“I’m outta here,” Randi said. “Just like, take care of shit, will ya? I mean, God. That’s all I wanted, after all. I wrote that letter for a reason. Duh!” She flicked her hair behind her shoulder, put her hands on her hips, and gave him one last look. “Jeez, Dan. Get on with it. Like you did ten years ago. Move. Just get on with it. Take care of your son.”
As she walked away, he thought to wave, but she was already gone, and the only thing left was Avery in his lap. Not Randi. Not the past, but the future. Closing his eyes, he hugged Avery back, the room still again, the stars gone, his breath deep and slow.
FIVE
Monday morning while Dan was in the shower, Avery went into the kitchen and grabbed the portable phone. Her old boss Brody Chovanes was bound to be in the office early after a holiday weekend, ready to pounce when other people took off the week following the Fourth. As she dialed his number, her hands stiff and cold in the sealed air-conditioned air, she could see him sitting at his desk, pressing through his contacts on his Blackberry, searching for the one person who would land him an account. Today. And he would.
Back when she worked with him, she loved the mornings as much as he did, knowing that when a vice president in charge of technology wanted change, he or she wanted it fast. All week, while Lanny was working on specs and packaging with the staff, Avery would be organizing a Power Point presentation that would dazzle even the most stolid accountant. Meanwhile, Brody was visiting the site, charming the client, making promises Avery knew they could keep. In the afternoons, they would all confer about the deal, the excitement building as they continued organizing over dinner at Andres. At ten, Avery would straggle home, her calves aching from her high heels, the small of her back tense, Dan already asleep.
But by Friday, if the sales meeting went well, the client nodding and clapping and shaking their hands, they’d won. How sweet a Friday evening after that! How wonderful the weekend. But by Monday morning, they were back at it.
Even as she waited for the voice mail system that would eventually allow her to press in Brody’s extension, she could feel the old excitement, the one she’d traded in to have the baby. By watching Valerie, she knew that a baby didn’t provide the rollercoaster of the workweek, the flush of adrenaline during negotiation, the thrill of the sale. Being a mother was a long, slow day, full of sleepiness and dirty diapers and crying.
That life wasn’t for her, she knew that now. It wasn’t what she would have. It wasn’t what she was allowed.
“Brody! It’s Avery.”
“Avery! My God, woman, why are you calling? Aren’t you supposed to be doing the housewife thing? Shouldn’t you be scrubbing the sink with Comet? No, wait. You should be at the club working on those thighs. Are you fat yet?”
“You ass!” Avery felt herself smile, from her mouth down into her chest, her muscles letting go just a little. “I should sue you for something. Maybe for being an idiot.”
“Too late. Alix already has that lawsuit covered. I’m surprised we’re still married.”
“It’s only a matter of time before some office assistant nails you,” she said. “And then, wham, you’ll be out. Way, way out. And guess who they’ll hire? Guess who really knows how to play the game?”
“Right. Like you want to be here. Soon you’ll be knee-deep in kids. So, what’s up?”
Avery looked over her shoulder, paused, heard the shower echo down the hall. “I want my job back.”
For an instant, Brody was still, the hum of his computer in her ear, but before she could say anything else, he said, “Fine. I’ll just fire Lanny.”
“You know that’s not what I meant. Well, sure, I’d like my exact job back, but really, I’ll do anything.”
“But,” Brody said, his voice soft, “what about the baby?”
Don’t think about it, she thought, swallowing down her sad story. And even if she did tell Brody, she wouldn’t be able to finish it because neither she nor Dan knew how it would end. She held the phone between her jaw and shoulder and wrapped her arms around her chest. “It’s not going to happen right now. And I want to come back. So are you sure you won’t fire Lanny?”
“Lunch. Tomorrow. Twelve?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Wear a short skirt, or I’m not hiring you back.”
“If you show up in your underwear, it’s a deal.”
Avery hung up and looked back over her shoulder again. Dan had finished his shower, and now she could hear him walking around in the room, opening and closing dresser drawers. He’d called in sick at work, and she’d promised to come with him to the doctor and then to see the Contra Costa County social worker, the one Midori Nolan had referred them to.
“I guess we’ll learn more about him. Daniel,” Dan had said last night in the voice he’d seemed to develop since all the phone calls, light, sad, and stuck in his body. Avery bit her cheek every time he spoke. She wanted to shake him and yank his voice out of him. She wanted to shout, “Stop feeling so fucking sorry for yourself! What about our baby? What about what I wanted?” But when she saw his dark, full eyes, she couldn’t say a thing. When she saw his eyes, she imagined the boy’s, his eyes wide in the empty trailer as he listened to the wail of the ambulance taking his mother away. She felt him in the way she’d felt herself sitting in the waiting room of the hospital as her father’s blood slowly stilled.
After the dinner at Luis and Valerie’s, Avery had gone out only to work out or go to the grocery store, ignoring Val’s and Isabel’s phone calls. She and Dan had taken the rest of the baby clothes and furniture out of the nursery, cleaned the rest of the house, and eaten silent meals together at the table. At night, she listened to him fall asleep and kept on her side of the bed, fearing his unconscious touch, a circling arm, a searching thigh. If he touched her, she imagined he might suck her dry, like the terrible monster on the Star Trek rerun on Channel 44 she’d watched as a child.
During the long afternoons after school when their mother slept, Loren and Avery would sit on the couch on the den and watch Partridge Family, Little Rascals, The Three Stooges, and The Brady Bunch reruns. In this one Star Trek episode, the monster could change into a pleasing shape—a trusted friend, a devoted wife—but when the sad Enterprise officers got too close, it placed its greedy sucker-pad fingers on their bodies and slurped up every last bit of juice, leaving nothing but fluttering skin and bone.
She couldn’t do more than she was doing, every minute the new story flashing through her head: Husband finds Child, Plans for Baby Scraped. As she emptied the dishwasher, worked out on the Stairmaster, shopped at Safeway, she thought of Daniel, of Randi, of an eight-year love affair Dan had never told her about. How? She thought as she lay next to him, listening to his sleeping noises. What else don’t I know? Even though Dan had promised he’d told her everything, she held herself back, away, knowing that one more thing would knock one of them loose, send someone running from the house. Alone and for good. The less time she spent here, turning the corners of her house that suddenly seemed different, the more opportunity she had to think about Dan’s past. That’s why she had called Brody.
“Are you ready?” Avery jumped and turned to face Dan. He’d put on a suit and tie as if he were going to work and not to talk with a stranger about a boy who may or may not be his; all dressed up to have cells carefully scraped from the inside of his cheek. If they had to test her, Avery thought, there would be no cells left, just grooves all along her mouth from her teeth.
“Sure. Yeah.” She smiled slightly, feeling how hard she had to work to make her muscles pull up the corners of her lip. Looking briefly in Dan’s eyes, she let her gaze fall to his tie, the one she’d bought at Nordstrom only last week, before any of this had happened.
“Okay. Let’s go then.” He cocked his head, trying to find her gaze. She breathed in and looked up, let herself be taken in, seen, without looking away.
“Are you okay?”
At his question, she dropped her eyes. “Yeah
. Let’s go.” She picked up her purse and put it on her shoulder.
He opened the door to the garage for her, and she pressed the opener. “Were you on the phone? I thought I heard you talking to someone.”
Opening the Lexus’ passenger door, she slipped into the leather seat. “Oh, it was someone from the damn United Bank,” she said, putting on her seatbelt. “Nothing really.”
After providing the DNA sample as well as two glass tubes of blood—for disease? Avery wondered but didn’t ask—they went to the Contra Costa County social services department and waited in a bright, noisy waiting room on plastic aqua chairs. Avery crossed her legs, jiggling her foot, and Dan sat with his elbows on his knees, seeming to find the white flecked linoleum interesting. Rather than watch the way he creased his forehead and rubbed his hair back periodically, talking slightly under his breath, she watched a mother and son arguing in a corner.
“You can’t tell him about your daddy coming over. What did I tell you? What did I say?” The mother jerked her purse strap up on her shoulder.
The boy, who seemed to be about twelve, had a green and gold A’s cap pulled down almost to his nose. He kicked at the legs of the chair in front of him. “So?”
“Now think about what’s going to happen. God dammit!” She squeezed an empty pack of cigarettes, the wrapping crinkling in her hand.
“I don’t care.” The boy pulled his cap down even further, and the mother slammed back in the chair and looked up at Avery.
“Going to be the death of me,” she said and then turned to stare at the long line of people inching toward the clerks behind the counter.
The death of you, Avery thought. There it was again, a mother who didn’t appreciate her child. For two years—really her whole life—Avery had wanted her own child. Just last week, she would have done anything to have a part of her and Dan brought forth into this life. How she would have cherished that child! How she would have loved it, whatever its sex, whatever its health. Of course, it wasn’t fair that there were mothers like this woman or like Randi. Sure, it wasn’t fair there were kids like Daniel. But Avery shouldn’t have to be the one to fix Daniel’s life, amend Randi’s, clean up the ugly mess she’d made. And Dan. His mess, too. She didn’t want a damaged kid, a scared, scrawny boy in a baseball cap; she didn’t want some low-life mom’s leftovers.
“Mr. and Mrs. Tacconi?” Avery started and almost cried out, standing up awkwardly as Dan walked over to a man and held out his hand. She looked down at her pumps, breathing in slowly, trying to cool her red face, trying to think of something that wasn’t judgmental. Karma. She still needed good karma.
“I’m Dan. This,” he said, looking back, “is my wife Avery.”
“How are you? I’m Vince Brasch. Let’s go to my office.” Vince adjusted his pants around his thick waist and pointed toward the hall with his thumb.
Dan reached for her hand, but Avery pretended not to see it, fiddling with her purse strap and clipping along behind Vince, who led them down a bright, white hallway, offices with glass doors on either side, each filled with someone behind a desk and one, two, three people on the other side, papers between them. As if it could all be that easy, life messes arranged into words, sentences, paragraphs, checks sent out, custody agreed upon, work arranged. All they had to do was sign and leave, and poof! Magic. Trouble gone.
Ha, she wanted to blurt out. Ha! Do you know what happened to us? But she didn’t. She sat where Vince told her too, tucking her feet under her seat, waiting as he began to flip through a pile of folders and papers, the new story of their life.
Dan sat back and then leaned forward. “I don’t need a lawyer, do I?”
Vince looked up over his file. “A lawyer?”
“Yeah. I was thinking while we were waiting. I feel like there are legal things that are going to happen. Financial matters. Almost as if I need someone to advocate for me.”
“What do you mean?” Avery asked, cutting in. As she looked at Dan, the muscles in her back pulled tight. “Why on earth do you need someone advocating for you? You didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Whoa,” Vince said. “Let’s just start at the beginning. But first let me say that if this case proceeds as I think it will, yes, you will eventually need a lawyer.”
“Why? What are you saying?” Avery said.
Vince held up a thick hand. “For legal custody. For filing those papers. Formalities. Official documents. Custody. Support. Those kinds of things. But no, you don’t need an advocate. Not now.”
“Oh,” Avery whispered. She sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. Dan still leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, looking up at Vince, as if this heavy, overworked man could actually make sense of this tangled family. Family. Custody. She would have control of a child not her own. The work she would soon have again, her house, and her marriage would spin around a kid she had no investment in, except he was Dan’s. Or was probably Dan’s. But because he was Dan’s meant she should be invested, unless there was something so sick and twisted inside her that she should never have a kid at all.
“Did—was there a will or something? Midori mentioned there were documents,” Dan said.
“Yes. Not a notarized will or trust, drawn by a lawyer, but a written document—a letter—specifying who should be notified at her death, who should care for Daniel. That kind of thing. She wrote that you were the father and there was no one else to care for the boy.”
“What about grandparents?” Avery asked. “I mean, other than Dan’s. Or aunts or uncles.”
“Aves. Come on.”
“I just want to know. Even if he lives with us, we will want to know who his family is.”
Vince sat back in his chair and pushed away from his desk, crossing his legs, his nylon pants shushing and slipping as he moved. “Randi had no living parents. Or siblings.”
“Randi didn’t have brothers or sisters,” Dan said. “But what happened to her parents?”
“I know the grandmother is deceased. I’m not sure what happened to the grandfather. Ms. Nolan will have that information.”
“You’re telling me that if Dan isn’t the father, there is not one single living relative who would want to take care of this boy?” Avery leaned forward, feeling her purse cut into her stomach. She pressed harder, liking the feel of the stiff leather against her clothes and skin, the hard press of the metal clasp. “And if Dan is the father, we are the absolute only place he could go? There’s no where else?”
“Other than foster care. The state system. There’s adoption, of course, but for a ten-year-old boy with some concerns, there’s not much likelihood of that.”
“Adoption,” Dan whispered. “Concerns.”
Avery ignored him, leaning in closer. “What are these concerns? These issues? What’s wrong with him?”
“Avery?” Dan said, sharply, turning to her, his eyes dark. She swallowed and wished she could suck back the questions, but there they hung, mean-spirited in the air.
“Let’s see.” Vince ran a hand through his thin blond hair. In a year, he’d be sporting pink scalp, Avery saw, his male-pattern baldness only covered by a thin layer of light hair. All the strange talks he must have with people like us, she thought, brought it on early.
“School-wise, he’s tested below grade every year,” Vince said. “He’s going into the fifth grade, and last year, he tested third grade in reading and spelling. Math was a little better. His teacher recommended testing for learning disabilities—dyslexia—but that wasn’t done. I don’t know if you know the term—IEP. Individual Education Program. The teacher and the special education teacher and the school administration get together and determine the best course of action for the child. Curriculum, goals, support. Maybe psychological support at the school, tutors, that kind of thing. When he starts school here—“ Vince paused and glanced at Avery. “When he starts a new school, that will have to be done. Right away.”
“Does that take long?”
/> Vince rubbed his nose and shrugged. “A couple of weeks. A month. The child is taken out for testing during school time. Then everyone meets and decides what the best plan is.”
Dan nodded. “We have a good friend, a neighbor, who’s a teacher. My friend Luis. He can give us some ideas. My brother’s a teacher, too. He’ll know about all this.” He looked at Avery and then added, “I mean, if Daniel’s mine.”
Avery wasn’t listening, remembering the class at the end of the hall at Pine Hollow Elementary, the room full of kids with braces and padded head gear, the kids who were dropped off in the special, smaller bus. The ones no one wanted to talk to or play with. Benny Roticelli, who sat on the bench and wished he could run with the other kids, but he had a huge dent in the side of his head and dragged one foot behind him. All the kids whispered that he was supposed to die really soon, and sometimes, Avery and her friends would watch him sit, as if expecting him to keel over right there during morning recess.
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