Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon Read Free Book Online Page A

son, right?” And then he gave Ryan that grin that, despite himself, Ryan still found pretty dazzling, even breathtaking, like he’d almost got a crush or something
—You’re my son
, and that deliberate eye contact, both unnerving and flattering, and Ryan, all flustered, was like:
    “Yeah, I guess I am. I’m your son.”
    This was one of the things that they were still figuring out—how to talk about this stuff—and it was all still very uncomfortable, theywould start to talk about it, and then neither one of them knew what to say, it required a certain language that was either too analytic or too corny or embarrassing.
    The basic fact was this: Jay Kozelek was Ryan’s biological father, but Ryan had only found out recently. Up until a few months ago, Ryan had thought that Jay was his uncle. His mother’s long-estranged younger brother.
    Ryan’s existence had been due to the usual teenage mistakes; that was the short version. Two sixteen-year-olds getting carried away in the back of a car after a movie. This was back in Iowa, and the girl’s, the mother’s—Ryan’s mother’s—family was strict and religious and didn’t believe in abortion, and Jay’s older sister, Stacey, wanted a baby but she had something wrong with her ovaries.
    Jay had always felt that honesty was called for, but Stacey hadn’t felt that it was a good idea at all. She was ten years older than Jay, and she didn’t think very highly of him in any case—in terms of his morals, his ideas about life, the drugs, etc.
    There’s a time and place
, she had told Jay, back when Ryan was a baby.
    And then later she said:
Why does it matter to you, Jay? Why does it always have to be about you? Can’t you think of someone else besides yourself?
    He’s happy
, Stacey said.
I’m his mom and Owen is his dad and he’s happy with that
.
    Not long afterward, they had stopped talking to each other. Jay had had some run-ins with the law, and they had argued, and that was that. Jay was hardly mentioned when Ryan was growing up—and then only as a negative example.
Your uncle Jay, the jailbird
. The hobo. Never owned anything he couldn’t carry. Got involved in narcotics when he was a teenager and it ruined his life. Let that be a warning. Nobody knows where he is anymore.
    And so Ryan hadn’t learned the truth—that Stacey was actually his biological aunt, that his little-seen uncle Jay was his “birth father,” that his biological mother had committed suicide in her sophomore year in college many years ago, when Ryan was a three-year-oldkid living in Council Bluffs, Iowa, with his supposed parents, Stacey and Owen Schuyler, and Jay was backpacking around South America—
    Ryan hadn’t learned all of this until he was himself in college. One night Jay had called him up and told him all about it.
    He was himself a sophomore in college, just like his real mother had been, and maybe that was why it struck such a blow.
My whole life is a lie
, he thought, which he knew was melodramatic, adolescent, but he woke up that morning after Jay had called him and he found himself in his dorm, a corner room on the fourth floor of Willard Hall, and his roommate, Walcott, was asleep under a mounded comforter in the narrow single bed beneath the window, and a gray light was coming in.
    It must have been about six-thirty, seven in the morning. The sun wasn’t up yet, and he rolled over and faced the wall, chilly old plaster with many thin cracks in the beige painted surface, and he closed his eyes.
    He hadn’t slept much after his conversation with Uncle Jay.
His father
.
    At first it was like a joke, and then he thought,
Why is he doing this, why is he telling me this?
though all he said was, “Oh. Uh-huh. Wow.” Monosyllabic, his voice ridiculously polite and noncommittal. “Oh, really?” he said.
    “I guess it’s just something I thought you ought to know,” Jay told him. “I mean it’s probably better if you don’t say anything to your parents,