Justin Tussing - Vexation Lullaby

She didn’t turn toward me, but I watched her lips pucker.

“I’m not kidding.”

“Stop,” she said.

“You mean stop the car?”

“No, stop saying impulsive things.”

We were west of the Appalachians. A band of maples and small oaks crowded the highway. Every so often there’d be a break in the trees and we could glimpse the patchwork of fields around us. The landscape was neither grand nor inspiring, but it was pretty enough. I tried to make a point to take it in, to be open to it.

Had I been saying impulsive things? Perhaps, like Cross, I contained myriad selves.

“What if I’m serious?”

“That’s not fair to me, Arthur. If you don’t go, you’ll probably regret it, then you’ll regret meeting me. I don’t want that responsibility.”

I drove another mile.

“You asked me to take you to a show, and I did, as a favor.”

“Don’t make everything into commerce.”

I would bleed before I knew I was cut; that’s how sharp she was.

“For a while now I’ve felt as though the world owed me a reversal of fate, yet I’ve been the one unwilling to accommodate change.”

“Arthur, are you trying to make me dizzy again?”

The highway unfolded before us, the laziest of rivers.

“I guess I need to ask you a question.”

I turned to catch her face. I’d seen her excited before and, because of her health problems, I’d seen her scared, but I’m not sure I’d yet spotted happiness.

Rosalyn turned up the car’s fan. “Don’t drag this on forever. Enough preamble.”

“Tonight, would you not go to the show with me?”

She bit her finger. “Wait! Do you mean you don’t want me to go, or you don’t want either of us to go?”

We flew over a little creek and the glimpse of moving water spurred me on.

“Neither of us goes.”

Rosalyn reached over and squeezed my forearm. “Promise you’re not trying to make yourself into a martyr.”

“Martyrs are selfless. That’s not my modus operandi. I’m fundamentally selfish.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Arthur.”

“How does The Holy Screw end?”

She turned her face from me. “You can never read that book. I forbid you.”

I held up my phone. “Tell me or I’ll look it up right now, while exceeding the speed limit.”

“You’re bluffing.”

I started typing into the search bar.

Rosalyn snatched my phone. “Ruben goes into cardiac arrest and dies in her bed. It’s very sad.”

“Oh.”

“Plus there are complications.”

“Meaning?”

“She’d snuck him into a convent.”

“I believe I’ve been waiting to meet you for a long time.”

We traveled two more miles into Tennessee.

“That’s a very nice thing to hear.”

“Can I say something else?”

“You may.”

“I think I needed to meet you more than you needed to meet me.”

“Oh, Arthur, that’s your narcissism talking.”

“But still.”

Peter took a shower. He washed his hair twice to try to get rid of the smell. He dressed in his boring clothes, brushed his boring teeth. Looked around the room twice to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind.

There was another knock on the door.

Peter undid the bolt and Cross walked in, shaking his head. “In the fall of ’75, someone drove a plumbing-supply van into one of my old cow pastures. He set up an orange pup tent and this chimney-looking thing he claimed was a telescope. For the most part, he kept to himself. Sometimes he’d come over to the house and ask to borrow my phone. He wore his hair slicked back with Vaseline and parted just above his right ear. He looked like an IBM engineer in the midst of a bender. He was always carrying some Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback — judging by the covers they might have been titled Nympho on Mars .”

The amateur stargazer, Peter knew, was none other than his own absent progenitor, the guy his mother referred to as the Scientist. Peter had first uncovered his name flipping through a calculus workbook Judith was using to shim up a wobbly electric range.

“When someone told me there was a girl in his tent, my first thought was she must be a robot.”

“Where was your farm?

“New York. A place called Round Hill.”

“The guy with the telescope was Lawrence Brand.”

“You resemble him a little bit. You’re both. .” Cross made his hand into a fist.

“Violent?”

“Tight.”

“I’m working on that.”

Cross leaned his hip against the edge of the dresser. “I’m not your father.”

“I never thought you were.”

“Alistair has never quite believed me.”

“He thinks you went to a lot of trouble getting me out here.”

“And how do you see it?”

“Maybe you were curious about me, but I think I was bait.”

“I used to love you.”

Peter felt his heart grow heavy. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“I was lost when I first met you. Music didn’t make sense to me. I had too much money and too many friends. You would go on these pointless walks and I’d tag along for something to do.” Cross bent over and lifted Peter’s bag. “Most people think that if you save a person’s life, then that person is indebted to you forever, but in some cultures if you save someone’s life, you become responsible for them, like their guardian. Isn’t that interesting?”

“I didn’t save your life.”

“You didn’t save my life when ?”

Peter reached out a hand and took back his bag. He pushed past the singer and out into the hall. The doors of the elevator yawned open in perfect choreography and he stepped inside. He felt free.

Before the doors closed, Cross slid in beside him. “Are you just going to go back to Buffalo?”

“Rochester.”

The car descended in its track.

“Did you ever love Judith?” Peter asked.

Cross paused. “That’s harder to say.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“It’s strange how I can remember you, but you can’t remember me. I wish I could give you something that could make you remember.”

“I promised someone I wouldn’t take anything from you.”

The trip was nearly over.

Cross said, “Why are you smiling?”

The elevator halted. A chime sounded in the ceiling, then the doors slid open.

At a glance Peter saw twenty or thirty people, ordinary folks who wore faces that were rarely recognized. They’d reached the lobby.

Cross said, “It was nice seeing you again.”

Peter didn’t even turn around.

The Waffle House sign looms above the downtown.

I get out of the car and wait for Rosalyn. When she gets out, I take her hand and we walk, our fingers interlaced, across the parking lot. I feel knitted together, and not merely with her — I feel more resilient and engaged than I have in a long time. I raise my chin and Rosalyn and I march toward our reflection in the plate-glass picture window. Between our growing faces, on the other side of the glass, I see a hand shaking — my daughter’s waving to us. I see myself smiling as I wave back.

When we get inside, Gabby stands beside her booth, waiting. Her hair is long and pulled back behind her shoulders. Her face is pink — she looks tentatively happy. We hug. I kiss her ear. Then, letting go with one hand, I introduce Rosalyn.

Gabby steps forward.

Rosalyn says, “I hope you don’t mind my tagging along.”

“I dragged her here,” I say. “I’m sorry we’re late.”

“No. No.”

Rosalyn and I slide in on one side of the booth.

“You’re beautiful,” Rosalyn says, to Gabby, and I think, Yes, she is and, yes, it’s a surprise that I have a beautiful daughter.