The Opposite of Fate (ARC)

by Alison McGhee

  Library. Bathroom. Out the back door. Baby. Zach’s words made no sense.

  “Slow down,” William T. said. He would cultivate patience if it killed him. He had promised Zach in his making-amends note that he would listen to him. “Mallie was there with you? You told her about the baby? She already knows about the baby, Zach.”

  “Not that he’s with me.. She didn’t know that. So I told her.”

  Zach’s voice was a controlled panic. William T. took the phone away from his ear and looked at it. The boy’s voice was a tinny rasp drifting up from the screen. And then she went into the library and I don’t know where she is now —

  “What did you just say, Zach?”

  He himself had asked Aaron Stampernick, attorney for the child, about the baby. He had listened as both Stampernicks told him that the second custody hearing, in the wake of Lucia’s death, had been closed and confidential. That no one wanted the child to grow up in a cloud of publicity, and that the judge had agreed. He deserved a private life, they had said in interviews. The sins of the father are not visited upon the child, they had said. Leave the church stuff out of it and what you had was a foster child and foster parents who wanted a life for him. A life away from the madding crowd.

  Zach was making no sense. He himself, William T. Jones, had been in the Stampernick house. The Stampernicks had regarded him with concern, as if he were losing his mind. As if he had finally gone off the deep end.

  “He’s mine,” Zach said again. “I have custody. His nickname is

  Mister.”

  “You tried to get custody,” William T. said. “That’s what you told me. You tried to get custody after he was born but they gave it to

  Lucia.”

  “That’s right. But Lucia died, and in her will she stated that she wanted me to have custody.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “And both Aaron and Melissa advocated on my behalf.”

  “Advocated on your behalf? What the hell kind of language is that?”

  “Their language, William T. They stepped in during the whole mess, after Lucia died. Lucia wanted me to have the baby. She thought I would do a good job, I guess. That he belonged with me. And Aaron and the judge agreed.”

  William T.’s head was crazy with confusion, thoughts flying around like birds caught around the Empire State Building. Zach was still talking, rattling on about foster-parent training and foster-­parent licensing and the custody hearing and Lucia’s will, and finally William T. could not listen anymore — amends be damned — and interrupted.

  “His father was a goddamn rapist, Zach!”

  “Wrong, William T. His father is me. I am his father.”

  William T. had never heard Zach sound like that. Stern. Angry but in that icy, calm way that some people got angry, the kind of anger that comes from protectiveness.

  “That baby doesn’t belong with you. He should be with another family. People who aren’t afraid of his history.”

  “I’m not afraid of his history.”

  “You should be afraid. You know nothing about his father.”

  “His biological father. And I know everything about his mother.”

  William T.’s life was changing again before him, the patterns laid out shifting like letter tiles in a game of make-a-new-pattern Bananagrams. The baby he had been driving down to Utica to try to catch glimpses of was living in Montana with Zach Miller. Against his will, that image of Zach’s truck with a car seat, and a baby strapped into it, came back into his mind.

  “ ’Mister’?” he said. “What the hell kind of name is that?”

  “It’s a nickname. His name is Thaddeus.”

  “Thaddeus is my name. T for Thaddeus.”

  “I know that.”

  Say her name, you goddamn chickenshits! William T. had tossed commands at the vultures, back in the thick of the chaos, back when they were calling Mallie “the young woman.” Don’t call her the young woman and don’t call me the neighbor or the man who has been a father figure. Call her Mallie. Call me William T.

  “Thaddeus means ‘gift from God,’ ” Zach was saying. “Which is what you are. You’re the one who watches out for everyone. You’re the best person I know, William T. And Lucia was the one who named him after you.”

  Names were power. Names were gravitas. A name stitched a baby to the planet, gave him a place on this earth. Thaddeus. Against his will, William T. felt the name pulling him toward itself. He resisted. He had to keep his focus clear.

  “What about Mallie, Zach? Whose side are you on here?”

  “Not a fair question, William T.”

  “Have you forgotten that you used to love her? Have you forgotten what that man did to her? Have you forgotten all the months when we thought she wouldn’t make it?”

  “I haven’t forgotten any of it. She told me she would’ve aborted the baby, William T. She said it would’ve been a cut-and-dried decision.”

  “And that would have been her choice. Mine too.”

  “Mine three,” Zach said. “But he’s here. He’s alive and he’s here and he’s not going anywhere and he deserves a shot, William T. He deserves a fair shot.”

  Darkness

  Crisis Connection, my name is Andrea. May I have your first name?”

  “. . . No. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. Are you somewhere you can’t talk freely?”

  “No. I can talk.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Is there something going on, something that’s upsetting you right now?”

  “. . . It upsets me all the time.”

  “That must be awfully hard, to have something that’s always upsetting you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there someone in your life who knows about this upsetting thing?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe that makes it even harder, then. To hold something painful inside like that.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there a name that I could call you just for this phone call? A nickname, maybe?”

  “D. You can call me D.”

  “Thank you, D. Everything you tell me here is confidential, if that helps. I am listening and if you want to tell me about this upsetting thing, you can, and I will listen.”

  “It happened a long time ago. It was my fault.”

  “I see. Why do you feel it was your fault, D?”

  “Because I did something bad.”

  “And you feel upset about that.”

  “I feel guilty. When I wake up it’s the first thing I think about. And when I try to go to sleep, it comes back. And when I’m up on a roof I think about it.”

  “So the guilt and pain are always on your mind.”

  “Yes.”

  “I see, D. I’m sorry. That must be a hard burden to bear.”

  “It never goes away.”

  “How so?”

  “Like the other day. This kid on the playground bounced his ball over the fence and I threw it back to him but he started screaming. It’s like I’m poison. It’s like maybe he knew something about me, like maybe he could tell I was a bad person.”

  “Do you believe that, D?”

  “Yeah. Kind of. Like what if it’s always like that, for the rest of my life? What if everything is dark and I’m dark and everyone runs away from me because I can never, never undo what I did?”

  “What’s the hardest thing about this feeling, D?”

  “That it will never go away.”

  “Is there anything that would make it go away?”

  “If I went away. That would do it, I guess.”

  “Is there any other way to make it go away?”

  “No. Maybe. Like maybe if I went to the cops and told them what I did. That I was the one. I think about that sometimes.”

  “Doe
s that feel like a possibility?”

  “No. Kind of. Maybe. My sister, though. My sister and my mom. Everyone would know. Then not just my future but their futures would be wrecked.”

  “Is that how it feels to you?”

  “Yes. Like there’s no way out.”

  “The fact is, though, that it might still be a way out, D. Keep in mind that sometimes there is no way out that doesn’t cause pain. Sometimes it’s a choice between something hard and something harder.”

  Mallie

  She sat in the cab of the Datsun. The man at the checkout desk at the library had given her a strange look when she burst in and ran past him, but he hadn’t said anything. Neither had the woman returning books to the fiction shelves when Mallie said, “Is there a back exit?” She had just pointed in the direction of the restrooms and then turned back to the cart of books. Out the back door the sun was blinding, unlike on the cool front steps, where Zach had just told her about the baby.

  The constants were colliding. Time and Pain and Mallie and Darkness had come together in a dot on the map: the front steps of Coburn Memorial Library in Coburn, Montana. The math problem she had come up with had been missing essential information, like the existence of a baby, and the reappearance of Zach. It was back to being unsolvable. Who could she talk to? Who else was out there? A faceless couple rose up in her mind.

  She spoke their names into her phone — Please find Aaron and Melissa Stampernick in Utica, New York — and their number shimmered up on the screen. She touched the call button and waited. Hers was an unknown number. It was doubtful anyone would pick up. But the phone rang only once.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Aaron Stampernick?”

  “It is. With whom am I speaking, please?”

  She almost laughed. So formal. Who spoke like that anymore? She tried to picture the man attached to this formal voice, and an old-fashioned stereotype of a fussy professor came to mind. Tweed jacket with elbow patches. Button-down shirt. Rumpled. Eyeglasses.

  “This is Mallie Williams.”

  Silence. Had he hung up?

  “Are you there?”

  “I’m here. Hello, Mallie. How are you?”

  This time she did laugh, at first silently and then out loud. Through the thousands of miles that separated them, she could feel him relax.

  “I don’t know why I’m laughing,” she finally managed, but that made her laugh harder. In the background she heard a child calling, the kind of insistent shout of a child who wanted a parent’s attention. “I really don’t.”

  “Because the situation is so absurd?” he offered.

  Yes! That was it. The situation was so absurd. And the word absurd was so absurd.

  “Absurd,” she managed, and they both laughed.

  “It’s an English-major thing,” he said. “Absurd instead of messed-up.”

  “Instead of fucked-up.”

  “That too. But not in front of the kids.”

  The child’s background shout was suddenly cut short, as if someone had picked them up mid-wail and spirited them away. Or closed a door. Or drawn a cone of silence down around Aaron Stampernick.

  “There,” he said. “Now we can talk.”

  “Are you free to say ‘fucked-up’ now?”

  “I’m free to say that this is an entirely fucked-up situation, yes.”

  She could hear in his voice that the f-word was hard for him. Maybe he was religious. Or maybe his personal code of ethics forbade cursing.

  “What can I tell you, Mallie?” His voice was serious now. He was a serious man. A man of gravity. She could sense that too. “What do you want to know?”

  “What happened, Aaron? From your point of view?”

  “I don’t know what my legal obligation is here, Mallie. I am first and foremost the Attorney for the Child, and everything I did —

  everything we all did — was in the child’s best interests. Whether it is right for me to be talking to you at this moment, I don’t know.”

  “Please,” she said. “Just . . . please.”

  She sensed his hesitation, and she felt him decide to override it.

  “I don’t know as there’s legal precedent for this sort of conversation, Mallie, but I will tell you the basics. What happened was that your mother had legal guardianship of you, and she felt that it was best to let your pregnancy proceed. She was then awarded custody of your child. Then she was stricken with cancer, and the whole chain of events began thusly to unspool.”

  Had she ever heard anyone use the word “thusly” in real life? The man’s language was ever more formal, spiraling upward the chain of grammar command. Maybe this was what he did in times of stress. She could almost feel the knots in his body, the tension held within. He kept going.

  “As attorney for the child, I developed a friendship with your mother, and she confided in me her wishes, which she then relayed in her will.”

  “Do you think my mother’s church was the reason she made me have the baby?”

  He hesitated. “Made you have the baby? Is that how it feels?”

  “I would’ve had an abortion.”

  “I see. Then Zach and Charlie and William T. were correct. But Lucia was your guardian and she did as she felt best for you.”

  “ ‘Best’? My mother abandoned us for her church.”

  “I am sorry it felt that way, Mallie. But in the eyes of the law, it is not a crime to be religious. Religion, no matter where or followed by whom, forms the underpinnings of many moral philosophies.”

  So many commas, small pauses, in his speech. Hesitation cloaked in stilted grammar. She decided to bypass his formality.

  “You sound sad, Aaron,” she said.

  There was another pause, and then, “I am sad. Sad for you and sad for Mr. Jones and your brother. Sad for your mother and Zach too, maybe most of all for the two of them.”

  “How did Zach end up with him?”

  “Ah. So you know.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “Your mother talked to us frequently in the last month of her life, when Melissa and I were alone with her. She told us she wanted the baby with Zach. To please make sure he raised the baby, because she knew that he had already tried for custody. ‘He knows my daughter best,’ she said. ‘He knows her better than I do.’ We helped her with her will, and we promised that we would do everything we could to advocate for Zach. We felt that she deserved at least that.”

  “Thank you for that. Was that all she said?”

  “No. The last thing she said to us was strange. We couldn’t make sense of it, maybe because she was fading in and out at that point. It was something about fortune cookies.”

  “Do you remember it?”

  His voice hushed and slowed, as if he were trying to remember exactly what Lucia had said. “She said, ‘Tell her Zach was right about the fortune cookies.’ ”

  She put the key in the ignition but didn’t turn it. The bag of fortunes sat silently on the passenger seat, different, somehow, as if it were judging her. She picked it up and slid it behind the seat. Every Chinese restaurant she and Zach had ever been to, beginning with their first date at the Golden Dragon. What had her mother meant? Sun beat down through the windshield. She wanted to be back on the road, to drive and drive, to put the miles behind her, but where would she go and how would she put any of it behind her? Wherever she went, Zach would be alive and in the world and so would her wanting to be with him, the way it used to be, the way it used to be, the way it used to be. But the baby was alive too, and with Zach, and nothing could ever be the same. The way it used to be repeated itself in her mind, a lyric-less song that was only refrain.

  She pulled the key out of the ignition and put it back in. Pulled it out. Put it back in. Where could she go? What could she do? Tell her Zach was right about the fortune cookies. Right how, th
ough? What did being right mean? The sun beat down. The sky was high. Big Sky country. Then the passenger door clanked open. Zach. She reached out to block him but he climbed inside anyway.

  “Just listen to me, Mal. Hear me out, okay? Just hear me out. Maybe you hate him, I don’t know, maybe you hate the fact that he’s in the world, but he’s a good kid, Mallie. He’s a good, good” — he turned his head away and his voice got softer — “boy. His name is Thaddeus but I call him Mister. I’ve always called him Mister. He’s almost a year old. He’s about to start walking. He likes mango. He likes birds, Mallie. He likes birds. He follows them with his eyes. A bird will stop him in the middle of anything. He almost fell off the slide once because he turned around at the top to watch one but I grabbed him in time.”

  Zach rushed on. She had never heard him talk like this. Zach had always been calm.

  “Thaddeus? That’s William T.’s name,” she said. “T for Thaddeus.”

  “I know. Your mother named him after William T.”

  Lucia had named the baby after William T.? But she and William T. had stopped talking long before the baby was born. Tell her Zach was right about the fortune cookies. But Zach was still talking.

  “He’s the restaurant’s kid, like he belongs to everyone. Sometimes I bring him to work and he crawls around the office until someone goes off shift and takes care of him. I bring Sir too. Sir watches out for him. Sir’s like a dog babysitter.”

  In her mind a restaurant began to grow around Zach and the boy and Sir, the hustle and bustle and clanging of a restaurant kitchen, servers winding their way through crowded tables, the smell of fry cooks and simmering sauces and the liquid sound of beer being pulled from the tap and in the middle of it all a baby, learning his way in a world crowded with sounds and smells and people.

  “I swear to God he’s a good kid. He’s half you, Mallie. How could he not be?”