by Laurel Brett
I took my seat across from her and we each ordered a glass of champagne.
“I have some news,” she said.
“I hope it’s not that you’re moving to San Francisco permanently.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s something quite different. I’m pregnant.”
“You are? How? When? Is it mine?”
“You are definitely the father, and as to how and when, all I can say is that some people don’t remember to use birth control when they’re taking mescaline. Our baby was conceived in the shower. Like Zeus and Danaë conceived Perseus in a mist of gold. Rembrandt, Titian, and Klimt all painted it.”
“Oh wow,” I said. I was happy; no, I was beyond happy, because Caroline had so longed for this, but I was also feeling déjà vu. Was it my fate to always get my women pregnant by accident before any true commitments had been made? A shiver went down my spine as I fervently hoped this baby would not meet Amy’s fate.
“Are you happy, Caroline?”
“Beyond measure. I am giving thanks.”
“What about all my flaws and vagaries? They have been very important to you.”
“A trifle,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“How about this,” she ventured. “We have until June, until the baby’s born, to decide if we’ll be loving friends raising our baby or if we’ll bow to convention and maybe even get married.”
“That sounds fine, providing I can go to doctors’ appointments and get to be part of the pregnancy.”
“I agree. We’ll see how it goes.”
“How are you feeling?”
“So good. No morning sickness.”
“Do you show?”
She got up out of her chair, and sure enough, there was just the tiniest mound of fullness where the flattest stomach had been.
“Did you know that Galen Green is in Florence for a year?” she asked once she was seated.
I allowed that I had.
“He shipped back another Daphne portrait. It’s magnificent. Really. In this portrait she has become the tree, roots and all, but it’s not sad. I don’t know how he did it. Do you want to wander over to visit the gallery after we eat? It’s open. We just wanted an excuse to have mulled wine and pumpkin bread for regulars.”
She searched my face. I was being tested, and I didn’t know which answer she wanted. She had described the painting so admiringly that only a churl would elect not to see it. And yet, if I was too enthusiastic the delicate détente between us might just dissolve. I told the truth.
“No, I think I’ve seen enough of the portraits,” I said.
“You’re sure?”
“I am.”
I left out the part about being desperate to see the actual Daphne, Ur-Daphne. A portrait of Galen’s Daphne would only make the longing more acute.
I enjoyed watching Caroline eat so much food. And then eat both of our slices of pumpkin pie as well. By tacit consent, although I saw her home, I did not go in. We were going to be friends, or we were going to be spouses. We were not going to occupy the gray zone in between, and it was months until this decision would be made.
* * *
The time flew by in a whirl. Do pregnancies always speed up time? There were trips to the city for doctors’ appointments. There was a day spent enjoying all the shower gifts, and there was a day going to a store to watch Caroline try on maternity clothes, proclaiming whether or not each item made her look fat. All the outfits were the same—concealing. You knew there was a swelling stomach in there somewhere, but the clothes weren’t volunteering anything.
Things continued to be equally frenetic at school. I had never taught a hundred students before. Why was this enrollment supposed to be a good thing? I didn’t get paid more, and the workload had tripled! On the other hand, it was great fun to hear excitement in my students’ voices.
We were working our way through an analysis of the Beatles’ White Album, which had come out right around Thanksgiving. The psychology of the album was one of the choices for the final exam, as was Hesse’s Damian, and the Diana Project was the subject of their final paper. It had become a massive set of notes our class had put together based on our investigations into personality—the imaginary personalities of the hypothetical Dianas. I felt as if for the first time my students were doing analysis they cared about instead of learning an experimental method that might be accurate but had no practical meaning for them unless they became researchers.
By Christmas my longing for Daphne was so acute that I went into an antique shop and bought her a Christmas present. I found the perfect thing: a vintage pin of a branching tree made of antique gold. Each leaf had a tiny emerald chip. I asked the shop to convert it into a pendant—pins were for old ladies. Of course, I found something for Caroline too, and I trotted along beside her as she chose Christmas gifts for the baby she was carrying, all practical things she would need once the child was born.
Having had a stillborn infant, I found her optimism unsettling, but heroic. When we got around to picking out the crib, I wanted to run out of the store. I was shocked at the depth of my feelings. I’d never allowed myself to feel the sadness of Amy’s death before. Emotional doors were opening; my life was like the ecstatic day at Coney Island when Caroline and I had ridden the Cyclone, the day I had also carelessly promised to take her and our future daughter on the teacup ride.
I felt like I was on a roller coaster at school too. I’d become so popular on campus that I was assigned two sections of our introductory class, each with the New Age emphasis I had pioneered the previous semester. The Diana Project name stuck, and it became a staple of the course. Every time we talked about Diana I wanted to talk about Daphne. I wanted to celebrate her. I wanted to capture her essence in the classroom, but most of all I still wanted her to return.
* * *
By late winter, Caroline’s pregnancy really showed. She delighted in wearing her new maternity clothes. I loved watching her happiness, though I felt disloyal in keeping my longing for Daphne from her. She was an intuitive woman, and I’m sure she suspected my feelings. However, the rules of our agreement allowed me to keep them to myself until the day of reckoning. When the birth of our child was still a few months off, I felt that we needed a game plan in place for when the baby came.
On a temperate March day, Caroline took the train to Poughkeepsie to decide if she’d be bringing the baby home to New Paltz after giving birth in Manhattan. Although the vernal equinox was still a few weeks away, I noticed the first snowdrops, the earliest stirring of spring, when I picked her up at the station. We drove straight home to my clapboard house, and she immediately marched upstairs to the space she had made so cozy with the quilt she had chosen.
“I think the guest room would be perfect for the baby,” she said, “but if we’re not a couple, then I’d have to sleep in there.” She seemed to assume that she would be leaving Manhattan. That was fine with me. I wanted to watch my child grow up.
“I guess I could give up my study,” I said. To be honest, it felt like a deserted space without the Daphne time line, which I had removed soon after learning about Caroline’s pregnancy. I wanted her to feel safe in every room of my house.
“Weren’t you talking about taking over Jerry’s apartment?” she asked.
“Yeah, but that was a silly pipe dream. And now with a baby, I don’t think I’d want to spend four hours commuting.”
“Do we have enough money if I decide to stay home with the baby for a while?”
“We could manage.”
“You could take the study downstairs, and the baby and I could live upstairs. Friends, you know?”
“We’re not going to make it as a couple?”
“Garrett,” she said so softly I could barely hear her as we walked down the stairs to the living room, “have you taken that time line down yet?”
“Actually, I have, but I’m not over Daphne. I still need to understand her.”
“We’re friends, wh
atever happens. And whatever happens, it’s okay.”
“People just keep vanishing,” I said. “My dad, Helena, Amy, even Jerry, and now Daphne.”
“It’s time to learn how to say goodbye, Garrett.”
“How are you at that?” I asked her.
“We’re not talking about me. Maybe you should visit your dad’s headstone.”
I had been trying to say goodbye to my father for almost my entire life. They had never recovered his body, so technically speaking he had no real grave. As a behaviorist, a man of science, I had little interest in religion and even less in visiting a headstone placed over an empty grave. Now that I was expecting another baby maybe it was time for me to visit Amy’s grave.
Helena was still near Ithaca, and by calling the Ithaca College alumni office I was able to get her phone number. When she answered I heard the laughter of a child in the background, a rich, happy sound. There was laughter in Helena’s voice too. “Garrett. It’s been a long time. We were just having dinner. My middle son loves to tell jokes, and he was laughing the most at his own. I love that about him.”
“Sorry to intrude. Maybe I should call back another time.”
“No, it’s okay. What can I do for you?”
“I want to visit Amy’s grave. Will you come with me?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’ve never felt like we were her parents together. You didn’t want to be. I forgave you, but no, I don’t think I want to stand over our baby’s grave with you.”
“I understand,” I said.
“Why the sudden interest?”
“I am about to have a child.”
“That’s wonderful. I’m happy for you.”
“Yes, it’s great, but I tend to get stuck on things—the past—and . . . well, other things too. I’m trying to clear out some of the cobwebs and scar tissue. Wouldn’t it be Amy’s eighteenth birthday?”
“You remember.”
“This is embarrassing, but I was only there that one time . . . and I haven’t been back since. I have no idea where to go.”
She gave me the directions and wished me luck with the new baby, and I wished her luck too. I wondered if I’d ever hear her voice again. I wasn’t sure I liked thawing out and all these emotions.
Helena’s parents had arranged everything all those years ago. They had bought a plot near Ithaca because their daughter was still in school, and they wanted her to be able to visit the grave as much as she needed to.
I drove up on the first true weekend of spring, right around Amy’s birthday. Her grave was in a lovely spot, on a high escarpment. There were only a few graves up there, presided over by a stand of birches that hadn’t yet come into leaf. I stared at the headstone with her dates. Born and died the same day, though we couldn’t be sure she didn’t die the day before. The doctors had been cagey. Her gravestone said, Amy Adams. I hadn’t expected that, though I should have. There were those few months when Helena was an Adams herself. Still, I hadn’t expected it, and I found that it made me unaccountably sad, and ashamed. I sat down on the grass near the marker and reflected on how self-absorbed I’d been. It’s true that I was only twenty-one, but I didn’t think that should have given me a free pass. I had had a daughter. I had had a pregnant wife. But I hadn’t acted like it. Helena had only her parents to turn to. I had deserted my wife and daughter, and I didn’t want that happening again.
In that moment I saw that I would have to give up Daphne. That’s just the way it was. If I wanted to be a mensch, as Jerry would say, I could only live in one reality. I had to be all in. I was almost forty now, and it was time for me to do the hard thing. It seemed that Daphne was out of my life by her own choice. I would have to stop longing for her. If I could.
* * *
The baby came right on schedule in the middle of June, the perfect time, when my semester was over, so I could be with Caroline. The infant was strong, with a full head of dark hair like her mother. Caroline had a pretty easy time of it considering her age. She wanted me in the delivery room like so many couples were doing, but I was a crotchety almost-forty-year-old father, a relic, and I wanted to pace in the waiting room like my father had. I loved his story about smoking during my birth. He told me that he’d said, “Some son of a bitch burned a hole in my tie,” meaning himself. I wished he were there to celebrate with me. I missed giving Jerry a cigar too. He had already sent a huge giraffe.
The next morning I entered Caroline’s room as a shock of sunlight poured through the window. “Hello, you,” I said. Our daughter was learning to nurse, and I swelled with an inexplicable pride, watching the rosy baby suckle on her mother’s nipple. There were over 3.5 billion people in the world, so why was I proud? It was just a dumb but universal feeling.
Caroline’s face looked like a Renaissance Madonna as the sunlight refracted off her opalescent skin. I could see that she’d been waiting a long time for motherhood. In preparation for the birth I had read some articles discussing postpartum depression, a syndrome that was just being discovered. I could see that I needn’t have, but I wasn’t used to such happiness.
I hadn’t looked at the mail from the last few days to sort through all the good wishes from friends and relatives who hadn’t been able to make the shower. In my mind, I was going over the instructions I’d received about holding a baby. People kept insisting that I needed to support her head, and I was nervous just thinking about it. I could hurt her, or even worse, drop her, but she was my daughter, and I was going to have to hold her after I emptied my arms of the mail. However, she had fallen asleep nursing, so Caroline put her in the basinette, and I laid the mail next to her on the bed. As it scattered, I glimpsed a postcard in the familiar purple-flair writing and caught the word graduation, which had been set off by an exclamation point. My pulse quickened, and I wanted to snatch it back, but I restrained myself. Instead I said, “I have to pee,” to buy time.
Once in the bathroom I turned on the faucets full blast and sat down on the lidded toilet. I could feel each beat of my heart and a constriction in my chest. I was imagining Caroline reading Daphne’s postcard and frowning. We’d both been holding our breaths, waiting for the baby to be born, avoiding the big unanswered question of our future. After seeing Amy’s grave I foolishly thought it would be easy to give up Daphne once I saw my baby, but it wasn’t. Not at all.
“Garrett,” Caroline called from the other room. With the bathroom door closed and the noise of the rushing jets, I couldn’t gauge her mood. I felt like I was about to face a firing squad.
As I walked back in, I stole a glance at Caroline, but her face wasn’t giving anything away. She’d moved all the mail, and she gestured for me to sit down beside her.
“Did you see Daphne’s postcard?” Her coal-black hair was twisted in back in a casual knot secured by her favorite silver holder. One of us sighed, but I honestly couldn’t say which one of us it was.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “High school graduation? Daphne is studying art history at Sarah Lawrence. Her bio at the gallery says so.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to start our familiar argument so I just waited.
“But here’s this postcard,” she said, thinking out loud. Then she ordered, “Say something!”
“I love you. I love our baby. I don’t want to screw it up.”
“You have to say something.”
So I did: “I believe the four Daphnes are real. I do. But I decided that I’m going to give up all the Schrödinger thinking so I can be a real dad, though I haven’t the faintest idea of how to do that. Especially with a daughter. Do you think she’ll like baseball?” Then I remembered our day at Coney Island. “We can take her on the teacup ride.”
“Yeah, that makes a dad,” Caroline said tartly. But she wasn’t really angry. “You’re going to give up all that crazy stuff? The time line? The meetings?”
I couldn’t get my voice to work right then, so I nodded heavily. I knew it was true.
“Maybe I
don’t want you to,” she said. “Sacrifice for us, I mean.”
“Yes, you do. You’re afraid it’s crazy.”
“I still can’t tell if it’s crazy or true.”
“I know.” I didn’t have a clue about what she was thinking. Other people are always mysteries. “I am going to see her, though,” I told her. “To celebrate her graduation.”
“Of course. I want you to,” she offered.
Neither of us said any more about Daphne. We didn’t want to jinx it by talking about craziness, or truth, or other universes, or myths, or physics. We just held hands and watched our daughter sleep.
“What are we going to call her?” I inquired. We’d already decided on Garrett for a boy, but Caroline was evasive whenever I asked her ideas about girls’ names.
“Remember when I told you I was named after my father’s grandmother, Caroline, and my mother’s mother, Tanya? What I didn’t mention was that I promised my parents I would name my own daughter after my father’s mother.”
“At the Russian Tea Room,” I remembered. “What was her name?” I asked with an odd feeling of anticipation.
“Daphne,” Caroline whispered. “Her name was Daphne.”
“Oh my god! Daphne?” I yelped, my voice rising an octave. I felt the same excitement as when I’d stood in the bookstore and the Schrödinger girl had lifted the hood of her rain slicker. I couldn’t wait to see the color my daughter’s eyes would be. “Yes,” I said, leaning over to kiss the mother of my child, “that’s our daughter’s name.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
* * *
Daphne’s note specified that I meet her in her hometown on Long Island at the very fancy Villa Victor at seven p.m. on June 29. She wanted to drive herself to show off her new license. I got to the restaurant first. Patrons chose this romantic venue for the pond in the front of the restaurant where actual swans floated gracefully, impervious to the traffic on the main thoroughfare in front. I thought of Daphne in Boston posing with the swan boats. It’s funny the way motifs recur in people’s lives. I left my car to be parked by an attendant and squatted by the swans, watching their reflections in the water. Two swans became four; simulacra fill our universe.