Page 42 of The Things We Never Say

“Dad, I need your help.” The kid sounded scared.

“What is it?” Artie asked. He drove into a nearby parking lot and put the car into park.

Rob said, “Dad, I need to break up with Rachel but I don’t know how to.”

Artie saw a group of young boys walking through the parking lot: One kicked another playfully, and that started them all running; they were laughing. Artie said to Rob, “Okay. This is what you do.” And then he told his son exactly how to get this done. He said, “Tell her to meet you someplace neutral, like a diner or a bar, do not go to her place or have her over. She’ll know what’s going to happen. Meet her there and just tell her, calmly and straightforwardly, that you are sorry, but you just do not have the feelings you thought you were going to have. Make it simple and direct. She’ll be furious, but this stuff happens.”

Rob said, “Dad, she has issues.”

Artie said, “Who cares about issues, you want her gone from your life, am I right?”

“Yes!” Rob said.

“Then do what I just said.”

“Okay.” And they hung up.

Two hours later Rob called back. Artie walked through the living room as they talked. Evie had just gotten home and had gone upstairs. “I did it. Dad, I did it! Oh my God, she was so mad at me, but it’s done! We met at this diner—and I did it!”

“A person should always know how to break up with someone,” Artie said. He felt a great calmness.

And then Rob said, “Where did you learn this?”

“My father told me,” Artie said. “Years ago, when I met your mother, I had a girlfriend called Gretchen, and my father gave me the very same advice I just gave you.”

“Sorry, but that was amazing. I never would have done it in a diner, and God, it would have been so bad, she probably would have talked me out of it. But, Dad, listen, do you know what her issues are?”

“She steals things?”

“Fuck.” Rob said this as his mother would, with that wonderful thwack of a well-struck tennis ball. “So she’s taken stuff from our house too?” Rob asked, his voice lower now.

“According to your mother, two little pillboxes or whatever those things are.”

“Oh God, I just found one in her drawer, and she told me that Mom had given it to her. Wow, this is fucking freaking me out. A guy I know called me after we went to his place, and he asked if she had taken a little poetry book.”

“According to your mother she’s a kleptomaniac, and your mother and I will be very glad you are done with her.”

“I’m so glad!” Then Rob said, “Why didn’t you guys tell me?”

“We would have,” Artie said.

Rob’s voice got lower. “I am just so glad I got rid of her.”

“Well done,” Artie said. “So, how’s Francesca?”

Rob said, “She’s been pretty great, actually. Going to look for an apartment soon. I don’t know…” Then Rob said, “But why was I ever attracted to Rachel?”

“Who knows,” Artie said. Then he chuckled and said, “Your unconscious.”

“Funny, Dad. You’re funny.”

But something really interesting had happened, Artie felt this before he thought it. He understood that his relationship with Rob had shifted, that he—Artie—had more say in it than he ever had, that Rob looked at him like a father. And maybe Rob always had—obviously he had—but this was different; there was a calmness to their situation that Artie was newly aware of these days. Something had been answered that he had not known needed to be answered. But the fact that Rob was—biologically—Reginald MacDonald’s son had been hanging there somehow in the air their entire lives, and now that it was known, Artie was somehow able to step in, almost like: Hey, Rob, need a father?, here I am, and Rob said: Oh great, thank God.

It was very hard for Artie to articulate this to himself, but he felt it, increasingly, and it brought him a quiet satisfaction.

—

When Evie came downstairs Artie told her about his phone calls with Rob and about Rob’s breaking up with Rachel, and Evie said, “Oh thank God! Tell me the whole conversation again!” And so he did. He thought that they had an old (married) intimacy as they were discussing their son. When they were done, Evie said, “And so where does this leave things with Francesca?” Artie said that he had not asked that specifically, he did not know, but that Francesca was going to look for an apartment soon.