Daughters for a Time (24 page)

I strained my eyes to watch Maura catch minnows and water bugs, toss pebbles, sail her boat in the weak current. It was close to noon. Sam would need a bottle; Maura would need lunch.

“Maura,” I called. “Five more minutes. We need to go get some lunch, okay?”

“But we still need to make a fishing pole!” Maura yelled, and then went back to the water.

“There’s not a day that’s gone by that I haven’t thought about you girls,” Larry said, rubbing Sam’s back gently. “The years kept passing, damn it,” he said. “So occasionally I would search your names on the computer. I just wanted to know what you and your sister were up to, that’s all.” His head hung low. “I wasn’t trying to pry into your lives.”

Why not?
was the bigger question. Why
not
pry? Why hadn’t he shown up at our doors, pushing his way into our lives with bulldozer strength? Why hadn’t he insisted on it? That would have been fine with me. At least we would have known that he cared. We didn’t need space; we needed our father. Prying into our lives would have been nice.

“I’ve followed your restaurant,” Larry said. “It sure has done well. And I knew that Claire had retired from her investment business, that she had a baby. Someone had done an article on her.”

I knew which article he was talking about, a piece written by the chamber of commerce celebrating successful businesswomen.

I shoved down the emotion that was rising in me. “I’d better get these girls some lunch.”

“Why don’t you let me help Maura make a fishing pole real quick. Is that okay?” He stood and handed Sam to me. “I’ll be right back.”

Sam nestled into my neck, and I warmed at the already ingrained familiarity of her touch. We watched Larry open his car trunk and then walk back toward us. With a pocketknife and a piece of twine, he proceeded to craft a fishing pole. He knew enough to get down on Maura’s level, squatting while he worked, simplifying his language for her. It looked as though he’d been a grandfather-in-waiting, having prepared himself for this exact moment.

While they built the fishing pole, I sat on the bench with Sam and fixed her a bottle, one-handed, just as I had marveled at Amy DePalma doing in China and Claire doing when Maura was small. I was learning to be a mom, but I couldn’t help but wonder why my happiness had to come at Claire’s expense. Like, God forbid, I should get spoiled from not having pain in my life.

It was only twelve thirty and I was already beat emotionally and mentally weary, like I had just taken a daylong exam. Claire in surgery. Larry at the park with us. Me taking care of my new baby and Maura. The earth was shifting beneath my feet, and not only did I need to hold steady for myself, I had to hold on for everyone else.
Buck up!
I could hear Claire say. I
wiped my face, straightened my back, and turned the corners of my mouth up into a smile.

When Larry and Maura had mastered the fishing pole, I said, “We really should get going.”

“Thanks for calling me, Helen,” Larry said, clapping his hands together to get the dirt off. “Seeing the girls—my
granddaughters
—has been tremendous. Keep me posted on Claire, will you?”

“I will,” I said. “I’ll call you later.”

“Give me five,” he said to Maura, holding out his hand.

Maura smacked it over and over, smitten with Larry, the guy from the park who knew how to make the coolest fishing pole.

Larry leaned across to me, planted a kiss on Sam’s head. Then he paused, stared at me and then Sam and Maura, and uttered, “Beautiful.” I watched him take a step in the direction of his car.

“Larry!” I called, hoisting Sam higher on my hip. “How do I know?” I asked. “That this is for real? How do I know that I can trust you this time?”

Larry looked away. Then he looked back at me and cleared his throat. His mouth was pulled to the side, and it seemed that his eyes had reddened. “I can tell you this,” he said at last. “This hour, today, with you and my granddaughters”—he paused, clearing his throat again—”was the best hour I’ve had in about twenty years. I’ll be damned if I’m going to mess that up.”

I looked at him. Nodded. “Okay, then.”

He nodded, too, and we stared at each other for what seemed like minutes. “Okay, then,” he said, and turned and walked away.

Once Larry was out of my sight, I pressed my palms into my eyes and pushed back a deluge of tears, took a deep breath, and found a cheerful voice. “Come on, Maura!”

“Aunt Helen, guess what?” she said, sitting on the embankment picking specks of dirt and grass from her feet. “Minnows are baby fish and tadpoles are baby frogs, but you can also call them polliwogs.”

The pure innocence of her stabbed at my heart. I knew that it wouldn’t last long with a mother battling cancer. I knew that a sick mother would draw the sweetness from Maura as surely as rice absorbed the moisture in a saltshaker.

When we got home, I changed Sam’s diaper and Maura’s wet clothes. I put Nick Jr. on the television, placed Sam in her playpen, and put the kettle on for tea. I looked at the clock again, wondered when Ross was going to call. I checked my cell phone, the home phone, and e-mail. Nothing so far.

Tim had brought some tomato-basil soup home from the restaurant, so I warmed it on the stove while I grilled cheese sandwiches. Maura and I ate while Sam slept. Just as Maura finished and ran off to watch the television, the phone rang.

Ross, finally. Bad news. The cancer was in the right ovary, as well as the fallopian tubes. The surgeon had had no choice but to do a full hysterectomy.

“Does she know?” I asked, grabbing onto the edge of the counter. The room had started to spin.

“Not yet,” he said with a hoarse voice. “She’s still groggy. Will be for a few hours.”

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and blew it out slowly. “She’s going to be okay,” I said, trying to lift my words, offer a little hope.

“You don’t know that,” Ross said, his voice hardly a whisper. “Your mother wasn’t okay.”

“That was a long time ago,” I said. “The statistics are better now.”

“How does anyone make it through this hell?” Now he was crying, unnatural harsh sobs.

“You deal with reality,” I said, understanding that I had a role to play. I needed to be strong for Ross. For Maura. For Claire, soon enough. “This is our new reality. We’ll deal with it.” I sounded like Claire, a graduate of her School of Putting a Strong Face Forward. Though, inside, I was wondering the same thing as Ross:
How the hell will we get through this?

“Reality sucks.”

“I know, Ross.” There was a long pause over the phone line. I could hear Ross swallow his tears, gulp for air, exhale his anguish.

“My dad dropped dead of a heart attack when I was five years old,” Ross said.

“I know,” I said, nodding, thinking of the photo on Martha’s mantel: her husband, young, tanned, wearing swim trunks, a son standing on either side of him, Ross in his arms.

“My mom raised me and my brothers alone. Can you fucking imagine?”

“Your mom’s awesome,” I said, thinking of Martha as a young widow—three young boys.

“I don’t remember my dad.”

“No. A five-year-old doesn’t remember much.”

“Maura’s not even five yet.”

“I know, Ross,” I said, my voice breaking. “I know.” The implications were heavy, like a tree branch covered in too much snow. Maura—without Claire, not remembering.

“Tell Maura I love her,” Ross said. “And tell her that Claire loves her.”

“I will,” I promised. “Take care of Claire. Call me later.”

Before I called Tim to tell him the news, I sipped at my tea and thought it through. Maybe this was
good
news. Better to take out too much than to risk leaving any of the cancer behind, right? Why leave any of the organs that could potentially breed the cancer later? Get them out of there! Give her a
clean slate. A fresh start. This was Claire we were talking about. Sure, she’d be sad about the hysterectomy; she’d mourn the loss of her fertility, but she’d get over it. She’d have a new plan by morning.

Feeling resolute with the soundness of my theory, I called Tim.

“I’ll be home in half an hour.”

“You don’t have to,” I said quickly. “I’m fine. Really! It’s going to be okay. She’s going to be okay.”

“I’m coming,” Tim said. “I’ll be there soon.”

When Tim walked through the door, he slung his arm around me and pulled me in for a hug.

I embraced him quickly and then pulled away. “What’s new at the restaurant?”

“Helen.”

“Seriously. What went on today? Sondra? Philippe? Any news?”

“Let’s sit down,” Tim said, reaching for my elbow.

“I’ve got laundry in the dryer,” I said, sidestepping him.

“Helen!” Tim stood before me like a blockade. “Stop. Let’s sit down and talk this through.”

“No.”

Tim pulled me into a hug, and as my cheek brushed against the soft wool of his sweater, I began to cry. I cried until I couldn’t catch my breath.

That night, I sat in the Jacuzzi tub with Maura across from me and Sam in my lap. When Maura laid soap bubbles on Sam’s legs, my new daughter squealed. When Sam smiled widely, her two front teeth poked out and her dimples deepened. She was precious. I thought of Claire, how she would never leave
Maura. I thought of Sam’s biological mother, how she must have struggled.

I had read accounts of mothers who placed their daughters on the side of the road, maybe in a box that had once held vegetables. I thought of Sam’s mother, raw from childbirth, yet walking miles to find the perfect spot to leave Sam to spare her daughter from a worse fate. I imagined her hiding behind a row of bushes, watching as passersby commented on the abandoned baby, the will it must have taken for her to stay still when every instinct in her body must have been to return. How her heart must have lurched. How her insides must have grown dark and hard, as if her heart had turned to stone.

After bath time, when Sam was dried, powdered, and dressed, and Maura was comfortable in her Dora pajamas, Tim put on a movie and we all piled into our bed. I cuddled into Tim’s chest and Maura made a pillow of my hip and little Sam snuggled inside the triangle that our legs made. A half an hour later, Maura and Sam had drifted off to sleep. The two girls had inched toward each other, curled into each other like cashews, four little hands balled together like a bouquet. Spikes of Sam’s licorice hair and Maura’s chestnut hair fanned around their sweet faces, two perfect peaches of cheeks, pouty pink lips.

“How’d it go today with Larry?” Tim asked. Though he had already taken his after-work shower, I could still sense the scent of rosemary on his hands.

“Good,” I said, still trying to isolate the feelings with which that encounter had left me. “A little awkward, but having the girls there helped. We kind of just stared at them. We didn’t talk that much.”

“It’s a good start, right?”

“It was nice having him there,” I admitted. “He held Sam like it was nothing.”

“What’s he think about Claire?”

“Reminds him Mom, of course.”

“What’s next with Claire?”

“Chemo, Ross said. In two weeks.”

“You’re doing a really good job, you know? With Claire and the girls. They’re lucky to have you.”

“You didn’t know me back when my mom was sick, but I was a real jerk. It’s not often that we get second chances, but with Claire being sick now, it’s like my chance to make it up to Mom.”

My mother died on a Monday. I had gotten up around seven o’clock and walked past her room. She was up already, propped against pillows, a folded newspaper with a crossword puzzle on her lap. Thinking back, I don’t think she slept much in those last days.

“Can I get you anything?” I asked her, though I knew that Claire had already been in. An untouched piece of toast and a cup of tea sat next to Mom on the end table.

“A hug would be nice,” she smiled. Her skin, as thin as vellum, stretched across her cheekbones.

I bent down to hug her, placing my hands on her shoulders—knotted knobs poking up at her nightgown.

“I love you,” she whispered into my ear.

“I know,” I responded.

I hated her hospital bed. I hated the smell of the Tiger Balm that Claire rubbed on her back. I hated the cluster of brown plastic medicine bottles on her nightstand.

As I began to stand up, Mom cupped my face in her hands—cold, frail, bird-bone hands. She forced me to look at her. “I love you. I really, really love you.”

My cheeks flushed hot, my nose began to tingle, and my mouth darted downward. I tried to say it back, I know I did. I remember the words fighting against the cement in my throat.
But the cement won, and the words never came out. I nodded and left her room.

By that night, Mom had slipped into unconsciousness. Claire was ready. If memory serves, I believe she had a to-do list for that exact moment. The doctors were called. Hospice sent a full-time nurse. My mother was an only child and her parents had already passed on, so there was no other family to call except for a few great aunts and uncles. After Claire made those calls, I watched her from around the corner as she picked up the line, wrapped the spiral phone cord around her finger, and called Larry. “She’s unconscious,” I heard her say, her voice cracking for the first time. She wiped her face with her sleeve. He must have said something kind, because kindness is Claire’s kryptonite, and she just stood there with a wide-open mouth, a silent cry bellowing from within her, and tears streaming down her face. Once she had composed herself, she said. “Okay. Yeah. Come on over.”