Daughters for a Time (9 page)

“For her room,” Tim said, holding something behind his back.

“What is it?” I asked, seeing the corners of a frame.

“I found this saying on the Internet,” Tim said. “And I had a guy in Chinatown write it in calligraphy on one side and English on the other.” It read:

Not flesh of my flesh
Nor bone of my bone
But miraculously, still my own;
You didn’t grow under my heart,
But in it.

“Oh my God, Tim,” I said, fighting back the rush of emotion. “I love it. I love it so much.” That was the end of me holding myself at a distance. I was all in. If the adoption fell through and I ended up empty-handed, I would just need to die from a broken heart. Another broken heart.

“You’re going to be a great mom, Helen,” Tim said. “I know you will be.”

Spring came and the weather was schizophrenic. A sunny blanket of sun in the seventies one day, cold and windy in the fifties the next, tumultuous downpours the following week. Today was one of the gorgeous days, the kind that made you forgive the long, humid summers and endlessly frigid winters. I had spent the day baking: a rack full of mini caramelized-onion quiches and prosciutto tortes, trays of focaccia, and three cakes. I had also helped Tim cook for the lunch crowd and prepare for dinner. Once my station was cleaned, I slipped out the restaurant’s back door, sat on a crate in the alleyway with a tumbler of iced tea, and watched the sun set. I was exhausted but satisfied, excited but calm. When a cool breeze snaked through my shirt and behind my neck, the feeling was so gentle it almost made me cry.

After saying good-bye to Tim, I left Harvest and headed to Target to get some of the items we would need for the trip to China as well as a birthday present for Maura, who would turn four in a few days. But my car turned left instead of right and I ended up in the direction of Arlington, parked on the opposite side of the loop across from my father’s house. His LeSabre was under the carport. I grabbed the bag of peanut M&Ms from the glove box, locked the car, and went into the park across the street, finding a seat on a swing.

My pocket vibrated and I checked my phone. It was Tim.

“Hi,” I said.

“I just wanted to tell you that a couple just came in for dinner and they have two little girls from China and they’re really cute. I wish you were here to see them.”

“That’s awesome,” I said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

I once read that girls from broken homes were statistically more likely to choose unsuitable mates than girls from stable homes. The logic was simple: she who knows what a healthy relationship looks like will model that relationship and vice versa. If I had fallen into that statistic, I would have ended up with a cheating husband who walked out on me when times got tough. Instead, I hit the jackpot with Tim and his loving family.

My boyfriend before Tim, a guy named Charlie, strung me along like an overused fishing lure. Even after the Draconian breakup, during which he had looked me straight in the eyes and said with a shrug, “I just don’t care about you the way you care about me,” he’d still drop by occasionally, clinking two bottles of hefeweizen and a white pizza from Fratelli’s. And although I’d practiced a harsh “What do
you
want?” having imagined the moment a hundred times in the weeks since the last visit, I always let him in with an affable hello, hoping that this time would be different. By the end of the night, Charlie would have my buttons undone and he’d whisper into my ear, “I don’t want to mislead you.”
Then what are you doing here?
I always wanted to say but never did as Charlie shucked off my shirt. Each time, I was left feeling smaller and less worthy than the time before.

When I met Tim, I almost faulted him for wanting me. After a father who had left and a boyfriend who valued me so little, I couldn’t figure out what Tim saw in me. There had to be something that he was missing that would soon rear its ugly head, sending him packing.

One night, when Tim and I were on a ferry from Venice to Corfu, we were lying on our backs on the deck of the bow. The sky was blacker than I’d ever seen and the stars were almost blue they shimmered so brightly. It reminded me of the Lite-Brite I had played with as a kid, plugging each little bulb into the board.

“Are you sure you love me?” I asked Tim. “Are you sure you’re not going to hurt me?”

“Not all men are evil,” Tim said. “You’ll see. You’ll see how good I can be to you.”

In the little park outside of Arlington, I popped a handful of peanut M&Ms into my mouth and chewed, staring at Larry’s house. I took a long breath, inhaling and exhaling with force, feeling the tensile edges of my ribs. I imagined walking up to his door and knocking loudly, with purpose. No hesitation.
There are things that I need to know!
I’d demand. I could do that. What could be the worst thing to happen? Instead, I got up and walked the loop around the park. I watched as a teenager took my seat on the swing, his friend handed him a beer, and together, they laughed loudly.

The houses surrounding the park were cute, eclectic. The golden glow of table lamps and porch lights made for a quaint, gingerbread-house effect. As I rounded the last corner, my gaze fixed again on Larry’s house. A sense of daring crawled up my back. As if being coaxed, I took a deep breath and crossed the road. I was now standing at the end of his driveway. My heart hammered. I looked back at my car. When I was a teenager, I, along with a group of somewhat derelict kids, had toilet-papered our math teacher’s house. I remembered the exhilarating feeling that accompanied that trespassing. This felt the same.

I willed myself to take more steps. Now I was standing at the base of his carport. I reached out and touched the back
bumper of his LeSabre.
I rode in that car
, I thought. As a little girl, I sat in that backseat and believed that everything in the world was good and right.

Every October, our family would drive out to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia to take in the sweeping views of the brilliant fall foliage. Claire and I would hunker down in the backseat, my nose buried in a Nancy Drew, Claire’s buried in one of her summer reading selections.
The Catcher in the Rye
, I remember well, as my sister gasped and giggled her way through it and I begged to know what was so funny. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad were in the front seat listening to the soft croon of George Jones on the cassette player. Every now and then Dad would swing his arm back to tap our knees. “Look out your windows,” he’d say. “You’re missing the beautiful scenery.” Claire and I would look up for a minute and then burrow back into our books, more interested in our sleuthy and scandalous stories than the changing leaves.

We were happy then, it seemed. I was, anyway. But I was only nine, maybe ten years old. Claire seemed happy, too. But what do kids know about grown-up things like braving a marriage riddled with sickness and betrayal? At what age does a child learn that her parents might be pillars, but that, easily, they can crumble?

A few more steps. Now I was standing on the concrete entryway. The front door was staring right at me. My heart buckled in a way that made me wonder if it was strong enough to endure such a stress test. I felt nauseated. This wasn’t a good idea. I wasn’t ready for confrontation tonight. I wasn’t ready to hear what he might have to say. I turned and felt the safety of seeing my car.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

Just then, the front door opened. Larry stepped out, a Hefty garbage bag suspended in the air, his mouth falling open like a ventriloquist’s dummy’s, his eyes as wide as buttons.

“Helen?” he said, staring at me as if I were a hologram.

“In the flesh,” I said, in a stupidly casual voice.

“God, you’re looking more and more like your mother.”

“That must be weird,” I said, for lack of anything better to say.

“Spitting image.”

“Everyone always said that I looked like you.” When I was a little kid, I used to think that meant I looked like a man with a mustache. Claire got to be the one who looked just like Mom.

“Is everything all right?” His hair was more white than gray; his face was corded with lines, worn and leathery. His voice was more gravelly than I remembered. He wore jeans and a Green Bay sweatshirt.

“Yeah,” I said lightly. “Sorry to drop in like this. I was in the neighborhood…”

“Are you hurt? In trouble?” he asked, setting down the Hefty bag.

“No, I’m fine.”

“Do you want to come in?”

“I can’t stay.”

Larry looked hard at me as he raked his fingers through his hair. The side of his mouth pulled sharply to the side. Oh yeah, the twitching.

“So you still like Green Bay, huh?” I said, pointing to his sweatshirt.

“It’s too hard to be a Redskins fan,” he said, offering a small smile. “How’s Claire?”

“Good. Married with a daughter.”

“I saw her once at Home Depot. She didn’t see me and I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t have ended well.”

“What about you? Are you a mom?” He leaned against the doorframe, popped his knuckles.

“No,” I said, and then added, “Not yet.”

“Do you want to come in?”

“I’ve got to go.”

“Helen,” he said. “Why’d you come?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Are you sure you don’t know?”

I turned my head, looked across the road to the park. I thought about the reasons why I was there, whether I understood for sure myself.

“Helen,” he said again. “It’s been a long time. Tell me why you’re here.”

“I miss Mom,” I said plainly. “I was just wondering, don’t you miss her, too?”

“I do,” he said.

“Claire never wants to talk about her.”

“Come in, Helen,” he said. “Just for a minute.”

I stepped over the threshold and into the front room: blue tweed recliner, leather sofa, television on a stand, a childhood photo of Claire and me at Christmas in red flannel nightgowns. Larry walked to the easy chair in the corner of the room and signaled in the direction of the couch for me to sit. I did.

“I miss her, too,” Larry said softly.

“I can’t believe that she’s been gone for so long,” I said. “I can barely remember being fourteen, but I remember every detail about Mom like it was yesterday.”

Larry nodded, sitting back and crossing his legs. “Did your mother ever tell you how we met?”

“No,” I said.

“Let me get us something to drink,” he said, going to the refrigerator and cracking open two bottles of Sam Adams. “It was our first semester of college,” Larry said, handing me a cold beer. “I don’t know how we found each other in that sea of students, but somehow she and I sat down next to each other in
history class. She grew up in Baltimore, right in the city. And of course, I was in West Virginia, out in the country. We were an odd match, but we hit it off right away and started dating.”

I imagined Mom and Larry when they were young: a city girl and a country boy. The two of them
wanting
to be with each other; the two of them considering each other like a found treasure.

“Your mother and I had three things in common. One, I was the first in my family to go to college and she was the first in hers. Two, we both had rocky upbringings, both with our fathers. Maybe you never knew that.” Larry clenched his fist, spread his fingers, clenched his fist again. “And three, we both wanted a family of our own so that we could do things right.”

I thought about that, how they wanted to raise their children differently than how they themselves had been raised.

Larry went on. “We dated, got married during Christmas break. Your mother was pregnant with Claire soon after that. She decided to drop out of school. I always felt bad about that. But she wanted to. Nobody was going to take care of her baby but her. When I graduated, I went to work for MetLife. A year or so later, we tried to have another baby, but we had a hard time.”

“She once told me about a miscarriage she had after Claire.”

Larry nodded. “Five years later, you came along. Your mother was so happy to have another baby. She really wanted a sibling for Claire. We lived in a small apartment and money was tight, but during those early years, I can say that we were truly happy. For a number of years, I worked in the afternoon and evening, sitting down with folks around their kitchen tables, showing them how much insurance they needed. It wasn’t so bad and I got to be home in the mornings with you girls. Your mother had gone back to work part-time. Those mornings with you kids were some of the happiest times in my life.” His mouth twitched, and then he looked away.

“We were happy for a lot of years,” he said. “Then I went and screwed it all up. I had an affair.”

“Why’d you have the affair?” I asked. I took a swig of beer, savored the bitter malt and sweet caramel, felt it travel down my chest and into my stomach.

“There’s no reason. None that makes sense. I was just a fool. The woman made me feel like I was young and wanted.”

“And Mom?”

“She was devastated, but didn’t want a divorce.”

“Always a good Catholic,” I said.

“That’s about the size of it,” Larry said. “She said that she wouldn’t disgrace her children by getting a divorce. So we stayed married, but she also stayed mad. I was at a loss to make things better. Then, Met was looking for a group of guys to go open an office in Philadelphia. I’d be gone for a couple of months. I took it, thinking that I was doing something good for your mother—giving her some space. What I should have done was stay home and work harder at our marriage. At the time, I thought I was making the right decision.”

“Then what?” I asked.

“By the time I got home, your mother had lost faith in me—on many levels. Looked at me like I was less than the man she had married. I guess, after that, I met her halfway by becoming less and less, until she no longer remembered that I was ever anything more.”

Larry’s face twisted. His hands formed into fists, the white of his knuckles popping like X-ray images.

“Then she got sick,” he said. “And that was that.”