online discussions of his music; it helped restore some of the things that had been worn away by everything that had happened to him since he quit. But after a while these people just made him feel ill, especially when they turned their cranky attention to
Tucker and Jackson were late, and they found Lizzie wandering up and down the line of limo drivers waving signs, in the vain hope that Tucker might have sent a car for her. He tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned around, scared.
“Hey.”
“Oh. Hi. Tucker?”
He nodded, and tried to convey without words that anything she wanted to do was fine by him. She could throw her arms around his neck and cry, she could peck him on the cheek, shake his hand, ignore him altogether and walk to the truck in silence. He was becoming an expert in what he was beginning to think of as Paternal Reintroduction. He could run classes, probably. There were enough people nowadays who could use them.
If Tucker didn’t disapprove of national stereotyping, then he’d describe Lizzie’s greeting as English. She smiled politely, kissed him on the cheek and still somehow managed to suggest that he was representing all the pond life who’d been unable to get to the airport due to other commitments.
“And I am Jackson,” said the boy with an impressive moral gravity. “I am your brother. I am very pleased to meet you.” For some reason, Jackson took the view that verb contractions were inappropriate at occasions of this magnitude.
“Half brother,” said Lizzie, unnecessarily.
“Correct,” said Jackson, and Lizzie laughed. Tucker was glad he’d brought him along.
The conversation during the first part of the drive home was easy enough. They talked about her flight, the movies she’d seen and the couple who’d been reprimanded by a steward for inappropriate behavior (“canoodling,” Lizzie called it, after detailed questioning from Jackson); he asked after her mother, and she talked about her studies. In other words, they did as well as they could, seeing as they were two complete strangers sharing a motor vehicle. Sometimes Tucker was mystified by society’s obsession with the natural father. All his kids had been raised by competent mothers and loving stepfathers, so why did they need him? They (or their mothers) always talked about wanting to know where they came from and who they were, but the more he heard that, the less he understood it. His impression was that they always knew who they were. He couldn’t ever tell them that, otherwise they’d just think he was some kind of brutal asshole.
The tenor of the conversation changed on the last stretch before home, when they’d come off the freeway.
“My boyfriend’s a musician,” said Lizzie, suddenly.
“Good for him,” Tucker said.
“When I told him you were my dad, he couldn’t believe it.”
“How old is he? Forty-five?”
“No.”
“I was just kidding. Most young people don’t know my work.”
“Oh, I see. No. He knew it. I think he wants to meet you. Maybe next time I come I can bring him.”
“Sure.” Next time? Surely this visit was some kind of probationary period, if not a job interview.
“Maybe at Christmas?”
“Yes,” said Jackson. “Jesse and Cooper are coming at Christmas. So it would be fun if you came, too.”
“Who are Jesse and Cooper?”
Oh, shit, Tucker thought. How had that happened? He was almost certain he’d told Natalie about the twins, and he’d kind of assumed that Natalie would pass the news on to Lizzie. Obviously not. This was another example of something he should have done himself, if he were any kind of father. The examples never stopped coming. They were inexhaustible. He would read up on parenting, if he thought it would help, but his errors always seemed too basic for the manuals. “Always tell your kids they have siblings…” He couldn’t imagine any child-raising guru taking the trouble to write that down. Maybe there was a gap in the market.
“They’re my brothers,” said Jackson. “Half brothers. Like you. Me.”
“Cat had kids from another relationship?” said Lizzie. Even this piece of tangential information was clearly irritating, something she apparently had a right to know. And if she was irritated about Cat having kids she didn’t know about, Tucker was guessing that she’d be even more ticked off when she found out they were his. Or was he doing her a disservice? Maybe she’d just be really happy that she had more siblings than she’d suspected. More siblings = more fun, right?
“No,” said Tucker.
“So…”
Tucker didn’t want her to work it out for herself. He wanted to be able to say that he’d told her, even if he’d ended up breaking the news twelve years after the event.
“Jesse and Cooper are mine.”
“Yours?”
“Yep. Twin boys.”
“When?”
“Oh, a few years ago now. They’re twelve.”
Lizzie shook her head bitterly.
“I thought you knew,” said Tucker.
“No,” said Lizzie. “If I knew, I promise you I wouldn’t pretend not to know. What would be the point of that?”
“You’d like them,” said Jackson, confidently. “I did. But don’t play them at any DS game. They will destroy you.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Lizzie.
“I know, right?” said Jackson.
“And they’ve been out to stay?”
“Just one time so far,” said Tucker.
“So I’m just another one on the conveyor belt?”
“Yeah. You have to be out by tomorrow, otherwise the next one bumps into you and you cause a pileup. I’ve lost kids like that before.”
“You think it’s something to joke about?”
“No. I’m sorry, Lizzie.”
“I should hope so. You really are unbelievable, Tucker.”
Lizzie’s mother had somehow been reduced in Tucker’s memory to the beautiful picture that Richard Ave don took of her in ’82 for some cosmetic ad, a picture that Tucker still had somewhere. He’d somehow mislaid Natalie’s obtuseness, her haughtiness, her fragility and her extraordinary humorlessness. How had he forgotten any of that, seeing as those four qualities went half of the way toward explaining why they had split before Lizzie was even born? (“Half” was generous, he thought, but seeing as he’d split with many, many women who possessed none of these faults, logic suggested that he should take some of the blame.) And why hadn’t he ever had a thing for warm Texan waitresses? Why had a chilly English girl seemed so compelling? Natalie was supposed to be his Julie Beatty replacement; he’d met her at a time in his life when he was a drunk, drifting from one party to the next simply because he was still being invited to parties. He was beginning to suspect that the invitations would be withdrawn one day, and the models, too, so Natalie had been his last hurrah. Not, of course, that she’d ever have made a noise as coarsely enthusiastic as that.
“Guys, let’s not argue. Hey, Lizzie,” said Jackson, brightly, “do you eat meat?”
“No,” said Lizzie. “I haven’t touched it since I was your age. It makes me feel sick, and I find the whole industry morally repugnant.”
“But you eat chicken, right?”
