can’t decide what to listen to in the car while I wait. Something thematically appropriate? Like Red Sovine’s masterfully cheesy “Giddyup Go”? No, too much. I look frantically through my “Daddy” playlist. (You’d be surprised—well, maybe you wouldn’t—how many country songs have the word daddy in them.)
I decide on Buck Owens’s “Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy”—a ridiculous choice, to be sure, but it’s upbeat and cheerful and it calms my nerves while I sit and tap the wheel and wait for noon to get a little closer. I’m loath to be the weirdo waiting by the tub of famous Randy’s relish for her illegitimate father (wait—is he illegitimate? Or just me?). A few repeats in, I’m singing along softly and yelp when someone knocks on my passenger-side window while I’m looking in the other direction.
A middle-aged man is peering at me, looking uncertain. He has very tan skin and all-white hair combed back in a way that reminds me of Michael Douglas in Wall Street.
It’s him. I hope to heaven he didn’t hear what I was listening to. Please, please.
When I get out of the car, he tells me he didn’t mean to scare me. He’d just recognized me right away.
“You really look so much like her,” he says. “It’s amazing.”
He tries to pay for my dogs. Santa indeed. I don’t let him. He’s nervous and hesitant and doesn’t know what the dining protocol is under these particular circumstances, so he lets me trump his outstretched dollar bills with mine.
There is something Vegas about his appearance, but his manner is cautious and soft-spoken. He says he never met anyone who wrote a whole book before. Without much prompting, he starts in with high school stories about Shelly.
He tells about Shelly scoring the winning goal at a girls’ soccer game.
I gobble my first hot dog down while I try to listen, then start on my second. Sports stories bore me to death, even, apparently, when they involve my enchanting mother. I’m distracted by the large sign above his head that says NO DANCING . The sign is memorable to me. It’s been here since before Shelly died. She brought me here at least a couple of times when I’d visit . Why would anyone want to dance in here? I remember wondering.
Keith feels my distraction and finishes the second story quickly.
He says, “Are you just writing about your mother? Or was there something else you wanted to discuss?”
“Yes,” I admit.
I’m surprised by his forwardness. He quickly tells me that one of my mother’s friends told him I was asking.
I’m speechless for a moment. I realize that I had no clue how I’d bring it up and am now grateful to him for doing it. I like him.
“The truth is I don’t know for sure. If anyone knew, Shelly did. And I’m not even sure she did.”
“There are ways to find out,” I say softly, focusing on the nub of my second hot dog.
“Were you interested in finding out?” he asks, and watches me, licking a bit of spicy relish from the corner of his mouth, then waiting, still openmouthed.
“I think so,” I say. I hurry to add that it would be simply to know, to set it to rest, that I have a wonderful family who raised me and I don’t expect anything of him.
“And I know it’s a choice my mother made a long time ago.”
I catch myself, realizing I said “my mother” where I meant Shelly.
He didn’t notice. He said he could understand my feeling of wanting to know. And he didn’t want to deny me that. As far as expecting anything of him—we could see what happened. If the results were what he suspected they’d be, he’d like to spend a little time getting to know me. If I decided that was all right. Because he’d always wondered. He’d accepted Shelly’s choice to stay silent and to grant guardianship to her sister and her sister’s husband. They were good people. But he’d always wondered.
I nod and say okay. That we’d have to see.
I listen to “Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy” a few
I decide on Buck Owens’s “Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy”—a ridiculous choice, to be sure, but it’s upbeat and cheerful and it calms my nerves while I sit and tap the wheel and wait for noon to get a little closer. I’m loath to be the weirdo waiting by the tub of famous Randy’s relish for her illegitimate father (wait—is he illegitimate? Or just me?). A few repeats in, I’m singing along softly and yelp when someone knocks on my passenger-side window while I’m looking in the other direction.
A middle-aged man is peering at me, looking uncertain. He has very tan skin and all-white hair combed back in a way that reminds me of Michael Douglas in Wall Street.
It’s him. I hope to heaven he didn’t hear what I was listening to. Please, please.
When I get out of the car, he tells me he didn’t mean to scare me. He’d just recognized me right away.
“You really look so much like her,” he says. “It’s amazing.”
He tries to pay for my dogs. Santa indeed. I don’t let him. He’s nervous and hesitant and doesn’t know what the dining protocol is under these particular circumstances, so he lets me trump his outstretched dollar bills with mine.
There is something Vegas about his appearance, but his manner is cautious and soft-spoken. He says he never met anyone who wrote a whole book before. Without much prompting, he starts in with high school stories about Shelly.
He tells about Shelly scoring the winning goal at a girls’ soccer game.
I gobble my first hot dog down while I try to listen, then start on my second. Sports stories bore me to death, even, apparently, when they involve my enchanting mother. I’m distracted by the large sign above his head that says NO DANCING . The sign is memorable to me. It’s been here since before Shelly died. She brought me here at least a couple of times when I’d visit . Why would anyone want to dance in here? I remember wondering.
Keith feels my distraction and finishes the second story quickly.
He says, “Are you just writing about your mother? Or was there something else you wanted to discuss?”
“Yes,” I admit.
I’m surprised by his forwardness. He quickly tells me that one of my mother’s friends told him I was asking.
I’m speechless for a moment. I realize that I had no clue how I’d bring it up and am now grateful to him for doing it. I like him.
“The truth is I don’t know for sure. If anyone knew, Shelly did. And I’m not even sure she did.”
“There are ways to find out,” I say softly, focusing on the nub of my second hot dog.
“Were you interested in finding out?” he asks, and watches me, licking a bit of spicy relish from the corner of his mouth, then waiting, still openmouthed.
“I think so,” I say. I hurry to add that it would be simply to know, to set it to rest, that I have a wonderful family who raised me and I don’t expect anything of him.
“And I know it’s a choice my mother made a long time ago.”
I catch myself, realizing I said “my mother” where I meant Shelly.
He didn’t notice. He said he could understand my feeling of wanting to know. And he didn’t want to deny me that. As far as expecting anything of him—we could see what happened. If the results were what he suspected they’d be, he’d like to spend a little time getting to know me. If I decided that was all right. Because he’d always wondered. He’d accepted Shelly’s choice to stay silent and to grant guardianship to her sister and her sister’s husband. They were good people. But he’d always wondered.
I nod and say okay. That we’d have to see.
I listen to “Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy” a few
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