Who's Your Daddy?

Chapter 12

It was 12:45 am and Traci was laying in her bed unable to sleep. None of her usual cures for insomnia were working—not the DVR marathon of Scandal, the attempt to make it through an entire issue of The New Yorker, or the two cocktails she made of vodka and Diet Cranberry Snapple. If anything, it seemed like her aggressive attempts to go to sleep were keeping her up.

She wondered if Ziggy was still up. Actually, she knew he was still up. Ziggy had exhibited vampire-like sleep tendencies since birth. But she wondered if he'd be in a mood to hear from his mother. Feeling emboldened, probably from the booze, she grabbed her phone from the nightstand and dialed.

"Hey," Ziggy answered on first ring. He sounded so welcoming that she wondered for a moment if he thought the call was from someone else.

"Uh, hi," she said, sitting up in bed and muting the TV.

"You're up late." Ziggy said.

"Couldn't sleep. Figured you'd be up. Thought I'd see how things were going." She twisted one of her forefingers as if twirling an old telephone cord.

"I'm working on a project that's due Monday. It's kind of a collage of all the cartoon guys that I've wanted to hook up with over the years: Otto from Rocket Power, Trent from Daria, Gerald, the guy with the ill high-top-fade from Hey Arnold!, Connor from Young Justice, and a whole bunch of other animated studs that I thought were hot when I was growing up."

Traci was struck by the phrase "when I was growing up." She realized, perhaps for the first time, that Ziggy now thought of himself as an adult, grown. She remembered thinking the same thing at his age. It was funny how, as the years go by, the confident feeling of being done with—fully cooked—slowly gives way to the realization that you're never more than a work in progress.

"What else is going on?" Traci asked.

"Nothing. You know, stuff."

"Are you still seeing that guy? What was his name? Diego?" She leaned forward on the bed.

"I wasn't seeing him, mom. We just hooked up."

"All you ever talk about is hooking up," she said. "Don't people date anymore?"

"Who says I'm not dating?"

Traci sat up again. "Are you?"

"Maybe. I don't know."

"What's not to know?" she asked.

Ziggy laughed. "There's this guy I met. We're sorta seeing where things might go. We're taking it slow."

"You're taking something slow?" She had to laugh.

"I know, right. Shocker," Ziggy said. "But he wanted to. And, I don't know, it's something I'm trying out."

"Does he have a name?"

"Of course, mother," Ziggy said. "Most people find that a name is a socially useful thing to have."

"Well, what is his name, smartass?"

"Eh, I don't really want to talk about it too much. Not yet."

"You don't want to jinx it?" she asked, finding herself torn between mom-advisory-mode and gushy boy-talk mode.

"No," Ziggy said. "I don't want you asking about him until the end of time if it doesn't work out."

Traci didn't respond. The key to getting Ziggy to divulge information was to seem as disinterested as possible. Traci glanced at the DVR clock and decided not to speak again until the timer changed from 12:52 to 12:53.

"O.K.," Ziggy continued. "I'll tell you one thing, just because it's a little different for me."

Traci, still watching the clock, forced herself to remain quiet.

"He's kinda older. Well, a lot kinda."

"Older?" Traci couldn't stop herself.

"Not like gross Hugh Hefner older. More like Ashton and Demi, before they got divorced."

"Jesus!" Her hand stopped twirling the imaginary cord and moved to clutching imaginary pearls.

"See, that's why I don't tell you stuff. You always react like that."

"Like what?" Traci asked. She got up from the bed and pressed her hand against the dresser.

"Like all hysterical."

"I'm just surprised," she said, starting to pace.

"It's not some creepy "Daddy" situation," Ziggy said. "It's like he's older, but doesn't really seem older, if you know what I mean?"

She didn't, but she didn't want to come off as judgmental.

"Well, as long as you..." She wasn't sure what else to say.

"It works for me, for now," Ziggy said.

She wanted to wrap the conversation up before she said the wrong thing, something questioning or disapproving which would make Ziggy double down in whatever this May-December thing was. Her head was frothing over with wrong things to say.

"Well, I'll let you get back to your project," she said.

"O.K., "Ziggy said. "I love you and stuff."

Her heart broke a little. She sat back on the bed. "I love you and stuff too."