—
When she got home from work, she washed her hair, poured a large glass of wine, and sat on her deck watching the Friday evening bridge traffic on 520 back up to a near standstill. When the glass was empty she opened her laptop and Googled commercial paternity-testing labs. She wrote three numbers on a sticky note, which she stuck to the side of her wineglass. After the sun had set and the evening began to cool, she carried the glass and her computer inside, shredded the sticky note into confetti, soaked it thoroughly in the soapy glass, and flushed it down the disposal. Then she called Eric. “It’s me. I need pizza,” she said.
“Margherita?”
“Meat for me. Greasy meat.”
They had not gone this long without seeing each other since Eric flew to New York six months ago. When the doorbell rang, she let him in, then opened her bathrobe and wrapped it around them both. In the morning she woke to find him lying on his back staring at the ceiling. They hadn’t talked about any of it the night before, and now Charlotte was almost afraid to, as if any rift caused by Jake’s paternity might cleave right through the heart of everything they were to each other, even if she didn’t understand how those issues were connected yet. He must have felt her eyes, even her thoughts. He didn’t look at her and said, “He isn’t safe there.”
“You think Boughton would hurt him?”
“Physically hurt him? No. There are other ways of ruining a kid.”
“Blake Simpson, the deputy, called me,” Charlotte said.
“Did you tell him we . . . ?”
“He already knew.” She told Eric that Simpson didn’t feel any better about Boughton than they had, but no arrest or prosecution was likely to come of it.
Eric asked, “What if you told him you were worried about Jake? Couldn’t he do something about that?”
“Based on what? The fact that Boughton didn’t welcome us into his home when we rang his doorbell unannounced and accused him of abandoning the wife who had just abandoned him? Jake might not seem happy, but he didn’t look abused.” She got out of bed and pulled on her blue jeans, agitated now. Maybe she’d called Eric too soon, before she knew what she was hoping for.
“You’re still upset, aren’t you?” he asked. “Look, forget what I said about being Jake’s father. His skin color . . . we both saw the picture of Jake’s dad. The real problem is that if no one cared enough to notice Raney was missing for two weeks, who’s watching out for Jake now?” Charlotte’s face twisted into tears, a rare event in their history together. He got out of bed and tried to hold her, but she pulled away. “Charlotte . . . I’m sorry. You were right—it’s gut-wrenching to see Raney like this. To see her son growing up in that place. My imagination . . .”
Charlotte spun around and slammed both of her fists against his chest, sending him back a step with a look of shock. “That’s not it. I’m not right for once, even when I need to be! Damn it!” She fell against the wall and slid to the floor, wiping her eyes. “I was at her bedside yesterday, looking at her face. You can see bits of her in Jake—her chin, the shape of her eyes.” She shook her head as if that might make the truth she saw go away. “But most of him . . . it is your face, Eric. I can’t explain his skin color, but he’s your child. The child you won’t have with me. And I am trying not to hate you both for that.”
He looked so stunned it made her want to hit him again and then wrap herself around him, hold on and say nothing else. Ever. After a moment he said, “You’re hating us for loving each other twelve years ago. Look, you and I both want to help Jake—let’s focus on that right now. It doesn’t matter where his genes came from, does it?”
“Doesn’t it? All last night I thought about my parents, my brother. My nephews. The only people in the world who love me no matter what I do. Even when they hate me.” She saw him consider protesting this and shook her head again. “Blood is blood, Eric. Maybe old married people get there too, but if there’s any chance you’re Jake’s father you should find out.”
“Well, since that’s impossible, I’d rather worry about helping him. A gift to Raney, if nothing else.”
“How? What can you do? Send money to David Boughton and hope he starts a college fund with it? Kidnap Jake?”
“I’ve already thought of something. If the last thing Raney wanted was to get Jake to a doctor about his back, start there. Is it scoliosis? How serious is that?” Eric asked.
“I don’t know. Scoliosis can be really bad in kids. It’s out of my field, but Will or Pamela would know. They’re bringing Hugo and Charlie over later.” Charlotte had promised to watch her nephews while her brother and sister-in-law went to a party. She saw his eyes darken and said, “I won’t tell them everything, Eric. It’s your story to tell if you want.”
After a moment he asked, “Is there any change?”
She knew he was asking about Raney, if only by the hopeless note in his voice. She wished she could counter that, say something positive and still tell the truth. “I don’t think she’s going to make it.”
—
Pamela and Will came by a few hours later. The lingering pall between Eric and Charlotte was obliterated by Hugo’s and Charlie’s energy; in moments they had overtaken the house. When they could do little more than crawl, Charlotte had started a game of hiding small toys about her house, colored blocks or stuffed animals at first, then Matchbox cars and trucks, balls, Lincoln Logs. An Easter hunt at every visit. Pamela said it spoiled them, but she didn’t urge Charlotte to stop. The boys never complained or fussed when Pamela walked out the door.
“Hey, guys!” Charlotte said, lifting Charlie onto her hip and swinging him around. He was so accustomed to the greeting that as soon as she picked him up, he locked his legs around her waist and let go, dropping upside down to dangle above the floor until the centrifugal force of Charlotte’s spinning made his hair stand up. “Mind if I give them ice cream?” Charlotte asked Pamela. Pamela flapped a hand in the air—all rules were off at Aunt Charlotte’s. Charlotte poured her a cup of coffee and set it on the table with a slice of cinnamon bread.
“Will’s waiting in the car,” Pamela said, but then she looked at the gooey bread and sat down.
“I have a medical question for you. Scoliosis in a child. What’s the usual course?”
“Hmm. It depends on the degree of curvature. And the age of the child. If it’s significant it usually means surgery. Can be a big operation but without it the curve can become pretty crippling. Who has scoliosis?”
Charlotte felt Eric watching them, listening. “A friend asked me about it. I said I’d try to help.”
They heard Will in the living room. “Pamela? It’s your office picnic. If you want to go alone . . .” He came to the kitchen door.
Pamela said, “He’s the one to ask—the professor. Will, what do you do for scoliosis? I mean, when do you consider surgery versus bracing?”
“Depends on the degree of the curve. But first you need a differential diagnosis.” Hugo heard his father’s voice and ran into the room, slamming into Will’s leg like it was a punching bag. Will barely seemed to notice. He scratched Hugo’s scalp with his knuckles and went right on talking. “Is it congenital? Idiopathic? Part of a syndrome? A tumor? The treatment might be the same, but you need to be sure no other organs are involved.” Hugo began to bang on his leg.
“A tumor?” Charlotte said. That hadn’t crossed her mind. “Malignant?”
Will bent over Hugo. “Go find Charlie, Hugo. Or jump on your sweet Aunt Charlotte’s big, king-size bed.” He winked at Charlotte but it worked—Hugo bounded into her bedroom. “Not always malignant. Not at all. Tuberous sclerosis. Neurofibromatosis. Those can cause scoliosis.” Charlotte’s face flushed and she was careful to keep her eyes on Will, refused to look at Eric. “I’d be happy to talk to your friend if she wants,” Will continued. “Pamela? Can we go? Please?”
—
It lay between them like a loaded gun—at the zoo, at the wading pool in Green Lake, on the swings. T
he boys played and Eric and Charlotte took turns being three and five years old again. Being parents. Teachers. Playing any role that allowed them to be together and still avoid each other. After Pamela and Will picked up their sons and shut the door to Charlotte’s house, the gun exploded inside her. “You need to find out, Eric. You need to know. Jake needs to know.”
“You’re running with this, Charlotte. Okay, so neurofibromatosis is one possibility. One remote possibility. So are a dozen other causes. Jake needs to see a doctor—we can try to make that happen. What’s the point of going further?”
“It’s the right thing to do. The moral thing to do. If you are his father . . .”
Eric brought his palm down on the table with a loud slap, then looked as surprised by his reaction as Charlotte was. He took in a slow, full breath. “Jake has a father. Should I damage that relationship even more? Isn’t Jake under enough stress?”
Charlotte’s chest felt so tight she couldn’t control her voice—torn with frustration and sadness and something bigger. Something hooked deep into the muscle and bone of what she and Eric were together in love. And what they were not. “Stepfather,” she said. “Not father. You knew Jake’s mother longer than Boughton did.”
Eric looked at her for a long, quiet moment. When he spoke, he sounded both sympathetic and defeated. “Boughton is the stepfather Jake knows. And I’m a stranger. You, too, Charlotte. We both are.”
—
They stayed in their own separate homes that night. Charlotte slept badly, reworking all the conversations she and Eric had started and left unfinished over the last day and a half; each time she came closer to some accord but stumbled before she felt certain of her own mind. Half the input was missing, she thought, ready to call him. So when the phone rang at six thirty the next morning Charlotte answered, “Let’s go to Alki for breakfast.”
After a short silence she heard Blake Simpson say, “I’ve already eaten, but that’s a kind offer. Is this Dr. Reese?” He apologized for calling so early, but he thought she would want to know that Jake Flores had run away from home and was in temporary foster care.
As soon as she hung up, Charlotte drove to Eric’s apartment. She knocked once, a single sharp rap on his door, and then let herself in. He was in his study at the computer and when he turned around, the deep red crease between his black brows made her suspect he’d been up all night writing. No more restful than her own bad night, she thought. She told him that Jake had run away from home. Eric looked so stricken Charlotte felt a rush of empathy. Had she wondered how much it would matter to him?
“Have they found him?” Eric asked.
“He’s in temporary foster care, in Port Angeles. He hid in the back of a pickup all the way to Forks and snuck into a motel for the free breakfast bar. Someone there called the police. He’d slept under some bushes all night.”
“Port Angeles,” Eric repeated. “He’s okay? I mean, nothing happened with . . . ?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Simpson said they would usually take a runaway back home, but Jake was so adamant they took him to a shelter until they could talk to Boughton.”
“Right. Right,” Eric said, obviously not registering the words.
“I want to see him, Eric. I want to look at his back again. If his scoliosis is serious and I can convince Simpson, maybe the court will force Boughton to take him to a doctor. Even if that’s all we can do for Jake, it might make a difference.”
Eric brushed her hair back from her face and his fingers lingered a moment. “Sure. Of course.”
“You’ll come with me?”
He was quiet for a minute. “Can we handle it through the police? What would Simpson say if he knew we went to see Jake?”
Was he hoping for an excuse not to see Jake again? “Simpson gave me the address. If I can get Otero to cover for me after rounds tomorrow we could be in Port Angeles by lunchtime.”
The red crease between Eric’s brows was still visible. It lingered longer now than it had three years ago, when they were first dating. The skin above his eyes drooped a bit more and his belt had moved out one notch. But some of his features had not changed. Never would, she thought, wondering if she would be around to confirm that. The sharp angles of his cheekbones, the slender, bony ramp of his nose—they were becoming more handsome as he aged. She couldn’t help thinking they suited a mature face more than a child’s.
—
Felipe couldn’t take over until noon, so they caught the 2:05 ferry to Bainbridge. Something had gelled within Charlotte overnight: a sense of impelled purpose she had not willed or rationalized and did not know how to justify. Eric sensed her changed mood. It hung between them in the car like a fine but fractured crystal, ready to shatter if it was not handled carefully.
Charlotte had called the foster home the previous evening to request the meeting, and then called back that morning to say they would be late. She’d been tempted to ask to speak to Jake, or ask the foster mother how he’d reacted to the news that they would be visiting. But in the end Charlotte decided to take only the step in front of her, and if that succeeded, then the step after that. Let each step show her where the next should lead.
In only one action did she break from this: just before she left to pick up Eric, she stopped in the hospital gift shop and bought two packages of sugar-free gum in two different flavors—one grape and one bubble gum. She put them into an unsealed letter envelope and dropped them in her purse.
• 17 •
raney
No one had seen her body since Cleet died—even Raney had stopped looking at herself in the mirror. Who cared as long as your clothes fit and all the parts did what they were supposed to? She could remember being in the changing room of the public pool where Jake was taking swimming lessons, years ago. A senior exercise class was letting out and she’d walked into a shower room crowded with nude elderly women, soaping up. Raney’s first thought was of the witches in a movie version of Macbeth they’d shown in her junior high English class, the bubbling cauldron stirred by stripped-down, slack-breasted old women. Most of the students had never seen any bare breasts, much less on the big screen, and when exam time came, all anybody could remember about Shakespeare’s play were those naked witches. But that day in the changing room Raney thought those women—their flesh mottled pink and quivering like jelly under the hot spray—were more beautiful than any of the dimple-free, nubile goddesses used to sell everything from motor oil to Florida vacations. Those bodies had been put to good use: babies and good cooking and hard labor so that strong biceps still muscled underneath their loose arm rolls. They’d given up the fight against gravity and looked proud of it; entered an age when, at last, they would be measured by their minds alone. She wanted to paint those women. Wanted to show off her own post-pregnancy belly and say, “Hey! Look what I did!”
She felt none of that the first night she shared her bed with David. His soft, clumsy hands felt alien exploring her body and she faced how little she knew about this man who was now her husband. Sometimes at night Raney lay next to David and felt Cleet there. And even Bo. Her three lovers, each holding the bit of herself she’d given away and her holding pieces of them while she pondered the boundaries of love. Is it a room inside your soul that opens when your lover enters? That still exists once he’s gone? Or is it a space that can only survive in the union of two?
Things worked better outside the bedroom. Having a third person in the house muffled some of the preadolescent tension that could crop up between Raney and Jake. While David and Jake didn’t always have much to say to each other, they could fill whole evenings going through David’s movie collections—from the old James Bond films all the way back to Douglas Fairbanks. They bought a new television set and a used VCR. And for the first time in months Raney could open the mailbox without worrying she’d find a foreclosure notice from the bank. She could see how thoroughly David worked at this new job of being a father, like the right spreadsheet and number juggling c
ould make the balance come out true. Sometimes she wanted to tell him to relax—he’s a boy not an accounting puzzle. You can’t make a tree grow, you just provide the right sun, water, and soil and give it time.
David decided to salvage Jake’s dismal school grades by tutoring him in the evenings. When Raney helped Jake with his homework, she always turned it into a game, using dried beans on the abacus of the tablecloth checks, or making up math stories about ninja warriors or bridges spanning Kool-Aid seas between cookie dough islands. It usually made Jake laugh even if his grades kept falling. David, though, was more methodical. After dinner he wiped and dried the table before he lined up two mechanical pencils and a pad of graph paper. He extracted a neatly folded lens cloth from its zippered plastic pouch to polish his reading glasses, then opened Jake’s textbook to the day’s lesson. By the time Raney and Jake had the kitchen clean, David had read the entire chapter and worked out every problem on separate sheets of paper. Then he pushed the book across the table and told Jake to read the chapter aloud.
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