Just Like Other Daughters (10 page)

He’s quiet for a second. “You okay, Alicia?”

His tone of voice catches me off guard and my eyes actually tear up again. No one but Jin ever asks if I’m okay. Not my colleagues, certainly not Randall. He never asked about my emotional well-being, even when we were married. I know Mark is just my plumber, but I’m somehow comforted by the concern in his voice.

“Just a long day. Some things going on with Chloe.”

“Kids,” he says with understanding in his voice. “I have two. They live with my ex-wife, in Chestertown.”

I never thought about the fact that Mark had probably been married, probably had kids. He’s younger than me, but only by a few years, I would guess. “Boys or girls?” I ask.

“One of each. Twins. Emma, she’s the oldest by six minutes, and Elon. They’re sixteen.”

I smile because I hear him smile. “Twins,” I say. I had always thought about what it would be like to have twins. Of course, Randall and I had never even contemplated having another child after Chloe. He had a vasectomy when she was three months old. Randall and I were responsible parents. We would have never dared taken our chances in conceiving another child.

I realize that I’ve allowed an awkward pause between us. “So . . . I’ll see you in the morning?”

“See you in the morning.”

I hang up and look at the computer screen. An ad for a well-known online dating service pops up on the screen. Half off tonight. I click the box that launches me onto the site . . . just for the hell of it.

I look at the cost. With the half-off coupon, it’s $14.99 for a month. It goes down to $12.99, if I sign up for six months.

Would it really take six months for them to find me a date? I could find my own date in six months. I read some of the testimonials.

Ah . . . these people are looking for a spouse. I don’t need a husband. I would never do that to Chloe—bring a man into the house. But surely there must be men looking for companionship without marriage.

I nibble on my lower lip.
Fifteen bucks
, I tell myself.

I hear a tap at my front door. I know who it is. It’s the only person who scratches at my door at ten at night. Jin’s back.

I shuffle to the door in sweatpants, sweatshirt, and shearling slippers.

“Sorry,” Jin says as I unlock the door. “I know it’s late but you’re not in bed.”

I raise my arms and let them fall. “Not in bed.” I wave her in. Ours is the most comfortable relationship I’ve ever had. The easiest. The kindest. Without Jin, I’d be lost. “I’m just surfing the Net.” I close my laptop when we walk into the living room. I know Jin would be supportive of the idea of me Internet dating, but I don’t want to discuss it with her. Not right now, at least.

“So, what’s up?” I can tell by the look on her face that something is. She’s still wearing the pink wifebeater and yoga pants, but at least she’s thrown a sweatshirt over them. Of course, it’s one of those off-the-shoulder sweatshirts, the kind skinny people dance in. I gave up feeling frumpy around her years ago. I just don’t have the energy.

I sit. She sits across from me.

“Chloe in bed?” she asks.

I nod. “I can’t believe she kissed Thomas,” I blurt out.

“So he
is
her boyfriend.”

“Never mind.” I hold up my hand. “I can’t talk about this tonight. If I think about it anymore, my head is going to explode.” I pull a throw pillow onto my lap. “You didn’t just come over to say hi after you ate all the pasta?”

She looks at her hands in her lap. She’s one of those people who, even at our age, can still sit Indian-style comfortably on a couch.

I wait.

She groans and hangs her head. “Abby called my cell. That’s why I didn’t pick up when Mark called.”

“He’ll be here tomorrow morning.”

She nods, then hesitates long enough for me to think I might have to wheedle the Abby information out of her, but then she goes on. “I didn’t actually talk to her.” Jin nibbles on her lower lip. “She left a message. She wants to come this weekend.”

“I thought Huan was going to the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York with friends this weekend.”

Jin picks at the hem of her yoga pants. “That’s why she wants to come this weekend. To see me. Without Huan.”

“Why?”

Jin shrugs, but doesn’t look at me. “What if it’s bad? What if she has cancer or something?”

“I doubt that’s it.” I open my laptop and casually close the windows on the dating service and the Google searches. I’ll think about couples.com later.

Now Jin is picking at the polish on her big toenail. “You think she’s getting married again?”

I slide one foot under me. That’s about as flexible as I get. “I thought you said that Huan said that she broke up with that corporate lawyer, like, three months ago.”

“She did,” Jin says. “But maybe they got back together and they’re getting married and she wants to tell me face-to-face.” She opens and closes her arms. “I want to be happy for her, but I can’t. How could she be happy with this woman when she couldn’t be happy with me?”

I’m surprised by the emotion in Jin’s voice. She’s really upset.

“You don’t know that she’s getting married.” I power down my computer. “That’s as crazy as guessing she might have cancer. There’s no evidence that either is true.”

“What do I do?” Jin asks, meeting my gaze, again.

What do I do?
I think.
About Thomas. About Chloe and Thomas.
“I guess we just wait and see.”

W
as that next week a defining week in my life? In Chloe’s? I always thought I could identify significant moments in my life as they happened. In the past, it had been relatively easy: high school graduation, college graduation, my mother’s death, going home with Randall that night, my subsequent pregnancies, getting my doctorate. I suppose I knew that Chloe meeting Thomas
could
have been a defining moment. She was infatuated with him from that first day, but that week, two weeks after Chloe met him, that was a defining time in both my life and hers. His, too, I suppose, but I couldn’t think about Thomas or how he was feeling. How could I? I couldn’t even deal with my own feelings, and certainly not Chloe’s.

I think that week defined my future because I could have put a stop to it then. Maybe if I had put an end to it then, everything would be different now. But how could I have possibly known that? And if I had known, would I have had the guts to do things differently? Would I really have been able to put the kibosh on Chloe’s relationship with Thomas? Did I have the right? And would my attempt to do so have made things worse?

I lean my forehead on the cold glass at the window. Alone again. But when I close my eyes, when I let go of the present and the emptiness around me, I hear Chloe.

I hear her screaming.

A temper tantrum.

Right on the steps of Miss Minnie’s. Approaching her twenty-sixth year and my daughter is stamping her feet, thrashing her arms, and screaming like a two-year-old. It was the week after Thomas’s first visit to our house.

“No! No, I want Thomas! I want Thomas to come!” She’s reaching for the door, grabbing the doorknob, trying to pry the door open as I attempt to lead her away.

“Thomas isn’t coming home with us today,” I say calmly, picking her canvas bag up off the wet stoop.

“Thomas is coming! We have to watch a movie. We watch a movie on Wednesday!” she shrieks, clawing at the door.

Chloe is short, but she outweighs me. I’m trying to find a dignified way to drag her away from the door, toward the car, but I can’t get her to budge. First I pull her, then I get behind her to give her a push. She’s sobbing. Drooling.

The curtain in the front window moves and three faces appear. Alexandra is there; she’s severely autistic. And Ann; general retardation, but high-functioning. Ann’s parents are actually considering sending her to a group home in the Annapolis area. Susan talks all the time about working at McDonald’s; the girl probably could work there if she had a simple job. Above their heads, Thomas materializes.

“K . . . Koey!” he shouts. He presses his mouth to the glass and makes it wet. “Koey!”

“Thomas!” Chloe sees him in the window and lets go of the doorknob so suddenly that I almost fall.

She moves quicker than I think I’ve ever seen her move. Before I can right myself, she’s running down the wheelchair ramp, ducking under the rail, and leaping into the flower bed under the window. “Thomas!” she cries desperately. “I want to watch the movie! We have to watch the movie!”

I straighten my coat, slipping the library bag over my shoulder. The air is growing crisp. It smells like snow.

“Chloe, Thomas can’t come with us. Not today. We didn’t get his mother’s permission to take him home with us.” I walk partway down the wheelchair ramp and eye the flower bed. It rained the night before, then froze, then thawed in the noonday sun. The flower bed is a quagmire.

I’m wearing my new knee-high leather boots and a skirt. I really don’t want to get my boots muddy, and I certainly don’t want to trample Minnie’s bushes and plants. I’m a college professor, for God’s sake. My behavior should be at least semi-dignified. What if one of my students sees me? I run into them all the time: in the grocery store, at the post office, at the coffee shop. I learned the hard way to never leave my house in my glasses, wearing baggy sweatpants and one of Chloe’s kitten sweatshirts.

I glance over my shoulder. No cars driving by, no pedestrians. I don’t see anyone in the neighborhood watching, but anyone who heard the commotion would certainly peek out their door.

“Please, Chloe?” I say calmly. “Can you just get in the car and we can talk about this at home?”

“I can’t get in the car!” Chloe moans. She is pressing both of her hands to the glass. Her sneakers are muddy, her coat spattered with mud. “Thomas, come out! Thomas!”

“K . . . Koey,” he echoes. He’s not crying, but I can see tears in his eyes. He’s upset. Chloe is upsetting him. He pushes his way between Alexandra and Ann and hovers, his big bulky self filling the window.

Chloe makes a fist and strikes the glass.

I duck under the rail of the wheelchair ramp and jump down into the flower bed. I’ll have to pay for the plants my daughter is trampling. I put my arm around her shoulders and gently lower her hand. Chloe’s super-strong. I’m afraid if she keeps hitting the window, she’ll break the glass and hurt herself.

She’s done that before . . . hurt herself. There was the broken arm when she jumped out of Randall’s car before he came to a full stop, when she was twelve. Then three trips to the emergency room for stitches due to: a kitchen knife mishap, a temper tantrum in the bathroom involving the mirror, and a jar of pickles she tried to open herself in the picnic aisle of the grocery store. I don’t want to add a plate-glass window injury to the list.

“Chloe, please,” I say forcefully. “You know you can’t have what you want by acting this way.”

She looks at me, her face bright red, her cheeks wet with tears, snot running from her nose to her lips. I bet Thomas wouldn’t want to kiss her right now. I pull a tissue from my coat pocket. “You need to come with me, and we’ll talk about having Thomas come over to watch a movie another night.”

She turns her head to look at me at last and I wipe her nose with the tissue, the same way I did when she was a child. And she still is a child in many ways, but in her face, I see an adult. Maybe an adult trying to escape her child’s mind. The thought brings a lump up in my throat and my eyes blur. I love her so much. I just want her to be safe and happy.

“Thomas can come watch a movie?” she blubbers.

“Not today.”

“Wednesday?” she asks, sniffling.

Today is Wednesday. Thomas came to our house last Wednesday and Saturday Chloe spent half the day with him with the LoGs. They went to an arcade and I followed the church van there and sat in the parking lot. Like a stalker. I didn’t witness any more lip-kissing, but I didn’t go into the arcade. Because if I didn’t see it, maybe I could pretend it wasn’t happening? Because nowhere on the Internet when I Googled “sex and Down syndrome” did anyone tell me what I should do to protect Chloe. To let her have a life, but still protect her.

That’s all I really want. It’s what every mother wants, isn’t it?

I think about my own mom and I wonder what she would do in my place. But she’s been dead so long. So many of my memories of her and of my childhood and teenage years have faded. I desperately wish she was here now to tell me what to do with my own daughter.

I pull Chloe into my arms. She fights me for a second, but then relaxes a little. She doesn’t hug me, but at least she lets me hug her. When she was little, this was, sometimes, the way I calmed her when she had one of her temper tantrums. I didn’t exactly restrain her, but I wrapped her in my arms. She feels so good close to me. I know she’s getting my coat all snotty, but I don’t care.

Chloe’s whole body shudders. “I want to see
Aladdin
again. With Thomas,” she mumbles. The girl doesn’t give in easily, I’ll give her that.

I stroke her hair, thinking I need to talk to someone, but who? Who can give me advice? Who can help me reason my way through this? Randall? I hold back a bitter laugh. When has he ever been helpful in making decisions about Chloe?

Maybe our family therapist, Dr. Tamara?

Is it time to talk to Margaret?

I don’t want to talk to Margaret. I don’t want my daughter to be with her son, her big, stuttering son whose glasses are always perched crookedly on his nose.

I kiss the top of Chloe’s head. “Wave good-bye to Thomas and let’s go home.”

“He can come?” She takes a great shuddering breath and looks up at me with her hooded blue eyes. Blue eyes that can melt my heart. “Thomas can come on Wednesday? So we can watch
Aladdin
. . . and . . . and
The Little Mermaid
?”

“We’ll talk to his mother.”

“He has a TV.” Chloe allows me to lead her out of the flower bed. The four inside watch from the window. I want to turn around and holler to them that the show is over, but I keep walking. I wonder if Minnie has witnessed the whole incident from another window.

“I’m sure he does,” I say, giving her a reassuring squeeze. We walk down Minnie’s driveway and head for the curb.

“But not good movies,” Chloe says. She’s still taking big, shuddering breaths. “He doesn’t have good movies. I can go to his house and take good movies. His mom, she can pick us up.”

“We’ll see, Chloe.” I fumble for the keys in my pocket and press the UNLOCK button on the fob. The Honda beeps.

“I can go?” Standing on the sidewalk, she looks up at me.

I can’t imagine letting my daughter go with strangers. I mean they’re
practically
strangers, Thomas and his mother . . . and his father. I don’t know his father. What if he’s some kind of pervert who likes girls with IQs below fifty? It’s a terrible thing to think, but how would I know? How does anyone know until their child is molested or raped?

I know I let her go with the church group, but letting Chloe go to Thomas’s house, that would be different, wouldn’t it? Groups are safer. And I’ve been right there if Chloe needs me—a parking lot away.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.

We make a quick stop at the grocery store and arrive home without further incident. I let Chloe choose what we have for dinner: fish sticks, mozzarella sticks, and French fries. The white food menu. All unhealthy, all contributing to both of our expanding waistlines, but I let her put the items in the grocery cart anyway.

We both have to leave our shoes at the front door because they’re so muddy. While I unload the groceries in my stocking feet, Chloe goes upstairs to change her clothes. Apparently, she and Thomas had apple juice again today and she spilled it all over her new sweatshirt, the blue one with the kitten and the pink ball of string on it—Chloe has four or five kitten sweatshirts. I can’t keep them straight, but she can.

As I turn on the oven, the phone rings. It’s Minnie, according to the caller ID. I hesitate, phone in my hand. Minnie rarely calls. No . . . Minnie
never
calls. I exhale.

“Hello?”

“Alicia, hi. It’s Minerva.”

“Minnie . . . hi.” I stack the fish stick box and the mozzarella stick box on the counter beside the stove. “I’m really sorry about Chloe’s behavior today,” I say, deciding I should be proactive. “I don’t know what got into her. This thing with Thomas—”

“Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she interrupts.

I like Minnie, but she’s all business. In the beginning, I liked her because she
was
all business. She helped me handle Chloe and the problem of what to do with her without a great deal of emotion. Without making me feel as if I was making a heart-wrenching decision.

“I’ll be calling Thomas’s mother next.”

I rest my hand on the freezer door. This doesn’t sound good. I wait.

“I had a chat with Chloe and Thomas today, but I think it’s best if you talk with her, too,” Minnie says. “I think this is one of those instances where we need to back each other up.”

I open the freezer and put a half gallon of butter pecan ice cream in, wondering what the hell my daughter’s done. “Absolutely.”

“Did she tell you?” Minnie asks.

I close the freezer. “No. What did she do?”

“She and Thomas locked themselves in the bathroom,” Minnie tells me, making no attempt to soften the blow. “Together.”

“They
locked
themselves in
the bathroom
? Why did they do that?” I can’t imagine Chloe using the toilet in front of Thomas. Chloe is fairly modest. She doesn’t even pee in front of me anymore. Of course she sees no reason why she can’t barrel into the bathroom when
I’m
using the toilet . . . or bringing the FedEx man in for a quick look-see. “Were they . . . using the toilet together?” I ask, frowning.

“No. When they let me in, everyone still had their pants on.”

“Well, that’s good to hear.” I almost chuckle at my sarcasm, but I know I shouldn’t be a smart-ass right now. I don’t want to anger or offend Minnie. Minnie’s one of the most important people in my life right now. Maybe even ahead of the plumber.

“I think they were kissing,” Minnie says.

I blink. “Kissing like . . . good-bye?” I try not to recall the two of them at my front door in a lip-lock.

“No. Not good-bye kissing. It was lunchtime.”

“Ah . . .”

“I apologize. We have a one-person-in-the-bathroom-at-a-time rule, even with the girls,” Minnie goes on, “but I was in the kitchen making lunch. I can see I’m going to have to be more vigilant with them . . . my home is not a place for making out.”

Making out?
Chloe was
making out
with him? “Oh no, of course not.” I grab a cookie sheet from the cabinet and dump the whole box of mozzarella sticks on it. “I . . . I’ll speak to Chloe about this. She shouldn’t be . . . obviously . . .” I’m an English professor but I find myself having a difficult time speaking my native language. “. . . Making out . . . that’s . . . totally inappropriate.” I slide the baking sheet into the oven. “Certainly nothing I’d ever encourage.”

“Alicia”—Minnie’s tone softens—“this is only natural, you know. She likes Thomas, and he likes her. They’re adults, with the same feelings and desires we have. They just need to figure out when physical displays of affection are appropriate and when they’re not.”