I nodded. I’d been fishing offshore with those three guys, my best buddies, with our dads since we were three, and by ourselves since we were fifteen—which, in retrospect, was too young. If you can’t drive a car, you probably shouldn’t be able to take a Sportfish thirty miles out into the ocean. “Want me to bring fried chicken or sandwiches?” This was our ritual. Melon, sandwiches, fried chicken, and someone’s mom’s brownies. Well, now, someone’s wife’s brownies.
He winked at me. “Just beer.”
I made eye contact with Amelia, who was sipping lemonade and laughing with Mary Lou Jackson. She smiled apologetically, and I walked toward her. Kind of like when neighbors bond over a natural disaster or a shitty landlord, we had been thrust together. She was the only breathing person who knew my current situation.
I wasn’t ready to broach the topic with my parents. My dad, who I was positive had never changed a diaper, would think I had lost my mind. My mother, who had raised me to be the kind of man my dad was, would think I wasn’t capable. I couldn’t take that energy right now. Not when this idea was so fresh and new. It wasn’t real yet, and it never had to be real. I could just think about it and feel happy.
Mary Lou slyly walked away as I made my way toward Amelia. “Am I crazy?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Damn,” she said. “So youarethinking about it! I knew it.”
I felt a prickle of happiness like that really great feeling you get from a big idea, like starting a new business or building a new house. You haven’t considered yet how much work it might be, how hard it might be, how much your life is going to change. You just feel the good parts. That’s where I was.
“They’re half of her, Lia,” I said. “I have four little babies waiting for me that are half-Greer.”
She sighed. “Parker, you’re being dramatic.”
I looked at her skeptically.
“Parker, look,” she continued. “One of the things everyone loves about you is that you’re a romantic. You see the starry-eyed version of the truth. But come on. You’re young. You’ll remarry. You’ll have babies with a new love. If you do this, it’ll prevent that. You’ll never want to move on.”
“Idon’twant to move on,” I said, feeling indignant.
She took a sip of her lemonade and shrugged. “I can’t beresponsible for this. I mean, you’re going to do what? Hire a surrogate? Quit your job and stay home with kids?”
I hadn’t thought of that yet. Stupid logistics licked the red off my candy. I couldn’t really see being a stay-at-home dad. But Greer wouldn’t have been a stay-at-home mom, either, so that didn’t matter.
“And what if you have girls? What are you going to do when they get their period?”
I laughed. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Well, it’s just an example. There are all these mom things that happen in life that you aren’t going to be able to give your kids.”
I crossed my arms. “Plenty of people grow up without mothers and turn out fine.”
She bit her lip. I could feel her softening. “I think it’s sweet,” she said. “I really do. But, Park, it’s not reality. This isn’t some romantic comedy where the clueless dad and a pair of charming, well-trained Labradors endure the hilarious misadventures of spit-up and dirty diapers. It isn’t that easy. Being a parent is really hard, and it’s real work. You have to be realistic about this.”
I nodded. I knew she was absolutely, one hundred percent right.
I would get a pair of Labs, too.
GreerMAY 22, 2011
I KNOWI DON’T HAVEtime to dateis sort of the refrain of my journal. But it isn’t an excuse, like my mother says it is. It honestly isn’t. It’s just that my life is so full right now.
But today was different. Today changed everything. I’m in Manhattan for the week to help Daddy, and I was rushing from a meeting in SoHo all the way back to Michael’s for lunch with a publisher who was interested in my writing a memoir. Me! I mean, I’m twenty-seven years old. What do I know?
I figured they wanted a McCann family exposé, which is laughable. If I’m not going to grant an interview—which I never have—I’m obviously not going to write a book about all my deep, dark family secrets. But that’s not the point.
The point is that I was running late, my driver was stuck in traffic, and I grabbed a cab. I paid the driver, dashed out, and a full half hour later I realized I’d left my phone in the back seat.My stomach sank. With thousands of cabs all around this city, how would I even attempt to find it? I was trying to focus on what the young, fresh-faced, and slightly nervous editor was saying about spreading my message of female empowerment and greater good to the world—I liked that a lot, by the way; I might have been wrong about the family exposé thing—and all I could think about was my missing phone. I was going to have to spend my afternoon going to the Verizon store, waiting in line forever, shutting my old phone off, getting a new one.
But I needed to be at a family foundation meeting that afternoon. I had some pet projects that I wanted to be funded this quarter, and they wouldn’t get done if I wasn’t there.
Even though I’m usually levelheaded, I could feel myself begin to panic, mostly because my phone was the keeper of everything. What if all my numbers weren’t backed up on the Cloud? What if I lost pictures and messages? What if someone found my phone, hacked into it, and stole my identity? I was about to say,I’m so sorry. I’m going to have to run, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
I turned around and there was a man standing over me, the light from the plate-glass window streaming behind him, making his handsome face radiant and otherworldly. He was tall but not too tall, with sandy blond hair that was tousled but not sloppy. Blue eyes twinkling, he smiled at me with the straightest, whitest row of teeth.
I stood up, though I’m not sure why, and he said, “I think this might belong to you,” in the most swoon-worthy Southern drawl I’d ever heard.
