Maybe Tonight (5 page)

“Who’s Anoushka…and who’s Lida?”

Mads blinked and looked up. Laney was standing at the mouth to his section of the workshop. She was shivering. Where was her coat? Had she cycled over without it?

Mads rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. He’d been trying to think of a good way to broach the subject of Anoushka and her request, of Lida and that unplanned meeting without setting Laney into flight mode. The last thing he wanted was for her to get spooked by the messiness of his life and his past decisions. But he’d put it off for weeks. Not knowing how to explain why he was spending so much time on this project when he had so many others to deal with.

“Mads? Who are Anoushka and Lida?” Her voice shook. “What’s going on?” She held up his phone. “You forgot it in the kitchen. And she called.”

“Laney…”

“I’m trying to stay calm, Mads. I’m trying not to jump to conclusions.” But her eyes were wide with confusion and she was so tense. He could feel it without even touching her.

“Anoushka is a former client…from the clinic.” He braced his hands on the edge of the workbench.

“And who is Lida? Please don’t tell me she’s trying to convince you to go active again.”

“No, it’s nothing like that. She… fanden. Lida…she’s my daughter.”

“Your daughter?” Laney’s hand fluttered to her own belly. She glanced down at his phone and then set it on the table. “It never ends, does it…?”

“No,
elskede
, it’s not like that…” He stepped around the table and gathered her in his arms. She was crying. No, he didn’t want to make her cry, didn’t want his screw-up life being the cause of any problems for her.

He steered her to the anteroom that was his storage area/office/place to get away. Anton’s new project was there–a bench he wanted to put in the garden. Mads made Laney sit down, then he crouched before her and told her everything.

“I bumped into her on the same day you and I met. She was out walking with Lida, and Lida was asleep in her stroller.” He laced his fingers with Laney’s. He loved her hands, loved the perfect moons of her nails and the tiny mole between her thumb and index finger on her left hand.

“And then she showed up here last week, and she asked me to create something for Lida. I couldn’t say no. I didn’t want to say no.”

Laney chewed on her lower lip and nodded slowly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought you’d freak out over it.”

“Mads…honey…please, don’t hide things from me. Just tell me. Trust me.”

“Okay…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kept it to myself.”

“We’re together now. We’re partners, right?”

“Of course. It’s just you and me.”

“Then don’t hide what’s going on from me.” She leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss on his forehead. “Especially not now…”

“No, you’re right. No more secrets.”

“Good…now show me what you’re making for her.” Her voice was lighter, calmer now. Her touch like feathers on his skin. “And then we can talk about what you’ll make for our daughter.”

He grinned at her. “I’ve got lots of ideas.”

“Good, because I’m sure she’ll be as picky as her mom.”

“Her mom has good taste.”

“I love you, Mads…” and she kissed him again, grazing her lips over his, brushing the tip of her nose with his and filling him with a sense of joy, that this was love, this was what it meant to be loved.

Pregnancy suited Laney. Even with the frequent bouts of morning sickness, even though she still barely looked pregnant, Mads was convinced she’d become more radiant, more beautiful. Sometimes, when they were in the apartment and everything was quiet, he’d imagine he could hear their baby’s heartbeat loud and clear and reminding them that soon she’d be with them too.

She was five months along. They were halfway there and he still found it incredible that soon he would really be a father. Not just a donor. Not the purveyor of someone else’s happiness.

But just that night, as Laney lay on the sofa reading the latest issue of
Vanity Fair
while he made dinner for them, he felt as though no one could be happier than he was.

He watched her as she turned the page, as one hand cupped the tiny mound that their daughter inside her, and his heart swelled and soared.

“Laney?”

She lowered her magazine and smiled up at him. “Is it time?”

“I want to marry you, I want us…to get married.”

The magazine fell from her hand as she sat up. “Are you serious?” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She tried to look steady but he saw how her hands trembled.

He crossed the room and sat down beside her on the sofa. She turned towards him. Her smile wavered. “You’re really serious?”

He nodded. “I don’t want anyone else. Just you. And I want to marry you.”

“I want to marry you too.”

“So say yes.”

“Yes…
ja
…” She touched his cheek. He cupped her hand and brought it to his lips, pressed tiny kisses to her palm. “
Jeg ønsker at være din kone.
“*

“
Og jeg vil gerne være din mand.
“**

They kissed again as outside snow began to fall. From somewhere in the building Kashmir sang of electrified love and Mads felt like nothing could make him feel more complete. Nothing in the world could mean more to him than the woman in his arms and the family they would have together.

*Translation: “I want to be your wife.”
** Translation: “And I want to be your husband.”

“Do you ever speak to your father?” Laney asked as they walked, hand in hand, along the gravel path to the beach. It was one of those winter days when the sky felt vast and brilliantly blue and crisp with ice crystals.

Mads shook his head no. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his father and his memories of him were always too blurry. “He calls my grandmother sometimes, but he never reaches out to me.”

“Do you know where he is?” They stopped now and took in the view. Øresund was frozen over for the first time in years and the snow-dusted beach looked like a sugary confection just waiting to be devoured.

“He’s probably in Christianhavn,” Mads said grimly. “That’s where he was last time I heard. Drinking away whatever money my grandmother or the state gives him.”

“I just wondered…if we should tell him that he’s going to be a grandfather,” Laney ventured. She took a careful step forward, testing the icy sand. “I’ve been trying to decide if I should contact my father too.”

It was one of the things that bound them–they were orphans of sorts. Both of them lost their mothers–Mads mother had died in a horrible car crash, Laney’s lost her battle with breast cancer. Both of them had also been abandoned by their fathers. He could still remember the night when Laney told him about how her father turned his back on her. They’d been watching a film–it was Susanne Bier’s first American film,
Things We Lost in the Fire
, and Laney had been quiet all day. He’d tried to get her to tell him what was wrong but she’d only flashed him irritated looks before she returned to pretending she was interested in the film.

It wasn’t until the scene when Halle Berry rails at Benicio del Toro and blames him for her husband’s death that she curled into Mads’s shoulder and whispered in his ear how her father left her, how he’d always made her feel unloved and unwanted. And Mads had confessed to her how his father could not resist alcohol, how he’d made sporadic appearances in Mads’s life, with promises as fragile as dew drops on a spider’s web. Promises Mads learned at an early age to have no faith in—they were just words…and words sometimes meant nothing.

“I don’t know, elskede,” he confessed. “I don’t know if I trust him in our daughter’s life.”

“Will she hate us though? We’re making this decision about her grandfathers. Maybe she’ll resent us when she’s older.”

He pulled Laney closer to him. He needed to feel her warmth, needed to feel that stability she brought to him. His chin rested atop her head and he breathed in her scent and the crisp air and reminded himself he could be a father without being as awful about it as his had been.

The last time he saw his father, he was sixteen years old. His mother was hooked to life support at Bispebjerg Hospital, and Mads was only allowed to see her for fifteen minutes every day. No one would come out and say it but he knew she would not survive much longer. He’d overheard enough of the doctor’s whispers to his grandparents, that she was not responding to any treatment, that the machines were the only thing keeping her alive.

Mads shut his ears to them. He didn’t want to hear what they had to say. He sat by his mother’s bedside and held her hand, ignoring how lifeless it felt in his. Sometimes he imagined she squeezed his fingers to reassure him, but he knew it wasn’t possible. Sometimes he reached up to touch her cheek or brush her pale hair from her damp forehead. And he talked to her, thinking if nothing else, she would know he loved her, he wished she would wake up, he wanted her to know that he was there waiting for her to come back.

Just then he was murmuring to his mother of what had happened in school, the new girl who was darker than everyone else, who was being bullied and how he’d stood up to the gang who always bothered her. His grandfather Henrik pressed his hand to Mads’s shoulder and said, “Your father is here. He wants to see your mother.”

“Does he want to see me too?” he asked automatically, though he had the feeling the answer was no. His father never knew what to do with Mads.

His grandfather patted Mads’s slumped shoulder. “Give him five minutes. He needs to make peace.”

Mads wanted to tell his grandfather his father deserved nothing, but the words felt tight and prickly in his chest. Reluctantly, he released his mother’s hand and let his grandfather lead him out of the sterile hospital room. When they opened the door, Benjamin Rasmussen was leaning against a wall, his jittery hands shoved in his pants pockets as he stared down at the floor.

He bit down the filthy words he wanted to fling at his father. They’d do no good. He just stared at him, unable to move, and wondered why now. Why come now when his mother had been in ICU for so many days? Why come now when there were so many other times they needed him?

His father finally pushed himself away from the wall and stared at Mads, as if seeing him for the first time. In a way it was. The last time they’d met, Mads was ten. Now he was sixteen and nearly as tall as his father.

“Is she awake?” his father asked.

“She’s in a coma.”

“I thought she was awake.”

“No.”

His father nodded. “Just as well.” And then he walked past Mads and into the room. His grandfather called after Benjamin but then the door to his mother’s room snapped shut.

Just as well.

That night, when they returned to the city and Laney had fallen asleep, Mads went for a walk and wandered the city in the wintry darkness. He told himself he was not looking for his father, but it was a lie. His cousin Henrik had warned him that Benjamin was still drinking, though not as much as before, still in Christianhavn. Mads had memorized the address. He found it easily, rang the bell and waiting to be buzzed in. The building wasn’t as shabby as he’d expected.

According to Henrik, Benjamin lived on the fourth floor in the elevator-less building. Maybe it was a blessing. It gave him time to think through what he wanted to say. But when he was at the third floor, his resolve faltered. Above him a door creaked open and he considered retracing his steps and escaping. Then he heard a gravelly voice calling out his name.

He swallowed hard. “
Ja, det er jeg. Jeg kommer.
“*

At the top of the stairs, his father waited, half the man he used to be. His once coppery hair was a dull gray, his face sallow and heavily lined. He was dressed in an old fisherman’s sweater Mads remembered from long ago and faded corduroys. On his feet were felt slippers that looked slightly too large.

“So you came,” Benjamin rasped. “Your cousin said you were looking for me. Well, now you found me. Come in.”

Mads followed him inside, glad his father had saved him the embarrassment of whether they should hug. They did not have that sort of history, yet he knew it should have been expected. The apartment was small–only one large room with a curtain sectioning off the bedroom from the living room. It was much more orderly than he’d expected. The last time he’d visited his father at one of his state-funded apartments it had been a tip that reeked of stale cigarette smoke and alcohol.

“Do you want coffee?” Benjamin asked but he didn’t wait for an answer. He shuffled to the small kitchenette and began prepping the coffee maker.

Mads stood in the center of the main room and looked around. On the wall was a framed photograph of the three of them–his father, mother and Mads from the one family vacation he remembered taking with his parents. They were in front of a caravan, and his mother was laughing, her head tossed back, her hair whipping in the wind, and a six-year old Mads was laughing too, his arms spread out as if trying to grab the world, while his father smoked a cigarette and grinned at them. Where had they been? Was that the year they drove to Spain? He could only remember they were together and it was the only time they’d all been like that and his parents weren’t arguing.

Mads shrugged out of his jacket and laid it over the back of an armchair. His father busied himself with pulling out faded coffee cups Mads recognized from his grandmother’s house.

“Do you need help?” he asked.

Benjamin shook his head. “This is nothing.”

When the percolator finally bubbled and hissed, Benjamin set about serving their coffee and then retrieved a tin of the butter cookies all the tourists loved.

They sat on the lumpy couch, the silence between them deafening. Benjamin coughed and cleared his throat. “Your cousin says you have something you need to tell me.” Benjamin said, bridging the uncomfortable silence.

Mads nodded. “I’m going to be a father…”

“Yes, your cousin Henrik told me.”

“I just wanted you to know. Laney and I…”

“Is that her name? Your girlfriend?”

“Yes. We’re getting married once the baby is born.”

“That’s good. You can have a family then.” Benjamin took a slow sip of his coffee. “I wasn’t much of a father. I’m sure you’ll be better.”

“Do you want to meet Laney?”

“Do you want me to?”

“I don’t know. I thought if we met, I’d figure it out.”

“And what is the verdict?”

“I still don’t know.”

“Drink your coffee before it gets cold. There is nothing sadder than cold coffee.”

Mads did as he was told but he could think of a lot of things far worse than cold coffee.

“Do you want to be a part of your granddaughter’s life?”

“I can’t make that decision.”

“Why not?”

“That’s for you to decide. You have to decide if you want me there. I can’t force you to do anything.”

“You could at least say that you care you’ll be a grandfather.”

“I’m glad for your sake that you’ll finally have a family. I know you’ve been unhappy. I know your American girlfriend makes you happy. Your grandmother tells me things, so does your cousin Henrik.”

“I wish…”

“Don’t wish, Mads. Wishes only make us heavy at heart.”

They both sipped their coffee and stared at their hands. Mads stole a glance at his father and wondered if this was what he would be when he was older. Perhaps not, not now when he’d found happiness.

“Will you at least come and have dinner with Laney and me one night?”

“If you want me to.”

“Do you want to know me? Do we have to keep going on like this? Like there is nothing between us?”

“We’ll see.”

This was better than nothing, Mads thought. At least there were no promises that could be broken. He listened as his father stumbled forward with awkward small talk, filling the silence with news of how his drinking was not “as bad as it used to be.” He even spoke of Mads’s mother and how he’d visited her grave and left some peonies there. “They were always her favorite.”

Mads nodded and blinked away the hot rush of tears threatening to fall. He didn’t have the heart to tell his father that his mother’s favorite flowers were not peonies. At least Benjamin had gone. At least he’d tried to do something nice.

“So I will be a grandfather.”

“Yes, in three months.”

“What will you name her? One of those fancy American names?”

“No, Laney says she was thinking of a Danish name that works in English too.”

“You should name her Liv, after your mother.”

“Maybe.” But Mads had already thought of this. And when he thought of his daughter, waiting patiently to be born, her name was always Liv.

*Translation: “Yes, it’s me. I’m coming.”