The Lost Daughter (5 page)

One by one she kissed his vertebrae. At last he turned. Rain lashed the windows, and a pale wash of sheet lightning in which tears gleamed in Sean’s eyes. He bent to kiss her breasts. They moved together cautiously, as if their bodies were fragile as reeds. When Brooke moved down on the mattress and gently sucked the soft pouch of her husband’s testicles, he gasped in delight. For a fleeting moment Brooke let herself believe it was enough, that he would see she loved him despite her stubbornness. She caressed him with her lips, her tongue, her breasts. Yet even as he came, deep inside her, his hands clutching hers, she felt him battling desire, as if love itself were the storm that would break her, and she him.

I
n the gray light just before dawn, Sean slipped from bed. A light breeze stole in at the window; the storm had broken the August heat. Quickly he showered and shaved. He used a safety razor these days. He got a closer shave and there wasn’t the hum of the electric to wake Brooke up. Ever since he’d been promoted to floor supervisor at the print shop, he’d had this schedule, six thirty to three. It worked great. Most days he could pick Meghan up from school or summer camp.

He padded downstairs in his socks, let the dogs out into the backyard, poured instant coffee, packed his lunch. He kept the blanket over the birdcage; Brooke would wake her canaries when she was ready. Sipping the coffee, he studied the garden he’d put in five years ago. Theirs wasn’t much of a house—a raised ranch in a neighborhood of Victorians and mansard roofs—but he was proud of the place. Twice the size of what he’d grown up in with three brothers and Fanny, and he’d just about paid off the mortgage. Cardinals flitted from apple to oak tree in back. Remembering what
Meghan had suggested last night, Sean chuckled. Kate and Gerry in the basement, that would be rich. Maybe when Gerry got fed up with Kate’s putting on ten pounds per kid he’d go after Brooke, see if he could persuade her where Sean hadn’t, to spawn another O’Connor. That was what the guy had winked at yesterday. At a christening, for Chrissakes.

Well, they’d put down a few, Gerry and Danny both. It had started as good-natured ribbing, the kind they all fed on, this time about Sean’s hair creeping down from his head to his chest and then up over his shoulders. He oughta get a wax job, Danny had said. It had gone from there to Sean’s tire and how if Brooke wanted one of those buff guys, they could find Sean a nice bouncy Polish girl who’d breed him a herd of boys. Christ, Sean thought, Gerry with two of each now, he was so puffed up it must hurt to breathe.

But it was Danny who had really pissed Sean off. “Maybe she just got all dried up inside,” he had said, waving a beer toward Brooke as she distributed chicken wings. “These blond types do that, you know. Run outta juice.”

“Really.” Sean had felt a kind of fire behind his eyes. He was ready to take a swing at the guy! They never learned, his brothers, that there was such a thing as a not-funny insult. But he’d kept his fists at his side and said, real slow, “At least she still balls me.”

Right away he’d regretted the words. He hated guys who talked that way about their wives, like they were supposed to be sex toys. But what could you do, with brothers on your case every time?

“That so?” Gerry had said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Sean met his eyes. “Twice a week,” he said, which was true. Also true was that every time he saw himself in the mirror—the balding pate, the dumb goatee, the heavy hips—he felt that in getting to make love with Brooke he won the lottery twice a week and then some. “Makes no sense,” he said. He’d grinned so Gerry could see
he was, in fact, getting laid by this gorgeous woman. Jeez, look at Kate, he thought, and how often did she give Gerry any action?

They had shut up for a little while, though they would start again next time with the blonde jokes and the frigid jokes, and Sean would have to throw it back at them. Talking that way left a bad taste in his mouth. Better to take a swing next time, he thought. He wrapped his sandwich in waxed paper, rinsed his mug, and tiptoed upstairs. From the doorway he watched Brooke sleep. Pale light washed her fine cheekbones and the hand she had flung over the edge of the mattress. She slept naked, and the thin sheet undulated over her hip, her shoulder, her surprisingly full breasts. He drank her in. He remembered the sweetness of being inside her last night, the high-pitched cry she always muffled, because of Meghan. She loved their girl so much—why
wouldn’t
she have another? Sean remembered talking with her yesterday about Danny and Nora, how they always seemed on the verge of splitting up. “No way,” Brooke had said. “They’ve got the two kids and one coming. They’d have to be a lot more miserable to call it quits now.”

So would it be easier to call it quits, since Sean and Brooke had just one? This wasn’t exactly what Sean’s brothers said when they teased him, but it was the likeliest explanation. Wasn’t it? Brooke was so quiet, so hard to read. You knew—Sean knew, anyhow—that she wasn’t placid by nature; she wasn’t boring. She was keeping her spirit corralled, muffled, under wraps. Maybe there was somewhere else, with someone else, where she let it go. Maybe, resisting the notion of a second child, she was really wrestling with whether she would leave Sean for this other man, for this other version of herself. A coffee date today, she had said. No pronoun used for the high school chum.

Sean shook his head to rid himself of these thoughts. They were crazy. Wasn’t he the guy Brooke was with last night? Didn’t she
whisper in his ear,
Oh you you you?
Did she not say she felt a charge go through her, every time he sang? Only when he was drunk or tired did he get these suspicions, and boy did his brothers pick up on them, like dogs on a scent.

He tiptoed across the hallway to Meghan’s room. He leaned down to kiss her forehead, just slightly clammy in the August warmth, and smelling of strawberry shampoo. He knew it wouldn’t wake her, as it would Brooke. Still, all the way driving to work, practicing his scales the way he did, each day, in the car, his lips remembered the taste of Brooke’s skin, the flush of her neck as she came.

F
rom the window of his small office Sean could see the bright light atop the Travelers Insurance tower, gleaming safety. Otherwise there wasn’t much of a view. Central Printing lay in the north end, a low-slung beige box along a strip that once included a glass manufacturer and Sealtest bottling. After dark, gangs used this street as a shortcut to confrontations and drive-bys on Albany Avenue; there had been six killings on or off Albany already that year. Some of Sean’s guys carried. 22s. He just drove an old car. When he left the shop today he’d keep his head down, and lock the doors before he put the key in the ignition.

Sean thought sometimes he should have gotten into the audio industry, where he could have learned about recording the human voice even if his own was just meant for the shower and the Hartford Chorale, where tenors were outnumbered but still a tiny forest in which to hide. Unless you auditioned for a solo, Brooke would say, but she was just indulging him. He’d tried being a church choir ringer, but he couldn’t stand the Masses. And then he’d hear Mum, who never learned to whisper, saying to her friends, “He thinks he’s a star.” Well, he kept it under control, didn’t he? Studied the tapes
in the car deck, where he didn’t bother anyone, and sang arias when he took the dogs to the wooded paths on Avon Mountain. The few times he’d caught sight of other walkers staring at him, he’d stopped right away.

Learn a trade, his dad had taught him, and you can have all the little hobbies you want. He had gotten into the print business because he wrote a neat hand, trained in it by the sisters at St. Ignatius. It had started as a part-time thing when he was at the state college. Back then people wanted hand-lettered signs. It was cheaper for a place like Central to hire a college kid than to mess with the fonts. One job had led to another, and now here he was with a dozen guys under him, half of them old enough to be his father. From the start the business had been under siege. First it was the cheap inks and paper in Taiwan—anybody not in a hurry could job the stuff out and get it flown back in a month. Then it was desktop publishing, color laser printers, making every Joe and his Mary a catalog designer. And now the economy going bust.

It was past three in the afternoon, time for the shift to change. He stepped out of his office. Already he’d called Brooke to say he’d have to stay late. Meghan had dance class anyhow, she’d said. She could pick her up and drop her at the class before she had coffee with her friend; Sean could get her after. “Bye, sugar,” he’d said, and Brooke had said “CD Pyg,” the way she always did.
CD Pyg
stood for Constant Disposition to Promote Your Good, which Brooke—or rather Brooke’s father, who passed away before Sean really knew him—said was the true sign of love. Sean liked the sentiment; he wasn’t sure he liked having it shortened to a code. And he was uneasy. Maybe because of the party yesterday. Maybe from that reference—again—to the no-gender friend. Hell, maybe just because of what he was about to do. But he wished now and then she’d say “honey” or “sugar” or “love.”

God, he thought, listen to you whine. He could hear the whoosh and clank of the presses, the shift shutting down. Already the night crew was trickling in, getting coffee in the lounge. Down to about a half dozen now. They had a big museum catalog on the way, but the rest was wedding announcements and some posters. Last month the hospital had pulled its account. They could run their brochures off their own laser printers now; other info went on the hospital website. Sean’s boss, Larry Dobson, had hired a new sales guy out of Boston, fresh-faced fellow named McMahon, but nothing had come of it yet.

Sean had the pink slips in his top drawer. Clearing his throat, he moved onto the floor. “Hey, Edson,” he greeted the stripper. “Nice work on that fold.”

“Yeah, it was a bitch,” the stripper said. “We got that Duofold coming in?”

“Delayed. We’re repricing. You seen Clyde?”

“He’s in the can. Guy spends a lot of time there, know what I mean?”

Sean knew. Clyde was on something, meth maybe, made him hyper, jittery, a little aggressive. He was a good layout artist, but recently he’d gotten sloppy. Still, Sean figured, someone would have had to go. Four in the layout department didn’t make sense anymore.

He hung around, waiting for Clyde to emerge, then saw Seymour, the color separator, packing up for the day. What the hell, Sean thought. Do Seymour first. “Hey, Sy,” he said, ambling that way.

“Hey, Mr. O’Connor.” That was Seymour: refusing to call a boss by his first name, whatever the other men did. All thirty-five years of Seymour’s time at Central Printing, he’d called the floor heads “Mister,” and he’d seen plenty of them, from two decades his senior to squirts like Sean. “How’d that christening party go?”

“Came off beautifully. That sun dance you did really worked.”

“Tell me you gave ’em a song.”

“I put the baby to sleep. Better than making him howl, I guess.”

“That’s a precious gift, that voice, Mr. O’Connor. I heard you folks sing that
Messiah
, three Christmases ago, with the symphony. Pretty stuff.”

“Thanks, Sy. Hey, can I see you in my office a moment?”

That was all it took, really. It was like the Mafia, Sean thought, offering to take a guy for a ride. Sy was the only man on the Central team who’d heard Sean sing—along with a hundred other voices—and he never failed to bring it up. Now his face adjusted itself. Carefully he packed his thermos into his lunch box. “Sure, Mr. O’Connor. Give me just a sec.”

In his office, Sean paced. He’d never smoked, but times like this, he wished he did. Anything to take the edge off. Sun still poured in the dusty window; the air conditioner hummed, but he was still sweating. At last the tap on the door. “Come on in.”

Seymour was in his late sixties, Sean figured. Last year there had been a hip operation, this year cataracts. But he held himself erect, his slight shoulders squared and his sharp chin up, the thin lips pressed together. “Have a seat, Sy,” Sean said, gesturing at the padded dinette chair that passed for seating in his office.

“I think I’ll stand, Mr. O’Connor,” Sy said evenly. He placed his lunch box on the edge of Sean’s desk and folded his hands in front of him. “I’m sure what you’ve got to say won’t take long.”

His face reddening, hands sweating, Sean went through the drill. The computers were doing all the color separation work these days, Seymour knew that. This catalog coming in was the only fine-art four-color they were likely to get all year. They’d thought and thought about ways to rejigger the thing, but the fact was they had to start phasing some areas out, and Seymour was in one of those
areas. Larry Dobson had put together the best package he could manage for valued employees like Seymour. Sean had the details right here.

Reaching for the manila folder he’d prepared, Sean’s hands shook. Christ, he hated this. “I ever tell you,” Sy finally interrupted, “about the place the wife and I bought, up there on Peaks Island?”

Sean set down the folder. “No, Sy. Didn’t know you had a place.”

Sy nodded. “Just outside Portland, Maine. Take the ferry there. We’ve been going up summers for, I don’t know, maybe twenty years now. All my kids had their summer vacations there. Wife teaches grade school, you know.”

“I did know that. Lucille?”

“That’s her name, yes. Good memory, Mr. O’Connor. This past Christmas we decided to spend up there as well. Plenty cold. But the kids all came, and five grandkids. We squeezed in somehow, kept each other warm. And my wife, she said she thought she could get a job, there, in the Portland school system. And I might take to watercolor painting.”

“That’s a great plan, Seymour.”

The separator smiled ruefully. “Tell you the truth, I’m not ready for it yet. I’ll be restless. Plus I hoped to get more of a nest egg together. You know, for the grandkids. But you got a job to do, Mr. O’Connor. I don’t envy you.”

“Thanks, Sy.” Handing over his packet of severance papers, Sean felt he was giving Seymour his death warrant. “You make this part easier.”