This Is My Daughter

by Robinson, Roxana;

  “Don’t you think?” asked Emma. “If we wait, and then you call, and Caroline says she thought we’d said three-thirty, then Amanda is so far uptown she’ll miss the wedding.”

  “No, then she and the nanny can go straight to the church.”

  Emma said nothing, unhappy. She turned away and began to pace again. The house telephone rang, and Peter’s face cleared. He left to answer it. He came back a moment later, tense again.

  “The limousine is here,” he said.

  Emma looked at him and said nothing.

  “Emma,” he said, “just remember this is hard for Caroline. This is a difficult thing to do, to send Amanda off for my wedding.”

  “I know,” said Emma. “I know it’s hard for her. I’m sorry. But please find out.”

  “I’ll call her,” he said, and left the room.

  Emma walked in a slow ellipse around the living room, her arms folded on her chest. She looked at her watch: three-thirteen. She thought of Caroline, dressing Amanda for Peter’s second wedding. Poor Caroline. Perhaps they should have invited her, included her somehow.

  Tess came into the room, holding her bouquet. “Mommy, I don’t know if I can carry these flowers,” she said. But Emma could hardly hear her.

  “Of course you can,” she said.

  “I do not think I can, Mommy.” She held the corsage away from her, a small knot of dark velvet violets set in heart-shaped green leaves. Narrow ribbons, pale blue, hung down from it.

  “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  “I think I might drop them,” Tess said solemnly.

  Emma knelt down. “No, you won’t,” she said, trying to be calm. But her heart was pounding. It was like terror, she thought, though she did not think she was terrified of marriage. But her heart was pounding. She put her arm around Tess comfortingly. Peter came into the room. “Where is she?” Emma asked.

  “She’s on her way,” Peter said, but his voice was odd.

  “When did she leave?” Emma asked suspiciously.

  “She’s on her way,” Peter repeated. “She’ll be here in time.”

  “Peter—” Emma began. She felt helpless, breathless with anxiety. All the possible risks, the hovering, incipient calamities seemed now centered on this one thing: Caroline was going to keep Amanda from being on time. Caroline was going to interfere in Emma’s wedding.

  Peter took her in his arms. He held her close to him, patting her back. “It’s all right, Emma,” he said earnestly. “No matter what happens, it’s all right.” He held her tightly. “Shh, shh, shh,” he whispered into her ear. “You and I will be married, no matter what.” Emma closed her eyes, as though she were dancing, feeling him wrap himself around her.

  Amanda and her nanny, Maeve, arrived, at three thirty-five. The others were standing in the hall downstairs with their coats on. Emma handed Amanda her bouquet, and they all bundled into the sleek black limousine at the curb. The door shut solidly. Rachel and Maeve sat, not looking at each other, on the jump seats. The two little girls sat in between Peter and Emma. The car was luxurious, with polished mahogany paneling, immaculate dove gray upholstery. Once inside they were quiet, subdued by the sudden silence and intimacy. Emma leaned back carefully against the seat. She took a long breath: there was nothing more to be done. Now things would progress regardless. She smiled at Peter. He smiled back and took her hand. It was almost here. The rumble was now deafening.

  The car drew up at the Church of the Heavenly Rest. Peter got out first. He leaned back in and blew a kiss to Emma. “I love you,” he said, and went off to find the minister. Emma waited in the car with the girls while people arrived and walked into the church. When the sidewalk was empty, they all got out of the car. Rachel and Maeve went inside to find seats, and Emma waited with the two girls in the damp stone hall. In the center stood a table, with a book for signatures on it, and a huge mass of flowers, the twin of the one at the Club. Her heart was pounding.

  Inside the darkened church, the organist was doing quiet trills, and their friends and relatives were sitting silently in the pews. The moment was almost here. Emma felt quieter and quieter, weightless. She smiled at the two little girls. They wore identical dresses, their hair was brushed and shining. Amanda looked grim, and Emma wondered how it had been for her, getting ready. Had Caroline cried? Been angry? Emma knelt down next to the child. She wanted to start this off right, she was determined to draw Amanda toward her.

  “You look beautiful,” she said. “Your hair looks so shiny.”

  Tess pressed jealously close. Emma smoothed Amanda’s hair; Amanda twisted slightly under her hand.

  “Amanda, I’m so happy to be marrying your father,” Emma said. “I know it’s hard for you. I’m sorry for that. But we want to make you part of our family, with Tess and your father and I.”

  Amanda stared straight at her, unblinking. Emma stroked her head again; again Amanda recoiled.

  “I love your father very much,” Emma said. She wondered if she should tell Amanda she loved her very much too. She was afraid it would not sound genuine; she was afraid it was not yet quite true.

  “And me,” Tess said greedily, pressing her stomach toward her mother.

  “And you,” Emma agreed, absently. She was looking at Amanda again. The girl’s hands hung down at her sides. “Where’s your bouquet?” Amanda, not meeting her eyes, shrugged her shoulders. Tess stared at her sanctimoniously.

  “Amanda, where is it?” Emma asked again.

  Amanda met her eyes, but said nothing. Her hands were empty, they had left their coats in the car. She did not have it; the bouquet was gone.

  “Is it in the car?” Emma asked. Amanda raised her eyebrows, slowly shrugged her shoulders. Emma marveled at her resolution. Emma looked outside, but the car had pulled smoothly off to wait on a side street. Amanda stood frowning into the distance.

  “You’ll have to walk without one,” said Emma, looking around the stone hall. Inside the church the organist had begun a longer, more serious piece, preliminary to the Event.

  “I know,” Emma said. She held her skirt up off the damp flags and stepped over to the huge vase of flowers. Delicately she teased out a single white rose, extricating it from the hidden stems. The rose was small, perfect, blush white. She held it out to Amanda. “Here,” she said, “carry this.”

  Now the Wedding was rattling forward, its rumble overwhelming, its bulk looming over her, vast, engulfing. Details no longer mattered, all was out of her hands.

  The white rose held negligently in her hand, Amanda stood next to Tess. Tess’s bouquet was clutched conscientiously in both hands. Emma could see what she was thinking: she was not like Amanda. She was good.

  Emma looked at small tense Amanda, defiantly holding her solitary flower. No matter what Emma hoped, Amanda could not be happy that her father was marrying Emma. Or that he was living with Tess. How could she feel happy about any of this? She was already, at seven, in mourning for her life, for her past and happy life, that other world. She was in mourning for the time before the fall, a blissful life in which order prevailed, things were in their rightful place, and her parents shone together in their proper settings, high in the firmament. Now this would be in the past, forever. But Emma was determined, too. She would rescue Amanda from her misery, draw her into something new.

  The organ music grew bolder, forceful, demanding Emma’s steps. The dark cool interior of the church waited for her, the deep powerful mystery of the ritual was almost upon her. Emma felt the frightening nearness of it, felt herself about to be engulfed. She turned to look outside, as if for the last time. The doorway was a bright rectangle onto the street. A woman, oddly hunched, wearing a tan raincoat, was standing at the edge of the sidewalk. She stood behind a parking meter, as though the narrow metal pole would conceal her. Emma’s glance paused, her attention caught by the woman’s tension, her frown, her anxiety. Her surreptitious air. It was Caroline.

  The music now insisted, rising, gathering strength, and E
mma turned back, facing the doorway into the dim vaulted space. She felt herself straighten. She looked down at the two little girls and smiled. She was prepared. At the end of the aisle stood the tall figure of the minister, exotic and powerful in robes, layers, brocade. Next to him she saw Peter’s serious face as he stood, his hands joined formally in front of him. They were waiting for Emma. The Wedding was here.

  PART TWO

  13

  Maeve Jones, Amanda’s nanny, was from Wales. She had very white skin and very dark brown hair. Her hair was short and springy; a tracery of white laced through it. Maeve had a long nose and gray eyes, and she wore colorless glasses. Except on her day off, Maeve wore a brown-and-white-checked dress with a white collar and cuffs. In the summer the dress had short puffy sleeves, in the winter the sleeves were long, and Maeve wore a tan cardigan sweater with it. Cardigan was the real name for a button-up sweater, and it was a place in Wales. Maeve told Amanda that.

  Maeve knew everything, and how to do everything. She was also very beautiful: she had beautiful lines in her face. There were two curves that cupped the corners of her mouth, even when she was not smiling. At the corners of her eyes there was a little nest of lines, light and airy, as though they had been drawn with feathers. Those grew deeper when she smiled. In between her eyebrows was a short perpendicular line, and on her forehead were wavy horizontal lines. Sometimes, when Maeve was sitting and sewing, Amanda climbed up on the arm of her chair and stroked the lines on her forehead, tracing them on Maeve’s white skin. Maeve would duck her head, after a minute, or shake it, and ask Amanda what she was doing up there, if she was searching for gold, or what. But actually Maeve didn’t mind, which Amanda could tell from her voice.

  In those days, the days before everything changed, it was Maeve, already dressed, brushed, perfectly tidy in her uniform, who came briskly into Amanda’s bedroom in the mornings, when Amanda was still asleep. And that day, the day everything changed, began like all the others, with Maeve opening the door from the hall.

  “Rise and shine,” Maeve said when she came in. She always said that. Maeve spoke with a quick musical lilt: it was the way people spoke in Wales. As she crossed the room she tapped Amanda’s foot, under the covers. At the window Maeve gave a quick authoritative tug to the shade and let it roll itself noisily up. She turned to Amanda, who lay in bed blinking at the light.

  “Who’s that still in bed?” Maeve asked. “Who’s that Slugabed? Who’s that Lazy Amanda?” Her voice was indignant, but there was a small smile at the edges of her mouth.

  “Maeve, I’m not lazy,” Amanda said. “I’m just tired.”

  “Oh, just tired, I see.” Now Maeve set her hands on her hips, her brown-and-white-checked arms making a pattern of exasperation in the air. Energy radiated from her, she nearly hummed. Maeve nodded. “Just tired,” she repeated. She looked intently at Amanda. “That wouldn’t have anything to do with staying up late last night, would it?”

  Amanda remembered, and began to scramble herself out of bed.

  “No, it doesn’t,” she said. She had promised, the night before, that if she stayed up past her bedtime she would not be tired in the morning.

  In those days, Maeve always made Amanda’s breakfast. She started the oatmeal before she came in to wake Amanda, and it would be ready by the time they arrived in the kitchen. While it was cooking Maeve helped Amanda get up and dressed. She had laid everything out in Amanda’s room the night before: the white round-collared blouse, the plaid jumper, the navy kneesocks, the brown oxford shoes. Amanda’s school clothes came in a box at the end of each summer: new dark blue socks, new blue plaid jumpers, new white blouses, each crisp and neat in its own plastic bag, pins holding it in its orderly folds. The new clothes were always too big, the jumpers drooping mournfully over Amanda’s knees, the collars loose around her throat. That was so Amanda could grow into them, and, amazingly, without effort, she always did.

  That morning Maeve knelt before her on the rug to help Amanda dress. Amanda set her hand on the knotty bone in Maeve’s shoulder, to steady herself as she stepped into her bloomers, first one foot, then the other. Still kneeling, Maeve buttoned up Amanda’s white school blouse. Amanda stood peacefully under Maeve’s sure hands. Maeve tilted her head back as she worked, eyeing the buttons through the bottom of her glasses. With each button the small line between her eyebrows deepened, then relaxed.

  “Maeve,” Amanda said, watching her eyebrows, “when did I meet you?”

  Maeve reached the top button, slid it through, and smoothed the collar down with a swift pat, finishing Amanda off. “You met me when you came home from the hospital,” she said. “You were only a bundle.”

  “I wasn’t a bundle,” Amanda protested, pleased. “I was a baby.”

  “Not then you weren’t,” Maeve said. “Arms up, please.”

  Amanda raised her arms obediently and Maeve slid the jumper over her head.

  “Then you were only a bundle.” Maeve snugged the jumper into place, swiveled Amanda, raised the child’s elbow, and pulled the side zipper down.

  “What am I now, then?” Amanda asked. She was entranced by Maeve’s authority, by her firm charge of Amanda’s life.

  “A scalawag,” said Maeve. “Don’t move.” She went into the bathroom with the hairbrush, and Amanda heard a powerful blast from the faucet. Maeve came back, the brush dripping.

  “Why do you put water on it?” asked Amanda, looking doubtfully at the sodden brush.

  “So your hair won’t fly away,” Maeve said, raising it to Amanda’s fine hair. Amanda thought of her hair lifting, strand by strand, up, off her scalp and lofting itself airily into space. She struggled to hold her head upright against the buffet of Maeve’s quick determined strokes. The brush slid into a snarl.

  “Ow,” Amanda said, arching her body sideways.

  “Sorry, Madam,” Maeve said, not sounding it. She lowered the brush and picked delicately at the snarl with her fingers.

  “Maeve,” Amanda said.

  “Madam.”

  “When you were little, did your mother call you a scalawag?”

  “That’s private information,” Maeve said at once, curling her tongue around the r’s. She spoke with brisk precision, but Amanda knew from her voice she wasn’t angry.

  Amanda thought of the photograph of Maeve’s parents which sat on her bureau. Amanda knew it, of course: she knew every object in Maeve’s tiny room. The room was much smaller than Amanda’s bedroom, and narrow. It held only Maeve’s single bed, a bureau, a small bookcase, an armchair and a standing lamp. Maeve’s bed was always made, the white coverlet always pulled smoothly up over the high rounded pillow. The room was always perfectly tidy, and it smelled of the bath salts Maeve used: Rose Geranium.

  Amanda’s room was large, with two beds in it, and two windows. She had once asked Maeve to sleep in the bed next to hers. “No one sleeps there,” she had pointed out.

  “I’ve got my own bed,” Maeve said. “And you need your beauty sleep.”

  “But this could be your own bed,” Amanda persisted. “And I would get lots of sleep.”

  “I stay up late with my reading, and writing letters. I’d keep you awake,” Maeve said.

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Amanda told her eagerly. “I’ll just lie there with my eyes closed. I won’t even hear you.” Right then she had waited hopefully for Maeve’s reply, believing there was a chance, thinking that only a slim layer of discussion lay between her and what she wanted. When she heard Maeve’s voice answering she understood that this was not the case. She heard that no matter what she said, and no matter what Maeve said, there was no chance of this happening, and that Maeve would never tell her what the real reason was.

  Still, she wished that Maeve’s room were next to hers. She wished they slept side by side, even if they were separated by walls, so that if she had a bad dream she could slip next door, quickly, lightly, invisibly, without risking the long, heart-thudding, nighttime journey down black hallways. But
Maeve’s room was in a completely different part of the apartment, distant, remote: next to the laundry room, off the narrow back hall that led from the kitchen to the service elevator.

  Amanda loved Maeve’s room. It was like an enchanted country, and she roamed through it, when she was allowed, with rapt concentration, as though she were on a mission. Respectful, ravenous, she examined everything, scrutinizing, trying to memorize. She was trying to learn Maeve’s life. She, Amanda, had only one life, and Maeve had been with her through the whole of it. But Maeve had another life, one that held her own family, her parents and her sister, Susan, and other places, even other little girls that Maeve had lived with. Amanda could not imagine Maeve living with other little girls, coming into their rooms in the morning, calling them Madam. It seemed impossible to her, but Maeve had told her it was true. Maeve had always been a part of Amanda’s life, but Amanda had not always been a part of Maeve’s life. The other parts of Maeve’s life were amazing to her, fascinating.

  Amanda knew the tortoiseshell brush and comb set that sat on the bureau. She knew the neat sewing case, with its woven handle and the small, gleaming, irresistible scissors. She knew the modest row of paperback books, with beautiful women on their covers, with long hair and full sweeping skirts. She knew the copper luster pitcher that stood on the bedside table, which was a present from Maeve’s mother.

  She knew especially well the photographs of Maeve’s parents and of her sister. They stood blinking and smiling in an unknown Welsh yard, tall dense unknown bushes crowding behind them. Maeve’s parents stood awkwardly side by side, their hands self-conscious, their faces smiling and anxious. Maeve’s father, balding and thin lipped, was portly in a rumpled dark sweater that buttoned halfway up his front. Maeve’s mother, small, wore a flowered full-skirted dress, tight across her bosom. Her smile was rigid, and her eyes were squeezed nearly shut, as though the camera’s click, the shutter’s fall, might hurt. Her eyebrows, though, were raised in a kind of private delight. Susan, standing alone in the same yard, was larger than her mother, more massive. She wore glasses, like Maeve, but her face was fuller, her nose smaller. Her hair was flat and smooth on top of her head, fluffy around her ears. The photographs were in a scuffed leather frame, navy blue, that folded like a book, and shut with a small metal snap. Amanda liked to snap it shut and then open it, but she was not allowed, because the click it made would drive Maeve loony.