He looked hard into my eyes, unwavering. “Shut up! Don’t you talk about my mama like that, you piece of trash!” He didn’t even blink.
“Lloyd took her back, and she took him back. He loved you like you were his own, and I don’t know that he knew. He must’ve, though, but he loved you anyway. Anne made me promise I’d stay away from them and away from you. So I met Gretchen right off and married her, to try and heal the pain.” He eased up his weight from me and the couch, letting me move, his story told. “And it didn’t heal. God, it never healed. I had to sit back and watch you grow up, and never tell you all the things I wanted to say.” I stood, stumbling against the coffee table, rubbing my wrists where he’d squeezed hard. I made my lips stop trembling. “Why are you making this up? What did my folks ever do to you, that you would say such horrible things about them?” “Your folks,” he rasped, “were decent, caring people with just as many flaws and shortcomings as you got. You’d do well to remember that and not keep them on such a high pedestal.” “I suppose you think this is some joke you can play,” I said slowly. “Do you just prey on women, Bob Don? You’ve turned your wife into a drunk and now you’re attacking a woman who’s got Alzheimer’s and can’t even answer your slander. Some damned gentleman you are.” “First of all,” Bob Don glared, his anger showing, “it breaks my heart that your mama’s sick. And second, it is not a damned joke. I didn’t view it that way and neither did Beta Harcher.” I didn’t want to register that last part. I had to. “What did you say? Beta Harcher?” “Yes, Beta Harcher. She knew. She knew I was your father.” “Quit saying that!” “No, Jordy, I don’t believe I will. Just because you don’t want it to be so doesn’t change a blessed thing. God, I’ve been saving up stuff to say to you for thirty years, so don’t you tell me to be quiet!” Beta Harcher. I shut my eyes and covered my face. The list. Mother of God. Bob Don’s quote talked about dividing prey-a damsel or two to every man. Gretchen and my mother, oh my God, I thought. And the quote beside my mother’s name, from Genesis: In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. Oh, God, I was a child of sorrow. Of sin. “If this is true,” I whispered, waving a finger at him, “then how would Beta Harcher know about this? How would she have any proof? Where’s your proof?” “When your mother went back to your father, I left Mirabeau for a while. I went to Houston, ’cause it hurt too much to be so near her. So your mother didn’t ask me to stay away from you in person. She wrote me letters. I kept them, not to hurt her with later or to try to claim you, but because they mattered to me. To me!” Bob Don pounded his thick chest with his fist.
“They were my private possessions. Mine!” I thought of another letter I’d seen today, belonging to Eula Mae, and I felt suddenly cold. “I kept the letters from your mama in a lockbox, stored in the attic.
Gretchen found them a few years back, but I didn’t know. She drinks because she knows that… someone else mattered more to me than she does. She’s known that for years. She heard me arguing on the phone with Beta; Beta was trying to get me to restart the censorship fight since I’d replaced her on the board. I told her she wasn’t going to do anything to hurt you. Gretchen got mad, and she gave the letters to Beta. Gretchen only knows how to torture herself; she ain’t good at torturing other folks. I guess she figured that Beta could cause me more grief in town than anyone else.” He shook his head. “It was like putting venom in the snake. Beta made my life a living hell.” “I don’t believe this,” I said to him and to myself. I needed to keep saying it to myself. “Beta wanted money from me not to show them to you. I told her to get the hell out of my office, I don’t pay money to goddamned blackmailers.” I steadied myself. “This… this is what you argued about with her Saturday?” He nodded, not wondering how I knew about that. “She said if I didn’t pay, she’d hurt you and your mama. She said y’all would really pay, if I didn’t. But I told her I wasn’t gonna pay no damn extortionist.” “But you did,” I said faintly. “You paid her $25,000.” Bob Don shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t want that bitch having money from me. I saw her the day she died and told her there was no point in keeping the secret.” “No point?”
“Listen to me, Jordy. Listen good. This is the truth. Just think about it. Lloyd-your daddy that raised you-is dead. He was a fine man, but he’s gone. Your mama’s sick. She needs us both. She can’t object to us having a relationship. My marriage with Gretchen has run its course.
And you’ve come home to Mirabeau. There’s no reason you and I can’t have a relationship as father and son now, like I’ve prayed for, like I’ve always wanted-” “What?” I whispered. “You can’t be serious. You lay this on me, with no proof, and want me to hug you and call you Dad? I don’t think so, Bob Don.” I was shaking and something was on my face. The back of my hand told me they were tears. “I mean, what do you even know about me? What do I know about you?” “I know a lot about you,” Bob Don answered, his voice softening like he was speaking to a frightened child. “Your Little League number was seventeen, and you liked to play shortstop. You hit your first home run on June 13, 1975, a little late but it still counts. You hated math from first grade on, and you never liked to study it. Your first girlfriend was a little redhead in the third grade and her name was Leslie Minter. The other boys teased you for being sweet on her but you paid them no heed. You got 1210 on your SATs. Your GPA at Rice was 3.4, and it would’ve been higher except you didn’t do good in economics-you hated it and didn’t want to study it, just like math. Just like your mama, you only wanted to work at what you like.” He paused and took a step toward me. “But I don’t know if you’re a happy person, Jordy. I don’t know if you’ve ever really been in love. I don’t know what you want from your life-”
“Just shut up!” I said. “Just be quiet a minute, please.” I felt sick and dizzy and angry and betrayed. How did he know all that? Was he watching me my whole life, some distant shadow that followed me wherever I went? A lie. My whole life was a fat, ugly lie. “Okay, you need time. This is a shock, I understand that, Jordy.” He wiped the drying blood from his cheek where his wife had scored him. “And proof.
I don’t have that, Beta does. Or did. She had the letters.” “Oh, God,”
I swayed. Shannon, lying shot amidst the wreckage of Beta’s living room. “You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t-” “Didn’t what?” “Someone tore apart Beta’s house today. They shot her niece. In the face. She may not live.” I stared at this man who’d destroyed my world. “Did you do that? Did you kill Beta to keep her from talking and then shoot Shannon when you were looking for those letters? Just what would you have done to get your proof back, Bob Don?” “I didn’t. I didn’t hurt anybody, Jordy!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t!” “I hope you didn’t,” I said. “I’m not worth killing over, I’m not, I’m not.” It was too much, too much said in this room in the past few minutes and too much unsaid the thirty years before. I ran from the room, I ran from the house, hardly hearing Bob Don Goertz calling after me. Emotional autopilot steered me away from home. I couldn’t even look at Mama. I couldn’t ask her if Bob Don was telling the truth and I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing her without asking. How do you ask? “Gosh, Mama, this fellow claims I’m his son. Any truth to that?” Asking Mama anything was as futile as getting a running start to jump across the Colorado. Instinct brought me to the library, where a light still shone inside. The door was locked and the CLOSED sign was up, but I managed to jab my key in the lock and practically fall into the building. I got up, locked the door behind me, and staggered to the checkout counter. Candace was still there, gluing date-due slips into new books. She paled when she saw my face. I tottered, taking deep, hard breaths, trying to get my emotions under control. I failed. I cried in front of her, I cried like a baby, and she came to me, wrapping me in her arms, letting my face dampen her shoulder. When that was over, I turned away from her, suddenly and deeply ashamed.