53
I nap hard. It’s that narcotic kind of nap where you wake up sweaty and you don’t know what time of day it is. My room is a forest now, and I lie flat on my back to take it in. I check my phone, and Jack’s sent a photo from the US Open. I reply: Looks fun! I just had a long nap.
Jack: How was the cake?
Me: Delicious
Jack: What flavor did you choose?
Me: Vanilla
Jack: What about the linens?
Me: I haven’t decided, I sort of liked the yellow
Jack: What were the other choices?
Me: All the colors, I’m going back tomorrow
Jack: Really, yellow?
Me: Probably white
I find my dad on the back porch, drawing straight lines in his sketchbook. I take the lounge chair next to his and sort of wish it was time for cocktails.
“There’s no life in a straight line,” he says.
“Are you Confucius now?”
“Sounds like. My agent, who is very close to giving up on me, keeps telling me straight lines are selling. Horizontal gradations of color.” He holds up his sketchbook to show me. “Does nothing for me.” He turns to a new page and draws a straight line across the middle.
“Do you know much about wedding linens?” I ask him.
He doesn’t look up. “Not one thing.”
“I kind of skipped going to the Old Sloop Inn today and lied to Jack about it. I can just go back tomorrow, right? They don’t run out of them or anything?”
“It’s a weird thing to lie about,” he says. “Especially for a person who’s so straight about everything.” I’m looking at the water, but I can feel him looking right at me. He’s been watching me ever since he drove Wyatt and me home that night. Like he’s waiting to see what happens next.
His comment hangs in the air, inviting all the ugliness in. Well you’d sure know about lying, Dad. We’re quiet for a minute.
“Cheating’s just lying, but with your body,” he says. I turn to him, and he’s put down his sketch pad. I guess we’re really going to do this.
“I’m not cheating. I lied about looking at linens.”
“I think you lie to yourself a lot.”
“Not true.” I cross my arms over my chest to protect myself from this accusation.
“When I was having that thing with Marion, I was lying to your mom, but mostly just to support the lie I was telling myself.” He meets my eye, as if to ask permission to continue. “People’s interest, as you know, in my work was waning. All I was creating were flat versions of something that once worked. And one night Marion showed up here in this rainbow-striped dress and twirled in a way that sparked my imagination. For a second I stopped feeling old and washed up, like maybe I wasn’t disappearing. It wasn’t really about my work.”
We’re quiet. “Was it worth it?” I ask.
“Absolutely not. I was using Marion as a bridge to someplace else, someplace where I would feel like a different man. I was terrified that I wasn’t good enough, but Marion wasn’t going to fix me. I didn’t become a new man, I just hurt everyone I loved.”
I’m hugging my arms around my knees now, bracing for the rest. I have never wanted to have this conversation before, but I’m ready for it now. I turned my back on the whole mess with Wyatt, and I turned my back on myself, but ever since my dad sat in that car and witnessed Wyatt and me digging up what was lost, I feel like something’s cracked open between us. I feel like he sees me, and I’m ready to see him.
“You cheat because you think it’s going to make you someone else, that it’s going to save you from your own damn misery. And that’s the lie you’re telling yourself. I guess that’s the point, Sam. Another person is not going to turn you into anything but who you already are. Make sure you’re not trying to turn yourself into someone else for Jack.”
“I’m not,” I say. “I mean I like having my act together.”
“As long as it’s not actually an act.”
Guitar music comes from the treehouse and it occurs to me that I have never lied to Wyatt, not once.
“Speaking of liars, can you believe how sneaky Wyatt was about being a big shot?”
“I wasn’t completely surprised.”
And then I just ask it, because why the heck not. “Do you ever still think about her that way? Marion?”
“That’s the weirdest part, Sam. Absolutely never. I can’t even conjure up a memory of what I was feeling at the time, like it was temporary insanity. Getting caught was such a shock to my system that I had to take a hard look at my life. I don’t lie to myself anymore. Or your mom.”
“I really do want to live like that,” I say. Then, in a practicing voice, I say, “I blew off looking at the napkins because I stayed up all night and then had a sugar crash.”
“Was that so hard?”