I open the front door, walk into the house without knocking. Gillman and my mother are in the family room watching television.
“Hey, son,” Mom says. “Back already? I thought you wanted to stick around and spy on Jack a little bit.”
“It’s an eighth-grade dance, Mom. He made me drop him off a block away from school. I’ll live if I miss creeping on a bunch of thirteen year olds.” I slap the application to Empire Ridge Preparatory Academy on the coffee table in front of Gillman and my mother. “Now, do either of you mind explaining this?”
“That’s a Prep application,” Gillman says.
“No shit,” I say.
“Hank, a little respect for your father, please.”
“Gillman’s not my fucking father. He’s barely a father to his own daughter.”
Gillman stands up. I move toward him until we’re standing face-to-face. He’s my exact height but outweighs me by a good seventy pounds. For a guy who abstains from alcohol and caffeine, you think he’d exhibit a modicum of temperance with sweets and fried food.
“Debbie,” Gillman says, turning away from me. “I don’t have to stay here and take this in my own house.”
“Running away already?” I say. “Come on now, Gillman, I know you want this fight. I can see it in your eyes and that donut-stuffed face. You’re ready to go all Mountain Meadows Massacre on me, aren’t you?”
“Hank!” Mom shouts.
“It’s okay, Debbie.” Gillman waves my mother off. “I got this.”
“Sure you do,” I say.
“Why would you think I’d run away, Hank?”
“Everyone runs away.”
“Open your eyes, son.”
“Don’t call me—”
“Spare me the martyr routine,” Gillman says. “Look around you. I’m the only one who hasn’t run away. Your sister moved to Portland the day she graduated college. We’re lucky to get a Christmas card from her. You’re in and out of Jack’s life when the mood suits you, teaching him how to masturbate and French kiss but not teaching him the difference between right and wrong or what it means to be a Christian. Meanwhile, your marriage is falling apart and you spend months at a time in New York away from your family just so you can flirt with my daughter.”
“Excuse me?” Mom says.
“That’s an oversimplification of things,” I say. “And you know it.”
“What exactly am I ‘oversimplifying’?”
“First off, let’s just leave Lila out of this. She confides in me more than she’ll ever confide in you, and that’s your problem, not mine. As for Jack, if I didn’t have that talk with him, no one would. The kid was scared shitless. He was turning into an emotionally and socially dysfunctional freak. He was turning into you, Gillman.”
“Give me a break, Hank.”
“If you could only see yourself in social situations, Gillman.”
“I am plenty social.”
“No, I’m talking when you have to get down and dirty with the unwashed Gentiles. Seeing you with your fellow Mormons at a Catholic wedding reception is priceless. You guys all huddle together around one table with this panicked, bug-eyed look as if you’re witnessing an orgy.”
“To be fair, if it’s anything to do with you Catholics, I usually am witnessing an orgy.”
“‘You Catholics,’ huh? Oh good, let’s go there next. Let’s talk about you teaching Jack what it means to be a Christian.”
“What about it?”
“You fucking suck at it.”
“Hank!” Mom shouts again.
“Debbie, I said I got this.” Again Gillman waves her off. “Okay, Hank. Take your best shot.”
“You don’t want my best shot.”
“Try me.”
“Okay, Gill-man. First off, the next time you have a spare moment, open a fucking dictionary. Stop calling non-Mormons ‘Gentiles’. A ‘Gentile’ is a non-Jew. Mormons are just as much Gentiles as Catholics, you idiot. And I realize the Catholic Church is far from perfect, but an apostasy? My ass, you intellectually dishonest and morally hypocritical prick. Let’s not forget for the first thousand years of Christianity my imperfect church was a goddamn one-man show. If not for that millennium of kicking ass and taking names, there wouldn’t even be a Christianity for your church or anyone else’s church to break away from. Hell, I got T-shirts older than your religion. Suck on that fucking revelation, Joseph Smith.”
I’m short of breath. Face red. Pulse racing. Perspiration drenching my shirt. But I’ve won. I know it. I can see it in Gillman’s eyes. I can taste it in the sweat dripping down into my mouth like liquid vindication.
Mom abruptly stands up and leaves the room. Strangely, Gillman hasn’t budged.
“Have you said all you wanted to say, Hank?”
I wipe my brow with the sleeve of my shirt. “I guess so.”
“Are you familiar with the term putative father?”
“Should I be?”
“If I were in your shoes, yes.” Gillman nods. “A putative father is defined as the presumed father of an illegitimate child.”
Gillman knows I’m Jack’s father? Well, fuck. I guess the joke is on me, eh, Joseph Smith?
“When did Mom tell you?”
“The first night we went out on a date, and I didn’t run away.”
Fortunately, Mom’s complete inability to engage in subterfuge has lessened the blunt force trauma of this revelation. There are only so many ways you can bring characters into the story, make them interesting and necessary to the narrative arc, and then find plausible ways to drop the big reveal on them. Quite frankly, I’m a little disappointed here. Mom telling Gillman over a basket of breadsticks at a shitty Italian restaurant is rather pedestrian.
“Well, go on,” I say.
“You sure you want to hear this?” Gillman asks.
“It’s becoming increasingly clear that it doesn’t matter what I want.”
“A putative father registry is a state-level legal requirement for all non-married males to document through a notary public with the state each female with whom they engage in heterosexual sexual intercourse in order to retain parental rights to any child they may father.”
Gillman has practiced this speech. His words sound like they’re being recited more than said.
“The putative father registry is intended to provide legal recognition to the non-married putative father of a child, provided he registers within a limited timeframe, usually any time prior to the birth or from one to thirty-one days after a birth.”
“But all bets are off,” I say. “If I never even knew he was my—”
“I’m not finished, Hank.” Gillman’s eyes roll up into his head and then back, as if he’s scrolling down the page to the last sentence. “Lack of knowledge of the pregnancy or birth is not a legally acceptable reason for failure to file.”
I bite my lip in disbelief. Gillman has won, big time. He’s called my bluff. I won’t say anything to Jack, at least not yet, and Gillman knows that. I’ve been Jack’s age. The kid is an emotional and hormonal powder keg, and I refuse to be the one to light the trail of gunpowder.
“So that’s it?” I say.
“Hank, I’m—”
“You’re pulling the rug out from under me?”
“I don’t want to shut you out of Jack’s life.”
“Then don’t!”
“Answer me this,” Gillman says. “When’s the last time your mother had a drink? When’s the last time she took a sleeping pill? Where is Jack graduating in his class?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your mother hasn’t had a sip of alcohol or so much as one narcotic in almost three years. Jack is graduating first in his class. First! Do you know how proud that makes me feel? I messed up with Lila. I know that, and I hope she can learn to forgive me. But with Jack, I have a chance to make things right. He and your mother are the lights of my life. I know I come across to you as old-fashioned and weird, but I’m a good man. I don’t want to change your mother or your brother.”
“Jack is not my brother, Gillman. He’s my son.”
“I know he is, and I can’t begin to fathom what you’ve gone through. All I’m asking is for a little more time. You and I are never going to be father and son, and I think we’re both fine with that. But I’m not going anywhere, and I hope for Jack’s sake you don’t go anywhere either. Just let me be his father for a little while longer. I promise you there will come a time when I won’t stand in the way.”
Conveniently, Mom pokes her head around the corner and walks into the room. She and Gillman sit back down on the couch. I pick up the Empire Ridge Preparatory Academy application off the coffee table.
“Is he going to have friends there?” I ask, looking at just my mother.
“Yes, baby. Tons of friends. Almost half his eighth-grade class is going to Prep.”
“That’s good, I guess.” I hand her the application. “I know you don’t need my permission or anything, but I think he’ll be okay there.”
My stepfather grabs me by the crook of my arm. “We don’t need your permission, Hank, but we want it.”
A smile tries to fight its way through my straight-lipped visage, but it’s not going to fucking happen. I jerk my elbow free of Gillman’s fat, clammy hands. “Don’t get to thinking we’re picking out china patterns anytime soon, asshole.”