One Small Thing (8 page)

Avery closed her eyes and listened, even though she wanted to pull the blankets over her head and block out the sound of his sad voice. Yes. Of course. He was right. Why would Randi do that if she had no intention of trotting a toddler up to a frat house and saying, “Here he is. Your son!”

When Avery was a teenager, one of her classmates got pregnant by one of the most popular, talented seniors, a guy who approached her at a party, handed her drinks, and then had sex with her out on the lawn as the party raged inside. Nine months later, she named her son Jason, after the guy, Jay, who had ignored her from the moment he pulled out of her and walked off the lawn. Avery’s friend told everyone about her baby, told them his name, hoping that Jay would take the name as a calling and recognize the baby as his son. He never did.

Randi had never done that. She’d never called, not in ten years. There had been no awkward visit, Avery opening the door to a stranger and baby. No requests for money. No clue to lead Avery sooner to what she knew now.

“You’re right,” she said, her voice muffled. “He probably is yours.”

Dan was silent, and he turned to the ceiling. “Yeah.”

When her father was dying in the hospital room, she and Mara and Loren sat in the waiting room. No one came in to tell them anything, their mother behind the closed door of their father’s room. One minute they were all sitting around his bed, trying to ignore the fact that the surgeon had told them there was nothing he could do. The cancer was everywhere, liver, kidney, bones, intestines. The next minute, the girls were rushed out by a nurse because something—blood pressure, heart rate—was wrong, off, weird, and then the door closed, and they were alone.

In her bed now, Dan on the other side, her arm pressed firmly between them, the truth in the air above them, she felt the same as she had in that hospital room fifteen years ago. Whatever was behind her father’s door, whatever the DNA tests would prove, would change her life forever. And there was nothing she could do about it but wait. Again.

In her dream, she saw her father’s pale face, his dark hair pushed back, his brown eyes closed. But she knew he was alive. There was still hope. A chance. A voice—she didn’t know if it was hers or someone else’s or just a thought—told her to pull the needles out of his cheeks and chin and forehead in less than five minutes and he would live. That was when she noticed the thin, quivering needles. So many of them. But she had to do it, and the voice told her to start, and she pulled and pulled and pulled. There were so many. Her fingers began to cramp, but she kept at it, even as the light began to fade. Her father’s face dissolved into the background, everything a smooth, pale gray.

She woke up, her body rigid, her eyes looking into the dark room that could have been any room, any place, perhaps her bedroom back in 1987. Breathing in and out, inhale, exhale, she slowed her thoughts, saw the shadow of her dresser, the fluid swathes of curtain, the ridge of Dan’s body on the other side of the bed. Avery grabbed at her chest, trying to stop her heart’s wild beating. She couldn’t fix her father, even in a dream.

Dan turned, his arm falling between them. Avery looked at the ceiling, knowing that she couldn’t fix this either. There was no way to keep what she had wanted alive.



The next morning, Dan still asleep, Avery slipped out of bed, into the hall, and then pushed open the door to the room they called the nursery, or at least, she did, saying, “Oh, I had the bassinet delivered. Could you put it in the nursery, Dan?” For him, the word (not to mention the purchases) was presumptuous or simply bad luck, she could tell, but to Avery, it meant that it could happen, just as easily as when she said, “I’m a Cal graduate” months before graduation,” or, “I’m Mrs. Avery Tacconi,” long before she and Dan were engaged. If you said something and meant it, it could come true.

The air was still and smelled of plastic wrapping, cotton, and wood. In the corner of the room, she’d stacked paint cans. Martha Stewart colors,
viburnum
, the palest off-pink white, and
linen
for the trim. She and Valerie had decided that with these colors, she could add any color of wallpaper trim, blue or pink. As they stood at the cash register at Sears with brushes and tape and paint trays, Valerie had rushed to the back wall and picked up wallpaper samples. “You never know. We might need these tomorrow!” That shopping trip had been a day before a visit with Dr. Browne but then, as usual, the results were negative. No baby that month. She hadn’t gone back to Sears since.

Even though Dan shook his head slightly when she read the advertisements in the
Chronicle
, she went to the sales at
I Bambini
, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Toys R Us, Mervyns, Target, Emporium. In the past two years, she’d found the bassinet, a crib, a complete layette, diaper genie, bathtub, stroller, car seat, baby shoes, playpen, changing table, dresser, a baby name book. She’d kept some of the stuff in boxes, tucked neatly away in the closet, but she’d made Dan put the crib together and she’d filled the baby’s dresser with clothes and supplies, the top covered with ointments and lotions. And only a week ago, Valerie had handed her a bag full of tiny newborn T-shirts and sleepers, things that Tomás at only three months had already outgrown. “I want you to have them,” she’d said. “I want your baby to be the one we hand-down to.” With each purchase or gift, Avery crossed off an item on the list she kept in the bottom drawer.

She’d also picked out the baby names she liked best. Of course, there were the inevitable but unlikely and slightly ridiculous family combinations: Isabel Marian, Marian Isabel or Walter William, William Walter. She would touch the crib and imagine Sophie, Ana, Mackenzie, Keegan, Connor, Brandon, Julia, Jordan, or Ashley.

Now, she walked over and rubbed her hand on the sheet that she’d put on the mattress, the bumper that softened the edges of the wood, its ruffles between her fingers, the wool blanket with its soft pastel threads. How stupid. How presumptuous, as Dan would have said if he’d dared to say anything about the baby to her. What was she thinking? What was this room anyway? She looked around at all her purchases, some of it two years old, maybe out-of-date, out-of-style, useless, replaced with other, cleverer baby gear. Here it was: Avery’s sad museum of desperation.

She slipped down the wall, her butt on the floor, and hugged her knees. These past two years had been a game, a mirage, a fantasy. Dan had played along with her as had Valerie and Isabel and Loren, but, as her father used to say, she’d “put the cart before the horse.” A huge, stupid, ridiculous cart with no horse in sight.

Wiping her eyes, she thought of what she used to do when she came home from high school her freshman year. Mara was in college at Wellesley, Loren was at cheerleading practice, and her mother was in her nest in her downstairs room, her face pressed flat against her pillow, her hand tired and limp on an open book. The bedroom was always hot and smelled like Oil of Olay and Caress soap. Quietly, Avery would open the window, bending down to breathe in clean air, turning back to her mother who never moved a muscle, not until at least six when the darkness woke her.

Going back upstairs, Avery would flick on the television and listen to the shows as she cleaned up the breakfast dishes and the sad half-empty glasses of water and coffee and plates of uneaten soda crackers and toast Isabel had left around the house. Once a week, she would vacuum everything, the machine leaving straight, comforting lines in the red carpet. She would feed their dog Pippin, change the water in her steel bowl, and drop flakes into the aquarium, feeding the last of her father’s exotic fish. The sad fish swam in the murky water as the filter burbled. Then she would take out a pad of paper and make lists: her homework, her dream boyfriends, her perfect life. She’d never gotten the dream boyfriend--her long legs and full breasts hidden in the folds of Loren’s too-big hand-me-downs--but she’d always finished her homework, and then her perfect life had just about come true.

But the list she had been keeping for the past two years needed to be torn up. Standing up and walking around the nursery, Avery touched everything, and then began to pick things up and place them in the closet and dresser—the animal mobile Valerie had found for her while shopping for Tomás, the case of baby wipes from Target, the diaper genie, the boxes and bags of teething rings, Destin, Johnson’s Baby Lotion, Burt’s Baby Bees Soap. She put the paint and brushes by the door, so she could take them to the garage. She stripped the mattress of the cute sheep and ducky sheets and bumper, folding them up and putting them in the closet as well. Upending the mattress, she leaned it against the wall. Later, she’d have Dan come back in here to dismantle the crib. Maybe Luis would help him. Or maybe it was too sad a task to invite anyone in for.

Finally, she opened the window, the plastic, cotton, wood smell leaking out into the morning air. She breathed in and turned around, as if expecting to see her mother, sleeping.

Later, after she made the coffee and emptied the dishwasher, she clicked on her Palm Pilot and looked up the number. They would be out of the office because of the holiday weekend, but she could leave a message. It would be better that way. She wouldn’t have to talk with Mary, who would ask questions and try to commiserate and cajole. She wouldn’t have to explain to the well-meaning nurse that she’d made a mistake, made the wrong kind of list, prepared for the wrong set of circumstances altogether.

Avery dialed and then listened to the long options, irritated by the voicemail system. As she waited, she looked to the hall, hoping Dan wouldn’t come out now. Finally, she pushed 1 to leave a message, walking into the family room as she did.

“Hi, this is Avery Tacconi. I need to cancel all my appointments for a while. I found out I need to deal with a family situation, and we won’t be doing the next round of IUI. I will call to reschedule when things are settled. Thanks. Thanks for all your help.” As she pressed the phone off, she saw Mary’s face, heard her say, “You don’t know what I’ve seen here.”

It was done. She put the phone down and stared out at the pool. A twirl of squawking starlings flumed up and over the fence, their feathers dark and slightly iridescent in the morning light. Next door, either Valerie or Luis was taking a shower, steam rising from one of the vents on the roof.

“What did you do?”

She jumped, breathing hard. “What?”

Dan walked over to her. He laid his hands gently on her shoulders. “Why, Aves?”

She turned, pulling herself away from him, still holding the phone to her chest. “You’re asking
me
‘why’?”

“You want this so much. That’s all we’ve been talking about for years. We don’t have to change anything we’re doing yet.”

Avery bit her cheek, winced, and looked at Dan. Yesterday, she couldn’t imagine that the Dan of the past and her Dan, this Dan, were the same person. But this morning, now, she could. She’d just missed the wounded, worried look around his eyes because he smiled so much, said the right things, assured her, his colleagues, everyone. His parents had known, so had Jared, and if she’d paid attention, she would have been able to see who they were really looking at. If she’d listened at all, she’d have been able to see Marian and Bill holding back, scared to give him their hearts again, knowing exactly what he was capable of. Avery would have seen the man she’d talked to last night, the one with a past she’d only seen on news programs; he’d been one of those teenagers hauled out of parental homes, struggling against handcuffs and shame.

She had married both Dans, the past and the present, and he wouldn’t be who he was now unless the other had happened. Nothing was for good or for real. Her father’s death had taught her that. She shouldn’t have forgotten.

“Let’s be realistic,” she said, flipping her hair off her shoulder and stepping away from Dan’s hands. “We can’t do this right now. We are going to have to deal with this boy. Daniel. If he’s yours, you aren’t going to want him in foster care.”

“What do you mean?”

“I haven’t been realistic for about two years. Maybe longer. I’ve been living in some kind of fantasy world. No one stopped me. It’s time I stopped myself.”

“Why was it a fantasy, Aves? We want a baby like everyone—“

“Everyone doesn’t get news like we did last night, do they? We have to be serious now. We’ve seen
Sixty Minutes
, the news. You’ve read the stories of 500 kids to one case worker. All that. You know what happens. The abuse. The neglect. Kids disappearing and no one noticing. If you don’t take him now, you’ll never get to know him. In eight years, he’ll be grown up. If he can have a father, he deserves one.”

Dan shook his head and licked his lips. “But, you’re okay with this?”

Without thinking, she barked out a jagged laugh. “No. Absolutely not. I’m not okay with it, Dan. I’m not okay that you didn’t tell me about your life. I thought we were married. I thought that we shared everything. I deserved to know about you. To
know
you in the first place.”

Dan shook his head and breathed out slow and light. “I didn’t think you’d want me if you knew what I’d been like—who I was. What I’d let myself become with Randi.”

“Is there anything else you want to tell me? Any other secrets you’re hiding?”