Of course it would be now that my father suggested a double date. I accepted, opting for mañana to tell him that Jeremy couldn’t make it—this night or any other.
I asked if he’d like to come for dinner.
“You mean at your place?”
“Sure.”
I waited for a delighted acceptance. Instead, I heard a wary “Would that have to be on tray tables?”
I said no worries! I’d found a table on Craigslist. We’d christen it.
“Can Kathi come, too?” he asked.
I said, “Of course she’s invited. This will be my chance to get to know her better,” hoping to imply that she and I had never had a conversation about his erectile dysfunction. I added, “I guess that thing you were worried about, her cooling off, was just a misunderstanding.”
Because we were speaking by phone, I couldn’t see what I hoped was relief on his face or, still better, his blushing over where Kathi’s entreaties had led. He said, preceded by a heh-heh, “Your old man hasn’t had much experience in the dating world, don’t forget. Kathi is definitely on board. I don’t know what you said, but it must’ve helped her express her feelings.”
Oh, God: busted as sexual therapist. I said, “She didn’t need any coaxing. She hadn’t realized that maybe there was a way to reassure you that her feelings were as strong as ever.”
On my end of the phone, I was making tortured faces that only a discussion of one’s father’s love life could induce.
“Is Saturday good for you?” he asked.
I said yes. I was free. Quite. Seven? Seven-thirty?
“You know your old dad. Six?”
“Perfect,” I said.
Now I could reassure Holly, who’d been calling more than usual, that in exactly five days I’d be seeing Dad, and under the right circumstances, I might confess that the Geneva thing had metastasized into a podcast featuring an actor pretending to be him.
I reached her in her car, in traffic, on her Bluetooth. She told me that she and Doug had talked to their friend, the famous attorney. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be a slam dunk.
“Which means what?”
“The intellectual property part. The slander or libel part. The invasion of privacy. Not much to go on.”
“Did you tell him the producer made up stories and had actors pretending to be”—I almost said, “Peter Armstrong,” but caught myself—“students and friends of Mom’s and Dad’s without a warning label saying, ‘The following story is bullshit. I totally made it up.’”
Then, gravely, Holly asked, “Did she?”
“Did she what?”
“Make it all up.”
“Yes! You know she did. She has no scruples!”
“Having no scruples isn’t actionable.”
“I didn’t have a year of law school like you did. I guess I thought ethics might count when it comes to ruining a dead woman’s reputation.”
Whatever show tune she’d been playing stopped. “Maybe there’s more to Mom’s story than you realize.”
“Like what?”
“It’s not my place to tell you.”
Another power play. Holly had the goods and I never would. So I took the plunge, trying to sound world-weary and in the loop. “Are you talking about Mom’s affair?”
There was a most satisfying gasp at the other end. “You knew? When did you find out?”
“I’ve always known. I sensed it. Call it intuition. I didn’t need anyone to spell it out for me.” Only the perpetrator himself, shocking me to the core at the Knights of Columbus Hall.
“You couldn’t always have known! I only found out the night before my wedding.”
Wait. What?
“Mom told me. Well, not in so many words. She came to my room and sat on the edge of the bed. You know what a goody-goody she was. I thought it was going to be the honeymoon talk. So I said, ‘Ma. C’mon. You think Doug and I have never done it?’ She looked puzzled, so I said, ‘This isn’t about what to expect on my wedding night?’ She actually laughed. And it was like—I don’t know how to describe it—like there was this sophisticated woman sitting on my bed laughing at how clueless I was. About her.”
“Go on,” I whispered.
“This was after the rehearsal dinner, so she’d had a few drinks. She said, ‘Don’t make the same mistakes I made.’ I said, ‘What mistakes?’ She said, ‘There are temptations around every corner. It’s not worth the immediate gratification.’”
“Mom actually said ‘immediate gratification’?”
“Maybe not, but something like that—maybe ‘not worth the thrill.’ Plus, she was in her party clothes, looking flashier than usual. Do you remember that dress? It was a navy blue taffeta or something that rustled—”
“Holly! What else did she say?”
“That Dad was a wonderful man.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he didn’t cheat on her. Or that she loved him even if she fooled around.”
“Or that she was sorry?”
“To me, it meant, ‘Your father isn’t capable of such a thing, but I am.’ Quite a thing to lay on your daughter the night before her wedding!”
“Did you ask her why she was telling you this?”
“No! I was so mad! I was getting married in, like, twenty hours. I needed my beauty sleep, and I get socked with that.”
And now I was the one being socked with new examples of my mother’s bad judgment, bad timing, unnecessary unburdening, and infidelity. “Did you ever ask her why?”
“Why she cheated or why she was confessing?”
“Both.”
“I tried the next morning, just the two of us in the breakfast nook. I said, ‘The stuff you told me last night—about temptation, about staying faithful to Doug—what were you really saying?’ She just cocked her head like she didn’t know what I was talking about. I said, ‘Don’t give me that look. You more or less told me you cheated on Dad. I need to know if your lover is going to be at my wedding.’ She said, ‘No, of course not.’”
And now Holly’s voice was all chummy. “But I have a theory.” She stopped there.
“Can I hear it?”
“You ready?”
I was, on one hand, entirely ready because I knew the answer, yet not ready because my sister would be guessing Peter Armstrong, so obvious from the podcast, and I’d have to confirm, deny, or plead ignorant.
But what I heard was “Lyman Roundtree.”
I repeated the name, laughing.
“Hear me out: the North American Scrabble Championship in Springfield? They drove there together.”
“So? They were colleagues.” Lyman Roundtree was a guidance counselor at Pickering High notable for the odd reason that he wore only brown suits, shoes, and ties, and had a very amateurish toupee. “What led you to that conclusion?”
“A letter I inherited.”
“Mom specifically left you a letter from Lyman Roundtree?”
“In a way. It was with her stuff—”
“What stuff?”
“Her photo albums. Her grading books. Cards and letters she kept.”
“We went through her stuff together. Why didn’t I see it?”
“I didn’t know what I had till I got everything home. You signed off on the albums because you thought it would be nice for my girls to have them. The rest looked like nothing.”
That was true. I remembered that gesture of mine, meant to seem auntly and altruistic, but it had more to do with the limited storage space in my apartment. “When did you find it?”
“What does that matter? At some point, when I was back home, I went through everything.”
“And you found a letter from Mr. Roundtree?”
“No. From his wife.”
“Saying what?”
“Saying, very angrily, leave him alone.”
“Holly, don’t you remember that his wife was crazy? She was in and out of a mental hospital. She thought every woman who ever talked to her husband was in love with him.”
“Why’d Mom keep the letter if the woman was crazy?”
“As evidence. It could be exhibit A in a court case if Mrs. Roundtree ever got sprung from the state hospital and came after Mom.”
“I think there’s something to it. I think he could’ve been the man Mom had an affair with.”
“That’s the best you can do—Lyman Roundtree? I’m almost offended on Mom’s behalf.”
“I think the whole idea of Mom’s cheating on Dad horrifies you. You don’t want to go near it.”
Hmmm. How to play this? I decided to plead guilty to protecting my innocent mother’s virtue. I said, “I think you’re right. I’m bending over backward to keep her memory . . . pure.”
“The podcast sure wants us to think she fooled around with some students. Do you also want to leave that unexplored?”
I said yes; to what end, what good, would it serve otherwise?
“Because if it’s true, Mom and Lyman Roundtree, it explains why she was fired.”
“She was never fired! She was teaching the whole time I was at Pickering High.”
“The union got it fixed. I can’t believe you didn’t know this.”
That again, the favorite/better-daughter competition. I couldn’t admit that I’d missed something so major, so I said, “It’s a little fuzzy, but now I remember Mom and Dad whispering about something job related.” I followed up that lie by asking who had fired her. Surely not Principal Maritch.
“The school board tried to fire her. In executive session.”
“You’re quite the authority on all things Mom.”
Her answer was a nonresponsive, overly breezy “I have another theory: Peter Armstrong.”
Uh-oh. “What makes you say that?”
“Dad getting arrested in his office? C’mon. Dad was angry at something. Does he live in Concord or still in Pickering?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I’d like to talk to him.”
“Why? What possible good would that do anyone? And who’s going to admit to a daughter that he fooled around with her mother? If he’s the one.”
“I’d be fact-checking. I don’t want to get sued for reporting something that never happened—”
“Report to whom? What are you talking about?”
“It’s public knowledge now, Daff. Our mother’s love life has been turned into a podcast. Which reminds me: Weren’t you going to overnight the yearbook to me?”
I told her no, never. I had enough trouble getting it back into my possession. It was in a secure location, locked up.
“I’ll need it eventually. There’s a lot of research still to be done, and I want the original source.”
Had I not caught on yet? “To give to Doug’s lawyer friend?”
“No! For my project!”
After additional backs and forths, purposely vague on Holly’s part, increasingly agitated on mine, I finally got a concrete answer: My sister, who’d dropped out of law school specifically so she’d never have to pick up a pen again, thought she’d witnessed enough dysfunction and scandal to write a memoir.