House of the Deaf. Lamar Herrin

      Annie let out a savvy, mock-incredulous, half-guffawing laugh. “Then who is the father?”

      “One of four,” Patty replied.

      The three or four feet separating them suddenly seemed like inches to Annie. She lay back and closed her eyes.

      “You don’t believe me,” Patty stated flatly.

      “You don’t believe yourself.”

      “Mike Conklin, remember him?”

      “One of the four?”

      “The longest shot. Brian’s next to the longest, but he’s ahead of Mike, so that should make him feel better. Then there’s—”

      “I don’t want to know,” Annie cut her off.

      “What’s the difference? They’re all like little boys. They shoot off in you, then run and hide and wait to see which one’ll get caught with his pants down. Brian was always slow to zip up, so it’s Brian who’s running around trying to find his kid.” Patty gave a snorting laugh. “Lizzie’s mine. She’s got four fathers, which is the same as having none. I’m all she’s got.”

      Word for word, Patty’s breath was in her ear, and Annie opened her eyes. She said, “I knew you back then. You weren’t sleeping with four boys at the same time. I would have known if you were. Mike Conklin went to our church. I went out with Mike Conklin, not you.”

      “Only once. Like I said, a long shot. You jealous?”

      “Wherever you’re coming from, Patty, go back. Start again. DNA tests will tell you who Lizzie’s father is—”

      “She’s got four! It’s a goddamn miracle, a freak of nature! I’ll have to explain it to her some day.”

      “Brian’s her father.”

      “For the record.”

      “That red hair, that dimple . . .”

      “Because of some red hair and a dimple, Brian gets to be the father? No fucking way!”

      “No,” Annie said, “because one of his spermatozoa got to your ovum at the optimum time and nobody else’s did. Those little sperms and those little ova have a mind of their own.”

      “Smart-ass college kid,” Patty muttered.

      “You never fucked Mike Conklin. Admit it.”

      “He tried to roar and beat his chest when he came. Don’t quite know what he was trying to prove.”

      “Not Mike Conklin.”

      A car drove in and parked beside Annie’s in the dirt lot just behind the row of trees. Patty stiffened beside her and didn’t look back, but Annie could see that there was a couple in the car, the woman with a blond bouffant head of hair and the man with his dark hair slicked back. They were smoking and listening to some twangy country music; then they cut the motor and the music off and Annie heard their own twangy voices, the woman’s querulous and high-pitched and the man’s close to a snarl. They’d come here to look at the lake and have their argument. They could have had it sitting in the back booth in some rancid roadhouse, but they’d decided on the lake. If they stuck to type, they would never get out and sit by the water.

      When had she become such a snob?

      Patty wasn’t waiting around. She’d woken Lizzie, who started to cry, like a bitter, morose commentary on the whole afternoon. With quick, practiced motions, Patty changed Lizzie’s Pamper, whipping her daughter around. She made no attempt to fold the blanket. She stuffed it and everything else into the bag. The wet Pamper she threw at a trash can up by the trees and missed. She didn’t go back to make good on her toss; neither did Annie. The arguing couple settled their differences long enough to regard the three of them with mutual hostility as they got into the car. Patty gave them their hostility back, and if she hadn’t had the still sleepy Lizzie crying in her arms would probably have gone up to their window and demanded to know what their fucking problem was.

      It was the old problem, getting older by the minute.

      The heat was all over them now.

      Annie and Patty got into the car and ran the air conditioner to the top.

      Tracy Chapman. Demanding one reason to stay here. Just one, and it better be good.

      At a McDonald’s, coming back into town, Patty asked for a Big Mac and some fries. They pulled up to the order station with its menu and mike only to discover that the drive-through service was closed for repairs. Annie parked and went in to bring out the food, and while she was standing in line she had a presentiment. She got back into the car, handed over the fries, the Big Mac and the Coke, and Patty was in an entirely different mood. She was wistful, almost in tears. Lizzie seemed to have been mastered by her mother’s mood and was quiet. “Let’s hear it,” Annie said.

      “Your father called. He said he was all right. He said he was taking a break. He didn’t want you to worry. Then he said he hoped your exams went well and your summer plans were working out. When he asked who I was and I told him he figured it out and said he hoped your homecoming wasn’t a disappointment. He said he loved you. He wasn’t crying, but he was sort of spaced and he forgot he was talking to me. He promised one day before long you’d be back together again. But he said ‘we.’”

      Patty stared at Annie, confronting her through her near-tears. “You don’t know how lucky you are to have parents like that,” she said. “You just don’t know. Your mother calls, then your father does, and what do they want? They want the same thing. They want you with them. I mean it, Legs. Where do you get that kind of luck?”

      Annie drove her friend back to her walk-up, where Brian wasn’t waiting for her. No one was. Then she drove away.