Thank God school was over for the holidays. In Michael’s last class, they watched an Alistair Cooke Letter from America episode on pork barrel politics. Mrs. McCarthy must have shown that video a hundred times. He wasn’t a big fan of school, but ever since that last night on the Cape, when Ed found Ann in his bed, he’d tried hard to focus and get back in Ed’s good graces. Michael was pulling decent grades—passing, at least. He took the AP chemistry class Ed thought he should take, joined basketball, and started playing chess at lunch. Ed talked to him about college, and he’d sent an application to UW–Milwaukee, but he didn’t want to go to college, at least not right away.
He and Ann had denied that anything had gone on between them, but Michael wasn’t at all convinced that Ed and Connie believed them. They seemed distant and wary. It felt as if the spell had been broken, and in the four months since their abrupt departure from Wellfleet, the Gordons had gone from being a model family to being a bunch of people who shared a house. He’d been lonely before he met Ann, sure, but he felt even lonelier now, because he was so acutely aware of what he’d lost.
Michael had always done his best to keep his distance, but now Ann was totally off-limits; she might as well have been wrapped up in police tape. She was a different person, too, only her perfect grades weren’t so perfect, and she’d become dramatically less involved, abruptly quitting the cross-country team and forensics. She even skipped homecoming, even though she’d been elected to the court and had a date. She was always in her room. She’d been distracted, not rude or mean. That is, until that morning. She’d been in the small bathroom they all shared for fifteen minutes. He worried he wouldn’t get to school on time, so he knocked gently on the door. “Will you be done soon?”
Ann threw the door open and stormed out. “I can’t get any privacy in this house!”
“What’s your problem?” he asked. He sincerely wanted to know the answer. He felt like he didn’t even recognize her anymore.
“My problem,” she said, “is that there are too many people in this house thanks to you. You aren’t the only person with shit to deal with. Take your shower and go. Just go away. Get out of my life.” She ran into her bedroom and slammed the door.
Ann could have said anything, but to tell him to get out of her life? Nothing could have hurt more. He nursed that hurt all day at school, his stomach a mess. He walked home slowly, his backpack heavy from textbooks, his mood as low as the heavy clouds that hung over the lake. He used to be able to turn to Poppy, his former ally, but she was just as distant as Ann, stoned all the time and doing God knows what. She was never home. She’d finally found her group, a new crowd in his own grade that Michael didn’t approve of: Chris Bonner, Priscilla Madden, Leah Bagnoli, people with runny noses and long pinkie nails. They hung out at Fuel Café instead of Coffee Trader, went to the Grateful Dead tape night on Thursdays at Thurman’s, got high and played hacky sack on the UWM concourse. Poppy even dressed differently, in oversized burlap harga shirts, ripped jeans, and Birkenstocks. She snuck out at night, and snuck back in. She reeked, and her pupils were dilated.
The wind off Lake Michigan was strong and damp. He turned down Newberry Boulevard. The Gordon house, with its Victorian turret, was visible in the distance. A car with tinted windows pulled into a driveway just in front of him, practically rolling over his feet. The window rolled down slowly, like in rock videos on MTV when limousines slow down and musicians invite someone to join the party.
Only this was no limo, and it was no party. This was Anthony.
“What are you doing here?”
“Get in, Michael. Let’s go for a ride,” he said. “We need to talk.”
THE CAR SLID THROUGH THE STREETS on the East Side toward Lake Michigan, where it turned south to head downtown. Stately mansions lined Lake Drive, huge Tudors and Colonials, homes that were bigger, nicer, classier, and more solidly built than Anthony’s place on the Cape. Ann once told Michael that she thought it was a bad omen if the lake and the sky were the same color. On this day, they were the same flat dark gray.
“Milwaukee isn’t bad,” Anthony said. “Parks, the lake. Old houses. I expected factories, Laverne and Shirley. Happy Days.”
“Why are you here?” Michael asked.
“I’ll bet this does seem curious.”
What a pompous ass, Michael thought. “Curious”? More like wrong. To see Anthony in Milwaukee was about as normal as seeing the waves crash sideways. “What is this about?” Michael asked.
“It’s sensitive. And it concerns you. Me. And Ann. Your sister.” He put special emphasis on that word. “It’s important to her that we talk. But let’s not discuss it now, not while I’m driving.”
It didn’t take long to get downtown, maybe ten minutes. By then, the insides of Anthony’s windows were covered with moisture. Downtown Milwaukee could sometimes seem abandoned, aside from the few grim-faced workers on Wisconsin Avenue walking with their arms crossed in front of them, bracing against the cold. Wreaths with big red bows hung from the electrical lines on each block. With the holiday just a few weeks away, Michael had hoped against hope that the festivities of the season might bring the Gordons back together. Last year, his first Christmas with the family, Connie had put up the nativity scene even though they didn’t go to church. It was a family joke to move Mary’s figurine closer and closer to Jesus each day of Advent. Ed resurrected the model train set he’d used as a kid. He’d spent a lot of time showing Michael how it worked. Once they propped up the tree (they’d driven out to a farm and cut it down themselves, which seemed impossibly quaint compared to the Charlie Brown trees his mother used to buy at the gas station), Ed set the train in motion around the base. Christmas morning was like a scene from a cheesy after-school movie. It wouldn’t be like that this year.
“Here we are.” Anthony pulled up in front of the classic old Pfister Hotel. The valet opened Michael’s door at the same moment he was about to open it himself. He almost fell out of the car, right at the valet’s feet.
They walked inside. Anthony took off his camel coat and draped it casually over his arm. He was dressed in pressed khakis and a soft, expensive-looking beige sweater. His leather shoes were shiny, free of scuffs. His tan was gone and so was his beard. His face was pale, which only made his black hair and dark eyelashes all the more striking and blunt, more startling than handsome.
Everyone at the hotel, including Anthony, was dressed nicely, expensively. It made Michael wish he’d given his outfit more thought, but how would he have ever known that morning when he was getting dressed in such a hurry that he’d end up here, at the Pfister? He wore jeans and an open jacket over the T-shirt Poppy gave him for his birthday last October. It said CAPE COD but looked like the Coca-Cola logo. He felt like everyone in the hushed lobby was staring at him.
“Follow me,” Anthony said, and walked to a mahogany table with plush gold chairs in the bar area, away from where most everyone else was seated. Michael walked several steps behind him. They sat down, practically hidden next to the base of the huge Christmas tree. The tree was as out of place as Michael felt; he was suddenly struck by the oddness of the grand piece of nature brought indoors. It was decorated with tasteful, classic ornaments, tinsel, and little lights that looked like old-fashioned gas lamps. There were gold foil gift-wrapped packages around the base of the tree. From a distance the gifts looked nice, but up close he could tell they were old, overused props. The foil was dented and there were small tears on the sides of the packages. Fake presents were the worst.
Anthony gestured at the waitress. “Bring us two red wines,” he said.
Michael was too stunned to speak, so he looked around the lobby of the fancy old hotel. He felt like he was in a cathedral. The trim was gilded gold, and the ceiling was vaulted, and painted with red-faced cherubs, blue skies, and clouds. Everything was old here, even the bartenders. They seemed wise, knowing, like they understood exactly what was going on with Anthony, who cleared his throat, his Adam’s apple like the stub of a branch that had broken off a tree. “I had business in Chicago. Thought I’d jog north for a bit to see you. And Ann.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“She’s upstairs. In my room.”
“What’s she doing in your room?”
“Resting.”
“She’s resting in your room?”
“She isn’t feeling well.”
“I want to see her.”
Anthony held up his hand: stop. The waitress set the wine in front of them and left. Anthony held his glass a few inches from his face, closed his eyes, let his jaw go slack as if he were sleeping, and inhaled. “This is how you smell wine,” he said. “Breathe in with both your nose and your mouth, taste and smell at the same time. Try it.” He passed the glass to Michael.
“I don’t care about wine.” Michael pushed it back. Ann was in this guy’s room!
“How old are you now?”
“Eighteen. What’s she doing in there? She should go home.” It was all he could do to avoid dumping it all over Anthony’s expensive cashmere sweater, and smashing the glass against the wall.
“So, she hasn’t told you.”
“Told me what?”
Anthony looked around. “You’ll keep this to yourself?”
“What gives?”
Anthony took another sip. He was stalling, or maybe he was nervous. It was hard to imagine that Anthony could feel that way. “This wine is from France. You should try to go to France someday. The Loire Valley is beautiful. The garden at Villandry—”
“I don’t want to talk about France.”
“This is a very delicate matter.” Anthony was so intense that it was hard for Michael to look him in the eye. He gave Michael that feeling you get when you meet a street dog for the first time. It might act like it wants you to pet it, but as soon as you do, it bites your hand off.
“First, Michael, I want to tell you a story.”
“I don’t want to hear your story. I really don’t.” Michael hated it when adults started conversations like this. He’d heard plenty of inspiring life stories from teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, ministers. Anthony wasn’t there because he wanted to shoot the shit. He wanted something. But what?
“Just indulge me for a moment, would you? Maureen…” Anthony said. He cleared his throat. “You like her?”
“Sure,” Michael said. He did like Maureen. He liked her very much. He could picture her in her tennis dress, offering him cookies, asking if he needed something to drink.
“Maureen is not my first wife.”
“So? What’s your room number? I should get Ann. We should go home.”
“Stay right there.” Anthony’s tone was forceful, threatening. He practically pinned Michael to his chair with his black eyes.
“See, I’m like you. I grew up with nothing. We actually have a lot in common. We’re scrappy. Scrappy is good, it means we’ve got fight. I see fight in you. Or I should say, I recognize it.” He pointed two of his fingers at himself, then at Michael and back at himself for emphasis. “There’s a difference, you know, between seeing something and recognizing that it’s there.”
“I have no idea what you are saying.”
“Someday you will. Straight out of high school I got a job at the mine where my dad worked.”
Michael stood up. “I said I want to see Ann.”
“Would you calm down?” Anthony grabbed Michael’s arm and yanked it so he fell back into his seat. “See, I barely had hair on my chest and already I had a ring on my finger. Jackie, she wouldn’t let me sleep with her unless we were good in the eyes of God, and what can I say? I was a red-blooded teenage boy, like you are now. You know how it is. Besides, in my shitty little town, I figured I’d have the same shitty kind of life everyone else had so I made the same shitty decisions. It was OK at first. I was making a paycheck, getting drunk with my friends and getting laid every night, but you know what? It wasn’t enough for me. I had this feeling, you know? That someone could live and die and not know about me or my town or the mine or Jackie, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. Real life happened somewhere else, that’s what I thought. Everyone else I knew seemed OK with staying put, but me? I knew I was different. I knew I was meant to have a better life. A bigger life. I wanted what I did to matter.”
“I don’t know why you’re telling me this,” Michael said. “It has nothing to do with me.”
“I’m telling you this story for your own benefit. You might not realize it yet, but you’re different from other people in the same way I’m different from other people. We know we can choose between a shitty life and a big life. People like us…”
“You don’t even know me.”
“Sure I do. I’ve watched you cut my grass. You did a good job. Perfect diamond pattern. I was impressed. You showed up on time, did the job right, took on more than I asked you to. You’re responsible, reliable. Ann says the same thing. She thinks the world of you.”
“Ann talked about me with you?”
“We talk about everything. Almost every day, sometimes twice a day.”
Michael couldn’t believe it. He wanted to start the day over. Was this even real?
“I’m not a bad guy, Michael. You think I am, but I’m just older than you are, and I’ve got more than you’ve ever had. More stuff, but also more problems. And right now, I’ve got a hell of a problem on my hands. So does Ann.”
“What’s going on?”
“That’s why I asked you here.”
“You didn’t give me much choice.”
“See—” But before Anthony could say anything, a big family sat down at the table next to them, a mother and father and three kids, all dressed up for their big holiday outing. The mother ordered Shirley Temples, and she made a big point of telling the waitress that they were going to The Nutcracker at the Pabst Theater that night, a big family tradition. The waitress couldn’t have cared less, Michael could tell. He paid attention to people in the service industry; they were more like him than jerks like Anthony. He wished this were any old day, and that he and the waitress could take a break together and complain about guys like Anthony who made a big show of smelling their wine, and families like The Perfects over there. The mother and her daughter wore matching headbands made of plaid silk.
Anthony watched them, too, although he was probably thinking about how poorly the wife had aged, how she was probably hot back in the day. He probably wondered how much money the husband made, or if he was, as Connie would say about some of the fancy houses on the Cape, “mortgaged to the hilt.”
Once the family were talking among themselves, Anthony cleared his throat and snapped back to attention. “Where was I?”
“I don’t care where you were. Look, why am I here? What do you want?”
“My story. So I started taking college classes at night. I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. When I finished, I wanted to find a job in a big city. Jackie—now my wife—she didn’t want to go. Her mom and dad were in West Finley, and her sisters, and her friends, all the people she’d ever cared about. Jackie was a great girl. We had chemistry, we did. Maybe she was the love of my life, but that didn’t matter—I couldn’t let shit like that matter. I realized something hard, but true, and this is why I’m telling you this tale: sometimes you have to hurt people to get what you need. Sometimes you have to do what you need to do to get where you want to go.”
Anthony leaned back in his chair, flagged down the waitress, and ordered another glass of wine. Beads of sweat formed on his upper lip, and his face was flushed red. “Your question: What does any of this have to do with you, right?”
The father at the table next to them pushed his son’s arm and said, “Elbows off!”
“Ann has a rather large problem, Michael. A large problem that requires a complex solution.”
“I don’t know what this has to do with me.”
“She’s pregnant.”
Pregnant? This felt like a body blow. She couldn’t be. No, no, no. Not Ann. Pregnant? Why was this asshole making up stories about her?
Michael never drank, just sometimes with Jason at the end of the day. He took a drink at that moment, some wine to wash down what Anthony just said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She’s too far along to take care of it. And, well, here’s the thing: she wants to have this baby because she loves me.”
“She does not.”
“I was as shocked as you are by this news. Not that she loves me. She’s told me that a hundred times. But about this baby. I care about her, I care deeply, but I’m afraid I’m not in a position to—”
“She doesn’t love you.” The bustling of waiters and clinking of silverware and twinkling of lights became a confused blur. Michael looked at Anthony and felt an anger rise up in him that he hadn’t felt for a long time. “You got her pregnant?”
Anthony wiped his mouth with his napkin, leaving a red streak from the wine that had stained his lip.
This prick slept with Ann? Michael wanted to reach out and slam Anthony’s smug face to the table. He must have inherited his father’s fighting spirit. He wanted to pulverize him, reduce him to nothing, make him his sand-filled punching bag.
“I know this is a shock,” Anthony said. Michael swore he saw a smile tug at the corner of Anthony’s disgusting mouth, a mouth he’d pressed against Ann’s mouth—no! Michael banged his fists on his thighs, jiggled his leg like a coke addict.
“You’re making this up.”
“Do you think I’d make up a story like this?”
“What about college? She’s getting scholarship offers. She’s smart.” Connie and Ed would be so disappointed. Academics were everything. Both of their houses were stuffed with books. Connie had just put a bumper sticker on her car that said KILL YOUR TELEVISION. “You ruined her future.”
“It was her own future she compromised. She told me she was on the pill.”
“She was your babysitter!”
The woman at the table next to them looked at Anthony with disapproval, and shifted her body to block Anthony’s view of her daughter.
“She was more than that. You know how special she is. Let’s just say we’d grown close.” That word “we” was what bothered Michael the most: we grew close. Ann wasn’t even there and he felt he was being ganged up on. “It’s hard to control your emotions when you’re physically intimate with someone again and again. You think you can, but it’s easy to get carried away. I’m afraid this is especially true for Ann.”
Michael balled up his fists, and Anthony stared at them.
“We need to talk about this like men. Grown men. You don’t want to punch me like you’re some kid on the playground. Let’s have an adult conversation about it, shall we? This is hard enough without all the tough guy bullshit.”
The lobby seemed to go still. Michael looked around, trying to think about something, anything else. He focused on an old lady with her granddaughter, the doll the girl was holding, their waitress’s black shoes, the busboy’s big tray. He listened for the tinny Christmas music playing in the background. Ann was pregnant, Anthony was the father. I am a poor boy too pa rum pa pum pum.
“I’ve got nothing to say to you.” Michael reached for his coat. “You’re sick. A sick pervert.” Michael pushed his heavy chair back and stood up.
“If you walk away right now, Michael, you’ll be responsible for Ann getting nothing.”
“You’d do that to her? She doesn’t need you or your money. She’ll be fine.”
“That’s not what she thinks. Give her some credit. She’s smart enough to know she’ll need financial support, and I want to help, I do, but I can only do so in the most discreet manner. Come on, Michael. Have a heart. You were raised by a single mother. You know she’ll need all the help she can get.”
“Her parents will be there for her.”
“She’s not at all convinced that will be the case. And even if they are, I’m guessing there’s not a lot of money to go around.”
Michael thought of Connie’s coupon file, organized neatly by grocery aisle. He remembered the small arguments he’d overheard between Connie and Ed about spending, the way Ed had to sneak the expense of their fishing trips. How Connie had suggested that maybe they sell the Cape house to help pay for Ann’s college, and Ed said no, never. The Wellfleet house had to stay in the family, it was for the kids and their kids and their kids’ kids.
“Strange as it may sound, Ann’s well-being is in your hands. If you really care about her, you’ll sit back down and talk to me.”
“What are you trying to say? You won’t help Ann if I won’t listen to you?”
“Sit.” Anthony looked at Michael’s empty chair.
Michael thought about leaving, but he wanted to talk to Ann. Thing was, Ann was upstairs. In Anthony’s room. Resting. Pregnant. No wonder she’d been so distracted. She really loved this guy?
“I told you that story about myself because I’ve made sacrifices to get what I want. To be perfectly honest, I don’t look back with regret. I’ve done what I had to do, and you are the type of person who can do the same. I told you that story because I want you to think about the kind of sacrifices you might also make, for others, sure, but also for yourself. See, Ann and I, we’ve been talking.” God, it made Michael physically sick to imagine Ann talking to this guy, even sicker to think about what else they’d done together. “We’ve come up with a plan of sorts. Actually, it was Ann who came up with this. I need to give her credit. She’s incredibly strategic in a time of crisis.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Please. Hear me out. I need—we need—well, now this is a hard thing to say: we need you to say you’re the father.”
“Me? No way. No fucking way. Are you kidding?”
The mother at the table next to them shot a severe look at Michael when she heard him swear near her children, like he was the bad guy instead of Anthony. “I don’t want to be part of your plan. I won’t lie about that. Are you nuts? Why would I do that? Her parents would kill me.”
Anthony put his finger over his lips. “Keep it down,” he said. “Please.”
Michael noticed a vein bulge on the bony ridge of Anthony’s big, Neanderthal forehead. His face was red and strained like he was in the middle of a bench press.
“Poor Ann, she was so certain you’d be willing to step up for her.”
“Ann came up with this?”
“Just listen. I want to keep my family together, Michael. I slipped up, every man does, but I’m a family guy, you’ve seen that. I should have had more control, should have been a better man. But I screwed up and I’m sorry. The chemistry was too much. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other.”
“Bullshit. This is bullshit.”
“I know you don’t think much of me, and you shouldn’t, but all I’m asking you to do—and all Ann is asking you to do—is to tell a little lie.”
“That’s not a little lie! That’s like the biggest fucking lie I could ever tell.”
Anthony didn’t respond right away. He eyed Michael, assessing the situation, developing his strategy. He drank some wine. “Are you forgetting that Ann did you a big favor? She gave you a place to stay when you had no place to go; she gave you a family when you had nobody. You would have been a foster kid. You’re fine now, Michael, just look at you. How about returning Ann’s favor? Everyone knows you’re in love with her. I could tell myself, the minute I saw you lay eyes on her. And my boys told us they saw you surprise her with an unwelcome kiss. Maureen was so concerned she called your parents to discuss it with them.”
Anthony paused to let that sink in—and embarrass him further. So that night Ed found Ann in his bed—that was after Maureen had told them? No wonder he didn’t seem to believe Ann and Michael when they insisted nothing had gone on between them.
“Ann told me how awkward she’s felt around you, with you mooning all over her.”
Michael wanted to die. He could hear Ann’s voice in his head as if through a megaphone: You love me, don’t you?
“So you have a thing for her, big deal. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, she’s the whole package. I’ve fallen for plenty of women I can’t have. But she thinks of you as a, well, as a brother. Hell, man, she made you her brother. That’s how it works sometimes. You’ll learn that, like with me and Ann, there’s this, this snap of electricity, this heat, this sizzle. Someday you’ll know what I’m talking about. But whatever, she’s your friend, your sister. And she needs you to help her out now.”
“By lying?”
“Yes.”
“But all she’d need to do is take one of those tests. It’ll prove I’m not the dad.”
This seemed to get under Anthony’s skin. It seemed as if he’d anticipated every argument, the way a candidate prepares for a debate. “And if she takes that test, know what happens? My marriage is over. Let me put the pieces together for you: If my marriage is over, Michael, I won’t have any money. And if I have no money, I can’t support Ann. Ann knows this.” Anthony took another big sip, so big you’d think he’d mistaken his wineglass for water. “Connecting the dots?”
Michael was connecting the dots—one horrible dot at a time.
“Ann, you know, she could go after me. Sure. She could drag me through legal hell. But why do that when what she really wants and needs right now, bottom line, is my financial support? What I’m saying, Michael, is that if word of this situation gets out, if the wheels come off my marriage, I’ll be cut off, a pauper. Here’s the plan: I’ve set up an account in your name at a bank here in Milwaukee, you just need to sign some paperwork. I’ll be on the account, too, but it’ll look like it’s yours. Every month it’ll look like it’s you who sent money, and that’s good for you, right? That way your parents won’t think you’re a deadbeat.”
A deadbeat. Michael couldn’t stand the idea of Ed and Connie thinking of him in those terms. He’d never get Ann—or anyone—pregnant, and then run off. Never.
“I can’t,” Michael said. He thought of the way Ed had looked at him that night when he’d discovered Ann curled up in his bed. He didn’t ever want to see that expression of anger and disappointment cross his face again, couldn’t stand the idea of it. “Her parents, they’ve been so good to me. I don’t want them to think I’d ever—”
“Oh Michael, it’s too late for you to worry about your reputation with them. They wish they’d never adopted you, don’t you know that? That’s what Ann tells me. You can have lots of reasons to hesitate to accept my offer, but that family isn’t one of them. You’ve already let them down.” Anthony wiped the rim of his wineglass with the corner of his napkin, staining it for no reason. “They were just trying to be nice. Liberal guilt, you know?”
“She told you that?” He thought of what Ann had said earlier that day: Get out of my life!
“But Ann, she believes in you. She knows that after everything she’s done for you, that you’ll help her through this.”
“Why don’t you just man up and be honest? Say you’re the father.”
Anthony sighed, as if this whole discussion was too tiresome for him. “You know I can’t do that. What I can do, what I’m trying to do at least, what Ann is also trying to do, is come up with a creative way to support her.”
Michael pushed his chair away from the heavy table and stood up. He threw his coat back on and started for the door.
Anthony followed him. “If you walk away right now, Ann will suffer.”
“I want to talk to her.”
“She’s got nothing to say. This is her plan, remember? She thought this was a great idea. And it is. We can look shiny as diamonds. Hear me out.”
Michael shook his head. No. He thought he might faint. He couldn’t move, couldn’t focus on anything but the carpet below his feet, the hum of voices and music.
“You don’t think we’d ask you to do this for nothing, do you? There’s something in it for you. Quite a significant something.” He pulled out his wallet and unfolded a check written out to Michael, and pressed it into his hand. Fifty thousand dollars.
“Is this real?”
Anthony laughed. “Yes, it’s real. I recognize this sacrifice comes at no small cost to you. I need to make it worth your while.”
Michael had to look twice at the number, and read it spelled out in fancy script: Fifty thousand and 00/100 dollars. More money than he’d ever seen in one place. Anthony pulled another check out of his wallet. “And here’s another check just like that one. You can go ahead, keep both of them. But if you do, Ann gets nothing. Or, if you love your sister, you pocket one, sign over the other, say you’re the dad, and then you disappear.”
“You’re bribing me.”
“Oh, I don’t think of it that way. I’m simply making an unpleasant situation less unpleasant for all of us.”
Michael fingered the edges of the checks, tempted to rip them in half. It was just paper, after all, yet in that moment, the checks felt like they were made of steel.
“I’m willing to pay to prevent this from destroying my life. Ann understands this, she does. I have the best lawyers, and I know the kinds of people who could screw Ann over, leave her with nothing. Screw both of you over. I don’t want to do that, I really don’t. You’re nice kids. But I’ll do whatever it takes to protect myself and my family. Just sign the paperwork and the check and let’s get this over with.”
Anthony led the way back to the table, and Michael grudgingly followed. Then Anthony slid some papers out of his leather attaché case. He seemed like the kind of guy who was always whipping out paperwork—making deals, talking people into doing things they shouldn’t do, not giving them much choice in the matter while making them feel like all the choices were theirs. He set the papers on the table and pushed them toward Michael. “I need your signature here”—he tapped a line next to an X on the top piece of paper— “and here.” He flipped the paper over. “And this is where you write down your social security number for the trust.” He pressed a pen into Michael’s hand. Not just any pen, but the fancy kind you get for graduation. Like a surgeon picking the proper tool for an operation. This pen felt heavy and involved, perfect for the task at hand.
“You can start a business,” Anthony said. “You can be your own man. All you have to do is say the kid is yours—that’s it. This is the easiest money that’ll ever come your way. Go out West or something. Go to college. See the world. You’re eighteen now. An adult. Nobody is going to chase after you. You’re free to make your own life.”
Michael knew it should be easy to sign his name, but his hand wouldn’t move. He was signing the last two years of his life away, signing away Ed and Connie, Poppy and Ann, his life in Milwaukee. Cape Cod. Everything that mattered to him. Signing his name was more like erasing it.
“Like I said, it’ll look like it’s coming from you.”
“Where are her parents going to think I got that much money?”
“Their only concern is that their daughter is taken care of. Look, my life is complicated, Michael. Complicated in ways you wouldn’t understand. Your life, on the other hand, is simple. You can just tell one little lie, pocket a chunk of money, leave a family you were never really a part of, and the girl who never loved you back the way you wanted her to. Ann did a lot for you, I get it. But now her future is in your hands. Everyone will think you’re the father anyway. Do the right thing.”
Anthony was right: everyone would think Michael was the father. Everyone. But Ann—she really came up with this plan? She really loved this guy? Slept with him again and again? When she’d come to his bed that summer, was she upset because he wouldn’t leave Maureen? He might not have believed what Anthony told him if he hadn’t heard the coldness in her voice that morning, if she hadn’t been so distant for the past few months. And now she was willing to use Michael to help Anthony? Couldn’t she see what Anthony was? She loved this sack of shit? Then again, his mother had loved Marcus. He treated her terribly and still she’d loved him.
“I hate you,” Michael said. He looked Anthony right in the eye.
“I get that. I’d hate me too if I were you. Just sign.”
And that’s what Michael did. He signed quickly, wherever he was told, before he could change his mind. And just like that, he became nobody.
Michael stood, put on his coat, and looked at the revolving door near the exit. He was overcome by a hot, explosive rage. He understood now why Anthony wanted to discuss this matter in a public place. He knew that Michael would want to hurt him. And he did: just like that he reached forward to strike Anthony, forgetting that Anthony was quick as a wrestler. He grabbed his wrist, twisted it so hard Michael could have sworn it broke, and let go. Michael yanked his aching arm back. Anthony stared at him, a stare that dared Michael to try again, a stare that was oddly calculated. Michael couldn’t lead with his right hand, so he used his left, and landed a sloppy hook on the side of Anthony’s nose. It couldn’t have hurt him. The family at the next table gasped.
Anthony stood and addressed them. “Will you please ask the bartender to call security?”
His face was right next to Michael’s ear. He whispered, “I’m going to press charges if you don’t get the hell out of here. Get lost, Michael. Go away. Disappear. Nobody cares about you. Not me. Certainly not Ann. Just take the money and run, and don’t you dare try to make contact with either of us. As far as you’re concerned, you never saw me. I’ve never stepped foot in this tired industrial town. That other paper you signed? It’s a silence agreement. Break it, and you’ll be in debt for the rest of your life, I’ll make sure of it.”
Michael saw the security guard in the distance. He spit on Anthony and made a run for it. He burst through the revolving doors and stumbled onto the sidewalk. He picked himself up and ran away from the hotel, away from Lake Michigan, away from the Gordon family home. Breathless, a few blocks south on Broadway, he caught his reflection in the giant plate-glass windows of the Grain Exchange and saw what everyone else saw: just some horny, troubled kid living with two beautiful girls his own age, a lovesick “stray” who would take advantage of any situation. He was an opportunist. He could feel that check in his back pocket—proof.
He couldn’t believe Ann would turn on him.
One thing was certain: he could never go back to the Gordons’ house. That part of his life was over, ripped away from him. He walked to the Greyhound station with nothing but his backpack. He used the pay phone at the station to leave a message on the Gordons’ voice-message machine. “Look, I’m sorry about what I did to Ann,” he said. He couldn’t bear to say he’d gotten her pregnant, couldn’t bear to lie.
He hung up and looked at the bus schedule. He had so much money now, he could go anywhere. Anywhere at all.