All We Ever Wanted(30)

I resisted the urge to ask him how many people he had on staff to do that for him, then figured what the hell. “You must have a guy for that?” I asked.

He looked taken aback for a beat but quickly recovered. “Actually my wife, Nina, is good at that stuff. Believe it or not.”

I raised my brow. “At changing lightbulbs?”

“Ha. No…I mean…all sorts of mini home projects….She enjoys them. But yes, for the more complicated ones, we do have a handyman. Great guy. Larry,” he said, as if all of us manual laborers knew one another.

I glanced around the room and said, “So. Where is your wife? Will she be joining us?”

He shook his head and said, “Unfortunately, she had a prior engagement.”

“That is unfortunate,” I deadpanned.

   “Yes,” he said, “but I thought it might actually be better if we could talk…you know…man to man.”

“Right. Man to man,” I echoed.

“So, Tom,” he said, after taking a deep breath. “Let me begin by apologizing on behalf of my son. The photo he took of your daughter was absolutely inexcusable.”

I squinted, pretending to be confused, cueing more babble.

“It was terrible….And believe me, Finch understands that now.”

“Now?” I asked. “So he didn’t understand that before? When he posted it?”

“Well,” Kirk said, holding up his hands, now palms out. “To be clear, he didn’t actually post anything—”

“Oh, pardon me,” I said, an expression I never used. “He didn’t understand that it was wrong when he sent the photo to his buddies?”

There was no way he could answer this question in the negative, I thought, but sure enough, he did.

“No,” he said. “Not at first. He wasn’t thinking at all. You know teenage boys….But now he gets it. Now he sees. Completely. And he’s sorry. Very, very sorry.”

“Has he told Lyla that?” I asked, feeling sure I knew the answer.

“Well. Not yet. He wants to…but I told him to wait until I talked to you. I wanted to apologize to you first.”

I cleared my throat and chose my words carefully. “Well, Kirk,” I said. “I appreciate the apology. I do. But unfortunately, it doesn’t undo what your son— I’m sorry, what’s his name again?”

“Finch,” he said, nodding, his chin nearly reaching his chest. “His name is Finch.”

“Ah, yes, that’s right. As in…Atticus Finch?” I asked.

   “Yes, indeed!” He grinned. “To Kill a Mockingbird is my wife’s favorite book.”

“Huh. Mine, too. Imagine that,” I said, uncrossing my arms before slapping my thigh in a sarcastic way.

“Wow. What a coincidence. I’ll tell her,” he said, smiling. “So. Where were we?”

“We were talking about what your son did to my daughter. Lyla.”

“Yes…and I can’t tell you how sorry Finch is.”

“Try,” I said, forcing a fake smile. “How sorry?”

“Oh, very. He’s very, very sorry. He’s a wreck. He hasn’t been able to eat or sleep—”

I interrupted with a brittle laugh, feeling myself start to lose my composure. “So…wait. Are you…Do you…Am I supposed to feel sorry for your son?”

“No, no. Not at all. I didn’t mean that, Tom. I just meant that he understands that what he did was wrong. And he’s extremely sorry. But he didn’t mean the caption the way it sounded. He just meant it as a…joke.”

“Does your son often make racist jokes?”

“Of course not,” he said, finally starting to squirm. “Is your daughter even…Hispanic?”

“No.”

His face lit up. “I knew it,” he said, as if the case were now closed.

“Her mother’s Brazilian.”

His smile faded into a look of confusion as I continued, “So technically, I think the word you’re looking for is Latina. Hispanic is a demonym that only includes Spaniards and other speakers of the Spanish language. And as I’m sure you know, the language of Brazil is Portuguese.” It was all information Lyla had fed me in recent months, research she had done to try to understand exactly who she was.

   “Very interesting,” he said, as I got the feeling he was either patronizing me or searching for a good angle for his kid. “So…Brazilians aren’t a different race?”

“Brazilians can be any race, Kirk,” I said slowly, like I was talking to an idiot. Which I was. “Just like Americans.”

“Oh, sure. Right,” he said. “That makes sense. So Lyla’s white?”

“Mostly,” I said, unwilling to dignify this man with a breakdown of her lineage. I wasn’t even sure exactly what it was, other than that Beatriz’s mother was Portuguese Brazilian and all white, while her father was something like a quarter black. Which I guess made Lyla one-sixteenth African-Brazilian.

“Mostly?” Kirk asked.

“Look. Bottom line…Although Lyla’s mother did, at one point, have a green card, Lyla is one hundred percent American,” I said.