A few minutes, then, crowding a couple more places onto a table that was a stretch for five, let alone seven, dishing up lasagna and salad in the kitchen, her grandpa pouring wine. But finally, she was looking across the table into Harlan’s twilight-sky eyes, focusing on him, on this, and saying, “I don’t get it. Why do you look mad? I should be the one who’s mad.” Clearly, her dangerously manipulative stage was going to happen sometime later than age thirty-four.
He said, “I don’t look mad. I look serious and determined.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Oscar muttered.
Dyma said, “Excuse me. What?”
Jennifer took a deep breath and said, “Well, as it happens, I’m pregnant. And I need to ask you for that job in Portland,” she told Blake. “With your company, I mean, if the offer’s still open. This is the part where I tell you that I’m going to need maternity leave in about six months, and also beg in an undignified way and tell you that I’ll take anything, and I’ll work harder than anybody else you could possibly hire, and whatever I have to learn, I’ll learn it, and you won’t be sorry.”
Blake had a hand up. “Hang on. Yeah, I can give you a job. I told you I would. You’re talent, and I want talent. But you’re pregnant? Wouldn’t have guessed that one. You know,” he told Harlan, “the NFL offers these sessions that cover this. Usually when you’re a rookie, because they figure the veterans already know. There’s a little thing called a condom. Could be a thought. Excuse me,” he said to Annabelle.
Jennifer said, “The condom broke.” Which was not something she’d expected to ever have to tell both her teenaged daughter and her eighty-four-year-old grandfather, not to mention her once-and-future boss, but there you were.
“Now, see, that’s just pathetic,” Blake said. “Technique, man.”
“Yeah,” Harlan said. “We don’t need to go into that much detail.”
“Maybe Dyma needs to know.” That was Dakota, of all people. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being a single mother, but it’s not the easiest path. And, hey, birth control fails. And sometimes, a guy forgets to use it. There’s that, too.”
Blake looked distracted. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
“Nope,” she said. “Not yet.” She smiled, slow and secret, and Blake got even more distracted.
“So,” Oscar said. “You’re pregnant, and Harlan’s the father.”
“Well, I didn’t know if he was or not,” Jennifer said, which was, whoops, her telling Dyma exactly what she’d been determined not to tell her. “Since I, uh, met Harlan a few days after I broke up with Mark. Which was extremely unusual for me,” she hurried to add. “Unprecedented, in fact. But it happened.”
“Mom,” Dyma said. “We get it. I was there.”
“So,” Harlan said, “she came to Portland a couple weeks ago to tell me all that, straight up, in case you’re wondering, which you shouldn’t, if you know her, and we got DNA-tested. Which was why she was with me when you called and told me about Dad,” he told Annabelle.
“Oh,” Annabelle said. “I kind of wondered, when she wasn’t there after that. Sorry,” she told Jennifer. “It’s just … you were so nice to me, and Harlan’s not exactly used to having other people around that he has to think about, so it would have been better if you’d been there. It explains why he looked so sad after we dropped you off, too.”
“I didn’t look sad,” Harlan said. “It was a rough day, that’s all.”
“His father killed his mom,” Dyma told Blake and Dakota. “Which is about the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard. They just found her body and arrested him for murder.”
“Oh,” Dakota said. “Well, that’s … awful. I’m sorry.”
Blake’s face had changed, too. He said, “Sorry, man. I didn’t know.”
Oscar said, “Excuse me.” Loudly, and everybody shut up. “Excuse me,” he said again, “but I still haven’t heard what happened with this paternity test.”
“Oh,” Jennifer said. “Harlan’s the father.”
A long silence, then, and Harlan said, “Which I only found out today, because Jennifer didn’t call me.”
What? She said, “You got the results the same day I did!”
“No, I didn’t. I got them this afternoon. I was in L.A. all week, doing this modeling thing. The one that got put off because I had to go to North Dakota.”
Annabelle said, “Coming out of the water with a surfboard. In slow motion, it’s going to be, with the water sort of dripping off him. Like, a single drop of water rollllling”—she dragged the word out—“down his chest. ‘So women want to lick it off,’ the producer told me, which was pretty gross to hear about your brother. And then pulling on his T-shirt in slow motion again, so everybody gets to look at his chest some more. For cologne. Are you sorry you’re pregnant, though, Jennifer? I get that, but it seems kind of exciting, too.”
Dakota said, “Mr. Darcy in the wet shirt, but backwards. I can totally see that. It’d work, too, on him.”
Blake said, “I think you’re straying from the plotline, darlin’.”
Harlan said, “I’m not sure why we can’t keep this discussion focused, but here’s the deal.” He looked straight at Jennifer, no humor at all in his deep-blue eyes. “I found out today, yeah, and I need to know—why didn’t you call me as soon as you knew? Why didn’t you talk to me?”
“Because I …” Her hand was shaking, holding her fork. Clack-clack-clack-clack, against the porcelain. She tried to stop it, and she couldn’t, so she set her fork down and put her hand to her cheek. “Because I thought …” Her face was working, and she couldn’t stop it. “You didn’t … say anything, and I thought …”
“Oh, boy,” Dyma muttered under her breath.
“Son,” Oscar told Harlan, “I think you’d better take this somewhere else. Whatever you came here to say—take her into her bedroom and say it. But I’m telling you right now, it had better be good.”
40
Blundering Through
When they got into the bedroom, which was about a hundred square feet, Harlan shut the door behind them. And Jennifer still hadn’t said anything.
He said, “Let’s sit down,” which would be on the bed, because there was no place else, but she shook her head violently, her arms wrapped around herself. Like it was too much. Like she’d held it together all this time, but now, she couldn’t.
Because she’d thought, as those days went by without a word from him, that he was throwing her away. That he was throwing this baby away. That he was the kind of asshole he couldn’t stand to think he’d become.
He couldn’t stand any of it. He got his arms around her, pulled her head into his chest, and held on. And, yes, that was exactly what his lawyer had just told him not to do, but what was he supposed to do, let her cry?