“I understand that. Do you have any clue to why she stopped?”
“No. Is this important?”
“I was just refreshing my memory,” said Meyfarth. “What does your father think about what’s happening with your family?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“Really? When was the last time you talked to him?”
“This morning.”
Meyfarth cocked his head quizzically. “So you chose not to tell him.”
“It’s not his problem. There’s nothing he could do to help. So there’s really no reason to bring him in.” Christopher looked away and frowned. “Besides, it’s just not something we McCutcheons do. It took him two months last year to get around to mentioning that an aunt of mine was dead.”
“Forty percent answer, Christopher.”
“I know. I really don’t want to talk about my father just now.”
“Guessing now—you didn’t tell him because he has a rooting interest.”
“Not that he’ll admit to,” Christopher said. “But it’s true, I don’t want to have to deal with his reaction on top of everything else. He’s not fond of Loi.” That was diluting the truth; the two were stone and storm. “I suppose he’d be happy to see me break with her and solo with Jessie.”
“Which isn’t what you want.”
“No.”
“Have you any idea why he feels that way?”
“I really don’t know what he feels or why he feels it,” Christopher said irritably. “Does this have a point?”
Meyfaith frowned. “Define your problem, Christopher.”
“Look, there’s a lot of old history there, and I don’t much want to relive it,” Christopher said, exasperation tingeing his voice. “The, ah—the emotions are still a bit confused.”
“Did you quarrel often?” Mey faith asked quietly.
A wistful look crept onto Christopher’s face. “No. Not quarrel.” He smiled, and the smile was eloquently bittersweet. “I didn’t see enough of my father that I could afford to get angry with him.”
The words seared his throat, stabbed deep into his chest. He was caught by surprise by his own thoughts. It was as though the words had leaped from his subconscious directly to his lips. Christopher looked plaintively at Mey faith and found the arty’s expression of empathy as distressing as the revelation itself. Rising, he walked to the edge of the nook, pretending interest in the plant identifier on a small pedestal there.
Meyfarth said slowly, “I think that’s a piece of something important, Christopher.”
“Do you?” asked Christopher, hugging himself as he stood facing the trees. “I don’t. I don’t even know that it’s true. I have this habit of rewriting what I feel so it sounds more dramatic. And then when it comes out of my mouth it doesn’t touch me at all.”
Gently, the arty said, “I don’t think this was one of those.”
Christopher turned to face Meyfarth. “I don’t think it matters,” he said stiffly. “I don’t think it has anything to do with what I’m here to work on. Damn you, I told you once already I didn’t want to talk about my father. Can we get back to the main program, or are we finished?”
There was a long moment of silence. He felt Meyfarth measuring him.
“All right,” said the arty. “My apologies.”
Christopher frowned and waved a hand dismissively. “Listen, I’m not stupid. I know I’m going to have to look at it sometime. But I don’t think I have enough banked just now that I can afford to make this the time. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Meyfarth said. “Can we talk about children?”
“Okay,” Christopher said, returning to his seat. “I guess we have to.”
“Loi has a son?”
“Einar. He’s in San Francisco. Twenty years old.”
“More like a brother, then.”
“To me? I wouldn’t know. I never had the experience.”
“But you knew Einar?”
“I knew him. I didn’t like him, but I knew him.”
“Oh?”
“We had incompatible anatomies. He was an asshole.”
Meyfaith’s laugh was easy and genuine.
“Loi agrees,” Christopher added.
“Enough of Einar, then,” Meyfarth said, smiling. “Tell me about the last child under ten you liked.”
Christopher shook his head. “I don’t see many children. I’m not sure I like any of the ones I do see.”
“No friends with adorable seven-year-old girls? All neighbors with brats?”
“Our upstairs neighbor in San Francisco had a boy while we were living there,” said Christopher. “Cute, I suppose. Little odor factory, though. And they leak.”
“That they do.”
“Sometimes I see a two- or three-year-old toddling along with a parent and it’ll make me smile. But a little older and I don’t know how to talk to them. A little older than that and I don’t trust them.”
“Why not?”
“I was one, remember?”
“What kind of kid were you?”
Christopher laughed, surprised. “You’d have to ask someone else. I was busy being the kid.”
“You don’t have any notion?”
Frowning, Christopher considered. “A pretty good one, I guess. I wasn’t much of a problem, wasn’t much in the way. I liked learning, liked my ed plan and my schools. I spent a lot of time in the woods.”
“Tell me what kind of father you think you’d be.”
A wry smile. “Not a very good one,” Christopher said. “I’m dividing myself too many ways already. I have an A job and my music and my family, and they all need more than I seem to be able to give them. If I divide myself four ways, I’ll have even less for everybody.” He shook his head. “I have too much growing up still to do. Look at why I’m here talking to you. Maybe someday. But I’m not ready now.”
Meyfarth pursed his lips. “Christopher, the nastiest secret in life is that there’s never a time when you understand it all, never a time when it’s as easy as you were sure it was going to be. If that’s what you’re waiting for, you’ll never be ready.”
Blinking, Christopher stared at Meyfarth blankly. “I’m only twenty-seven. Jessie’s twenty-five. We have lots of time.”
“Every year you wait, you’ll find more reasons to say no. Why not have the child and just let Jessie worry about it?”
“It’s not fair—”
“I think if you ask Jessie, you’ll find out that would suit her just fine—”
“No,” Christopher snapped. “You’re not listening. It’s not fair to the boy. If I have a son, I’m going to be there for him. I’m going to be part of his life, not a sidelight to it. I’m going to watch him grow and make sure he knows how much I love him. I’m not going to raise him by remote control, turn him over to some kind of secondhand mom-for-hire.”
“Like your father did with you?” Meyfarth asked gently.
There was a moment of soft-eyed surprise, a glimmer of hurt, a tinge of puzzlement, and then Christopher’s face closed down hard. “Damn you, I told you I didn’t want to talk about my father,” he shouted, jumping to his feet and waving clenched fists. “I told you and you kept pushing me back there. My father’s one person, and I’m another. And what I do has to do with me, not with him.”
Meyfarth did not flinch or shy from Christopher’s angry demonstration. “Then why did you start talking about a ‘son’? Who were you thinking of when you spoke so passionately about the right and wrong way to parent? It wasn’t a friend. It wasn’t a neighbor. Wasn’t it your father?”
“You said that,” Christopher insisted. “You said ‘son.’ ”
Meyfarth stood, half blocking the way to the trail, holding the younger man’s eyes with his gaze. “No. I said ‘child.’ You’re lying to yourself, Christopher. You brushed up against something that hurts and now you’re lying to yourself.”