In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel (26 page)

“I don’t.” Adam had cut him off.

“It’s only natural to wonder—”

“I don’t.” Adam had lived fifteen years in the same house as Wyatt Zoellner and worked in his ice cream store since he was legally allowed, but other than putt-putt and an occasional game of darts, they shared almost nothing. His loyalty was to his mother, and it was her secret to reveal. “It has nothing to do with me,” he’d said and almost believed it; nobody could ever say Anna Zoellner’s bastard son wasn’t just as good at convincing himself of things as he was other people. Blissfully, a year later he was gone to New York and then LA, where plenty of people had parents they didn’t speak to for one reason or another.

Almost without thinking he’s driven to Santa Monica, a beach completely unlike the one an hour from his hometown, but a beach all the same. Weird how after all this time in California, he still associates the ocean with Florida.

He parks the car and walks to the pier, watches all the couples holding hands, riding the Ferris wheel, throwing balls into milk jugs on the midway.

He’s shared more of himself with Phoebe than any person he’s ever met, and in many ways, she knows him better than he knows himself. Now, his anger softened, Adam realizes what he knew from the moment she mentioned the man from Atlanta: He’s going to look at the photos and whatever Phoebe found on the Web. He is going to meet this man.

It’s nearly midnight when he gets home, but Phoebe is awake on the couch with the dog reading a heavy book called
Theories of Social Psychology
that she quickly sets aside.

“You’re right, sweetie.” She’s on her feet tentatively reaching toward him. “I had no right to do this.”

Telling her it’s all good, he finishes the embrace for her, inhales the familiar mix of vanilla lotion and Anais Anais. A solid thirty seconds before he pulls away.

“Well.” He sighs. “Let’s see what you found.”

*   *   *

A week later Adam is in the master bedroom’s ginormous closet, where getting dressed is proving unusually difficult. He tries and discards four different shirts before deciding on a Thomas Pink double cuff better suited for a wedding than a meeting with a possible parent. For balance, he swaps fitted pants for a pair of distressed jeans. His off-season hair has grown to a standard military crew cut, which he futzes with to no avail.

That Michael Shipman, who thinks he’s Adam’s father, has business in Southern California seems far too coincidental. But Adam knows so little about this man, there’s no point in calling him on the lie. Instead he simply agreed to meet at Michael’s hotel for a drink. Actually, Phoebe set things up.

Adam has spent hunks of the past week studying the pictures Michael Shipman sent in his letter. The most disturbing is a strip of images from a photo booth: Michael Shipman, probably a decade younger than Adam is now (with the same Roman nose, same square chin), and Adam’s mother, so young and impossibly radiant. In the pictures she’s smiling, really smiling, in a way Adam has never seen. Looking at it winds his insides like watch gears.

Coming into the closet, Phoebe straightens his collar. Apparently finding an outfit wasn’t all that difficult for her; she’s wearing a conservative navy dress perfect for the occasion.

“This is ridiculous.” He runs his hand over his scalp. “What am I possibly going to say to this guy?”

“Do you want me to cancel?” She takes his hand in both of hers.

“No,” he says, but pulls her in when she starts to leave.

Backing her against a wall of shoe cubbies, he kisses her hard enough to knock down a pair of red-soled Louboutins. Presses his body against hers so tight that he’d be inside her but for their clothes. She responds equally savagely, nails down his sides, teeth on his lower lip.

And he wants to stay in this closet with her forever. To never go back to Canada, never let Phoebe attend another class, never think about the outside world and people, like Michael Shipman, who inhabit it. Just the two of them among the boots and suits and dry-cleaning bags.

*   *   *

There are photographers across the street when he pulls up in front of the Four Seasons Beverly Hills. Though they’re probably waiting to catch Madonna, who’s performing at the Staples Center that night, one of them notices Adam giving car keys to the valet.

“It’s Captain Rowen!” A shuffling of feet and camera clicks, and for the first time in the eleven years he’s been a working actor, Adam is blinded by flashbulbs that aren’t part of a step-and-repeat on a red carpet.

“Adam, over here!”

“This way!”

“Is this your girlfriend?”

Two uniformed doormen rush from their stations to assist if necessary, but Adam holds up a hand indicating he’s okay. Her own face still hidden behind giant sunglasses, Phoebe nudges him forward. Adam smiles at the photographers, gives a quick wave before entering the hotel, where the paparazzi’s calls are clipped by the glass doors and ambient music in the lobby.

“I’ll be really pissed if I end up in
The National Enquirer.
” Phoebe laughs, and Adam almost forgets why they’re here.

Almost.

The Windows Lounge is lousy with people for cocktail hour, but Adam spots Michael Shipman instantly, tries to convince himself it’s because the man is looking expectantly toward the entrance and not because Michael Shipman is a mirror into Adam’s future. Phoebe squeezes his arm, and he loves her so much he wants to be stranded with her on a tropical island or in an Alaskan igloo—anywhere that isn’t here.

Seeing them, Michael Shipman crosses the room. Maybe he’s an inch or two taller than Adam, or it could just be that he’s wearing an exceptionally well-tailored suit. Adam accepts his outstretched hand and says his name as if he’s being controlled remotely.

“Phoebe Fisher,” Phoebe volunteers when Adam fails to introduce her. “We spoke on the phone.”

Michael leads them to a table he’s reserved in the corner, and the three of them slide into winged chairs, order a round of generic drinks—vodka sodas and gin and tonics—and the waitress sets a dish of nuts and olives in front of them.

“Well, this is a little awkward.” Michael Shipman smiles. It’s a nice smile, an incredibly familiar smile. If this dude really is his father, Adam can expect to age well. “But like I told Ms. Fisher on the phone, my wife saw you in
Living
, and we couldn’t get over how much you look like our son. When you mentioned Anna in the article, well, we did the math—”

“So your wife knew?” Adam says much more forcefully than the situation warrants. Under the table Phoebe rests her hand on his thigh.

“Knew what?” Michael Shipman is confused. “I met my wife years after I dated Anna.”

“Oh.” The nuts have a spice/sugar rub on them; Adam is looking at them intently enough to notice.

“I wasn’t married or seeing anyone else when I was with your mother,” Michael says. “Did she tell you I was?”

“No,” Adam says after a while. “She never mentioned you, ever.”

Something shifts in Michael Shipman’s eyes—deep brown eyes that aren’t like Adam’s at all, actually. “Well, what did she tell you about your father?”

“My mother told me absolutely nothing.”

“I see,” Michael says.

Adam feels the frozen rage building in his throat again.

“So why are you here now?” he asks. Phoebe tightens her grip on his leg, but he doesn’t care. “You had thirty-one years to find me, and now that I’m some famous actor you want money? It’s basic cable; it doesn’t pay that well.”

While this is true, it’s most likely irrelevant. Michael Shipman is wearing the same kind of pricey watch Adam’s agent does and he smells ever so faintly of expensive cologne.

“I’m not after anything like that,” Michael Shipman says gently, seems to want to reach out and pat Adam’s hand.

To say they look alike is silly. Adam and Michael Shipman look like father and son—it’s the wide cheekbones, the dimples. The hair on Adam’s head is the same dirty blond as Michael Shipman’s, and if it were ever allowed more than a few months to grow out, it would have the same wavy texture. Michael Shipman’s got the detached earlobes from eighth-grade biology.

“Then what, you need a kidney?” Adam asks. “Or this magical son of yours could use a piece of my liver?”

“Adam.” Phoebe squeezes his leg.

“I don’t know what your mother told you, but she’s the one who left,” Michael Shipman says, red splotches on his cheeks and under his collar, jaw (same boxy jaw as Adam) jutting forward. “I thought we were in love, and one day she was gone—no call, no note, nothing. I looked for her for months.”

Phoebe makes a sympathetic sound in the back of her throat, and Adam wants to leave her stranded on that island or freezing in that igloo.

“It’s not my intention to bad-mouth your mother.” Michael Shipman is visibly trying to gain control. “I’m only here to find out if I have another child in this world, period.”

This seems reasonable, Adam knows, but he’s seventeen and back in the car with his grandfather—someone trying to tell him what only Anna Zoellner has the right to tell.

“Look, Mr. Shipman, I already know how to play catch.” Adam’s using Captain Rowen’s voice, hungrier and more damaging than his own, and he’s saying the kinds of cutting things Rowen would say.

His napkin flutters to the ground as Adam stands and reaches into his back pocket for his wallet. He sets six twenties on the table, even though the bill is probably half that, even though Michael Shipman is on his feet, too, waving away the money.

“Please, I’ve got this.” Michael looks inconsolable in a way Adam will remember for the rest of his life, even when he’s older than his father is now.

“Really, don’t waste a second feeling guilty,” Adam says. “I’m
Living
magazine’s sexiest TV bad guy, my life turned out fucking amazing.”

Adam extends a hand to Phoebe, and for a sliver of a second she hesitates, desperate to apologize, to say something to this man. But her allegiance is to Adam, so she links her fingers in his, keeps up with his rapid pace as they make their way through the crowd back to the lobby.

“Wait,” she says as the doorman holds open the glass door.

Thinking she’s going to say they should go back, Adam cuts her off, tirades about how he owes Michael Shipman nothing.

“He’s just some guy who may have had a fling with my mother,” Adam says, loud enough that a few people at the reception desk turn.

“Sweetie.” She places her palm against his chest. “I was going to say you should let me get the car. You don’t want to deal with photographers right now.”

Nodding, Adam takes the valet ticket from his pocket, realizes his hand is shaking, heart beating so fast he wonders if he’s having a heart attack; perhaps coronary disease runs in Michael Shipman’s family? “Maybe you should drive.”

He waits in the entranceway until Phoebe is behind the wheel before ducking into the car.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t realize this would be so upsetting.”

He says nothing, and she drives in silence, does a decent job of shifting gears at the tail end of rush hour.

As she starts to make the turn onto Wilshire, Adam stops her. “Just keep going.”

Phoebe wordlessly takes Santa Monica West to I-10 East. At the junction with the Santa Ana Freeway, she looks to Adam. He nods, and they drive south as fast as commuter-jammed traffic will allow. Occasionally, he feels her worried glances.

Leaning his head against the window, he closes his eyes and thinks of his mother—selfless and sacrificing and giving up so much so he could have everything. His mother, who felt the need to keep Michael Shipman from him.

Twenty miles outside Oceanside, Phoebe says they need gas. Adam checks the fuel gauge, nods again, and they follow signs to an exit ramp and a Chevron station.

“It’s on the front passenger side,” Adam says, the first words he’s spoken in an hour and a half.

Stopping at the pump, she kills the engine and puts a cautious hand on his shoulder.

“Well, Michael Shipman seemed nice,” Adam says.

A choked laugh from Phoebe. “Yeah, he did.”

Her flat response strikes Adam as perhaps the funniest thing he’s
ever
heard, and he starts laughing and can’t stop, laughing so hard tears shimmy down his face and his stomach aches as if he’d done a year’s worth of crunches.

“Are you all right?” Phoebe asks, brows upslanted peaks of concern.

“I’m fucking amazing,” he manages.

Apparently unconvinced, Phoebe gets a restaurant recommendation from the attendant behind the counter. The place—one of those seaside joints with a name playing off the water—has rickety wood steps, smells of sewage, and looks as if it’s closing down even though it’s ten past nine. But there’s a full bar, and a waitress seats them by an open window overlooking the ocean and the glow of Camp Pendleton down the road.

Adam downs his first Jack and Coke like a shot, gets a second, and chugs that as well.

“Did you eat
anything
today?” Phoebe asks (ironic, considering how little she ate when they first met, when she was just another would-be actress).

Adam shrugs, and she tells him if he’s going to drink like that, they should get food. He’s way too knotted to eat but appreciates her custodial care, so he orders a chicken sandwich and a soda sans whiskey.

He sips his Coke, asks, “Do you think he’s telling the truth, about how things went down with my mom?”

Phoebe shakes her head. “I don’t know, sweetie.”

“I sorta figured the reason she never told me was because it was kind of bad—like she had a one-night stand or was raped or there were so many different guys she honestly didn’t know which one it was.”

“Would that make you feel better?”

“I dunno. But that guy we met, he … it seems like…”

“Like he might have been the kind of father you would have wanted?” Phoebe finishes because Adam can’t say it. Even thousands of miles from his mother, he can’t bring himself to betray her by speaking the thought aloud.

Clenching his eyes closed, he bows his head and nods in agreement.

Phoebe puts her hand on top of his on the table, and when he opens his eyes, she’s looking at him as if working out a complex equation. Opens her mouth, then closes it again. Finally she says, “I had an abortion once.”