Good Riddance(29)

“Bullshit.”

Quite rude but hard to refute, since every other word I’d uttered was fiction. She continued in a new, chummy tone. “I came away with a very strong sense that your senator was a lady-killer. And I think you did, too.”

“Which applies exactly how to my dad?”

“Your father was yelling at him for taking up with his daughter. I’m not so na?ve that I don’t recognize a cover-up.”

“By me?”

“What you just told me—that he was yelling about union stuff.”

I wasn’t the polished liar I hoped I was. Instead of apologizing for embroidering, I compounded it. We were still in my doorway. I told her I couldn’t talk for long, that I had a project in a double boiler, but, okay, if she insisted.

Because I was spinning another lie, an even bigger one, I started with “This is totally off-the-record. Do you understand what that means? You cannot, under the sacred rules of the press, repeat this to anyone. Or put it into a documentary.”

I could tell by the intensity of her squint and her moving a step closer that she was all ears. I said, “Okay. My dad was, in fact, warning Armstrong to stay away from his daughter, but it wasn’t me. It was a sister I never told you about.” And from nowhere, without any premeditated baby-naming effort whatsoever, I came up with “Samantha.” Yes, a Samantha who still lives in New Hampshire.

“So he was warning him away from a daughter, just not you?”

I told her I couldn’t talk. I had chocolate tempering, which was a delicate stage, even a critical one.

“Is this sister married?”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I combined a look with a half nod and half shrug that might have conveyed Sort of.

“If that’s a no, what’s the big deal if two single people are hooking up?”

“Age difference. Plus, he’s a lifelong bachelor. As you and I both know—always a red flag.” I repeated, “I have to go. I’ve probably already ruined the chocolate I was melting,” adding for good measure, “You’re never to mention this to my dad,” at the same time I was thinking, I’d better clue him in about made-up Samantha.

“It still sounds fishy to me.”

“What part?”

“This is the father you brought to Thanksgiving, right? He struck me as a really sweet guy, not someone who’d get arrested over his daughter’s love life.”

Her peculiar phrasing, “This is the father . . .” stopped me. Had I, in my state of shock on the ride back from the reunion, revealed something about my newly dual paternity?

“Of course that’s the father I brought to Thanksgiving. What an odd question. I can’t help it if the truth sounds fishy. Isn’t that the way life works? I mean, who’d ever believe that someone would want to make a documentary out of a smelly high school yearbook?”

I’d meant that as an insult, but she smiled as if I’d recognized her particular scouting genius. “Do you have Armstrong’s email address?” she asked.

“I certainly do not.”

“Didn’t he give you his card?”

“Thrown out. I’m surprised you didn’t find it while foraging in the trash.”

“Sarcasm will get you nowhere,” she said. She reached into her pocket, withdrew her phone, and tapped the bottom of the screen. “Got it,” she said.

“Were you recording me? Isn’t that illegal? Isn’t that like wiretapping?”

“Your chocolate,” she said, with a skeptical sniff of the air. “Better get back to your project.”

I wasn’t actually tempering chocolate at that particular moment. Face-to-face with Geneva, all I did was fib.





16


Was This My Life Now?



Geneva wasn’t the only person with a Pickering, New Hampshire, Google alert. My sister, as ever unapologetic about the time difference between West and East coasts, called just before midnight to ask in condescending fashion, “Did you know Dad was arrested?”

Even half-asleep, my sibling rivalry kicked in. “Of course I did. He called me from the police station. You know how prisoners get one phone call, just like on TV? Well, I was his.”

“Good for you. But mainly it’s this: Is he losing it?”

“You mean is he getting senile? No! He was wrongly arrested.”

“It sounds as if he charged into the New Hampshire State House!”

What to say and how much? I began with “Did I tell you I went to a Pickering High reunion?”

“Don’t change the subject! Is he in jail? The article didn’t say—”

“No, he’s not in jail. And I’m not changing the subject. I went to the reunion because—”

“And Dad went with you? I thought he hated those reunions.”

“No, he did not go. Please shut up. I’m getting to the senator he trespassed against, Peter Armstrong.”

“And?”

“So, upon my arrival, I was handed a note from Armstrong saying we’d be at the same table. I’m, like, Who’s he and why does he want—”

“I don’t need the internal monologue.”

“Okay. After the first course, he asked me to dance, and next thing I knew, we were out in the corridor—did I say it was the Knights of Columbus Hall?—where he told me he’d been in love with Mom since his senior year in high school. Then on Monday he sent me flowers, and Dad happened to be there when they arrived. Not good.”