Thirty Sunsets (15 page)

“Don’t even think about turning this around on me!” the woman shouts, shaking a finger at him. “You’re probably in on your mother’s plan: ‘Find some couple at church to adopt the little bastard, Mom, but act like I don’t have anything to do with it. Then maybe I can keep getting all the sex I want after this little inconvenience is taken care of.’ Well, you’re not getting off that easy, buddy! I’ll make sure you fulfill your responsibility to your baby if it’s the last thing I do!”

“Like you fulfilled yours?” Brian yells, his eyes bulging.

“Stop it, stop it!” Olivia cries. She gives Brian a pleading look. “I called her yesterday, right after you told me about the conversation with your parents, when I was still upset and didn’t realize—”

“Didn’t realize
what
?” Olivia’s mother says. “That the only reason this woman invited you to her froufrou beach house was to steal your baby out from under you?”

Mom presses a hand against her cheek, her mouth agape.

“She was just trying to give us some options,” Olivia says, tears streaming down her cheeks. “She wasn’t trying to ram anything down our throats. I didn’t understand. Like I said, I called you when I was still upset, and—”

“Well, I’m pretty damn upset right this minute!” her mother shoots back.

Dad holds a palm in the air. “Hold it! Everybody needs to calm down. Please!”

“What do
you
have to say about anything?” the mother says, sneering at Dad. “Speaking of which, I want genetic testing done on this baby. No telling what kind of medical history we’ll be dealing with.”

Stunned silence.

Olivia locks teary eyes with Brian and mouths, “
I’m sorry
.”

As my eyes dart from one face to the next, the realization shoots through my heart like a dagger: my imagination
hasn’t
been running wild. My instincts
aren’t
off base.

Everybody knows something I don’t.

twenty-two

Nobody moves a muscle.

My mind is reeling, and everyone else seems like they’ve just been thwacked in the head with a two-by-four.

Genetic testing …

Medical history …

“Get. Out. Of. My. HOUSE!” Mom’s roar thunders through the foyer like a tsunami. “OUT!”

“Honey … ” Dad cajoles, but Mom waves him away like a gnat.

“You will not waltz in here and tear my family apart,” Mom tells Olivia’s mother. “
Get the hell out!
”

Every jaw drops. Mom is actually shaking. And cursing! This is surreal.

Olivia’s mother is frozen in place.

“Out!” Mom shrieks, lunging toward her.

“Hold it!” Brian interjects, stepping between the two mothers and making a time-out motion. He glances at Olivia. “Let’s take your mom out and get some fresh air.”

Olivia nods, her eyes petrified.

“Who are you to kick me out?” Olivia’s mom sputters, indignant to be out-bullied.

“I will tear your hair out if you hurt my family,” Mom responds, in the most chilling monotone I’ve ever heard.

“We’re leaving, we’re leaving,” Brian says, taking Olivia and her mother by their arms. “We’ll get some air, get a bite to eat, we’ll calm down, then we’ll … ”

Then we’ll what? Watch these two banshees claw each other’s eyes out?

“Then we’ll discuss this like adults,” Brian finishes.

That’s just what Brian suddenly seems like. An adult. I know he is one now, technically speaking, but up until this beach trip it’s been hard to see him as anything other than the kid who played SpongeBob to my Sandy Cheeks in our backyard games as toddlers. Maybe that’s why it’s been so hard to picture him as a father. Suddenly, it’s not hard at all. I swallow hard.

Brian leads Olivia and her mother outside, then closes the door behind him.

My parents and I stand there, the tension of the past few moments seeping out like steam from a teakettle.

twenty-three

“It’s time.”

Mom shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Maureen: it’s time.”

Approximately three minutes have passed since I’ve ex-haled. Looking from Mom’s frantic face to Dad’s expression of sad resignation has convinced me of one thing: my dread now firmly outweighs my curiosity. Whatever it’s time for, I don’t think I want to know.

Dad looks at me. “Let’s sit down, honey.”

But I don’t move a muscle until he takes my arm and leads me toward the family room.

“Michael … ” Mom protests weakly, but she follows us to the couch. Mom and I sit on it—collapse on it, really—and Dad sits across from me in the recliner, pitching forward and putting his hand on my knee.

“Honey … ”

Mom moans, dropping her face into her palms.

“Honey, you know how much your mother and I love you and Brian … ” Dad continues, and a thousand Very Special Episodes of saccharine sitcoms fill my head.

“Nothing could ever change that,” he adds, and I wonder if the nervous tension will make me burst into hysterical laughter. But I just keep sitting there, waiting for the shoe to drop.

“Honey, when your mother and I—”

“No!” Mom wails, her face still buried in her hands.

Dad pauses a moment, then continues: “When we—”

“NO!” Mom says again. “I mean it, Michael! I can’t do this! We need time to … ”

“To
what
?” Dad challenges, kind but resolute.

“To do this right!”

Dad moves his hand from my knee to Mom’s. “It’s time,” he whispers.

Mom jumps to her feet. “I can’t! Do you understand that? I can’t!”

She runs down the hall and slams her bedroom door behind her.

We hear her weeping, and Dad looks torn for a moment about whether to go to her. But his mind is made up. He’s clearly decided there’s no turning back now.

He clears his throat and seems to force himself to hold my gaze. “When your mother and I started dating,” he says, absurdly trying to sound casual, “she was already pregnant.”

I’m still staring at him as if he’s just uttered something in a foreign language. “Pregnant.”

He nods. “Right, sweetie. She was already pregnant.”

“But … how did you get her pregnant if you weren’t dating yet?”

Okay, I’m fully aware of how stupid that sounds, and I don’t recall actually forming the question in my brain, but somehow, those are the words that fall from my mouth.

Because that’s the only explanation I can absorb: that Dad got Mom pregnant.

“Um … ” Dad says, looking around the room for a moment before homing in again on me. “I wasn’t the one who got her pregnant.”

Oh.

My eyebrows knit together, my mouth open as if awaiting a fresh jumble of stupid words to fall out. “What happened to the baby?”

Dad’s eyes fall. “The baby is your brother.”

Oh. I have a brother I didn’t know about? Wait, no …

“Brian,” I say, surprising myself by sounding eerily matter-of-fact.

But that can’t be, so I’m really eager for Dad to explain what’s
really
going on and why there’s no reason to believe my world has just been shattered and why this whole thing is a giant misunderstanding and …

“Right,” Dad says. “Brian.”

He holds my hand between both of his. I pull it away.

“Brian’s … not your son.” My voice is so flat, I wonder if I said the words aloud or just thought them.

“Of
course
he’s my son,” Dad says, and I think,
Whew, my world is still on its axis after all! I’ve just misunderstood …

But then I get it. Brian is Dad’s son in a Very Special Episode kind of way. As in, not at all.

“You’re not his dad.”

I’m talking to myself now, just trying to take it all in.

Dad grabs my hands, holding them too tightly to let me pull them away. “I’ve loved your brother since the moment he was born … since
before
he was born. He’s my son as surely as if—”

“She’s such a hypocrite,” I say to myself in barely a whisper, peering blankly into space. “Such a friggin’ hypocrite … ”

“
No.
Your mother is
not
a—”

“She was using you,” I say in a monotone. “She’s still using you.”

“Forrest, you
know
your mother and I love each other very—”

“You said it yourself,” I say, pulling my hands away and rising to my feet. “You said you tried forever to get her to go out with you, but she wasn’t interested until … ”

“That’s
not
what I meant, Forrest.”

But I’m already heading toward the back door.

“Forrest, wait!”

What a Very Special Episode thing to say.

“Wait!” Dad repeats as I fling the door open. He’s caught up with me by the time I’ve reached the stairs of our deck.

“I need some time,” I tell him, aiming for calm to increase the odds that he’ll leave me alone.

“Honey, you don’t understand … ”

“Please, Dad? Just a little time to myself?”

He stands there looking torn, then finally nods. “Please hurry back … so we can all talk.”

Yeah, that’ll give me something to look forward to.

“You really haven’t heard the … ”

But I’m already running down the steps, toward the beach, away from my dad.

He
is
my dad, right?

Who the hell knows? Suddenly, everything I’ve ever be-lieved, everybody I’ve ever trusted … it’s all up for grabs, a giant crapshoot, just a big, heapin’ helpin’ of
shit
.

By the time my sneaker-clad feet hit the sand, I’m running, running somewhere, running toward the water, I guess, I dunno, I don’t care, just running …

People are milling around me—dusk is just setting in and a peachy sunset is piercing through billowy clouds—but I’m oblivious, still just running, just pushing forward, wondering if I can outrun the sound in my head of my life splintering into a million pieces. I run until I hit the surf, then fall onto the wet sand, holding my head in my hands as the lazy, rippling waves of low tide nibble at my sneakers.

I’m vaguely aware of the outfit I’m wearing—the snug shorts, the B-52s T-shirt (campy, ironic, understated—like I’ve coolly thrown on the first thing I grabbed from the drawer)—and cringe as I remember I picked it out specifically for Scott.

Scott. That guy from a lifetime ago. The one from a parallel universe. The one who stood me up a mere hour ago. The one I gave a shit about before I realized I had
real
problems. The one who made sense in my world when my world wasn’t full of deception. Thirty sunsets, my ass. Thirty zillion
lies.
And counting.

Fitting, no? Scott’s done apparently nothing but lie the whole time I’ve known him, and my family has done nothing but lie the whole time I’ve known
them
, with me going about my business ludicrously believing what I was told, inexplicably trusting people, imperviously living my life as if I had a goddamn clue.

They’ve all been lying to me … even Brian.

Because Brian knows.
I’m sorry
, Olivia mouthed to him when her mom blathered about genetic testing.
I’m sorry I told my mom what everyone on earth besides your idiot sister has apparently known forever, that you’re not who she thinks you are, that she’s not who she thinks she is, and that, oh by the way, I’m your confidante now, not your what’s-her-name sister. Half sister, that is.

How could Brian know this without telling me? Haven’t we always told each other everything? He’s the only one I ever told about my weird OCD habit of alternating which side of my teeth I brush first—left to right in the morning, right to left at bedtime—one of a million ways I’m committed to an insane notion of symmetry. I’m the only one who ever heard Brian’s confession that it was him, not his friend Ty, who accidentally ripped the upholstery of a new chair the very day Mom bought it.

Sure, our relationship took a sharp turn south when Olivia came on the scene, but at least
that
was a betrayal that fell within the parameters of a world that made sense.

This …
this
betrayal … a betrayal that makes a mockery of every single moment of my childhood, my life up to this point, considering that it was all based on a lie—
this
defies the very laws of physics.