He was silent. I pressed, “Don’t you?”
He hung his head and stared at the woven carpet, a braided mix of teals and grays. Another item Mom and I had selected from the Anthro catalog a few years ago when we decided to redecorate most of the house to celebrate her promotion to the Dr. Jefferson Reynolds Chair of Art History at Bellwether University. This was a few months before my discovery of The Shoebox.
“Don’t you?” I said for the third time.
“Of course I do. That’s why I’m here now.”
“Three years too late.” Sixteen years too late.
“Haven’t you ever heard of better late than never?” he said in a sheepish tone.
I looked away.
“I was kidding,” he added.
“I know,” I said. “I just didn’t find it that funny.”
He let out a loud, awkward whistling sound. “Fair enough. But I’m here now. So can we at least …” He trailed off.
“At least?”
“At least talk. I want to get to know you.”
I cocked my eyebrows in a dramatic fashion. “Well, that’s a tall order, Mr. Oliver.”
He groaned. “Please don’t call me that.”
“I’m not going to call you ‘Dad.’” The word “Dad” left a bitter taste in my mouth. Like black coffee or dark chocolate—something that tasted a bit off now, but I knew I could learn to like if I worked at it. I swallowed a few times.
“Of course,” he said. “I’m not asking you to. Just, please don’t call me Mr. Oliver. Mr. Oliver is …” He paused. “My father.”
“Right,” I said, and suddenly felt like a huge asshat.
“The one who’s dying.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. “Sorry” was a free pass of a word. It cost nothing and bought you time.
“I wish you could’ve met him when he still had his wits about him.”
Something inside me stirred and I sank down into the white leather chair. Mom was a big fan of the type of furniture that envelops you and swallows you whole.
“It’s a big regret of mine,” he continued. “The second I found out about you, I should’ve fought harder. I should’ve begged Lena to let me introduce you to my family. Taliah—” He paused again. “Can I call you that?”
I nodded.
“You have a family in Oak Falls, Taliah. They would love to get to know you.” He tapped his fingers against his leg. I’d watched so many videos of him playing the guitar with those fingers. “They deserve to get to know you.”
“Like how I deserved to get to know you?”
“Yes.”
I stood back up. I brushed my hands against my acid-wash jeans, pressing out imaginary wrinkles. “I just don’t get why you’re here now.”
A loud clanking sound came from the kitchen. Then a rustling, and Harlow poked her head into the living room. “Sorry about that. Ignore me.” Before I could beg her to stay with us, she scurried back into the sanctuary of the kitchen.
“My father is dying,” he said, his voice registering in a lower octave than before. It reminded me of the tonal quality he used to sing “Your Life in the Rain,” one of his band’s most popular songs. It was supposed to inspire the listener to feel nostalgic and melancholy. But it usually made me feel furious.
How dare you try to break my heart? I’d want to scream when listening to the track. You don’t have the right.
“Your grandfather,” he added as if he wasn’t sure I would be able to piece together the connection. “And I don’t know.” He sighed and tugged at his hair. “The whole thing has really done a number on me.”
“Right,” I said softly. “Like, let me guess? It made you realize how fast life goes. Made you want to focus on what really matters.”
“Goddamn. You remind me so much of your mother. That biting wit.”
I shrugged. “She did raise me.”
“Taliah,” he said slowly, stretching my name out like it was something to savor. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“I didn’t realize we were fighting.”
“You know what I mean.”
I didn’t say anything. I focused on a framed photograph of Mom holding nine-year-old me on her shoulders on a trip we’d taken to Cambridge. We were dressed in matching ruby red wool sweaters. I was wearing a funny-looking brown corduroy beret. She’d been invited to give a series of lectures at Harvard on Ed Ruscha. It was a big deal, I remember, because she’d recently finished up her doctorate and this was one of the first prestigious speaking engagements she’d landed.
When I was first born, Mom had been a working artist. She’d actually had some of her sculptures shown at a few prominent galleries in New York. The showings had even garnered some favorable write-ups in big-time publications like the Village Voice. But before I turned two, she’d enrolled in graduate school with the intention of earning her doctorate. And ever since she’d earned it, she hadn’t publicly shown her artwork. Not once.
I studied the photograph some more and zeroed in on her knowing wide brown eyes. I wondered what she would think of the situation currently unfolding in our living room.
I felt like a traitor.
I felt impossibly angry at her.
And I felt confused. My heart pulling me in one direction, my head pulling me in the other. There was a tectonic shift happening inside of me.
“I’m just going to come out and say it,” Julian announced. “That’s one thing I’ve learned over the years. To be direct.”
I frowned. That seemed like such a flimsy thing to have taken away from years of experience in the music industry. But I was curious, so I turned my attention from the photograph and back to him. “Okay.”
“I know this is a pretty wild and crazy idea, but I want you to come with me to meet your grandfather before he passes.”
I blinked. “What?”
“You heard me. I want you to come to Oak Falls with me right now. It’ll be a short trip. But it will give us a chance to get to know one another. And a chance for you to meet your aunts, cousins, and grandmother. And of course, your grandfather.”
I’d frequently fantasized about meeting my father. Even before I had the slightest inkling that my father was Julian Oliver. But my fantasies had never included the extended family that was likely to come with discovering the other half of me. Maybe that thought had never crossed my mind because most all of Mom’s extended family lived in Jordan. Or maybe my brain had never processed the fact that of course, even rock stars have mothers and fathers and siblings.
He broke the uncomfortable silence with a question. “Do you play?”
“What?” I said, startled. I followed Julian’s eyes to the piano that sat near the bay window in the living room.
“Oh. Yeah. But you know that.”
“Huh?”