Daddy Love: A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Whit was proud of Dinah: she’d had months of excruciating physical therapy and had not ever complained. She was now far better coordinated than she’d been five years ago when the doctors’ prognosis had been so poor. What upset Whit was, she insisted upon thinking of herself as strong when in fact she wasn’t strong: she collapsed easily, and had been rushed to the ER more than once, hyperventilating, or stricken with a violent tachycardia, or afflicted with a paralyzing gastrointestinal pain. She insisted upon thinking of herself as near-normal.

  It was Dinah’s God-damned pride, she rarely used her cane. Though Whit had bought her a fancy Victorian cane beautifully carved out of ivory.

  (She’d said, How the hell can I walk with an ivory cane? An elephant was slaughtered for this ivory, Whit!)

  And her pride, she insisted upon walking from the parked car, rather than having Whit drop her off as he’d gratefully have done. And inevitably she faltered, and had to rest clutching at Whit’s arm—No, no! I’m fine. I just get a little—winded, sometimes …

  Often, Dinah hid her face from Whit. It made her anxious when he looked frankly at her and it made her anxious when he seemed to be averting his eyes from her.

  She didn’t apologize for her face, at least. Whit would have been furious with her if she’d tried.

  In fact her face didn’t repel him. Beneath the translucent scarry tissue was Dinah’s true face. And the beautiful dark-brown eyes thin-lashed and unchanged.

  Geraldine said slyly to him, when Dinah was out of the range of her lowered voice, D’you think we don’t know? We know.

  He’d wanted to shove the woman from him. Always her manner with Whit Whitcomb had been subtly mocking, flirtatious. She’d never tried to address Whit as her daughter’s husband and the father of her daughter’s child, only as “Whit” Whitcomb who was some sort of disc-jockey charlatan with a weakness for pot and for casual sex. This character could pull the wool over others’ eyes, but not hers.

  Hotly she said, She knows but she won’t say a thing. Because that’s Dinah’s nature—weak, trusting. At least you could be more circumspect.

  And when Whit didn’t dignify this bullshit by replying, she said meanly, That means—evasive. At least you could be more—

  I know what circumspect means, Geraldine. Thanks!

  He would leave Dinah, maybe. For this would be a way of leaving the bitch of a mother-in-law, too.

  He would leave Dinah but not until her physical condition was stronger. And not until Robbie returned.

  And if Robbie did return, if the miracle happened, certainly Whit Whitcomb wasn’t going to leave his wife and son.

  In this way they waited.

  For six years, they’d waited.

  The mother waited with more evident faith that the child would be returned to them, the husband with conspicuously less.

  Yet, they had only to glance at each other, at times, to be immediately linked, bonded.

  The sight of a child on the street, a stray remark made by a stranger, the appearance of someone who reminded them of, for instance, one of the Ypsilanti detectives to whom the missing-child case had been assigned, years ago—these were triggers.

  Sometimes, Dinah burst into tears for no evident reason. Whit knew the reason.

  She told him her dreams. He rarely told her his.

  Yet it was uncanny, sometimes their dreams overlapped.

  In her dreams, Robbie was frequently a presence. But where Robbie’s face was, were blurs like eraser smudges. The terror came over her—I am forgetting his face.

  In the dreams Robbie was being returned to them. Yet, there were invariably complications. Dreams that went on and on and on like endless journeys on badly rutted roads in bad weather.

  How many times Dinah had felt the child’s fingers wrenched from hers! How many times she’d been thrown to the ground and yet fantastically caught up beneath the abductor’s minivan in a way to drag her along the pavement like a limp lifeless rag doll … R ecounting these dreams to Whit she described her sleep interrupted by the droning voices of strangers, recorded phone-voices, computer-voices; there were endless documents and forms for the bereft parents to fill out; a jarring squawk of radio-voices; bright fluorescent lights searing her eyes. Until suddenly it would be revealed to her that Robbie wasn’t there, and had never been there.

  And Whit would think But that was my dream!

  Since she’d become a hotline volunteer Dinah had particularly exhausting nightmares in which she was on the phone trying to hear a faint, fading voice—(Robbie’s voice?)—pleading and screaming for the party not to hang up.

  Don’t abandon me! Don’t abandon me.

  Yet Whit stayed away from the house as long as he could. He could not help it, this was his addiction.

  He’d waked from the nightmare to find himself a (minor, local) celebrity. Whenever any child-abduction case erupted as breaking news, “Whit” Whitcomb was likely to be quoted in print or interviewed on TV. His was a whirligig-life in terror of solitude and silence: work, busyness, sex, drinks with friends, occasional pot, even seeing late-afternoon movies at the mall, alone. “Action” movies of brainless and relentless violence which Dinah could not have tolerated.

  Dinah was lonely but never criticized him. She must have taken a vow, she would never criticize her companion in bereavement.

  Her less frantic life mimicked his, to a degree: university courses, volunteer work, finding friends to spend time with, cultivating new friends, evenings at church. She who’d been enviably self-sufficient before Robbie was born, and totally absorbed in Robbie after he’d been born, was now desperate for any sort of companionship however haphazard and transient.

  Even, sometimes, her mother’s companionship. Whit could not quite comprehend.

  When Whit came home, immediately he went to his computer. A kind of gravitational force pulled him to it, as into a black hole—as Dinah ruefully observed. All day, when he wasn’t engaged in work at the radio station, or meetings with people, he was obsessed with his e-mail and cell phone which he might check a dozen times an hour.

  An hour?—the scale was rather more to the minute.

  Like one who has come to consciousness in a devastated city, amid ruins, he would find a way of surviving, a primitive shelter.

  Here, I can live. I can breathe, here.

  Hadn’t meant to speak harshly to the woman.

  He never did. And mostly, they forgave him.

  She was one of the wealthy donors who helped subsidize WCYS-FM. Particularly, Whit Whitcomb’s American Classics & New Age. That is—she and her husband contributed.

  At fund-raisers, the Proxmires were photographed in their gorgeous formal attire. These were occasions when Whit shook hands with Tracy Proxmire while his much-younger wife Hedy stood by smiling and beautiful.

  She’d been saying to Whit that she understood, of course—he would not ever leave his wife.

  And he’d said, You’re sure of that? Wow.

  And she’d said, You know, Whit—you could say there’s a disadvantage to having had a personal catastrophe in your life.

  And he’d said, Is there? Really? And what might that be?

  And she’d said, Being unaware of the degree to which you’re an asshole, because people give you a free ride.

  And he’d laughed. His face stung as if the woman had slapped him, but still he laughed.

  Then he said, The actual disadvantage is that you attribute your subsequent life—every mood, every downturn—to that catastrophe. You can’t imagine an alternative life. There is only the one life. You have no perspective.

  This was true. This was sad, banal, quasi-profound, true.

  He thought, Is this the end for us? Maybe time.

  With each of the women who was not Whit’s companion in bereavement there came such a time.

  Sometimes early, after only a few surreptitious meetings. Sometimes later, when the eager sexual yearning began to subside into something more durable.


  The women seemed never to be prepared. Whit was well prepared.

  Though Whit was, at the outset, the more eager lover. Like a child ravenous for affection, the warmth of touch.

  Now he was trying to be gallant. Trying not to notice the woman’s fingernails as she stroked his arm as if to comfort him.

  Each time they’d been together the nails had been polished a different color: pale pink, pale peach, russet-red, dark lavender. Initially he’d expressed a jocular sort of admiration. Then, a subsequent time, bemusement. But more recently, a sort of embarrassment. (Were the fancy fingernails for him? The woman’s glamour calculated and assembled for him?) It made him smile to think, women have such ridiculous things done to them on purpose!

  (Except Dinah of course. Poor Dinah’s nails were short, broken, splintered. The protein seemed to have leached out of her body, her nails were papery-thin.)

  Today, the nails were pearly. Opalescent.

  But more significantly, the nails had been reshaped, and were no longer oval but square, like tiny shovels. Whit found himself staring at them wondering how Hedy could use her hands?—for instance, with a cell phone?

  Carefully Hedy said, not wanting to offend her thin-skinned lover, The perspective you lose is not knowing how different your life would be, otherwise. I mean your inner, essential life …

  Whit wasn’t sure he’d heard this correctly. He was still staring at the fingernails wondering now if something so artificial-looking could still be, in a way, natural; whether, if he tried to break off one of the nails, it wouldn’t break, because it was an actual outgrowth of the woman’s body.

  If there was a problem in the marriage, Hedy said, unaware of Whit’s mounting rage, there would still be a problem. That’s if.

  “If”—?

  Well, I’m trying to make a point. Maybe it’s a point that isn’t viable.

  That might be, Hedy.

  What I’m saying is that it might be unreal, illogical, in a way unjust to blame your life on something that went terribly wrong in a point in time …

  He left her to flounder on. He’d lost interest in the ridiculous nails if they were real or fake; or whether the woman’s feeling for him was real or fake or some incalculable admixture of the two. Trace elements—too small to measure.

  It was their time together when abruptly Whit said he had to get back home. He’d never said such a thing to Mrs. Proxmire before but he said it now, with sudden urgency.

  Why? Is something waiting for you back home?

  Isn’t that what “home” is?—something waiting for you?

  Well, you’ve never brought up the subject before, Whit.

  So I won’t, again.

  A forty-five-minute drive from Ann Arbor Hills and midway, on the state highway, he heard his cell phone ringing, those heart-tripping unmistakable notes, but he refrained from answering it for he’d had more than one near-accident driving this very highway and answering calls he shouldn’t have answered; and when he arrived home, there was Dinah standing on the lighted porch awaiting him.

  Often, Whit didn’t arrive home until late. Yet, here was Dinah awaiting him.

  She was holding something in her arms, that stirred—their next-door neighbor’s ginger cat. Whit waved to her as he turned into the driveway, though he felt dread. Was it Dinah who’d tried to call him? They spoke often during the day though they had no news. He wished, from his wife, no more news, ever.

  As he opened the car door, Dinah stumbled down the porch steps. Her scarred face was quickened, her eyes alight.

  “Whit! They’ve found Robbie.”

  III

  ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN SEPTEMBER 2012

  Where was he?

  They were waiting for him in the first-floor atrium of the tinted-glass Washtenaw Building in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

  After fifty minutes with Dr. Kozdoi the parents had left the therapist’s office on the third floor of the building, and Robbie remained for another fifty minutes for a private session with her.

  This had been their practice for the past several months, since they’d initiated counseling sessions for their son.

  It was 12:12 P.M. Robbie’s session with Dr. Kozdoi would have ended at about 12:00 noon.

  “Do you want to go look for him? Or …”

  “He might be in the restroom upstairs.”

  “We could wait a few more minutes. We shouldn’t make Robbie feel that we’re—waiting—so obviously.”

  Whit took Dinah’s hand, and stroked it. Gently.

  Dinah turned her hand, as she always did, to grasp Whit’s fingers from beneath. She could feel the strength coursing through the man, her husband. She thought We are perfect now. We are a family now.

  They decided to wait for Robbie, a few minutes longer. He was eleven years old and might like a little privacy, after his session with Dr. Kozdoi.

  Your son is making enormous progress, Dr. Kozdoi told them.

  After his unspeakable ordeal, he is doing remarkably well.

  Robbie did not talk to his parents of his private sessions with the therapist; nor did Dr. Kozdoi tell them anything that would violate the boy’s confidentiality—of course.

  The Whitcombs knew that at times, unable or unwilling to speak, Robbie was given a charcoal stick to draw for Dr. Kozdoi on sheets of construction paper. But this “art” remained in Dr. Kozdoi’s office and Dinah and Whit hadn’t yet seen any of it.

  Dinah had called Dr. Kozdoi to ask her: Has he told you anything—much—about that man?

  (That man was Dinah’s way of alluding to the abductor and sexual predator known to police as “Chester Cash.”)

  Dr. Kozdoi had replied that she could not discuss this with Dinah, just yet. If—when—the subject came up during the meeting with the three of them, that would be different.

  Dinah had said, But I don’t want you to tell me anything that my son has actually said, Dr. Kozdoi. But only if—if—he has brought up that man …

  Politely Dr. Kozdoi repeated that she was very sorry, she couldn’t discuss Robbie with Dinah, just yet.

  Of course, the Whitcombs understood that Robbie must be speaking of that man to the therapist. As he’d spoken, if briefly and not always coherently, to law enforcement officials.

  And eventually, he would speak of that man to his parents. When the time was right.

  Dr. Kozdoi had told them: In such sensitive child-therapy, nothing should be hurried. Premature disclosures are counter-productive. The interrogative model is forbidden. The young patient must never feel that he is being examined, queried, doubted, “attacked” …

  In her cheerful way Dinah had asked Robbie if he liked Dr. Kozdoi—as she did—and Robbie murmured what sounded like Yeh she’s OK.

  Whit had asked Robbie if he thought Dr. Kozdoi was helping him and Robbie murmured what sounded like Yeh guess so.

  Robbie was not the chattering child of six years ago. This eleven-year-old Robbie was a very different boy altogether.

  Difficult to encourage Robbie to look them in the eyes.

  This Robbie was shy, soft-spoken. His reaction time, when spoken to, seemed just perceptibly delayed.

  He did not smile spontaneously. His smiles were also just perceptibly delayed.

  Oh, Dinah hated to remind the boy—she hated herself as a mother, in such a role—to try to stand up straight, not to slouch his shoulders, hold his head high.

  She could not bring herself to say You must not slouch and cringe. You are safe with your loving parents now.

  Yet, it was a fact: the five-year-old Robbie was not so evident in the eleven-year-old’s face.

  The eyes were not a child’s eyes. The eyes were dark, wary and watchful.

  The crudely dyed hair—bleached-blond, dirty-blond, brown—had mostly grown out. Whit had taken the boy to have the last of the dyed hair trimmed away and now dark-haired Robbie more resembled, Whit thought with satisfaction, a boy who might be his son.

  As a little boy Robbie had called them Momm
y, Daddy. Mommy! Dad-dy!

  Countless times a day the delightful child-voice Mom-my! Dad-dy!

  With some prompting, Robbie now called his parents Mom, Dad.

  Such intimate words didn’t come naturally to him. Not just yet.

  Dinah had more than once seen a look of panic in the boy’s eyes, as in the eyes of a stutterer as he approaches a particularly treacherous patch of sound.

  Mom. Dad.

  They hugged him often. He was so tall—for a little boy …

  In fact, Robbie was of average height for an eleven-year-old. But he was still very thin.

  His white-blood count was improving. His anemia had nearly vanished.

  When Robbie was hugged he stood limp, unresisting. His thin arms at his sides.

  As if he is being held captive. He will not try to escape.

  His breathing quickened at such times. Heat lifted from his skin. Dinah might have imagined it, his little heart pounded.

  It was somewhat hurtful to her, when Robbie was hugged by his grandmother, Geraldine, he reacted in much the same way. When he was kissed on the cheek, his eyelids fluttered.

  He did not—yet—kiss in return.

  Lately, encouraged by Dinah, and (perhaps) by Dr. Kozdoi, Robbie was making a gesture at hugging his parents when they hugged him, if awkwardly.

  Yet, Dinah was convinced that Robbie liked being hugged, and even kissed, as he seemed to like, unexpectedly for an eleven-year-old, being assigned household tasks: when he finished one, he asked for another. Even clearing the table, rinsing dishes and putting them in the dishwasher. Even laundry. Vacuuming!

  He seemed to like being praised for these tasks. If Robbie was to smile, it was at such times.

  That man had treated him like a slave, the Whitcombs had learned. Among the other horrors to which he’d subjected their son for six years of his childhood.

  Yet, he is our son. He is our Robbie.