Page 32 of Succubus

He really needs to respond.

Wait. Something else occurs to me—could this be something romantic, the Dow he mentioned? Is he afraid to tell me what happened with her because of that? I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.

I call him, but he doesn’t pick up.

Love you too, I write. You know you can tell me anything Grub. Right?

CHAPTER 11

I’m watching Ella play Minuet No. 2 in the sanctuary of a church. She panicked for hours last night, begging to skip the recital, to quit the violin entirely. But here she is, standing in front of the other small violinists and their families, her little face a mask of fierce concentration.

I keep checking my phone under the single-sheet program. I got home yesterday and Grub still hasn’t responded. He’s always seemed ever present, perpetually reachable, and I realize now how false an impression that was. I can’t reach him at all. It’s like I can feel the bulk of all the land between us, suddenly relevant now that technology isn’t working to connect us.

What am I supposed to do?

This may seem shocking, but I don’t know Grub’s name.

Not his real one.

All these years, he has refused to tell me. Even when he was little. He was always so internet savvy. I think he liked being mysterious at first, and then later he just didn’t want me to surprise him. He was so determined to protect me. I always figured he’d tell me one day. Now I hate myself for not making it a priority, for not prying it out of him, demanding it in return for my love.

How can I figure out if he’s okay?

I try to focus. Ella misses several notes but continues resolutely on. A victory! She returns to her seat between Dee and me, vibrating with success and whispering frantically that she forgot to make the circle her teacher always emphasizes and start the following phrase with an up bow. Maybe Ms. Nancy (the sweetest, gentlest teacher in the world) will be angry?

And my God, when we stand up at the end, Joel is there, in the back. Appearing like a thick-shouldered, bespectacled ghost who is officially haunting me now. His eyes meet mine and he smiles hesitantly, looking somehow happy to see me. My mind takes me on a whiplash tour of our last interaction—my psychotic attempts to both kiss and not kiss him in the restaurant.

Why is he here? How did he know about it?

I remember through the flapping and sputtering of my broken-rudder brain that it was me. Well, Ella and me. She begged him to come; I gave him the information weeks ago. Who can keep track of these things when one is busy meeting one’s two-thousand-year-old alcoholic former rock star father for the first time?

Ella spots Joel and dashes over to him, uncharacteristically confident. She hugs him, they high-five, and he hands her the flowers he’s holding. I watch, frozen, as she proudly introduces him to Dee, who is glowing in an orange wrap dress. Dee is tall and lush, full-lipped and elfin-eyed; her hair is a waterfall of health; she is automatically sexy in anything and everything.

We don’t look like sisters. Her father had brown skin and was tall. My father was only famous.

“What if you guys got married to each other one day?” Ella says, standing between Joel and Dee. They both laugh too loudly. Dee hasn’t dated anyone since Ella’s father. If I’m being totally honest, she hasn’t seemed very tempted to, either, but even so, I’ve made it abundantly clear that I don’t want her to be abstinent in solidarity or something.

Hurt stings me in a soft, hidden place. Why doesn’t Ella think I should be the one to marry Joel?

Because I am not her mother.

No matter how much time we spend together. No matter how many times I check her butt because she’s worried there’s still a little poop on it, and she’s scared to get poop on her undies. No matter what, I’m just a proxy. Just an aunt.

I re-snap the snap on the front of my old backpack purse and look down at my green corduroy pants that seemed more festive than jeans when I put them on earlier. I realize with sudden nausea that they will fall in love. That they are meant for one another.

But then he’s walking over to me and my body is trying to shuck itself, every organ running in a direction of its choosing. I don’t know how to look at him. I don’t know what to do with my face or how to have a face, really, at all.

“I wanted to stop by, for Ella,” he says from above me, where I am not looking. His voice is like his couch—warm, soft leather. If I had a recording of it, I would carry it with me through my whole life, listen to it in every quiet moment. “But can we pretend I didn’t try to seduce you over coconuts?”

I make a startled sound that is possibly enough like a laugh to pass for one.

He says quietly, only for me, “I’m good at pretending. Apparently pretty bad at seducing.”

I look up.

Colors spill across the room, people flowing together, conversation splashing into meaninglessness. He is perfectly, horribly clear, though. For a second, I feel like I’m dying: This is a near-death experience, my brain zooming in with impossible exactitude, extrasensory fixation. He is the center of everything.

The understated lines of his eyelids, the welcoming openness of his face with its faint freckling, sugared sunlight through stained glass consecrating the tiniest fibers at the edges of his white button-down shirt.