Point of Balance (3 page)

3

Rachel's father and I never did get along.

When she and I were dating, he never went out of his way to be friendly. He would smile and say hello, shake my hand and take it back quicker than a congressman pocketing your last dollar. But the sideways glances he darted at me, when he thought I couldn't see him, would have melted my chrome-vanadium forceps.

“You're imagining it, honey,” Rachel whispered to me when she crept out of her room and into mine. “He's simply a grump who wants the best for his daughters.”

“I'm going to be a fucking neurosurgeon, Rachel. What more does he want?”

“His whole life he's watched out for his little girls. You wait until you're a father and have a young stud strutting around your house with a weapon of this caliber,” she said as she reached under the covers.

Truth is, the Robson family were close-knit. Rachel was the oldest sister, the sensible one. She had an orderly, straightforward mind, was studying to be an anesthesiologist and always scolded her kid sister, Kate, for all the crazy shit she dreamed up. Aura, the happy-go-lucky and talkative mother, would make corn bread while she gossiped about the neighbors. And then there was Jim, the father
figure, a Virginian through and through, one who was still seasick from the voyage on the
Mayflower
. He would sip his beer on the porch, irritated by the tall, dark young resident who claimed to be his daughter's boyfriend.

“What news from the North?” he would always say.

“Well, you know, Jim, they do say there's fifty stars on the flag now.”

He never laughed at my feeble attempts at a joke, and matters didn't improve much after the wedding. But we both made an effort and normally gatherings at the Robsons' were homey, although they made me feel uneasy. It wasn't all Jim's fault, mind you. I felt I didn't quite fit in. To be honest, I've never been too big on all this family business.

I'm an orphan and I never knew my birth parents. Up to the age of nine I had lived in one foster home after another, where the other kids weren't siblings but rivals you fought with for food and anything else you could get your hands on. Then a couple from Potts­­town, Pennsylvania, adopted me. He was a country doctor, and she his nurse and assistant. They died in a car crash when I was in my second year at medical school, before I met Rachel, so I became an orphan twice over. The crash made me flunk the whole year. Sorrow had always loomed large in my life, but for years it seemed to be well inside the closet. It leaped right out again the day my parents died, and mauled away with its sharp black claws. Only Rachel had kept it at bay after that.

Now that she's gone, Julia and her family are all I've got.

So for fifteen years I've made the hour and a half's drive to Fredericksburg every third Sunday, as well as for birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the Fourth of July. Although the way the Lexus was barreling along that night, I would make it in half the time.

I don't remember what speed I was doing, but I was so full of adrenaline that I nearly got myself killed at the Falmouth exit. I had turned off there hundreds of times but was driving so fast that night I missed it. I jammed on the brakes, left half the tires on the black
top, and reversed the car right in the middle of I-95. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. Luckily it was past one a.m. and I was on a four-lane freeway, otherwise such recklessness could have cost me dearly. A colossal truck hove into view. Its headlights dazzled in my mirror while its horn blared louder and louder. We were about to crash but the driver slowed down in time to switch lanes. His front bumper almost clipped my rear one and my little sports car might have been a leaf, the way the draft from twenty tons of truck shook it.

I pulled up on the shoulder between I-95 and exit 133, and struggled to collect myself. That was no way to behave and it would not help Julia at all. It had been a close call.

And all because of a stupid hunch.

A couple of weeks before, my in-laws had dropped in to see Julia. Jim owned a small chain of well-known hardware stores, Robson Hardware Repair. You may have heard the slogan: “Do it yourself and you'll get the best workman.” Both hardware and the slogan suited good ol' Jim to a T, because he's as hard as nails. There were five or six stores in the chain, but none to the north of Arlington. Jim never strayed across the Potomac unless he had an appointment in the District, which he did that day.

Aura had made her usual entrance, about as subtle as a brass bell falling down the stairs. Twice.

“Juliaaaaa! Where is my little honey pie?”

Julia sprinted and slid the last stretch along the polished floor in her socks. She threw her arms around her grandmother's neck and smothered her with kisses.

“Grandma! Come up to my room, I want to show you something!” she said as she took the old lady's hand and pulled her along.

I said hi to Jim and offered him something to drink, knowing full well he'd decline. He never touched a drop when he was driving. He sat on the sofa and sneered at the fixtures. Rachel had gone in for modern furniture, with clean lines, which did not go down well with her hidebound father.

“Julia's shot up. We haven't seen her in more than a month.”

“I've had a lot on my plate,” I said by way of an excuse, a little put out.

I admit that since Rachel died the visits had petered out, but it also riled me that we were always the ones who had to make the trip. It was no farther from Fredericksburg to Silver Spring than from Silver Spring to Fredericksburg. But I didn't say so, to be polite. And because I was still in awe of the old buzzard, damn it.

“That's my point, Dave. You work too hard.”

That was out of line from someone who'd spent a lifetime traipsing from one of his stores to another and knew by heart what he had in stock, down to the last screw.

“What are you driving at, Jim?”

“It does Julia no good for you to work so hard.”

I wasn't about to dignify that with an answer, so I shrugged my shoulders and stared at him. He stared right back.

“I just sold up, Dave.”

That took me completely by surprise. Jim had always bragged that when death came calling it would find him behind the counter. I could always picture him scowling at the Grim Reaper's scythe blade and selling him a Bester-brand whetstone.

“But, Jim, those stores, they're your life.”

He squirmed and crossed his arms.

“Ever since Rachel's death, I haven't had my mind on the job. I can think only that life is short, and there's more to it than fussing over Allen keys.”

Those had been Rachel's very words at dinner, once, between the mashed potatoes and the turkey.

“The Ace Hardware guys have been trying to buy me out for years, as you know,” he went on. “Today I sat down with them and we made a deal. They haven't paid me all they would have five or six years ago. Times are hard. Still, I've got more than enough to see me through. I'm sixty-three and I've worked like a dog for half a century. I deserve to enjoy life and take care of the things I love and cherish.”

“Ain't that the truth, Jim. You've done the right thing. Good job.”

The old guy nodded his head. Maybe he was drumming up the courage for what he really wanted to say. Finally he spat it out, true to form, right between the eyes.

“You don't get it, David. I want Julia to come live with us.”

I glared at him, dumbfounded, and made a ridiculous sound, somewhere between a hoot and a snort.

“You've got to be kidding.”

But there wasn't a trace of humor in Jim Robson's eyes.

“It'll come as a relief to you. I'll be doing you a favor. And it's what's best for my granddaughter.”

“Are you suggesting I'd let go of my own daughter, Jim?” I said, trying to take it all in as I got madder and madder.

“Washington is no place for a girl. They'll turn her into one of those robots in uniform. She'd be better off in a good small-town public school.”

That rankled. Rachel and I had searched high and low for the best school for Julia from the very moment we knew she was on the way. We had chosen one that put art and feeling good before competitive edge. They had twelve applications chasing every place at that school. We had waited in endless lines and called in favors from everybody we knew until we got her in. And now this busybody comes along and tells us we've got it all wrong.

“Julia goes to Maret. It's one of the best schools in the country, where they don't wear a uniform, by the way. And I certainly don't think it's for you to tell me how to bring up my daughter.”

“Think about it. That way she'll have somebody waiting for her when she comes in from school, someone to take care of her. She'll eat proper food, good home cooking. Julia's all skin and bone.”

I got up and stomped around the table to face him. He stood right up.

“Listen, Jim. Out of respect for you and Rachel's memory, I'll pretend we never had this conversation,” I said with a wave of my
hand, as if I were brushing off a fly. “You're the girl's grandfather; that's all. You're welcome in this house anytime. But I beg you, if you want it to stay that way, then don't you ever come out with such crap again.”

I backed off and he sat down.

“You'll be sorry for this, David,” he said through gritted teeth, somewhat humiliated. I let that go because I wanted to put the whole stupid business behind us.

“I'd better go and see how Julia's doing,” I said, and shot upstairs.

When I came back down, I was surprised to see Jim gone from the living room. I went into the kitchen and found him there, whispering in Svetlana's ear. She nodded, very straight-faced. When they noticed me, they drew apart, startled.

There was a guilty expression on my father-in-law's face.

Back then I had thought no more of it. Jim's veiled threat seemed no more than the typical outburst of a man used to always being in the right and getting his own way. I also took Jim's talking to Svetlana as his trying to show who was boss after I'd hurt his pride. I imagined him lecturing her on what to feed his granddaughter, or on the quality of Virginia tomatoes—which are great, I must say.

But when I had arrived home an hour before and couldn't find Julia, and figured Svetlana could not have moved out by herself, the threat suddenly became very real, and that word in the nanny's ear had taken on conspiratorial proportions.

As I took the last bend in the road to the Robson home, my mind was churning over the same questions I had been asking all the way there.

Would Jim have dared to take away his granddaughter? How had he talked Svetlana into it? Had he offered her money? I didn't know what Ace Hardware had paid him, but I believe years before Rachel had mentioned an offer in the millions. Even if they had settled on the low side, Jim could still afford to put a young foreigner through grad school. For sure, Jim was as stubborn as they came, but would he go to such lengths to get his way?

He couldn't be that stupid
, I thought.
He must see that he'll never get away with it. Does he really think I'll turn the other way while he takes my daughter?

I finally drew up outside the house and parked on the stony slope that led to the garage on the edge of the farm, a place that has been in the Robson family for four generations. They had been poor all that time—Rachel was the first Robson to get into college—but nobody could top them for pride.

A soft rain was falling, which did nothing to settle my nerves. As I approached, I saw the light above the front porch was out. They usually left it on all night, as well as a pair of lights downstairs. My in-laws thought this climate-change talk was something Al Gore had made up to sell books.

I walked up the front steps in two strides and had the knocker in my hand when the door abruptly opened. There was Jim, in a checkered bathrobe. He looked me up and down, and then let me in. He didn't seem surprised to see me.

“Come in and keep quiet. They're both asleep, upstairs.”

I felt intensely relieved to hear that. It swiftly took a load off my mind and I could breathe deeply for the first time in hours. I saw he had only one slipper on, and his footfalls sounded off-kilter as he padded along. I was still angry, but the sight of my father-in-law's bare, skinny calves was dismal enough to dismiss any thoughts of quarreling.

I followed on his cracked and parched heels to the study, where he would wind down at night and take in some TV while he had a beer, before he turned in. But that night Jack Daniel's had stood in for Bud in the starting lineup, and to all appearances, Tennessee's finest was on fire.

The other difference was even more worrying. The TV was switched off and there was a big silver picture frame on Jim's easy chair. It was plain the old man had been poring over it. I knew only too well that frame didn't belong in Jim's study, but on the mantelpiece.

He picked it up as he sat down and poured himself another finger of Jack.

“She seemed so full of life, David. And so happy.”

He lifted up the photo to show me, but he didn't need to. I knew every bit of that picture, because for nights on end I had sat up with it in my hands, too, and drunk myself stupid gaping at it, like the old man. We had that much in common.

It was a photo of our wedding. Rachel was holding a bridal bouquet by the church door, while we gazed into each other's eyes. I hadn't seen in her face the happiness Jim spoke of, at least not an overdone or mawkish happiness. What I saw was the full knowledge she had found her soul mate. But then I hadn't simply seen the photo; I had been on the receiving end of that look.

“She surely was, Jim. I think she was happy the whole time we were together.”

He tilted his head to one side and hesitated. Perhaps he was mulling this over. His skin was bone dry and his cheeks obscured by spider veins. He stared at the bottom of his glass, seeking the answer there. And then he knocked the drink back in one.