Carver dragged in a choppy breath. “Then maybe I am.”
“Well, no,” Chip said, with uncharacteristic patience. “I looked it up. It’s like, twelve people in India who are the exception. So I kept this to myself for months, I let it eat a hole in my gut, and then I brought it up to Conway —”
“Not me? You didn’t fucking bring it up tome?”
“How could I, dude? How was I supposed to do that?”
Carver tried to breathe in a steady, regular pattern. The thirteen or so drinks he’d had were on the verge of coming back up.
“She told me I had to ask Mom and Dad,” Chip said. “And I did. And they melted down, and they denied everything, but I pushed them, and pushed them, I didn’t let it go. And finally they came clean.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Carver said, and dry heaved. It felt as though the world had cracked open and now everything was pouring into the crack, fast as a mudslide or avalanche.
“You need to puke?”
“No. Just finish the story. Jesus Christ.”
“Alright,” Chip said. He patted him on the shoulder again; it should have been comforting, but Carver could barely feel it. “Alright. What they told me is, uh, yeah, Mom had an affair with a friend of theirs when I was a kid. This was around the time that Dad was gone a lot for work.”
“Who? What friend?”
“They didn’t tell me his name, but I think I remember him,” Chip said. “I have this vague memory of a guy coming by, and watching movies with me and Mom. I never saw anything, but I felt like something was off. Or I’m thinking that in hindsight, I don’t know. But I remember a guy.”
“What did he look like?”
Chip shrugged. “I don’t remember. Dark hair, I think.”
“What else did they say?” Carver was suddenly seized by the need to know every last detail. “Like, what the fuck? Why wouldn’t she — I know she believes in abortion, what the fuck? This can’t be true, Chip, it doesn’t make any sense.”
Chip put a hand up. “First thing you need to know is, this guy is dead.”
“What guy?” Carver said, like an idiot.
“Your dad. Your biological dad.”
This landed like a blow. “What do you mean he’s dead?”
“He died when you were little. And what happened was, he had, like, testicular cancer in his twenties, so he thought he was infertile. Apparently him and his wife tried for years before they split up. So Mom didn’t think you could be his. And, um…” Chip ran his hand over his face. The dark bruises under his eyes looked worse in the low light, almost black. “The cancer came back a few years later, I guess. And he died from it, that time.”
Carver did actually need to vomit now. He did so over the edge of the roof, though at least a third of it didn’t actually clear the edge and splattered in the gutter. It was a vile mixture of vodka and salmon which both smelled and tasted like it.
Chip patted him on the back. Carver almost couldn’t stand how nice he was being. It was making this moment all the more intense and surreal.
“They told you all of this,” he said, spitting and wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his tux. “And never said shit to me. You all know. You fucking know, Conway fucking knows.”
“They don’t know she knows,” Chip said.
“So?”
“Yeah. No, yeah, it is fucked up. Sorry. It’s actually —” Chip cleared his throat. “It’s gonna sound fucked, but I’ve almost been kind of pissed at you these last few years, ‘cause I just, like… I had to keep this to myself, and I’ve been, you know, kinda worried about you, and feeling bad for you, and you didn’t even know. So whenever you pissed me off I was like… fuck you, more than usual.”
Carver was in such a state that he started laughing at this. He didn’t know what else to do. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, bud.”
Carver sat there for a moment with his thoughts, then started to feel nauseous again. He dropped his face into his hands. “He’s dead?”
“That’s what they told me.”
