Undone

by John Colapinto

  “No,” she said. “I was just wondering.”

  “Wondering,” he echoed. “About what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, finally closing her legs and turning toward him. She drew her feet up on the seat so that her body formed a Z. “About what we’re going to do in Connecticut.”

  “I’ve given that quite a bit of thought,” Jasper said, taking up the subject energetically, to dispel his embarrassment. “I thought you should just take it easy. After all, it’s only about four weeks until school. I think you should get to know your new family and your new home and your new town. I’ve got a membership at the country club. I thought you might like to take some tennis lessons and maybe hang out there at the club. You can swim, sail, and there are a lot of kids your age. You can make friends.”

  “I don’t care about other kids—I just want to be with you. But I’ve never tried tennis. Can you teach me?”

  Jasper chuckled. “I’m afraid my days as a tennis pro are behind me. Besides, I’ve got work to do. I’m writing a new novel. I don’t have much time for tennis.”

  “So I won’t ever see you?” she said on a note of real panic. She pictured him hidden away behind an office door day and night, writing. How would she enact the plan?

  “Oh, you’ll see far too much of me, I’m sure.” He glanced over and smiled. “Every day at breakfast. At lunch, if you’re around. Dinner. And in the evenings. You’ll get your fill of your old dad.”

  “Never,” she said, relieved. “I want to be with you every second!” She leaned across the seats and nuzzled Jasper’s ear. “I’ll sit on your lap when you’re writing. Like a little cat—you won’t even know I’m there.” She made a purring sound, and then placed her arms around his neck. She rested her head on his shoulder. “Oh, Dad,” she said, “I’m so happy we’re together!”

  Jasper murmured his assent. And he was happy; indeed, he felt his heart brimming with that paternal pride that had so surprised him a month ago. But he continued to feel a peculiar rigidity, a constraint and physical awkwardness at her touch. Why could he not relax? Why was it so difficult to return her physical affection? Was it that he’d fallen out of the habit of touching and being touched? Since Pauline’s stroke, he had lived so much in his mind, as a writer, struggling with phantoms, locked away in his work cave down the hall, an ascetic. But no. He was not a complete stranger to physically expressed love. He hugged and kissed and touched Maddy every day. Why should Chloe be any different? Yes, Chloe was, of course, older—a woman, really. Or almost. But Jasper saw men cuddling their teenaged daughters all the time. Why could he not take one of his hands—which gripped the wheel with white-knuckled tightness—and slip it round her shoulders? Draw her face to his and give her a kiss on the cheek? The hell of it was that he could feel the yearning in her body, the sense of her straining to press herself against him, to express and receive physical affection—and no wonder, given her recent loss and the period of foster care she had endured. Yet here he sat, absurdly distant and cold, like a statue, with her warm, quiveringly alive body draped upon him.

  He must get control of himself. He forced himself to remove his right hand from the steering wheel. He awkwardly snaked his arm around her shoulders. She moaned softly and snuggled still more closely to him. Yes, he thought. Yes, this is fine. He felt himself beginning to relax a little. Actually to enjoy the feel of her, the weight of her head against his shoulder, the feel of her breath on his neck, the sending aroma of her skin. He responded by giving her a quick peck on the forehead.

  She murmured, “So, what’s your new novel about?”

  Jasper never talked about works in progress with anyone but Pauline, but he sensed an opportunity now to let Chloe know him better by taking her into his confidence about his writing. Besides which, he thought she might be amused to learn about how she had, inadvertently, inspired him. “Well, as a matter of fact,” he said, “you had quite a bit to do with my new book.”

  “Me?” she said, lifting her head from his shoulder. Her forehead had puckered into soft wrinkles.

  “Yup,” he said, turning his eyes back to the highway. “I dreamed up the idea after I first learned about you. Writers often take a real situation—something from their own lives—and play with it; they ask, ‘What if?’ In this case, I asked myself, ‘What if a person tried to pretend he was someone’s child and faked a DNA test to prove it?’”

  Chloe whipped her arms from around his neck.

  Jasper, startled, turned and saw that she had retreated from him, actually pushing her body back against the passenger door. One of her hands was on the door handle—as if she were contemplating jumping out onto the highway. (She was certainly prepared to do so—depending on where this conversation was going.)

  “What’s wrong?” he said, frightened. She was watching him, clearly terrified, as if she expected him to pounce at her, to attack her. He could not imagine what had gotten into her. “What’s wrong?” he repeated.

  “Why would you think something like that?” she said, her eyes on him, her fingers still on the door handle. “Why would I make you think of someone playing that kind of trick?”

  He realized his terrible mistake. He was so used to discussing his working methods with Pauline—a former editor. Yet here he was, talking to a high schooler about the mysteries of literary creation and expecting her to understand. All he had succeeded in doing—by speaking of falsified DNA tests, impostors and lies—was to make her think he had entertained such suspicions about her! How could he have been so stupid, so insensitive?

  He apologized, explaining that his novel had nothing to do with their situation, that he had merely used a kernel of information about DNA testing to play a game of make-believe.

  Inexpressibly relieved—for a nightmare moment, she truly thought he had somehow learned of the plan—Chloe felt the tension drain from her body. She let go of the door handle and resettled herself in her seat. “Well, that’s a crazy idea anyway,” she said. “No one’s going to believe it. It’s impossible to fake a DNA test.”

  “Of course,” Jasper said. “But it’s pure fantasy. My books are just for fun. Like puzzles—they’re not supposed to be real.”

  “Okay,” she said, pouting. “But I still think it’s stupid.”

  Jasper, duly chastised, sat in shamed silence. The relentless highway, cutting through featureless tracts of farmland, flowed past. After a few miles, Chloe edged toward him. She reached over and took his hand off the wheel and placed it around her. She leaned over and once again cushioned her head on his shoulder. “I forgive you,” she whispered.

  The aim of this long drive was to draw her out, to touch on subjects they had not discussed on the phone, to talk about things they might feel uncomfortable discussing in front of the rest of the family. There was one topic, in particular, he had wanted to be sure to bring up on this drive. There seemed no time like the present.

  “So,” he said, “we haven’t really talked about your mother.”

  “What about her?” Chloe said, once more going on alert. She felt, instinctually, that it was best to keep him off all topics related to her life at home, in New Halcyon.

  “Just how sorry I was to hear about what happened.”

  “I don’t really like to talk about it,” she said. “It makes me sad.”

  “I understand. But it can be good to talk about things that make you sad.”

  “Yeah, that’s what all the social workers and shrinks keep telling me,” she said, tipping her face up on his shoulder and looking at him with what she knew was one of her most ardent, knee-weakening expressions. “But I don’t want to think about Mom right now. I don’t want you to think about her either. I just want to be your daughter who you can kiss and hug and hold. I just want you to fill me up with love.” This was pushing it, she knew, but it felt imperative that she somehow deflect Ulrickson from this paternal line of inquiry.

  He looked down at her face. She was staring up at him with a gaze so in
tensely beckoning that it took an effort for him to disentangle his eyes from hers. He looked back out onto the highway. He felt her wriggle against him, repositioning herself. For some reason, his heart was pounding so hard in his chest that he was sure Chloe could feel it.

  She could feel it, like a trapped bird beating against the inside of his rib cage and sending its tremor against her hand, which lay on his chest. So she was surprised that when he next spoke, it was to voice the most banal of questions.

  He asked if she was hungry.

  In fact, she was. But determined to keep up the pressure, she snarled and took a playful bite at his neck—actually catching some of his flesh between her teeth and giving a painful little pull. She quickly kissed the spot, and said, “Starving.”

  They stopped at the next fast-food place and went inside to stretch their legs. Jasper was again forced to endure the spectacle of males—seemingly of every age, ethnicity, social class and education level—staring hungrily at his daughter, looking up from their burgers and fries and milkshakes. As usual, Chloe seemed oblivious of the quiet chaos her presence caused. She simply swayed against him as they waited in line. Jasper could feel the envy that radiated from her admirers. In a gesture half protective, half defiant, he put his arm around her and pressed her against him.

  Surprised and encouraged, she smiled up at him. “Oh,” she said, giggling, “McDonald’s makes you romantic, huh?” She raised herself swiftly on tiptoe and kissed his chin. She dropped back onto her heels and continued to scrutinize the menu posted above the workers’ heads.

  Jasper looked around the room. Burgers were arrested in midair; straws, unsucked, lay against protruding tongues. He smiled blandly, and then stepped up to the register.

  They ate in the car as Jasper drove. Chloe picked lightly at her Filet-O-Fish sandwich, left more than half of it for Jasper to finish, and took only a single bite from one of his fries. She did, however, greedily suck down all of her strawberry milkshake, and half of his chocolate one.

  Feeling that they had, in the humble act of eating side by side in the car, fallen into a dangerous dynamic of actual parent-and-child intimacy, she decided that dramatic measures were called for. She stuffed the trash into the takeout bag and tossed it into the backseat. Then, in a single fluid motion, she lifted her legs, swiveled in her seat, ducked her head under his extended arms and laid the back of her head on his lap. She rested her bare feet on the passenger seat.

  “Chloe!” Jasper cried, nearly losing control of the car. He gaped down at her upturned face in his lap. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

  “Resting,” she said matter-of-factly. “I didn’t sleep much last night, I was so nervous about meeting you.”

  “Well, I’ll pull over and you can get into the backseat!”

  “I don’t want to lie in the backseat. I want to be here with you.”

  “This is insane,” he cried. “It’s dangerous. I can’t drive like this.”

  “Why?” she said. “You’re driving right now.”

  “Please sit up,” he said. “You’re not wearing a seat belt.”

  “You won’t crash. You drive so slow.”

  “Nevertheless, a policeman might see us.”

  She batted her lashes at him. “Are we doing anything wrong?”

  “Yes—it’s illegal not to use your seat belt.”

  She ignored this and rolled toward him onto her side. She heaved a contented sigh, then joined her hands as if in prayer and slid them between her cheek and his thigh, pillowing her head. She felt, suddenly, quite genuinely tired; her claim about sleeplessness last night because of nerves had been true.

  “Chloe?” he said. “Are you listening?” Her eyes were closed. “Chloe?”

  “Mmmm?”

  “Will you sit up?”

  She merely nestled herself more snugly onto him. Then she got an inspiration. She took one of her hands from under her cheek, placed the thumb between her lips, and began to suck.

  “Don’t be silly, Chloe,” he said. “That’s not good for your teeth.”

  He grasped her wrist and pried her thumb from her mouth. Instinctively, she seized his hand and jammed his little finger into her mouth, sucking on it avidly. He felt a thrill like a stream of electricity pass through his hand, up his arm and into his body. For a moment he could not react. He was remembering how he had used precisely this method to pacify Maddy, as a newborn, between feedings in the middle of the night when she woke him with her squalling and he was too tired to fetch the bottle of milk expressed by pump, each day, from Pauline’s breasts. He would simply roll over to the crib beside his bed and stick his little finger, blind, into Maddy’s mouth. She would suck for a minute or two on the tip and soon fall asleep—a practice his pediatrician had frowned on (“You don’t want her to get nipple confusion”) while admitting that every exhausted parent resorts to it. Then as now, Jasper felt the soft enveloping wetness sheathing his digit, the ridges in the curved upper palate, the ticklish workings of the velvety tongue and lips. Stunned, he could only gape down at Chloe for several seconds before pulling his finger from her mouth.

  “That’s enough,” he said sternly. “You’re being quite ridiculous!”

  But she did not protest. Her lips had gone slack, her hands limp. Her breathing had taken on a smooth, deep, slow rhythm and her head felt heavier against his thighs. He said her name. She did not respond. Her fingers twitched. She was, in fact, deeply asleep, lulled by the slight rocking motion of the car, the warmth of his thighs and the strange, unexpected comfort she had taken in sucking on his finger, as if she truly were a small child, his child.

  He looked down at her vulnerable, outlandishly pretty profile. Certainly, it was inappropriate for her to have sucked on his finger that way—but perhaps, he thought, this was a natural reaction to the strangeness of the situation she found herself in. Hadn’t Doreen Edwards warned him that the child might display just such episodes of regression, of defensive slipping back into infantile states, as a coping mechanism? Thinking of this, he felt a surge of paternal love and protectiveness, but he was not tempted to slip his finger back into her softly working mouth—or, rather, dismissed as ridiculous the obscure impulse to do so.

  He looked out the windshield. Evening was coming on. They had entered the northern part of Connecticut. The lowering sun deepened to purple the green of the surrounding fields and lengthened the shadows of the trees and fences that bordered the farmhouses sliding past. He felt a flutter of nervousness, not the first, at the thought of their arrival home, of Pauline. He saw before his eyes that look she had given him as he left the house yesterday. A dark, almost accusing look. He pushed the thought from his mind. He told himself that everything would work out, that Pauline would come round. To calm himself, he looked down again at that impossibly pretty face and inhaled through his nose. Her bouquet acted on him like a calming drug, a tranquilizer.

  He looked at his watch. They would be home in less than an hour! He let Chloe sleep for another thirty minutes, and then decided it was time to wake her. He reached down and stroked her hair. She snuffled, pawed at her face, and her eyelids quivered.

  “We’re getting close now,” he said softly.

  Her eyes flew open and she sat up. “Close?” She had been a million miles away, submerged in a dream that seemed to feature two other girls and a small apartment in some densely populated metropolis where she had never been. Jolted back to the perilous present, she looked around in panic at the unfamiliar landscape and was once again on high alert. She began to rearrange her hair, which had come loose from her bun and lay in messy tangles around her face. “How close?” she asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.

  “Maybe fifteen minutes,” he said.

  It was now dark outside. Gone were the mountains, pastures and farmhouses. They drove through a wasteland of widely spaced industrial parks twinkling with lights, dark highway under- and overpasses. A scattering of hangar-like big box stores appeared on ei
ther side of the road. These gave way to a denser grouping of garishly lit gas stations, fast-food restaurants, Cineplexes, strip malls. They arrived at a large intersection where eight lanes of traffic converged. Jasper turned right, took another turn and still another. Then they were skimming along a quiet road, semi-rural in its wooded seclusion, lit by widely spaced old-fashioned street lamps among the lit leaves of huge, massy black trees.

  Chloe quickly touched up her face with the help of a compact drawn from the small purse over her shoulder—brushing some mascara onto her lashes, touching some color onto her pursed lips—then turned and retrieved her shoes from the backseat. She slipped the high heels on, then sat up alertly, her back straight, moving her head from side to side, looking at the large stone estates wheeling past. Her anxiety about soon meeting Jasper’s family mingled with genuine excitement and fascination at seeing the lush and luxurious neighborhood where he lived—where she would now live. “I’ve never seen places like this,” she said with awe. “Except in the movies.”

  They turned onto Cherry Tree Lane. “Your new home is coming up on the left,” he said.

  Chloe gaped at the long, low-slung structure behind the maple on the front lawn. She leaned forward, almost pressing her face against the windshield. “Wow,” she said, “it’s huge.”

  Actually, it was one of the neighborhood’s smaller houses. Jasper’s father had deliberately built it to sane proportions—with just enough room to accommodate himself, his wife and his two children. Jasper, in his turn, had honored his father’s, and his own, aesthetic by resisting the orgy of expansions and renovations even then being undertaken by his neighbors in the overheated housing and home equity–loan bubble soon to burst—the building on of extra wings and higher stories and additional outbuildings. But he knew that Chloe was comparing the house with where she had grown up, on New Halcyon’s River Road, a stretch of houses quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks. On one of his days off from the club, that long-ago summer, he had paddled in a canoe under the disused railroad trestle bridge and down the stagnant, weed-choked river where ramshackle dwellings were clustered on the overgrown bank. One of those dilapidated shacks, he realized with a pang akin to the one he had felt when he saw her pathetic carry-on, was where Chloe had been raised. Well, all that was behind her now.