Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,104

Rhonda. We were just kids back then. I had already had this one, she said, jerking a thumb toward Dee, who smiled and shrugged.

—She called me and said, What do I do, Rhonda? I said, Whose is it? But she wouldn’t tell me.

You don’t know? I said. I was relieved and disappointed all at once.

—She would never tell me. Wouldn’t tell Kel Keller either. But he had always been in love with her so he took her back. It was a big secret that you weren’t his. I mean he must have known, but he acted like you were his son. She told her parents you were. He told his parents. They got married in Atlantic City. I was maid of honor. When he left your mother she was sad but not that sad. They weren’t right for each other. I always told her that.

OK, I said. OK.

Dee was looking down. He tossed his bottle of Yoo-hoo into the air and caught it out of the air. I was so angry with my mother suddenly that I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to yell at her the way I used to when she was alive. To be honest, that’s what I wanted to do. Or to grab her and shake her by the shoulders. Which I never did, never except for once, when she was passed out, when she was acting like a child. I shook her hard.

Have you heard of Arthur Opp? I said.

Arthur Opp, she said. She started to shake her head slowly but then clapped her hand to her mouth. Arthur Opp! she said. She laughed. That’s a name I haven’t heard in years.

You have? I said.

—Just after we graduated, she went to college for a semester. You know that?

—Yeah.

—Arthur Opp was one of her professors. She had a crush on him, said Rhonda, her face still lit up with the memory of what it was like to be young. She used to talk about him all the time. My God, Arthur Opp.

I paused. I did not want to say it yet. I wanted her to go on.

—We made up a song about him. We were being silly. I can’t remember how it went.

I thought of my mother at my age. It was hard.

—You know what? said Rhonda. They used to write to each other. They were like pen pals. After she dropped out of school she wrote to Arthur Opp to thank him for teaching her, and then he wrote back. She was real excited. She showed me the letter. They wrote to each other for a while.

—I know, I said. I used to see his letters.

I wanted to tell her the rest but I waited for a long time. Something about it felt so personal and strange that I didn’t even want to bring it up. I felt like I was opening my mother up for teasing.

Your mother was different than all of us, said Rhonda. She was always falling in love with these guys. God bless her.

I said, She told me.

Dee and his mother waited.

—That Arthur Opp was my father.

My face got hot and I looked away from everyone, out the window, into the dark street.

Rhonda sat in stunned silence for a minute and then did the worst thing she could possibly have done: she burst out laughing.

Mom, said Dee. Jesus.

Good for her, Rhonda said. Sorry. But good for her.

She could have been lying, I said.

Maybe, said Rhonda.

I’m named after him though, I said.

Arthur? said Dee. Your real name’s Arthur?

Yeah, I said, Arthur. At this point I was almost laughing too. I don’t know why but it felt good to almost laugh.

Arthur, said Dee again. And the laughter burst out of him too in a holler. He lowered his head over his knees to laugh.

And then we were all laughing, and Rhonda the hardest, patting her own cheeks, wiping her eyes, gazing off into the distance someplace, remembering things about my mother that I would never know.

Later she asked me did I want to stay there, and I said just for a couple nights, if she didn’t mind. But I have been there ever since. I’ve been sleeping on the couch, buying my own food with the hundred dollars that the other Kel Keller gave me.

Next I went back to school. Mr. Harper said he would talk to the principal and to my teachers, and I think he did a good job, because they have all been especially nice to me. Matt