When Nate was a little boy, he used to ask Jim how he knew how to be a father. “I went to daddy school,” Jim would answer as if it was the most obvious thing on earth. As if some people taught literature, like he did, while others taught the fine points of parenting. Nate would picture a classroom with a bunch of men who looked vaguely like Jim being lectured by someone maybe older and wiser about how to tuck your child in at night (and which bedtime stories to read them), how to make grilled cheese sandwiches and SpaghettiOs, or how to act like two parents when there’s only one.
“Is there a mommy school, too?” Nate would ask, equitable child that he was.
“Oh, sure. They’re everywhere,” Jim would reply, doubling down on the baloney he was throwing. “I’ll point one out next time we pass it.”
Nate would sometimes wade into the “daddy school” weeds: “Do you get a rest period? Are there report cards? Did you like your teacher?”
Jim would muss Nate’s hair, tell him he was asking too many questions, and change the subject before he dug too deep a hole for himself. Nate eventually lost interest and found all new things to bug his father about.
Still, as lively and creative and loosey-goosey as Jim could be, he was pretty much a straight shooter. Ask him a question, he’d give you the answer, whether it was appropriate or not. At the very least, his responses were usually true—or as true as he knew them to be. There was whimsy, yes; candy-coating, not so much. Which was why, when Nate got older, he thought to ask his father where that whole “daddy school” business came from; it was kind of unlike the man he came to know.
“Back then, I was scared shitless half the time. I didn’t want you to be too,” Jim admitted as they were driving to Dodger Stadium to watch the home team clobber the Cardinals. “I figured if you thought I actually studied what to do, wasn’t just winging it, you’d feel more secure—even if I didn’t.”
Jim turned down Foreigner’s “Long, Long Way From Home,” which was playing on KLOS. “For the record, kiddo, I never lied about anything else to you. And I never will.”
Nate, who’d just turned thirteen, didn’t think much of that comment at the time. He was still too young to know that if you never lied about anything there was no reason to say that you didn’t. Much less promise not to ever do so again. He’d also never heard the term “projection,” at least the psychological use of it. Nate was just so happy to be going with his dad to a Dodgers game—Jim was about as interested in baseball as Nate was in Victorian literature—that he wasn’t about to ponder anything deeper than how many Dodger Dogs he could persuade his father to spring for.
It was extra strange because, as a kid, Nate always felt totally, if subconsciously, protected by Jim, despite—or maybe because of—his dad’s largely carefree demeanor. Who would have guessed that, for a time, Jim had been “scared shitless?” It may have been an irrational worry, but Jim loved Nate so much—so much more than he ever thought he could love another person—that the enormity of being responsible for someone else’s entire existence was, in those early days anyway, too overwhelming to bear. Nate learned that last part one night maybe a dozen years later when Jim got sloppily confessional after a few too many cocktails.
This all came bubbling up during Nate’s next therapy session. It was a few days after his last encounter with Amy, the events of which—save his stubborn refusal to decide her future and, in turn, his own—Nate replayed in detail for Mira, down to the shade of blue of the Seiko watch. Despite his rejection of Amy’s generous gift, Mira said his time with his mother seemed “peppered with progress.”
That made some sense if, like Mira, you didn’t have all the facts. Nate was about to rectify that, thought he’d roused the energy to explore his complex feelings about Amy’s job offer—and its greater implications. But at the last split-second, he defaulted to a joke instead.
“As opposed to what?” Nate smirked. “‘Salted with setbacks’?” They’d become comfortable enough with each other to give or take the occasional jab. For Nate, it took some of the naval-gazing gravity out of the sessions, which, he knew, was part of why he was able to keep returning. The other part was how he’d come to depend on them, to his continued surprise.
Mira looked amused by his alliteration, then quickly sobered. “Still, what that ‘progress’ means for your future remains unknowable,” she said with sphinxlike authority. It was as if she knew he’d left out a key piece about his last meeting with Amy.
Like the crystal clarity that Nate had learned could near-magically appear in a therapy session, he came to a sudden conclusion. “I don’t want it to be,” Nate replied. “I want to know what’s going to happen with Amy because, right now, this kind of … parental purgatory? It’s not working for me. Or anyone else for that matter.”
“Is that your way of saying ‘I should have taken the watch’?” Mira eyeballed Nate, then scribbled a few notes, her first all session.
Nate glanced at his Swiss Army watch, noticing how scratched the crystal had become. “I just couldn’t bring myself,” he said. “It would have been like saying, ‘That’s okay, no worries. Thirty years of what might have been has been gladly erased with the snap of one stainless steel watchband!’”
“Even though she assured you that wasn’t the point of the gift?”
Nate was quiet. He knew he was being as stubborn and resentful as Amy suggested. Didn’t he just say he wanted out of parental purgatory?
To that end, he finally revealed what he’d left out earlier about Amy. He felt sheepish and said as much, but Mira seemed nonplussed. Clearly, her patients held back shit all the time.
Mira rearranged herself in her chair. If she’d worn glasses, this is when she would have taken them off, maybe rubbed the bridge of her nose. She scratched the side of her head with her pen cap instead. “Let’s switch gears for a minute.”
Nate adjusted himself on the couch in anticipation. He saw that the split-leaf philodendron was looking more alert. Had he told her last time to water it more? If he didn’t, he should have.
Mira raised her head a bit as if addressing the air. “Do you want children of your own, Nate?”
“Wow, that’s a pretty big question for this late in the session, isn’t it?”
Mira didn’t answer, awaiting his reply. Nate reconfigured his body on the cushions again. The query caught him by surprise. He shrugged. “In theory, sure.”
Mira narrowed her gaze. “What does that mean?”
“It means … not now but maybe at some point.”
“I see. So, the answer is no.” Nate was about to jump in but she put a hand up. “Which is fine, really. I wish more people would say no to that question. It would show they were being honest. Most of my patients shoot me an automatic yes.”
Nate had no idea what she was talking about, just that he apparently answered correctly. But had he? “Where’s this going?” he finally asked with just a few minutes left to their session.
Mira put her pad aside, scooched to the edge of her chair, and folded her hands atop her skirted knees. “It’s curious, that’s all.” Nate stared at her. “Usually when people are very close to at least one parent, they want to repeat that experience with their own children.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want kids. I’m sure that I do.”
“Doesn’t sound so sure. Not that it matters, men change their mind on the subject a lot more than women.”
“It might be nice to have someone to actually have this imaginary child with before thinking more about it, wouldn’t you say?”
Nate didn’t mean to sound pissy but there was a needling to Mira’s tone that made him defensive. He could feel a thin layer of sweat erupt across his forehead. He glanced at the sleek digital clock perched on Mira’s desk: it was ten to the hour. She usually started wrapping up by now, yet she looked like she was hunkering down for the night. Mira caught his drift.
“It’s okay, Nate, my seven o’clock canceled, so you’re my last one. Let’s follow this thread a little longer.” She paused. “Is that alright?”
He was starving and eager to get home to Cody, who asked no questions, couldn’t care less about Nate’s stupid issues, and just wanted to snuggle and get his belly rubbed. Why can’t human life be that simple? Nate leaned back against the soft sofa pillow.
“Did you and Jennifer ever talk about having a family?”
“Together?” Nate wasn’t going for a laugh but Mira rolled her eyes and shot him a sideways smile. It relaxed him. He thought back on his happiest days with Jennifer when they were coasting on a romantic cloud and it sometimes felt like they were the only two people on the planet who’d found love. “We did,” Nate admitted. “Even came up with names.” He flashed back for a second, trying to recall what they’d zeroed in on. “Two boys and a girl: Spencer, Connor, and Zelda.”
“Zelda?”
“It was actually my dad’s idea, but Jen kinda dug it.”
Mira took a stab. “For Zelda Fitzgerald?”
“The fun part, not the schizophrenic part.” Thinking back, Nate hoped Jim had just been joking about the name; it seemed like a loaded choice.
Remembering his and Jennifer’s children chat evoked a similar talk they’d had about where they would live if they ever, well, got to the point of having those kiddos. Nate voted to move out of the city, somewhere more bucolic where they could have acreage, a giant garden, and lots of dogs; Jennifer fantasized about moving to Manhattan and opening her own dance academy for Broadway hopefuls. Both were pipe dreams, of course, and complete opposites. Yet neither of them had said no to the other’s wishes; it had been more about being together. Mira retrieved her pad and pen, and made what seemed like a string of notes. She looked intent. Nate gazed across as if he could read what she was writing. Did he really even want to?
“What do you do with all those notes?”
She finally looked up from her pad and smiled at Nate. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Her eyebrows almost comedically rose and fell. Nate shrugged because he didn’t know what he wanted, except to go home. But it still wasn’t in the cards.
Mira sat back, turning serious again. “I imagine you’re wondering why I’m asking you about children.”
Nate didn’t have to wonder: most everyone and everything Mira brought up led back to Amy. You could practically see it happening, like one of those real-time virtual maps that tracked your Lyft driver. All that was missing was a countdown clock that showed the minutes it would take for Mira to reach her destination.
And he was right. It was pretty masterful how Mira worked her way—in record time, given the lateness of the hour—from Jennifer and Nate’s would-be brood to whether he feared that fully accepting Amy as a mother might, over time, erase Jim’s place as Nate’s favored parent—and maybe diminish his father’s memory altogether. In between, they touched upon whether Nate thought he’d make a good dad, if he felt he could be a good son to Amy, and, in turn, if Amy would be a good mother to him—good enough to change his life to find out.
Nate had been given so much food for thought that he literally felt full and, despite his hunger pangs sitting with Mira, didn’t feel like a meal when he got home. Instead, he gulped down a beer, snapped a leash on Cody, and walked him over to Occidental.
The fall session had recently started and the campus was abuzz as students crisscrossed in pairs and trios warmly lit by the tall, Victorian-style lampposts that lined the walkways. Cody stopped and lifted his leg on one of these lights, then gave an excited “look at me” bark. Not that too many passersby noticed; they were too wrapped up in their own joyful energy, the kind that came with the promise of starting afresh. They’d lose it by the end of the term—most college kids did, Jim used to say—but there was nothing like a clean slate to make you look and feel ready to take on the immediate world.
Moving through the campus that night, Nate didn’t feel his usual nostalgia for his own academic past. He was enjoying the infectious enthusiasm of the younger folks around him, yet had no desire to be one of them. Maybe he was still preoccupied with the torrent of topics that emerged from his therapy session like worms from a newly dug hole. Or maybe it was because he knew he had to keep moving forward and stop looking back, a default which, to say the least, had not been serving him well these last months. Still, something about living in the moment felt good and right just then: a small sign of progress—or maybe a stab at his own clean slate.
Nate had stopped in front of the Mary Norton Clapp Library (the name still killed him) to let a couple of effusive dog lovers make a fuss over Cody when his phone rang. He saw that it was Danny, so he excused himself and moved off to answer the call.
“Cronin/Soto Landscape Design,” Nate said in a mock official tone. “You got the cash, we got the flash.”
Danny ignored the joke, nearly bursting through the phone. “Yo, Cronin, ready to be an uncle again?”
“What?” Nate stopped so abruptly that Cody banged into his shin. “Wait—you?”
“Well, me and Leesh—and the Raff-ster. Yep, we found out tonight. It’s official, dude!” Danny sounded positively giddy. Before Nate could respond, Danny crowed, “Wait, I’m putting you on speaker. Congratulate your accountant.”
“Hey, Nate,” Alicia called coyly through the phone. “Big news, huh?”
“Huge! Wow, congrats, you two. This is awesome!” Nate was surprised to feel a lump forming in his throat. He gave a quick cough. “Does Raffi know yet?”
Alicia let loose a deep, joyous chuckle. “Yeah, he asked if we could get a puppy instead. Not sure it totally sunk in. But it will!”
“Not sure it’s totally sunk in with me either!” Danny joked.
“It better sink in, mister!” his wife told him with a sweet jab to her voice. Despite their occasional speed bumps, Danny couldn’t have picked a better mate than Alicia. She was the tether to his balloon—and, in turn, he gave her flight. The lump in Nate’s craw grew just thinking about that.
“Hey, so what’s the wish? Girl, or another boy?” Nate asked extra brightly.
“Girl!” Danny and Alicia yelled in unison. Nate guessed Raffi was enough boy for now.
“And if it is a girl,” Alicia said, “we’d like to name her Natalie.”
“Nice!” Nate said, though he completely missed the connection.
Danny could tell. “After you, dumbass!”
Nate was speechless. He watched as Cody blithely sniffed around a dewy stretch of grass. A skinny guy with earbuds and an orange Oxy cap whipped past on a skateboard. It seemed like an unlikely sight just then, but maybe thirty-one-year-old Nate and his oversized dog were the odd ones.
Nate snapped to. “Wow, I’m incredibly honored. And completely blown away.” And undeserving, he wanted to add.
“Yeah, don’t get all sappy on us, pal. We liked the name, that’s all.”
“Don’t listen to him, Nate,” Alicia piped in. “If you didn’t make Danny a partner, we couldn’t have afforded to do this. Not now, anyway.” She paused, maybe for her own tightening throat, and added, “This is ‘thank you.’”
It was a good thing Danny and Alicia hopped off the phone as quickly as they did—clearly to call another dozen people before it got too late—because Nate was ready to lose it right there in front of the old Mary Got-the-Clapp Library (that’s what he used to call it once he was old enough to know what it meant). He fell onto a bench beneath a lamppost and let the tears flow as Cody quietly curled up on the grass beside him. Nate was glad it was dark—dark enough, anyway—and that no chipper students were looming in either direction. He wanted to be alone but needed to chill out a minute before he and Cody made their way back home.
Nate was happy for Danny and Alicia, of course. And it wasn’t as if he wanted what they had … exactly. He always felt there was something a bit prescribed about their life together, that they’d moved ahead with marriage and a family too early for Nate’s taste, much less timetable. Yet, as a result, unlike Nate, they had a solid, stable, seemingly long-haul relationship, not to mention a great kid and another on the way. Meanwhile, Nate felt light years away from any of that, the remarkable circumstances of this past year suddenly feeling like more of an excuse than a reason for, as Mira would have it, his inexorably linked romantic and familial struggle.
Nate was aware that you can’t have it both ways: freedom and solitude, yet also the warmth and constancy and devotion of one person who is there just for you—and you for them. He’d loved having girlfriends, even if none, except for Jennifer, ever really lasted that long. At the time, each relationship had seemed long enough. They would run their course and Nate didn’t remember much consternation on either side, likely because what they had didn’t matter enough. It was fun—until it wasn’t.
Only with Jennifer did they both care enough about the other to cause pain, or rather for the pain to be the result of their uncertainty. Make that Nate’s uncertainty, which only became an issue once faced with a more permanent arrangement. Strangely, it was Jennifer who seemed the uncertain one now, or at least the one unwilling to give in to something less than what she needed, expected, or was worth. He missed her—so much—but they seemed to be at an impasse and Nate wasn’t sure if there was any way left for them that was strictly and irreversibly forward.
Still, that Nate should learn that Danny and Alicia were having a second child less than, what, two hours after the subject of kids came up in therapy felt like some kind of message from the universe. It was one without a conclusive answer or direction but maybe a purpose. And if that purpose was for Nate to end up sitting on a college campus bench in the near-dark quietly sobbing as the world spun happily around him, well, it was probably worth listening to.
He dried his eyes, then cocked an ear and tried to hear what the cool night air, the fragrant eucalyptus trees, and the splatter of stars above were trying to tell him. And if he listened very, very, very closely, he could make out a small, faint voice telling him, in the most loving tone imaginable, that he had all the power he needed to change the world—or at least the world he’d so tentatively inhabited for far too long. He just needed to trust, to believe, and to forgive. It was the only way.
Cody sat up, gazed at Nate, and let loose a toothy yawn. It was time to go home.