Goodnight Nobody (34 page)

I kept my eyes shut and pretended to be sleeping, until I heard him sigh and felt the bed shift as he rolled back to his side.

Evan continued to call every few days. "Can I see you?" he'd ask. "We've already wasted so much time, Kate. We should be together." I put him off too. I stared at the ocean and thought about Kitty Cavanaugh's father. Was he dead or alive? Had he been following the story? Was he guilty of more than fathering an out-of-wedlock daughter?

February turned into March. "I wish I could stay," my mother told me. "But I signed a contract."

I nodded. "It's okay. You were here"--I swallowed hard--"when I needed you."

"I'll always be here when you need me," she said. She drew my hair back from my forehead and kissed me. "Remember that, Kate."

The breeze off the ocean became warmer, scented with salt and beach plums. On the weekends, Janie or Ben would watch the kids, and I would walk on the beach for hours, feeling the cool sand on the soles of my feet as I made my way past concentric circles of seaweed, piles of driftwood, the occasional decomposing fish. Some days I'd see seals cavorting fifty feet out or sunning themselves on rocks at low tide. The rocks were the most comforting thing of all. Every day, the tide would go out, and they'd reappear, the way they would all summer, the way they'd been doing for centuries before I had ever seen this beach and would continue to do after all of us were gone.

Just before Memorial Day, I reached under the front seat of the minivan to retrieve Sophie's candy necklace, and found the advance reader's copy of
The Good Mother
that Laura Lynn Baird had given me. I flipped past the blank pages at the front of the book advising that the dedication was to come, and read

Mommy & Me

by Katherine Cavanaugh

Foreword

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess, with long black hair and rose-red lips who went off to an enchanted kingdom and came back with a baby, a little girl all her own.

When the princess died and the little girl grew up, the girl went looking for her mother, trying to understand who she was, whom she'd loved, and what each of them had become.

There are women who grow up with good mothers, women who endure indifferent mothers, and women who survive toxic parenting, absent mothers, abandoning mothers, mothers by biology only.

The woman who raised me, my aunt Bonnie, fell into the first category, as loving and supportive a mother as any child could wish.

My real mother--my biological mother, the woman who gave birth to me in a hospital in Hyannis in 1969 and moved back to New York City by herself six months later--was a mystery: a glamorous presence, a beauty, a sorceress. I spent the first years of my life trying to charm her, waiting for her to return to me the way, I'd find out much later, she was waiting for the man who'd gotten her pregnant to come back to her.

"Mommy!" Sophie held her out hand for her necklace. I tucked the book in my purse and handed it over. That night, I read more.

The man who may or may not be my father sits across from me in a midtown restaurant. His suit is black, beautifully cut, or gray, or navy blue. His gray hair is combed straight back from his forehead, or it's curly salt and pepper, thinning on top, too long in the back, or it's gone entirely, leaving the top of his head naked and vulnerable as an egg. His fingertips are blunt, the nails clipped close and coated with clear gloss. When I slide my mother's photograph across the linen-draped table, he barely glances at it before using those fingertips to slide it back. "Never saw her in my life." A dozen years, a dozen men. The Internet helps--a few keystrokes and I can download biographies from corporate Web sites or magazine profiles. I can find out where this possibility, this shadow-daddy, grew up, where he spent his summers, where he went to college, where he got married, how many children he claims. I work in a cubicle in my small town's library. I sift through reels of microfiche, yellowed newspaper clippings, laminated programs, black-and-white photographs. And I return again to the city to sit in restaurants where coffee costs six dollars a cup, and ask the only question that matters.
Mine?
I wonder, staring at him over my cup as my voice launches into the speech I've given so many times before.
Are you mine? And what do you know about how my mother died?

On the first day the temperature topped seventy-five degrees, I wiggled the children into their bathing suits and slathered their pale bodies with sunblock. Janie had come to visit again. We worked together, gathering pails and shovels, towels and folding chairs and a rainbow-striped umbrella to stick in the sand. Then we descended the stairs to the beach. The boys dashed right into the little waves that lapped the sand. Sophie hung back, clutching my hand. "Come on, sweetheart," I coaxed. She shook her head but didn't resist when I scooped her into my arms. The water was shockingly cold as it flowed over my toes and ankles, but I forced myself to keep going, wading in until it was foaming past my knees...then my hips.

"One...two...three!" I said, and bent forward until Sophie's toes brushed the top of a wave. She squirmed in my arms, giggling, as I tossed her lightly into the air. She screamed with laughter, then collected herself and let me carry her back to shore to build a sandcastle with her brothers. I eased myself into the water until it was up to my shoulders, then took a deep breath and dunked my head. When I brushed the salt water out of my eyes and looked back to shore, the kids and Janie were applauding. I waved, then flipped onto my back and floated in the pale green ocean water, looking up at the sky.
Come home to me,
said Ben.
Come back to me,
said Evan. I closed my eyes, listening for my answer. My hair trembled in the water. My body rose and fell. The waves rolled in and out, saying nothing at all.

On Memorial Day, the telephone rang.

"Turn on your TV," said Janie.

"Which channel?"

"Doesn't matter."

I flicked on the set and saw a familiar vista--the White House, atop an emerald green lawn, underneath a sparkling blue summer sky. A podium had been set up in the Rose Garden, and the president stood behind it.

"We go live now to this unprecedented speech," said the news anchor.

The president gripped the podium. I saw his throat working as he swallowed once, twice, and then began to speak. "After careful consideration, I have decided not to seek my party's nomination for a second term as president," he said. "I have made this decision after lengthy and prayerful personal reflection, and a desire to do what is right, not only for this country, but for..." His throat worked again. "For my family. I have caused them pain--my wife, my children, the people who have seen me at my lowest and loved me nevertheless." He looked down at his notes, then looked up again, clenching his jaw. "I ask the media and the public to respect our privacy during this difficult time. Godspeed, and God bless America."

It was a moment before the anchor's voice came on again, and in that moment, I stared at the face on the screen as the camera lingered. I considered the high cheekbones, the cleft chin, the blue eyes that gleamed as he bowed his head over the podium. Eyes, a poet might have said, the blue of pansies...or of cornflowers.

"Well," the anchor spluttered, clearly off balance. "Well, Peter, I'm not quite sure what to make of this. Have we heard any news about a possible medical condition?"

"He wishes," Janie said in my ear. "Cops found the dealer last night."

"The president's dealer?"

"No, President Stuart was already a congressman then. He knew better than to buy his own junk. He had his little brother get it for him--you know, the one who spent the entire last decade in and out of rehab. Thirty years ago. Two hundred dollars of uncut China white and bye-bye, inconvenient woman and illegitimate kid."

I stared blankly at the empty podium on the television screen, picturing the note I'd found in Kitty's dresser drawer.
Stuart 1968.

"Mommy?" Sophie tugged my hand.

"I should go." I told Janie.

"Stay tuned," she said, sounding almost giddy. "Breaking news. Developing fast. I've got to go get my hair blown out. CNN just called."

I told her goodbye, hung up the telephone, and flicked the television into silence. Bonnie's voice echoed in my head.
She told me that she was getting to the end of it
...and Joel Asch's voice joined hers.
Writing for us gave Kitty access,
he'd told me.
You can interview senators. Even presidents.

"Come on," I said. I lifted my daughter in my arms and started singing against her cheek. "Comes the measles, you can quarantine the room...comes a mousie, you can chase it with a broom. Comes love, nothing can be done."

"No singing," said Sophie, batting my lips away. "Don't you want to see the president some more?"

I shook my head and carried her through the glass doors out into the sunshine, down the silvery stairs that led to the water's edge. "I've seen enough," I said.

Permissions Acknowledgments

Acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

"All by Myself" by Eric Carmen, Sergei Rachmaninoff (c) 1975, renewed 2002 by Eric Carmen Music, Inc. All rights administered by Universal Songs of PolyGram International, Inc./BMI. Used by Permission. All Rights Reserved.

Laurie Anderson, "Smoke Rings" (reprinted with permission from the artist).

"Comes Love." Words and Music by Lew Brown, Sammy Stept, and Charles Tobias (c) 1939 (Renewed) WB Music Corp., Chappell & Co., and Ched Music Corporation. All Rights for Ched Music Corporation. Administered by WB Music Corp. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

Goodnight Moon
(c) 1947 by Harper & Row. Text (c) renewed 1975 by Roberta Brown Rauch. Illustrations (c) renewed 1975 by Edith Hurd, Clement Hurd, John Thacher Hurd and George Hollyer as trustees of the Edith & Clement Hurd 1982 Trust. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. This selection may not be reillustrated without written permission of HarperCollins.

Horton Hatches the Egg
by Dr. Seuss, copyright TM and Copyright (c) by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, LP 1940, renewed 1968. Used by permission of Random House Children's Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

The Feminine Mystique
by Betty Friedan. Copyright (c) 1983, 1974, 1973, 1963 by Betty Friedan. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

"Frankie and Johnny" by Lee Bayer, Ernest W. Hayes. (c) 1966 by Champion Music Corporation. All rights administered by Songs of Universal, Inc./BMI. Used by Permission. All Rights Reserved.

"My Funny Valentine" by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (c) 1937 (Renewed) Chappell & Co. Rights for Extended Renewal Term in U.S. controlled by The Estate of Lorenz Hart (administered by WB Music Corp.) and The Family Trust U/W Richard Rodgers and The Family Trust U/W Dorothy F. Rodgers (administered by Williamson Music). All Rights outside U.S. controlled by Chappell & Co. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

"My Funny Valentine" by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers. (c) 1937 (Renewed) Chappell & Co. Rights for Extended Renewal Term in U.S. controlled by WB Music Corp. O/B/O The Estate of Lorenz Hart and The Family Trust Under Will Richard Rodgers and The Family Trust Under Will Dorothy F. Rodgers (administered by Williamson Music). All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

"Why My Mother Made Me" reprinted from
The Gold Cell
by Sharon Olds by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

References to Babo and Uglydoll are granted by permission of PrettyUgly, LLC (www.uglydolls.com). All rights reserved.