TJ: That must’ve been tough.
FM: It was. Those kinds of things work on a child. They wear them down.
TJ: But they did tell you eventually?
FM: Yeah, when I was eight. They sat me down in the living room and said they had something to tell me. And I know, because I’ve read all the literature, okay, that there are lots of different theories about how to do this, when to do this. Some say do it from the beginning, don’t make it a big thing. Others say it’s better to do it later when the child can understand. There’s even some who think you should never tell. But it is a thing. Whether it’s said or not. Like if I were gay, I would’ve known. I wouldn’t need my parents to confirm it, right?
TJ: What did they tell you?
FM: They said they loved me, and part of me thought they were getting divorced, because that had just happened to my friend. But then I thought if they were getting divorced, they’d tell my sister and me together, because they were always careful about treating us equally. My mom even had this book where she wrote that kind of stuff down. Gave Sherrie a toy at the supermarket, with the date, et cetera, et cetera. Weird, right? Anyway, so I knew I was going to hear my dad say I was adopted. And that’s what he said. And then they tried to put this positive spin on it, like, “We picked you. You are our special chosen baby,” or whatever. But I started asking, “Who is my mother? Who is my mother?” I think that upset my mom, you know?
TJ: Do you think . . . I know you were eight, but was that when you started thinking about looking for her?
FM: Oh, absolutely. That’s when I became a little Nancy Drew.
5
LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH
CECILY
I suppose there’s a time in everyone’s life where you discover you’re a fool. Sometimes, maybe, it’s a slow revelation. For others, there’s a moment when it becomes obvious. In my case, I can tell you the precise date and time. I even have a text to prove it. It arrived at 2:22 p.m. on my twentieth wedding anniversary.
I’d been running around frantically all day trying to find the perfect outfit for the trip to New York Tom and I were taking to celebrate. Making sure my mother had the list of all the things Henry couldn’t eat because of his allergies, arranging for carpooling for Cassie’s and Henry’s activities throughout the weekend, and ticking items off the long list I’d been working on for weeks, as if making my family function for a weekend without me required the same level of planning as a minor invasion. It all sounds so stupid now, like that point Teo made about the furniture in our house.
None of it was necessary, but it felt like it was at the time.
• • •
After two hours of questions, I ask Teo if we can take a break.
“Could we stop for the day, actually? My head is splitting.”
“Of course.” Teo turns off the camera and starts to efficiently pack it away.
I like that about him. He’s compact. His equipment fits into a reasonably sized bag and consists of his camera, a tripod, and a boom mic that folds out like the protractor set I had in high school. His body is compact, too, no extra flesh but not any extra muscle, either. Proportional. He seems to take up less space than Tom, who was always the center of attention in any room he occupied.
“I should’ve noticed the time,” he says. “It’s almost six.”
I noticed every minute going by, counting down until I could reasonably say “enough” for today. I haven’t felt this anxious in months. I wanted to jump out of my body and land somewhere soft, white—oblivion. But now that the interview’s over, the feeling falls away.
“It’s fine.” I stand stiffly.
“You all right?”
“Just stiff. I’m a casualty of a lifetime of running. I shouldn’t do it anymore.” In fact, I haven’t run in a year, but that hasn’t helped the problem, only exacerbated it.
“I couldn’t ever do it.”
“You look like a runner.”
“Do I?”
I smile, then lower my eyes. Our interactions are often like this, full of undercurrents. Not flirting, exactly, but not strictly professional, either. Sometimes he looks at me like he’s looking at me now, and it feels like a caress, one I want to prolong.
It’s been so long, you see, since I’ve been touched.
“You’re probably one of those men who stays slim no matter what you eat.”
“That’s possible.”
He tucks his camera into his bag and zippers it closed. Whatever part of myself I gave up today is safe inside there, too.
“I’ve noticed, you know,” I say.
“Noticed what?”
“You don’t like it when I ask you personal questions. Which is . . . I don’t know . . . ironic?”
“You’re probably right.”
Cassie wanders in. She’s changed out of her funeral clothes and into a tight-jeans-and-T-shirt combination I would never have had the confidence to wear at her age. Part of me wants to shield her from the attention dressing that way might bring, and another part is proud that she feels comfortable enough to do so.
She’s had a crush on Teo ever since she met him a couple of months ago when he started coming to the house for preinterviews. A teacher crush, or perhaps it’s a my-dad-is-gone-forever crush, nothing sexual despite the provocative clothing, but a gap that needs to be filled. Though she’s not as vocal about it as Henry, she misses Tom, misses how he used to watch her soccer games with intensity but never embarrassed her by yelling like some of the other dads. How he went over her essays for English with a special red pen he bought for that
