“Really? Most guys I know seem to think it’s interchangeable for female.”

“Yeah. My father is one of those guys. Used to call my mother that. All the time.”

“That’s gross.”

“What’s gross is her putting up with it.”

For all of Tricia’s faults, and they are legion, she mostly leaves her boyfriend drama out of the house. Guys never stay at our place. She goes to theirs. If they call her foul names, at least I never have to hear them.

“Why’d she put up with it? Your mom?” I ask.

Ben shrugs. “She got pregnant with my brother when she was seventeen. Married my dad. Had three more by the time she was twenty-three, so she was kind of stuck with him. Meanwhile he’s out and about, carousing. He has two more kids by his girlfriend; it’s an open secret. Everyone knows. Including my mom. But she still stayed married to him. They only got a divorce when my dad’s girlfriend threatened to take him to court for child support. Cheaper and easier to dump my mom and marry the girlfriend. He knew my mom wasn’t the kind to sue.”

“That’s terrible.”

“It gets worse. Mom’s finally free of the bastard and we’re all older, a little independent. Things seem to be going okay. And what’s she do? Goes and gets pregnant again.”

“How many are you?”

“My mom had five kids, four with my dad, one with her current douchebag. And my dad has two others that I know of, but I’m pretty sure he has more. He believes birth control is the woman’s responsibility.”

“You’re like the redneck Brady Bunch.”

“I know.” He laughs. “Only we didn’t have a housekeeper like what’s her name?”

“Alice,” I answer.

“Alice.” He smiles. “Ours would have to have a white-trash name, like Tiffani.”

“Or Cody.”

Ben looks perplexed. I remind him that I clean houses for a living.

His face actually flushes. “Sorry, I forgot. I meant no disrespect.”

“Oh, please, it’s a little late for that now,” I say, though I’m smiling and then he is too.

“So what’s your story?” he asks.

“My story? You mean like my family?”

He raises his eyebrow, like he just bared all, and now it’s my turn.

“Not much to tell. It’s sort of like your story and the opposite of it. It’s just me and my mother, Tricia. No dad.”

“Did they split up?”

“Never together. She refers to him as the sperm donor, though he wasn’t, obviously, because that would’ve meant Tricia actually intended to have me.” Tricia has remained uncharacteristically quiet about my father, and over the years I’ve suspected it’s because he is married. I picture him sometimes, in a nice house, with a nice wife and nice kids, and half the time I resent the hell out of him for it, but the other half of the time, I sort of understand. It’s a good life, that. If I were him, I wouldn’t want someone like me to fuck that up either.

“Tricia thinks she raised me on her own,” I continue, “but really, it was the Garcias who raised me.”

“Meg’s family?”

“Yeah. They’re like a real family. Mom, Dad, two kids.” I pause to correct myself but look at Ben and see I don’t have to. “Family dinners. Games of Scrabble. That kind of stuff. Sometimes I think if I hadn’t met Meg, I never would’ve known what a normal family was like.”

I stop. Because remembering all those times at the Garcias, watching movies on their worn couch, making plays and forcing Scottie to act in them, staying up too late by the dwindling fire on camping trips—all of that fills me with warmth. But. Always the but.

Ben is watching me, like he’s waiting for me to say something else.

“But if that’s what happens to normal, what hope is there for the rest of us?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. Like he just doesn’t know either.

20

We get back to Ben’s house and he unpacks his stuff, and we both spend a half hour shining a flashlight around the walls and watching Pete and Repeat chase the beam. It’s possibly the most fun I’ve had in months.

Ben makes a list of the clubs that Meg most often hung out in. None of them will get going until around eleven, and they’ll stay happening until four in the morning. We pound shots of espresso at his neighborhood café before setting off in his Jetta.

The first club is that one in Fremont I met Ben at. He introduces me to a group of groovy-looking girls in cute dresses and cool shoes—Meg people. They’re all about a decade older, but that wouldn’t have stopped her. When Ben explains who I am, one of the women embraces me in a spontaneous hug. Then she holds me at arm’s length and says: “You’ll get through it. I know it seems like you won’t, but you will.” Without asking anything more, I get that she, too, has been through this, has been left behind, and it makes me feel less alone.

None of these women knows anything about Meg going to the health center; most didn’t even know she went to college. If Meg didn’t tell them even this, chances are she didn’t tell them about the Final Solution. I don’t bring it up.

We go to another club. We’re barely past the bouncer when a girl with blonde choppy hair flings herself into Ben’s arms. “Where have you been?” she demands. “I’ve texted you, like, a hundred times.”

Ben doesn’t hug her back, just sort of taps her uncomfortably on the shoulder, and after a minute, she takes a few steps back, jutting her lip into a fake pout. Then she spots me.

“Hey, Clem,” Ben says. He seems tired. “I’ve been on tour.”

“Tour, huh? That’s what you’re calling it now,” she says, still looking at me.

“Hey. I’m Cody.”

“Cody’s a friend of Meg’s,” Ben adds. “Did you know Meg Garcia?”

Clem swivels toward Ben now. “Seriously? Are you, like, organizing a sorority for your castoffs? Can we, like, all wear matching outfits?” She rolls her eyes and pouts for real now. Then she makes a disgusted pff sound before flouncing off, giving Ben the finger as she goes.

“Sorry about that,” Ben says. To his shoes.

“Why should you be sorry?”

“She was . . . It was a while ago . . .” he begins, but I wave my hands to stop him.

“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”