Where We Belong (9 page)

“It’s okay,” I say.

“Why not? C’mon, Champ … I didn’t mean to imply that I
never
want to marry again … I just meant that—”

The conversation I was so desperate to have suddenly feels trivial as I say, “Peter. This isn’t what you think. I’m not upset about that … I mean, I was—but this is … something else.”

“What? What is it?” he asks, his voice kind but with a tinge of frustration, impatience.

My mind races, knowing exactly how I
could
cut to the chase:
Peter, my eighteen-year-old daughter is asleep in the next room.

But I’m unable to get those words out—or begin the story at all.

Instead I stammer, “It’s something else—something I have to tell you. I—I’ve kept a secret from you.” I feel relieved the second the words are out. At the same time, I regret my cryptic Lifetime television preamble.

“What kind of secret?” he asks.

“A pretty big one,” I say.

“What? Did you kill someone?” he asks with a nervous laugh. And then—“Sorry. That wasn’t funny. Even if you did, you could tell me. You can tell me anything.”

“I didn’t
kill
anyone, Peter,” I say, thinking of that word,
abortion,
that haunted me that summer. Was it taking a life? I could not decide, then or now. All I knew was that I couldn’t go through with it. I wonder if I had made another choice, whether I would have kept that a secret, too. I wonder how I would feel if I were making that confession to Peter. If the shame would have felt greater than it does now. I remind myself that I did the right thing—by having her, by giving her away. Then I bury my face in my pillow as he continues his questioning.

“Was it before me? I mean—it’s not about us, is it? You didn’t make out with Damien Brady, did you?” he asks, referring to the male star of my show. He is joking, but I wonder if he’d view that as a lesser or greater betrayal.

“No,” I say, burying my face in my pillow. “It’s not about you. It’s about me. And something that happened to me eighteen years ago.”

“What? What, Marian? Please just tell me. It’s not going to change the way I feel about you.”

“You can’t promise that,” I say.

He takes a deep breath, then reaches over and kisses me, a hard, openmouthed kiss that lasts more than a few seconds. His tongue is soft, warm, reassuring. When we separate, he says, “Rip off the Band-Aid, Marian. Just tell me.”

And so I do, the words awkwardly tumbling out of me, the story unfolding in its bare-bones form, starting with that summer, ending with the knock on the door a few hours ago. I can’t look at him until I have finished, afraid of what I might find. Disapproval, disappointment, judgment. And sure enough, when I do, it is all there, although he is doing his best to hide it.

“I never told anyone,” I say, as if this makes it better that I didn’t tell him. “Except for my mother.”

“Well. Thank you for finally telling me,” he says.

“Do you still love me?” I ask him.

“Of course,” he says, and although he sounds convincing, I know there is a big difference between love and trust.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says.

But what choice does he have? We both know he can’t retrade on the grand promise he just made. At least not tonight, here in the dark. At least not before he hears the part of the story that I intentionally left out.

5

kirby

I
find
the photograph of Marian and what must be her parents—my grandparents—the following morning as I tiptoe around her sleek living room, one eye on her closed bedroom door, careful not to get caught snooping. There are a lot of abstract paintings in the room, but it is the only photo—a black-and-white eight-by-ten in a sterling frame engraved with Marian’s initials. In it, she and her mother are wearing party dresses, her mother’s beaded, Marian’s long and floral. Her father is in a tuxedo. They are standing in a vineyard, next to an olive tree with a dramatic background of a valley and blue mountains. Marian is in the middle, her arms around her parents, and they are all laughing. I have the feeling that Marian’s father just cracked a joke as he has the sort of satisfied look that comes after you’ve said something funny. He is lean and tall with a long nose placed on a long face, and a neatly trimmed beard, all of which remind me of a bearded Atticus or a modern-day Abraham Lincoln. And although he is not that handsome, he has the sort of face you want to keep looking at. Her mother is the opposite—petite, elegant, and beautiful, but generic. Her hair is sprayed into a stylish bob, and she is dripping with diamonds. Marian looks about like she does now, only younger and thinner, her hair longer. She is barefoot, her strappy sandals kicked off in the grassy foreground, and she wears no jewelry other than a small gold pendant that appears to be a cursive
M
. I imagine that they are at a family wedding, at some fancy spot like Napa Valley (although I’m not even sure exactly where that is). In a few moments, some huge-ass cake will be cut, pink champagne poured, and a big brass band will play Sinatra while everyone dances, ballroom style, under the stars.

As I pick up the photo and stare at it more closely, I feel a sudden longing, although I can’t describe exactly why. Would I rather be part of this family? Or is it a simple matter of wishing I had been at the party that night? I put the frame back down on the table, one fact crystallizing in my mind: Marian is rich. I think of the photos in my house—class pictures lining the stairwell and fuzzy snapshots cluttering up the mantel—and can’t help but wonder how different my life would have been if she had kept me. It’s not that we’re poor, but still. Who doesn’t want to be rich? Besides, she can no longer use money as an excuse to give me away. She could have easily afforded to keep me. It
could
have been done. She just didn’t
want
to. The realization doesn’t make me angry, but it does sting a little, and I can’t help feeling a little bitter that here she was, living large, when, for all she knew, I could have been on food stamps. Somehow it makes it more of a rejection than if she
had
to give me up.

I make my way over to a boxy, white sofa and sit, trying to get comfortable on the rock-hard cushions as I examine the large, glossy books on the glass-topped coffee table, searching for clues about what she likes, who she is. I pick one up called
Hamptons Havens
and begin to flip through it. It is filled with more photos like the one I’ve just examined, and I wonder if Marian has a summer house there. I’m betting that she does—a huge one she still calls a cottage. Or maybe she prefers Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod, Nantucket, all the spots in New England that blur together and only ring a bell from my mother’s obsession with the Kennedys.

A few seconds later, I hear her bedroom door open. I nervously close the book, doing my best to look as inconspicuous as possible, a difficult task on a white sofa in a sun-drenched room. I look toward the doorway as she emerges in gray velour sweats. Her hair is swept up in a bun, fixed with a comb, and she is wearing brown tortoiseshell glasses that explain my nearsightedness.

“Well, you’re an early bird,” she says when she spots me, her voice too high, too friendly, fake.

I force a smile back, but feel it fade as my gaze shifts to a male interloper, walking a few paces behind her. Wondering when he arrived, in the middle of the night or this morning, I self-consciously cross my arms in front of my Gap sweatshirt, resenting him for being here and Marian for feeling the need to call in reinforcements. As he comes closer, I can see that he is older than Marian—maybe as many as ten years older—but is handsome in that older-guy kind of way, and he looks important. I can tell by the way she glances back at him, and he gives her an encouraging nod, that she cares very much about his opinion of her—his opinion, period. I fleetingly wonder if he could be my birth father, having heard stories about couples giving their first child away, only to marry later. But I know the far more likely scenario is that my birth father is nothing like this man.

“Kirby, I’d like you to meet Peter. Peter, this is Kirby.”

“Nice to meet you, Kirby,” Peter says in the confident, deep voice of a news anchorman. He steps toward me, his posture as perfect as his smile, and extends his hand. Sunlight glints off his gold watch, as I stand and nervously shake his hand. His handshake, of course, is strong, borderline painful. I wonder if he is making a point. Regardless, I decide I don’t like him—at least I don’t like his type.

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” I mumble, glancing at Marian, waiting for her to fill the silence. But she says nothing, the three of us forming an awkward triangle. Peter finally asks a question that fills the room. “So? I heard you arrived last night?”

I nod, recross my arms, and say yes, my voice as small as his is large. I find myself wondering if he really knows who I am, and how she told the story of my arrival. Was she happy? Upset? Annoyed? Stunned? Was she worried that I’d try to move in, mess up her perfect life? Maybe he had warned her that although we were related, she knew nothing about this stranger in her home. I might be here to steal from her or sneak into her room at night and attack her. Had she called him last night, in a panic? Is that why he had come over? For protection?

If he is suspicious of my motives, he fakes it well (as I bet he always can), booming, “Great. Great.” And then, “So what are you girls going to do today?”

Marian shrugs and says, “Oh, I don’t know. I think we’ll probably just do a little Upper East Side tour. Walk around. Show Kirby my neighborhood.”

“The park? The Guggenheim? French toast at Caffe Grazie?” he says.

Marian says, “All of the above. And maybe a little shopping. If Kirby is up for it.”

I nod and force a smile, but seriously can’t believe that she’s suggesting shopping. Not only do I have zero desire to shop, but the thought also intimidates me, the retail equivalent of not knowing which fork to use at a restaurant.

“Ahh. Barneys. How could I forget?” Peter’s tone is teasing. He winks and looks at me. “Be careful. Marian has been known to get trapped in that building, poor thing.”

She rolls her eyes and tells him to hush, but he makes another quip about how he’s had to rescue her from the jaws of that beast on Madison Avenue. The whole thing is very Hollywood, very Manhattan. Very strange.

A few beats of laughter later, he rubs his palms together and says, “All right. I’m out. Gotta go get Aidan from his mom’s.”

I process that he is divorced as he looks at me and explains, “My son. Maybe if you’re here for a bit, you can meet him. He’s about your age. Fifteen. Wait. How old are you, again?”

“Eighteen,” I say. “I just look fifteen.”

“You’ll appreciate it one day,” Marian says.

I watch as Peter leans over and kisses Marian on the lips, no other part of their bodies touching, before walking to the door. As I sit back down on the sofa, he turns and gives her a look I can’t read. Perhaps it is moral support, maybe it is sympathy. But whatever it is, I glance at her, just in time to see her mouth,
Thank you.

I look away, wondering what she is thanking him for, if it has anything to do with me.

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes later Marian and I are walking into Caffe Grazie, a bustling restaurant in a two-story town house near Marian’s apartment. The hostess smiles at her in recognition, then leads us to a narrow booth in the back of the room where Marian pushes aside her menu and tells me there is only one way to go.

“The French toast?” I say, remembering Peter’s words.

“You bet,” she says, as our waitress arrives with two glasses of ice water and Marian’s coffee.

“Would you like some, hon?” the waitress asks me, holding up the carafe.

I tell her no thank you, and after glancing at my menu and noticing that the orange juice is six dollars a glass, I mumble that I will stick with water.

“We’ll both have the chocolate croissant French toast,” Marian says.

The waitress nods, then briskly departs as Marian looks at me and says, “So? Is there something in particular that you wanted to do today?”

I shake my head, feeling tempted to make the point that I didn’t exactly come here to see the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. And if we
must
do the tourism thing to avoid real conversation, then I’d prefer to check out Carnegie Hall or the Brooklyn Philharmonic or the Jazz Museum in Harlem or one of the city’s many music stores I found on the Internet. Like Drummers World that carries everything from Epstein castanets made of rosewood and black grenadillo, to Albright Milt Jackson jazz mallets, to a vintage Rogers kit from the seventies with a fourteen-inch dynasonic snare. I obviously can’t afford to buy any of it, but I’d kill to see it up close and test it out. Rogers drums have a richer, more musical sound than most other drums, which are more about a big upfront attack. They are the best freaking drums on the planet—noticeably better sounding as well as being really beautiful. But I don’t say any of this—mostly because I have the feeling that she really doesn’t want to know.

Instead I shrug and say, “I don’t care. Whatever you want to do is cool with me.”

“Well … Let’s see,” she says as I stare at her huge diamond stud earrings. “When do you have to be back at school?”

I know what she is getting at—when will I be hitting the road?—so I say, “Wednesday. But … I can leave before then. I mean, whatever you want … I can go anytime. It’s totally up to you.”

“Let’s play it by ear,” Marian says with a little too much cheer. “Stay at least for the night, okay?”

In other words,
not two nights
, I think, and mumble thanks.

She starts to say something, but then stops and taps the newspaper that she toted along with her. “Do you read the Sunday
Times
?”

I tell her no, but in case she thinks I’m some apathetic, clueless teen, I add, “I do read the paper, though. We get the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
.”