That we were capable of it.
“I stole your car,” I said, because that seemed like as good a way as any to put an end to this father-daughter bonding session before it started.
“Oh,” my father replied, blinking rapidly. “I thought maybe I forgot where I parked it.”
That nearly startled a laugh out of me. It was comforting to know that the absentminded professor wasn’t just forgetful when it came to pesky little details like my birthday, my age, and when and where he was supposed to pick me up.
“I got you a new phone.” With an awkward little smile, my father turned back toward the counter and then handed me a new cell phone. “I remember you said you broke yours.”
“A month ago. I broke that one a month ago.” I hadn’t meant to say that out loud, and when the smile faded from his face, I wanted to kick myself. My father was what he was, but at least he was trying.
At least he wasn’t evil.
At least he’d stayed.
“I mean, thanks,” I said, taking the phone. “And sorry about the car.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Want to tell me where you were today?”
I tried to remember the last time he’d asked me a question that direct, but couldn’t. “I actually went by the university,” I said. “I saw part of your lecture.”
The expression on his face wavered, and for a second, I thought he was going to laugh, or cry, or both. Instead, he shrugged.
“Nothing you haven’t seen before, Kali.”
He hesitated, ever so slightly, when he said my name, and I couldn’t help hearing her say it.
Kali, baby. Kali-Kay.
I turned toward the sink and made a show of washing my hands. I waited for my father to say something else, and I told myself that if he asked, I’d tell him.
I’d tell him everything.
This was a game I played, one I always, always lost. If he asks me why there’s blood on my shirt, I’ll tell him. If he asks me where I’m going, I’ll tell him. If he asks why I don’t have any friends, or if I want to go out to dinner, or if I’m doing okay—I’ll tell him.
In the past few years, I’d made those bargains with myself—and with the universe—a million times. If, if, if—and it never came to anything.
He never asked.
Until now.
“What’s going on with you, Kali? You seem …” He trailed off, at a loss for words—clearly an unusual experience for a man known for giving eloquent lectures. “Are you okay?”
“No.” I hadn’t meant to say the word, but fair was fair. He’d asked. All those years, all those conditional statements, and now, he’d finally asked. “I saw my mother today.”
For a moment, he was silent. He wrinkled his forehead, like whatever language I was speaking, it wasn’t quite English. “Your mother?” he repeated finally.
“Contributor to half of my gene pool. About yea tall.” I raised my hand to demonstrate. “Looks a little bit like me, only prettier.”
“Kali, your mother—I’m sure it wasn’t her.”
If only that were true.
“This woman’s name was Rena. Rena Malik.”
I could tell by the look on his face that he knew that name, knew her.
“That was her name,” I said softly. “Wasn’t it?”
It was a funny thing not to know about your own mother, but since my father and I didn’t talk about her, I’d never actually known her name.
“Rena,” my father said, like she was standing right there in the kitchen with us, an ever-present ghost.
“Rena Malik,” I said again. “I guess she never took your last name.”
“We weren’t married,” my father said absently.
“You weren’t?”
I don’t know why that surprised me, but I guess I’d always just assumed that they were. My father wasn’t the type of guy to have a kid out of wedlock.
“Kali, your mother and I weren’t … together.” My father chose his words very carefully. “She moved in with me after you were born, but the two of us were never … that is to say …”
If I hadn’t wanted to hear my father give a lecture on sexual selection, I certainly didn’t want to hear a play-by-play of my own conception, via a one-night stand.
“Where did you see her?” With that question, my father seemed to gain his composure—and an intensity that I hadn’t heard anything but academia bring out in him in a very long time.
“She didn’t see me.” That wasn’t exactly what he’d asked, but it wasn’t like I could tell him that I’d seen my mother in Paul Davis’s basement lab.
“Okay,” he said. “Good.”
“Good?” I repeated.
“Your mother,” he said. “Rena—she … she’s not the motherly type, Kali.”
“And you’re the fatherly type?” I asked him. He blanched.
“Fair enough,” he said after a moment. “I know I’m not perfect, but—your mother didn’t leave, Kali.”
Of all the words he might have said, those were the last ones I was expecting.
“What?”
She didn’t want us, and she left. That was what he’d told me for as long as I could remember.
“I left. I left her, and I took you with me.”
I tried to imagine a world in which my father would have volunteered to be a single parent. I tried to imagine what could possibly have compelled him to do a thing like that.
The tests. The secrets. The games.
It was all hovering right out of reach, my memory hazy and incomplete.
“What did she do?” I asked, my voice hoarse, my hands shaking.
My father turned, busying himself with something at the counter. “It was a long time ago, Kali.”
Can you say gun? a voice whispered from somewhere in my memory.
“What did she do to me?” I asked, my body running cold, my muscles hardening to stone.
Sit still, Kali. Sit so still.
Time for my shot.
A possibility occurred to me, one I should have thought of much, much sooner. One that made sense of the splinters I’d seen of my own past, one that answered every question I’d ever had about why I was the way I was.
Maybe they’d made me that way.
I’d spent my entire life thinking that maybe my mother was like me, that maybe my condition was hereditary, but what if it wasn’t?
My father was a scientist.