Doug met his gaze with his pink and rheumy eyes. “Don’t say ‘no’ like I’m stupid.”
“I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“You think I’m being too charitable to her. Well, you know a lot about us now, you might as well know this — I had my own affair before she had hers.”
Carver instantly and deeply regretted whatever dicky facial expression of his had led his father to divulge this. “Jesus, okay.”
“In Japan.”
“Okay, Dad! That’s fine!”
“If I’d had a Japanese love child —”
“Sure. Yes. My bad.”
Doug drank more of his scotch. He’d already been tipsy at the wedding, and the bottle of Glenlivet on the desk had clearly just been opened but was missing a few glasses worth of its scotch. He must be more inebriated right now than he’d been in a decade. “Your mother felt abandoned, and neglected. And she had good reason to.”
“But you didn’t drive her into this guy’s arms. I thought everyone was taking responsibility for stuff tonight.”
“Youwon’t take responsibility for how hostile you were as a teenager,” Doug tossed back at him. “You were an emotionalterrorist, the temperature dropped five degrees when you walked in the room. It was like living with an ex-girlfriend.”
Carver self-protectively breezed right past that comment. “I’m just saying this situation is more her doing than anyone else’s.”
“So you see me as weak, now that you know. You think I didn’t have my house in order.”
“I think you’re taking this in an unnecessary direction.”
“I know,” Doug said helplessly.
“I’m sorry I shit-talked Mom. We all love Mom, okay? She’s so good at minigolf.”
Doug let out a sigh and finished his drink. “God damn it all,” he said. “You’re right, we should have told you sooner, because now I have to wear this when I’m already a pathetic old man. Just another retired asshole who plays golf and putters around in the garden waiting to die.”
“Dad…”
“I was going to be a judge someday, but it’s so much more political than I realized. I never had the right connections. I think it’s because I had to go to a state school for my bachelor’s. I got into much better schools, but I only got the one full ride offer for football. I wonder sometimes if I should have just gambled on the loans, but I had no way of knowing. These are the kind of indignities I worked so hard to spare the three of you from.”
“Dad,” Carver repeated, thinking for the first time in his life that his father really needed to see a therapist.
“He was my friend, too,” Doug said, with a sudden and surprising anger. “The… man.”
“I know,” Carver said. “You guys said.”
Doug rubbed his forehead. “It would have been so much easier if youhadbeen an adopted child,” he said. “If I didn’t have to pretend you came from me.”
“And if I didn’t remind you of him?”
Doug said nothing and continued to rub his forehead. Carver leaned back in the uncomfortable chair, glancing out the window. The blinds were drawn but open. Through them he could see the ghostly white leaves of one of the flowering dogwoods that grew along the back of the house.
“It’s complicated,” Doug finally said.
“Okay.”
“I didn’t completely hate him for what he did. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”
This was a surprise. Carver leaned forward.
“I just knew I couldn’t ever see him again,” Doug said. He paused for a moment, and it looked like he was grinding his teeth. “So I didn’t. Your mother tried to get me to see him on his deathbed, and I didn’t go. And I’m glad I didn’t.”
