Just Fly Away Read online

  Just

  Fly

  Away

  ANDREW McCARTHY

  Algonquin 2017

  For my parents

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About Algonquin

  1

  I suppose if I thought about it I would have to say that I had a premonition when we were down the shore that something bad was going to happen. That’s not as bizarre as it might sound. I get these feelings sometimes. They come at strange moments.

  A couple of times a year the whole family piles into the car and we cruise down the Parkway to go to the boardwalk on the shore and play a little Skee-Ball and take a spin on the Tilt-A-Whirl—stuff like that. If it’s late enough in the summer we go swimming. The day is always a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

  “I just love breathing in that sea air,” my mother must say five or six times every visit. My sister, Julie, is very good at that pop-the-balloons-with-the-darts game, and my dad is generally pretty jolly and outgoing. This time it only took him until we were walking away from Steaks Unlimited to bring up his famous/infamous Jersey shore story.

  “Did I ever tell you guys about the summer after I graduated high school and I worked as a dishwasher a few blocks from here—”

  “At the Pizza Pub!” Julie blared out.

  “You only told us fifty times, Dad,” I said.

  “We love when you remind us of that, darling,” my mom said. Then she paused for a large bite of her sandwich. “Every time.”

  “All right, all right,” my dad groaned. Frankly, there really wasn’t much more to the story than that.

  Everyone was strolling down the boardwalk scarfing various greasy goodies—I was eating those famous cheese balls, Julie and my dad were splitting a Philly cheesesteak. My mom was having one of the famous sausage sandwiches—down the shore is the only time I ever see my mother eat what she would normally call “crap.”

  Julie then spied an arcade that had one of those machines with the silver claw that drops down and tries to pick things up. She spent considerable financial resources going after this ridiculous-looking hat. She came close a few times.

  Later, when she and I came back from a double go on that spinning swing ride—which I’ll admit is very childish but sort of a tradition of ours—my dad was standing in the sun waiting with that hat in his hand, beaming with pride.

  “It only took him ten tries,” my mom said. She put her arm around his waist.

  “Hey!” His voice sounded all fake offended. “It was only nine.”

  He handed Julie the hat, then held something out toward me. “And I thought you might like this, young lady.”

  It was a small furry thing, an inch or two long, attached to a little chain.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You don’t know what this is?” my father said. He shook his head sadly—my dad was really a very bad actor. “You have led a very sheltered life—we have got to get to the shore more often. This is a lucky rabbit’s foot. I won it for you at that pound-the-frog game.”

  “What’s it do?”

  “It doesn’t do anything. You put it in your pocket and carry it around and it brings you good luck.”

  I actually liked the idea a lot and went to put it in my pocket.

  “Gross,” Julie said.

  My hand froze. “Is it from a real rabbit?” I asked.

  “Of course not, Lucy,” my mother said.

  I stuffed it in my jeans.

  Shortly after that, I had my weird premonition. I was standing with Julie, waiting for her to buy cotton candy—the appeal of which I have never understood. I looked over at my mom and dad, who were nearby, leaning against the boardwalk railing and looking out at the ocean, still a murky greenish gray this early in the year, when I got an uneasy sort of feeling.

  I can never usually put my finger on exactly what’s wrong when this happens; it’s just this weird sensation that I get right between my shoulder blades—like the shivers, but not quite. That’s my spot, between my shoulder blades—it’s my Achilles’ heel. It’s a feeling I definitely don’t like, so I generally try to keep my guard up.

  After what seemed like a few minutes, but was probably only a few seconds, the feeling went away. By the second time we rode the Pirates Plunge, I had forgotten all about it. The day wore on. We looked at the weirdos shuffling down the boardwalk, we played too many arcade games, and late in the afternoon we walked on the beach and put our feet in the freezing water. When the sun started to sink over Buffies Baby Burgers, we headed north.

  As usual, my dad inflicted his classic rock radio station on us all, which, I have to admit, plays some catchy tunes, but only if cranked up to an extremely high volume. And so, as the sky grew dark and the exits flew by, the entire car belted out a song about a small-town girl and the smell of wine and cheap perfume and something that went on and on and on and on, and then another one about tramps with hot cars that were born to run.

  If I’m to speak truthfully, this happy little tale of family bliss was not entirely uncommon; we generally had a good time together—but this was to be the last one. The last one B.T.—Before Thomas. Before Julie and I found out our father had been lying to us for more or less our entire lives.

  That happened the next day.

  2

  My mother likes to say that I’m a pessimist. I am not a pessimist. I’m just not getting too excited or raising my hopes too high, so that when something bad happens I won’t be disappointed, I’ll be ready for it.

  But I wasn’t ready for this. Not at all.

  Or the way I found out, all of a sudden like that, after dinner, without warning. Then once I knew it, that was it, I couldn’t not know it ever again.

  It was a complete shock. Complete shock. For both my sister and me. Or at least it was for me. Julie didn’t act too shocked, but you can never tell what she’s thinking.

  We had just finished dinner out back—the first outdoor meal of the season. The weekend had been unseasonably warm for April—that’s the phrase they always use, isn’t it, unseasonably warm. The meal had been entirely pleasant. We had spicy shrimp on skewers, which I adored. Everyone liked them a lot, but my mom made them more often than she might otherwise because of my very vocal passion for them. Now, however, those tangy crustaceans will forever be associated with this horrific evening.

  Julie had talked a lot—for Julie—about her school play, and we even had some laughs at my dad’s expense.

  “The show is in two weeks?” he asked my sister.

  “Here we go,” my mom said with a smirk. My dad can’t remember anything without writing it in his appointment calendar. He still uses an actual book, pen on paper, as if he was born in the 1970s, which he was. He gets a lot of grief for it.

  “Next week, Dad,” Julie said.

  “We’ll be there,” he promised her. He nodded his head, as if lodging vital information he would take with him to his grave. “So what’s in two weeks?”

  “Really, darling?” My mom shook her head. She was sort of grinning, but maybe not entirely. “And you’re not even close to fifty yet.”

  “Oh, right,” he said, “it’s our wedding anniversary.” He saved himself by giving my mom one of his winning smiles, where he squints
his baby blues at her.

  After the meal, Julie and I cleared the table. Which, frankly, is a pain when we eat outside. Everything has to be carried to and from the kitchen. It’s the main reason I don’t like eating out there, that and the bugs. When we finally were done, Julie ran up to her room to listen to her musicals, like she always does after dinner. I was about to put on the dishwasher, but when I opened the door to the cabinet under the sink and shook the detergent box, it was empty. This drives me crazy. For some reason my mother puts stuff like empty milk and OJ cartons back all the time, so you don’t know that you’re out of something until you pick up the carton, and then it’s too late. For years I have been telling her to just throw it out so there’s no box there and that way we’ll know we need to get more. It falls on deaf ears. In any case, there was no dishwasher powder.

  I started to walk to the back door to tell my parents. It’s one of those doors where the top and the bottom can open separately; they’re called Dutch doors. Or so I’m told. I wouldn’t really know, of course, having never been to Holland. The top half, with the windowpanes, was closed, secured by the brass triangle thing.

  I could see my parents sitting around the table on the deck under the big pine tree, or evergreen tree, or whatever kind of tree it is. My mom was facing away from me; her feet were up on the rung of the chair my sister had been sitting in. She had her glass of wine in her hand—like she always does in the evening. She was saying something to my dad. He looked kind of surprised by whatever it was, though not in a bad way, just slightly confused. When I opened the door I heard her say, “And I think you’d be proud of him.”

  My father, who should have seen me right over my mom’s shoulder, didn’t.

  “Proud of who?” I asked.

  My mother pulled her feet off the chair, like I was the school principal coming into a room. My dad coughed in a weird way, as if he had suddenly choked on something he hadn’t eaten.

  “Nothing, sweetheart,” my mom said. She was nervous as she turned her head over her shoulder in my direction, but didn’t really look at me. “Nobody.”

  My dad’s knee started bouncing up and down.

  “Not nobody—obviously,” I said. “Dad would be proud of who?”

  “Just someone from work,” my mom said.

  She was lying. This made me really mad. It also scared me for some reason.

  “Bullshit,” I said. I’m generally not that into cursing. Of course, I went through the typical phase of swearing a lot when I was a few years younger, the way kids of a certain age do, but at this point I’m just not that into proclaiming that everything is a load of manure. This one just escaped.

  “Lucy!” my dad said.

  “You’d be proud of who?” I asked again, louder. I don’t know why I wanted to know so badly. I didn’t really care that much at first, but when they started acting so secretive, it made me kind of crazy. My father was looking at my mother. His eyebrows were raised, like he was asking her a question. I couldn’t see my mother’s face.

  “I’m exhausted by it,” my father said, with a big sigh.

  “Exhausted by what?” I said.

  “It’s up to you,” my mother said to him.

  The wind had started to blow and the tree branches above were creaking and groaning like they might break. That tree poking up through the deck has some very heavy branches and there is a lot of action when the wind blows. It provides a lot of shade, so you’re not forced to sit in the blazing sun, but honestly, I am not a huge fan.

  My dad was looking up at those branches.

  “Exhausted by what?” I said again.

  “Go and get your sister,” my father said.

  “Tell me what’s going on.” I wasn’t budging.

  “Lower your voice,” my father said. “Go and get your sister and I will tell you both.”

  My mother finally turned all the way around and looked at me. Her face was really calm. It freaked me out. I backed away a few steps and then I bolted into the house. I ran through the kitchen and the living room, and then I was up the stairs and throwing open my sister’s door. I walked over and killed the power button on her music.

  “Hey!” she shouted.

  “Mom and Dad want us out back. Now.”

  When we walked back out onto the deck, my parents hadn’t moved. My mother had turned back away from the door, facing my father. My dad was staring straight ahead, just past my mother. I wasn’t even sure he had noticed us come back out until he spoke.

  “Sit down, girls,” he said.

  We went around the table and sat in the same spots we always do—my dad was on my left, my mom on my right, my sister across from me.

  Then he told us.

  “There’s a child,” my father said. He made a point of looking first at me and then my sister in the eye as he continued. “A boy. An eight-year-old boy. He lives here in town, with his mother. And I’m his father.”

  Then things got really strange. It was exactly like on those cheesy reality shows when they “re-create” things. There’s a car accident in the remote woods, or there’s a person on an operating table, something like that. Suddenly the person leaves his or her body and floats up to the ceiling and watches everything from above. They see the emergency team operate on them down below in a desperate race to keep them from going to the light and remain instead among the humanity of this plane and all the suffering and heartache of this sorrowful world. The heroic doctor calls for the scalpel and says things like “We’re losing her, more suction.”

  That’s what happened to me the second my dad told us he had another kid. Up I went.

  Maybe because I was floating, I wasn’t sure I even understood what my dad was saying. It didn’t seem to make any sense. I knew what the words meant, but I couldn’t compute them. I had a brother? Who I didn’t know? Living in our town?

  After a while my sister said, “Oh”—which could have won the Academy Award for understatement of the century.

  My mother and father sort of chuckled a little at that, but there was nothing funny going on.

  “What’s his name?” my sister asked.

  “His name is Thomas,” my father said.

  “How old is he?” she asked.

  He had just said that. What was the matter with her? But at that moment I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell you how old he was either.

  “He’s eight,” my father repeated. A little more than half my age. This kid had been alive for most of my life?

  “What’s he like?” Julie asked. She sounded like a robot. Why all these questions?

  “Well,” my father said, “I don’t really know him very well. We don’t have much contact. That’s the way his mother wants it.”

  Suddenly I was slammed back into my body. “You have another family?” I blurted.

  “No, Lucy,” my mother said.

  I snapped my head around to her. “Let him tell me.”

  My parents looked at each other.

  “No, Lucy,” my father said slowly. “I don’t have another family. I had a child with another woman, but we don’t have much contact, any contact at all, really. Those are her wishes. They live in town. Occasionally I run into her. It was something that happened a long time ago, so no, we don’t see each other—or talk very often. But there is a child.”

  Nobody moved a muscle, not for a long time.

  “And all this happened after you were married to Mom,” I finally said, stating the obvious.

  “Yes,” my father said.

  You hear about the parents of some girl just like me getting divorced all the time. Then eventually you discover that one of them had been screwing around and the mom found out and there was crying and screaming and throwing the dad out and then the kids are shuttled back and forth, just like you always figured in the back of your mind that they would be, because everyone gets divorced in the end anyway, right? But this kid situation added an extra dimension to things, that’s for sure. And what the hell was
my mother still doing with him?

  “Did you know about this?” I stared at her. “When did you find out?”

  “Your father told me several years ago.”

  “Several years?”

  “Yes, Lucy,” she said.

  “How many years, exactly?”

  “About five years ago.”

  “Five years!” I heard my voice, and it was shrieking. I didn’t mean for it to be, but there was not much I could do about it. My palms were sweating.

  “And you just sit there like that?” I shouted at her.

  “Lucy,” my father said, “be respectful to your mother.”

  “Why? You weren’t.”

  “Okay, Lucy. That’s enough,” my mom said.

  “I can’t believe this. Dad screws some woman, has a kid, who we don’t even know about for most of our lives, and we’re all supposed to just sit here? Have you even met him?” I was staring at my mother.

  “I’ve known who they are for some time. I ran into him and his mother today. He’s a lovely boy, and that’s what I was telling your father when you came out.”

  How could she be saying these things? What the hell was going on? I looked over at Julie. She was just staring off into space. She was no help at all, as usual.

  “Are we finished?” I said.

  “Lucy, it’s a lot to take in. Why don’t we talk about it for a while,” my mother said, finishing her glass of wine.

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Lucy—” My mother’s voice was very soft now.

  “What, Mom? What?” My voice was not soft. I couldn’t stop shrieking. “Why don’t you just have another glass of Chablis and forget about it. What else is new?”

  “Lucy, don’t talk to your mother like that, do you hear me?”

  “No. Fuck you, Dad! You don’t tell me what to do.” I’d never said that to either one of them before. A milestone. I shoved my chair back hard across the deck. One of the big rules in our house was to always lift the outdoor chairs and not push them so that the wood didn’t get ruined. I didn’t care. My chair made a harsh scraping sound—I saw later that it had dug deep grooves into the wood that will never be gone.