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Too Many Miles

David Haight

    The twin mattress was crammed against the wall beneath a shelf stuffed with pictures. Next to the bed was a desk, a litter box in place of a chair, and a dusty elliptical machine. The sound of the television and the morning show her mother had forced her (then with more vigor brother Dylan) to watch growing up echoed up through the vents. The voices were harsh and hard to follow. There was a banging of cabinet doors. The smell of cat piss was unbearable. Miss Otis, her Grandmother Loretta’s cat was dirty, shit besides the litter box and hissed at everyone, batting its tiny white paws at your ankles. She refused to get rid of it. She knew how to love the unlovable, like Deborah, like me, Emma thought. There was a hesitant, apologetic knock. The door opened slowly.
    “Emma?” It was Deborah, sent up by her grandmother, taking a sip from an oversized coffee mug that despite being French Roast was unable to cover the smell of cat piss. Deborah had gotten knocked up by Loretta’s oldest son Martin when she was barely out of high school. He packed up and split town twenty some years ago. She was devastated. She took his old room in Loretta’s house and never left. That’s probably what they think I’m going to do, Emma thought. Left my baby with my mother and drove away only to turn up here. “Don’t you have to get ready for work?”
    Emma grunted and waved Deborah out. She sat up. On the wall opposite the bed was a black dresser lined with dozens of photographs: her grandfather in his marine uniform as a young man, her uncles and aunts and cousins at picnics, sporting events, graduations, beneath Christmas trees, wedding pictures all modeling outdated fashions and hairstyles. Her family was the exception. Those photos stopped the year her father left and were identical: her mother, Dylan perched on her hip, barking orders, at her father who was mugging for the camera, younger versions of herself, her face triangular and beaming, staring merciless at her, making it hard to stand up. It felt like a shrine to a family that died in some horrible way, in a car crash or house fire. There was none of her stepfather Jack, whom everyone in the family with the exception of her mother and brother loathed. She had begged to stay at Eric’s (a boyfriend of sorts) but his parents, who had always disapproved of her, refused. Before hopping in the shower she stole one last glance at her dad, hoisting her above his head.
    “There’s the most beautiful granddaughter in the world,” Loretta said the minute she saw her. “How did you sleep?” she asked, waddling over to her, brushing the hair out of her eyes. She smelled of coffee and piousness.
    “Fine,” she said pushing her away. She poured herself a cup of coffee, pulled a cigarette from her purse and lit it. Loretta frowned. “You got that filthy habit from your mother.”
    “Can you not make a big deal about everything?” she asked blowing a long cloud of white smoke at her. She stole a glance at the television on the kitchen counter. “One year that stupid show came to East River and mom dragged Jack-”
    “Don’t say his name.”
    “at three-thirty in the morning to O’Hara’s where they plopped on the front walkway to get a glimpse of that faggot host. She had had a few belts so she didn’t even see him when he walked by. Jack snagged him by the shoulder, and introduced him to mom,” she said unable to hide pride in her stepfather’s actions. It was a story her mother told often especially after she’d been drinking. She caught herself. “He was always pushy, would have kicked me out of the house at fifteen if he could have.”
    “That’s right,” Loretta said with righteous indignation. “I knew he was trouble the minute I laid eyes on him, sat there staring at Dad and me like he was better than us. Better than us. I knew what he wanted. He wanted your mother. Not you kids. Not us. He was a son of a bitch. Cared only about himself and his worthless books.”
    “I’ve been talking to Deborah this morning,” she continued nodding at Deborah as if pointing out a new painting on the wall Emma had missed, “and we have no doubt that we can get Rain back.” Emma sighed. “She’s your daughter and your mother has no claim. After what that son of a bitch did to you and your mother. Just thinking about it,” she paused and gazed to the heavens for strength. “I won’t let my great granddaughter be raised in that environment. I will use every resource I have left.”
    “Grandma!”
    “If she is still with Jack then we can use his history of domestic abuse-” Deborah began logically, piercing Loretta’s bombastic rhetoric.
    “Beat the crap out of her is what he did,” she said making the sign of the cross. Deborah did the same.
    “-and get Rain back here without a hitch. The main thing is, um, we know how impulsive your mother can be,” Deborah said slowly. She appeared reluctant to go on. Emma stared her down.
    “What are you trying to say? Spit it out for fucks sake. Is there anything to eat?” she asked turning towards the kitchen.
    “What’s she trying to say dear, is we know how volatile your relationship is with your mother, so it would be best for you to... not engage with her. Do you understand what we’re saying?” she asked bringing her a piece of toast a perfect square piece of butter floating in its center.
    Emma groaned. “You’re saying to stay the fuck away from her.”
    “The language,” Loretta said with a grimace. “A pretty girl like you shouldn’t talk like that. But yes. We don’t want her taking Dylan and Rain and disappearing. Bow your head.”
    “She won’t pull precious Dylan from that fancy high school. It’s a piece of toast,” she said holding it up.
    “And you should be thankful for it.”
    Emma bowed her head with a barely concealed smirk. Loretta and Deborah followed suit.
    “Bless us our Lord,” Loretta began. Emma mouthed the words rolling her eyes letting her tongue dangle from her mouth.
    “Amen,” they all concluded.
    “This is all your father’s fault.”
    “Can we not talk about him?” she asked taking another drag from her cigarette.
    “If he hadn’t left with that whore none of this would have happened. And after all the money I gave him and your mother.”
    “Grandma!” Emma shouted, slamming her coffee cup on the table a pool of brown coffee settling next to it. “That’s not true,” she whispered. Her grandmother had a way of manipulating the facts, taking a sliver of truth, magnifying and calcifying it, divorcing it from all context. It was one of the reasons her mother hated her.
    “Who leaves his wife and children after twelve years?”
    When her parents divorced her father moved out of state and returned twice; both times asked only to see Dylan. No one knew why. He was loaded into the car like a prized Pony. Eight hours later she watched as her mother and Jack pulled into the driveway unloading an endless parade of gifts. She raced to the front door, nearly yanking it off its frame. “What did he get me?” she screamed. Jack shook his head, “Nothing.” She slammed and locked the door. It was a sting she still felt.
     “He came to see Dylan but not his beautiful daughter, his first born; everyone knows your first born is special.” Deborah frowned. This made Emma feel better and worse. Her grandmother had that ability. “I hope he rots in hell for what he did to his family. Pushing his wife into the arms of that devil.”
    “Did he ever hit you?”
    “No,” she screeched. The closer Jack and Dylan became the more heinous Jack grew in Loretta’s imagination until she became convinced that Jack, who had struck Cassidy before, had also hit Emma. He hadn’t. Emma had never seen Jack hit her mother. She had seen the results but never any of their epic blowouts. It was the only mercy either of them had ever shown.
    “Why did you leave her?” Deborah asked.
    “I know you mean well but you don’t know what it’s like over there,” Loretta said with a forced smile. “I’m sure she had good reason with those two maniacs.”
    “I know enough,” Deborah said having picked Emma and Rain up deep into the night on more than one occasion.
    “Didn’t you hear me? They are maniacs. He once went after her with a rock.”
    “Actually she went after him with a rock,” Emma said. “A real big one. Split his head open like a melon,” she laughed exposing chewed up bits of toast. “It was forgotten about by the next morning, the two of them cuddling beneath a blanket on the couch, holding hands, nursing their hangovers together, smiling and speaking sweetly to one another. She would get a new bandage for his head once it was soaked through. By the end of the day the garbage can was full pink and cherry bandages like the molted skins of snakes.”
    “It’s toxic.” Loretta said. “I’m just glad you came here.”
    “I don’t want to talk about it,” Emma said, taking a slurp from her cup, setting it over the spilled bit of coffee.
    “Then isn’t it too toxic for an infant?” she asked never having understood why Emma chose to live with her mother and stepfather and put herself and her child in the line of that hateful fire.
    “Who was there for you when the father of your child walked out on you?” Loretta hissed.
    “That was your first born that did that,” Deborah barked back, unafraid.
    “And we need to be there for Emma.”
    “That doesn’t make any sense,” Emma said but Loretta wasn’t listening, never listened to anyone who contradicted her, never listened to anyone but herself and God which were interchangeable.
    “What we need to focus on is getting Rain back safe and sound and away from that monster.”
    “You’ve always had a blind spot for her,” Deborah said. “It doesn’t help her.”
    “Somebody has to love her. She was abandoned by her father and all but abandoned by her mother.”
    “I’m sitting right here,” Emma said playfully swirling her finger on her plate licking up the crumbs.
     “I’m not going to talk about this in my house,” Loretta said ending the conversation. Everyone was silent. Loretta refilled Emma’s coffee. Deborah was critical of her reflection in the compact mirror.
    “I don’t know why I left her,” Emma said, mashing out her cigarette on the plate. She only knew that one morning she woke up and felt worn out, like a car with too many miles still expected to go from one coast to the other. “I need to go to work, are you ready?” she asked Deborah. She nodded, got up, tossed the compact in her purse, which she threw over her shoulder. Emma finished her coffee, set the cup upside down in the sink, patted Miss Otis on the head, which batted at her shoe and followed Deborah to the car.
    She arrived at work twenty minutes late. She was excited, she had been working as a salesperson at Assorted Memories, a small jewelry making company, exactly three months and qualified for medical benefits. She didn’t know anything about custom jewelry or how to sell it. The HR director, who she had only talked to the day she was hired greeted her and invited to her office on the floor above. Once there Emma pointed to the silver framed pictures, “Are you a newlywed?” Startled, the woman nodded. Emma was informed that she hadn’t expanded their territory into the southwest and was being let go. “You can gather your things and leave.” Adding, “I’m sorry.”
    “That’s okay this job sucked anyway. And you look better in the pictures.”
    Exiting the building she crossed the street, sat on a bench next to the man-made lake the ducks ignored and called her mother.
    “I just got fired.”
    “And?”
    She could feel her mother’s disappointment compounding by the second.
    “When are you going to grow up? Start taking responsibility for things?”
    She didn’t know and was scared to death. She never wanted to grow up.
    “No answer per usual.” Her mother was disgusted. “Do you have anything to say, are you even worried about your child or how you’re going to support her?” was the last thing she heard before the line went dead.
    “Bitch,” she said to the empty line. She attempted to call Eric but he didn’t answer. Where was he? Why wasn’t he answering? He always answered when she called. He was probably seeing that slut Anne again. Didn’t he realize she had an asymmetrical face? She repeatedly called her therapist who repeatedly failed to answer, slipped off her high heels and walked the five miles to the 1200 Club. She didn’t have any money but started drinking anyway, White Russians. Around three-thirty a haggard looking man in his forties wandered in ordered a whiskey and coke and stared at his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. He bristled with the kind of kinetic energy that barely camouflaged some inner trauma. I should know. He’s either been fired like me or his wife split. If it’s the former drinks and the ladder drinks and sex. She chuckled. “Rough day?” she asked sliding up next to him.
    “Don’t waste your time on me,” he said returning to the mirror.
    She leaned on his shoulder and caught his eyes in his reflection. He turned her way. Now I have him.
    “Give it up,” she said. He threw her a puzzled look. “You’re in a bar in the middle of the day. Unless you’re a pro which you’re not something happened. And to break the ice I’ll go first, a month ago I abandoned my child with my mom and I got fired today.”
    “My wife left.”
    Drinks and sex, she thought. A bet’s a bet
    “What are you doing about it?” he asked, as if he were begging for help.
    “This currently,” she said lifting her glass. “I’m seeing a therapist, against my will. Mainly I sit on his lumpy couch and stare at him. He has a square shaped face. Always wears brown. Why do all therapists dress like communists? That’s beside the point,” she said waging her finger. “That’s all he would do. Wag his finger and tell me I have low self-esteem. Well, that seems clear,” she said taking a long pull from her glass once again getting comfortable on the bar stool.
    “Do you believe in soul mates?” he asked sadly. What a loser, she thought.
    “We chat about that too. I pepper questions at him: how do you recognize your soul mate? Does everyone get a soul mate? Is it like opposites fitting together like yin and yang? Sometimes it got too esoteric. What if your soul mate was born in a different part of the world or a different century? What did that mean for your happiness? Things like that were interesting but rarely helpful. He reminded me this was not why I had come to therapy. You sought out help because of your issues with your father, he would say.”
    They drank for hours. She teased a twenty out of his wallet and filled the jukebox with music. They got drunk and laughed and swapped war stories. “What could you know, you’re a baby?” he asked more than once the whiskey catching up with him. He had an edge when he drank too much whiskey.
    Once when the bartender wasn’t looking she snatched his right hand and shoved it under her shirt and onto her bare breast and he found himself coughing out, “I want to make love to you.” She took his head between her hands (his hand was still on her breast) and said, “Nu-uh. It’s not that. And no, your wife wasn’t your soul mate.”
    “What could you possibly know that?”
    “Because you’re sitting here with me,” she said, “probably having a better time. And I’m not a baby.” The bartender had caught on by now. They ended up in the backseat of his car her pants pushed down but still clinging to one leg (in case the cops come she whispered, he liked that) frantically having sex. He sweated profusely and apologized for it nearly as much. After they picked up an armies worth of Chinese food and crashed at his house.
    The next morning he staggered down the stairs to find the sun pointing its fingers at the razor thin scratches running along the surface of his exquisite hard wood floors. It all came back. They burst through the front door pawing at one another. She snatched a container of Chinese food from him, placed the thin handle in her mouth and danced her way backwards across the floor, drawing him forward with her index finger. He followed. She discarded her purse and he his suit coat on their way into the kitchen, where a pool of noodles, lay scattered in the sink. She sloppily fed him from chopsticks. The scratches in the dining room were replaced by Swiss-cheese divots in the carpeted stairs that led upstairs, where his tie was hanging languidly over the railing and their clothes slept like exhausted dogs outside the bedroom.
    Emma was already up. He could see her spaghetti-thin legs dangling from the roof, swaying nervously. He cracked the patio door and poked his head outside, peering up at her. She stared awkwardly down at him, coffee mug in her hands and smiled ironically.
    “Your fire pit looks horrible.”
    Shooting a glance at the hole in the ground and the rusting iron insert wedged uncomfortably into it, he thought about the day Tiffany left and not knowing what to do bought the iron insert and shoveled until he thought he was having a heart attack. “It’s not pretty but it works.” Emma shrugged. “I’m going to go change,” he said. Emma shrugged again. He put on a fresh set of clothes then headed into the den, through the window and took a seat at Emma’s side. She had just left another voicemail for Eric. She sat staring into the distance, smoking a cigarette.
    “You’re not getting weird about last night are you?” she asked frowning at him.
    “A little but nothing for you to worry about.”
    With the exception of her nose which was large and inelegant she was the twin of her mother. Withdrawing the cigarette and rolling it between her index finger and thumb she said without looking at James, “I stole them from my mother. When I was a teenager. I would steal packs of cigarettes from my mother. I didn’t do it intending to smoke. I just wanted to piss her off. Besides Jack, my stepfather, there was nothing she loved more than her cigarettes. Nothing. Eventually I started smoking them. Big surprise. You ever smoke?” She finally looked at him.
    “Not really. When I drink sometimes. Should I throw a couple of steaks on the grill and make some eggs or do you just want to go out?”
    “I need to sleep not that I’ll be able to,” she said. “But the sun’s nice. Look up there,” she said pointing to the power line and the hawk resting on top of it three yards over.
    “We get them all the time. Their natural habitat is gone. They have nowhere else to go.”
    He threw a couple of streaks on the grill. It smelled good, reassuring. He was sprinkling salt on them. She was about to let him off the hook for last night when the doorbell rang. She stood up and walked over the roof and peered down at the blue pickup truck in the driveway. “It’s my kid brother.” He was unable to hide his fear that he was being drawn into a family drama he had no interest in. She climbed down from the roof. “Fuck you,” she said to him as she opened the door.
    “How’d you track me here?” she asked, leaning out the doorway, glancing over his shoulder. “Is mom with you because if she is-” He cut her off with the wave off his hand.
    “You need to come and get Rain,” he said. “I’m not kidding Emma”
    James watched in fascination at this tall thin boy with the face of an angelic child.
    “Why don’t you go play Hot Crossed Buns with Jack? He is back isn’t he?” Dylan just stared at her. “God you make me sick.”
    An expression of disbelief fell across Dylan’s face. “That’s what you say. Your child is at home and that’s what you’re going to say to me. To mom?” He did an about face got in his blue pickup, backed out of the driveway and screeched away. She shut the door.
    “Hot Crossed Buns?”
    “Jack, my stepfather, played saxophone so naturally Dylan wanted to play. One day I came home after five days. I had run away. Anyway I walk in and there they are playing together, in harmony you could say. With all the bad stuff that happened in that house that one wasn’t the worst but it hurt. What do you care, right?” she said, yanking her hair back into a ponytail keeping it in place with a rubber band she pulled from her back pocket.
    “Listen, I’m sorry, and-”
    “Save it,” she said. “Let me shower. The only thing I’ll ever ask from you again is a ride.” He didn’t argue.
    She arrived at her grandmother’s. No one was home. Thank god. She desperately needed to talk with Eric. He was still ignoring her. He wanted to know if she would love him again. He wanted to know if he was the father. It was only a few days after her birthday, the first birthday after her father had left. The check he mailed to her bounced. That was when she knew things had really changed, that he hadn’t just moved. She taped it to the inside of her locker, a burning beacon of hatred. Eric, whose locker was next to hers and who had a thin mustache covering up a constellation of acne, saw it. That’s when it all started. A few days later she opened her locker to find a postcard with a daisy, hand drawn in crayon, in muted colors and above it the words, also in crayon, and talk about the weather. Even at the thirteen she found it beautiful. She pictured them having a small little house in the city with a tiny little garden and a dog they would take for frequent walks. They had a favorite coffee shop and bookstore. They would have a baby girl their dog would be protective about. Sometimes she let him kiss her sometimes more. She crawled to the twin mattress. The room smelled. She fell asleep.
    A few hours later her phone rang. She surged to her purse. It was Eric. He wanted to see her. She dug through her grandmother’s dresser drawers until she found forty bucks. Then she went to her secret hiding spot in the back of her closet, snatched another fifty and despite the buzzing she felt in her head she fished the few turds out of the litter box and walked them like extracted bullets into the toilet, snatching the much larger pile next to it with a paper towel and flushing it. There, she thought convincing herself easily. Now we’re even. Closing the door behind her she left and sat on the shoulder of the highway waiting for Eric.
    Emma entered the car slowly, as if she were a nervous hitchhiker. She shut the door and stared out the passenger window. They drove.
    “What? Aren’t you talking to me?” he asked leaning forward trying to catch her eyes. “Hello?”
    “I’ve been calling you for days,” Emma said, her head whipping at him. “You haven’t answered or called me back once. I could have been laying in a ditch for all you care.” While you were screwing Anne, she thought.
    “It’s good to see you,” he added after they had driven a few minutes. “What’s been going on? I’m sure things are crazy as usual.”
    “I want to go see my dad if that’s all right with you.” She added, “I lost my job.”
    “Jesus what happened?” He pulled through a McDonalds and ordered them two large Cokes.
    She took a long drink. “That tastes great.” He liked making her happy. She shrugged. “I’m just a loser.”
    He reached over and rubbed her shoulder. “What really happened?”
    “They said I couldn’t expand their southwest territory or some bullshit. It’s not like they trained me. Anytime I asked for help they basically told me to go fuck myself. Maybe it was true. I hated it anyway. I’m just no good at anything.” Before he could contradict her she went on. “It’s not just that. I don’t like anything. There’s nothing I want to do for eight hours every day. I already know what you’re going to say that I should find something I like well enough to do every day. But who wants to live that way?”
    “But you have Rain now?”
    “Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain. Why is everything always about her?”
    “She’s your daughter.”
    “No, what you want to know is if she’s our daughter.”
    “That doesn’t matter.” But it did. “What matters is that she’s taken care of properly.”
    “Why do you think I took the job in the first place? I took it for the medical insurance.”
    “I could make you get a DNA test.” He was glaring at the road. He wanted to glare at her but he was afraid. He was afraid of her.
    Emma opened the car door and struggled to unfasten her seatbelt. Eric’s right arm pushed her hard against the seat. The wind howled. Her large Coke collided with the window and dropped to the floor. She pounded his shoulder with her left arm. He eased the car over to the side of the road. She kept pounding his shoulder and face. Looking down at her shirt she brushed away the spilled soda, opened and shut the door and signaled for him to drive. He started the car up again. Neither spoke. It was their usual routine.
    Eventually they passed the tall gates of St. Mark’s cemetery. It seemed more barren than usual with the last of the leaves having fallen off the trees and the milky greyness of the sky. They headed, hand in hand toward the back, where her father’s gravestone sat on the top of a little hill. They stood for a long time without saying anything.
    “Didn’t we make it one time in here?” Emma asked.
    “You know we did,” he answered. “We did lots of crazy shit in here. Remember when they buried that sixteen year old that was killed in a car crash?”
    “Simonson,” Emma said. “Michael Simonson. The only reason we checked out his tomb was because of that notebook hanging from the cross in that purple plastic container.”
    “It looked so strange dangling from the arm of the cross. People would visit his grave and write messages to him.”
    “We couldn’t wait for the new entries.”
    “Christ you pretended you were one of his friends. You even wished him a happy eighteenth birthday. It’s not funny,” Eric said.
    “It’s a little funny.” She rubbed the corner of her father’s tomb with the toe of her shoe. “He just left and never came back,” she said without emotion. “I used to tell myself that our family was perfect before that, before the divorce, Jack and all that. But like most memories it was a lie.” She reached back into the past that wasn’t anymore and into the future that she would never have. She lit a cigarette. “Everyone thought it was adorable that I was daddy’s girl. They didn’t realize it was a response to Dylan and my mom. All my life my greatest fear was that my mom loved Dylan more than me. When my dad left I was devastated. I would lie in my bed at night asking him why he didn’t take me. But I already knew why.”
    “It wasn’t your fault. You were just a kid-”
    “It wasn’t anything I did,” she began.
    “That’s what I’ve been telling you,” he said thinking he had finally gotten through to her after so many years. “For, well forever,” he added.
    “It was being born. (His shoulders dropped.) I was a mistake. My parents never would have gotten married. My mother made it clear that her marriage was the greatest mistake of her life. She was resentful about it and furious at my dad for finally splitting (something she never had the courage to do by the way).”
    “She stayed together for her family. For you.”
    “Bullshit. She’s weak. She threw her life away on something she didn’t want and that makes me sick.”
    “What should she have done?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
    “Aborted me and gone on with her life.” She started to soundlessly cry. “My dad tires of us, finds someone else and splits. My mom finds Jack and has the family she always wanted. Even Dylan is happy. Everyone is happy and I’m left out in the cold because I was never wanted in the first place. That’s why she loves Dylan and not me.” Eric made a face. “Don’t you see? You think you’re so smart. She chose to have him.” She wiped her eyes and nose and wandered over to another grave picked up a fresh bouquet of flowers and laid them on her father’s grave. She was silent.
    “Remember that summer my family went to Florence? We went to see Michelangelo’s David,” Eric began, in that thoughtful way he had. “We waited in line for like two hours. Everyone was tired and crabby but excited. We were about to turn the corner into the hall where he stands so majestically when my stepsister-”
    “The older one?”
    “Yeah, Maria, who had been suspiciously quiet put her hand on my forearm and says that she’s frightened.”
    “Scared? Of a statue? Another weak woman,” she spit out.
    He continued, “She was white. I thought she was going to faint.” Emma made a face. “I found out later that there were only two things she wanted to do before she died: to raise a family and see David.” She made a questioning face as if to ask: what gives? “She wasn’t prepared for it yet. She couldn’t even go in. We would get close to the hall and she would roll out of my grip. I had to walk her out. I already know what you’re going to say she gets all the way there, halfway around the world and wimps out? Stupid, right?”
    She squatted down, and brushed dirt away from her father’s name. “It’s not stupid. She’s exactly like me. It was easier when he was dead. I was able to blame Jack or mom, even Dylan. But he’s not. He’s out there right now not giving a rat’s ass about me.” Standing back up she pointed down at the tomb. “I don’t know who this is,” she said with a soft chuckle. “My dad lives in Philadelphia.”
    “When you asked me for money to go to Philadelphia to meet his mom?”
    “It was to see him,” she said wiping tears from her eyes. “At least I tried to. I got outside of his apartment and waited. For hours. He came and I couldn’t. He came out again and I still couldn’t. I just flew home.” She took a breath.
    He glanced around the cemetery before turning back and locking eyes with her. “Is Rain mine or not?”
    And there it is. The only reason you bother with me anymore, she thought.
    “I don’t know. Honestly. I was out with Amy and Chris. I was mad at, well, everything. Some guys were buying us shots.” She paused, for a long time. “I woke up the next morning, sore and with no memory of the night before. He didn’t even drive me home. I don’t know if it’s yours.”
    Neither spoke. Finally Eric took a deep breath, one that it turned out he had been waiting to take for a long time. Emma wasn’t sure if he was going to scream at her or simply walk away and out of her life. For the first time she was afraid of what he might do.
    “Wanna go slash his tires?” Eric asked.
    “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
    They dashed to the car. They sat staring out the windshield at the mute grey tombstones.
    “How long have you known?” she asked.
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    She threw an icy glare at him.
    “Come on Emma,” he said with a dark smirk. “The years don’t match up. You’re not as clever as you think you are.” After a moment he added, “You were lucky there was someone with the same name for Christ sake.”
    “Then why didn’t you say anything?” she asked, prepared to get angry at him.
    “Stop,” he said, running his hand over her face.
    She felt foolish and tiny and sad.
    “Did you at least get to see it?” she finally asked.
    “What?” he asked puzzled.
    “David.”
    He nodded. “Later. A few days later.”
    “Did Maria?”
    He shook his head no.
    “How was it?”
    “Perfect.”
    Emma smiled. He did, reluctantly.

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