It was my turn to fall to the ground. My head was reeling like a cheap midway ride, and I felt like I was going to throw up. Out of the corner of one eye I saw my dad, holding Dill, walking over to me. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Gotcha was not supposed to turn up at Half-a-Life. Lish would never believe that he was dead and then came back to life, and besides, she’d tell Gotcha, and he’d say, “What? What? Denver? Drug deal? Drive-by shooting? Postcards? What?” And the gig would be up and Lish would be onto me and be furious and hate me and I’d lose my best friend and I’d have to move out of Half-a-Life, probably to Serenity Place, and spend the rest of my life an outcast, a liar, a loser, a good-for-nothing pathetic broken-down bitter welfare mother with no friends. But wait! If Gotcha was here and Lish was so thrilled, where was he? Why weren’t they running up to Lish’s apartment, to her kitchen floor, to the twins, to the older girls, to their new, life together?
Lish opened one eye and then the other. She stood up and put her hands on my shoulders. Her breath reeked of tequila and beer and her hair was full of grass. She pulled me close to her and hugged me hard for all she was worth. Then she stood back, her hands still on my shoulders, and said, “Lace!”
“What!”
“GOTCHA!!!”
And she fell back onto the ground, laughing and looking up at me with what could only be described as love in her eyes. And then, poof, she closed her eyes and fell asleep. She had always loved a good performance.
“But Lish,” I asked her over coffee and Tylenol the next day, “how did you know?”
“Thresa, your accomplice who can’t keep a secret for a second, told Sarah, thinking Sarah wouldn’t talk because she never does. Anyway, Sarah did talk. She told me before the party last night that the whole thing was just a big joke. She said she wouldn’t want anyone else getting hurt from a lie the the way she did. And besides, when you wrote about the silver spoon? Gotcha didn’t even know about it. I took it after he had left. So even then I was on to you.”
“It wasn’t a joke, Lish, I was doing it to stop you from wondering. And waiting. I thought it would, you know, make things better for you and the twins if—”
“If he was dead instead of just out there?”
“Yeah.”
“Lucy.”
“Yeah?”
“Why don’t you try to find Dill’s father? It would be weird, but you could try to contact them all and get blood if they’d cooperate. You never know, it might work. Call their parents and see if you could see baby pictures of these guys, if there are any. They might hang up on you, but they might not. Why don’t you do what you can? You might get lucky, you never know. Figure out when you conceived Dill and try to remember who you were with at that time, that sort of thing. You could do these things, you know.”
“And if I never find out?”
“Then you never find out.”
That afternoon my dad said goodbye to all of us at Half-a-Life. He had gone up to Mercy’s apartment and had given Mercy a book about rocks, to give to Mayhem when she was older. Later Mercy showed us what my dad had written inside: “Dear Mayhem, We probably won’t ever really know each other. But you will always be a special child to me. I’m sure your mother will be able to explain everything. Mothers are good at that sort of thing. Yours truly, Geoffrey Van Alstyne.” Then it said, “P.S. Good! Luck!”
Downstairs Sing Dylan shook his hand and Teresa gave him a big wet kiss and a pack of cheap American smokes. “In case you wanna start,” she said. He said, “Thank you, Teresa. Thank you kindly.” He and Dill and I walked to his car. Joe and Pillar were leaning against it. Joe had his arm around Pillar’s waist and they were talking to each other. For the moment, they were happy again. As we approached my dad’s car they smiled and wandered over to a different car to lean against while they talked.
“Dad. How come you and Mom never had any more kids?”
“Well. I guess … it just didn’t happen.” Which I took to mean that sometimes it just did. He took my hand, It was dry and very big. I looked at Dill’s own big hands, and finally saw the similarities. For a second my dad and I were racing to The Waffle Shop. Nobody else existed.
“Lucy?”
“Yeah?”
“Life is not a joke.”
“No.”
I walked back to the front doors of Half-a-Life. I looked up and saw Lish on her balcony. She had on a t-shirt that read “I’m With Her,” and it had a hand on it with a pointing finger. She stood in a square of sunlight and brushed her black hair. Halfa-Life. Half-a-Laugh. Winnipeg, Manitoba, city with the most hours of sunshine, the centre of the universe. I was home. It’s true that life is not a joke. But I knew my life was funny. And Dillinger Geoffrey Van Alstyne was a lucky boy.