One Small Thing (20 page)

“Okay.” She looked at the skirt of her dress, the red poppies vibrant against the strangely overcast day, the sky Midwestern and full of heat and humidity.

“Midori talked to him this week and so did his therapist. He knows. He knows who I am and who you are. Apparently, he took it pretty well.”

Better than I am, Avery thought, her chest tight. “Good.”

“He really wants to meet me. I mean, he met me already, but meet—“
“I get it,” she said. “He wants to see you in terms of who you are now.”

Dan nodded. “Yeah.”

“I’d want to see you, too.” Avery thought of her father, his glasses sliding down on his nose, the space between his teeth, his constant laugh. If he walked into a room, she’d want to run her hands down his face, smell his neck, press her cheek against his chest. She’d open her mouth and swallow a waft of tobacco smoke, take in what may have killed him. She’d remember what she’d forgotten.

Daniel who’d had nobody for so long—a mother disappeared into drugs—would need flesh that could teach him how to live, even if the flesh belonged to Dan, the father who had been promised to Avery’s unborn children.

Dan looked at her, searching for sarcasm or anger, but Avery held still. “So,” he said. “What we’ll do is have kind of a meeting at Liza and Martin’s. And then they and Midori will let us talk with Daniel alone. Maybe we’ll be able to go out for ice cream, depending on how he acts.”

Avery shivered. “Whatever.”

Dan turned to her again, and for a moment she thought he was going to pull over on Highway 99 and throttle her. He had on the same face her father wore the few times she’d misbehaved, gone one step too far, asked for the twentieth time if Grace Szudelski could spend the night, “Please, can she? Please?” His eyes would narrow, his lips would press together into two strips of solid white. With Mara and Loren, his face transformed much more quickly, after one, “I don’t know what happened to the fender,” or, “I did too get home at 11.” Then there were quick, loud words and silence. Avery had always hated the silent time, even when it was one of her sisters who was in trouble. She would step slowly into the room where her father sat smoking a pipe, softly touching his knee, shoulder, hair, hoping that everything could go back to normal again.

And now Dan looked at her with the same slit eyes, his hands tight on the wheel. “You might as well say ‘Fuck you,’ Avery. I know you don’t want to be here. But for Christ’s sake, could you help me out a little? I’ve waited for days for you to show me one tiny bit of interest. Shit. Anything. I’m going to meet my son. If it were your son, I know I’d be more interested than you are.”

Avery thought of her father, his sweater, his hand on his knee, the short, black hair curling on his knuckles. But Dan was farther away than even her dead father, the air hard and solid between them. “If I’d had a son, you’d already know about it. I would have told you even if I’d had an abortion. Or a miscarriage. How you can think that I could do any more than I am already doing is just flat-out amazing.”

She sat back hard against her chair. Dan stepped on the accelerator and wiped his forehead with his hand. “I’m nervous, Avery. This hasn’t been easy. Yeah, I should have told you. Everything. I know that. Yes, you needed to know I lived a terrible, awful life before I met you. I’ve been thinking about it since the phone call. I know I’ve screwed up everything. Maybe even our marriage, but I thought you loved me. Who you married is who I really am, Avery. I had stuff in the past, but that became part of what I am now. Don’t you see? I thought that you really meant what we said to each other. This is the worse part we were talking about. We’ve had the better.”

Turning to him, she felt her mouth hang open, the past two years a jumble of unarticulated anger in the pit of her stomach. Month after month of nothing, examinations and exploratory surgery and hormones, failure after failure after failure. That had been worse enough. “So I’m just supposed to take it all in. Your drug use. The drug addict you lived with. Her poor, sad son that has a room in my house, in my baby’s nursery?” She tried to breathe down her tears, but there they were, unwelcome and hot in her eyes. “I’m supposed to be some kind of mix between Deepak Chopra and Martha Stewart, able to deal with all humankind’s crap with kindness and to be a god dam whiz at redecorating and furnishing a boy’s room. You want me to accept it all. But what about me, Dan? What happens to me in this?”

“It’s just not about you, Avery. Christ!” Dan clutched the steering wheel. “It’s about a boy. A boy whose been abandoned. His mother died! You said you understood that.”

“I do!” she cried, remembering the first dream she’d had about her father after he died—he was standing at the mantel talking to her, his pipe in one hand, the stem moving up and down as he made a point. When she woke up, she smelled tobacco for just a second, and then she remembered what was real, what she was left with. “But how can I possibly be expected to be anybody to him.”

“You’re supposed to be somebody to me,” Dan said more quietly. “You are supposed to be my wife.”

Avery closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest. She felt the hum of highway under the car and in her feet, and she remembered the airplane, her giddy nerves as she flew home, Mischa’s voice still in her ear. She thought of her and Dan’s bed, the forbidden zone in the middle, the way they’d been talking in shorthand for two weeks. Was this a marriage? Was this what she’d agreed to at St. Stephens Church, their friends and family all around them listening to every word of their wedding vows? She knew she wouldn’t live like Isabel, who seemed trapped in the same life she’d lived with her father, except he’d been dead for fifteen years

Smoothing her pants, Avery imagined today like a project, a company that had to be sold PeopleWorks equipment and software. She could do that. She knew she could smile and charm the clients, make them think she wanted nothing more but to come to Tulsa and stay for two weeks at the Doubletree Inn while the system was implemented. Avery could convince Lawrence and Claire and Simone and Perry that her life depended on that very thing. She didn’t have to mean it. If they didn’t buy in, she would walk out the door with only one tiny regret and that was about her commission.

So today could be like a sales meeting, nothing more. She could sell herself to Midori and Daniel and this Liza and Martin. They would think she was the most amazing wife since Laura Bush. Dan would get off her case and stop making her think about her father and Mischa. If they left her alone, she would have time to breathe. She would have time to decide what she was going to do.

They all sat in a dark living room, a conglomeration of strange metal gadgets arranged on the coffee table and book cases. Behind the couch where Avery, Dan, and Midori Nolan sat was a row of Bavarian beer steins. Liza and Martin Adams sat in two maroon chairs across from the couch. Liza had a Diet Coke in her hand, and Martin adjusted his glasses, pushing them back against the bridge of his nose. When he spoke to Midori or Dan, Avery stared at him, wondering if he was one of those sick men who took children in for the purpose of using their bodies or for dominating them, king at last. But he seemed simply like a scattered, intelligent man.

“He took it great,” Liza said, squeezing her Coke can, the small tin sound pinging in the room. “He was like amazed! In fact, he has been acting much better since. I think he’s really excited.”

Avery cast another glance around the crowded room, knowing she’d be glad to leave this house, too. Martin crossed his arms and nodded, his glasses sliding down his long nose.

Dan smiled. “That’s good to hear. So when do you think he can come home with us?”

Midori looked up from her notes. “Well, we have the official papers to deal with. But, not long. A matter of weeks. Maybe only two. Hopefully, he’ll have the time he needs to adjust to his new home before school starts. That will be a hard transition for him.”

One breath in, one breath out, Lamaze breathing, yoga breathing. Avery tried to keep her eyes open, but all she wanted to do was close them and drift away. Transition. Her whole life had been one transition. She’d been waiting for the one defining moment to mark her passage. But into what? Pushing a child into the world would have been clear, true, pure. Her child was inside her, and then it was outside her. Easy to see the black and white of it all. It was either in or out, life or death, the darkness or the light. Not like the mess her life had become.

“Avery? Is that okay?” Dan was looking at her, waiting.

She wanted to say, “No, it’s not okay.” She wanted to give Midori Nolan, Martin and Liza, and Dan a terrible face, something pruned and squished and angry, or maybe she’d blow a raspberry with her lips, spit and sound everywhere. Then Avery would stand up and walk out to the car, sit in the driver’s seat, and take off. She wanted to cry.

But instead, she nodded and said, “Yes.” And then, remembering how she had to sell this moment as if she were a product, she lifted her lips, feeling the muscles press into her cheeks. “Of course.”

Liza and Martin looked at each other doubtfully, so Avery added. “It’s been a shock, all of this. Truly. But a boy needs his father.” Liza leaned forward. “And a mother,” Avery tacked on, knowing she was supposedly the mother. Liza leaned back in her chair, and Avery turned to Dan. He was looking at her with such gratitude, she immediately wanted to take her words back, stuff the lie into her mouth and chew it gone.

“Well, let’s bring Daniel in,” said Midori. “Why don’t you all have a good discussion? He will ask about you and Randi, Dan. He wants to know how you met. I suggest you tell him the basics. The details can come later. It’s up to you, though.”

“Okay.” Dan sat on the edge of the couch, his hands slipped between his knees, as if he were waiting for a teacher to pass out a final exam. Avery held onto her cushion, trying to find the breath she had counted out before, but every inhale and exhale was in halves or quarters, her stomach scratchy with acid, her heart pounding.

Liza stood up and walked into the hall. Avery heard her knock on a door and then a muffled conversation. If this were a scary movie, Avery would close her eyes and put her fingers in her ears so she wouldn’t have to listen to the music that was now rising in intensity, cellos and singular piano notes as the monster or murderer or ghost slid silently down the hall, each and all ready to kill or shock or damage. At the movies, she would throw herself into Dan’s side, hold her face against his shoulder, search for his open hand. Now, she looked at him on the opposite end of the couch, his eyes on the hallway, and she knew he wasn’t watching the same thing. He was watching the end of a drama, the characters reunited and redeemed. He wasn’t in the same theatre at all.

Daniel came down the hallway and stood in the doorway, looking at Dan. He was a small child, skinny, his elbows white and pointy. His jeans were new, but way too big, caught at his middle in a belt that hung down below a T-shirt that said Quicksilver on the front. He wore all-white shoes that Avery recalled having seen on television, a famous basketball star jumping up to the basket, the shoes brilliant on the screen.

Starting with his dark, still wet hair, she searched Daniel, looking for Dan. At first, it seemed that the test had been wrong. He was so pale, none of Dan’s olive skin in him at all. If she stood up to him and bent down, tilting up his jaw, she would see all the veins that kept him alive, his skin the color of no swim lessons, play dates at the park, nor vitamin D. And then there were the freckles, dark tan points of color flowing across his cheeks and nose, running down the tops of his arms. If she made him take off his baggie jeans, she bet there would be more on his thighs and shins. That wasn’t from Dan’s family, and neither was the body, all bones and sinew. Dan and Jared came from bigger parents, full of muscle and flesh, strong and ready to work. Bill still worked in his yard every weekend, mowing and hedging and cutting. Marian walked every morning with her neighbors, women in visors and sensible shoes, charging down the lanes, walking toward clear arteries and healthy hearts.

But this boy? He would be sucked under a lawn mower. He would fall to earth from the weight of a chain saw. He would begin to whine after a half-mile walk. He was the kind of kid who is laughed off every playground in the United States, and Avery closed her eyes, pushing back nausea and delight. They were wrong. Completely.

But then Midori said something to him as she walked out of the room, and he responded. Avery opened her eyes, watching his mouth, the slight tip of chin as he spoke, his lips, full and Italian and Dan’s. This was how Dan’s genes mixed with another woman’s. This is how his wouldn’t mix with hers. Here was the child he couldn’t have until death and social services brought him one.

After Midori left, Daniel stared at Dan, and then looked toward Avery. She almost flinched and pulled her gaze away from his eyes but managed instead to look back, finding the awkward smile she’d used earlier. “Hi,” she said, breathing away her nausea. “I’m Avery, Dan’s wife.”

“Do you want to see my room?” he asked.

Avery looked at Dan, and Dan stood up. “Sure we do.”

“I want to take my things to your house. I don’t want to leave anything here.”

Great, Avery thought as she stood up, imagining more strange metal gadgets and mini beer steins. Or worse, Randi’s collection of what? Heavy metal CD’s?
People
magazines? Leather halter tops?