Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [87]
A short but intense electrical current shot through me, like the sizzle and flash of a flying pest caught by my parents’ bug zapper: Zzzap!
“When?” I asked, trying to sound casual for my own benefit more than my dad’s.
“Today,” he said. “In the hospital.”
In the silence that followed, I could hear the whoosh whoosh whoosh of blood pulsating through my brain.
“Jessie?”
“Did you talk to him?” I asked.
“Of course I talked to him.”
“Why was he there? Marcus told me his treatments were over….”
I was more than a little convinced that you had lied to me about your dad’s recovery, just so you wouldn’t have to face my constant inquiries as to his current health status.
“He’s done,” my dad said. “He had stopped by just to say hi. Apparently everyone who finishes chemo promises to come back when they’re healthy just to say hi, but no one ever does. Mr. Flutie actually did.”
I imagined him promising all the nurses, “I’ll shoot on over when I’m done with all this stuff. I’ll shoot right over….” It reminded me of something you would do.
“He looked a little thinner than I remember. He was wearing a Princeton baseball cap because his hair hasn’t grown back, and he’s afraid that it won’t. I tried to make him feel better by saying that I’ve been living with my chrome dome for twenty years….” My dad rubbed his head. “He was making the rounds, you know, introducing all the nurses to his son….”
“His son?” Zzzzzzzzap! Another surge. “Marcus was there?”
“No,” my dad replied. “The other one. The older one. Hugo. You know, I never even knew Marcus had an older brother. You never mentioned it.”
“I’ve never met him,” I replied. “He lives in a cabin in Maine with a forty-five-year-old divorcée.”
“Oh, no wonder Sam kept referring to him as ‘the prodigal son,’” my dad said.
(Your acceptance into the Ivies sealed your fate. Up to that point, let’s face it, it was up for grabs.)
“So what was Hugo like?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” my dad said. “Because as soon as Sam saw me, no one else could get a word in edgewise.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“That’s the interesting part,” my dad said. He put down his beer bottle, leaned forward in his chair, and massaged his bare skull. “He said Marcus asked you to marry him.”
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzap!
fifty-six
My dad tilted his head to the stars and whistled through his teeth. I looked up, too. The moon was a sliver shy of fullness, still on the safe side between sane and crazy.
“Why did you get married so young?” I asked.
“One word.”
Love, I thought.
“Vietnam.”
“Vietnam?” I hadn’t expected such a pragmatic response, even from my dad.
“I graduated from college in seventy-two. Your mother and I had been dating for five years, since high school. At that point it seemed foolish to put off a wedding.”
“Were you afraid of getting drafted?”
My dad rubbed his forehead. “No,” he said firmly. “Nixon was withdrawing troops. The war was winding down.”
“Okay…”
“I graduated from high school in sixty-eight….”
“The Summer of Love?” I asked.
My dad squeezed his eyes tight and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “Didn’t you learn anything at that fancy college? Sixty -seven was the Summer of Love. Sixty -eight was one of the worst years in American history. More soldiers were killed and wounded in that year than any other. RFK and MLK were assassinated. Student protesters shut down your alma mater for a week. Does any of this sound familiar?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Paul Parlipiano always talks about the enduring legacy of the Students for a Democratic Society.”
“Paul who?”
“Paul who?” I asked, incredulous. “I had the hugest crush on him in my freshman and sophomore years of high school, then he went to Columbia and came out of the closet and became this big social activist on campus….”
My dad signaled his boredom by blowing into his empty beer bottle, making a low toot like the call of a distant ship. It was time for his story, not mine, so I shut up without even telling him that it was indeed Paul Parlipiano, my