Leaving Haven (34 page)

She listened again. “Oh yeah? Well, we do, too.” She slammed the phone down on the table.

“Hey,” Polly said. “That's my phone. Be careful.”

Chessy sighed. “Well, that didn't go well.”

“What do you mean?” Georgia said. “What did he say?”

“He wants the baby back,” Chessy said. “He says the baby is his responsibility, and since he fucked up his other responsibilities he doesn't want to fuck this up, too.”

“John said
that
?”

“Not in exactly those words. But it's what he meant.”

“What did he
say
?”

Chessy sighed again. “Well, he's smarter than I thought. He's figured out we're up here. So he's on the way. He's already past Baltimore.” She glanced at the time, displayed in glowing numbers on the phone.

“Which means, if he doesn't stop a lot, he'll be here before breakfast.”

24

Alice

June 25, 2012

A
lice had never considered herself much of an actress. She had been too shy to get involved in theater in high school or college, and wasn't even very good at telling little white lies of the “I love that dress” or “The soufflé was delicious” variety. When Wren was little, she had delighted in playing imaginary games in which she was a feisty Dalmatian and Alice was the evil Cruella de Vil. But Alice always felt so self-conscious play-acting, even with her six-year-old daughter, that she would stumble over her lines and say something like
“Give me those puppies!”
in what she thought was a mean voice only to have Wren roll her eyes and say, “No, Mom, you're supposed to be
evil
.”

But on Monday morning, Alice put on a great performance. She awoke early and made fresh coffee and filled a thermos for Duncan to take on the road. She made breakfast sandwiches for Wren and Duncan—scrambled egg whites on whole-wheat toast, with a little cheddar cheese for flavor. She made sure they had sunscreen and bug spray and hats and swimsuits and beach towels, as well as aloe vera gel in case they got too much sun anyway. She put an extra fleece in Wren's duffel bag because Adirondack nights could be cold, even in late June. Binoculars, flashlight, two decks of cards, matches, first-aid kit—finally Duncan turned to her and said, “I think we've got it all. We're only going to be gone four days.”

“Yeah, really, Mom,” Wren said. Wren sat half upright on a stool, with her upper body sprawled across the kitchen counter. She wore her pajama bottoms and a T-shirt and flip-flops, and planned to curl up in the car and go back to sleep as soon as they drove off.

Alice felt her smile stretch across her face like plastic wrap, too tight and artificial. “Okay.”

Wren slid from the stool, picked up her pillow and put it under one arm, then came over to Alice and leaned into her, the top of her head nestled under Alice's chin. “Bye. See you Friday.”

Alice kissed the top of her head. “Bye. Have a great time, chicken. Say hello to the Adirondacks for me.”

“Okay.” Wren opened the door and walked down to Duncan's car, packed and ready to go at the curb.

Duncan picked up the bag Alice had packed with the thermos and sandwiches and protein bars and cut-up apples. He didn't look sad, as he had yesterday, Alice noted. He looked almost relieved. Alice swallowed hard.

“I didn't really thank you yesterday,” she said. “For doing all that research. I haven't been thinking very clearly. I appreciate it.”

He nodded.

Don't go!
Alice put her hands over her mouth; the words were so loud in her heart she thought they had made their way to her lips.

“What's wrong?” Duncan said.

Alice dropped her hands to her sides and cleared her throat. “Nothing.”

He put his hand on the doorknob, and she couldn't help it. “Please come back,” she said.

He looked at her. “Of course I'm coming back. We'll be back on Friday.”

“I don't mean just that. You know what I mean.”

He sighed. “I can't make any promises, Alice.”

She closed her eyes as he opened the door, listened to his steps on the brick walkway, the gentle squeak of the storm door as it closed behind him. She didn't open her eyes until she heard the car door slam, the engine start. Then she waved through the glass, as her husband and daughter drove away.

A
LICE
CLEANED
UP
the kitchen, made the beds, threw in a load of laundry, did three sets of push-ups, and it was still only 7:15
A
.
M
. The day stretched before her, long and empty. She sat down at her desk in the corner of the kitchen, opened her laptop, and checked her e-mail. She went through the news she liked to read online, looked up the weather in Lake Placid (78 degrees and sunny) and in Santiago, Chile (58 and rainy). She tried to do some research for the paper she was writing, but she couldn't focus and kept reading and rereading sentences about employment-to-population ratios and wage elasticities and coefficients in female labor supply equations until none of the words made sense. Finally she closed her laptop in disgust.

She threw the laundry in the dryer and did four sets of chin-ups. She vacuumed. She wished, for the first time ever, that she knew something about gardening, because digging up a bed of soil or carrying rocks or laying flagstone would distract her mind and tax her body in a way she craved right now. And then, because she felt jumpy and scared and not at all like her usual self, she did something her usual self would never do: she sat down on the front stoop and called her mother.

A
LICE?
IS
EVERYTHING
all right?”

“Yes.” Now that she had her mother on the phone, Alice wasn't sure what exactly she wanted to say. “I got your postcard,” she said.

Rita's voice relaxed. “Great! Can you believe we got married?”

Alice paused. “No. Yes. I mean, I don't know. I was kind of surprised you didn't mention it to me before you left, or at least before you actually got married.”

Rita laughed. “Oh, honey, we didn't decide to do it until we got here. And I knew you were busy with teaching and your family and I didn't want you to feel like you had to come all the way down here to see me get married. I'll send you a picture. Olly has one of those fancy phones and he took pictures.”

Alice bit her lip. She held her own “fancy” phone pressed against her ear, as though she could press herself right into her mother's voice, her mother's womb, and then come out differently and do it all over again, relive her life to this point.

“Duncan left,” she said.

“What?”

“Duncan left. I had an affair and everyone found out and now we may split up.”

“You're kidding me.”

“No,” Alice said. “I'm not kidding.”

“Duncan had an affair? He never seemed the type—and believe me, I know the type.”

“No,
I
had the affair. Me.
I
cheated on Duncan.”

“What?”

“I cheated on Duncan.”

A long silence met her words. “Well, honey, you could knock me over right now,” Rita said at last. “I would have sworn
you
weren't the type.”

“I'm
not
,” Alice said. “Does there have to be a type? I don't even know how or why it happened, really. It just happened, and it was a huge mistake.”

Alice heard her mother exhale and could picture her, small chin tilted up, blowing out a stream of cigarette smoke.

“Welcome to the club,” Rita said. “I always thought it was too hard to be as perfect as you tried to be.”

“I didn't try to be perfect,” Alice said. She already regretted confiding in her mother. “I just tried to be normal.”

“I'm not criticizing you.” Rita blew out another stream of smoke, there in Chile, five thousand miles away. “Where did Duncan go?”

“To the Adirondacks,” Alice said. She watched a fat robin peck in the dirt beneath the crepe myrtle at the end of the walkway.

“For good?”

“No, for the week. With Wren. He's coming back on Friday.”

“So he hasn't actually left you for good.”

“I don't know.” She thought about telling her mother everything—about the egg donation, about Liza and Wren, about John, about Georgia's disappearance and the new baby—but it was too much. “We're in counseling, but Duncan doesn't know if he can get over it.”

“Huh.” Rita paused to absorb all this. “Who's the guy?”

“The guy?”

“The guy you cheated with.”

Oh, why not? Rita had likely done the same, or worse. Alice sighed. “John Bing. My best friend Georgia's husband.”

A stunned silence, then Rita started to laugh. “Now that is
big,
” she said. “I've gotta give it to you. When you fall off the straight and narrow, you don't just take a little step off the path. You
leap
. Wow.”

Alice ignored her mother's laughter, and her words. “I don't want to lose Duncan.”

“Why not?”

“What do you mean, ‘Why not?' He's my husband.” Alice's irritation with her mother grew. Would she never learn to stop expecting Rita to be a normal, sympathetic, nurturing mom?

“I like Duncan,” Rita said. “You know I like him. He's a wonderful guy. But if you stepped out on him, clearly something's missing.”

“Nothing's missing,” Alice said. “There were a lot of unusual circumstances.”

“There always are,” Rita said.

Alice stood up, the phone against her ear, and brushed the dust from the back of her shorts.

“Why can't you just be a
mother
for once?” Alice said. “It was bad enough I had to be the adult my whole childhood; can't I get even one ounce of empathy from you now? It's not like I've demanded all your time and attention throughout my life.” She couldn't stop herself. “You didn't even invite me to your wedding!”

Alice heard rustling, a low voice, more rustling. “Hang on. Olly just came in.” Alice waited, a wire pulled taut.

Finally Rita came back on the phone. “Ally? Sorry about that.” She sighed. “Listen, I'm sorry you're having a hard time. I really am. I didn't mean to make you feel worse. But would you really have taken the time and spent the money to fly all the way down here for my wedding? Half the time I don't think you like me all that much, and I figured you'd disapprove anyway, since you don't know Olly and since I never married your father.”

“I don't not—,” Alice began.

“Oh, hush,” Rita said. “Let me finish. Look, I wasn't the best mother in the world and I'm sure you have plenty to be mad about. But it's not like I woke up every morning and thought, ‘How can I screw this kid over today?' I was working full-time at the Eppinger factory, which wasn't exactly fun and games, and then when I came home I wanted to blow off a little steam, have a drink, go dancing. I was seventeen when you were born. Your dad left before you were two, and I was on my own. You were in college by the time I was the age you are now.”

Alice didn't care. She was six years old again, and scared. “You didn't take care of me!” she said. “You never paid attention! It's a miracle I didn't get kidnapped or abused or burned or something.”

“Maybe,” Rita said. “Look, what do you want me to do about it now? I messed up. I did the best I could. I'm sorry. I
am
sorry. Maybe now that you've screwed up a little you'll understand that's what happens; that's how people are.”

“That's not how
all
people are,” Alice said.

“Really?” Rita said. “ 'Cause I'm seventeen years older than you and I still haven't met the person who's never made a mistake.”

Alice didn't know what she wanted from her mother. Remorse? Insight? Forgiveness? Whatever it was, she wasn't going to get it, at least not right now. “I have to go,” Alice said.

“Ally—”

“Congratulations,” Alice said. And she clicked the phone off.

F
OR
THEIR
THIRD
date, Duncan took Alice kayaking on the C&O Canal. She counted their initial meeting at Kramerbooks as their first date, because he had asked her to have coffee; then he had taken her on that walk through Arlington National Cemetery. He met her at the boathouse in Georgetown at 6:00
A
.
M
., under pink skies that cast a rosy tinge on the early morning river and made the bridges glow. She was there before he was, watching the water, when he appeared at her elbow and handed her a cup.

“Cream, no sugar,” he said.

And that small thing—the fact that he had noticed and remembered how she took her coffee—pierced her. No one had ever attended to her likes and dislikes before. Alice had hated ketchup her entire life, and yet once a month Rita would decide to cook a real dinner and make a meat loaf drowned in ketchup. But Duncan noticed and remembered and even respected her preferences.