Turtles All the Way Down(33)

“I’m good,” he said, backing up. “I actually kind of hate eating. I’ve always had a nervous stomach.”

“Me too,” I said, and then my phone started ringing. “It’s my mom. Don’t say anything.” I tapped to answer. “Hey.”

“Tell the driver of that black SUV to turn around this instant and come back to our house.”

“Mom.”

“This isn’t going further without me meeting him.”

“You have met him. When we were eleven.”

“I am your mother, and he is your—whatever he is—and I want to talk to him.”

“Fine,” I said, and hung up. “We, uh, need to go into the house if that’s okay, and meet my mom.”

“Cool.”

Something in his voice reminded me that his mom was dead, and I thought about how everyone always seemed slightly uncomfortable when discussing their fathers in front of me. They always seemed worried I’d be reminded of my fatherlessness, as if I could somehow forget.

—

I never realized how small my house was until I saw Davis seeing it—the linoleum in the kitchen rolling up in the corners, the little settling cracks in the walls, all our furniture older than I was, the mismatched bookshelves.

Davis looked huge and misplaced in our house. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a guy inside this room. He wasn’t quite six feet tall, but somehow his presence made the ceilings seem low. I felt embarrassed of our dusty old books and the walls decorated with family photos instead of art. I knew I shouldn’t be ashamed—but I was anyway.

“It’s nice to see you, Ms. Holmes,” Davis said, offering a handshake. My mom hugged him. We all sat down at our kitchen table, which almost never had more than two people at it—Mom and me. It seemed overfull.

“How are you, Davis?” she asked.

“Things are good. As you may have heard, I am kind of an orphan, but I am well. How are you?”

“Who looks after you these days?” she asked.

“Well, everybody and nobody, I guess,” he said. “I mean, we have a house manager, and there’s a lawyer guy who does the money stuff.”

“You’re a junior at Aspen Hall, yes?” I closed my eyes and tried to telepathically beg my mother not to attack him.

“Yes.”

“Aza is not some girl from the other side of the river.”

“Mom,” I said.

“And I know you can have anything the moment you want it, and that can make a person think the world belongs to them, that people belong to them. But I hope you understand you are not entitled to—”

“Mom,” I said again.

I shot Davis an apologetic look, but he didn’t see, because he was looking at my mom. He started to say something, but then had to stop, because his eyes were welling up with tears.

“Davis, are you all right?” my mom asked. He tried to speak again but it devolved into a choked sob.

“Davis, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize . . .”

Blushing, he said, “I’m sorry.”

Mom started to reach a hand across the table, but then stopped herself. “I just want you to be good to my daughter,” she said. “There’s only one of her.”

“We have to get going,” I announced.

Mom and Davis continued their staring contest, but Mom finally said, “Back by eleven,” and I grabbed Davis by the forearm and pulled him out the front door, shooting Mom a look as I went.

—

“Are you okay?” I asked as soon as we were safely inside his Escalade.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

“She’s just really overprotective.”

“I get it,” he said.

“You don’t need to be embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed.”

“Then what are you?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’ve got time,” I told him.

“She’s wrong that I can have anything I want whenever I want it.”

“What do you want that you don’t have?” I asked.

“A mother, for starters.” He put the car into reverse and backed out of the driveway.

I wasn’t sure what to say, so eventually I just said, “Sorry.”

“You know that part of Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming’ where it’s, like, ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity’?”

“Yeah, we read it in AP.”

“I think it’s actually worse to lack all conviction. Because then you just go along, you know? You’re just a bubble on the tide of empire.”

“That’s a good line.”

“Stole it from Robert Penn Warren,” he said. “My good lines are always stolen. I lack all conviction.” We drove across the river. Looking down, I could see Pirates Island.

“Your mom gives a shit, you know? Most adults are just hollowed out. You watch them try to fill themselves up with booze or money or God or fame or whatever they worship, and it all rots them from the inside until nothing is left but the money or booze or God they thought would save them. That’s what my dad is like—he really disappeared a long time ago, which is maybe why it didn’t bother me much. I wish he were here, but I’ve wished that for a long time. Adults think they’re wielding power, but really power is wielding them.”