James' World 2

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On Saturday, August 19, 2023, two weeks after I turn seventy-one, I become a new father, again.

I’m not expecting, nor is Lisa, who’s sixty-seven. And while I’m  pleased to say that thirty years on we still savor each other head to toe and in several other positions, our reproductive job was over with when Judah was born in 1999, and we knew it. We had started late (I was married once before: ten years, no kids) and Lisa and I were past forty and craving it all—parenthood, love, redemption. Judah was our last shot.

Imagine that pressure—not on us, on him. Lisa and I were ready. I don’t know if any child is ready, but Judah caught on right away to the basics—cry, suckle, piss, shit—and took it from there. When I was the age he is now, in 1976, I was a geek in search of a carnival, drinking hard, writing poetry, welcoming my worst instincts every day. Judah’s working on a Ph.D. in chemistry at UCLA.

We followed him out to Los Angeles instead of aging out alone in New Jersey because we love him and he loves us. He comes by every Saturday for lunch, usually with Greta, his girlfriend. He arrives alone today, which in itself signifies nothing much, but his smile’s tight. There’s a . . . vibe. A doting, aging father feels these things.

We kiss, we hug, we sit. Lisa’s behind him, standing with her back to us, dishing red-lentil dal, grabbing spoons, asking how Greta’s doing.

“So?” I say once Lisa’s at the table.

“What?”

I see it in his eyes, steel blue, flecked with black.

He knows I see it. He favors the Brennans, Lisa’s people: lean, long-muscled, free of my flat feet and back hair, and quiet—but in one room, we share one brain.

I raise my brows.

He lifts his.

Of course. Like Lisa, he wants me to ask. Information withheld is power. Bad news he’d have dumped by now.

“Bub,” I say.

“Bub?” he says.

Not once has he ever called me Dad. We’re not pals, either. We are men and Bub works fine.

“Buhhhhb,” I croak, low. “What is up?”

He grins, eyes wide and wet. It’s not the jalapeños in his mama’s dal. He’s feeling . . . something. A lot.

“So I heard from this woman yesterday,” he says. “She’s pretty sure I’m her brother.”

Lisa, Judah, and me, the nuclear family stripped to its minimum with little space for secrets—we all know how this has happened. Over the years, I’d talked lightheartedly about my time as a sperm donor in the early 1990s and the possibility that my seed had spread without my knowledge.

It was during my first marriage, to a wonderful woman who didn’t want to be a mother any more than I cared about becoming a father. She earned a medical resident’s paltry stipend, and I raked in forty dollars a pop when a local alternative weekly found my columns to its taste. I was writing short fiction, too, and working on a novel and putting too many basics on credit cards.

A different man might’ve thought about getting a job. Fk that. I’ve known since age twelve that I was alive to write. It was a calling, not a career. I was about to turn forty, my wife had her medical degree and would soon make real money, so no, I wasn’t going back to selling shoes.

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COLLAGE BY JENS WORTMANN

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