by Wendy Silk
I nodded at her, but I secretly still felt that there was something not quite right about what we’d just done. Not the sex, that wasn’t it. The sex was incredible. Doing it without a barrier between us felt wonderful. It was just that I wanted to treat her like a queen, always. I wanted to take care of her, and let her fully decide what she did with her body.
Maybe sometime in the future, we could have a family together. As I thought about it, I realized it was what I wanted more than anything in the world. God, a tiny Cici to hold in my arms. There would be nothing that I couldn’t handle if I had her and a baby in my life, making my heart larger every day.
But were we ready for that yet? I couldn’t silence the nagging feeling that I wasn’t sure.
Cici had rolled off me, and onto the chaise longue next to my chair. She still held my hand lightly as she arranged herself in a position where she could comfortably nap. “I’m just going to close my eyes for a moment, Tim. The sun feels so great out here. I forget every winter that we have these hot days to look forward to. Let’s just enjoy it together. We’ll talk about serious stuff afterwards.”
I couldn’t argue with her logic. As the warmth of the sun seeped into my skin, my body surrendered to the peace that came from what we’d just done together. That was the main thing. We were together.
It seemed like only a few minutes when something made us both start awake. The position of the sun low in the sky behind the fruit trees, however, told us that the afternoon was almost over. Cici sat up with a sudden movement. Gone was her easy, relaxed manner that had reminded me of a stretched-out cat. Now, she was rubbing her eyes and sitting straight up in her lounge chair.
“What was that?” Cici had assumed an entirely new manner. I’d never seen her so tense.
“Isn’t it just Kelly?”
She looked at me without answering. Her eyes were wide.
“What’s got you so upset?” I asked. “You know, Kelly, your housemate? So she’s home?” I ran my hands through my hair, brushing it out of my eyes. “I really don’t think she’s going to be all that shocked to see that we took a swim together.”
Cici stared at me, still not saying a word.
“Or even that we, you know, just had sex out here by the pool. Isn’t that what people do on dates sometimes?” I was trying to keep the mood light, but I couldn’t understand what had her so spooked.
Cici finally found her voice. “Tim, it’s that I didn’t tell you something.”
“You did. It’s ok. Did you have a dream or something that’s gotten you confused? Don’t you remember? You told me all about your sister and the car accident. It’s ok. I know all about it, and I understand.” She was chewing her lip as she watched me. Finally, it dawned on me that there was something I was missing. “Cici, I don’t get it. Was there something else you wanted to tell me?”
She took a long breath and opened her mouth. Just as she did, the back door of the house opened, and out came Kelly. She had an adorable little girl with her.
“Wait, I know her. That’s Maggie, from the daycare.” I felt foolish admitting that I’d learned the names of all the kids that Donna watched. I was supposed to be this macho guy, over there solely to work on my construction job, but I genuinely liked the kids. I wouldn’t have told anybody else, but I enjoyed seeing them every day I worked there. Maggie was my favorite, with her alert, sweet personality, and her bright eyes.
“Yes,” Cici said slowly. “It is.”
As I watched Kelly walk across the deck, holding the little toddler’s hand, something began to click for me. I was about to ask a question when Kelly spotted us. She looked worried, as if she hadn’t expected to see us there. She began to turn around, ready to scoop up the little girl and go back inside.
“Sorry!” Kelly called over to us. “I didn’t know you’d be here. Cici, didn’t you say four o’clock?” She sounded like she’d just been caught in a mistake, and I was starting to think I knew what it was.
Cici spoke in a strangely resolute voice. “Yes, I did. You’re ok, Kelly. It’s my fault. We fell asleep, and time got away from us. Do you want to come over here and introduce her to Tim?”
Kelly looked like she wasn’t sure if she should, but she followed Cici’s instructions. She picked up little one-year-old Maggie, and walked over to us.
As she approached, I felt that everything was becoming clear to me.
“Cici, why didn’t you tell me? I didn’t know that Kelly had a baby. So that’s why you come by the daycare all the time? You’re helping Kelly pick up her little one?”
Cici looked at me with a mixture of scathing exasperation and desperate worry. Just as she opened her mouth to answer, the little girl wriggled down from Kelly’s arms and lurched unsteadily over to us.
She held her arms up to Cici and spoke in a bell-like, clear voice.
“Mama! Mama!”
Cici reached forward with the most natural gesture I’d ever seen, and picked up her daughter. She hugged her tightly and kissed her wispy hair. Holy shit. Maggie wasn’t Kelly’s kid. No, I had gotten that wrong. That was why Cici had just looked at me like I was a dunce. She was Cici’s daughter.
Cici had a baby.
As I watched the woman I loved, I began to understand a whole new facet of her. She was so much more than I had known. The softness in her face as she held her little girl was like a rainbow peeking out from the clouds that had been Cici’s burdens in her earlier life. She was so happy, so at peace when she was in the role of mother.
I knew I would support her in every way I could. Sure, it was a problem for me that she’d never told me about her little girl. That was almost an insult to me; did she think I wouldn’t stick around if I knew she had a child? But we’d work through it, I was sure of it.
Then, when Maggie turned her round little face to look at me, and I looked, truly looked, at the bright blue eyes that I saw in my own mirror every morning, I felt my heart sink into a swirl of emotions that I couldn’t even begin to identify..
Well, damn. It wasn’t just Cici who had a baby.
Maggie was ours.
Chapter 18: Cici
All I could do as I watched him stand up and stride angrily away from me was to shout his name.
“Tim! Tim!” My voice was a strangled squeak as I tried to get him to stop walking away, but he didn’t turn around. He didn’t even acknowledge that he heard me, although I knew he did. I sat as still as I could on my pool chair, as if I could somehow rewind the last few minutes and make it happen differently.
I’d meant to tell him. I’d been just about to tell him. As I tried to assuage my panic with these thoughts, however, I realized that there was never a moment when I could have said the words. If I knew what to say, I would have done it already.
What did I think I was going to tell him? “Um, Tim, by the way, we have a child together, and I’ve kept her from you even while we’ve been dating.” Was that it? Or maybe something like, “Tim, I’ve been lying the whole time we’ve been seeing each other and also for the last two years by not telling you the most important thing that ever happened to you.”
Or here was the real kicker. “Tim, I’ve kept Maggie a secret from you because I was worried it would be too hard to share her with you. I’m used to thinking of her as mine.”
Shit, this business of telling the truth hurt.
And I was only doing it in my head so far, not aloud to Tim.
I hugged Maggie to me and I got up as quickly as I could without scaring her. I was certain that he’d left already, but I might as well see if I could catch him. I almost passed by Kelly with just a reassuring smile, but then I stopped, feeling honor bound to tell her too. “It’s ok, Kelly. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m the one that got the time wrong; we fell asleep.”
“Yeah, I can see that. Cici, I’m so, so sorry. You must think I did it on purpose because I’ve bugged you so many times about Tim. Please don’t think I would ever do that. I know how hard you worked to kee
p Maggie a secret from him.”
“I worked way too hard on that,” I answered. “It got to the point where it didn’t even make any sense. The secret was going to come out by accident somehow; this is too small a town for it not to. I think I was just waiting for somebody else to tell him about her instead of me.”
“But why is it such a big deal? Lots of women have little ones, and then they go on to meet the right man. I don’t understand.” Kelly’s face was puzzled as she watched me, waiting for answers.
“Oh, Kelly, you don’t understand. You know how you’re always saying that Tim and I got serious too fast, that we haven’t known each other long enough?”
She nodded. “Yeah, you just met this summer. I stand by that, but you’re right that it isn’t really my business.”
“No, it is. You were there the first time we met, too. Remember back at Billy’s bar? That night I took somebody home with me?”
Kelly went pale. “Yes, of course I do. You never took guys home with you. Then he disappeared and you were so down about it, for the longest time. It was Tim, wasn’t it?”
I nodded mutely.
She went on. “And then when you told me you were pregnant with Maggie, which of course I already knew because I could spot the signs on you a mile away...I mean, really, who throws up every morning for a week, and then tries to say it’s just something she ate?” She cleared her throat and continued. “So when I knew you were pregnant, of course I guessed it was that guy. I felt so sorry for you because I knew you were hung up on him and he’d vanished.” She shot me a look of total understanding, and we both said the words at the same time.
“It was Tim.”
I was exhausted from explaining it to Kelly. How was I going to manage having this conversation with Tim. On the other hand, how would I go on in my life if he never wanted to have it? What if he really disappeared for good this time, and he didn’t want to hear my side of it? My heart sank as I had to confront the reality that he might not want to have anything to do with either me or Maggie from here on out.
I stepped past Kelly with a sad smile. “I’m going to go nurse Miss Mags. I don’t know if he’s coming back.”
She called lightly after me as I walked into the house. “He will...I know he will.”
I went straight through the kitchen and the front of the house, and left again through the front door. All I could think of was the comfort of my dad’s garden. Once I’d passed through the wafting scents of roses and larkspur, I settled myself on the stone bench, now in the afternoon shadows. It smelled like a wonderful, peaceful haven out here.
I hoisted Maggie into a new position on my lap, and began to nurse her. Although she nursed less frequently these days, allowing me to spend more consecutive hours working on the business, she still loved it when I offered. She looked up at me, with her sweet eyes meeting mine. I brushed the wisps of hair away from her forehead and whispered to her. “How much about this do you understand, dear one? Do you know who your father is?”
A gruff throat clearing noise made me startle and look away from Maggie’s cherub face. As I’d expected when I heard it, it was Tim. He’d come back.
“Cici, I didn’t even make it all the way to the corner shop. I left, I banged my way out of your garden gate, but I had to come back. I had to ask you to tell me for real. Tell me what happened.” His words were coming too fast, as he sought to make sense of it. “How did it happen?”
I’d started to smile when he materialized in front of me. Perhaps there would be the tiniest sliver of hope for me. He was back, wanting to talk. It must mean that there could be a way out of this mess for us.
I couldn’t help but try a light hand in answering his question. He’d gone right to the practicalities of conception, which were the least important part of it now. Now that we had a living, breathing toddler who was sitting in my lap, twirling my hair.
“Tim, it happened the way it usually happens,” I aimed for a bantering tone. “We used condoms, I know we did. But we just did it a lot of times, and there must have been some way that…”
His lips parted slowly as he tried to formulate a response to this information he was still assimilating. “You’re right,” he spoke faintly. “I’m sure it was my fault. The condoms weren’t that...new. I guess I’d had them for a while. I never meant to do that to you.” Then, as if he was hearing himself say the words long after he’d thought them, he continued. “No, wait a minute. You can’t seriously have me apologizing to you right now. I mean, yes, I’m sorry that it happened, but…”
I’d wondered if we were going to be ok, right up to that point. Then I realized that we weren’t yet on the same page. I couldn’t allow him to say that. “Tim, I’m not sorry it happened. Look at her. She’s perfect.”
He fell silent and studied my darling Maggie. His heart was right there in his eyes as he took in the utter rightness of her. Would that be enough to help us through this moment? When he drew breath to speak again, I thought he might be willing to forgive me.
But when I heard the tone of his voice, I recoiled.
He wasn’t back here to try to connect with me, or ask me any loving questions about what it had been like for me. No, he was furious.
He was fist-clenchingly, blazing-eyed angry at me.
“Tell me, Cici. Tell me the truth. If you even know how to do that.”
I sat back on the bench, trying to edge away from him. My hands reflexively reached around Maggie to hold her tighter. “Tim, please. I’ve been trying to tell you all this time, I swear I have.” My voice sounded spindly and weak, even to my own ears. “I just didn’t know what to say.”
“You’ve been trying?” His words were clipped and even. “You mean that when we were taking long walks together, when we were kissing each other oh so romantically, when we were...fucking?”
I flinched at how he made it sound. I knew he loved me. Or he had loved me, at one time.
“All those times we were together,” he continued. “You were never able to tell me that I had a daughter? That I’m a father?”
“Tim, I...I just don’t know what to say. I couldn’t find you back in Texas, when I was pregnant. I looked for you, believe me. But you’d just disappeared. I thought I’d never see you again. It was hard, but I got used to the idea that it was going to be just me and Maggie.”
His lips compressed as he listened to me.
“Then, when I saw you up on that ladder at the hotel…”
“You mean you saw me before the day at the shop? You already knew I was in Blue Shore?” His eyes were steelier than ever.
“Well, yes, I did, but…”
“So you’re telling me that you knew everything, that you were aware I was in town before I even chased you, followed you home. But you were never going to stop me and tell me about her.”
“No, I wasn’t.” I couldn’t help it; the bald truth just slipped out from between my lips. “Tim, I wasn’t going to tell you at first because I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. Then all this happened between us, and it got...even more confusing.”
His eyes sparked at me. “Because you found out that I’d been in prison?”
I drew back at his tone. “That wasn’t how I was going to put it. But, yes, it’s true.” Finally, my own secrets were coming out, even the deepest ones that had been hidden from myself. The truth was that I hadn’t wanted to share her. And the worse truth, the one that lay even deeper underneath that one, was that I was worried that Tim would be a bad father.
She’d have a criminal for a father.
Tim was watching me closely, and his face blanched as he read my thoughts. Everybody had always told me that my emotions appeared as clear as day on my face, and there was never a time that I wished more than now that it wasn’t the case. But he’d seen. He knew exactly what I’d thought, as plainly as if I’d said it aloud, or skywritten it above us.
“Cici, I can’t believe you.” Tim’s voice was like nothing I’d ever heard, or hoped
to hear again. His anger was evaporating as quickly as it had come on him. In its place was a mask of something I couldn’t quite grasp, but I regretted it deeply. I’d hurt him in so many ways.
“Tim, I’m sorry. Can we start again? Please?” Maggie was no longer nursing. The tension of our conversation had passed along to her, so that she was sitting up straight in my lap and looking warily at us both. She wasn’t exactly upset, but she could tell something important was happening.
Tim’s gaze settled on her again. His eyes drank her in, as if he wanted to learn everything about her. As if he wanted to memorize her features, and her smoothness, and her soft baby colors. He wanted to know her like I did, and he knew he never could.
I hadn’t meant to take that away from him. I’d withheld so much from him. I didn’t know which of us was in more pain right now, or which deserved it more. But when he spoke his next words, I knew it was me, on both counts.
“No, Cecily. We can’t start again. Sometimes you can’t.” He took another long look at Maggie. I realized with despair that he was trying to fix her in his memory before he left.
And then it happened. He turned on his heel and walked right out of my life.
Chapter 19: Tim
I meant exactly what I said to Cici. I kept repeating it in my head, as I stomped down the sidewalk through the lengthening evening shadows, toward the corner shop and the little apartment I called home.
Sometimes, you can’t start again.
I’d known this all my life. It hadn’t stopped me from trying, but I knew it for a fact. You could try to fix things, but it never worked. It hadn’t helped my mother when she tried to marry a second time, after my birth dad left her penniless and pregnant. She’d married my stepfather and simply fallen from the frying pan into the fire. Instead of being the respectable single mother she could have been, living in a tiny apartment not unlike the one I slept in now, she became a tired, stringy woman whose efforts to improve her life couldn’t keep up with the number of black eyes my stepfather gave her.