Fertility: A Novel (43 page)

Sarah opened an eye and asked in a sleepy voice, “Hey, where are you going? It’s Saturday. Aren’t you off this weekend?”

“Yeah, I am, but I’ve decided. I’m going to see him.”

She bolted upright in bed and threw off the covers. “Oh, we’ll come with you. Just give me a few minutes.”

“No. I think I’d better do this on my own. Let Anna sleep. You go back to sleep, too.”

“Are you sure? I want to help.”

“Thanks. That means more than you know, but I think I’ll just go and do the deed. I’ll be back soon.” He sat down on the bed and kissed her. “Really. Thanks for the offer.”

“I know how rough this has been on you.”

“Well, his organs are failing, so it’s almost over.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. He’s still your father. I’m glad you’re going.”

“I wish I was. It’s something I just have to do.”

* * *

When Rick got to the ICU he found Kelly Stavropoulous asleep in the chair next to her husband’s bed. What he didn’t expect was the small, red-headed boy sleeping in her lap — the half-brother he hadn’t known existed. The monitors indicated that the patient’s blood pressure, respiration and heart rate were perilously low. Time was short.

Rick went out of the room and got a folding chair. He’d seen people die many times before, but he had to steel himself to approach the bed. What now? Dare he touch him? He knew that even at the end, people can sometimes sense touch and hear voices. He set up the chair close to the bed and took his father’s hand. It was cold.

Keeping his eyes focused on the floor, he began. “Eric. This is Rick. I came to say good-bye.” He couldn’t be sure but he thought he felt two fingers squeeze his hand. “Your wife tells me you feel bad about the accident all those years ago. Well, I don’t want you to worry about it. I recovered. I had a happy childhood. I have a good life now. A very good life. I’m in love with the mother of my child. I’m passionate about my work as a doctor. From all indications, I’m pretty good at it, too. Everything worked out okay for me. More than okay. I’m sorry things didn’t work out for the two of us. But I see you have your wife and little boy right here. I’m sure they love you very much.

“So if it’s your time, go in peace.”

Rick hadn’t planned on what he was going to say. It just came to him. And when he looked up he saw tears pooling beneath his father’s sunken eyes. Rick patted his hand and got up to leave. It was then that he saw Kelly looking at him. “Thank you,” she mouthed as he left the room. Two hours later, Eric Stavropoulous was dead.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The summer and fall that followed would long be remembered by Rick and Sarah as one of the sweetest times of their lives. Despite each learning of the other’s flaws and fears, they were in love. Together, they thrilled at watching Anna grow and change. Fortified by happiness, they found the courage to start cutting their demons down to size. Sarah began weaving the accident and its aftermath into the tapestry of her life. Though his father’s abandonment was tattooed on his soul, Rick experienced something of an epiphany following his death: Eric Stavropoulous was just a guy, a guy who’d made an unholy mess of his life.

The lovers delighted in knowing that being together made them better and stronger. They decided to celebrate their union when Sarah was at last able to walk without the assistance of crutches, canes or casts. They chose an inn on Cape Cod for their wedding ceremony, which would be led by the rabbi who had conducted the service at Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah and Anna’s baby naming. Joseph insisted on picking up the tab for their wedding party, adding that it was a father’s pleasure to see his daughter well married. Rick reveled in the knowledge that he had earned what he thought of as “The Joseph Abadhi Seal of Approval.”

So, on a warm, sunny September day, surrounded by their supportive families and closest friends, Sarah and Rick celebrated the joyous confirmation of what they already knew: Neither could imagine life without the other.

* * *

Rick generally got up with the baby around five and cuddled her while she “took some swigs” from her morning bottle. It was their special time together and he savored it. He couldn’t believe how fast she was growing. She’d been sitting up and crawling for months. She could coast around the living room while holding on to the furniture. They’d had to baby-proof the apartment because she was so quick and curious. He figured that within the month she’d be walking. Then all bets were off.

It was dark in the morning now, and he had to turn on the kitchen light to do bottle duty, his first act of the day. This morning he’d gotten up before Anna, taken his shower and found her standing up in her crib waiting for him when he emerged from the bathroom. He threw on his tee shirt and briefs and picked up the baby from the crib. They made their way to the kitchen to warm the waiting bottle, then headed for the sofa. Rick turned the lamp onto its lowest setting and covered them both with the hand-crocheted quilt Bubbe Rivka had given Rick and Sarah as a wedding present.

As she drank her morning milk, Anna used her fingers to explore her father’s face. She poked his ears and pulled his earlobe, then stuck her index finger between his upper and lower teeth while Rick pretended to bite her. Rick loved looking into those ocean-blue eyes, compliments of her grandmothers. He wondered what else she had inherited from the family. Only time would tell.

Rick sang to Anna every morning — just the two of them in the quiet apartment before the crack of dawn. His repertoire was eclectic, everything from children’s classics and Jay-Z raps to old Beatles songs. This morning he broke into a rendition of “Eleanor Rigby.” It was there on the sofa, while he was singing about the poor, lonely Eleanor, that his eyes were drawn to the envelope on the coffee table. He focused on the return address: The Estate of Eric Stavropoulous. When Sarah had handed it to him the previous night, it had seemed radioactive and he’d dropped it unopened on the coffee table. But now it seemed to have lost some of its menace. It was as though Anna was his shield, and with her in his arms he could face its contents, whatever they might be.

He picked the envelope up with his one free hand, curious now, and tore it open with his teeth. He removed the first enclosure. It was from a lawyer, explaining the steps involved in settling the estate. The second was a handwritten note card. When Rick opened it, a check fluttered out, landing on Anna, who was all too eager to grab it. Rick gently slipped it from her grip without looking at the sum, and put it facedown on the table. Then, with some trepidation, he began reading the note.

Rick,

I was granted the gift of being your father for just a short while. For five years — the best five years of my life — I was able to love and nurture you, to share amazement and delight with your mother at your quick mind and your sense of humor. But then I ruined everything. My recklessness caused the accident that brought you such unimaginable suffering.

I was solely to blame but I didn’t have the strength of character to face what I had done. Instead, I ran away. It meant losing you, but at the time it seemed only fair that I forfeit the right to be part of your life. Over my lifetime I’ve done many things that I regret, but all of them pale next to that fateful decision.

When you chose to cast off the name we shared, I was certain that you hated me and that there was no hope our relationship could ever be repaired. I was brokenhearted. But every day I thought of you, loved you, missed you more than you’ll ever know.

You grew up without me. Your mother has my greatest respect and undying gratitude for doing what I was unworthy of doing: helping you become the fine, capable man you are today.

If you are reading this letter, I have passed from this life. Know that it was stupidity and cowardice, not a cold or callous heart, that kept me from you. I am so very sorry that I was not the father you deserved.

Eric Stavropoulous

Rick sat motionless, face wet, cradling the baby in the crook of his arm. There was one part of the note that he kept rereading:
It seemed only fair that I forfeit the right to be part of your life
. Having earned the right to be Anna’s father, Rick couldn’t imagine giving her up. Now he understood why his mother felt sorry for Eric Stavropoulous.

Anna grew ready for action when the last ounce of her milk disappeared from the bottle. She pulled it from her mouth and would have flung it to the floor had her father not caught it just as it became airborne. There was no time to dwell on what he’d read. He put the letter, the card and the check back in the envelope. Then, as he took Anna back to the bedroom to relieve her of her sodden double diaper, he placed the envelope on top of the refrigerator, safely out of reach of his ten-month-old world explorer.

The baby babbled and chortled as Rick cleaned her bottom and tried to get the fresh diaper on. She kicked her legs wildly, almost daring her father to get a diaper on her rear end. The thought crossed Rick’s mind that perhaps the kid had some of his defiant streak. If she did, it probably served him right.

When at last he had the diaper on and her legs back in the footed pajamas, he put the baby in bed with her mother. “Wake up, you loafer. Get to work mothering your child,” he teased as he kissed Sarah. She reluctantly roused to see Rick looking at her, his eyes shining. So far there hadn’t been a single day when she hadn’t gotten a thrill out of seeing him first thing in the morning. Today was no different. They both savored their morning hello before it was rudely interrupted by Anna, who climbed atop her mother and grabbed her lips with both of her hands. It was her newest trick. Rick had laughed the first time she did it. Now it had become part of her daily routine.

“Hey, bud, those are my stomping grounds,” he said as he loosened her surprisingly tight clutch. “She’s had her morning swig. Her bottom’s clean and dry for the moment.”

Sarah grunted and closed her eyes again. “Oh, God, I’m sleep deprived. She was up again in the night. The nurse practitioner at the pediatrician’s office thinks she’s teething.”

“That’s a bunch of baloney. Just a catchall for everything we don’t understand about babies,” Rick groused good-naturedly.

“You’re probably right,” Sarah said, pulling herself up and leaning against the headboard. “My theory is Anna is just angling for some company in the middle of the night. If I had my druthers, I’d let her cry it out, but I can hardly follow those instincts while she’s sleeping in our room and you have to be up at five.”

“Good point. Thank you for catching the graveyard shift. I owe you big time. Let me show you a token of my gratitude,” he said as his hands moved under her pajamas.

“Hey, Dr. Smith, don’t you have some place to be? Like work? Don’t you have patients who need you?” she teased as she put her hand on his and kissed him.

“Aw, shucks,” he said with a slow, Southern drawl. “Gotta go out into the hard, cold world and bring home the bacon. Otherwise, I’d be all over you like ugly on an ape, you lucky thing. Keep your motor runnin’ till tonight, sweetheart.”

“That’s a date,” Sarah said, laughing, while Anna blew spit bubbles into her ear.

Rick reluctantly got up and dressed quickly. He ran a comb through his hair — which lately had sprung a few gray strands — tied his sneakers and then kissed Sarah and Anna good-bye. As he got his coat out of the front hall closet he called back to the bedroom, “Short day today, promise. See you for dinner.” And then he was out the door.

It was 5:51 on that dark November morning. Sarah sat in bed, holding the babbling Anna. She put on the radio to catch the weather. Instead, there was something about Mark Arkin. The reporter explained that the real estate titan and his wife were bankrolling a new charter school that would open the following fall on the West Side: The Arkin Career Academy for the Construction Professions. Its mission would be to prepare high school kids either for college programs in architecture and engineering, or the construction trades. The chancellor of the New York City school system lauded the couple’s generosity in providing a new option for city youth. Then Arkin’s voice came on — not his in-your-face voice that let everyone in the room know that he was the alpha male, but the more restrained voice he had used when he apologized to Sarah for the accident. “Our hope — my wife’s and mine — is that this school will help prepare youngsters from all five boroughs to be New York’s next generation of construction professionals. Consider it our gift to a city that has been very good to us.”

Sarah thought this was likely a maneuver by Arkin to get some much-needed good press. A thorough investigation into the crane accident revealed that he’d put the screws to the general contractor to bring his condo project in under budget. And charter schools were the new darling of the billionaires’ club, a good place to aim his philanthropy. Given the vagaries of the tax code, it probably didn’t hurt his bottom line, either. Sarah wondered if what she’d said to him all those months before — about doing well by doing good — had played some role in his beneficence. She’d likely never know.

When the piece concluded, the newscaster’s mellifluous voice reported that it was going to be another unseasonably mild autumn day, with temperatures reaching the low sixties. At the moment, it was fifty degrees with calm winds in Central Park. Perfect. While holding Anna, Sarah put both feet on the floor and arose from her bed. There hadn’t been a day since her cast had been removed that she hadn’t given thanks for being able to accomplish that simple maneuver. She knew it was possible that as life moved on she might forget — first one day here and there, and then, perhaps, more often. But for now, she remained in awe of her ability to move unencumbered and take care of herself and her baby.

Sarah moved quickly to implement her early morning routine. Anna knew the drill: crib for a few minutes with a favorite bunny while her mother disappeared into the bathroom for a quick shower. Once the shower was done, Anna got to crawl around the apartment while Sarah filled her diaper bag with supplies and goodies for the day’s adventures. Sarah threw on some jeans and a sweater before she dressed Anna from her repository of baby gifts. Today was a purple fleece outfit from Aunt Ellen and Uncle Max. She tied the laces on the baby’s sneakers — a gift from Doris — and put Anna on her hip. They stopped at the refrigerator for the insulated breakfast bag that she’d packed the night before. Sarah nuked the bottle to take out the chill, and then tucked it in the bag’s side pocket. Coats on — and then they set off. Sarah put the diaper bag on the stair lift and walked down the two flights, right hand on the railing, left arm holding Anna tight.