“That’s weird.”
“Yeah.” He paused. “He took the dog, though.”
Nina nodded. “Not a total loss then.”
Peter continued, “My grandmother, Alice, is a nightmare. She looks like Miss Havisham, you know, from Dickens, but talks like something out of a Coppola movie. My mom is great, proving genetics aren’t everything, but Aunt Katherine continues to be a strangely dressed homicidal maniac.”
“Wow, don’t hold back. Say what you really think.”
“You’ll see. My sister Jennifer is awesome—you’ll love her—but my cousin Lydia is a fiend in human form, despite being a genius. Or maybe because she’s a genius. She’s not as bad as her mom, but let’s call her challenging. OK, let’s get on with the chart. We have years for backstory.” He licked the last of the chocolate off his fingers. “But remember, don’t go near my grandmother without a shiny shield to look into. One direct glance and it’s masonry all the way.”
“Damn.”
“True story. Anyway, let’s press on. Draw another line and put a three.”
Nina did so.
Peter turned his head to see her piece of paper. “You could totally take my class. OK, we’re nearly done. Now you’ve reached my group; me, my sister, and Archie’s little boy, Henry, who is two. No one else has any kids, so that’s it for nieces and nephews.”
“Great.” Nina pushed the piece of paper away, but Peter pushed it back.
“Oh no, you’re not done. You need another horizontal line. I don’t have kids, but my older sister Jennifer has three, Little Alice, JoJo, and Louie. They’re nearly teenagers, and they are—drumroll, please—your great-nieces and great-nephew.”
Nina looked at him. “Wait, I’m someone’s Great-Aunt Nina?”
Peter laughed. “Yes. You are their Great-Aunt Nina. Which would be amusing to them if they didn’t already have a Great-Uncle Archie, and a Great-Aunt Millie, who’s younger than they are.” He pointed his finger at her. “And THAT is unusual, even to me.” Then he pushed his cup and plate away and started to roll up the chart. “I’m exhausted. Shall we go to the gift store? I hear they have paper clips shaped like rabbits and those old-fashioned pencils with all the colors inside one on top of the other.”
So that’s what they did.
After the shopping was over, Nina and Peter exchanged hugs, and Nina headed home. She felt anxious about a potentially angry brother she hadn’t even met yet and worried that, through no fault of her own, she had ruined someone else’s life. It was a whole new level of awkward, and she was someone who was pretty familiar with awkward. It had taken her previous record—the time she’d attended a Bar Mitzvah by accident when she’d walked into the wrong synagogue (Beth EL is not the same as Beth AM, in case you were wondering) looking for a friend’s wedding—and smashed it completely. She felt discombobulated, to use a word Liz liked, as if millions of voices had suddenly cried out in—no, wait, that’s Star Wars. She felt like she’d had a heart transplant. The original organ that usually felt stable in her chest, beating its way along and only occasionally skipping a beat (hello, Michael Fassbender), had been replaced by something that didn’t feel as though it had been installed correctly.
Nina told Phil the cat all about it, and he was horrified. “Your dad isn’t Richard Chamberlain from The Thorn Birds?”
She stroked his head and shook her own.
“Or Magnum, P.I.?”
Nina looked over at her wall. Phil wasn’t really saying any of this, of course, because he’s a cat and cats don’t talk, but his voice in her head was listing her dream dads. She had head shots of all of them on her wall; a tribute both to their stellar work on television, and to the hopeful and imaginative little girl she’d once been. The two he’d mentioned were there, but also Commander Riker, whose real name she could never—no, wait, Jonathan Frakes; Bruce Willis (Moonlighting, not Die Hard); Alan Alda in M.A.S.H.; and her personal favorite, Mark Harmon from St. Elsewhere, though his character ended up dying of AIDS, which was a bit of a blow at the time. For her, not him.
Throughout Nina’s childhood, TV had been her second best friend, after books, and she had watched what her nanny Louise had watched, which meant mostly ’70s and ’80s shows, not counting Star Trek: TNG because Louise was a die-hard Trekkie. She even liked Deep Space Nine.
When Nina had been around ten, she’d gotten it into her little head that maybe one of these characters was her dad, and it became a game, sort of. She liked calling it a game, anyway, because if she actually thought about how much effort went into researching whether or not the potential dads in question were in Los Angeles when she was conceived, that would seem weird. Once she’d clarified that they were, she would cut out their picture and stick it in a box she had for the purpose. The Dad Box had become a bit of A Thing for a while, because Nina had been an anxious kid, and had frequently needed to sit on the floor and dream about possibilities outside of her daily experience.
Not that her daily experience was dreadful; it wasn’t like she was ice fishing in the Bering Strait, or using her tiny child fingers to pick solder out of abandoned electrical products, but sometimes walking down the halls of elementary school had been terrifying. She had panicked a lot, and could still remember the time Louise called her mom and talked to her in a quiet voice about it. Then she’d hung up, turned to Nina, and said, your mom says breathe in a paper bag and tough it out. Then Louise had sat and rocked Nina on her lap, and she’d cried—little Nina, not Louise—and a few days later Louise had gone out and bought a laminating machine and laminated the dads. Nina would take one to school with her every day, rotating through the roster so none of them would get upset, but anyway, that’s not the point. The point is none of these witty, urbane, caring men were her dad. Her dad was just some guy who sounded like a total phallus.
Phil pointed out that the sins of the fathers are not the sins of the child, and Nina replied that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, then they both fell asleep on the sofa. It had been a difficult day.
Seven
In which Nina meets a brother.
As was often the case, Liz got hung up on the details.
“You’re the love child that’s going to derail the whole plot of their lives?”
Nina nodded. “I’m afraid so. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Of course not, but how often does one get a chance to be Jon Snow?”
“Does that mean I know nothing?”
“I think that was always the case; your illegitimacy has no bearing.” She smiled. “But maybe you’ll inherit a million bucks and we’ll be able to pay off Mephistopheles.” She pointed her finger at Nina. “You could be like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Characters in books are always inheriting a fortune.”
“It doesn’t usually end well. Think of Charlie Kane in Citizen Kane. Or Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady.”
Liz shrugged. “You’re forgetting the greatest family of inheritors ever, the Beverly Hillbillies. Elly May Clampett’s life was filled with joy. Joy and plenty of gingham.” She looked Nina up and down. “You could totally pull it off.”