His name was Chris. He lived in Madison, Wisconsin. My dad was his father. They used to see each other every six months; my dad rerouted his trips so he could come through Wisconsin and visit his other family: Chris’s mom and Chris.
Chris had seen my dad’s obituary in the online version of our local paper. It had shown up in his Google Alert, which made me think that he’d wanted (poor guy!) to keep tabs on my dad. His dad. His mother had died of heart failure, a year before. Of course, Chris wasn’t mentioned in Dad’s obituary, but we were. And we were listed—that is, my dad was listed—in the phone book.
The fact that this hot guy was my half brother took a while to sink in. I still kept expecting him to say that he was a distant cousin who happened to resemble my dad.
There was another weird detail I should add: At that point, I looked almost exactly like my mother when she was around my age. (I still resemble her, though less than I used to.) I looked like her in the wedding photo, and my newfound brother Chris looked like my—our—dad. And there we were, the happy bridal couple, straight off the top of the wedding cake, cloned and reanimated twenty years later. What can I say? It was hot.
I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but I was conscious of holding my body just like Mom in her wedding gown, my elbows tight against my sides and my hands curled at my chest, like chipmunk paws. When I made myself lower my arms and stand like a normal person, I saw Chris glance at my breasts.
Had my mother suspected the truth? Was that why she talked about everyone having secrets? I could never make myself ask, even—especially—after Chris entered our lives.
She invited Chris to sit down at the kitchen table, and she served him a plate of cold cuts left over from my dad’s funeral. We’d ordered way too much, and though the shock of Dad’s death was magnified by the shock of meeting a brand-new brother, the physical fact of Chris sitting in Dad’s seat and calmly eating mortadella made everything seem almost normal. Almost right.
My mother said, “Chris, we’re so sorry for not inviting you to the funeral!”
Why was Mom apologizing? Because she always did, just like women are supposed to. Everything is always our fault! Even though I felt sorry for Mom, I wanted her to shut up.
Chris said, “Gosh, why would you? You didn’t know about me.”
We must all have been thinking that it was Dad’s fault. But it was a little late to blame him.
Chris said, “I’m the one who should apologize.”
“For what?” my mother said.
“For showing up like this,” he said. “And I guess . . . for existing.”
Chris had a beautiful smile. We all laughed again. It was more laughing than Mom and I had done since Dad died.
“Have more,” my mother said, and refilled his plate without waiting for him to answer. I loved watching how he ate, appreciative and voracious.
Would my whole life have been different if my mom hadn’t said it was too late for Chris to start out on the long drive home? If she hadn’t invited him to spend the night?
What happened was going to happen. Chris and I stayed up all night talking. I don’t remember what we talked about. Our lives, our hopes, our fears. Our childhoods, our dreams for the future. What did I have to say for myself? What did I know? I was eighteen. A kid.
In the morning, Chris took my cell number. The next afternoon, he called. He hadn’t left for Wisconsin. He was staying at a motel not far from our house.
I already had a boyfriend. I’d gone to the senior prom with him not long before. I’d had sex with him a few times. He was the first guy I’d had sex with, and I wondered what all the fuss was about.
I wasn’t thinking about my boyfriend. I was thinking about how fast I could drive to Chris’s motel without getting a ticket.
Chris had told me what room he was staying in. I shivered as I knocked on the door, and I didn’t stop shaking as I walked into his room and shyly kissed him hello and looked for a place to sit. There was a rickety chair beside a desk. His clothes were piled neatly on the chair. We both knew I was going to sit on the bed.
He sat down next to me. The back of his hand grazed my breast.
“Come over here,” he said, though I was already there.
I can still hear him say it, and when I do, I feel breathless and my knees get weak, just like they did then. After that, I understood what sex was supposed to be about. Why people would do anything for it. Die for it. Once I knew, I couldn’t get enough. There was no going back. Chris and I couldn’t stay away from each other. I wanted, I needed to be there: that thrilling, intensely pleasurable, intimate place we could get to, together.
I have to be careful when and where I let myself remember being with Chris. I can’t think about it when I’m in public, certainly not when I’m driving. That same liquid desire runs through me. My eyelids get heavy, sleepy with longing. I close my eyes against the heat, and I feel myself melting into a puddle of pure wanting.
*
The night Sean got home from London, I put the boys to bed in Miles’s room. Nicky cried and didn’t want to go to bed because his dad was home. And (no one had to say) because his mom wasn’t. But Sean went in and stayed with him until he fell asleep.
I asked Sean if he wanted a drink.
“I’ve never wanted a drink so badly in my life,” he said. “A strong one. But I don’t think it’s a great idea to be smelling like a brewery when the police come.”
I was relieved when he called the cops. It meant he was taking this seriously. I hadn’t felt it was my place to call and report a missing friend. I’d been waiting for Sean.
I don’t know why they sent the state troopers, who, in our area, mostly do traffic stops. That’s their field of expertise. And the occasional domestic dispute.
How strange that the cops should have been the ones who looked guilty when they walked in. Sergeant Molloy had red hair and a red mustache like an old-school porn star. Officer Blanco’s lipstick (were female cops allowed to wear that much makeup?) was smeared. It crossed my mind that they’d been fooling around in the patrol car when Sean’s call came in.
Maybe that was why they seemed confused. At first they thought I was Sean’s wife, so why had he reported his wife missing? And then they thought that my house was Sean’s house . . . It took a while to get things straight: Sean was the husband, I was the friend. When Sergeant Molloy asked how long Emily had been gone and Sean had to look at me for the answer and I said six days, Sergeant Molloy shrugged, as if to say that his wife—he was wearing a wedding ring—was always taking off for weeks at a time without telling anyone. Officer Blanco gave him a funny look, but the sergeant was staring at Sean, as if he was wondering why Sean needed to ask me how long his wife had been gone. Or why we’d waited so long to report her missing.
“Sorry,” said Sean. “I’m a bit jet-lagged.”
“Been traveling?” asked Sergeant Molloy.
“I was in London,” said Sean.
“Visiting family?” Brilliant deduction, Sherlock. The accent was the tip-off!
“Business,” said Sean.
The troopers exchanged a long look. They’d probably learned in the police academy that the husband is always the first suspect. But they must have missed the class that explained what to do if the husband was on the other side of the Atlantic when the wife went missing.
“Give it another couple days,” said the sergeant. “Maybe she just wanted a little time off. A little holiday from her life.”
“You don’t understand!” I said. “Emily left her son with me! She’d never go away and leave him and not call or get in touch.”
“All the more reason,” said Officer Blanco. “I got three kids, and believe me, there are days when I dream about how sweet it would be to take a break, check into some nice, comfy spa somewhere, and have a little me time.”
I spaced out for a moment, thinking about my blog and about how I heard things like that from moms all the time. But Emily wasn’t like that. How could I make them understand that something was really wrong?