Nick Hornby - Juliet, Naked

“Not a lot, no.” Not as much as he should, anyway, seeing as he was the father of a couple of daughters.

“And she flew all the way here to see you when she found out she was pregnant. There’s something going on with her.”

He finished buttoning up Jackson’s coat and kissed him on the top of his head. Of course, the one kid who he hadn’t fucked up was the one kid whose offspring he wasn’t likely to see.

He phoned Natalie as soon as Cat and Jackson had left.

“When do you think you’ll be coming to see her?” said Natalie.

“Oh,” said Tucker, and this time the word was airier. “As soon as I can get things organized here.”

“But you are coming? Lizzie didn’t think you’d make the effort.”

“Yeah, I guessed she’d think that. I know her better than she suspects. And she doesn’t know me at all.”

“She’s very angry with you right now.”

“Well, I guess this sort of thing stirs up all sorts of inner shit.”

“I think you have to get used to it, as your children start to have children. It makes them see how absolutely hopeless you were.”

“Great, I’m looking forward to it.”

It was only much later, after he’d put Jackson to bed, that he realized he didn’t have the money to go to London. He didn’t have the money to go to New York City, was the truth of it; Cat was helping him out for the time being. What would come after that was a mystery, although not one he was particularly anxious to solve. Nobody would let Jackson starve, and that was the only thing that mattered. He called Natalie back and told her he’d been unable to make child-care arrangements.

“His mother won’t look after him? Gosh.”

That “gosh”—so English, so poisonous.

“Of course she would, but…”

“But what?”

“But she’s away. On business.”

“I thought she did things with yogurt.”

“Why can’t yogurt involve travel?”

“Wouldn’t it go off?”

At least he could still feel the open, festering exit wound that Natalie had left, so that was something. That combination of bitchiness and stupidity was as hard to bear now as it had been back then.

“So bring him. I’m sure Lizzie would like to see him. She seemed quite taken with him.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s the school year, and…”

“Lizzie said you and Cat were breaking up.”

“That’s something that… that seems to have happened, yes.”

“So you can’t afford to fly to London.”

“It’s not that.”

“So you can afford to fly to London.”

“If, you know, push came to shove.”

“That’s exactly where push has come.”

“I can’t afford to fly to London, no. There is a little cash-flow problem at the moment.”

“We’ll pay.”

“No, I can’t…”

“Tucker. Please.”

“Fine. Thanks.”

Having no money wasn’t so bad, really, as long as he never did anything other than go for coffee with Fucker once a month or so. Adults, however, especially adults with several children, sometimes found themselves in a position where they needed access to a fund more bountiful than the bedroom change jar that departing ex-spouses had generously left behind. Natalie’s husband did something… Actually, Tucker had no real idea what he did. He could remember that it was something he disapproved of, or had belittled, anyway, so he probably did something that involved going to meetings, possibly while wearing a suit. Was he an agent of some kind? Movies? It was coming back to him now. Simon (?) headed up the London branch of some unspeakable Hollywood agency. Maybe. He was a no-talent leech, anyway, Tucker was sure about that. It was easy to feel superior to these people while you were the talent. But when you stopped being the talent, then they were just grown-up people with a job, and you were the hopeless case who was going to have to accept charity from them.

“Do you know people in London?” said Natalie. “Is there somewhere you can stay?”

“Yeah,” said Tucker. “I mean, she’s not right in the center, but we can come in on the train or whatever.”

“Where is ‘she’?” Tucker was pretty sure there were quote marks around the pronoun. It would be entirely typical of Natalie to put them there.

“It’s a place called Gooleness. On the coast.”

Natalie shrieked into the phone. “Gooleness! How on earth do you know anyone who lives in Gooleness?”

“Long story.”

“It’s hundreds of miles outside London. You can’t possibly stay there. Mark and I will find you somewhere.”

Mark, then, not Simon. And on further reflection, Mark might not, after all, be a no-talent leech. That might well be somebody else’s husband.

“Really? I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”

“Lizzie’s flat is empty, for a start. She and Zak are going to stay with us for a little while when she gets out.”

Was Zak her boyfriend? Had he heard that name before? The trouble was, there were too many tangential connections. Too many kids, too many stepfathers, too many half brothers and half sisters. He couldn’t name half the people related to his children, he realized. Natalie had other kids, for example, but who the hell knew their names? Cat did, that’s who.

“And do you still want to bring Jackson with you? Seeing as your child-care problems were completely bogus?”

“I guess not, no.”

So he was off to London on his own.

“When will we get there?”

“Ten minutes. But Jackson, you understand that we’re ten minutes from the airport. And then we have to wait for the plane. And then we wait for the plane to take off. And then we fly for seven hours. And then we wait for our bags. And then we wait for a bus. And then it’s maybe another hour from the airport to Lizzie’s apartment. If you don’t think that sounds like much fun, then it’s not too late. I could take you to your mother’s, and…”

“It sounds like fun.”

“All that sitting around waiting sounds like fun.”

“Yep.”

It hadn’t gone well, telling Jackson he was going to see Lizzie without him, and there had been many, many tears, followed by total capitulation. There had been times in his life when he would have paid for tears like these to be shed on his behalf: every single one of his other children had cried unstoppably when a mother had attempted to leave them in his care for a day or an afternoon or even for twenty minutes while she took a bath, and he’d felt wretched and useless every time. His own kids had been afraid of him when they were young. Now he had a child who needed him and loved him and felt anxious when he went out (because “out” was all it had ever been with Jackson, never “away”), and Tucker felt unmanned by it. Fathers weren’t supposed to engender this level of dependency. They’re supposed to miss bedtimes because of business trips and concert tours.

So he’d had to call Natalie and ask her to fork out money for an extra ticket, which made him feel even more inadequate than he had the first time. It was one thing not being able to afford to pay for himself, but fathers were supposed to be providers, as well as bedtime-missers. This father, however, was forced to depend on the largesse of the ex-wife before last and her leech of a husband.

They checked in, bought a small mountain of candy and a couple of dozen comic books. Tucker was feeling awful, anxious and sweaty; when he took Jackson for a pee he looked in a mirror and was alarmed by the complete absence of color from his face. Unless white could be counted as a color, which it probably could be, when it was this intense. He was almost certainly about to be laid low by flu, or pneumonia, or something, and he cursed his timing: in twenty-four hours’ time, he’d be too sick to travel. He could have stayed home without losing face, without being the worst father in the world.