The Mother of His Child

by Sandra Field

  As she rounded the corner, she nearly collided with another Burnham player. Horrified, she saw it was Kit’s friend, Lizzie. Wishing the floor would open to engulf her, she ducked her head and almost leaped away from the girl. But Lizzie was gaping at her as if she’d never seen a teacher before.

  “Hey!” Lizzie cried. “You look just like—who are you?”

  Ironically, it was the identical question Cal had asked. “Sorry, I’m in a hurry,” Marnie mumbled, and fled down the corridor. The staff room, thank goodness, was empty. With shaking fingers, she punched in Christine’s number.

  No answer.

  She then tried two other teachers. One wasn’t home, the other had a migraine. Very slowly, Marnie put down the receiver and looked up the number for the School of Engineering at Burnham University. A businesslike secretary connected her to Cal’s extension. It rang once. Then his voice, horribly familiar, announced that he had left the office for the day and would return her call the next morning, please leave a message at the sound of the beep.

  What was the good of that? Tomorrow morning was far too late. With a moan of dismay, Marnie clunked the receiver back into its cradle and realized she was wringing her hands in true gothic style.

  Okay, okay, she told herself, calm down. Think. It’s time for some damage control. You’ll go straight to the Faulkner coach and plead a migraine even though you’ve never had one in your life, and then you’ll go out the back door and run home as if all the demons in hell are after you.

  Kit won’t see you. And Lizzie, providing she doesn’t run into you again, can’t do any lasting harm. So she’s seen someone who resembles Kit. So what?

  Her heart began to feel as though it might stay confined by her rib cage, although a light tremor still shook her fingers. On impulse, Marnie dialed one more teacher, discovering to her great relief that he could come in half an hour. She glanced at her watch. The game would begin in fifteen minutes. Everything was going to be all right.

  Marnie stood up, wriggling her shoulders and rotating her neck in an attempt to relax. Then she got up and opened the staff-room door.

  Kit and Lizzie were standing outside in the corridor.

  Lizzie looked excited, Kit terrified. Marnie put on her most schoolmarmish expression and said briskly, “If you need a phone, you can use the one down the hall.” Giving them a brief nod, she started to walk past them.

  In a voice that quivered with strain, Kit said, “You look just like me.”

  For the first time in her life, Marnie looked her daughter full in the face and, with an enormous effort, kept her own face expressionless. In the same cool tone she said, “I suppose I do a bit. Although your eyes are a different color and your hair’s redder than mine. You must excuse me, I have to—”

  “Are you my mother?” Kit gasped. “My real mother?”

  Marnie’s face muscles felt as though they had congealed; an actual headache began to throb through her temples. Although each word felt like a repudiation of her very soul, she said stiffly, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. The game’s nearly due to start. Shouldn’t you both be in the gym?”

  “You’ve got to be my mother,” Kit said, her words falling all over each other. “I don’t care what you say, you look so much like me. I’m adopted, you see. My parents told me when I was very young, and until my mother died…” Briefly, she stumbled. “Not my—my biological mother. My other mother. Anyway, she died. The past couple of months, I’ve been asking my dad about my real mother, wanting to find out about her…about you. He hates it when I do that, but I have to, don’t you see? I have to know! And then Lizzie told me about bumping into you and so we’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  Marnie stood very still. Her brain cells seemed to have stopped working. She even felt as though her blood had coagulated in her veins. On top of meeting Kit under the very worst of circumstances, she now knew that once more Cal hadn’t been honest with her. He’d never mentioned that Kit had evinced an interest in her biological mother—information that was surely crucial to Marnie. How could he have been so deceitful? So cruel?

  Taking a deep breath, Marnie made one more valiant attempt. “I’m sorry,” she said gently, “I can see how important this is to you. But just because you want to find your—your real mother, you can’t go around inventing her…as you’re doing now.” She gave Kit the best smile she could muster. “Good luck with your game.”

  She shouldn’t have smiled. Kit said frantically, “When you smile, your front teeth are crooked just the same way as mine. I’m not making this up. You are my mother, I know you are!”

  Her voice had risen and her brown eyes were wide with pain. Desperate to comfort her, Marnie made her second mistake. “Kit—” she blurted.

  “You know my name! How do you know my name?”

  Because your father told me. “I heard your friend—”

  “I never mentioned Kit’s name,” Lizzie said triumphantly. Lizzie was clearly enjoying all this drama.

  In a wild flood of words, Kit accused, “You didn’t want me when I was born and you don’t want me now! How could you have abandoned me? Was I so awful you didn’t love me even a little bit?”

  “I—”

  “My mother died and left me, and now you’re just the same. I hate you both! You don’t even have the guts to say I’m your daughter, not even after I’ve stayed out of your way for nearly thirteen years. I hate you, do you hear me? I hate you!”

  Tears were dripping from Kit’s cheeks onto her singlet. Marnie said decisively, “Kit, stop it. You know nothing about me or the circumstances that—”

  “I know you just lied to me. Told me I’d invented you. Called me by name when you shouldn’t have known my name.”

  As forcefully as she could, Marnie said, “My own mother only died a month ago. Until then I never knew who’d adopted you.”

  “Save your excuses for someone dumb enough to believe them,” Kit flung. “I don’t want to hear them. It’s too late, don’t you see? Or are you stupid as well as a liar?”

  Lizzie drew in her breath in a fascinated gasp. Marnie could have said, “Your father doesn’t want you to know about me.” It would have been true. But somehow, even though Cal had lied to her, she found she couldn’t say those particular words. On the other hand, she wasn’t going to let Kit walk all over her. “Please, Kit, if I lied, it was for the best of reasons,” she said.

  “Sure. So you don’t have to stop and look at the way you behaved,” Kit cried. “All mothers are supposed to love their kids. But not you, you’re different. You never loved me. Well, that’s fine with me. If you don’t want me, then I don’t want you. I never want to see you again. Never, do you hear me? Never in my whole life!”

  Marnie had been convinced when she’d recovered consciousness in the clinic and found her mother sitting by the bed that she couldn’t ever again feel pain to compare with the emptiness of her arms…empty of her child. But now, in a school corridor many years later, she was being proven wrong. Her daughter hated her. Was repudiating her.

  White-faced, Marnie stood very still, Kit’s words echoing in her brain. Her tongue was frozen to the floor of her mouth; her limbs felt like blocks of ice. And then, from the corner of her eye she saw a flicker of movement. A man was standing in the corridor behind Kit. A black-haired man. Cal.

  He must have heard every word his daughter had said.

  This has got to be a nightmare, she thought crazily. In a few moments, the alarm will ring and I’ll wake up and get ready for school. Please, God, let it be a nightmare.

  Cal said flatly, “Kit, I’ll take you home.”

  Kit whirled. “Dad!” Her breath caught in a sob. “Oh, Dad…I’m so glad to see you,” she cried, and ran to him, throwing her arms around him and burying her face in his chest.

  He was wearing a shirt and tie along with a sport jacket. At any other time, Marnie might have noticed how handsome he looked. But all she was aware of was how naturally Kit had s
ought his embrace. I’m jealous, she thought blankly.

  She said in a voice that didn’t sound remotely like her own, “Cal, what are you doing here?”

  “Kit left a note on the kitchen table telling me the team was coming to Faulkner. I saw it as soon as I got home from work.” He looked Marnie up and down. “You didn’t expect me to turn up, did you?”

  “You think I planned this?” Marnie croaked. “That it was a setup?”

  “You’re the school librarian and school got out over an hour ago. So why are you still here?”

  Blessedly, a lick of fire began to melt the ice in which Marnie felt encased. She was damned if she was going to plead her case. Why bother? Cal had already condemned her. She said bitterly, “Why didn’t you tell me that for the past couple of months Kit has been asking about me? About her biological mother? All your lies are by omission, aren’t they?”

  Kit had raised her head, her face tear streaked, and was looking from one to the other. “You know about her, Dad?”

  Cal said. “We met by chance ten days ago in Burnham. I told her to stay away from you.”

  Kit’s face crumpled. “I want to go home,” she whispered.

  He curved his arm around her. “That’s exactly where we’re going, hon.”

  Two against one, Marnie thought with painful accuracy. And she, Marnie, was the one left out. Alone. The way she’d always been, even when she lived with her mother.

  Cal was speaking again. “Lizzie,” he said, “I want you to go to the coach and tell him Kit isn’t feeling well and I’m taking her home. Please don’t tell anyone what happened here today. I know I can trust you.” Then he shifted his gaze to Marnie, his eyes as hard as flint. “Maybe you could do us all a favor and go home, too—before any more damage is done.”

  Her head high, Marnie looked him straight in the eye and said, “Ever since I found out half an hour ago that Burnham was playing here today, I’ve done my very best to avoid this situation. If you choose to think the worst of me, that’s your problem.”

  He didn’t say a word. Turning on his heel, he led Kit away, his arm around his daughter’s waist.

  His daughter. Not hers.

  Lizzie had vanished, too. Very slowly, Marnie walked the other way down the hall, toward the canteen. The game would have started by now. She’d get everything ready for the break and go home.

  By now, her headache was all too real. Served her right, she thought wretchedly, wrote a note about the workings of the steamer, the grill and the cash box, then left the school.

  Once she was home, Marnie took a couple of Tylenol, fell instantly asleep and woke five hours later from a nightmare in which Cal was chasing her around the basketball court with a cleaver, Kit and Lizzie cheering him on. The two girls were dressed up like blue grizzly bears.

  It was pitch-dark. She could hear the fall of waves on the beach; a car swished past, its headlights briefly reflected in the mirror over the dresser. Her headache seemed to have gone. But none of the drug companies had invented a pill for heartache, she thought, and felt the first slow tears seep down her cheeks.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE next day, Marnie and Christine shared yard duty at morning recess. The sun was shining and a playful wind was blowing from the sea; at any other time Marnie would have been happy to be outdoors. But not today. Today, the only thing that could make her happy would be to have Kit run into her arms as yesterday she’d run into Cal’s: with the complete naturalness of someone who knows where she belongs.

  No hope of that, thought Marnie, and gave Christine a smile she did her best to make convincing. Christine, however, took one look at Marnie’s face and said, “You’re coming to my house right after school, I’ll feed you fish chowder, and you’re going to tell me what’s gone wrong the past couple of weeks.” As Marnie opened her mouth, Christine added fiercely, “And don’t argue. I’ve kept my distance for days, figuring you’d tell me what was up when you were ready. I’m not waiting any longer.”

  Yesterday, after Cal and Kit had left the school, Marnie had felt cripplingly alone, but she didn’t have to feel alone with Christine today. “All right,” she said meekly.

  “Good,” Christine said, the breeze disarranging her sleek brown hair. “Now I’d better go and stop Billie Shipley from peddling cigarettes on the school grounds. Does he think I’m blind?”

  “Hey, at least it’s not hash,” Marnie said, her smile more genuine, and with affection watched her friend stride away. Christine was engaged to the local doctor; she was a loyal and fun-loving friend.

  She was also a dedicated gardener and an atrocious housekeeper. At four-thirty, Marnie cleared a laundry basket full of crumpled towels from the nearest chair, deposited them on the dining-room table next to a pile of English exams and accepted a glass of Chardonnay in an elegant crystal glass that wasn’t quite as clean as it should be.

  Oh, well, she thought, alcohol kills germs, and raised her glass. “To your garden.”

  “Raccoons dug up half my tulips. So I’m going to drink to you instead. May you look like a human being again soon. Cheers.”

  Wryly, Marnie took a sip. It was, as she’d expected, an excellent wine, dry with just a hint of fruitiness. Before she could think of what to say next, Christine’s cat launched itself onto the table; some of the exams slid to the floor.

  “Good place for them,” Christine said gloomily. “I sometimes wonder if any of my students hear one word I say.” The vagaries of adolescents were a safe enough topic. Marnie latched onto it with relief. But as soon as she paused for breath, Christine said, “Can it, Marnie. What’s up?”

  Marnie looked at her in silence. When she’d taken the job in Faulkner, she and Christine had hit it off right away and become the best of friends. Last year, Christine had been careful not to let her growing romance with Don, the doctor, harm the friendship. Such concern, Marnie knew, was far more important than piles of dirty towels. And if she hadn’t been prepared to tell all, she’d have turned down Christine’s invitation…wouldn’t she?

  She said uncertainly, “Chris, only two other people know what I’m going to tell you. One of them lives in Australia and the other in Burnham, and it’s essential this remain between you and me. You wouldn’t believe what a mess I’m in.”

  “Give,” Christine said.

  So Marnie did. Slowly at first, then more rapidly as she lost herself in the story, she told Christine about her mother and Terry and the school dance; about the clinic and the adoption of her child. “I ran away a week after she was born, worked my butt off to get my arts and library degrees, then got my first job here three years ago September,” she said. Then she told about meeting Cal in the parking lot and everything that had ensued after that, even including Cal’s offer of a long-distance affair. She finished with the nasty scene in the school corridor before the basketball game. “I haven’t heard from either one of them since then, nor do I expect to,” she concluded, and took another big mouthful of wine.

  Christine had paid her the compliment of complete silence during her recital. Now she said, “But Cal can’t go around pretending you don’t exist. And Kit will want to see you again once she gets over the shock.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It isn’t over,” Chris said forcefully. “It can’t be.”

  “She hates me, and he thinks I deceived him. I’d say it’s over.”

  “You’ve got to fight for her!”

  “How?” Marnie demanded. “Ring the front doorbell and say I’ve come for tea? Kit thinks I’ve abandoned her twice now—thirteen years ago as well as outside the staff room. She’s an adolescent. We both know they’re not the most rational of creatures. Plus Cal doesn’t want me coming anywhere near her. As if I had some kind of disgusting disease. Pour me some more wine. Maybe if I get royally sloshed, I’ll feel better.”

  “No way. We’ve got to keep our heads here.”

  “Do you think I haven’t stayed awake night after night trying to figu
re a way out of this mess?” Marnie cried. “There’s only one thing I can do. Next week when the transfers come in, I’m going to ask for a school at the very tip of Cape Breton. That’s about as far away as I can get from Burnham and still be in Nova Scotia.”

  “You’re going to run away?” Christine squeaked.

  “You’re darn right I am.”

  “You can’t,” Chris wailed. “She’s your daughter!”

  In a low voice, Marnie said, “I know that, Chris.”

  “Oh, Marnie, I’m sorry. I’m not handling this well at all.” Christine plunked her glass down and gave Marnie a clumsy hug. “You’ve got to admit it’s been rather a shock. Although it does explain why you run a country mile any time a man gets the slightest bit interested in you.”

  “I’ll never risk getting hurt like that again.”

  “That might have been true before you met Kit and Cal. But it’s too late now. You have met them—and you’re hurting anyway. Hurting bad.” Christine paused, her head to one side, and asked with genuine interest, “What does Cal look like?”

  “Oh, he’s a hunk,” Marnie said wearily. “So what?”

  “Hmm… Marnie, there’s got to be something I can do to help.”

  “Pray for a librarian’s post in northern Cape Breton.”

  “I’m certainly not going to do that!”

  “There’s nothing you can do,” Marnie said. “But thanks for listening…and now I’d really love some of that fish chowder, Chris. For the first time in days, I feel hungry.”

  After supper, they walked over to Don’s place and the three of them went for a long walk on the beach. When Marnie got home, she fell into bed and slept soundly without a single nightmare.

  She was glad she’d told Christine. It couldn’t change either Kit or Cal or the heartache that was her constant companion, but it did make her feel less alone.