Around Our Heads

It took me a while to get around looking for the name. I told Chris what I’d learned, and he understood why the whole conversation made me upset. But I still tried to keep my spirits up. He was afraid the situation would make me go back to being scared of the family we created, but I told him not to think like that. Our family was awesome. And I wasn’t going to give it up for anything. Sure, he was a baseball player and wasn’t home all the time, and I was a nerd who swore like a sailor. But our kids were loved. There was so much love in our house that we were actually kind of disgusting. And I knew as long as we had that, then we would get through anything.

When I finally started researching, I just decided to Google the name. I got several different Jacob Gazarra’s. Most of them were too far away for me to worry about yet, and only two were in our local area. One in San Francisco and one in Napa. One was a lawyer, and one owned a construction company. I was guessing I was probably looking at the one that owned the construction company in Napa.

So in early October, I drove to Napa to look for the building. It was a single-story shitty brick building. The name of the company was written across the windows in peeling paint. I parked the car, took a deep breath, and went inside to check it out.

The walls were paneled wood, and there was a metal desk and brown leather chairs. The woman behind the desk had a lot of cleavage and an attitude that actually kind of intimidated me, to be honest. I really didn’t want to talk to her because she already looked like she wanted to claw my eyes out.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m looking for Jacob Gazarra,” I told her.

“How convenient. Since he works here. But you’ll have to come back later. He’s in a meeting.”

“Can I just wait here? It’s kind of important.” She looked down at the little bit of belly that was starting to stick out of my shirt.

“He knock you up too?” I looked down.

“Excuse me? What? No. Definitely not. This is about something completely unrelated.”

“Then have a seat. He’ll be with you shortly.”

“Thanks.”

I sat down on a brown chair and tapped my foot nervously. The woman stayed behind her desk, filing her nails. I wasn’t sure what she meant by ‘Did he knock you up too?’ Was he prone to getting a lot of people pregnant? Was it possible that I had siblings? Didn’t he tell Chris that I was his only child? I wasn’t sure. Either way, my heart was pounding, and the butterflies in my stomach were going crazy, so the baby followed along. Finally, I heard the woman’s speaker connect.

“Do I have any messages?” a man’s voice asked.

“Nothing, but a girl here wants to talk to you. She says it’s important.”

“What’s her name?” She looked at me.

“Marley Johnson,” I told her.

“Marley Johnson,” she repeated. “And she’s knocked up. If I hear you’ve been screwing around on me again, we’re gonna have a problem.”

“I don’t know anyone named Marley. She’s probably just here for business. I’ll be out in a second.”

“Mm-hmm.” She went back to filing her nails and pretending I wasn’t there.

A minute later, the door opened, and a man stepped out. But I knew right away that he wasn’t the right person. I remembered what the man looked like when he came to see me. He had my brown hair and green eyes. This guy’s hair was a pale blond, and his eyes were blue and sunken like he hadn’t slept in 20 years. He had a pudgy nose and looked maybe ten years older than me at most. I stood up anyway.

“Marley Johnson?” he said, somewhat nervously as he glanced at the woman behind the desk. I stuck my hand out.

“Hi, nice to meet you. I um—I came here looking for someone. But I can see that I have the wrong person. So I’m really sorry to bother you.”

“Who are you looking for exactly?”

“I’m looking for my biological father. His name was Jacob Gazarra, but I can see you’re not old enough to be my father. So I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

“Must be a more common name than I thought. Maybe we’re related distantly.” He smiled nervously again.

“Maybe,” I replied politely. “I had two leads locally. The other one was in San Francisco, but I figured since this was the right area, it was more likely. But thank you for your time and uh—good luck.” He gave the woman another shifty glance.

“Thank you. It was nice meeting you, Marley.” I nodded and left.

Then I sat in my car for a few minutes. I didn’t think my biological father was a lawyer, but anything was possible, right? I mean—maybe that’s why my mom never pressed charges. I also guess he didn’t really put off any lawyer vibes when I saw him that one time. I could still bring up the memory of what he looked like. He even had my nose. And he’d been wearing a button-up shirt with beige pants. He just looked—average.

When I got home, Chris was trying to show Avery how to hit her little plastic baseball bat. She had better aim than I think most three-year-olds did, but she still wasn’t quite hitting the target correctly. Still, Chris was determined to make her a star athlete.

“How’d it go?” Chris asked. The only reason he didn’t come along with me was because Josh was too busy working on his new comic book project to watch Avery. Chris didn’t want to drive all the way to Oakland to have his mom watch her. He also figured I’d be safe going into a building rather than a strange house.

“Not him,” I told him. He looked up at me. “The guy wasn’t old enough to be my father. He was also super blond and blue-eyed. I think my father might be the lawyer in the city.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“Are you going up there with me to check it out?”

“When are you going?”

“Tomorrow.”

“You’re just going to the office, right?”

“Yeah, just the office.”

“I want to go, yeah. I’ll talk to Josh and see if he can spare a few hours of babysitting for us.”

“Okay. Let me know.”