This Is My Daughter

by Robinson, Roxana;

  He looked down at his book and began to read, sinking slowly into the distant world of prewar Europe. The solemn mountains, the clear salubrious air, the innocent assumptions of order and continuity. He spent the evening with Hans Castorp and Clavdia Chauchat, against the background of the implacable Emma, the distant, sleeping Tess. Peter moved from one world to the other, drifting silently between the two, entering the chilly bright sanatorium, encountering the self-indulgent Castorp reclining in his deck chair, pulling his blanket over his legs. The delicious Clavdia appeared, with her strange name, the unexpected drawl of the v, the sensual dangerous Clavdia; then Peter emerged unhappily into this real hospital room, with this real child, who had no choice in her illness. The deep steady note of sadness reverberated through both worlds, through the majestic German mountainscape and the doomed love story, so that everything in the book, Hans Castorp’s moments of greatest joy and ecstasy, was suffused with Peter’s unbearable melancholy, and somehow deepened it.

  Often, as he read, Peter raised his head and looked up at Tess’s bed, listening. There was no sound from her; still, he found himself suddenly drawn to attention. Each time, Emma raised her head too, hopefully, as though he might have heard something she had missed. Each time, after a moment, without looking at him, Emma lowered her head again to her book. Sometimes she read silently to herself, sometimes she read aloud, to Tess. Sometimes she moved her chair over next to the bed and sat there, reading. Sometimes she stood by the bed, looking down at Tess’s battered face.

  When Emma read aloud, Peter listened to her steady voice. At times she seemed so calmly interested, so engaged by her text, that he wondered if she had forgotten who her audience was. He hoped she had. He hoped she had moments of relief. He hoped she had become caught up in the story, intent on the perfidious Edmund, the brave Lucy, the noble Aslan. He hoped she had forgotten, for a moment, the terrible space and time she actually inhabited.

  Peter went to his office every day, and there were many times, for him, when he was talking to colleagues, drafting a document, having lunch with friends, when he forgot. He never truly forgot, this knowledge was always in his mind, but there were many times when it was not in the forefront of his mind, moments when he laughed. He didn’t want to talk about it at the office, hated having people mention it. That drew it again, painfully, to the forefront. Hearing the accident spoken of out loud, by other people, pulled it closer to something he could not deny, something that might be permanent. As long as it was dark, unspoken, it might be temporary, nothing that need be addressed, a nightmare he did not have to discuss. He never brought it up, and there were times during the day when it was silent, quiescent, mostly absent from his mind. The times when he laughed were a relief.

  At ten o’clock Peter closed The Magic Mountain.

  “Well,” he said, “I think I’ll pack it in. Want to come home with me?”

  Emma looked at him. The first two nights she had spent in the hospital. While Tess was in the ICU, she had stayed in the waiting room, dozing on the uncomfortable plastic-covered couches. In the semiprivate room, Emma had stayed on a mat on the floor. She was not allowed to use the other bed, even though it was empty. One night she had gone back to the apartment in the middle of the night, and slept a few hours.

  Now she shook her head at Peter. “I’ll stay here for a while.”

  “Are you going to spend the night here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” Peter said. He leaned down and kissed Emma’s raised and unresponsive mouth. He moved to the bed and leaned over Tess. He whispered good night to her, his words barely audible, as though now, at night, her sleep were normal, and he was trying not to wake her. As he left, he turned at the door to blow Emma a kiss.

  “Good night,” he said.

  Emma looked at him. Her thick bangs covered her forehead; her long eyes, below them, were pink rimmed. Finally she said, “Good night.”

  Back at home, the darkened apartment seemed strange to him, brooding, unfriendly. Without turning on lights he walked through the square hall, past the darkened living room, with its small polished tables, its glowing rugs, everything poised for the brilliance of lamplight, conversation, laughter. Entertainment: he couldn’t now imagine it. Another life, another world, not his. The rooms were now silent and gloomy, full of blame. Blame was everywhere.

  In their room, in the big four-poster bed, he slept at once. He woke later, and in the dark he felt groggy and confused. He reached for Emma, to find her side of the bed empty, a wasteland of cold sheets. For a moment he groped, bewildered, unable to remember why his wife was gone; sickeningly, with wakefulness, it came to him. Tess’s terrible wounded face, the bloom of bruise beneath her skin. Her silence. He closed his eyes at the memory.

  He was asleep again, later, when Emma opened the door. He woke, hearing her undressing in the dark. She moved carelessly, not trying to be quiet.

  “Em?” he asked, whispering.

  “What,” she said, out loud.

  “You’re back,” he said. She did not answer.

  Lying there, watching her in the gloom, Peter wondered how she saw her return here. Was it a defeat? A failure of the flesh? Or a practical decision, morally neutral? He wondered if it signaled despair or expediency.

  “Come to bed,” he said, but Emma did not answer. She went into the bathroom, and he heard the water running.

  Peter lay waiting for her in the dark, listening to her shower in the next room. He felt deeply solitary, more so than he had felt before she returned. He was alone. His solitude seemed vast, endless, hurtful. He mourned Emma’s absence in bed at night. He mourned her absence in his days, and in his life. Emma hardly spoke to him now at all. When she did, it was with barely veiled hostility, a crushing weight of blame.

  Peter was waiting for this to end. He didn’t want to know how much longer it might continue. He didn’t allow himself to consider that things might be changed for them forever. He held that thought away from himself, but it lay darkly along the horizon. He was treating all this as temporary: how could he not? He wanted his wife back, he loved her. And he wanted Tess to get well. He loved Tess.

  Peter remembered the exact moment when he discovered that he loved Tess. It had been years before, when Tess was still a small child, four or five. It was in the summer, at the first cottage they had rented at Marten’s Island. They had all been outside, on a hot peaceful afternoon. The girls were playing in their hideout, beneath the low curved branches of the forsythia bushes. Emma had been doing something—what had it been? Not reading. She had had something, spread out in colorful pieces, all over a round metal table in the garden. Her short legs were stretched out beneath the table. It had been Peter who was reading, sitting in a chaise lounge, his feet up. Suddenly the air was split by a high piercing wail from Tess. She burst out of the sheltering mass of forsythia.

  “I was stung,” Tess said shrilly, agonized. She held her elbow in one hand. “There was a bee.” She wore only shorts, and her soft little-girl torso was pink and vulnerable. Amanda came crouching out of the bushes behind her, looking anxious.

  “Ow, ow, ow, ow,” wailed Tess, running toward them, throwing her head up and down as she ran.

  “Come here, Tessie,” Emma said, opening her arms.

  But Tess, for some reason, did not even look at her mother. Clutching her plump arm against her bare chest she ran across the lawn, crying in a high unbearable voice. Dodging around Emma’s arms she sped past her to Peter’s chair.

  Surprised, he put his book down, and just in time. Tess threw herself onto his chest, burrowing against him like a small animal.

  “Peter,” she said sorrowfully, “I was stung.”

  Peter put his arms around her. “Ow,” he said consolingly.

  “It hurts,” Tess said, speaking into his shirt. “Make it stop.” Her whole body, warm, damp, solid, was collapsed trustingly onto his. The suddenness, the choice, and the trust undid him. Peter felt his chest fill une
xpectedly with emotion, and for a moment there was no room in it for speech. Swallowing, he looked over at Emma, who raised her eyebrows and smiled. Peter hugged Tess’s small heated body. She made settling movements, fitting herself urgently against him, then lay still, sniffing.

  “Ow, ow, ow,” she whispered.

  “We’ll put mud on it,” Peter said. “That will make it stop hurting.”

  “Mud?” Tess raised her head.

  Peter leaned over and carefully spat into the damp earth beside his chair. He stirred it with the tips of his fingers, and plastered a small clump of brown sod onto Tess’s elbow. She watched, absorbed, still troubled. Then Peter rocked her again, holding her against him, and patting her silky bare skin. Her back was so short that he spanned it with his spread palm. He felt her heart beating quickly against his chest. She lay limp and confiding in his arms, snuffling. He tucked his chin over the top of her head and kissed the fine blond hair.

  He felt strange, astonished by this unexpected spreading glow. He had never named, to himself, what it was he felt for Tess. Something large and vague: affection, responsibility—a sense of dutiful connection. But this, whatever it was, was different. He was in a wide new range of feeling. Something within him had let go, and he was flooded, engulfed by an emotion he hadn’t known he owned.

  It was her trust that had brought it on, her innocent certainty that he loved her. Her belief that it was true made it so. She had claimed him for her own.

  Since that moment of choosing, Peter had loved Tess, though not in the same way that he loved Amanda. It wasn’t more or less, but different. He felt pride and affection for Tess, seldom anything else. Vexation, but never anger. It was Emma who became angry at Tess, Emma who disciplined her. Peter always took Tess’s side; his only task was to love her. For Amanda he felt different things, more complicated, all of them closer, more desperate. For her he felt anger, she trapped him in a kind of wild resentful love. He was knitted into Amanda, they shared the same root system. They could not be separated, no matter how much rage lay between them. It was a great deal. He could not now think of Amanda—walking around, talking to her friends, watching videos—without rage spreading across his mind.

  Peter thought again of Tess, lying in the hospital.

  Sometimes he imagined how things would be if she did not get well. Unlike Emma, he let this thought into his mind, he let it take up space. He imagined a room—would it be in their apartment?—with a wheelchair, heavy, with shining spokes on the wheels, and a special high metal bed. He imagined a woman with a white uniform seated near the bed. The woman looked up brightly whenever someone came in. But Peter could go no further than that. He could not bear to imagine Tess herself, changed.

  While he waited for Emma to come out of the bathroom, Peter closed his eyes. He thought, God, let her get well. Please let her get well. Please. His body tensed in concentration, fervent. Please, he thought, please. He was praying.

  He had never prayed before all this. It seemed hardly fair, having been so indifferent to God all this time, to ask his help now. But there was no one else to ask. Peter prayed all the time now, in between other thoughts, if that was what this was, this urgent surge of feeling, wanting. What else was there to do? Who knew what would make the difference? This might. Please, he thought again, let her get well. He was supplicant, humble, fervent.

  Emma came back into the room. She was in her nightgown, a calf-length cotton T-shirt. The V neck showed the two bones at the base of her throat. Through the thin cotton he could see the two points of her nipples, the diagonal slants of her ribs, as she walked. Her ribs were surprisingly close to the surface, like a starvation victim’s.

  Emma’s face, in the light from the bathroom door, was closed. Peter held up the sheet for her to climb in next to him, but without meeting his eyes Emma walked around the bed and climbed in on the other side, nowhere near him. She turned her back and lay tightly coiled on her side, close to the edge of the bed. She said nothing.

  Peter rolled over and slid closer to her. He had not remembered the bed being so large, the other side being so distant. He put his arms around her and felt her go rigid.

  “Emma,” he said, whispering. He slid his chin along the curve of her shoulder. It was unyielding. She said nothing.

  “Emma,” he whispered, again.

  “What?” Emma answered, not whispering. Her voice was loud in the dark.

  “Let me in,” Peter said.

  Emma did not answer.

  “I love you,” Peter said. He slid his hand along the ridge of her shoulder, slowly, tenderly, back and forth. Not to arouse but gently, to comfort. He remembered this body when it was his, when he was allowed to arouse it. He remembered a time, in the house at Marten’s, waking up in the middle of the night, and Emma turning silken and silver beneath his hands. He could hardly imagine this now. Sex, that expanse of generous delight, was something from another world, lost to him.

  Emma said nothing. Her body, under his hand, was rigid.

  “Emma,” Peter said, “I’m part of this. I want her to get well too. We’re in this together. I love Tess too.”

  In his arms, Emma stiffened more.

  “Don’t say her name,” she said.

  Peter took his arm from around her. He rolled over, turning his back.

  Later Peter woke again. Emma was gone.

  The room was now completely dark, the door to the bathroom was shut. He heard something, and raised his head to listen. Emma was in the bathroom. He could hear her weeping. The sobs were long and drawn out, the voice was low and exhausted. The sound of it frightened him, it was raucous and uncontained.

  Peter listened, then climbed out of bed and padded over to the bathroom door. He opened it and, in the sudden dazzling light, he blinked.

  Inside, the bathroom was radiant: the white tiles around the tub, the peach-colored walls. On the walls were delicate prints of ferns. The room looked like a bower, except for the woman. Emma was kneeling on the floor in front of the tub. Her arms were folded on its rim. Her head was laid down on top of her arms. The sounds she made were terrible and loud.

  Peter knelt beside her. He put his arms around her.

  “Emma,” he said.

  At once she stopped. Her body went limp. The sudden silence was alarming. She did not answer. She waited for him to leave. Peter held her. He tried to rock her with his body. She was rigid. She would not look at him. She waited for him to leave. He felt her willing him to leave.

  In the office, during the day, Peter waited for Emma to call. Each time the phone rang he picked it up quickly, at once, on the first ring, no matter who sat across the desk from him.

  “Chatfield,” he said, hoping to hear Emma’s voice telling him what he wanted to hear. In the brief moment before he heard the caller’s voice answer, it might be true. During that moment it might be Emma, telling him that Tess had begun to waken, that his life had begun to heal.

  26

  They had both wakened at the sound of the crash, though they hadn’t known what it was. They found themselves lying in a listening silence, hearkening to an unremembered sound.

  “What was it?” Emma asked, sitting up.

  “Some kind of …,” Peter said. Her sitting up made him get out of bed. He didn’t know what it was. They both put on bathrobes and slippers, moving quietly. They went downstairs. The moon was full, and each room they passed was filled with its cold light. The nighttime silence was oddly alarming. They went out the back door, onto the deck. In the road, up the hill on the other side of the hedge, was a big vague light. They moved toward it.

  “Where’s the car?” Emma asked, as they crossed the driveway. Peter didn’t bother to answer: the car’s absence seemed minor then, something that could be set aside, explained later.

  But it was not minor, and each discovery after that was worse. Out in the road, in the terrible gray moonlight, Peter saw something motionless at the curve. At first he couldn’t understand it, couldn’t read the
dark shape. The strange light flooded the hedge, the tree. Everything was still and silent, but even so there was a sense of recent violence. They began to hurry: now he could see that the shape was a car, lying on its side. Its dark metallic underside was facing them, its nose was buried deep in the trunk of the maple.

  The poor people, he thought. He felt compassion for them, these strangers, whoever they were.

  Ah, but each thing he saw was worse, sickeningly worse. The car, as he approached it, as they came around its back end, became a Volvo, familiar, theirs. Incomprehensibly theirs. On its side, its headlights—oddly subdued—blared into the hedge. No sound came from it, no sound. A figure knelt at the side of the road, its back to them. The figure’s arms hung down at its sides: this shape too was familiar.

  “Amanda?” Peter said. She turned. In the bloody glare from the tail-lights he saw a long red abrasion on her cheek. Her face was bruised and muddy. She looked at him, dazed and silent, her eyes dull. He had never seen such a look. His heart tightened with fear.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, touching her shoulder.

  Amanda made a strange sound and flinched violently, pulling away from him. “Don’t.”

  “What happened?” Peter asked, frightened.

  “We crashed,” Amanda said.

  “Is it your shoulder?” Peter asked, touching her more gently. She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut. We, thought Peter.

  “Who was with you?”

  Amanda nodded at the car. Peter turned to look. Emma was at the car. The headlights lit up the trunk of the tree, and the dense mosaic of the privet hedge beyond. The dashboard lights were on. Peter heard her voice. It did not sound like Emma.

  “Oh,” she said, her voice breaking on the single syllable.

  Peter turned back to Amanda. “Is Tess in there?” he asked.

  Staring dully at the car, Amanda nodded slowly.

  In her bathrobe, Emma climbed slowly inside the car, through the open window. Peter left Amanda and went to the car. Emma was down inside it, her head down. He couldn’t see.