He felt her misgivings. He knew it was taxing her, having so many details hanging out in the breeze. She’d want to nail down every one.
“You could have just eliminated the trip to see me. But I’m glad you did.” He watched her blush and shy smile, something he’d always love.
“I had to do that.” And then, “But you’re right, Damon. I’ve just got to embrace the rush. Keep my head on straight.”
Damon knew she was nervous but would never admit it. That was probably weighing on her as well. Ever the over-achiever, Martel had lists for everything and loved checking things off. She used big sticky notes on her wall for making project lists, like she was running a whole SEAL Team. It was kind of amusing to watch. But that’s what made her such a good teacher, he noted.
As they pulled into the short-term parking area, he stopped the car and turned to her. People passed the car, traveling back and forth, bearing luggage and armfuls of carryon bags while the two of them sat in silence. “Martel, you’re going to do just fine. Don’t worry about anything. No way to know how it’s going to turn out, so just be okay with it however it does. Don’t beat yourself up if it goes—differently.”
He didn’t want to put a negative connotation on it but needed to bring it up.
“But call me, okay? I don’t want you stewing about something.”
She gave him a timid smile. “Thanks. I do like planning everything out, don’t I?”
He rolled his eyes and fanned his face with his fingers. “You think? Just know you can’t control everything. On the teams, we plan for anything and everything and still it never goes the way we planned it. Never. There’s nothing you can do but just enjoy meeting her and doing what you came to do: telling her that she is loved. By both of us. Hopefully making it so we can see her again, maybe together. That’s all you can do.”
“You’re right. And we have a lot to be grateful for. The Newbergs have been wonderful. I want them to know that, too. It’s such a gift they’re even allowing me to see her.”
“You did that. You chose nice people, Martel. Give yourself credit. Now they’re treating you with the same respect you gave them.”
“I want to do it right.”
“You’ll do it your way, Martel. I have no doubt it will be right. Come on, let’s get you on the plane.”
He wheeled her bag to the ticket counter, stood with her while she got her boarding pass and checked her bag. Just outside the TSA checkpoint they sat for a glass of wine and a beer, holding hands. He watched as several young men, looking like new Navy recruits, passed by wearing backpacks, acting like he did when he first reported to base after the training in Great Lakes. They acted like kids on a football team. Excited, hiding their fears, trying to be a good friend to the guy on their right or left who was going through all the same jumble of emotions. Everyone wanted to be one of the ones who made it, not to have to report home and say they DORed. And yet, the odds were stacked against them. Always.
It would always be the same class after class. Wave after wave of strong young men pushing their limits.
He knew what he was going to do later on this afternoon after her plane took off.
“I’ll take pictures for you,” she mumbled, ringing the top of her wine glass with her finger.
“Did you bring pictures, of us?”
“I did. Got a nice one of us at Sunset Beach, with the salmon-colored sky in the background, too.” She smiled, removing her finger from the glass and folding her hands in her lap. “I brought pictures of my mom and dad, the house I grew up in. My dog. A picture of you from the yearbook I loved, the one in your basketball uniform. I’m standing next to you.”
“I remember that picture. We’d just won the championship.”
“You were the star. Always have been.” Her eyes were warm and filled with tears.
He took her hand in both of his. “Hey, what’s making you sad?”
“I’m worried about her questions.”
“Well, just be honest with her. That’s what we agreed, right?”
“What if I don’t have an answer for a question she asks? You know, what if she asks me one of those tough ones?”
He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “They’re all going to be tough questions. If they weren’t, she wouldn’t want to know anything about you. About us. And you’ll have to make that okay, if that happens, Martel. Be prepared that she won’t be that interested or scared to ask you anything. She’s only twelve. Shoot, I was afraid of my own shadow at twelve.”
Martel lay her head against him and thought about that for a bit. Then she slowly wound out of his arms and stood up, putting her computer bag strap over her shoulder. “I think it’s time.”
The long hug and even longer kiss didn’t calm her nerves. He felt her heart beating like it was going to run down the hallway and out into oncoming traffic. Her hands were shaking and a little cold. Her smile was chaste and not full. He loved her so much and more every day. What could he do to help her?
Only one thing he could do.
“Martel, I just want to say how damn lucky I am that you came back into my life after those years when I was such an idiot. Just remember you bring love to everything you do, honey. You make the world a better place just because you’re in it. Go bring her some of that sunshine. She’ll love meeting you. I hope she understands how lucky she is to have a person like you. Not everyone gets to have someone who loves them like you do. You can tell her from me, she and I, we are the lucky ones.”
Her eyes were weeping, but she smiled through her tears.
“Thank you, Damon. It’s all happening now. This is the big stuff, isn’t it? I’ve thought about this day ever since her birth. I love you so much—” She grabbed him one last time, then turn and walked into the TSA line without looking back.
He stood there, watching until she made her way to the rampway leading to the gates. At last, she turned and waved with a brave smile, holding her ticket over her head.
As she disappeared into the crowd, he felt a piece of him had been torn out of his chest.
Damon drove to the Hotel Del Coronado and parked in an unmetered spot. He walked through the lush grounds, winding through an open-air restaurant and two-story bar area overlooking the ocean. He walked in front of it, until he got onto the beach, and then headed south.
When he was going through BUD/S, they had done their rubber boat exercises there on the beach, carrying them over their heads in crews of eight or ten or twelve. Sometimes the short ones, sometimes the tall ones, sometimes the mixed-up ones which were hardest on the tall guys like Damon.
He still had a patch at the back of his head where he could swear the hair had been rubbed off and would never really re-grow. But maybe it was his imagination.
He remembered some of the faces of the guys who lay beside him, shivering in the cold early morning surf, the wet-n-sandys, the times when he’d look up at the stars and the moon and feel that cold pang of ocean creeping up onto his almost warmed but very wet uniform, boots and all, making him an icebox again, until the water would recede, and his body’s heater would begin to work overtime again to warm the water close to his skin until the surf claimed him again.
Over and over it went. He never thought about how it stunk to be doing this, he just did it. In making it not significant, he could endure a lot more. It was always harder whenever he worried about making it through a phase.
He remembered how green his feet had been when he finally got to take his boots off after six days without showering, warmth and less than two hours sleep the whole time.
He remembered the line of blue, green and red helmets, each with a name hand painted by each recruit. These were the DOR guys, a reminder that some had chosen to go home, or had decided the process wasn’t worth the pain they were suffering. Sometimes just discovering their level of want, or how far they had to test themselves. Some of these fellows he didn’t know very well, others he did. Some were roommates, or swim
buddies, and then one day they were just gone. Nobody lingered around. They were either in, or out. Some were made to chase the bell on the back of the pickup truck barreling down the beach, the instructors in their warm jackets yelling catcalls at them to ring the bell. He never got to the point where he’d suffer that humiliation.
Except it wasn’t. To even try out for the teams was being a hero. So many hurdles had to be overcome just to get the chance to try out. Part of it was luck, but the most part of it was not quitting. He wasn’t very good at much, but he was good at not quitting, and so he became a recruit and eventually wore the Trident proudly.
He could hear the shouts the instructors barked, the answering, shivering, miserable hoarse call-backs, the grunts when someone fell, or threw up, or fell out of a boat and had to be hauled inside. He’d been on the last boat crew, relegated to an extra thirty-minute swim in the dirty inlet. Sometimes he’d made the fastest boat crew. He’d been on the crew with foreign trainees who didn’t try half as hard as the rest of them had to. He’d had to pick up some of the slack for some who were lazy, or sick, or disheartened. It wasn’t being soft, it was about being a team.
There was no other training in life like this training. And it didn’t even begin to train him how to be a good person, a good husband, a father. While he was out there doing all this, he was oblivious to what she was going through. Their baby was growing, she was preparing to place her up for adoption. Martel was handling all the burdens she had going on, alone, no team to back her up. Just her mother, and the nurses at the home she stayed at, and the grit that was Martel.
Because she wasn’t a quitter either. And, like she said, she thought about meeting Ainsley every day since she gave birth to her. This was the day she’d finally do it. Cross that thing off her list. Stare into the eyes and face of the little girl she made, they made together, the little girl who deserved to know she came from them, even though they were not her parents. Someone else stepped up to the plate and got to claim that one.
He and Martel just didn’t quit on her.
They didn’t quit on the love that they’d once had and now had again. Even with the burden of the mistakes. It wasn’t always going to be easy. They would never be perfect. But he knew, he was certain, they would never quit.
No matter what.
Chapter 6
The tree-lined streets of old Palo Alto reminded Martel of the McDonald neighborhood in Santa Rosa, where she’d lived during part of her childhood. Although the houses were much larger here on the peninsula, especially recently with the McMansions mushrooming from small bungalows in the trendy neighborhoods, the feel was the same. With the wider streets and old oaks, lush formal gardens lovingly tended, it was perhaps California’s answer to Savannah, on a much smaller scale.
She’d ridden her bicycle to her music lessons, and dance classes, and been on teen boards at the Santa Rosa Youth Center, where the real action was. The dance parties and plays were her favorite, since she didn’t do much with sports.
Later on, as her interest in boys developed, she began to watch basketball and football, even some soccer. The teen dances had become a problem with a downtown that was in search of itself and City leaders who didn’t have the will to imprint a clear vision for the youth. She wondered if Palo Alto suffered the same fate.
The Newbergs lived in a brown shingled mock Tudor style home on a quiet cul-de-sac street. At the end of the street, a quaint park/sitting area had been created, dotted with more than a dozen multicolored birdhouses mounted on polls. It appeared to be a neighborhood project, and the place was literally covered in little birds, mostly finches, landing and taking off, scaring off other birds and showing off their plumery. People had fashioned houses out of old boots, buckets and paint cans, galvanized watering cans and old telephone boxes. One was even made out of a small pink Barbie house with glittering ribbons hanging down, blowing in the gentle late afternoon breeze.
She parked in a cut-out area of the lawn, and walked toward the Newberg’s simple, but neatly manicured home. She heard a dog bark nearby when she rang the doorbell.
Ainsley answered the door, looking even more like Damon, her father, than the picture the Newbergs had given her a month ago. She was very tall for her age, her eyes a bright ocean blue, with a cute, upturned nose and a saddle of light brown freckles pouring all over her rosy cheeks. Her spun-gold blonde hair was tied in braids but mussed. Dressed in a basketball uniform, Martel guessed she’d either just come from practice or had been practicing in the front yard. She hadn’t missed the basketball hoop attached to the double car garage door frame.
She’d grown up fast, Martel guessed, because she wasn’t entirely confident in her size, nearly Martel’s height. Her feet were enormous. She sported athletic shoes with multicolored laces, drawings of daisies and hearts adorned the sides by bright permanent markers.
“I don’t wear them for games. For practice,” she said, responding to the fact that Martel had been apparently gawking at them. Her voice was slightly raspy, and uneven.
“Ainsley, they’re beautiful. I was just admiring the patterns. You like to draw, I take it?”
“Not really,” the teen shrugged. “I just didn’t want them to look like basketball shoes.”
A perfect explanation.
Not sure whether or not she should shake her hand, Martel introduced herself. “I’m so happy you agreed to meet with me.”
Ainsley shrugged again. “Sure. Why not? You gotta right.”
And there it was, that little prick of a pin that burst her warm friendly bubble. The air seeping out of the thought she could control this little drama play between them. It was Ainsley’s show, and Martel was just here for the ride she’d allow her to take. Come what may. Damon had warned her about that.
Mark and Lori Newberg were standing behind Ainsley and invited her inside.
“Oh, sorry. Duh!” Ainsley said, standing aside to make room for her entry, making a face at her father, who mimicked her right back. Lori smiled and kept her eyes on Martel.
“Thank you, Lori and Mark. I really appreciate you setting this up.”
“Of course,” Lori said, with respect.
Martel felt a bond and trust between the two of them immediately. It didn’t ease her nerves, however.
“Come on, beans, let’s get this group some refreshments,” Mark said to Ainsley. “You want wine, beer, water or soda?” He pointed in Martel’s direction.
“I’ll just have water.”
“Fart or no-fart,” asked Ainsley, her hands on her hips, one knee bent. She more resembled a young colt than a girl.
“I’m sorry?” Martel was confused.
“She means gas or no gas. Her spin on the little choice there,” added Mark.
Martel laughed. “I see. Quite unusual. I can see she’s her own person.” While everyone stared at Ainsley, the girl pulled her shirt from her chest, examined herself, and said, “Nope. No one else in there. I’m the only person in this body—today, anyway.”
“I’ll take the farted water, please, then.” Martel answered.
“Make that two, Mark,” yelled Lori.
“Coming right up!”
Lori motioned to a loveseat across from a leather-covered reading chair and matching leather couch at forty-five-degree angles. Martel sat in the loveseat and waited. Lori chose the large reading chair, crossed her legs and leaned over her thigh.
“You can see we have our hands full. Ainsley is the center of our attention, the life of this family. It’s never a dull moment.” She tried to look overworked, but Martel knew otherwise.
“She’s very bright. Quite a character.”
“She and Mark play a lot of basketball together. He played in college some and helps out with the team. When she wanted to take ballet, he learned ballet himself so he could practice with her, practice her lifts and stretches. That didn’t last long, and I’m glad too. The sight of my husband in tights—well, he has skinny legs.”
They
both laughed.
“Sounds like they have a perfect relationship, Lori. I’m so pleased to see how happy she is.”
“We’re very proud of her. It’s almost like she was meant for us. Having her in our lives is so perfect. I’ve thought about it many times, how similar she and Mark are in so many ways. People assume she’s biological, not that it matters.”
There was a little lump in Martel’s throat forming. That pain in her gut that Damon had missed out on something wonderful. She drew in the thought she came up with many times like this when she was filled with regret: she’d done the right thing and she wasn’t in any position to raise her daughter. These people were. And that was as it should be.
She inhaled and asked a question she’d always wanted to know. “What did she say when you told her about us?”
Just then, Ainsley and Mark returned to the room with coasters and tall glasses of mineral water, garnished with lime. Ainsley and Mark shared a flavored mineral water, still in the can. They sat side-by-side on the couch. Both crossed their legs in the same direction, same leg.
“You guys gossiping about me?” Ainsley asked.
“You tell them, sweetheart. She asked me what you said when we told you about the adoption.”
“Oh, that.” She scrunched up her lips, angled her head and did a slow neck roll to the left. “The first thing I thought of was that mom and dad kidnapped me, and that they told me so I could keep their secret in case the police came.”
Martel nearly spit out her water. “You’re kidding!”
“I thought someone would be very pissed, so I asked them about it. And they told me it was agreed to. I didn’t understand it, but I didn’t ask again, just in case they were lying to me.”
Mark objected, pretending to be offended. “Hey, you really thought we were liars? Seriously, Ainsley?” The skin on his forehead lined as his eyebrows rose.
“I didn’t understand how it worked. I didn’t—” She stopped herself, creeping on territory that was becoming dangerous, but Martel caught the subtle flavor of her thoughts.
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