It was.
“No, it’s okay.”
Bill chuckled. “I’m going to tell you anyway. It won’t hurt anything, I don’t think. So Nancy’s pregnant, and it’s not my baby. I’m sure you can imagine, it was bad. I was pissed off, sorry for myself, crazy in love with her, hated her so much I couldn’t look at her, everything you’d think—but all at once, you know? I wanted to kick her out and beg her never to leave me. Marry her all over again and fly to New York City so I could murder that bastard. Just a real swamp. Uncomfortable.
“It went on like that for weeks. Nancy and me fighting, making up, having conversations that lasted for hours and hours and both of us crying or one of us yelling. I started to think that was going to be my life, one way or the other. Some swamp of feelings I couldn’t escape. But then one morning we were eating breakfast, May at the table in her high chair with Nancy feeding her out of a jar, and I just thought, Can I love her, or can’t I? Can I love this baby she’s carrying—this baby who’s going to end up looking like my wife, maybe smiling like my wife, or she’s got my wife’s eyes—or can’t I? And it wasn’t even a choice. I already loved Nancy, already loved May. Probably I already loved this baby. So what was I gonna do, walk out on them? See my daughter Wednesday nights and every other weekend and bicker with Nancy over alimony and how much school supplies cost, because the world says that’s what you do when your wife cheats on you and has another man’s kid?”
Bill sat down on top of the box he’d just packed and rubbed his hands over his knees. Kal kept working so he wouldn’t have to deal with the vulnerable openness of Bill’s face.
He didn’t want this. Didn’t want to be listening, shoving feelings about what Bill had gone through on top of all the feelings he already couldn’t handle.
Nothing to do, though.
“The thing was, if I did that, I’d still love her. I’d spend the rest of my life watching this baby grow up who could’ve been mine—my wife’s baby—and all because I decided I couldn’t love them even though I did. It wasn’t some decision to make.”
He crossed his arms, looked straight at Kal. “So I decided just to do what I wanted to do, which was love my wife even when she made mistakes, even when it was uncomfortable and hard. Love my kids, and be glad to get to do that. I knew once I decided, there was no turning back. I couldn’t decide three years down the road to get pissed off and resentful all over again. It was real simple.”
Bill wiped his palms over his knees one more time and stood up. “Anyway. That’s my philosophy.”
He took the tape gun off the table and started taping up the last set of boxes. Displaced, Kal wandered over to the box Bill had just gotten up from and sank down onto it.
“All this stuff,” Bill said, “is just what happened when I watched the news and figured out how much I love the world. Humanity. I ask myself, Can I love these people in Aleppo or not? There’s not a choice. I already do. So what can I do for them, what can I give them, how can I show up every day for them? I figure, maybe they unpack these boxes and it just looks like junk, like, ‘Don’t send us any more diapers, Bill, jeez.’ But if they tell me that, I’ll send them cash, or baby strollers, or whatever they say they need. It’s what I can do.”
Bill finished taping. He started carrying them to the front of the garage and opened the overhead door on one of the bays, presumably to load the boxes into his truck later.
Kal was grateful he didn’t seem to need him to say anything, because his head was a swirling mess.
He would have figured Bill was listening to conservative talk radio out here. Smoking cigars. Being irrelevant. But no. He was a garage philosopher, dishing out perspective while he packed up his Syria donations. Making Kal ask himself questions he didn’t want to think about, because Bill knew what he was saying—he’d been through some shit. He knew what it looked like when there wasn’t any decision to make because you’d already made it.
Kal was going to love Rosemary Chamberlain for the rest of his life.
He already loved her. He’d never met anybody he wanted to be around like he wanted to be around her, and it wasn’t going to stop. She’d go back to England and write her book, and he’d walk into the bookstore when it came out, pick up a copy, moon over her author photo on the back cover. He’d stream Bea’s movie on Netflix or YouTube or download some new app he’d never heard of that was the only place he could get ahold of it, watch it furtively in the dark, thinking about Rosemary, wiping away pathetic tears.
He was never going to stop thinking about Nepal. He loved Nepal. He wanted to ship his ridiculous love for Nepal to Base Camp in flimsy cardboard boxes—always had, and always would.
Bill Fredericks and his philosophy were inconvenient, uncomfortable, and intensely fucking annoying. But he wasn’t wrong.
Kal didn’t have a decision to make. Not really.
“Well, shit,” Bill said.
A white van pulled into the driveway, the name of a restaurant emblazoned on its side. The name seemed familiar; Kal was pretty sure there was a place in Queens called the same thing. It pulled to a stop, and Allie tumbled out the passenger door, all smiles and hair. “Daddy-o!”
Bill stepped toward her, wiping his hands on a rag hanging from the waistband of his work pants. “Did I lose track of the time, or are you guys early?”
Allie beamed. “Me and May didn’t want to miss out on anything interesting, so we made Ben release his death grip on the restaurant.”
Bill hugged his daughter. “It’s good to see you, hon.” As she pulled him down the drive to the van, he looked back and winked at Kal.
“Buckle up.”
Chapter 27
Kal couldn’t get Rosemary to look at him.
She sat directly across from him at the dining room table, the two of them smack-dab in the middle, Bill and Nancy at either end, Ben and May finishing up plating dinner in the kitchen, Winston and Beatrice to his left, Allie bouncing b
ack and forth with salad and drinks.