On Thin Ice

by PJ Sharon

  “Promise me you’ll take care of your father...he really does love you...he just...” She barked out a harsh cough, her face contorting in pain.

  I squeezed her hand. “I will, I promise.”

  Her eyes closed and she became still. I watched her chest, my heart stopping for a beat, waiting to see her breathe again.

  Panic rose in my throat. “Mom?”

  Her eyes fluttered open and I let out a slow breath as she struggled to take one in.

  “Penny. I’m so tired...”

  “It’s okay, Mom... rest.” I sat holding her hand and watching the rise and fall of her chest for a few more minutes and then felt a presence behind me. I turned to see a good looking, older man standing in the doorway. He stared at me, his dark eyes intense. Then his gaze shifted to my mother.

  “How is she...?” The look of fear and concern sent an odd spike to my gut.

  “She’s sleeping. Who are you?” I asked.

  “I’m...a friend. Can I come in?”

  At the sound of his voice, my mother opened her eyes. “William.” That one word and the way her eyes softened around the edges, the way her face relaxed, doubled the spear to my gut. “Thank you for coming,” she said, a weak smile curving her lips.

  He came to the other side of the bed, pulled up a chair, and reached out to her. Her hand, small and frail, disappeared into his large grasp. “I’m here, Barb.”

  I studied the two of them for a second and when he looked up and met my gaze, my pulse exploded in my ears. “Mom?” I asked, glancing down at her.

  She looked from him to me and back again. “Penny, this is William Tyler, your biological father,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed on him.

  The world stood still, frozen in her words, in her eyes, in his face. Time ticked by for an eternity before I could speak. “I don’t understand.” But I did. In that second, even as my mind whirled and tossed as if caught in a tornado, I understood everything. Why my mother always seemed to be missing some essential part of her soul. Why my Dad couldn’t look at me or love me, why I never really fit into my family or felt like I belonged.

  “Let me explain.” My mother’s voice, sad and weak, brought me back to her.

  “You don’t have to. I get it.” I spit the words out, my face growing hard and cold.

  “I wanted to tell you, but it never seemed like the right time. I planned to tell you after you graduated—when you were old enough to understand.” She gasped for breath. “I thought we’d have more time.”

  “Don’t, Mom.” I slipped my hand out of hers, stricken by the urge to laugh hysterically, or run screaming from the room. Instead, I got up slowly and backed away. “I can’t do this. Not now. I need some time...alone.”

  I turned and fled, bumping into Marie on the way out the door, sending the drinks and sandwiches flying from her hands.

  Chapter 25

  I stumbled through my day, adrift in chaos. Everything I thought I was had been torn away, all of the pieces of me scattered like dry leaves, paper thin and blown on the wind. Fourth year Spanish sounded like Greek, and Latin might as well have been Sudanese. Even the English language sounded foreign to my ears, so lost was I in my thoughts and turbulent emotions.

  “What’s eating you, Pen?” Sami walked beside me as we shouldered our way through the buzzing corridors, rushing between sixth period English and seventh period calculus. “Is it your mom?”

  “Yeah,” I said absently. In the three minutes between classes, I couldn’t get into all of the disasters that had my life in a tailspin. My abortion was scheduled for tomorrow, a fact that I definitely wasn’t about to discuss in the halls of Somerville High. And this bio-dad thing had my stomach twisted into such a tangled knot, I couldn’t begin to unravel what that might mean in the long run.

  “I’m really sorry you have to go through this. I don’t know what I’d do if it was my mom.” She gave me a quick hug and left me at the door to my classroom. “I’ll see ya’ later.” She smiled sympathetically and disappeared into the crowd of faces. I knew my friends cared, but there was nothing anyone could say or do to make sense of the craziness I was dealing with. I’d almost cried that morning when Katie had texted me a message saying that she was praying for me and my family.

  My family? What a joke. I was pretty sure prayer wasn’t going to miraculously cure my mother of cancer or change the reality of my new found genetics. Prayer was most definitely not going to solve my pregnancy dilemma or grow me wings so I could fly far, far away. I sat dazed through calculus class, bouncing my knee and chewing my cuticles, anxious to move, to run, to scream. I felt like a wolf that had been caught in a hunters trap and was trying to chew its leg off to escape.

  Per Mom’s request, I stuck to my routine and went skating. As soon as I hit the ice, something shifted. Freed from the expectation to skate competitively, I felt lighter on my feet than I had in years. The wind in my face diluted the tension that ran through my body. My legs pushed and propelled me into spins and turns, relieving the quivering in my muscles. When the music started, the soulful blues melody struck a chord in my heart, vibrating in graceful notes into my arms and hands. I disappeared into the perfection of the music, the intricacy of the footwork, the precise placement of the pattern and each individual element.

  I executed a perfect chawktaw, and skated the edges over and over until forced to stop by sheer exhaustion. I hadn’t eaten enough today and spots danced before my eyes, threatening to pull me under. I glided over to the boards and climbed into the hockey box to rest. I guzzled a bottle of water, gasping for breath, afraid I might throw up. Get it together.

  “Penny?”

  My head shot up. William Tyler stood behind me, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his brow furrowed with concern. “Are you all right?”

  I closed my eyes, took a cleansing breath, and leveled a hard gaze at him. “What do you care?”

  “I know you must be very confused and upset.”

  “You have no idea how I feel.” I took another hard swallow of water, trying to bring my throbbing pulse under control.

  “You’re right, I don’t. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Why don’t you take a hike?” I was not doing this. Not now. Not here. Not today.

  “You know, I’ve watched you skate a hundred times. I’ve never seen you quite so focused as you were today. Your Blues looked great.”

  Of all the things he could have said, I hadn’t expected that. “You’ve been watching me?”

  “Ever since I found out about you. You were twelve the first time I saw you. You were starting to get the hang of sit spins. I didn’t know about you until then. My wife had died and your mother had just been diagnosed with cancer. She came to me and told me that I had a daughter.” He stepped closer. “Penny, I’m sorry we didn’t tell you sooner. Your mom...she wanted to protect you. She didn’t want to break up the family.”

  I glared at him. “What about my dad. Did he know?”

  A shadow crossed his face. “Yes, he knew right from the start.” He took in a slow breath. “I’ll explain everything. Why don’t we go somewhere and talk.

  Torn between my anger and the million questions that pummeled my brain, I shook my head. “Look, Mister Tyler...”

  “Bill. You can call me Bill... if you want.”

  “Okay... Bill. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. I can’t really deal with all of this.” I pulled on my jacket. The sweat I’d worked up had cooled off, shooting a chill down my arms in the icy air.

  “I think it’s important for you to understand before...before it’s too late for you and your mom to resolve this.” He had a kind face, clean shaven and proper looking, with lines at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth like he had once smiled a lot. I thought about what he said and dropped my head into my hands.

  “Really? Are you serious? You’re going to use the ‘we’re-running-out-of-time’ card? After you’ve been in on this for the last five years?” I tugged at my laces
.

  “Your mother is worried about you.”

  I turned to him, my eyes blazing, face hot. “Don’t even think about trying to make me feel guilty. I’m sick of it! Whenever you, my mother, my dad...anybody wants me to do something, you pull that guilt crap. God forbid I should make anyone worry about me!” I pulled my skate off and threw it on the rubber matted floor, tearing at the laces of my other skate.

  “I didn’t mean to...Penny, look at me.” He pulled at my sleeve, forcing me to stop attacking my knotted laces.

  “What do you want from me?” By now, tears flowed, hot and heavy, my voice coming out in a cracked whine.

  “I want you to listen to me. Give me ten minutes and then I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want.”

  I swiped the tears away, ground my teeth, and forced my breath to slow while I finished untying my skate. I kicked off the boot. I toweled off my blades, stuck my skates in my skating bag, and jammed my bare feet into flip-flops. Standing, I threw my bag over my shoulder and asked, “Where do you want to do this?”

  He took my bag and slid the strap over his shoulder. “C’mon, I’ll buy you a Diet Coke.”

  Chapter 26

  “I met your mother when she was in nursing school. She was nineteen, beautiful, funny, and full of life. I was her English professor. I was thirty years old and married.” He looked up from his coffee, his deep brown eyes filled with contrition. “I can’t pin the blame on anyone else. I was selfish and stupid and weak. But I fell in love with her.”

  The music blasted through the double doors as a couple of kids piled out of the public skate session in Rink 2 and headed for the snack bar. We were seated at one of the small round tables set back in a quiet corner away from the general chaos of the rink I’d spent most of my life in. “Go on.” I sipped my soda through a straw and sat back against the metal folding chair, nibbling on a peanut butter cracker, the dry crumbs sticking in my throat.

  “I considered leaving my wife, but then found out she was pregnant. It was a Catholic college and there would have been a lot of scandal if anyone had found out about the affair.” He studied the contents of his cup, his features hard and sad. I had an odd sense of familiarity with his expression and then recognized it as my own. It was the look I gave myself in the mirror when I was feeling like crap about something I’d done. I set my cup down and folded my arms across my chest, waiting for the story to continue.

  “Barb...your mother, broke it off and left college. I heard she had married Richard a year later and that she’d started a family of her own. I didn’t see her for another ten years. Then, we ran into each other when she went back to school to finish her nursing degree. I was filling in as temporary head of the English department at the State University.” He spoke quickly as if afraid I would hit an invisible buzzer before he had a chance to finish. Then, he took another long, deep breath, and rubbed his knuckles on his forehead. “At that point, my wife had died and I was a single parent.” His face changed to an expression I could only imagine was pride. “I have a son.”

  A warm rush of unexpected emotion flooded my heart and collided with all the confusion. “I have a brother?”

  I had never been interested in dolls and dresses and hated how girly my sisters were. I often wondered if I’d had an older brother, would it have taken some of the heat off of me—someone else to pin my parents’ expectations on. Somewhere along the line, I’d theorized that maybe my dad didn’t love me because he had been hoping for a boy. I’d been wrong about so many things.

  “Derek is twenty-nine. He’s a veterinarian in Amherst. I haven’t told him about you yet, but I’m betting he’ll be thrilled to meet you. He’s always wanted a little sister.” He smiled at me, his eyes lighting up as he talked about his son. My heart lurched.

  “So finish your story. You’ve got four minutes left.”

  His smile faded and the lines in his face hardened again. “So, when we met up again, we renewed our friendship. I didn’t intend to allow it to go any further. I’d caused your mother enough grief and I didn’t want to interfere in her life. She had three children and a husband, but...” He paused as if deciding whether he should say what he was thinking.

  “But what?”

  “Your mother wasn’t happy. There were a lot of problems in the marriage. She turned to me and I...I guess we were both lonely. I can’t expect you to understand. We loved each other. It was as simple and as complicated as that.”

  I understood all too well how complicated love could be and how much it could screw up your life. “So what happened? If you were so in love, and she was so miserable with my dad, why didn’t she just leave him and move on with you?”

  “She couldn’t break up the family, and I didn’t ask her to. Sometimes, I wish I had.” He sighed and finished his coffee. I smiled as his face contorted when he hit the bottom.

  “The coffee here is lethal. I should have warned you.”

  A small grin moved across his lips, “I suppose the least I deserve is a bad cup of coffee.”

  “So my dad knew about you two?”

  His gaze met mine, all humor gone. “He found us together. It got pretty ugly. Your mom broke it off shortly after that. She said she had to try to make it work for her family.” I thought of my dad’s face when he had walked in on me and Carter. A new twist of guilt and understanding wove its way into the tangle of knots in my heart and head. Dad’s anger, his disappointment—another betrayal. Bill was still talking. “She didn’t know she was pregnant until later and then she wasn’t sure right away whether the baby was mine or Richard’s. After you were born, it eventually became apparent that you were mine, but by then, she and Richard had come to some understanding. She said she wanted you to have a normal life, with two parents who stayed together. She didn’t believe in divorce.”

  “A normal life, huh? That’s a joke.” I crushed my cup and tossed it into a trash can six feet away. It bounced off the rim and dropped in.

  “Penny, she thought she was doing the right thing.”

  “So you don’t have any problem with the fact that she lied to you for twelve years? That she kept your child from you until she was in a position where...wait a minute.” The timing struck me. I remembered that I almost had to quit skating because my parents couldn’t afford the lessons and then all of a sudden, everything was fine. “Did she come to you because she needed money for my skating?”

  His face turned ashen. “When she got diagnosed, she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep working all the overtime in order to pay for your lessons. She needed help. I’m glad she came to me. If I’d known about you, I would have helped support you all along.”

  “Did my dad know about the money?” So many things fell into place. “Of course he did. That’s why...” It all clicked. Where the money had come from, why my father never came to the rink, why he resented me so much. My stomach churned with acid. The whole terrible mess made me sick.

  “He knew everything. He and your mother had an arrangement.”

  “An arrangement?” My voice rose, drawing attention from a couple seated at a nearby table.

  “He knew how she felt about me. He knew you weren’t his child. He knew I was supporting your skating. He agreed to it all as long as your mother didn’t lie or keep anything from him ever again.” His expression turned weary. “And as long as we didn’t see each other. He loved her. He would have agreed to anything to keep the family together.”

  “Well that explains a lot, Bill.” The sarcasm dripped from the words. I stood and picked up my bag, heaving it over my shoulder. “Your time’s up. I’ve gotta’ go.”

  “Penny, we all wanted what was best for you.” When he stood, he towered over me. I wished for a second that I’d gotten some of his height. Maybe then, I’d be able to look him in the eye.

  “Hmmm. What’s best for me right now is that you leave me and my family alone. I don’t want to see you again...I need some time to figure things out...I’ll call you.” I turne
d to go, feeling my limbs go to that achy, numb place they went when I crawled deep inside myself.

  “I’d...I’d like to come to your skating show.”

  I stopped, but kept my back to him. My knees shook and tears threatened to spill over again. “Whatever. It’s a free country.”

  Inside my head, a voice screamed. Leave me alone. Don’t do this to me. Not now while everything is such a mess. But in a dark corner, a little girl stood trembling, wishing her father would take her in his arms and make everything all better.

  Chapter 27

  I slept like crap that night, dreaming of vultures pecking out the eyes of little children, of skating on a pond and breaking through the ice, my skates pulling me under the frigid dark water. It wasn’t the first time I had dreamt of the ice beneath me giving way, but I pushed the fear and dread aside as I dressed for my day. I threw on a sweatshirt over my tee shirt and jeans, chilled by the mid-September change of season in New England. The leaves on the trees were already turning yellow, a sign that it wouldn’t be long before the browns and grays of winter would take hold.

  The morning sickness had been replaced by a ravenous hunger that felt foreign, as if my stomach had a mind of its own. Betrayed, I choked down toast with peanut butter and a glass of milk, and met Sami in the driveway. We planned to cut school and she was driving me to the clinic—at the same hospital where my mother lay dying.

  Sami shifted the old pick-up into fifth gear once she settled onto the highway. A Volkswagen Jetta zoomed past us. “Those are kinda cool,” she said.

  Lost in thought, I didn’t respond.

  “I almost have enough money saved up for a car. Shopping on Auto trader and e-bay, you can get some good deals.”

  I stared out the window watching farm land and cows go by. Sami turned the radio down. “What’s up? Are you nervous about the procedure? Ya’ know; it wasn’t that bad.”