One Small Thing (9 page)

Looking up, he seemed to think, replaying all the years before her. Avery’s stomach tightened, turning dark and ahrd, her hard pit. Finally, he said,

“No. That was it. What I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you’d take it like this. So angry. I knew you’d turn away.” His voice was sharp, the tone she’d heard him use with co-workers when a system wasn’t delivers as promised or a client was upset. How could he talk to her like that, now, when it was he who had done it all?

“Maybe you were right,” she blurted. “Maybe I wouldn’t have wanted you.” She put her hand on her hip, fighting back tears. She closed her eyes and saw their wedding, everything perfect except for the fact that her mother’s brother Lloyd gave her away instead of her father. But her simple, white silk dress, the cascades of white roses, baby’s breath, ivy, the cake from Katrina Cazelle, and her groom were what she’d pictured, listed, imagined: Dan in his black tux, his face tanned and gorgeous over his white shirt, Jared behind him, his parents actually smiling in the front row of the St. Stephen’s church, her mother in her lilac dress, Mara and Loren standing next to Avery in their bridesmaids gowns. That’s what she’d wanted. That. She’d never signed on for the dark twin in the back row sitting with his skanky girlfriend, both high as kites, laughing at how stupid this was.

Avery opened her eyes. “I lost my father. I know what it feels like to really lose two parents. I could never—it would be terrible to leave your son out there, alone, without anyone.”

Dan crossed his arms over his chest and looked her in the eye, an explanation on his tongue. There. There he was, the man she knew, who could fix what was broken: a bad grade, a conflict at work, an overpayment on a bill. In this instant, he was the husband she thought she knew. Her love. Her hurt love. “Aves.”

The coffee maker hissed, and Avery turned to pour two cups, trying to keep her hands from shaking. She walked to the fridge and took out the milk, pouring just the right amount for Dan. Handing him the cup, she picked up her own, closed her eyes, and sipped.

“Aves?”

“What?” The coffee was black and strong in her throat, the same feeling that was in her heart.

“I’m surprised, that’s all. I don’t even know if I can do this myself. There’s so much to think about.”

Avery breathed out. “Do you think you could leave him out there? Wouldn’t you spend the rest of your life wondering about him? What he was doing? How he looked? If he was safe? You left him once Dan. You can’t do it again.”

Dan put down his coffee cup and rubbed his forehead, leaning against the counter. “Yes.”

“So that’s it. That’s what we’ll do.”

“And the baby?”

“There is no baby. Not yet. Later. We can do it later. Dr. Browne, Mary, my mom, Loren, everyone says there’s time,” she said, her voice hitching on the words she hated.

“Aves. I don’t know,” Dan said. “What about all the stuff you’ve bought?”

“What good does it do when there’s nothing in here?” she said, putting a hand on her belly. “And anyway, I’ve packed up the nursery.”

“You did?”

“Where else is he going to stay? Your office? The couch? I need you and Luis to dismantle the crib. Everything else is in the closet.” Avery dumped the rest of her cup in the sink and rinsed it out. She looked out the window, the air already full of heat and summer. If she didn’t get out of the kitchen this instant, she wouldn’t be able to survive into the next minute. Her skin felt hot, her face full of pricks as if it was covered with needles. “I’m going to go work out. Then I’m going with Valerie to the park.”

“Aves,” Dan said, looking up. “Don’t go.”

On her way out of the kitchen she turned. If she was seeing him for the first time at Peet’s this moment, she’d walk right out the door and not look back. “I have to.”

FOUR

“Did you know?” Dan held the phone against his cheek, listening to his brother’s breathing. “Did you know this was going on?”

“Mom called me and said some social worker had called about Randi, but either she didn’t tell Mom about the kid or Mom didn’t tell me.”

Dan pressed his lips together. If they were twelve and ten again, he’d punch Jared in the stomach. If they were seventeen and fifteen, he’d clock him, as he’d done a couple of times. He closed his eyes. Of course. Dan had deserved this for years, Jared finding a way to punch him back. Jared kept the secret because he wanted to. Because he could.

“So you brought all that up last night about the pool and everything . . . “

“Look, I’m sorry. I should have told you. Warned you. But there wasn’t a good time with the party and everything. It’s not like we had a minute of privacy, and you get so mad when I bring up anything. Anyway, I guess Mom’s call made me think about you and Randi. Before it got weird. I used to do everything with you guys for a while, remember? I was half in love with her, Dan. In the beginning, she was a beautiful girl.”

Dan slumped down in a chair and scratched his knee, liking the hard feel of his nails against his jeans. “I know. But what am I going to do now? You didn’t see Avery this morning. She’s pulled down the nursery. She’s not going to try for the baby. She called the doctor. And I’ve got to go and get cells scraped out of my mouth for a DNA test. What am I going to do about that?”

Jared sighed, and Dan could hear all the years of advice he hadn’t listened to in his brother’s breath. Jared had visited his and Randi’s dark apartment despite their parents’ disapproval, sat on the couch and watched sitcom re-runs, and tried to get him to quit taking drugs, enroll in college, find a job, apologize to their parents and admit to stealing the coins and the credit card. Dan had laughed out loud, scooting over as three of Randi’s friends walked in the apartment without knocking and slipped between the brothers on the couch, giggling and leaning towards Jared. Dan had rolled another joint and turned the channel. After a while, Jared stopped coming at all.

One hot, end-of-summer morning, Dan had awakened to find that Randi, after a long night of Long Island ice teas and sticky, thick joints, had thrown up in her sleep, her face clammy, her body sweaty and hot. He had leaned over her, afraid, his palm cupping her mouth, checking for life, and when her steamy, putrid breath puffed against his skin, he had stared at her. Her body was warm, but he imagined she could be dead all the same, like Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix, someone so wasted that not even stomach contractions and vomit scared them awake. Pushing her damp black hair away from her skin, so pale and thin Dan could see her veins, he watched her pulse, a rapid one, two, one two beat on her temple. She was fine. Maybe she’d be hung over and grouchy and heavy-lidded for the whole day, but okay. By ten or eleven at night, she’d probably be sitting on his lap and lighting another joint, the day repeating itself over and over again, as it had for months and years.

Dan moved away from Randi, leaning against the wall. He had a headache and cotton-mouth—his arms were sore from some kind of game he and his dealer Ingram had played, a kind of arm-wrestling for hits on the bong. Who really won that one? he wondered, when all it gave you in the end was a pounding head and a girlfriend sleeping in her own barf.

He rose to get a towel to start cleaning her up, and then he sat back on the mattress. Dan looked at the dirty sheets, the bare white walls, clothes in piles on the green carpet, the red bong on the dresser. Out in the living room, Ingram was probably naked and asleep, either Lucy or Joelle (or maybe both) next to him. Staring at his pale hands, Dan knew he couldn’t live this day over again. He had to start to move, and not just out of the bed.

The next day, without saying more than, “I’ve got to go somewhere,” he drove down to Sacramento Valley College and stood in line with kids who’d been sophomores when he’d graduated from high school. At the window, he enrolled in freshman composition, humanities, chemistry, and California history.

When he finished all the requirements for his AA degree two years later, he didn’t tell Randi about his acceptance to Cal until the week before he moved out. But really, he’d moved out long before, going to bed early while Randi went out with her friends, studying Greek mythology or Calculus or chemical reactions as she sat on the couch, flicked the channels on the TV, and lit another joint. And when he was gone for good, for real, she’d never called. Not once. She must have been pregnant the day he said, “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go,” and drove to Berkeley, his used Ford Taurus filled with boxes and books. He’d been so busy with himself, he hadn’t noticed that her periods had stopped or that she was sick in the mornings or that her stomach stuck out in her tight jeans.

Dan hadn’t wanted to see or hear anything back then. He had been so scared, he’d refused advice, especially Jared’s, because he didn’t want to fall off the track that had taken him this far, from the apartment to three degrees, Avery, his job, his house. He had stopped listening to anybody. But now he needed help. Now, for the first time in twenty years, he needed his brother.

“Do you really want me to say anything?” Jared asked.

“Yeah. I do.” Dan swallowed, waiting for words.

“You’re going to call the social worker again and you’re going to get the full story. Avery’s not home right now, right?”

“Right.”

“Find out what happened to Randi. Find out about the boy. Get the details. And then you do what the social worker says. Take care of it. Clean up your own mess.”

That’s what their father had always said, year after year, problem after problem. “Clean up your own mess, dim bulb,” Bill had said, chuffing Dan on the shoulder. “Figure a way out of this,” he’d say after a bad report card, a principal’s phone call, a 300 dollar speeding ticket. But how could he clean up a life? His father had barked and shouted, but he’d never taught them what to do, assuming that the words were rule enough.

“So if he’s mine, I bring him home.”

Jared sighed. “Of course.”

“Right.”

“Dan, it’s not like you haven’t been thinking about how to be a parent for the last two years. My God, you and Avery were desperate for a child. You two have every child book in the universe in your living room. Maybe it’s not the way you wanted it to be, but it’s the way it is. You can’t just walk away from him.”

That’s what Avery had said, exactly. Dan needed Excedrin. He needed to think. “Okay. I’ll call you back, all right?”

“Dan, you’ve got to listen to me. For once.”

“I know. I am. Thanks, Jared. Okay?”

“All right.”

He was about to hang up and then he caught his breath on a thought. “Wait. Um, should I call Mom and Dad?”

Dan could hear Jared putting the phone back to his ear. “What?”

“Should I call Mom and Dad?”

“I would—I think you should wait. Wait till it’s decided. Until you meet him. Daniel. Wait until . . .”

“Until I do something right?”

His brother said nothing, but Dan knew he agreed. Why would his parents want to know the terrible details of Randi’s life and death and child—a story they’d hated from the beginning--when they hadn’t wanted to hear the good stories of his life since Randi? What was he thinking?

“Never mind. Thanks. I’ll call you later.”

They hung up, and Dan walked to the cupboard, opening the Excedrin bottle and popping two pills in his mouth. Since he’d awakened, his forehead felt crushed by a large hand. “The hand of God,” he could imagine Reverend Rawson saying, his frightening childhood bible tales ringing though the Sunday school class. No wonder Dan had refused to go to church when he was thirteen. Who needed the hand of God squeezing your head shut?

He put the bottle back in the cupboard and walked down the hall into the nursery. But when he opened the door, he knew it wasn’t a nursery anymore. Avery had put all the clothes and toys away, stripped the mattress and leaned it against the wall. The crib was just a piece of furniture now. Nothing that they would fill themselves. No baby.

Dan slumped against the wall and shook his head. God dammit. What was he expecting? Why had he ever imagined the past would disappear? Instead, it had followed him like a shadow, its black tail whipping all the way into the Central California Valley, into Turlock, into a trailer park, into a medical center where Randi had died alone.

“Buck up, Junior,” he heard his father say. “Keep cracking.”

Dan breathed in and wiped his face. Fine. He’d buck up. He’d call Midori Nolan. He’d call Luis to help him take the crib apart and carry it into the garage. He’d stop crying. He wouldn’t call his parents. He’d finally do as he was told.

“So she contracted Hepatitis C how?”

“I wanted to talk with you about that, but I felt . . . .” For the first time, Midori Nolan seemed to falter, her crisp sentence breaking off in his ear.

“What?”

“I was going to tell you that you might want to get tested for that. It’s contracted through blood products or shared needles and can be dormant in the blood stream for some time, I hear. But then your wife was on the phone. She must be having a hard time with this.”