Leaving Haven (15 page)

“If it seems like I don't understand, then explain it to me,” Alice said. She needed to
get
this. “Because I cannot understand why, after all you've been through, you would not want me to talk to the principal so these girls are held accountable. Once they're done with you they'll move on to someone else. Is that what you want?”

“No!” Wren said. She walked over to the refrigerator, pulled open the door, and stood there staring at its contents.

“Be reasonable,” Alice said. She sat down on the stool next to Wren's backpack, noting even as she did the cheerful pink and purple and green polka dots that covered it, the little charms Wren had clipped to it, the ballet slipper sticking out of one pocket. She thought of Wren's eagerness back in September when she'd picked out this new backpack for school, and she thought of how this year was unfolding now. It made Alice want to slap Emilie across her smug, overly made-up face.

Wren emerged from the refrigerator. “Can we move?” she said.

“What?”

“We could move this summer. You can teach anywhere, and Dad works so much we never see him anyway. We could move someplace not
too
far, like”—Wren closed her eyes and scrunched up her face in thought—“like Annapolis! Then we could see Dad every weekend. And have a boat.”

The three of them had spent a day in Annapolis once when Wren was ten, sailing on a sightseeing boat around the bay, eating blue crabs at a restaurant on the water, walking up and down the long pier.

“We are not moving to Annapolis,” Alice said.

“Then how about you homeschool me?”

“Wren! Running away isn't the answer.”

Wren came over and picked up her backpack, slung it over one shoulder.

“Maybe not for you,” she said. “But it sounds good to me.” And with that, she disappeared into the hallway and up the stairs to her bedroom, leaving Alice in the kitchen, wishing for a road map, the kind that showed you which direction to go when you felt totally lost.

A
LICE
WAITED
UNTIL
after dinner to tell Duncan. She sat at the kitchen island, her elbows on the granite countertop, twirling the stem of her wineglass between her fingers.

“They're doing it again,” she said.

“Who?” Duncan said. “Doing what?” He stood across from her at the kitchen sink, wearing his evening (and weekend) uniform of Levi's jeans and a button-down shirt in tattersall plaid (this one in blue), open at the neck to reveal the white undershirt beneath. He turned on the faucet and began to rinse the dinner dishes and load the dishwasher.

“Those girls. They stuck a note in Wren's locker today. They're bullying her again.”

“A note?” Duncan said. He picked up the sponge and began to wash a wineglass.

“Yes. Teasing her about ‘Al.' ”

“That's unfortunate,” he said. “But I'm hoping she can develop a thicker skin.” He looked up from the sink. “Did you notice the lightbulb in the den was burned out again? I think there's something wrong with that fixture.”

That was Duncan, moving from life crisis to lightbulbs in the blink of an eye.

“
Screw
the light fixture,” Alice said, with more heat than she intended. “Our daughter is being harassed.”

“My goodness,” Duncan said, looking at her in surprise, his brows raised, his eyes open wide.

Alice was hit with a completely irrational urge to slap him. “Surely you have something to say about this nastiness with Wren,” she said, “other than ‘my goodness.' You say ‘my goodness' when someone tells you they can do a backflip off the diving board, or that their grandfather was a world-class wrestler, not when someone tells you your daughter is being bullied.”

“Well, I wasn't sure if one note in her locker constituted bullying,” Duncan said. He resumed his careful rinsing and stacking of the dishes.

Wren appeared in the doorway, her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, her blue eyes—so like Duncan's!—rimmed with red because she'd been crying. She was fine boned and petite, a throwback to Duncan's mother, Clara. The sight of her face, pinched with sadness, stabbed at Alice's heart.

“Why do you think they're so mean?” Wren said.

“I don't know,” Alice said. The intricate dance of female friendships still confounded Alice, who had never really grown close to another woman until she befriended Georgia.

Duncan turned off the water and cleared his throat. “You have to ignore them,” he said. “This too shall pass.”

“It hasn't passed yet,” Wren said.

“Do you want some ice cream?” Duncan said. “I was just going to have a bowl of mint chocolate chip.”

“I don't like mint.”

“We have mocha, too.”

Wren nodded and sat down at the counter. Alice reached over and rubbed her back in slow circles, feeling the fine bones of Wren's shoulders beneath her hand.

“I'm going to take care of this,” Alice said. “Once and for all.”

“Don't call the school,” Wren said.

Alice looked at Duncan, an entreaty. He shrugged. Nothing ruffled the steady, placid way he viewed the world. Alice wanted outrage; she wanted fierceness. She wanted Duncan to howl a battle cry and charge forth to defend their daughter, to do what she herself would do.

But that was not Duncan. Alice left the two of them to their ice cream and slipped out onto the back deck, into the cold January air, the clear black night. She looked behind her to make sure the door and windows were firmly closed, pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, and called John.

He answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”

“Home. Outside.”

“What's up?”

“They're doing it again. Someone slid a note in her locker today, signed ‘Your boy, Al.' I just want to kill someone.”

“The little fuckers.”

Alice felt a vicarious satisfaction. “John, one of the little”—Alice couldn't bring herself to say the word—“
terrorists
is your daughter.”

“
Was
my daughter,” John said. “We have had several talks, as you know. If Liza wrote that note or even witnessed the writing of that note it will be the last thing she remembers.”

Alice was silent. “I thought it would stop,” she said, “after you talked to Liza.”

“It will stop,” he said. “After I talk to her tomorrow.”

Alice heard the clank of pots and pans, a babble of voices.

“I'm at work and I've got to get the dinners out,” John said. “Meet me at the park Thursday and I'll update you.”

And Alice, who just a week ago had sworn to herself there wouldn't be a next time, heard herself say, “Okay. Thursday is good. At two?”

“Two,” John said.

It was that easy.

10

Georgia

Eight Months Earlier, October 2011

G
eorgia lay on her back on the table, her eyes on the white acoustic tiles of the ceiling. Alice stood next to her, by Georgia's head, one hand resting lightly on Georgia's shoulder.

Georgia could not count the times she had done this, lain on an examination table exactly like this one, with the white paper crinkling beneath her every time she moved, steeling herself for another disappointment. The last time she had been pregnant (four years ago, after the first in vitro attempt), she'd had a positive pregnancy test and then come in at six weeks, just like now, for an ultrasound, only to be told the embryo didn't have a heartbeat. The same thing had happened right before her second miscarriage—the positive pregnancy test, the early ultrasound, the lifeless, floating orb on the screen. Those incidents—and the others, because there had been others—ran together in her mind now, a slide show of sympathetic glances from technicians, silent rooms, her own tears.

But now, Dr. Gopal moved the wand and pointed at the screen. “There. See that? It's the heartbeat. And just one. Perfect. Twins are always riskier, and at your age I'd rather minimize the risks.”

Georgia stared at the screen in shock. And there it was, undeniable: A rapid, steady blink, a tiny heart, beating in a strong, mesmerizing rhythm. An embryo. A baby.
Alive.

The tears ran from Georgia's eyes down the sides of her face into her ears. “There's never been a heartbeat before,” she said.

Alice squeezed Georgia's shoulder. “It's great, Georgia. It's real!”

Georgia turned her head and looked up at Alice as the doctor continued to measure the small blur on the screen. “You know, there's no way I can begin to—”

“Georgia, don't.” Alice shook her head. “We agreed: You're grateful. I know it. Duncan knows it. We're happy for you. Now, it's about you and your family and your baby.”

Georgia believed this, at last. She and John had been to counseling (something John hated but had been willing to do), and Alice and Duncan had gone for counseling. It had all been very civilized, and they had discussed every possible aspect of the whole situation from every possible angle until even Georgia was sick of it all. Of course, she still wondered about things, like what if the baby not only looked like Alice but
acted
like Alice as the years went by? Alice had little quirks, as everyone did, like the way she tilted her head to one side, right ear toward right shoulder, whenever she was thinking about something. Or the way she reached up and twirled her hair with one finger, winding it around and around. And what about Wren, and Liza? They would both have an equal genetic connection to the new baby, even though it would be Liza's little brother or sister. It was strange territory, a moonscape. What would they tell the girls? And when? There were other weird things, too, things Georgia hadn't even thought about but that John had asked about:
Do you think you'll feel a sense of obligation to Alice, like you'll have to do any and every favor she might ever ask?

“Alice never asks for favors,” Georgia had said, which was true. Alice was the most self-sufficient person she had ever known. “There are definite pros and cons to using a friend,” the counselor had said. “It's my job to be sure you consider them all.”

Well, she had considered them all and then some. Of course, at times Georgia wished she had an anonymous egg donor, someone with great genes who would forever be a shadowy person in the background. But then she wouldn't have a baby at all, because John had flat-out refused to deal with an unknown donor.

Alice was a known quantity—known and loved. And with the sight of that tiny heart beating, beating, beating there on the screen and deep inside her own body, Georgia knew she had done the right thing.

“Your baby is about the size of a raisin right now,” Dr. Gopal said. “Right on target for six and a half weeks.”

Your baby
. Georgia hugged the words close to her, cuddled them in her mind. The doctor finished, and Georgia sat up.

“We've got to celebrate,” Alice said. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to go to Kendall's and eat ginger scones,” Georgia said. “Slathered in butter. I've been craving ginger all week.”

“All right,” Alice said. “I'll even eat white flour and sugar with you in honor of the occasion.” She smiled. “But not ginger; I hate ginger, which just goes to show you that this baby is definitely all
yours
.”

“I know,” Georgia said. And she did.

S
HE
WAITED
ANOTHER
week to tell her sisters. They headed north on a brilliant early November day, to the cabin in the Adirondacks where they had gone every summer since Georgia was born, and even before. Their mother had spent every summer vacation with her family in the little three-bedroom log cabin on Lake Conundrum since 1950. Now she was buried in the cemetery two or three miles down the road from the cabin, with a fine view of Hoffman Mountain to the west, and the ponds and forests of the Pharoah Lake Wilderness Area to the east. “But she's so far away,” Polly, then eleven, had said, after the funeral. “But we'll visit her every summer,” Frank had told her. “Your mom came here every summer when she was a little girl, and you will, too.”

Polly insisted on driving, and Chessy said that riding in the backseat made her feel like throwing up, so of course Georgia said she'd sit in back, even though she hated being in the back because she could never quite hear anything unless she leaned so far forward that the seat belt practically cut her in two. At first the three of them—especially Polly—had been almost giddy with the freedom of escaping for this long weekend without kids, spouses, significant others, or even pets. Chessy had balked at this last stipulation, because she usually brought her dog, Charles, everywhere with her, but the sisters had stood firm: No distractions. No taking care of anything or anyone but ourselves for four whole days.