The Paternity Test (15 page)

“Oh, no,” said the owner, his eyes full of injury. “No no no, the artist destroys the block.”

“The artist—” said Stu.

“Breaks the woodblock after he’s made the run. Then burns it. An offering, if you will.”

Stu’s face changed. The grin was gone, and he gazed squarely at me. I sensed he had leapt from art to
us
. To having a kid.

At frst I feared that he was thinking he was like the woodblock: create a precious copy of himself, be burned to ash. But his expression wasn’t especially frightened or resentful; stunned-but-in-a-good-way was more like it. And later, in the car, he talked about his feelings: “I can’t stop thinking about the guy who does those woodcuts. I guess I’d never thought how much the making of art
is
the art. The process as much as the product, you know. Commitment.”

It hit me, then: he likened himself not to the burned-up wood but to the artist, the visionary shaper. Maybe he was feeling—for the frst time, really
feeling
—that fatherhood required more than the siring of a child.

The whole hour’s drive back he maintained his awestruck look, a
holy crap!
that didn’t skimp on
holy
.

At home, in the driveway: an unfamiliar car. Smiley-face yellow, its hood all wax and wink, a child’s fantasy notion of adulthood.

“Who the fuck?” said Stu.

“New York tags? Beats me,” I said. My eyes went to the house, where the kitchen lights were on. “Okay, I’m officially creeped out.”

“Me, too,” said Stu. “You think we should call—”

But then the door swung open, and out strode his sister, hailing us coquettishly with . . . what was it? A piece of sandwich? “Boys, I could’ve walked away with everything,” she called. “Try to be a little more careful.”

Stu stepped from the car. “We locked,” he said. “We always lock.”

Rina popped the last of the sandwich into her mouth, tidied a bead of mayo with her tongue. “The deck, the sliding doors: open sesame!” Then, as if collecting a reward for her resourcefulness, she offered herself, on tiptoes, to be kissed.

I hadn’t seen her in almost four months, since her and Richard’s visit, and I was struck anew by her sharp, demanding beauty: her holographic skin (now ruddy, now translucent), her mouth (pretty, but always at risk of pouting). Her attractiveness was literal: you couldn’t help but face her. The effect was bracing but also claustrophobic.

Was that why I was feeling so boxed-in—just her presence? No, I was remembering what had happened in November, after she and Richard had departed.

Their visit, as I said before, was sad but still successful. And so, when they were leaving, I’d been doubly glad: happy that the house would be restored to Stu and me, but happy, too, to realize that I could host my in-laws, could honestly say, “You’re welcome any time.” Hugs were traded.
Thanks for having. Thanks for being had
.

Then, three days later, a call came from Great Neck. Richard wanted to talk to me. (
Richard?
To
me?
) We were practically family, he said, right? So no B.S.? Okay, then: I should know how ill at ease he’d felt when I . . . well, he hated to use a loaded word like
groped
. . . when I had touched and squeezed him on the butt. Actually, no. More than ill at ease, he said. Invaded.

“What?” I said. “When?”

“Hugging ’bye, in the driveway. You reached around, and your hand . . . well, you groped.”

Groped? Patted the small of his back. At most! The shock—the absurdity—of the charge was so hammering that I didn’t think yet to be angry. Instead, I scrambled to the far ends of politeness. “Gee, if I—I mean, I certainly never meant . . . I feel bad that . . . that
you
felt bad.”

“Not that I’m homophobic,” he said. “I’m sure you know I’m not. But Pat, it wasn’t appropriate. You’re Rina’s brother’s . . . partner.” He seemed to want bonus points for choosing that neutral term and also for the fact of having made this call himself, rather than leaving the dirty work to Rina.

How could I explain to him how off the mark he was? Even, I might say, if my sexual radar screen were as wide as the wide, wide world, Richard wouldn’t make a blip upon it. (His clammy face; his toadish little eyes.)

“So, just to say it,” he concluded, “not my thing. Plus, I’m faithful to Rina. A hundred and one percent. I thought it was important just to say that.”

“No,” I said. “No, of course. Sure.”

We shot the breeze farcically for another thirty seconds (was it thundering as hard on the Cape as on Long Island?), and that was all.
Hi to Stu! Hi to Ree!
The end.

Stu and I, for days, tried to guess his motives. I put forth the “lady doth protest too much” theory, convinced Richard had
hoped
(even if unconsciously) for me to attempt a lewd pass. Stu said no, the guy was just Semitically conflicted. On the one hand, Jews preferred to side with the oppressed; on the other, they were trained to think in clear-cut categories: sea creatures, to be kosher, should swim and not crawl; flatware was for meat or milk, not both; and men should sleep with women, not with men. Gay men (gay
brothers-in-law
) must have melted his wires.

The rift had now nominally been mended, no hard feelings. Richard had even instigated, the last time we spoke, a “Hey, bud, I’ve missed you” rapprochement. But his voice, the thought of him, continued to make me qualmish—just the way, two decades past my frst teenage bender, the word
Cointreau
could still turn my stomach.

I’d stayed mad at Rina, too—for not having prevented Richard from making that jackass call, for picking him as her husband in the frst place—but now, in the driveway, I tried to set my anger aside. I grinned and bore her kiss’s sandwich smell. “Wow,” I said. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”

“Long story short,” she said. “You know those things I’m selling?”

“Oh, you mean the candle chandeliers?” I almost added,
We love ours, it really does look good
, but Rina, having snooped around, would know we’d never hung it.

Wait. What else would she have seen in snooping around the house? Insem syringes . . . photographs of Debora . . .
No Penis, No Problem
? I elbowed Stu. Our secret might be blown.

But Rina seemed entirely caught up in her own business. “The chandeliers?” she said. “Nah, they never moved. Don’t know why. But these are better. These are really good.”

These
, she explained, were aromatherapy pendants: hand-blown glass, filled with assorted essential oils. Whenever you needed a dose of, say, bergamot to becalm you, all you did was reach down for the pendant at your neck, uncork it, and take a long draft.

Lord, how the woman could hype a product. If only the stuff she peddled ever lived up to her pitch. Her master’s in art history from CUNY notwithstanding, she seemed to be missing a sense of taste. Why she’d ever leapt from her sturdy career ladder (internship at the Jewish Museum, assistantship at Christie’s) and plunged into the tchotchke-hawking business was a riddle.

“Aromatherapy?” said Stu. “Since when are you into that?”

“Wouldn’t say I’m
into
it. But people are. It’s hot.”

She said the word so zestfully that I indeed felt heat: her breath, its sandwich smell, in my face. She’d led us into the house—backward, like a tour guide—and here we were, in the kitchen, a chaos of cans and jars: Starkist, Hellman’s, Vlasic, Grey Poupon. A celery stalk rose from the Disposall like a drowned man’s arm. Would Rina at least say “Sorry about the mess”?

What she said was, “The Christmas Tree Shops are
this close
to signing on. You know they’re based practically down the road, in South Yarmouth? Their buyer said, ‘Come on up’—our frst face-to-face. The whole thing was sort of last-minute. I would’ve called, but . . .” She made a quick flutter with her hand, as if the reason were as obvious as air.

Her m.o.—“C’mon, you know me, I don’t do trifling details”—was calculated to win free passes, even when the details weren’t so trifling. Stu would often grouse about her chutzpah, her entitlement, but once, when I endorsed his jab, and twisted the knife a little, he stopped me: “Well, I’d rather she ask a lot than ask for nothing.
Your
sisters would be mortified to borrow a cup of flour. With them I feel like a perfect stranger.”

Fair enough. Sally or Brenda would never “just drop by.” But Stu couldn’t fathom the way a family like ours related. Our adage: absence makes the WASP grow fonder.

“No worries,” he told his sister now. “It’s nice. A nice surprise. At frst, to be honest, when we pulled up and we saw . . .”

“Oh,” she said, “the Porsche. You’d have to ask Richard about that.”

The roots of all my molars prickled.
Richard
.

“I’m sure he’ll have to sell it back. No way can we afford it. But what can I really say, you know? That car”—she chuckled weakly—“is his baby.”

Just like that, my malice was short-circuited. Free pass granted.

I couldn’t help but think of Debora, propped in bed, inseminated. It wasn’t as though we hadn’t had to work to make that happen, but on some level, things for us were easier than for Rina. We could simply
choose
a fertile womb.

“You can’t blame him,” I said of Richard, meaning it sincerely, but feared I had sounded condescending. “Blame him for wanting,” I tried again, “a little midlife fun. Are we there now, God forbid? Middle age?”

Rina smiled with what looked like charitable exhaustion: aware of my try, and grateful, but unmoved. By now she must be used to having pity cast her way, crumbs of consolation at her feet. “Middle age?” she said. “Is that the age when our middles grow? Or,” she added—her hand approached her abdomen—“sometimes don’t.”

Stu, looking pained, retreated to the bedroom, leaving me to guide Rina—a VIP of grief—to the living room. I sat her on the couch.

“Nice what you did to the house,” she said, sinking into the cushions. “It makes everything seem much less . . . manic.”

“Oh? Oh, that’s good. Thanks a lot!” I could think of nothing we had changed since she was here.

“But I don’t know if I could live with all that
view
,” she said.

The view, at present, was just the way I loved it. Frostinglike waves on the bay’s broad expanse; beyond, creamy layers of cloud and sky— like a pastry, fattening just to look at.

“All that open space,” she said. “On and on and on. Everything looks so relentlessly possible.”

“Exactly. That’s—”

“But, God!” she said. “Doesn’t it get you down? How could real life ever live up?”

“Wow, you and Stu really are related, aren’t you?”

“Well,” she said, “you can take the Nadler out of New York . . .”

“But what?” said Stu, walking in. “You can’t make me drink?”

Rina, like a Roman empress, stretched out on the couch. “Are you the only Nadler here? Who’s to say we weren’t describing
me
?”

“Were you?” he said.

“No.”

“And so?”

“And so
what
?”

Stu shoved her legs away and flopped down beside her. Jesting with her, or jousting—who could ever tell? Their silences could snap me in two.

Time to get lost, I thought, so I said, “I’m remiss! Let me fix up something in the kitchen.” (Something
more
, I could have said. Another tuna sandwich.)

“Nah, come on,” said Rina. “Sit down with us. Relax. You’re just back from—hold on. Have you said?”

“From Provincetown,” said Stu.

“For work?”

“Just needed a break.”

The elephant in the room: a break from what?

“Sweet,” said Rina. “That must be nice—flitting off on a weekday. Dinks: that’s what they call you, right? Dual income, no kids.”

I clenched:
Did
she, after all, from snooping, know our secret? Now was she just fishing for a confession?

But who was she to call us Dinks? What were she and Richard? (Maybe you got exempted if you didn’t
choose
your kidlessness. Dual income, a big chunk of it spent on
wanting
kids . . .)

“Speaking of which,” she said. “The reason I dropped by . . .”

Stu said, “Ree, please. You never need a reason.”

“
One
of the reasons.” She smiled, stroked his knee. “I thought it’d be extra nice if . . . telling you in person. Richard and I. We’re going to adopt.”

“Adopt?” he said. “Wow,” he said. “A baby?”

“No, a pet rock. What do you think?”

“Adopt,” he said. “That’s great. That’s . . . so great!” He leaned over and kissed her on the brow.

Surely she could hear the complications in his voice. In case she did, to keep the scales tipped toward pure good wishes, I rushed to add my own “Congratulations!”

“I really want this now,” she said. “We both do. We’ve decided. I mean, should we sit around forever feeling sorry? All that hoping and hoping—now it can get
used
. Aim that energy onto something real.”

I could see—in her toughened jaw, her fluctuating color—the cost of having forced herself to feel no disappointment. But also I saw her readiness, her genuine relief. Saw the earnest mother she would be.

Fondness wicked up within me, a rising solidarity. “Yes, us too,” I wanted to say. “We’ll all of us be parents!”

But Stu shot me down with a let-me-do-this look. He asked his sister: Boy or girl? Where from? How soon?

“Richard wants a boy, of course; I’d be fine with either. But God, it’s a pain in the ass to find a Jewish kid. Probably have to go to God-knows-where—deepest Russia? I’m sure we’ll have to pay a modest fortune. But Dad always told us, right? You get—”

Stu finished with her: “—what you pay for. Speaking of Dad, you’ve told him? He and Mom must be thrilled.”

“Don’t say anything, please,” she begged. “We’ll spill the beans this weekend. They’re coming to our place for Shabbos dinner.”

Stu said he’d give an arm to see their kvelling faces.

“Come! We’d love to have you there. Both of you. Will you? Pat?” She sprang up and hurled her arms around me.

She must have sensed that I felt foiled, but she couldn’t know the reason. When would Stu come clean about our news?