I shook my head and took his arm. I kept my voice soft. “Stop this. Just stop it. You don't want to push me away. I know you don't.”
“What I don't want is to hurt anymore about you, son. I wish you'd never found out I was your father. Then you could have stayed the ideal son in my mind. I never would have sullied my picture of you with a real person.”
We'd sparred with the truth that lay between us for the past year. I had tried to reconcile the lie my life had been. He had tried to father me past the thirty years we hadn't shared. His abandoning the quest to integrate us into a family seemed completely out of character. I stood my ground.
“I don't believe you. Tell me what it is you don't want me finding out.” My mind nimbled over the possibilities. “Is it about whatever might have happened between you and Paul and Gretchen all those years ago? Or why Sass is such a terror? Or why Tom seems to hate the rest of this family? Or whatever happened to Deborah's parents? Or what Wendy might be up to? Or is it some dirty secret of Uncle Mutt's?”
His eyes were blue steel on mine and I realized, sickeningly, that I'd completely miscalculated. Bob Don meant business, and in the worst way. “This isn't Mirabeau. You are here by invitation, boy, and that invitation has just been revoked. As soon as Mutt gets back, you go. You leave here. If you don't, I knock you out and dump you on the boat back to the mainland myself. Whether or not you and I are still father and son-and the whole concept kinda seems a joke right now, since you won't show me a dog's consideration- will depend on what happens when I get back to Mirabeau.”
Anger coursed into my face; I could feel the blush deepen my skin. Hurt forked my tongue into a weapon. “I haven't exactly behaved like the model son? I'm sorry to disappoint you. But that's inevitable when you stick me up on a pedestal so high I can't even see you or the ground. You haven't treated me like a son; you've treated me like a pathetic charity case, like I'm some mistake you've got to make up for.” Sass's cruel words rang in my ear. You're a mistake. “A mistake. Is that how you view me?”
“Your mama was sharp-tongued, too, when she got riled,” he muttered.
“And what's that shit?” I barked. “I'm sick of these little insights into my mother's character you seem compelled to offer me. Do you think I don't know her? I spent a hell of a lot more time with her than you ever did!”
“That wasn't my choice. I loved her,” he said through gritted teeth.
I shook my head. “It still amazes me she cheated on my father with you. I can't quite picture it. Maybe it wasn't the grand passion you've painted. Maybe it was two or three quickies in the toolshed. God knows there aren't any other witnesses to back you up. Maybe I am a mistake, then. Maybe my mother wasn't anything to you but a convenient piece of ass and all I am is you not having a rubber in your pocket when you got a bad itch to fu-”
He stepped forward then, quickly, and slapped me across the face. The force of the blow was not hard, but I rocked back on my heels, my hands groping for the swing's chain. Shock and surprise lit his own eyes, and as I rubbed my stinging cheek I saw the hand he'd struck me with quaver.
“Jordan-” he croaked.
“You hit me,” I said, my voice shockingly mild.
“No.” He shook his head. “I won't have you talk about your mama and me that way.”
“I don't want to hear the same old litany, Bob Don. You made your feelings clear just now.” A sharp stabbing pain lanced my heart. Oh, what had I done?
He stepped forward, remorse etched in his face. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to turn away and pretend that this terrible exchange had never taken place. Instead I looked past his shoulder to see two boats roaring across Matagorda Bay toward Sangre Island.
15
I stumbled up the stairs of the creaky house. I went to Candace's room and rapped quickly before stepping inside. Candace glanced up from her magazine. She didn't look so sickly; a bit of color had returned to her face. Her eyes widened at my expression.
“Uncle Mutt's on his way back. With the police. If they need to talk to us, we'll talk. Otherwise, get your bags packed, we're going.”
“Going? Going where?”
“Back to Mirabeau. Bob Don's made it abundantly clear that we're no longer welcome here.”
She dropped her magazine. “What are you ranting about? And what about Aunt Lolly's funeral?”
I didn't bother to hide the anger heating my blood. “The man who provided the sperm to create me is no longer interested in my company. He doesn't trust me, and I can't be a son to him, Candace. He doesn't want us at Lolly's service. You thought he'd need us, he doesn't, believe me.”
I tossed one of her carry-ons onto the bedspread and reached for her book bag. “Where's your stuff? We can be gone in an hour or so, if the cops don't need further statements from us.”
“Wait a minute! Hold on, ace.” She took the other bag from my hands. “Tell me what's going on.”
I started, sounding like a recalcitrant child disavowing his own blame in a schoolyard squabble. “He's all bent out of shape because he thinks I'm snooping around his precious family. And now it's become pretty obvious that he's not going to trust me with whatever haunts him here and I don't believe he ever loved my mother and I'm sick of him trying to tell me what kind of person she was and-” Hot shame silenced my torrent of words. I felt roiling nausea churn my guts. I turned from Candace and hurried into her bathroom. I knelt before the open toilet right before lunch made an encore appearance.
When I'd quit retching, I spat the sourness out of my mouth. I clenched my eyes closed and leaned against the porcelain bowl. There are not many moments in a man's life when the quiet, comfortable fabric of his existence unravels in a long, painful thread. I'd had my share: the damp-smelling funeral parlor where my grandfather lay in the quiet of his coffin and I had my first look at human death; the dark, rainy morning the doctors told me with their fixed expressions of professional disappointment that Daddy was dying and they could do nothing; the faultlessly beautiful night in Boston when the phone call came from Sister that my mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's; the vengeful, drunken slur of Gretchen's words when she told me I was Bob Don's bastard. I felt the wrenching tug at my heart that this was another such moment. I'd laid open the anger, frustration, and pain I'd nursed so carefully, treasured so well, against Bob Don and my poor mother. I'd suggested their love-and I should have known better of them both-was nothing but physical pleasure, Bob Don was a callow cad, and my mother-my beloved, smart, funny, unpredictable, kindhearted mother-no better than an easy lay.
If I had decided to be mad, it was in the sense of insane.
I spat again into the toilet. Candace had followed me and, without speaking, rinsed a washcloth and applied it to the warm spot where neck met back.
“You've been urping, too,” I said by way of casual conversation. “Maybe I've caught whatever you've got.”
She rubbed the cool comfort of the cloth against my neck and splayed her fingers into the short hair on the back of my head. “I don't think so. Can you tell me what happened, honey?”
I retold the tale, not shying away from my own culpa-bility in the stupid exchange. Candace listened, and when I was done, she rubbed her eyes with her fingertips.
“Oh, Jordy. Please don't do this to him and to yourself.”
“Do what?”
“If I have ever doubted you and Bob Don are blood kin, that doubt has to be gone. Y'all are so much alike it's not remotely funny.”
“Great. Now you, too. Listen, I don't want to hear a lot of psychobabble about this, Candace. Can't you just tell me I'm right and agree with me, for once, that Bob Don and I do not a family make?”
“Loving you doesn't mean sharing your brainwave pattern,” she answered, not unkindly. She mopped at my lips with the wet washcloth. “Maybe we should all breathe a sigh of relief this finally happened.”
“What?”
“You're arguing. It might be healthy. Like I said before, you and Bob Don acting like a real father and son is
