Until I Find You - Page 238

"Name one, Caroline."

"Your mothers weren't your favorite people," Miss Wurtz said.

"I loved my mom when I was a little boy," Jack pointed out.

"Goodness, Jack, I'm sure your sister loved her mom when she was a little girl. But, with hindsight, Heather has at least considered what a difficult woman her mother could be. Doesn't that sound familiar?"

It was The Wurtz's view that Jack's father had not abandoned him; on the contrary, William had provided for Jack. William's deal with Alice at least made her responsible for doing all the outwardly correct things. Jack had gone to good schools, he'd worn clean clothes, he wasn't beaten or abused--that is, not to Alice's knowledge.

It was also Miss Wurtz's view--and Caroline was no fan of Jack's mother--that Alice had, to some degree, shielded Jack from what The Wurtz called the "adult choices" in Alice's own dark life. (Notwithstanding Leslie Oastler and some of Alice's friends in the tattoo world.)

"You must tell me how William is when you find him," Miss Wurtz said. "Meanwhile, be thankful you have a sister."

"I have a sister," Jack repeated.

That was the message he would leave on the answering machine in Dr. Garcia's office, because it was too early in the morning to make an appointment to see her. Merely discovering that he had a sister was in the category of what Dr. Garcia called "incomplete information"--by which she meant that Jack's news didn't merit calling her at home.

Jack called his sister, Heather Burns, instead. It was only 7:00 A.M. in Santa Monica--10:00 A.M. in Toronto, where Miss Wurtz had been calling from. But it was already midafternoon in Edinburgh. There was music playing when Heather answered the phone--voices and an organ, maybe trumpets.

"Give me a moment," his sister said, turning down the volume on the CD player.

"It's Jack Burns, your brother," he told her.

"It's Heather--your half sister, actually," she said. "But I feel I know you. It was almost as if I grew up with you. 'If your brother knew you, he would love you,' Daddy said every night, when he put me to bed. And there was always this refrain: 'I have a son!' he would shout. 'I have a son and a daughter!' Daddy would say. It could be tiresome, but I got the point."

"I wish I'd grown up with you," Jack told her.

"You don't know that yet," she said. Her voice was crisp and even, with less of a Scottish accent than he'd expected. (There was some Irish in her accent, Jack thought--the effect of those years in Belfast, perhaps, or the Irish boyfriend.) Above all, she sounded very practical.

"I want to meet you," he told her.

"You don't know that, either, Jack Burns," Heather said. "I'm not comfortable asking you for money, but I need it. Our father needs it, I should say--not that he knows he needs it."

"He took care of me; I'll take care of him," Jack told her.

"Don't act with me, Mr. Movie Star," Heather said. "Say only what you mean."

"I mean it," he told her.

"Then you better come meet me. Let's see how that goes," she said.

"I should have been there, when you had your first date," Jack told his sister. "I could have warned you about the guy."

"Don't go there, as Billy Rainbow would say," Heather said. "I could have warned you about some of your dates, too."

"No doubt about it," he told her. It was another Billy Rainbow line. (That character never said anything that hadn't been said a million times before, but Billy said the most mundane things sincerely.)

"You sound just like him," Heather said. "Like Billy Rainbow, I mean."

"But I'm not like him--I'm really someone else," Jack said, hoping it was true. His sister made no response. Jack could hear the music playing; it sounded like a hymn. "I have a sister," he said. (It seemed to go with the hymn.)

"Yes, you do, Jack Burns. You have a father, too. But I'll tell you how it is," his sister said. "You have to go through me to get to him. Not for all your money, Mr. Movie Star, do you see him without seeing me first--not for all the money in the world!"

"You can trust me, Heather."

"You have to go through me to get to him," she said again. "I have to trust you with him."

"I swear to God--you can trust me," he told her.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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