Things Unsaid: A Novel (21 page)

Andrew’s mother sneezed.
Does she think Abigail smells feral?
he wondered. Maybe his mother was allergic to his wife.

Abigail reached into her pants’ pocket and offered his mother some Altoid breath mints. “Here, take two of these. So Ethan’s not offended. Babies are very sensitive, you know. They have a superb sense of smell.”

His mother was the one offended. Her shoulders hunched, her thin lips in a tightly pinched line. “What else should I do before kissing my own grandson?”

Andrew heard the ice in her voice, but Abigail didn’t crack.

“Oh, that’s it for now … I guess. It’s really a privilege to be trusted with someone else’s baby, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

Andrew could hear his mother’s words inside his skull:
“I’ve held more babies than you have.”
But that’s what she would say to her own daughters. Abigail was not family. She was the lucky one. Andrew took satisfaction in the fact Abigail wasn’t afraid of his mother, not like everyone else. That was her most admirable quality.

He loved staring into baby Ethan’s sweet little face: a few fine blond strands, a very pink bald scalp, blue eyes staring up at him. He was a beautiful infant—so different looking from the twins. After his mother finished washing her hands at the kitchen sink, he watched as she took the baby from Abigail. After a few seconds, she frowned and passed Ethan to him.

“This is no grandson of mine,” she said. “Both sides of our family have only black or chestnut-brown hair, and either black or brown eyes. This is
not
my son’s child. If he had blond hair and brown eyes, or dark hair and blue eyes, it’s
possible
he could be my grandchild. But this baby … not a chance!”

Abigail smiled. “Oh, Aida, can’t you be happy for us? That we have another little boy? God didn’t want to give us a baby girl this time. Don’t be disappointed.”

It was late. Midnight. They all went their separate ways to bed.

The house seemed quiet, but not at peace. His parents had left very early—in a cab this time, Andrew had an oral surgery to prepare for. He had heard the door click as they left, but he hadn’t risen to say goodbye to them.

It was still dark when he downed his muddy coffee and went to strip the bed in the guest room, making it tight with new sheets, GWMA-style. He wanted to rid his house of his parents’ smell. Thank God, life could now go on as usual. He backed the car out of their one-car garage, grateful that he hadn’t had to leave his car outside that night. He and Abigail always fought over whose turn it was. The loser had to allow a
good ten to fifteen minutes to wipe all the snow off the windshield and warm up the engine after the car had been out all night. In the pitch dark.

Later that night, as they sat on the couch watching a talk show on TV, Abigail scrunched up next to him, trying to cuddle. But Andrew wasn’t in the mood.

“What’s wrong, hon?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Andrew muttered. “My mother just puts me in a bad mood, that’s all.”

“Is this about Ethan? What she said about how he couldn’t be your son because of his blond hair and blue eyes?”

“Nah. What does my mom know about genetics? She was just shooting her mouth off. Never liked blonds for some reason. Always called them ‘pasty faced.’ ”

“Hmm. Don’t pay attention to the old bat. I don’t like to speak ill of people, but your mom’s the biggest bitch I know.”

Tell me something I don’t already know
, Andrew thought. Still, he didn’t like it when Abigail called his mom a bitch. Carrie and Grissim had both been kinder.

When Ethan was sixteen months old—his big boy—Andrew remembered his mother’s words again.

He had walked into the kitchen to start a big pot of water boiling. He loved their old-fashioned stove, how it had a folding metal top to hide the burners, converting to a work surface for cutting boards and mixing. He relished how much cleaner and more aesthetically pleasing it was with its metal top flattened down. The kitchen in general was soothing to him, just as Ethan’s breathing had been when he was an infant. The gentle, trusting sound of his inhalations and exhalations, like the back-and-forth petting of a kitten, had always put Andrew at ease.

Andrew enjoyed being a father. The pleasure of knowing you could love and be loved. Like his love for his father and his father’s love for him. All sons loved their fathers and vice versa, right? The only
difference was, Andrew felt comfortable showing his love for his sons—and his need for theirs.

Abigail had just closed the books for the day. He knew he could trust her with money—with everything. Besides, she was better than he was with accounting.

“Oh, darling, our books are worse and worse,” Abigail said, looking over his shoulder into the pot of water on the stove. “We have to talk.”

“Does it have to be right now?” he asked. “I’d like to get the show on the road. The twins are going to be famished when they get back from baseball practice.”

As if they had been eavesdropping from the sandlot, Adam and Jake rushed into the kitchen, occupying all the space in the room.

“What’s for dinner? We’re starving,” Adam asked, giving his mother a big kiss on the cheek while Jake waited his turn to do the same. They knew how to manage her.

“Guys, we need some alone time. Can you go do something—like take a shower? You have that guy smell, stinky and sweaty. Go clean up while we talk,” Abigail said as she reached for the box of spaghetti in the pantry, not making eye contact.

Andrew thought that was strange. His wife always got twinkly eyes whenever one of their sons kissed her. Just like his mother had.
What’s going on?

“That’s gross, Mom. You’ve been married too long to have alone time. But hey, we don’t want to know.” He shook his head and threw up his hands. “Let’s get out of here, Jake, before they embarrass us. Geez.”

Andrew heard the thud of baseball cleats through the house as they escaped upstairs.

“Hon, can you give Ethan a meatball while we talk?” Abigail asked.

He spooned out a meatball, cut it into tiny pieces, and put it into a plastic
Toy Story
bowl for his little boy. He picked up Ethan and after a wet, sticky kiss—
Why do kids always have sticky mouths, even when they haven’t been eating anything sugary?—
he placed the toddler on his food-encrusted booster seat.

“Okay, what’s so important?” he asked as he reached for salad greens and a bottle of salad dressing from the refrigerator.

Abigail looked on edge. Burdened. She had never been that way
before. Not even when Ethan fell down after trying to run on his still-unsteady feet, hit his head, and had to be taken to the hospital.

“We have to talk about Ethan. There’s something I have to explain.”

“Must we now? I know his tantrums are nerve racking. It’s just a stage. I’m so tired. I just want to eat with you and the boys. I need some downtime.”

But no, something was wrong. Andrew could feel it.

“No, no. It’s not his tantrums.” Abigail paused. “I know you love Ethan as much as I do, sweetheart.” She smiled and came over to where he was sitting. Feeding Ethan.

“Remember, darling, the Christmas before last, when your parents came to visit?”

He couldn’t remember what she was trying to have him remember. What was one Christmas from another? They all blurred together in his mind. His parents staying, Abigail getting irritable, the boys getting overexcited by all the lavish gifts, and then his parents leaving without saying good-bye.

“Don’t you?” Abigail pressed. “It was the Christmas before last. Ethan was no longer so wobbly headed, was beginning to look around, trying to understand his world. Your parents told us about their money problems getting more and more serious. Asked for help. Now do you remember?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Andrew said. “So, what’s the big deal?”

“Don’t you remember your mother’s hissy fit? She said, as she held Ethan, that he was ‘no grandchild of hers.’ ”

And then Abigail said it, in an almost joyful way: “Andrew. Ethan is not yours.”

Andrew stared at her.

“I wanted to tell you so many nights. But I was afraid of what you would do. You were always in a world of your own. No place for me. Not even during sex. Maybe especially during sex. I wanted to hurt you.”

He was silent. It was as if his wife were speaking a language he didn’t understand. As if he needed subtitles. He folded into himself, curled up like a sow bug concealing and protecting its vulnerable parts. His soft underbelly. Abigail yanked at her wiry hair, loosening and then tightening it in its gnarled leather band, one with a stick that pokes through. Then she took Ethan and left Andrew and their twins.

Following Abigail’s confession, Andrew found out she and God had decided that baby Ethan was a gift for Abigail and his best friend, Jonathan, not for Andrew. Jonathan—the friend he had weekly target practice with, reliving his days at George Washington Military Academy. He had thought his best friend was like Grissim—trustworthy. Maybe his mother had understood genetics and Mendel’s theories better than the rest of them after all.

Abruptly moving out with Ethan, Abigail had asked Jonathan to start a new life with them. Jonathan declined; he had decided God wanted him to stay with his wife, not with Abigail and Ethan. They still met at evening Bible meetings, however. God forgives.

After the loss of his wife and son, Andrew had felt very lucky to find Ashley. A recent transplant to Shrewsbury, Ashley had a similar style to Abigail’s. When she leaned way over the patients to clean their teeth, her cleavage flashed before his eyes, just as Abigail’s once had. No Bible reading, though. No more of that, thank you very much.

Six months after he and Ashley started dating, Andrew casually mentioned to his parents that his “new friend” was pregnant. (Sometimes he called her Abigail. They seemed almost identical at times.) This fourth grandchild—technically the third, Andrew reminded himself—Jason, was offered to his mother as a gift, but not the kind arranged under the Christmas tree. He was barely a month old that Christmas—a scant two years after his mother’s discourse on Mendel. Chestnut-brown hair, black eyes.

He and Ashley organized the presents in six piles that year: one for each of them, one each for the twins, one for Jason, of course, and also one for Ethan, a little boy Andrew could never give up. Ethan would stop by for a glass of milk and Christmas cookies and pick up his gift-wrapped surprises. Abigail would wait for her son by the front door.
What more could I possibly want for Christmas?
Andrew thought bitterly.

Abigail still demanded and received monthly alimony checks. Andrew had two families to support now. But it was never going to
be three—in his mind, his parents were no longer family. If his sisters could come up with the money that would leave his parents some breathing room to recover from their debts and prevent eviction, good for them. But he couldn’t afford to contribute.

The last time he saw his parents was more than five years ago now—Jason’s first Christmas. After that trip, their visits had stopped. And Andrew hadn’t traveled to Washington since their move. Birthday celebrations for his parents, family matters at SafeHarbour, those things were not part of his life anymore. And never would be again. He had problems of his own.
Five years
, he thought, shaking his head. It seemed like just yesterday.