Binding Arbitration (51 page)

She stepped in without a word, but I could almost see her thoughts racing. “You did this on purpose to trap me.”

“Isn’t that my line?” I narrowed my eyes.

“You did it deliberately.”

“Yes, I did.” I smiled and closed the shower curtain over her face, which had the first inkling of acceptance. “You said I could give Cass anything he wanted for Christmas.”

I peeled the plastic paper off the pregnancy test and dipped the thing in the sample. “They’re painting your name on the door at the Legal Aid office today.” The urine seeped up the stick to the little window.

“The security system has been installed.” The first pink line lit up the window.

“Vicki’s had the whole place painted. The office furniture arrived, the daycare rooms are finished, and she hired a day-time nanny. Good thinking on her part, ‘cause that nanny is going to earn every penny I pay her. I might have to pay her more, taking care of two infants and a toddler, don’t you think?”

The second pink line appeared slowly, parallel to the first. My heart raced with joy. I said a quick prayer to God, to Cass and Andy, too. She’d have no other choice but to join the land of the living now. I grabbed the receipt out of my bag and scribbled two smiley faces and ‘I love you’ on it. “Read the results on your own. I’ll make you something to eat.” I slipped out of the bathroom.

There was nothing else in the cabinets except oatmeal, and cereal and the milk was sour in the fridge. Libby stayed in the bathroom longer than I expected. From what I could gather, she hadn’t eaten more than saltines for the last two weeks.

I gathered the empty boxes from the landing on the front porch and carried them into Cass’ room. I smiled at the place where I’d first laid eyes on him. Even with the joy of this new surprise, I yearned for him. Starting with his dressers I packed everything except photos.

From Libby’s room, I heard dressers opening and closing, at least she was getting dressed.

I went to the kitchen and reheated the oatmeal. It wasn’t going to be that tasty, but it would sustain her.

Back in Cass’ bedroom, I continued with the next drawer of his dresser. At the bottom was a piece of artwork. I traced the lines of the drawing, it was a family, a woman with long brown hair and green eyes, and a man, each of them were carrying a bundle in their arms. I smiled, swallowing down the tears, knowing Cass was happy. He had told me so only hours ago.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” Libby vaulted herself into the room.

“Packing up Cass’ stuff. The Cancer Federation is going to come by next week.” I handed her the bowl of oatmeal.

“You have no right to do this.”

“I have every right. I’m his father. You’re his mother. That makes us equals.”

I was across the room, when she launched the bowl of oatmeal at me like a missile. I barely ducked before the bowl shattered against the wall and the oatmeal slid to the floor in a glob.

“I’ve had enough of your angry outbursts.” I ground out.

“Well then, run along. Isn’t that your response to a pregnant woman?”

“I haven’t been the one running for the last two weeks.” I sealed up another box and stacked it atop the first one.

Libby kicked at the boxes and they toppled onto the floor, the top one broke open.

“I know you’re hurting, and you’re mad, but if you weren’t pregnant, I’d want to beat you within an inch of your life.”

“I wish you’d kill me!”

“Babe.” I stepped toward her, pulling her into my arms. “We’re going to make it through this.” I coaxed her to sit on Cass’ bed, and I knelt in front of her. “I love you, and I miss you. Please come back to me. I need you.”

Tears raced down her cheeks. “I don’t need you, I don’t want you, and I don’t love you.”

“What about them?” I spread my hand over her abdomen.

“Those pregnancy tests are wrong all the time.”

“Are you going to try to convince me you don’t love our babies?”

She fell forward, her elbows on her knees. “Just go away. I don’t want to be with you. You remind me of Cass. And I don’t want to love you.”

“That’s unfortunate for you, but you’re my wife and you already love me.”

She looked up at me. “Aidan, don’t make me hurt you.”

“You already have by shutting me out, by trying to disregard our future.”

“I don’t love you, and I don’t want any more kids.”

I smiled. “You lie, Libby. For all your declarations to the contrary, you’re lying to yourself. You’re hurting, and you’re angry. You love me, and you have from the beginning.” I waited for the words to sink in. “The same way I’ve loved you. You can deny it, but it doesn’t make it any less true or any less real. And speaking untruths now isn’t going to ease your pain. It’s only going to make you feel worse later.”

She leveled her gaze at me. “I hate you.” She could have knocked me over with a feather with that. Even though I knew it wasn’t true, it hurt me, but on some level, maybe she wanted to test the love that I had so easily and often professed.

“You hate what’s happened to us, and so do I.” I reached for her hands. “But life is going on, and we need to go on. We need to pack this place up, and then get on a plane to Arizona. I have to go back to work, and we need to find you a good doctor. We both need to heal, but the best way; the only way I know how, is to do that together.”

She pulled her hands out of mine. “Of course your precious baseball career awaits,” she screamed.

I remained calm; one of us needed to be. “The only things precious in this world to me, Libby, are you and our children. I can’t stop the people I love from dying, but I can love the ones I have left all the more.”

Her body racked with the tears. She could fight me, if I was angry, but if I was tender, she had no defense. “Just get out. Go to Arizona and don’t come back.”

“Libby, I know you feel anguish, heartache, and grief, but you’re killing me from the inside out. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, and I can’t think straight. All I can do is take one day or one task at a time.” The tears I’d been holding back started to run down my cheeks. “I need you.”

She raised her chin with defiance. “I don’t need anyone.”

“Yes you do, Libby. Everyone needs someone who is more important to us than ourselves.”

“My someone died on Valentine’s Day.”

“Are you trying to rip my heart out with your bare hands?”

“Will that make you go away?”

I looked around the room as if there was some shred of hope for me to grasp onto. I threw the only pitch I had left. “Cass wouldn’t want this.” I showed her the drawing.

She became fiercely angry and hurled accusations in my face like spikes. “How would you know? When did you become such an expert on what he’d want?”

“When he told me, I listened,” I threw back at her without thinking before I composed myself. “You remember when he said to tell you his purpose for being born? He came to me this morning, and he told me it was time to tell you. He said he’s happy.”

“You’re delusional.” She put her hands over her ears. “I won’t hear this.”

I fought her hands off her ears and held them steady in her lap. “Too bad. It’s what you need.” I hesitated gathering my thoughts, organizing them, hoping beyond hope I could reach her. “Cass told me he was born to keep us together, and when that didn’t work, we needed a reminder.”

“I hate you, Palowski, and I hate God. What kind of God would use a little boy to force two people together who were so completely unsuited for each other?”

“A merciful one, one who knew what each of us needed from the other.”

“I don’t need anything from you or anyone else.”

“You’re hiding behind a lie because you’re scared. I know you, Libby. You’re not a liar, and you’re not a coward.”

“I don’t love you, Aidan. I’m sorry.”

She thought she knew her own heart, but right now it was filled with so much anger and pain she wasn’t feeling anything else clearly. “It’s good, then, that I love you enough to forgive you for this right now.” I got to my feet. “You’re the only woman I love, the only one I’ll ever be with again, and the only one who’ll ever carry my children. And you’re the only woman I’ll forgive without you even asking.”

“Don’t count on it.”

I lifted her chin, so she’d have to look me in the eye. “Don’t count down the fact that I’m planted in your heart as deep as my children are planted in your body. Don’t count down the fact that every time your body changes, or the babies start to move, or whenever you’re reminded that something bigger than either of us is growing inside of you, that you’ll see my face, and you’ll hear me say I love you in your mind. Every memento is me pulling on your heart strings, pulling you back to me.”

“I gave you up once before—for him—and I’d do it again in a heartbeat, if it would bring him back.”

“Not everything in life is a trade off.”

“Do you think I can replace one child with another? Is that what your merciful God thinks?”

“Maybe we’re tied together in a cord that’s stronger than either of us. Maybe it’s a reminder that we’re a family, that you are as much a part of me, as I am, you.”

“The only thing that ties us together is binding arbitration. Don’t fool yourself into believing we’re in control, we don’t even get to sit down with the opposition and plead our cases. Unfortunately, sometimes we walk away from the table with less than we bargained for, and some, like me, we end up without anything left.”

I kissed her lips tenderly, as if I could brand my words into her. “I love you, babe, and I’ll be waiting.”

I backed away as stillness seemed to envelope her. I pivoted myself, a man with an axis again, and I forced myself to make determined strides. Then suddenly, like an eruption, things started flying about Cass’ room with resounding clunks. She screamed curses from the top of her lungs.

I drove away, clamping down on a raw surge of pain. I had done all I could do for now. I instinctively knew that forcing more on her now would send her into a tailspin. Last time I thought I could force her hand she hadn’t come back when she desperately needed me.

But now, she didn’t need me. I’d given her the money and the freedom to decide, which in turn was the gift I’d given myself. If she came back now, it would be permanent testimony of her love for me, as tragic and as flawed as I am.

I’d have to live on the love we had shared in the past few months until she was able to forgive me for not saving Cass, until she was able to forgive herself, until she’d allow herself to feel my love again. I’d have to live on the hope that as our babies grew, so would her realization as to the depth of my love and devotion to her.

Batter up
, the ump said solemnly.
I’m glad she knows how to take strikes.

36

RIP: REQUIESCAT IN PACE

Grief fills the room up of my absent child, lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words. Shakespeare

Libby

I dumped drawers. I emptied cabinets. I shredded the linens. I threw books. My head hurt, and I was dizzy by the time I collapsed in quiet contemplation of the gaping hole that once was my front door. Aidan had ripped the framing away, the way I’d desperately tried to rip him out of my heart.

A flutter in my stomach prompted me to close my eyes. Cass had been to see Aidan, in a dream. A common phenomenon, the dead visiting, settling accounts, and assuring ourselves that the one we lost goes on without us.
Why had he chosen Aidan? Why not me?

I needed more time to grieve, but now new life growing inside me would take that time away. I had to live, or risk injuring
them
. There was more than one. ‘Babies.’ Aidan had smirked as he spoke, as if he’d thrown a no hitter.

A shadow crossed the doorway. “What the hell happened here?” I heard a baby’s babble and looked up. Vicki stood in the doorway with a baby carrier in one hand, and a shopping bag in the other. Her long, patterned coat was dragging off one shoulder courtesy of an expensive diaper bag.

Vicki set the baby carrier down and unbundled the gurgling Betty. “Cat got your tongue?” She tucked Betty into her elbow, placing small cardboard boxes of Chinese food directly in front of me with chop sticks on top. “Eat. You look like shit.”

The smell of the food came at me, and my mouth watered. I opened the container and started to eat, as Vicki sat down offering Betty her breast. “You haven’t returned my calls.”

I nodded my head.

“Time’s up, Libby, no one is going to tolerate this bull-hockey any longer, especially your husband.”

I stuffed a stick full of fried rice into my mouth, speaking around it. “I sent him away.”

“You’re trying to put the kibosh on the best thing that’s ever happened.” She murmured to Betty. “Aunt Libby might need an extended stay at the Looney bin. Jeanne’s finally rubbed off on her.” Betty’s fist hit her mother’s breast, and Vicki’s knowing eyes fell on me. “This isn’t just about your pain. He loves you, and you’re punishing him, as if this is his fault.”

“I can’t stand to look at him. It’s Cass’ face, the same crooked smile, the eyebrows, and the dimple.”

“News flash for you, Lib, but it was his face first. And that’s the face of love for you. Why would you deny it?” She reached into her shopping bag and handed me chocolate milk.

“I don’t want to love him.”

“His love can fill the gaping wound you’re letting fester.”

I shrugged, digging in another cardboard container.

“You always have been too blind to see.” She ambled to her feet; she had lost most of her pregnancy weight. When had that happened? She handed Betty to me. “Burp her. I have to pee. For the life of me, I think my bladder is ruined.”

I gathered Betty onto my chest. When she murmured, it sent an ache into my own breasts. I patted her back in a steady rhythm while she sucked on her fist. All of a sudden, she let one rip and it wasn’t from her front end. I moved onto the floor, pulling the diaper bag behind me. I was fairly confident I still knew how to do this. Betty flayed her arms, pumping them up and down as I took off her shoes and her fleece bottoms. “Wow, that’s quite a doozy.” She cackled at me in response.