The Postcard Read Free Page A

articles, things like that. But Walter Huff wasn’t really anyone.” Dad said this with a kind of snicker. “Not that I’ve known for all that long. I only found out after the old man died that he created Walter Huff from nothing. Fracker, the lawyer, told me.”
    “Dad!” I said, shocked. “So who’s your father?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said, turning away and moving things nervously. “There was no Walter Huff, that’s all I know. Having a child, like that, outside of marriage like my mother did, wasn’t done. We’re talking the early sixties. To be not married and have a child? Uh-uh. When I finally got up the nerve to tell your mother, she thought it was completely fantastic. Not about Grandma not being married, but that this man who I thought was my father was a . . . fiction. Unbelievable, really. From then on, she didn’t like it when Mr. Fracker came to see me. She thought he was some kind of sketchy guy, criminal or something. She was never convinced he was even a lawyer, or
just
a lawyer. I finally told him to leave me alone. It got to be too much for me, too.”
    “Well, yeah,” I said.
    “Right. But that’s it. That’s the story. Your grandma didn’t have a husband. I never knew who my father was. There was a made-up name, but nothing else.”
    “But how can you even do that?” I asked. “Make someone up? How could
you
not know? Couldn’t anybody tell that this guy, Walter Huff, was never around?”
    He shrugged. “He didn’t have to be for very long. When I was still a baby, he was supposed to have been away on business when he had an accident. So my mother became a widow. It’s nutty, but the old man was like that. So they say. He could do that and make it stick. I never met him. He never acknowledged that I was his grandson, of course.”
    “Make someone up,” I said. “That is so bizarre. So that’s why Mom always said stuff.”
    He glanced at the floor, nodding. “It was just one more crazy thing about my mother.”
    You’re telling me!
Grandma suddenly seemed stranger than I ever thought she was. What kind of life had she had, anyway? And
Dad
? What was
his
life like?
    Dad seemed tired all of a sudden. “So there you are. No murders or mysteries or anything like that. We’re talking Florida when I was young. There had to be a husband, and her father made one up. For a little while.”
    He was talking so much! He never talked like this at home.
    So Dad was illegitimate. His mother wasn’t married when she had him. I guess I felt a little like Mom did about Grandma flying. Grandma having a baby and not being married is one thing. But that her husband was a . . . phantom? And after so long for some guy to tell you that your father is not your father and is really no one? So nobody knew who my grandfather was? Is?
    There were too many questions for me to deal with. Maybe Mom had the right idea. It was too unbelievable. Too strange. Shut it down. Close it off.
    “All right, Dad. Thanks for telling me. I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks.”
    He opened his hands and gave me a look as if he expected more. “Do you . . . have any questions or anything?”
    My mind was a complete jumble. “I don’t think so. I’m good.”
    I wasn’t good. I didn’t want to be there. It was so hot. I didn’t want to know about anything. So I had a made-up grandfather. So what? I hated the place. I wanted to be back in Boston with the house all to myself.
    CHAPTER FIVE
    While my dad moved boxes noisily around, annoyed at me for not asking to know more, I went into the kitchen, checked the refrigerator, and found store-made potato salad, jelly, eggs, and one beer.
    It was nice and cool holding the door of the fridge open, until he snapped at me — “Get inside or shut the door!” — and I finally had to close it.
    Looking out the screen door, I studied the backyard again. It was a small square, butting up against the backyard of the house on the next street (31st Avenue North?