That night, whispering in bed, John said that he couldn’t stand the idea of the principal experiencing some sort of redemption based on how Akasha had turned out, that this man might take their son’s beautiful character and outstanding accomplishments as proof of his right action. In the morning, over coffee at the kitchen table, he told Akasha that he forbade him from going to Cheyenne. Akasha got up and pulled John’s head against his chest, saying, “It’s okay, Dad. Everything turned out all right, didn’t it?” Megan put a hand on Ray’s shoulder and squeezed gently. They were grandparents now, old men who apparently needed comforting. Ray reached for his granddaughter and Megan handed her over. This, he thought, is what an abundance of love will do for you. Such forgiveness. In moments like this, he could practically see the walls behind which he and John had lived.
Akasha didn’t call ahead. Megan and Zoey traveled with him to Cheyenne, but they stayed in the motel while he went out to the house, which he’d found easily using an online people-search site. The principal’s wife opened the door. Thinking quickly, not wanting to drop a bomb in the middle of their lives, Akasha said that he was a former student. The man who came to the door was in his mid-fifties, balding, and robust-looking. He came across as the kind of person who thought physical fitness equated moral fitness. He had a ready-made public smile, probably from years of being a principal in a smallish town, but it wilted as he recognized Akasha. His mouth puckered. The veins in his neck bulged. Loudly, so that his wife could hear, he said, “Hey, how’s it going? Glad you stopped by.” And he shut the door in Akasha’s face.
Akasha cried when he told the story to his dads on the phone later that night. “I think it’s fair to say he had hate in his eyes. Hate.”
“That’s not hate, son,” John said. “That’s fear. They can look just the same.”
“I almost took Zoey with me. I’m so glad I didn’t. It would have been like exposing her to toxic radiation.”
“I’m sorry,” John said.
“We love you,” Ray said. “Megan loves you. And our miraculous granddaughter thinks you make the sun and moon rise.”
John and Ray were relieved, in a way, by how the experiment had turned out. Akasha had been hurt, but in a quick, surgical way. The principal had shown his colors immediately. It was over now. He and Megan and Zoey could get on with their lives.
But Akasha wasn’t finished. Next he found Francine. She was listed everywhere a person could be listed, including the phone book. She lived in Brooklyn and was a nurse at St. Vincent’s.
“A nurse? A real one?” Ray asked.
“What other kind is there?”
“An aide or something.”
“No, a real nurse.”
“She made her choices,” John said.
“I want you to be a part of this,” Akasha said.
“You don’t want to do this,” John countered.
“Okay,” Ray said.
Akasha, Megan, and Zoey came to New York for the weekend. On Friday night they all had dinner with Mindy, who now lived in her own apartment and clerked for a high-end bath products store. Years ago, John and Ray had set up a retirement account for her, but though she was pushing 70, she refused to retire. She loved her job. The eastern European accent, coupled with her assertive personality, had helped her win several sales awards. Mindy had intensified rather than mellowed over the years. Megan found the woman frightening.
“Here, here, here!” Mindy barked, clapping her hands with each word, and then thrusting her arms at the baby. Megan instinctively shrank back, clutching Zoey.
Akasha said, “Let go, sweetie,” and transferred Zoey from Megan to Mindy. No one else got to hold the baby the rest of that evening.
By prior agreement, they did not tell Mindy about the following night’s meeting with Francine. “Just don’t,” John had told Akasha earlier in the week. “It wouldn’t be fair to her.”
“Trust us,” Ray said. “You’d give her a heart attack.”
On Saturday morning, John claimed he had work to do and retreated to the office. Ray shooed Akasha and his family out to the park and obsessively cleaned the already clean apartment. John thought the meeting should be businesslike with nothing more than coffee and cookies. But Akasha bought enough hors d’oeuvres to make dinner for ten and laid them carefully out on the coffee table.
Francine arrived a few minutes early, wearing a pair of nice jeans and a pale yellow cashmere sweater. She had a good winter coat, which Ray took from her. Megan was still in the bedroom nursing Zoey. Akasha did not hug Francine or even extend a hand. He said, “Thank you for coming.”
She nodded, tried to speak and couldn’t.
Ray ushered everyone into the living room while John got drinks.
Akasha sat blinking, staring.
Francine said, “So. Thank you.”
“It’s okay?” Akasha asked.
Ray closed his eyes, unable to shut out the picture of Akasha in the car seat, on the bus bench.
John bustled in with glasses of wine and handed them out. He said, “Okay, so let’s start with why you never followed through seventeen years ago.”
“Dad.”
“This is awkward, son. We may as well do facts first.”
“He’s a lawyer,” Akasha said to Francine.
She smiled and said, “I know.”
Ray dredged his mind for something softer to say, for a way to steer them onto an easier path of getting to know one another.
“He’s right, though,” Francine said. “I’d welcome the opportunity to explain a few things. It’s a good place to start.”
“Shoot,” John said.
“Dad,” Akasha said. “Lighten up.”
“So John and Ray told you I found you when you were nine?”
Akasha nodded.
“I was…I guess desperate is the right word…to be in your life. And to make whatever amends I could make. I wanted to be your mother. On the spot, right here in this living room, I came up with an idea. I’d finish my education here in the city. I’d get a chance to be in your life. I asked them to pay for this.”
Akasha looked at Ray and then John. “You didn’t tell me this. You left stuff out.” The anger in his voice pissed John off. He stood up.
Francine ignored John and spoke directly to Akasha. “Of course, it sounded entirely self-interested. Like I was using them. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that they would never believe that my motives were anything other than selfish. And they were selfish. I wanted you.”
Francine took a sip of her wine. “I might have been able to get past worrying about their misunderstanding me. But after that evening, seeing everything you had, especially all the love you had, I realized that the selfish part would be my intruding in your life. You were safe. And happy. You are so loved. I realized I would be an obligation. Or worse, an anchor.”
Ray reached for John’s hand and pulled him back onto the couch.
“But,” Akasha said, already visibly awed by his mother. “You moved to New York and got your nursing degree, anyway.”
She nodded. “I wanted to be available. Completely available. For this moment.” Her face spasmed. She regained control and said, “I have a nice apartment. I live alone, but I’ve been seeing Wesley for nine years. He’s a community college teacher. Life is, for the most part, good.”
Zoey, still in the bedroom with Megan, shrieked.
“You’re a grandmother,” Akasha said.
Francine nodded, and both Ray and John wondered if her stalking had reached all the way up into New England these past years.
Akasha stood to go get Megan and Zoey, and that’s when the key turned in the front door lock.
“Oh, shit,” John said. “Mindy. How many times have I asked you to get the key back from her.”
“Right. You try.”
“She still has a key?” Akasha asked.
Ray shrugged. “She likes to do stuff like drop off cakes on our birthdays.”
> Mindy shut the door behind her, threw the deadbolt, and unwrapped her scarf. “So! Good evening, everyone!” she said with too much bluster.
Francine got up and gave Mindy a hug.
John leapt back to his feet.
Ray closed his eyes and shook his head.
Francine escorted the older woman to the couch and helped her sit.
“What’s going on?” Akasha asked.
“You—?” John glanced around himself as if looking for an object to hurl at Mindy. “When—?”
Ray sat back and laughed out loud. Already he looked forward to hearing how this alliance had come about.
“She once lost a baby, too,” Francine said. “Before she came to this country.”
Mindy made her shushing sound. “Sss. Sss.”
“Okay,” Francine said, taking Mindy’s hand. “Another story for another time.”
“You had a baby?” Akasha said.
“Sss. Sss.”
Megan came shyly into the living room holding Zoey, who gurgled and then shrieked again. Akasha’s face lit up with his beautiful smile, and everyone looked at him looking at Zoey.
John remained standing, swaying a bit with the weightlessness of shock. Mindy’s betrayal undermined everything, including his own curdling lies. “How dare you—” he breathed into the room, but everyone ignored him. He stepped around the coffee table and reached for the baby, prying her away from Megan. Finally, John had everyone’s attention.
“Anyone who—” he said for the thousandth time.
“Loved Akasha that much?” Ray asked.
The words sluiced away John’s indignation. He stood in the middle of the room, a man holding his granddaughter, nothing more, nothing less. His lies on Akasha’s behalf hadn’t been half as potent as Francine’s patience or Mindy’s arbitration.
John carried the infant to Francine and gently handed her over. He’d never seen arms so full.
Reading Guide Questions
1. Ray is more uneasy than John about keeping the baby they found on the bus stop bench. John justifies their action by saying that anyone who leaves an infant alone like that couldn’t possibly be a worthy parent. What do you think about their decision to keep the baby?
2. Short fiction usually focuses on a brief period of time, a day or even a few minutes, but this story encompasses much of a lifetime. Did you as a reader find this long time frame for the story satisfying or an overreach? Why?
3. Did this story surprise you in any way? What did you expect for the baby’s future when the two men “adopted” him? In what ways did the story deviate from your expectations?
4. The question of what makes a family is a hot topic right now. How would you describe Francine as a mother? How would you describe John and Ray as fathers? What do you think about Mindy’s role in the family?
5. Many of the characters in this story behave in ways they are not proud of. Discuss incidences of this for several characters. Did you feel compassion, outrage, a mix, or something else altogether about their decisions?
About the Author
Lucy Jane Bledsoe’s story “Wolf” won the 2013 Saturday Evening Post Fiction Prize, and her story “Girl with Boat” won the Arts & Letters Fiction Award and was nominated for a 2010 Pushcart. Her other stories have been published in Arts & Letters, Fiction International, Shenandoah, Roanoke Review, Quiddity, Hot Metal Bridge, H.O.D., Bloom, Terrain, Stymie, Zyzzyva, and Newsday (as a winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project). Her fiction also has been awarded a California Arts Council Individual Fellowship in Literature, an American Library Association Stonewall Award for Literature, and two National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Fellowships. Her most recent novel, The Big Bang Symphony, was a finalist for four awards, including the Northern California Independent Booksellers Novel of the Year Award and the Ferro-Grumley, and was featured on NPR’s To the Best of Our Knowledge.
Website: http://www.lucyjanebledsoe.com
Twitter handle: @LucyBledsoe
Also by Lucy Jane Bledsoe
The Big Bang Symphony (a novel)
Biting the Apple (a novel)
This Wild Silence (a novel)
Working Parts (a novel)
Sweat: Stories and a Novella
The Ice Cave (narrative nonfiction)
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