Good Riddance(23)

“No! A total stranger. He’d asked to sit at my table where the ladies were all aquiver because he’d been voted most likely to succeed.”

Was that funny? Apparently so, because Jeremy was smiling.

“I’m dead serious. This is horrible! I have a father, and I didn’t want some random biological one showing up.”

“What proof did he have?”

“A long fling with my mother, which makes sense when I look back—”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant scientific proof.”

“I didn’t stick around to ask for proof. Besides, anybody can say, ‘I’m your real father and there’s a DNA test to prove it.’”

“And who’s this guy again?”

“A New Hampshire state senator.”

That rendered Jeremy silent. When I asked, “What?” he said, “A politician wouldn’t go out of his way to expose himself as a guy who fooled around with a married colleague and had an out-of-wedlock child.”

“Colleague? He was one of her students!”

“In high school? Your mother was having sex with a student?”

“It started after he graduated, or at least that’s the story.”

“Still . . . gross. His teacher?”

“She was the youngest teacher in the school. And very pretty. There was only five years’ difference in their ages.”

“Phhhf. Five years? Nothing!” He lifted his glass, but I didn’t meet the toast.

He asked, “You know what I’d do?”

“Get my own DNA test?”

“No. I’d blow it off, pretend it never happened. Didn’t meet him, nothing registered. Sayonara.”

“That would be a guy thing—walk away. Ghost him.”

“What’s the girl thing then?”

“This girl? Obsess.”

“I don’t mind,” he said. “Can we obsess some more?”

I didn’t leave because we were back to kissing. I said, “I don’t really feel the braces. But what’s happening down there?”

“Sorry . . .”

“Now what?” I asked.

“Your choice.”

“Did you plan this?”

“Like I knew you were going to ring my doorbell?”

“I mean, had you thought about me in this way before tonight?”

“Of course. I’m a guy.”

He asked if I could put off the homework for another half hour or so.

“Maybe a refill? That way I can blame it on being drunk.”

“I’m in no condition to make you another martini,” he said.

The bold new me asked if he had condoms or should I get my own.

“I believe I do. Want to . . .”

“See your bedroom? Sure.”

That was that. Easier than I expected. This was the big city. As a single woman suffering a dry spell, I seem to have decided in the course of one hour that an across-the-hall lover, with no strings, no rules, and an east-facing bedroom that caught the lights of the Freedom Tower, might be just the ticket.





12


Correct Me If I’m Wrong



Did he have to send me flowers? No, not Jeremy, but my putative biological father, Peter Armstrong. The kind gesture of sending beautiful, fragrant pink and white lilies might have been more discomforting if his note had been needy and annoying. Instead: “Daphne, please know that I would never intrude. I cannot say how important it was for me to meet you, but what happens now is up to you.” With unfortunate timing, my father was visiting when the doorman called upstairs to say, “Flowers for you.”

I lied to my dad. I said that the bouquet was from someone I’d met on a blind date.

“He must’ve had a really nice time. I’d say he’s smitten.”

I offered some modest, ambivalent syllables, which made him ask if I’d accept a second date.

“Doubtful.”

“You should thank him for the flowers. That’s only polite.”

I said I would. Then, because the very reason I’d invited him over for takeout was conjugal detective work, I began, as planned, with “The reunion was Saturday. Pickering High’s.”

“You actually went?”

“With Geneva, up and back, a car service.”

He said nothing, asked nothing. I volunteered that the theme drink was a Tickled Pink and that the undertakers who did Mom’s funeral were at my table.

“The Perrys.”

“Right. And there was a Donna, a Barbara, a Roseanne or Rosemary, who didn’t make cheerleader.”

“All women?”

“No, a couple of husbands.” I searched for a vase and settled on a pitcher before adding, “And a man named Peter Armstrong, who announced that he’s establishing a June Maritch memorial scholarship.”

The dad I’d always known—high school principal, gentleman, and diplomat—would’ve said, “Isn’t that the most decent thing!” But today all my announcement evoked was a grunt.

“I mean, why didn’t we think of honoring her for all those years of devotion?”

“Is this already in the works?”

“I think he said he’d be putting his contact information on the class’s website.”