Cold Feet (23 page)

That Wednesday evening, as I stared at the computer screen and read the name of the mortgagor for the house on Redwood Lane during my years of high school, my first thought was that Dr. Majdi was right. The wave had arrived.

For a moment, I thought it was a mistake. I scanned the screen for a frenzied few seconds, looking for the name in the proper time period. When I found it, I felt the oddest sense of relief. I must have typed in the wrong address, I thought. I retyped the address, double-checked the screen, and realized with a stomach-crunching certainty that I had typed it correctly the first time. It wasn't the wrong address. It was mine all right. And it happened to be three doors down from the mortgagor's other house, also on Redwood Lane.

Mike Madigan, neighbor, father of three, defense contractor, and old movie fan, was my father.

The man who had always been so nice to me, always offered to fix things around the house, and always laughed at my jokes, even the really unfunny ones. The same man my mother had avoided like the plague.

Mike Madigan had purchased our home the month before we moved in, and he'd sold it weeks after I left for college. He was
the purchaser, but he put my mother's name on the deed as well. This wasn't an investment property. He was my dad.

I left the screen up and stumbled in the general direction of STB's office. I had to ask for directions from a student I passed in the hall, as dazed and disoriented as I was. There was something else, something hugely important in the back of my brain that demanded my attention, but my survival mechanism told me to find Liv before turning to face it. The wave Dr. Majdi had warned me about was hovering above my head, gathering steam. I needed to find Liv, before I focused too hard on the implications of this discovery and determined exactly what my memory was trying to grasp.

Finally, minutes away from using the emergency phone I saw in the hall to call security and ask them to help me locate a missing person, I found the right wooden door. Without thinking, I pushed open the door, eager to find Liv and retain some sense of equilibrium. Was it true? Was Mike Madigan my father? Could there be any other explanation?

Then, at the exact moment I opened the door to Tony's office, the awful nagging thought, the one that had been jumping up and down for attention at the edge of my consciousness since the moment I'd seen Mike Madigan's name on the computer screen, took shape. The wave crashed. And I was
flattened
.

“What are you
doing
?”

Liv and Tony jumped apart as if experiencing an electric shock, probably because they assumed the person yelling at them was someone with slightly more clout than me, like his wife or the dean. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Liv had sworn against this moment
so many times, and with absolute blind faith, I'd believed her. Sexy Tony Brown, evil professor and cheating scumbag, was sitting comfortably at his desk chair, while Liv perched in his lap, talking quietly. This wasn't some split second where they were overcome by desire and he kissed her, arguably against her will. This seemed ordinary. Regular. Normal.

“What is going on?”

“Em.” Liv looked at Tony for support and he sighed audibly. I realized this must be something they'd talked about dozens of times, her judgmental best friend and how she would react if she ever found out about their secret . . . what? Affair? Relationship? Both options sucked. All at once, I understood why Liv, the most desired girl I knew, absolutely never had a boyfriend. Because she always had one.

“I knew you would be upset. I knew it always made you uncomfortable. I didn't think you'd understand—”

“I do understand. I understand that there is absolutely no one in the world that I can trust. My fiancé kept a secret from me for years, my mother is a pathological liar, and my father had a goddamn secret family. You're just like all of them, Liv. I can't trust you. I don't even know you,” I shouted, near tears. Liv, meanwhile, looked like she was in shock. Somewhere in the back of my mind I realized it wasn't Liv I was yelling at. It was Caro, Sam, maybe even Mike.

“Does that mean you found your dad?” Tony asked, looking genuinely interested. “You said something about a secret family. Does that mean you know who he is? Can you contact him?”

I took a short, hard breath.

“No, Tony, I can't contact him. No one can. Because he's dead.”

CHAPTER 23

O
ne of the few times Caro called me after I moved to California was two years prior, to tell me that our neighbor, the friendly but relatively inconsequential Mike Madigan, had died suddenly of an aneurysm. At the time, I was puzzled as to why this was even headline news, prompting one of her rare moments of deliberate contact. Since my mother had moved out of Arlington and back to Georgetown as soon as I escaped to college, I assumed she hadn't looked back.

“Do you still keep in contact with everyone from Redwood Lane?” I asked, trying to pay attention to my mother on the Bluetooth while simultaneously looking for parking. It was a Sunday morning and I was meeting a friend from my book club for brunch at Huckleberry on Wilshire, which happened to have the best fried-egg sandwich in
Los Angeles. I was already ten minutes late, but I knew the slightest indication of distraction would annoy my mother, so I was trying not to use my “talking on the phone in the car” voice, which Sam said made me sound like I'd had some kind of stroke.

“Who told you about his . . . accident?” I couldn't figure out how to refer to the tragedy. All I knew about brain aneurysms was that there was no way to prevent or predict them, and they killed you in about fifteen minutes. Even just talking about them felt like bad luck.

“He was only sixty-two,” she said sadly, neglecting to answer my question. Caro hadn't sounded so depressed since the verdict from
Bush v. Gore
. Something else was going on, but I couldn't figure out what. I figured the call had to be context for something else. Perhaps she was coming to terms with her own mortality and decided it was time to connect with her flesh and blood. I'd never heard her express such a remorseful thought.

“That's really sad. I remember when he used to shovel our front walk in the winter. And didn't he have a bunch of kids? How's his wife doing?” I found some street parking and pulled in. I shut off the engine, but didn't get out of the car. All of a sudden, the creamy latte and blueberry cornmeal muffin I'd been looking forward to all morning didn't seem all that tempting. I felt surprisingly bereft. For someone I'd known only marginally, Mr. Madigan had seemed like a genuinely good guy who didn't deserve to be randomly kidnapped from the world. As I sat in the quiet car, my energy rapidly drained out of me. The lightness I'd been experiencing moments before at the thought of a Sunday brunch and gossip session was replaced by a tight sadness in my stomach.

I listened to my mother's blank reply as she listed where Mr. Madigan's boys went to college. As my car's interior quickly started to overheat with the air-conditioning off, frustration started to build on top of my sadness. Why was she calling me now, of all times? Was this kind of impersonal information, the births and deaths of our neighbors, really all that my mother and I had to say to each other? The last I'd heard from Caro was ten months prior, when my student loan bills were mistakenly being sent to her. Now, sitting in my black Prius, with the sun baking down on me—opening the door seemed way too hard at that moment, even though it would have solved the problem of the pool of sweat settling on the back of my neck—I started to feel more and more agitated, a common reaction to Caro popping up out of the blue.

“Is this the only reason you're calling?” I interrupted sharply. My tone instantly altered the direction of the conversation.

“What?” she responded. Slowly and in a steely voice, Caro repeated, “I called you to tell you about Mr. Madigan. The poor man woke up with a headache one day, went to his company picnic, and collapsed halfway through the pie-eating contest.”

“Like, collapsed in the pie?”

“Good Lord, Emma, I was speaking figuratively. It's not funny. A man died.”

“I know.” I was hurt. I'd been trying to make light of the situation, perhaps morph the conversation into a real one by making her laugh. Evidently there was no chance of any real communication between us. “Listen, I'm late to meet a friend for breakfast. Is that it?”

“Yes, Emma,” she responded with a sigh, her heavy annoyance
rippling through the phone lines. She was exasperated with me because . . . well, I don't know why. I'd made a joke—off-color for sure, but we were discussing a pie-eating contest, for God's sake—in the middle of a conversation about someone I didn't even really know. Nothing I ever did with her was ever right, and honestly, I was sick of trying.

“Okay, bye, then?” I said, questioningly.

“Good-bye.” And that was it. That was how I found out my father died.

Slumped against the cold red brick of one of Berkeley's many eclectic structures, this one resembling a tower Rapunzel might inhabit if she decided to move to the Bay Area, I recalled this conversation in vivid detail. Suppose I had reacted differently. Suppose I hadn't made the terrible pie joke, I wondered, shuddering at the memory. Would she have told me then? Was that why she was really calling, to tell me the truth, after all those years? I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall, mentally recounting the emotional fireworks of the last hour.

After making arguably the most dramatic statement of my adult life, to Tony Brown of all people, I'd fled from his office before he or Liv had time to register what I was saying or ask for details. I definitely didn't want to talk about it, especially not with the two of them. I wanted to be worlds away from everyone who had been lying to me. The last time I glanced at Liv, her face was still flush and frozen, as if I'd slapped her across the face with my cold words.

The truth is, the second I realized what the words on the computer
screen in front of me meant, something inside of me snapped. Part of me felt absolutely miserable, but the other, more self-destructive part felt strangely free. I no longer cared about anything or anyone. Learning the truth about my father and realizing that I would never know him was my Get Out of Life Free card. I didn't have to search for answers or make any of the tough decisions that had been plaguing me all week. I could give up, something that felt deliciously, wonderfully tempting.

I could do it, I realized, for real. I could start over. I could say good-bye to the lies and manipulation from Sam, my mother, even Liv, and start fresh. I considered this as I watched the Frisbee players on the lawn with their bare feet and chests, hoodies casually tied around their waists, despite the chilly September air, whizzing the Frisbee back and forth in sharp arcs. Perhaps in my next life, I'd play Frisbee.

My phone chimed. I pulled it from my pocket and opened to an e-mail with the subject line:
Wedding Cancellation
. It was an e-mail from a vintage furniture store in Santa Barbara, confirming the cancellation of a chuppah rental for Saturday.

Even though Sam and I weren't Jewish, I had always envisioned myself getting married under the antique canopy and had hunted until I found the perfect one to rent for our ceremony. The ceremony that Sam had apparently canceled. I guess he went through with it, I told myself miserably. As instructed. But that didn't matter much at this point. The pain was real no matter whose decision it was.

No more chuppah, no more wedding, no more Sam.

I felt a thick haze of despair and heartache wash over me, mixed with something like relief. It was over. I was alone. I couldn't go back on it now. I would not be marrying Sam. I had no chance to mess up our marriage down the line, because there would be no marriage. I would never lose Sam out of the blue, or the stability and comfort that he brought to my life. I didn't have to prepare for the loss or protect myself against it. Because he was already gone.

I stood up and brushed the grass off my clothes, the blood rushing to my head and making me dizzy. Unsteadily, I crossed the lawn. Where would I go and what would I do? I had the next three weeks off for my honeymoon, and not a single obligation to anyone. I also didn't have any of my stuff, other than the bag I traveled with, as my suitcase was still in the back of our rental car.

Liv would either head home, probably toss my stuff on the side of the 280, or stay in her illicit love den with Tony. Sam would move on, maybe try it again with Val. Caro wouldn't notice, and everyone else would reschedule their weekend plans. I thought about Sam's mom and her big, hard hugs. I thought about her flying in from New York the next day and arriving to hear the news that Emma was not going to become her daughter-in-law. In fact, from this point on, she would probably be a stranger. I shook the depressing thought from my head and reminded myself that it didn't matter. My life with Sam was over.

Walking down the main street running along Berkeley's campus, I blindly hailed the first cab I saw. As soon as I sat down on the plush, cracked seat, I knew where I had to go. I would leave the past that no longer mattered behind, and head toward the one person who might be part of my future. I instructed the cabbie to take me to the Marina
and rattled off the address. Hours after I broke off my engagement and minutes after I ran out on my best friend, I made my third terrible decision of the day. I headed straight to Dusty's.

Once I was actually standing in front of the imposing yellow Victorian with its ridiculously steep stairs, I began to lose my nerve. I knew next to nothing about this guy, except for the fact that he had great taste in eyewear and he was fatherless. But short of hanging around Haight-Ashbury and hoping some hippies would take me in, what choice did I really have?

Despite the dearth of parental connections, before today, I'd always had Liv and Sam. Now I had no one. Dusty was it. He was the only person who wanted to see me, as well as the only person who got what I was going through. Everyone else had their own angle, their own interests at heart. Dusty had only mine. That's because he barely knows you, a little voice added. I politely told the little voice to shut the hell up, and texted Dusty that I was here. We had left the key behind when we “checked out” that afternoon.

Within seconds he was outside. He ushered me upstairs into the now familiar living room.

“Carrick's out, and I told him to let me know when he was on his way back,” he said, when he saw me looking around.