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  “Good, listen. You said yourself that you’re the one who got in touch with us, not the other way around. I didn’t ask for this. Now, if it makes you feel better to give him presents, pay for things, then I’m willing to let you do that. But I do not plan to give you visitation rights or anything like that, so don’t even suggest it.”

  Would now be the time to tell her about the songs I’d written about her? Should I mention the house I just tried to buy? Why hadn’t she just told me about her dream? Wouldn’t that have been easier? If two people are simultaneously pining for each other, doesn’t that mean they’re supposed to be together? I always thought so. For a split second, I pictured screeching over there on my bike to change her mind. I saw myself and Jack facing her down. We were holding hands. In our other hands, we held guitars. Then I saw myself in front of a judge, explaining that I was the boy’s biological father, I had rights. Some hot thing bubbled up in my throat—maybe it was indignation and self-righteousness—but it was quickly replaced by doubts and questions.

  If a kid is happy, is it right to set his life on a different path just because you’re an adult and might be able to achieve it? If the kid didn’t want to have anything to do with me, would it be fair to insist on it? I don’t mean legally. I just mean as one human to another. And if he had someone else whom he preferred to think of as his father—someone, say, with a real house and real job— wasn’t it more in the boy’s best interests to stay out of the way of the life he wanted to make for himself? I had a feeling it was. I wasn’t used to the father thing at all: even the word father sounded weird coming out of my mouth. And I knew that I didn’t want to wreck anything for him.

  “Well,” I said into the phone before I had come up with anything else.

  Diana waited for me to say more. When I didn’t, she sighed, frustrated with me again. Then she said, “Good, I want to know something. You’re smart. You have a lot of, well, natural abilities. Why are you sitting there doing nothing with your life? You know what I’m saying. You wrote these great songs. Big hits that still get played after all these years. What happened?”

  Maybe I had realized before that particular moment that Diana wasn’t what I had hoped for. Maybe I had seen the afternoon she came over with Jack or in the restaurant that night or even way back when we were together that she was not the woman I was supposed to be with forever. But now, with that question, she had just wiped away any lingering wisps of hope or desire I still had for her.

  I should have thanked her then and there for popping the dreaded question and letting me drop her from my list of things that might have made my life work. I should have felt relieved and grateful to her for showing me the truth. But I didn’t feel that at all. Instead, I felt as though I’d just lost a lover and a child.

  I chose to disregard the question. I said. “So, if Jack wants to get in touch with me, hang out, or whatever, you know where to find me. And I hope your marriage works out perfectly. For everybody. I hope you’re all really happy.” Then I added, “You deserve it.”

  “Thanks,” she said with a lighthearted lilt to her voice, “Thanks, Good. I feel so much better. Really, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” My own voice sounded different now from the way it had been in the beginning of the conversation; I could have been a different person altogether.

  “And I hope you get what you need too,” she said.

  “Sure. I’ll be fine. Thanks. OK, well, so long.”

  “Bye, Good.”

  “Good-bye.” You might remember what I said earlier about using that whole word.

  I reached for a guitar. I sat there holding it for a long time, feeling the empty space that was left inside myself where my pretend version of Diana used to be. I couldn’t feel sad about missing her and Jack, because I hardly knew them. What I missed, of course, what I always missed was myself and the life I could have had.

  There was a knock on my door. I opened it. Wouldn’t you know? All the brand-new furnishings for my real life had finally arrived. The kitchen table and chairs, the desk, the entertainment unit and TV, the bed, all of it, finally showing up at exactly the moment that I no longer needed them.

  twenty-six

  Ellen was sautéing mushrooms. “So you felt that if you could make yourself available to Jack, maybe you could have him around, in your life.”

  “I thought he might, you know, need me, I don’t know, like, as a father. I thought I might be able to figure out how to do that. But it turns out that they have someone for that already. They’re all set.”

  She said, “Are you devastated?”

  “I don’t know what I am. I mean, first, I was all panicked that I might have to do something for them, that they might want something from me. But I came around. I kind of worked on myself, you know, tried to improve.”

  Ellen didn’t stir for a second. She didn’t want to turn and look at me and make me get all self-conscious. But she was listening hard, willing me to say more.

  “I went to a Point Blank concert in L.A. I offered to sell them some songs. I thought I could sort of pick up where I left off, give myself a real job.”

  Now she opened her eyes wide, afraid to move, in case I clammed up again.

  “Yeah. I gave them a tape.” I drummed my fingers on the kitchen table. “They didn’t want the songs.”

  “Oh,” she groaned, “You’re kidding? You must have felt awful. But, Tom!” Ellen almost yelled. “This is important progress! Do you know how long it’s been since you—”

  “Yeah, I know. It wasn’t so great. I sweated buckets and threw up in the bathroom.”

  “But still! You did it! That’s—oh, my God!—that’s—”

  “Right. But what I was saying was that in the beginning I was worried that Diana and Jack would want something from me, that I would have to protect myself from them trying to get at me. But I’ve come to this other place. I puffed myself into a whole new shape so that I could be, you know, more, for them! And now I’m all deflated because they don’t want anything. Well, she did get a little excited about the money. She asked me to pay for a camp and a Playstation 2. I saw a little spark of desire when I told her about the royalties. They can have it all, if they want. I sure don’t care about it.”

  Ellen went back to stirring.

  I sat there a minute. “I thought I was in love with her. All this time. Then once I got close to her again, come to find out I’m not. I probably knew that before, I just forgot. I liked the fantasy better than I liked her. Isn’t the human mind just the most interesting thing?” I smirked.

  “So maybe your initial motivation was Diana and Jack, but now that you’ve gotten to this other place, the reason you went there doesn’t matter so much? Now you can just keep going from where you are. This is a good thing, Tom.”

  “Do you think he took a look at me and kind of shook his head and walked away?” Even before she answered, I was thinking of using the phrase “shook his head and walked away” in a song.

  “Oh, no,” Ellen said. “No! Is that what you think? Kids don’t—”

  “I mean, it’s not like I’m some, you know, orthodontist, or software engineer, or anything normal.”

  “Tom, no one is normal.”

  “Some are closer to the bulge in the old bell curve than others. I mean some people are, well, orthodontists.”

  “But I hope you’re at least acknowledging that just knowing about Jack motivated you to move forward in your life. You do see that, right? And you have to at least feel a little bit grateful that, now that you know about the kid, he’s well taken care of. Aren’t you happy that you found this boy in great shape with all of his needs met?”

  I hung my head even lower than it already was. “I know it’s selfish of me, but I was hoping that I was the only one who could do certain things. I was hoping that only his biological father would do for birthdays and Christmas and, I don’t know, guitar lessons. Do you know what the weirdest thing is?”

  “What?
”

  “He doesn’t like music. He has no interest in guitar lessons.”

  Ellen looked at me. “Ah,” she said.

  “Yeah.” For some reason, I wanted to go then. She wasn’t even finished making my dinner, and I was ready to head for the door. I should have brought a guitar, I thought, something to hold and make noise with.

  Ellen looked at the mushrooms and took the pan off the burner. “I think it’s a good thing that Diana has this man in her life who’s willing to be Jack’s father.”

  All of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe for a minute, and my throat felt closed. I put my hands over my face to try to block everything out.

  “Tom?” Ellen said. “Are you OK?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve done a lot of things wrong, and I don’t know how to fix them.”

  Ellen had a metal grater in one hand and a piece of cheese in the other. There was a long pause while she thought about what to say. “I was reading a column on how to get organized. This woman wrote in to say that she had all these pictures of her family that she hadn’t put in albums, something like fifteen years’ worth of snapshots. She kept taking pictures and not putting them in the books. They were all in shopping bags in her closet. So the columnist told her not to go back to day one but to start from her most recent roll of pictures.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Yeah. So do you get it?”

  “What?” I said.

  “What I’m saying?”

  “About pictures?”

  “I’m saying, starting now, be whatever you want.”

  I looked at her.

  “Starting now, if you want to do something else with your music, do it. If you want to, I don’t know, move to a new place, do that. Don’t worry so much about where you’ve been, what you’ve done, what you’ve missed, all that. Think about what you’re going to do next.”

  I said, “See, I just tried that. It didn’t work.”

  She poured eggs into the pan. There was a big hiss. She waited a minute. The eggs started to get firm, and she sprinkled in the grated cheese and mushrooms. Some people are good at everything.

  twenty-seven

  I heard Vic’s truck pull up before I was awake. Its sound was as distinctive as the UPS trucks and at least as loud. He and Robin had had only two kids when they bought it. That seemed like a hundred years ago now. The door slammed. Vic must be picking up the kids for the weekend. I got out of bed.

  “Elise isn’t ready.” It was Mike’s voice. “Her hair is getting fixed. Mom said could you throw our stuff in the back.” I could hear stuff hitting the bed of the truck. Why didn’t Vic say hi to Mike?

  “Dad?” Mike said. “Are we going to the beach?”

  “We’ll see. I have to stop by work for a couple of minutes.”

  “No,” Mike whined. “I don’t want to. We did that last time, and it was all day.”

  “You guys can play on the computers!” Vic said with feigned enthusiasm.

  “We don’t want to.”

  “You want to go back to the apartment and stay with Sandy?”

  There was a long pause. “Can’t we just stay here with Mom until you’re done with work?”

  “Nope.”

  “No fair.”

  Maddy and Ray were outside now. “I want to sit in front!” Maddy said.

  “No, me!” said Ray

  “You’re not old enough,” Mike explained. “Elise isn’t even old enough, but Dad lets her. If he didn’t, we wouldn’t get to go.”

  Ray said, “I don’t want to go!”

  “Don’t say that, Ray,” Maddy said. “You’ll hurt Dads feelings.”

  “Get in.” Vic opened the door. “Where’s Elise? Elise!”

  “She’s almost ready!” Robin called back.

  A few seconds later, two doors slammed, first the house, then the truck.

  “Mommy!” Ray yelled at Robin. “I don’t want to go!”

  Then there was a minute or so of stuff I couldn’t hear, except that Ray was crying.

  “Make sure they’re back by five tomorrow!” Robin said sharply. “They need to get their hair washed and their—”

  “Fine,” Vic said.

  “Have fun, guys! See you tomorrow! I love you!” Robin was yelling in a cheerful, upbeat voice as the truck backed up.

  “Bye, Mommy!” two of the kids called. Ray was crying, probably leaning out the window as the truck backed up.

  I didn’t look out the window, but I pictured her standing there, waving in her bathrobe. How could she let them go with him? They’d be gone for two whole days, and she’d be miserable. Robin and Vic had been saving for a house, she told me. They were going to buy a new place in one of the northern suburbs when Vic suddenly lost sight of the master plan. He got involved with someone from his office and left Robin with the kids so he could move in with the other woman.

  I heard the sound of the truck engine fade into the general traffic noises. The crying would start any second now. As if I had stepped on a nail, I sprang into action. I was going to stop the crying before it started. At that moment, I was willing to do just about anything not to hear that sound. In three giant steps I was in the kitchen filling my new coffeepot. I dumped water in the tank and grabbed a filter. I scooped some coffee out of the bag and pressed the button. I pulled on some pants and a T-shirt, raked my fingers through my hair, and went next door.

  She was just starting to tear up when I got there. It wasn’t the bathrobe today. She was wearing an old pair of jeans and a work shirt over a white T-shirt. “Hi!” I said a little too loudly. “I just— I don’t know what I was thinking! I measured out too much coffee. Do you want a cup? Just to, so I don’t waste it?”

  She wiped her face on her sleeve. “Uh, coffee?” she said.

  “Yeah, coffee,” I said, “That hot brown stuff people drink in the mornings?”

  “Uh. Yeah. OK. Sure.”

  “Two minutes!” I said.

  I went outside and grabbed two plastic chairs from the garage. Former tenants had left them here. There was a square of uneven bricks with grass growing between them that joined the entrances of our two apartments. I always thought Jeanette’s husband had laid them, and it was his first bricklaying experience, maybe his last. I put the chairs on the bricks, where they teetered on the lumpy surface, I went inside and got down two coffee mugs. I always use the same one, but I had to wash the other one, as it had a dead moth in it. Then I poured the coffee in.

  “Robin?” I said at her door.

  “Yeah?” She came from inside somewhere. She had brushed her hair.

  “Want to sit outside? I found some chairs.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  Slowly, carefully, as if recovering from an illness, she came outside. She sat in a chair, and I handed her the coffee cup. “I hope it’s not too strong.”

  “I like it strong,” she said.

  “Oh!” I said. “I didn’t bring any milk or sugar.”

  “I have some,” she said. She stood up and then turned around. “Oh. Do you want anything in yours?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m OK.” It was real coffee, so I wasn’t planning on drinking mine. I had bought it for the real-life act I had planned for Diana. The coffee was just a prop.

  Robin went inside and put stuff in her cup. I heard her getting a spoon out of a drawer, stirring. She came back out, sat down, and took a sip. “Mmm,” she said. She closed her eyes. “The kids went with Vic this morning.”

  “Oh? Really? His weekend, I guess, huh?”

  “They’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “You can live it up!”

  “Luckily, I’m working all day. I hate it when they’re not here,” she said, biting her lower lip. “I just hate it.”

  “Well. You get a little free time for yourself, though, that must be—”

  “I don’t like time for myself,” she said, “It just leads to thinking, and thinking leads to regretting and worrying. I try to avoid free time as muc
h as possible. For all the time that I’m not working, I try to get a lot of videos.”

  I nodded. I decided to stop pretending that she was going to have fun without the kids, to stop acting as if I didn’t know anything. “I understand completely. I spend a lot of time trying not to think myself. I’m something of an expert. But I have a whole row of guitars, instead of four kids. I’m not sure that they work as well.” Without thinking, I took a sip of my coffee. “Hey!” I said. “That’s pretty good. I didn’t know I knew how to make real coffee.”

  She laughed. A little. Sort of.

  Then we sat there for a few minutes not saying anything. I didn’t really have anything to tell her or ask her. I just didn’t want to hear her crying. That was all that had brought us together, and so far, it was working. I drank the whole cup of coffee.

  “What about you?” she said.

  “What about me, what?”

  “What are you going to do today?”

  “Oh. Play my guitar. And, I don’t know, work on some songs maybe.”

  She nodded and sat there a minute. Then she drank what was left in her cup. “Well, that was excellent. Thank you.” She handed me the empty cup. “I think I’m going to take off now. I’m a couple of hours early for my shift, but Saturdays if I get there early, they usually put me right on. I can use the money.”

  “That sounds good.”

  “Enjoy your day!” she said, just the way they did in the grocery store.

  “You too!”

  She made a brief groaning sound. “I’ll try.”

  I put the chairs back in the garage.

  twenty-eight

  When the kids came home one afternoon, Mike wanted a guitar lesson. Now Elise wanted one too. I no longer had a reason to practice being around children, but they didn’t know that. We sat outside in the yard. I didn’t want them to see that in addition to my hideous lamp shade, my lame TV, and my pathetic plant that was still sitting on the floor, I now had a whole bunch of new stuff crowded into the center of my place, some of it in boxes. I hadn’t gotten rid of the old stuff yet, or set up the new stuff. Since I had recently lost the energy and motivation that a project of this scale would require, it might all just sit there for a long, long time.