Tainted (4 page)

“You haven't changed anything, have you? The furniture, anything. The place looks exactly the same.”

He was here all right. This was Billy Madison, not some specter.

“Everything has changed, Billy. Every single thing.”

“Of course. I didn't mean—look, Holly, anything I say is going to sound wrong, I know. I screwed up. I should have contacted you. I should have done a thousand things I didn't do. I know I can't make up for that. But I'd like to see her. That's all. I thought we could talk about it. I'm back now. I'm going to Harvard Law School in September, so I'm back.”

“You'd like to see her? Do you even know
her
name?”

“Katy. My parents told me.”

“That's great. Your parents told you.”

“You see? Everything I say will come out wrong.”

Holly walked over to the window. She couldn't look at him any more. Why hadn't she prepared for this? Why had it never occurred to her that he'd come back? How unbelievably stupid could she be?

And why couldn't she see the ocean? Why was she hemmed in by the trees, the stupid trees she should have cut down years ago? It was crazy to live here and not have a clear view to the water. Stupid and crazy and awful.

“She looks stunning in the pictures.”

“Don't. Don't keep looking at the pictures. You have no right. You walk into my house without telling me you're coming. You say you're back and you want to see Katy. You must be joking, Billy. You haven't seen Katy, you haven't contacted Katy, you don't know anything about her. You just can't—” her fear was turning to rage “—suddenly show up and think you can see her. I won't let you hurt her.”

“I wasn't planning on hurting her, Holly. Why won't you turn around and face me?”

She wasn't used to being angry. She hated confrontations and arguments and normally did anything she could to avoid them. Anna had once said, “Holl, if someone slammed the door on your hand, you'd apologize, wouldn't you? You'd say, ‘Oh, I'm so sorry, it's my fault I put my hand there.' ” But this wasn't about her: this was about Katy. And when it came to Katy, Holly wasn't Holly any more. She was Katy's mother.

“Why won't—?” She turned. “All right, I'll face you. And I'll ask you exactly what it was you were planning. To come down on the occasional weekend and take her out for ice cream? Until you get tired of that or caught up in your law school life? It doesn't work like that. Being a parent doesn't work like that. You have no idea.”

“Did you tell her I was dead? Is that it?”

“I wish. No, Billy, I didn't tell her you were dead. You know when she first asked me about her father? In the car. On the way to kindergarten. ‘Do I have a daddy?' she asked. I wasn't prepared. I almost crashed the car. I had thought I'd tell her when she was older, I kept putting it off. I thought when she started real school, I'd tell her then. But I hadn't thought
what
to tell her
.
And she was sitting in the back of the car in her child seat, so innocent. So sweet. I couldn't tell her her father had run away and left her. What was I supposed to say? ‘Sorry, sweetheart, but your father's just not that into you?' I couldn't. I said the first thing that came to my mind. I said, ‘Your daddy is an explorer. He goes around the whole world all the time exploring places that are really far away.'

“How ridiculous is that? Of course she asked me if you were ever coming back and I said I didn't know. For a while she asked me lots of questions about where you explored and what explorers do. And it was too late. I had to stick to the lie. I made up so many lies, I can't even remember half of them. Now she doesn't ask me any more questions because she knows I get upset when she does. So she asks Henry. And Henry has to lie. We both have to lie. To cover up for you, Billy.”

The phone rang. Holly didn't move. On the second ring Billy said, “Go ahead—answer it. I'll wait.”

“I'm not going to answer it. And I don't want you to wait. I want you to leave—now.”

He didn't move. On the third ring the answering machine kicked in. They stood; Billy now staring at the floor, Holly staring directly at him, wanting him to look up and see just how much she meant what she'd said. He couldn't mess up Katy's life. She wouldn't let him.

“Hello, Holly Barrett, this is your traveling companion, Jack Dane. I went off without getting your number. Fortunately for me, you were listed in directory inquiries. Anyway, I have the job, so I'm in your town now—don't start until Monday though, so I was wondering if you'd like to have dinner somewhere with me tomorrow—Sunday—night. I think I should leave where to have dinner up to you as you're the native here. If you'd like to, please call me at 617 495 7783. I should hang up soon or I'll use up all the machine time. If you're otherwise engaged, I apologize for asking. Right. Goodbye.”

“Traveling companion?” Billy's eyebrows arched. “Have you been in England?”

Her cellphone rang; Holly reached into her pocket, retrieved it and saw it was Henry. She punched the answer button, spun away from Billy.

“Hi.”

“Are you OK, sweetie? You've been a very long time.”

“I'll be there in a minute.”

“Is something wrong? You sound—”

“I'll be there. One minute.” Shutting it off, she stated, “I have to go, Billy. And so do you. Now.”

“Listen, please. Please try to understand. I didn't know what I was doing. We went on that walk and it happened, suddenly you were pregnant, and Holl, I really didn't know you. I mean, we were friends. When I was with Anna the three of us would hang out together. And when Anna broke up with me, I turned to you. Yes, I guess I used you. But I never thought for one second of what could happen—that you might get pregnant.”

“You should have.”

“I know. Obviously. I should have. But I was stupid and I didn't. The next thing I know you're telling me you're pregnant. We'd never even gone out on a date. It wasn't as if we were a couple. And my parents were telling me that I should go ahead and live my life and not get caught up in being a father so young—that your decision to have the baby shouldn't wreck my future—and I listened to them. I'm not saying it's right, but can you try to begin to understand my position? I knew you as my girlfriend's friend and presto—you're my child's mother. I didn't mean to hurt you. Look, I can see how angry you are. I'll go now. I have to go away for two weeks but toward the end of June I'm back here—and I want to talk everything over with you. Try to figure this out.”

She had been watching his face as he spoke, how his cavalier attitude had shifted; his eyes nervous, his teeth biting his lower lip. A little like Katy when she'd say, “Please don't turn off the light,” at bedtime. And what he'd said wasn't untrue. She wasn't the only one blindsided by her pregnancy. He must have been terrified too.

If only he'd actually talked to her then. Instead of running down corridors to hide every time he saw her in school, like some kid about to be taken to task by the headmaster. If he'd just phoned her once, come over and asked her how she was. Or why she had decided to go ahead and have the baby. The last words she'd ever spoken to him were, “Billy, I'm pregnant.” His mouth had gaped, his hands fluttered briefly, he'd said, “Shit,” and then he'd climbed into his car, started it up and driven off, leaving her standing in the school parking lot. Alone.

“What do your parents think about you coming to see me?”

He pushed his hair off his forehead with a little flick. At which point Holly heard the “click” of a gear shifting into place in her mind. Every single thing in her life
had
changed. Nothing had in Billy's.

“You didn't tell them, did you?”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean? They must know you're in the house or they would have rented it out. They've rented it out every summer since—since I had Katy. So what's the deal, Billy? Did you promise them you wouldn't see me?”

“I didn't promise.”

“Whatever.” She closed her eyes, shook her head, opened them and allowed herself a wry smile. “You know what my father used to call your father? Dumpy—the eighth dwarf. Dumpy being an acronym for Dumb, Unpleasant, Mealy-mouthed, Patronizing Yuppie.”

“This isn't getting us anywhere, Holly. Be logical, though. I'm bound to run into her on the beach or pass you two in the car on the road. It would be better if we worked out together what the best way of me seeing her is.”

“It would be best of all if you left now.”

He rubbed his hand over his mouth, took a step toward her, then pivoted and walked away. Out of the room, out of the house. The screen door slamming shut as he left.

When she heard the sound of his car engine starting, she walked into the kitchen, turned the cold tap in the sink on full blast and threw handfuls of water on her face. Her rage had left her shaking and in tears. Always—she always made excuses for people, tried to figure out what the other person's point of view was and why they might have done whatever it was they'd done. There was always a reason to forgive people. But not Billy. She couldn't forgive him. If she hadn't gotten pregnant, if they'd just had that one brief moment on the beach and he'd never talked to her again, she would have found a way to excuse his behavior. But he'd walked away from Katy, from the most beautiful person in the world, a girl who deserved her father's love. There were no excuses for hurting an innocent child.

Yes, Billy, I'll be logical. And responsible. And adult. All the things you've never had to be and I've been for the past five years. Oh, and by the way, thank you so much for your kind words about my parents' deaths. Thank you for being you and not changing one little bit.

“You seem preternaturally calm about this whole situation,” Henry remarked.

As soon as Holly had returned to his kitchen, she'd told Katy that Bones looked lonely in his dog bed on the living room floor, knowing Katy would rush off to be with him and she could then tell Henry what had happened.

“I'm not. But I don't want Katy to see me upset. Besides, I don't believe for a second Billy has thought anything through. The idea of seeing Katy is an impulse of his. It will pass.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, I do,” she answered quickly, but wanting to say,
It's the same for him as having a quick screw on the beach. A whim with no thought for the consequences
. “As soon as he gets back into his life in Boston, reconnects with his old friends, he'll forget about her. Plus, at some point he'll have to tell his parents and they'll go ballistic about not letting this ruin his future, and that will stop him. He's a coward, Henry. I understand his confusion when it happened, but he hid behind his mother and father the whole time. He never spoke to me once, not once after I told him I was pregnant. He's a coward. Cowards don't want little children. And anyway, he still looks about sixteen. He's still a child himself.”

“And you're positive you have no feelings for him? Did seeing him bring back any memories?”

“Only bad ones. I know I was crazy about him—crazy being the right word. I know I put way too much on him, or the idea of him. That's not his fault. But he's arrogant. I don't know—” She shrugged. “Let's stop talking about him. Let's finish making this chowder and then play card games and listen to the end of the baseball. Let's get everything back to normal.”

They sat out at a table on Henry's porch playing Spit, playing Fish, playing Old Maids, playing Crazy Eights. Henry and Holly would, very occasionally, let Katy win on purpose while at the same time competing wildly with each other. His old transistor radio sat on the window ledge, giving them good news as the Red Sox proceeded to hammer the Twins.

Henry's house was as ramshackle as hers inside, as weather-beaten as hers outside. They were both gray clapboard with peeling paint, both had dusty old attics with crawl spaces. But his porch, unlike hers, was in pristine shape, possibly because this was where he spent so much of his time. When he wasn't clearing dead wood from his land, hunkered down in front of his computer, or off in his boat fishing, he'd invariably be sitting on his porch—reading, or simply staring out over the water, smoking his pipe.

When Holly first heard the expression “walking tall” she thought of Henry. He was straight and upright without being smug or patronizing. On the day her father had died, Henry had spent all night staying up talking to her mother. He'd lost Isabella two years before, to cancer—now he'd lost his son. He knew too much about grief. Until three a.m., Holly had been at the kitchen table with them, but she finally left them to get some sleep, worn out by shock and sadness. The next morning she'd come downstairs, seen them both still sitting there, drinking coffee. When Henry finally got up from the table and headed back to his house, her mother said, “Henry has an inner compass that points true north. Like your father.”

Henry wouldn't let anything change, she knew. They were happy in the world they'd created on Birch Point. Henry adored Katy. Billy couldn't touch them, not when Henry was there. Billy would go away and leave them the way they were and everything would go back to normal. Like it was now.

“Time for our perfect chowder,” he announced after Katy won a game of Concentration.

“I'll go get it and bring it into the dining room.” Holly rose, made her way to the kitchen past a myriad of old photos of her ancestors. Each time she walked by them, she'd stare into their unsmiling faces, wondering what their lives had been like, whether the stress of daily life had been the same for them or whether the age they'd lived in had been less complicated, easier.

After the first spoonful, Henry pronounced the chowder was, indeed, “perfect” and shook Katy's left hand with his. She beamed, her smile so contagious, Holly and Henry grinned with her.