, an old runtish counterwoman was stabbing scraps of chicken onto toothpicks. She had the hounded look of a former child laborer, empty-faced, listlessly suspicious. “Come,” she called to passersby, thrusting toothpicked pieces. “Take flee samples! Taste some chicken. Flee!”

Flee indeed.

Debora and I had escaped, if only by a hair. No one knew what we had done; no one ever had to. But I had woken up today full of the need to run from Stu. I couldn’t bear the brunt of his
not
knowing.

We were supposed to head right back to Debora’s again this evening, to do the second, extra-insurance insem. I didn’t know how I was going to face it; I needed time and space away, to think. Flailing about, I’d said to Stu—inventing an excuse—that I was working on a research project. A piece on, um, Pilgrims. I’d have to drive to Plymouth. Would have to be there almost all day long. (How easily a little lie could snowball.)

“Fine,” said Stu, “but make sure you get back by fve. I love you.”

“Love you, too.” (Which wasn’t a lie, but felt like one just then.)

Loitering at the mall, I thought:
Today
. Get through today. Tomorrow will be a smaller hill to climb.

I sipped my flattened ginger ale, but it couldn’t ease my symptoms. The only cure? Keep my distance from Debora.

Soon enough, this all would fade: the lust, the laceration . . .

Paula’s memory of yesterday’s encounter would also fade. Besides, what was the worst the girl could say? That she had seen me with one shoe off ? That I had yanked her wrist? Even if she spoke of all she knew, I’d be safe.

Still, the thought of guileless Paula soured my soda’s taste. The way she’d danced so joyfully, believing we were playing. Her face: so suggestible and pure.

I stood, tossed the soda in the trash.

I did drive to Plymouth, with no good reason why. Maybe to chip away at my deceit?

This was my frst visit since the ’70s, I was sure. I walked along the sullen Main Street, past the dingy one-room stores (a shop that sold used Harlequins, a British-foods boutique): hardly the cute town of my remembrance. I even saw a homeless man, leaning against a lamppost, collecting change in a greasy pizza box.

The waterfront was likely to have kept more of its charm. Tracking the scent of frying clams, I strolled down to the harbor. Bring some back for Stu, I thought, to sate his ex-kosher hungers. But no, by the time he got the clams they’d all be soggy. I hoped my good intentions weren’t as perishable.

In the pursuit of solidness, I walked to Plymouth Rock. I stepped into the grotto, peered down. But wait:
this
was all, this grimy little stone? How had my mother, bringing me here, made it seem so lofty? A memory, then: the time she’d seen a street sign with our name on it. Her hearty yelp: “Pat, look . . . it’s
you
!”

Now I knew the purpose of my trip: to find that street. I’d come here to stand upon Faunce Place.

A block or two away, if memory served correctly. Maybe up the hill and to the left? Off I went, checking out each alleyway and lane, squinting at the signs. I didn’t see it.

Retreating toward the water, then back again, I searched. Winslow, Brewster, Howland, Brewster, Winslow. Still no Faunce.

Ten, ffteen minutes, I searched that goddamn town. I asked a passing family, but they were tourists, clueless. I tripped on crooked cobblestones. Got lost.

Then I saw the homeless man, against a different lamppost. Even from a yard away, I smelled his rummy breath.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “You know where Faunce Place is?”

“Faunce Place? No such thing,” he told me.

But no, I said. I’d
been
there. I knew it was nearby. Maybe he could think a little harder?

“Lived here all my life,” he said. “Know it like my hand.” He seemed to stare into his box of change.

Christ, was there a cost, now, for every human contact? I dug into my pocket for some quarters, tossed two in. “There,” I said. “Now do you remember?”

The man trained his faded-denim eyes up at mine. “Told you,” he said. “No such thing. Don’t you think I’d know it?”

I made a fist. “You don’t know shit. You’re fucking drunk, is all. What was I thinking, talking to a bum?”

I found my car and headed quickly home, full of shame.

On the road, I started owning up to what I’d done. Maybe not quite consciously, I had been succumbing to a poetry major’s grandiose dramatics. Seeing myself as playing out some great Homeric epic: of loss and love and faithfulness, of origins and kin. And I, the hero—flawed, perhaps, but weren’t the best ones always? In Plymouth, though, railing against that helpless homeless man, I had seen how minuscule and base I had become. No one’s hero, but only a regular asshole, and a fool.

Now I knew what I would do—what I must do—at home: start to make amends by telling Stu the whole long truth. Yes, that was it; I’d confess, before I wavered. I would do so, not because I thought it was heroic but because it was all I could come up with: the way a worthy man—a would-be father—might behave.

Coming clean, I hoped, would be better than getting caught, better than always fearing I soon might be. Maybe if I started acting more honorable, I’d become so.

I sped home, racing my resolve.

“What are you doing back?” said Stu. “Said you’d be gone till late.”

“I know,” I said. “Things changed. Sit with me for a minute?”

I led him to the couch. My skin was hot, alive. Behind us, noise: squirrels and blue jays, bickering at the feeder. Before us, sets of footprints in the carpet, his and mine—from just now, from walking to the couch.

“Stu,” I said. I touched his thigh. “There’s something you need to know.” Clichés were fine, I told myself. Clichés were maybe good. Maybe if I hadn’t been so bent on being “original,” I’d have caught my run-of-the-mill selfishness much sooner.

“What?” he said. “
What
, Pat? You’re sort of freaking me out.”

“Something happened,” I said. “With Debora. Me and Debora.” I stared at one of his travel posters: “Come to Ulster . . . for a Real Change and Happy Days.” “I swear it wouldn’t have happened if ”—
if you hadn’t gone away?
—“if I hadn’t had to help with the insem. Remember that day? The morning when I had to bring your sample?”

Stu looked straight ahead. He said, “‘It’?”

“Debora and I. We slept together. Or, well, not even really, you know? The frst time? The frst time it was just—” Just what?
My fingers?
“You weren’t there,” I said, “and Danny wasn’t, either. Someone had to help her out. The guidebook said—remember? Remember how the chances of conception are increased?”

Stu removed my hand from on his thigh. His arm was shaking. “Pat,” he said.

“No, listen, Stu. Please! Hear me out. It happened just a couple times, I swear to you. That’s all. And now it’s done. It’s over. I could’ve just not told you. But I
am
telling, because it’s done. To make sure that it’s done. I didn’t want to have this thing between us.”

All the time I talked at him, my thoughts were in a cage. Pacing, pacing, rattling at the bars. I wished he would throttle me or punch me in the face. But Stu was just . . . just sitting there. A lump of meat, deboned.

“It’s hard,” I said, “because we’ve never had, exactly, rules, and—”

“Rules?” he all but whispered. “You need a fucking
rule
? To let you know it’s wrong to screw our surro?”

A puny voice. So awfully, awfully hushed.

Sunlight through his earlobe, a glowing coal of flesh; one small puff, his skull might catch on fire.

He said, “If I weren’t so mad, I think I’d be amazed. You fucked up in so many ways at once. Cheating on your boyfriend with your baby’s surrogate mother? It’s like some kind of degenerate trifecta.”

This was maybe a couple of hours later, back on the couch. After a lot of slamming doors and silence.

He said, “Did you
plan
to be so dumb? You must have planned it. Dumbness like that isn’t just a fluke.”

And: “Really? You? The one who said that fucking around was fucking us up? Who moved us to the boonies so we’d leave all that behind? Mr. Restraint? Mr. Picket Fences?”

I wasn’t sure exactly how I’d thought he would react. Shocked, at frst, and puzzled, perhaps. Stung. But given his many years of scoffing at convention, of arguing that spouses should not be sexual possessions, I had thought he’d take this more in stride. Plus, after all the times I’d looked the other way for him, maybe he could try to be forgiving. Shouldn’t my confession count for something?

“Stu,” I said. “I’m sorry. You know I’m really sorry. But I’m not sure it helps to get so . . . well, so hysterical.”

“‘Hysterical’? Oh, that’s good,” he said. He shook with soundless laughter. “You know you shouldn’t say that, right?” he mocked, nambypamby. “‘Hysterical.’ That’s misogynist. It means I’m getting womby.”

Cringing, I recognized my own barbs aimed at me. And also, now, I recognized the extra threat that Stu must feel: the fact that I had cheated with a
woman
. He had worked so hard to get past his sissy boyhood, to forge the Stu whose dread of girls would never be a hindrance as he barnstormed through our gay-men-only world. But now, at a moment when his manhood was in doubt, when he was failing, metaphorically, to get it up with Debora, I had gone beyond our realm, to her: I’d outmanned him.

“Is it—” I said. “Is the issue that I had sex with a woman?”

Stu was toeing his shoe into the carpet’s dusty shag. The carpet showed our footprints, still, from when I’d frst come home today and led him here, before I spilled my secret. Where were the men who’d made those tracks? Ghosts.

“You think,” he said, “because she is ‘a’ woman, that’s the problem? Pat, get real. The problem is that she’s
this
one.”

“But Stu, you’ve been seeing all along how close we’ve gotten. Does this, now—does sex—have to make such a difference? How many times have I heard you say that sex can be just sex?”

“
Can
be—that’s what I said. Not that it always is. The guys I used to trick with, I hardly knew their names. Certainly wasn’t planning
babies
with them. Please, please don’t try to pretend that Debora was just some hook-up.”

No, I couldn’t. I’d heard my own hypocrisy. I wouldn’t.

“The crazy thing?” he added. “I’d come around to your way. I mean, just the other day, that guy I met? In Atlanta? He was nothing.
Would’ve
been nothing. I’ll never see him again. But still, I didn’t let it go past kissing—do you know why? Because I gave up everything for
this
, Pat. For you. Moved up here, away from everyone, to show you how I feel, to prove that all those other guys meant zero. And now,” he said. “Now . . . I’m a chump.”

Danny’s voice through the phone machine: “Guys? Aren’t you coming? Deb’s all set to go. We’ve been waiting.”

We were an hour late, it seemed. We’d lost track of time, our least concern.

“Leave it,” I said. “Don’t answer.” We’d make excuses later. Engine breakdown. Medical trauma. Something.

But Stu reached right past me. He picked up.

Only then, with a jolt of grief—seeing his fist around the phone, watching him lift it stiffly to his face—only then did I think of what I might have done to Debora.

Even in my need to make amends, so purely selfish.

“. . . no,” I heard Stu saying. “Tell her to just forget it.”

“Please,” I mouthed.

Stu to Danny: “I told you, no. Not coming.”

“
Please
, Stu.” I tried to take his elbow.

He shook me off. “You want to know, Danny? You really do? Go and ask your cheating wife what she did with Pat, why don’t you.”

Please, Stu,” I begged. “Please don’t punish
her
. This is for us, for you and me, to work out, okay? Please? There are things you couldn’t know—”

“Oh, really? Wonder why. Maybe because my boyfriend has been sneaking—”