Dr. Dad

by Judith Arnold

  Yet he was at the class, wasn’t he? By definition, that pretty well marked him as someone who wasn’t holding everything together. Like the other students, he was a father who needed help.

  The class was still waiting for him to speak. “I have a friend,” he said, shifting in his chair, as if a different posture would make it easier for him to open up to this group. “She had a difficult adolescence with her father. And now she…well, I don’t know if hate is too strong a word, but…” Closing his eyes briefly, he conjured a vision of Susannah in his car earlier that day, telling him about her tortured relationship with her father. It was nothing like his relationship with Lindsey, but he’d still felt the sorrow of it in a personal way. “Maybe she does hate her father. She certainly resents him. They’re estranged. She moved all the way across the country so there would be three thousand miles between him and her. Losing your child can happen. It isn’t just some unrealistic nightmare.”

  “Is your relationship with your daughter like this friend’s relationship with her father?” Molly asked carefully.

  “No. Absolutely nothing like it. I’m just saying…” He folded his hands and drew in a deep breath. “Fathers lose their daughters. It happens. That’s all.”

  Molly smiled enigmatically and turned from him. Evidently, she recognized that he didn’t want to be the center of attention. She called on someone else, who talked about how his son was always testing limits, and every time he loosened a limit the son pressed harder, trying to push the limit even further. Other members of the class joined in, analyzing how fathers could determine where the lines needed to be drawn. They discussed why it was so often fathers and not mothers who drew the lines, why they felt it was their job to exert discipline, whether too much freedom was as perilous as too little.

  Toby listened, gleaning useful nuggets of information from the discussion. But a part of his mind remained mired in the worry he’d admitted to—that he would lose Lindsey, that someday she would loathe him as much as Susannah loathed her father.

  He didn’t know why he feared such a thing. He didn’t exploit Lindsey the way Susannah’s father had exploited her. He didn’t expect Lindsey to support the family, to take responsibility for anyone else’s welfare, to sacrifice her own childhood to a career not of her choosing. He was nothing like Susannah Dawson’s father, and he never would be.

  Yet he’d heard the bitterness in Susannah’s voice even as she’d kept her tone level. He’d sensed the anger seething beneath her placid surface. And God help him, he wondered at the anger that might be seething inside Lindsey, too. Anger about having no mother, perhaps. Anger about floundering into adolescence without a woman to guide her. Anger about all the injustices, both petty and monumental, that she faced every day.

  Toby was such a convenient target for that anger. He was her father.

  The class wound down, and Toby sorted through what he’d picked up from listening to the others. They seemed to have concluded, thanks to Molly’s subtle leadership, that children should have a chance to experiment in the shallow end of the pool before being allowed to dive off the high board. “Start slow. Give them five dollars and ask them to buy you a newspaper. See if they come back with the right change. Or tell them they have to be home from a friend’s house by four o’clock, and see if they persistently come home at four-fifteen, armed with a different excuse each time. These are ways you can safely measure their level of responsibility. Do they live up to your expectations, or do they constantly cross the line? If they can’t swim safely in the shallow end, they aren’t ready for the deep end.”

  Useful advice, if a bit general. Some of his classmates’ comments had been useful, too, or at least reassuring. Some of them had children far more aggressive than Lindsey. Maybe a truly awful kid would make discipline easier—it was a snap to say no to someone who kept making unreasonable demands—but such a child would certainly be more exhausting. Compared with those fathers, Toby felt lucky to have a daughter like Lindsey.

  Yet he still feared losing her, giving her so much freedom that she floated away from him like a balloon on a breeze, while he frantically, futilely, tried to grab the string that had slipped out of his fist.

  “Toby?” Molly approached him as he and the other fathers stood and stretched and started moving toward the door.

  He glanced at his fellow classmates, then turned back to Molly. She wasn’t asking anyone else to stay after class. He felt almost like a naughty schoolchild about to be handed a detention slip.

  She looked toward one of the fathers as he shouted a farewell, then smiled and waved at a few others, waiting for the room to empty out. She was at least six inches shorter than Toby, her hands tiny, her body petite except for her swollen abdomen. The only thing huge about her was her smile.

  “Allison’s told me about you,” she began. “She’s my best friend, and she’s a big fan of yours.”

  “Allison Winslow?” He nodded, relaxing slightly. Maybe he wasn’t going to get detention after all. “I’m a big fan of hers, too.”

  Still smiling, Molly assessed him with a long gaze, one hand rubbing her belly. “She told me you lost your wife to cancer a few years ago, and you’re raising your daughter single-handedly.”

  “That’s right.” He stopped relaxing. Was she going to tell him how sorry she was? He hoped not.

  “She also told me you’re a perfectionist. You’re terrific with your patients, exacting with your colleagues and very hard on yourself.”

  “No, I’m not,” he argued, even less relaxed as his defenses started massing protectively around him.

  “I’m good with my patients, and I’m professional with my colleagues—”

  “And you’re very hard on yourself.” Molly seemed to consider her options for a moment, then chose to reach up and pat his shoulder. “You can’t be perfect, Toby. You need to stop worrying so much about falling short.”

  “Meaning…?”

  “Meaning, I’ll bet you’re a wonderful father. You’re not going to lose your daughter. You love her, and I’m sure she loves you. So stop being so afraid of messing up with her.”

  “I’m not—” He cut himself off. He’d already admitted his fear in front of the entire class.

  “You need to take care of yourself a little, Toby. Worry a little less about your daughter and spend a little time on yourself. Can you do that?”

  “I’m the only parent she has,” he answered automatically. It was the truth, after all. Lindsey had no one else to worry about her, to raise her properly, to keep her on track at school and to help her weather the turbulent journey of growing up.

  “Maybe you’d be a better parent if you didn’t try so hard,” Molly suggested, her voice soft and tender, as if that would take the sting out of her criticism. “Do you ever worry about yourself?”

  “No, I…” He sighed. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re tense. You’re stressed out. You think you’re losing you’re daughter.” Her smile could melt a polar cap. “You’re not fine, Toby. You need a life.”

  “I have a life.”

  “And her name is Lindsey.” Molly gave his shoulder another pat. “You probably resent my talking to you this way. But I’m just trying to help. It’s my job as the teacher of this Daddy School class. No father can be a good father if he isn’t happy with himself. What do you need? What would make your life better? You don’t have to tell me—just think about it. And try to come up with answers that don’t include the word Lindsey.”

  What he needed—besides a healthy, lovely daughter who lived up to her potential and didn’t wallow in sarcasm—was…

  Yes, damn it. Molly was right. He needed a life. He needed friends he could talk to about something other than Lindsey or work. He needed someone he could laugh with. He needed sex. He needed human warmth and companionship.

  He needed Susannah Dawson.

  Staggered by a rush of emotions—gratitude and amazement mixed in with his usual quota of panic and frustration
—he smiled down at Molly Saunders-Russo. “Thanks,” he murmured. “You’ve given me something to think about.”

  He was still thinking about it as he pulled out of the parking lot behind the YMCA and eased into the light evening traffic. Across the street loomed the massive Arlington Gazette building, its windows lit as staffers labored to put together tomorrow morning’s edition. The luncheonette next door to the Gazette building was still open for business, but most of the other stores and offices along the street were dark for the night.

  He glanced at his watch: eight-forty. He really ought to get home.

  The supermarket was on his way. He could take a quick spin around the parking lot and make sure Susannah had gotten her shopping done and was safely out of there. All he’d do was check to see that her car was gone, and then he’d go home.

  The parking lot in front of the supermarket was illuminated by the floodlights on towering poles planted in the asphalt. The supermarket itself looked bright and welcoming; so did the discount drugstore at the far end of the lot. Lindsey’s favorite CD store was closed, as were most of the other stores in the shopping center. But people needed food and medicine at all hours, so those stores stayed open late.

  The parking lot was nearly empty, and he spotted Susannah’s Volkswagen beetle almost immediately. It was parked where she’d abandoned it that afternoon, where he’d dropped her an hour and a half ago. Its pea-green color and turtle shape were so distinctive, he didn’t even have to see the California license plate to know it was hers.

  Why was it still in the lot? Had she even made it into the supermarket, or had a mad horde of fans swept her off? He knew she was an adult, fully capable of taking care of herself, but he couldn’t shake his picture of her under siege that afternoon, with some son of a bitch pawing at her breast.

  Why was her car still here? What if she wasn’t all right?

  He slid his car into the vacant spot next to hers, yanked the parking brake and bolted from the car, pressing the remote lock button as he jogged toward the supermarket. The automatic glass door swung open and he hurried inside.

  The store was nearly empty. Two cashiers stood idle at their checkout counters, chatting. A middle-aged man hovered in the produce section near the door, a basket hooked over his arm and a rapt expression on his face as he inspected tomatoes. Céline Dion’s rendition of the Titanic theme song poured from ceiling speakers. The light was glaring enough to hurt his eyes.

  He sprinted past the produce displays and along the aisles, peering down each one. A few stray shoppers with carts were making their way through the store, but the place seemed almost desolate compared with the crush of customers he usually encountered on weekends. He didn’t care how many shoppers were there tonight, though. All he cared about was one shopper. If she wasn’t in the supermarket, or in the drugstore at the other end of the lot, he didn’t know what he’d do.

  Three-quarters of the way through the store, in the bread aisle, he finally located her. She had tied a colorful silk scarf pirate-style around her hair, and she had a pair of owl-round horn-rimmed eyeglasses perched on her nose, but Toby recognized her. He knew her posture, her slender physique. He knew the way she tilted her head, the graceful length of her fingers as she lifted a package of English muffins from a shelf and tossed it into her cart, which was already crammed with groceries—far more than he bought for both him and Lindsey every week.

  Maybe she was hoarding supplies so she wouldn’t have to shop as often. Or maybe she ate a lot.

  The mere sight of her filled him with relief. That she was all by herself, not being hounded and harassed by fans, brought his pulse rate down to normal and made his breath come easier. Perhaps Lindsey wasn’t the only person he ought to stop worrying about. Susannah was doing fine.

  He almost considered sneaking away, leaving her to the privacy she craved. At home, Lindsey might be wondering where he was. Or worse, she might be watching some brain-numbing show on TV instead of doing her homework. Reassured that Susannah was all right, he could go home and take care of his daughter.

  But he didn’t want to. Molly’s advice resounded in his mind: he needed a life. He needed to think about what he wanted—not just what was best for Lindsey, but what was best for him.

  Maybe Susannah wasn’t best for him. But at that moment, spending a few minutes talking to her seemed more important to him than shutting down the part of himself that wasn’t about Lindsey.

  With a resolute shrug, he strode down the aisle until he was close behind Susannah. “Hey,” he murmured.

  She flinched and spun around. Regret filled him for having startled her. She must be tense to the point of near paranoia about being approached by strangers in public places.

  But he wasn’t a stranger, and when she saw him she relaxed and smiled. “Toby! What are you doing here?”

  He refrained from answering that he’d been checking up on her. “My Daddy School class just let out,” he said. To keep her from questioning him further, he went on, “Are you really buying all this stuff? This cereal has got a lot of sugar in it.” He lifted a box from the mountain of food in her cart. “It’ll rot your teeth.”

  “I know, Dr. Cole,” Susannah said with feigned solemnity. “I was hoping to get some tooth decay. I thought that cereal might do the trick.”

  He laughed. “Then you chose wisely. Have you really been shopping all this time?”

  “I went to the drugstore first,” she told him. “I needed shampoo and aspirin. The two greatest necessities of my life.” She picked a jar of all-natural peanut butter from the shelf across from the bread and added it to her cart. Then she glanced up at him. “You had no trouble recognizing me,” she conceded, sounding vexed.

  “I know you.” He studied her. He didn’t like the scarf, which hid her beautiful hair. But the eyeglasses weren’t bad. “These are cute,” he said, gesturing toward the frames. “You should wear them more often.”

  “I don’t need them. They’re just plain glass,” she said, then sighed. “Well, if anyone else recognized me this evening, they were tactful about it. I haven’t been asked to give any autographs.” She scrutinized the array of jams. “So, how was your class?” she asked before selecting a jar of raspberry preserves.

  “Enlightening,” he said, falling into step beside her as she continued down the aisle. “We talked about freedom.”

  “Freedom?”

  “Giving our children freedom. Trusting them enough to let them fly.” And he and Molly had talked about Toby’s giving himself some freedom—freedom to remain at the store with Susannah because watching her fill a small paper sack with gourmet coffee beans brought him pleasure. He observed as she rolled down the top of the sack and folded the wire tabs to seal it. Her hands were more than graceful, he admitted. They were sensual, the skin pale and smooth, the fingers tapered, the nails perfect ovals. He wanted to feel those hands on him, moving across his skin, learning his body as he learned hers. He wanted to kiss her, not just her lips but everywhere. He wanted to untie the scarf and watch her hair tumble loose.

  She placed the sack of coffee beans in her cart and started up the next aisle. A few steps in from the end, Toby closed his hand over one of hers, halting the cart. She turned to him, curiosity glimmering in her eyes.

  “I’d like to see you,” he said, then cursed silently. It had been a while since he’d asked a woman out—and he’d never asked out a woman like Susannah. He felt awkward all of a sudden. Conversation with her had always been a comfortable thing, but this wasn’t conversation. It was something more. “I mean, I’d like to have dinner with you Saturday night.”

  “Spaghetti and shrimp at your house?”

  “No.”

  She took a minute to absorb what he was actually saying. He left his hand on hers, savoring the delicacy of her bones and the silkiness of her skin against his palm. She didn’t pull away, which was a good sign.

  “No,” she said, which was a bad sign.

  He stared at their
hands for a moment, wondering why, if that physical contact felt so right to him, their having dinner together Saturday night should seem wrong to her. “No? Just no?”

  She sighed, and her smile struck him as sad. “I like you, Toby. I don’t want to ruin that.”

  “You think having dinner with me would ruin it?”

  “I don’t know.” She slid her gaze to the jars of jam and marmalade. They were translucent, red and amber, like garnets and topaz in the fluorescent light.

  He wondered what she was afraid of. He wasn’t a gaga fan; he’d never even heard of her before Lindsey had told him about her TV show. Nor did he have any intention of exploiting her the way her family had. All he wanted was to take her out to dinner, and to kiss her again, and to see where a kiss might lead. All he wanted was to spend time with her, talk to her and give the passion that flared between them a chance to burn brighter.

  Since she still hadn’t withdrawn her hand from his, he risked lifting his other hand to her chin and steering her face back to him. “Why not give it a try?” he suggested, his voice low and gentle. “What’s the worst that could happen? It wouldn’t work out, and we’d go back to being neighbors.”

  “That’s not the worst that could happen,” she said, meeting his gaze now, her eyes crystalline through the flat lenses of her glasses.

  She was right. Lots of worse things could happen: someone’s heart could get broken. Or they’d have a terrible fight and find themselves unable to remain amiable neighbors. Or Lindsey could become attached to Susannah, more attached than she already was. Lindsey was obviously infatuated with the idea of Susannah. She was enthralled by Susannah’s past, her fame, her alleged glamour. If she and Toby had a falling out, it would upset Lindsey terribly.

  Damn. He was supposed to be putting his own needs ahead of Lindsey’s for once. That was what Molly Saunders-Russo had instructed him.