Your aunt.
“Maybe you could marry Mommy,” Michael says.
“Michael,” Nicole says again and shakes her head at Ray.
“You always say you need help around the house,” Michael says with his little hands on his hips, imitating her. “Maybe you guys can get married and clean each other’s houses.”
“I’m talking about help from you, little man,” Nicole says.
Ray’s absence in their life is a neon sign, blinking on and off and sputtering out.
“I don’t know if your Mommy would have me,” Ray says, glancing quickly at Nicole.
Nicole watches them talk with a wistful look on her face as if there might have been a time when she wanted that too. Her phone rings, and she searches her purse for it.
“I’ll just be second,” she says. She goes down the hall into the bedroom, and Ray takes the opportunity of being alone with Michael to ask a question.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Ray,” I hiss. “What are you doing?”
Ray shoots me the stink eye and then looks back at Michael.
“Somebody Mommy knew a long time ago, before I was born,” Michael says.
I wince. It might be a well-deserved sucker punch, but ouch.
“Yes,” Ray says quietly. “That’s right.”
Nicole comes back and apologizes, but doesn’t explain. We sit in the living room and stare at the walls. This is awful. Ray looks miserable. He looked less nervous at his sentencing. When Michael moves away from us, Ray speaks again.
“Thanks for coming by,” he says. “I know the place is a wreck, but I’m trying.”
“I can see that, Ray,” she says, but her face says that she doesn’t think he’s trying hard enough.
“You haven’t told him?”
“Not yet.”
“I’d like there to be a time when you do.”
“I’d like that, too, but I’m not holding my breath.”
“Who does he think his father is?”
I find myself looking back and forth between them like I’m at a nerve-racking tennis match.
Ray has the deck stacked against him. I wonder what Nicole has told Michael about his father—what evils Ray will have to come back from. Jail. Worthlessness. The dead. Something even more impossible than that.
“I told him his father was sick and had to go away for help,” she says. The explanation stings, but it’s got its truth. “That way I can bring you home well. Or I can kill you off. Whatever need be. And that’s up to you, Ray.”
I imagine being killed off in one’s own life—like a soap opera character who suddenly falls down a flight of stairs and breaks his neck because the actor who played him got arrested in real life.
“I’m well, Nicole,” Ray pleads and then curses under his breath. “Please tell him his father is well.”
I’m shocked by the ferociousness of his feelings. It’s endearing and sad at the same time.
“I can’t rush it,” she says. Her voice isn’t mean, just firm.
“I’ve missed five years,” Ray says, watching Michael jump cars off the windowsill.
“And whose fault is that?” she says at last.
“Ok, so spitballing,” Ray says, sitting on the coffee table in front of her. “We keep meeting here and there, and you finally tell him who I am. How do you explain that I’ve been here all this time? That I’m back from whatever imaginary place you sent me to, yet I didn’t run right up to him and tell him who I am?”
“I don’t know that part yet.”
Ray curses again and stands up quickly, knocking back against the table.
“This isn’t helping your case,” she says in a hushed voice.
“What?”
“That you’re cursing at me every other sentence.”
“I’m cursing around you, not at you.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Because why?” he asks. “Because you said so?”
“Because you said you were clean,” Nicole says and the words pour out of her. “Because you said you loved me. You said ‘I’m going out for a pizza’ and you never came back and I’m sitting there waiting for that stupid pizza because I’m starving and pregnant and afraid to tell you because I thought you might ditch me and then you ditched me anyway without any reason at all.”
There’s not much Ray can say to this. It’s true. I think about slipping out—sneaking on tiptoe toward the door. Maybe I could excuse myself to the bathroom. Maybe I could jump out the window.
“I got busted that night,” Ray says. “I didn’t stop for pizza. I went out to meet up with a guy and got wasted and forgot where I parked so I wired a car but was too jacked up to drive it and I crashed it and landed myself in jail on drug charges, grand theft, DUI, and every other stupid thing I’d ever done.”
She takes a deep breath and exhales loudly.
“Did you know the baby was yours?” Nicole asks. “When I came to tell you I was pregnant.”
“Yes,” Ray says. “You said you didn’t want it to be mine.”
“I didn’t.”
Michael looks over at us, and Nicole smiles at him—able to flux between anger and love seamlessly.
“Do you now?” Ray asks.
Nicole looks him full in the face, and both Ray and I brace for the coming tirade. But it doesn’t come. She reaches over and takes hold of Ray’s hand. He looks at her in shock.
“Ray,” she says, “prove yourself wrong for once. This is your chance. I didn’t have to call you. I could have let you leave town after your father’s funeral and never said a word. Take that for what it’s worth and try this time.”
I hope so hard that Ray will listen to her.
“You know I’m going to screw up,” he says. “Why torture me with a carrot on a string that I can’t ever get to?”
“Let’s just take it one step at a time,” she says. “Hold down that new job you got. Better yet, go all out and do such a good job that you get promoted one day. Clean up your apartment. Meet us at the park Friday, and we’ll go from there.” She stands up and calls over to Michael.
“Can I keep
