“So, Avery’s not happy? You said ‘think so.’” Bret tapped his pencil on his yellow legal pad.
“It’s hard to tell.”
“And Daniel has been home how many days?”
“Eight. The first day was theoretically a visit. They couldn’t just give him to me. To us. But Midori pushed everything through the following Monday, and he’s home.” Dan was almost panting, this sentence requiring too much air.
“And Avery’s back at work.”
“Yes.”
“And you took that paternity leave? Like we discussed.”
“Yes,” Dan said. On Daniel’s first day home, Dan had called Isabel after Avery had left the house and asked her to come over to baby-sit. Then he’d driven to work and sat down with Steve and told him the whole story, beginning to end. Afterward, he’d requested his six weeks of paid paternity leave, a benefit he’d never really considered using, not even when Avery was trying so hard to conceive. So he wasn’t surprised when Avery stared at him, her mouth open slightly, her face reddening, when he told her what he’d done.
“What?” she’d said. “No one really takes that.”
“I have to. Who’s going to take care of Daniel if I don’t? I’ll have enough time to get him ready for school and then keep an eye out the first few days of school if there’s trouble. It’s the perfect solution.”
Avery shook her head, her lip trembling. “I suppose you think I should stay home. That’s what you wanted. I told you I wouldn’t!”
Dan had looked over his shoulder, not wanting Daniel to hear any of this. Lowering his voice in hopes that Avery would get the hint, he said, “I know. I’m not saying you should now. But I am.”
“But what will they think of you at work?” Avery said just as loudly. “I know they give paternity leave, but no one on track takes it. You’ll never get that promotion. Steve will definitely give it to someone else.”
“I don’t care,” he’d said. “Not now.”
“And,” she said, almost snorting. “You told him about everything? What were you thinking? How could you let Steve know what happened?”
“I had to, Avery. I can’t pretend any more. It’s too late for that.”
Avery pushed her hair away from her face, pulling it back in an imaginary ponytail, and then let it fall back to her shoulders. She tapped the kitchen counter with her fingers. “I’m not Mother Teresa, Dan.”
“I don’t want you to be.”
“Yes you do. You want me to be someone else! Someone who’s nice. I’m not nice, Dan. You don’t see me adopting twenty special needs kids, do you? I don’t know what you want from me.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“I’m not the kind of person who can do this! You’re not the kind of person who should be on paternity leave. You weren’t going to take it when we were going to have a real kid. Our kid.”
Avery crossed her arms, pressing against her chest, tears in her eyes. They had stared at each other until they heard the footsteps, the soft, small kind trying not to be heard. The kind going backwards, away from what was painful.
“Shit,” Avery said. She glared at him, her eyes the blue of the fake frozen block at the bottom of the Igloo cooler. “I’m going to bed.” She brushed by him and went to their room. Dan breathed in, his lungs so heavy they felt wet, and then went to go find Daniel. But when he got there, Daniel was under the blankets, the Spiderman nightlight on, his breathing slow and steady. He knows how to pretend, thought Dan. He’s just like me.
Dan crossed his right leg, his ankle hard on his left knee. He looked at Bret and sighed. It seemed to him that therapy would take forever. Two visits weren’t enough to get at all the stories, the ones involving Randi, his parents, Avery, and now Daniel. Midori was right to send him here, but maybe this wouldn’t work. Maybe he wouldn’t come back. He didn’t have time. If it weren’t for Isabel and Valerie watching Daniel for him, he wouldn’t be here now.
“So do you like being home?” Bret asked. Dan blinked, surprised by this easy question.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve been able to talk with Daniel a lot. He’s told me stories.”
“About what?”
“About his life. About Randi. What her life was like after—after me.”
“How does it feel to hear those stories?” Bret tapped his pencil a bit harder, onetwo, onetwo. The fountain outside spilled water onto rocks. Dan closed his eyes for a second, opening them to find Randi on the couch against the far wall, her legs crossed, one swinging a purple leather high heel sandal.
“Tell him,” she said. “Come on, big guy.”
Dan cleared his throat. “Daniel told me that at the end of the month when they ran out of money, Randi would go at night to a peach orchard, pick a basket, and then sell them on her corner. Made a sign and everything.”
“Tell him what I bought with the money, Danny,” she said, rubbing her hands over her black nylons, adjusting her sandal strap.
“Daniel said she would buy him a bag of candy and a hamburger at Burger King.”
“Is that all she bought?”
Dan looked at the couch, but Randi wouldn’t look up. She clacked her gum and pulled a dark curl with her forefinger.
“He said she also would buy drugs. Even when she was really sick. It turns out she died of pancreatitis and something with her liver. I didn’t even know what that was. Daniel said she was yellow at the end.”
“For crying out loud, Danny.” Randi stood up and adjusted her leather skirt. “Did you have to tell him that? Jee-sus. I’m outta here.”
“How does Daniel feel talking about his mother?”
Dan watched as Randi tippled to the door in her high heels, her shoulders white and smooth in her skinny-strapped shirt. “You better change your tune, Danny. Or I’m not coming back.” The door opened and slammed. Dan jumped.
“Dan?” Bret stared, looking over his shoulder.
“He tells me at bed time. When he’s tired. Sometimes he cries. During the day he’s pretty quiet. He watches everyone. Even me. I keep thinking he imagines it’s all going to disappear. I don’t know what will happen when he goes to school.”
Bret glanced at the clock on the shelf behind Dan’s head. “How do you feel when he tells you about Randi?”
Breathing in deeply, Dan could still smell Randi’s Charlie perfume, the amber, fruity smell of the Long’s Drugs aisle where she would slip boxes of cologne, perfume, and after bath splash into her coat pockets. An ache of old tears pulled at his throat. “Not good. I just left her, Bret. She was on her own. I didn’t even call. How can I tell my son that? How can I tell him that his mother died because of me?”
“Would you have done anything differently? Really? Didn’t you have to get out of there? Wasn’t that life toxic for you?”
“But I could have helped her.”
“Sometimes, Dan, the only person you can help is yourself.” As he stared at Bret, Dan heard Avery saying, “I’m not Mother Teresa.” Maybe Bret was right. No one really was always good, not even Mother Teresa. Nobody did everything possible. But for his boy? Randi? No matter what Bret said, Dan knew he could have done something. One small thing.
“We’re almost out of time. But I want to know if you’ve talked to your parents.”
Dan scooted forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees. “Not yet. Jared’s come over. But we decided to wait until Daniel is more settled to bring anyone else in.”
“Who’s we? You and Avery?”
“No. Jared and I. We decided. Avery didn’t have anything to—she didn’t have an opinion.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “Daniel’s already met Isabel and Avery and our good friends next door. I think he’s kind of overwhelmed.” Even though this was the truth, Dan felt the words as slick on his tongue as a lie. He was scared to call Marian and Bill. If Jared told him to wait, he would wait. As long as he could.
That night, before Avery came home from
work and long after dinner, Dan sat in a chair next to Daniel’s bed, holding Julie of the Wolves—the book Luis had recommended—in his hands, reading aloud. Daniel looked up at him, his face blank, taking in the story of young Miyax who runs away from home and ends up lost in the Alaskan wilderness. They’d finally gotten to the part where Miyax was accepted into a pack of wolves, and even though he knew Luis would never have recommended irony along with words, Dan couldn’t help but think that Daniel was in exactly the same situation, only in this house, there was an alpha female who barred her teeth at anything that came too close, even the alpha male.
As he read, adding character to Miyax’s thoughts with high and low intonation, Dan tried to remember if his parents had read to him past the picture book stage. Sure, he could still envision Where the Wild Things Are and Green Eggs and Ham. But later? Nothing. He and Jared read comic books with flashlights in their dark bedroom, trying to stay as quiet as possible so that Bill wouldn’t push open the door and yell something about lights out. And it wasn’t until college that he’d picked up a book, a novel, and then it was only because he had to read Catch-22 or A Hundred Years of Solitude for a required English class. Maybe it wasn’t too late for Daniel to like words, to use them to forget what had been real.
“Dan?” Daniel was all eyes peeking from under the blanket. “Dad?”
Dan put his thumb on the page and looked up, his mouth open, his eyes smarting. Dad. Dad. He cleared his throat and said softly, “Yeah?”
“Am I here for like good? I mean, will I have to move again? Will I have to go back to the Adam’s?”
Leaning back against the chair, Dan closed the book on his thumb. Miyax’s somber face stared at him from the cover. “No. This is where you live now, Daniel. Midori and Vince Bausch and making sure all the papers are in order. Everything’s just about set.”
“But she doesn’t like me.”
“Who? Midori? Of course she does.”
Daniel shook his head on the pillow, the reading light picking up the red in his hair. Randi’s red. The red that snaked through her brown curls. “No, not, like, her. I mean your wife. She’s hecka mad.”
Dan’s mouth puffed full of denials and cover-ups, but then he pressed the false sounds out and nodded. “She is. She’s really mad.”
“Why? I didn’t do anything to her.” Daniel sat up and leaned against the headboard. “I don’t even know her.”
“It’s not about you, Daniel. It’s me. I didn’t tell her some things I should have.”
“Like what?”
Dan put the book down on the nightstand and rubbed his face with both hands. What would have happened if his parents had told him the truth when he’d asked questions? His parents had fought behind their bedroom door, his mother running out of the room and down the hall, her eyes red. For the rest of day after a fight, Bill sat in his favorite living room chair watching a ball game or car races or the golf channel. If his mother had said, “I wanted to take you two boys to visit my parents for two weeks and your father said ‘no,’” would Dan have been damaged beyond repair? Why did parents want to hold life away from their children? All it did was make it more frightening when things did happen, childhood slamming against adolescence, truths falling like dead bodies to the ground.
“I never told her the story about your mom. That we were a couple. How we met. All of that.”
“How did you meet my mom?” Daniel asked, crossing his arms across his thin chest.
Dan smiled. “I met her during Freshman Orientation. The very first day of high school. She was sitting in the middle of the quad with some friends. And I said to my friend Tim, ‘Look at her.’”
“Was she pretty?”
Dan looked over at the picture of the blonde actress Daniel had immediately put on his mirror. “It was 1984, so styles were different. She had this big—“ Dan put his hands on top of his imaginary hairstyle and patted it “hair. Big hair. But it was dark and curly, and she was thin. Not skinny. Thin.”
“Kids call me skinny. The other boys at the Adam’s called me ‘Bone Boy.’”
“Listen,” Dan said, rubbing his stomach. “You’ll be glad you pulled from that side of the family later on. Trust me.”
“What do you mean? Who else is there?”
“My parents. Your . . . grandparents.”
“Did they like my mom?”
Again, the easy lie bloomed in his mouth. How much easier it would be to say, “Oh, they adored her. My mother and she went shopping together. Your mom learned all my mom’s recipes. My mother’s one best wish was that Randi and I had kids. Wait until they meet you! It’s Grandma’s dream come true.” But it would take what? Another day? A week? before Daniel would see the lie for what it was. There would be no spontaneous, joyous reunion with Bill and Marian. Nothing like the picture postcard Dan’s lie would create.
“They didn’t like us together. They didn’t like us as a couple. We did some things that made them mad. I guess you could say they are still mad at me because of them.”
“What did you do that made them mad?” Daniel asked.
Looking around the room he, Val, Isabel, and Luis had put together, Dan sighed. The truth, a language he learned in college. “Do you know how your mom died?”
“Midori told me it was her blood. A disease in her blood that was bad for her insides.”
“Do you know how someone gets that disease?” Dan asked, hoping Daniel would nod, and the conversation could move quickly toward its end. But he didn’t, shrugging, his shoulders up to his ears.
“Well, you can get it—its called Hepatitis C—from blood.”
“Oh, sort of like AIDS?” Daniel said. “We learned about that in school. A lady came in to talk with us about it.”
“Oh? Well, yeah. Just like AIDS.”
“So, from another person. She got it from another person?”
“Maybe. Or from taking drugs with a needle.”
Daniel thought, his eyes looking toward the nightstand and the book. He blinked and then looked up at Dan. “Okay.”
“You know about that?”
Daniel adjusted his legs under the covers and picked at an imaginary scab on his arm.
“You know what I’m talking about then?”
“So why haven’t your parents come to meet me?”
Dan sighed, exhausted. He’d forgotten how children talked, asking what was true and close to the bone, words like the sharpest knife filleting away the bullshit. He hadn’t been around Loren’s kids enough recently, Avery turning down dinner offers because children in general made her crave the baby that wouldn’t grow inside her. When had he himself changed from a kid like Daniel to the young man who stole from his parents? When had the truth disappeared into a fog of lies that swirled so tight around him and Randi, Dan saw only shadows?
“Well, I haven’t told them yet. I thought—we thought. . . Your uncle Jared and I thought,” Dan said, thinking of Bret Parish and how he made Dan clarify everything, “that you’d met enough people this week. You will meet them. I promise.”
“If they didn’t like my mom, I don’t like them.”
Dan nodded. Just as well. Fine. But unrealistic. Somehow, he’d have to make that meeting work.
“Did you ever meet your other grandfather? I know your mom’s mom died.”
“At little. He’d come over sometimes. But then Mom said that he’d ‘hightailed it away from hell’.”
Dan hid a laugh. “Oh.”
“That’s what she said, anyway.” Daniel looked down. “Hell isn’t a bad word here, is it?”
Picking up the book again, he smiled. “No, it’s not. More?”
Daniel shrugged but looked up expectantly, and Dan continued reading. Outside, the light shifted from light gray to black, houses lighting up, darkness settling on the neighborhood. As he turned the page, he swallowed, realizing that for the first time, this house held a family, parents and a child, like all the other houses.
That night around el
even, Dan startled awake, staring at the ceiling, his ears taking in the round, dark sounds of the house. There! Kitchen counter. Keys. Avery. She was just getting home, putting her things on the kitchen counter, filling a glass with water once, twice. She was thirsty. Did that mean she’d been drinking? She’d called at seven to say she had a dinner meeting with Brody, Lanny, and someone from that accounting firm in St. Louis, but before when she was working, she didn’t drink at those meetings. “Alcohol doesn’t help in business,” she’d said. “It only gives everyone a headache.”
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