Because of Our Child

by Margot Early

  “For what?”

  He hesitated, seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “It’s a pity you don’t write and that investigative journalism isn’t your thing.”

  “I can write, and I like film as a medium. Are you saying there was some cover-up about Makal Canyon?” Her pulse quickened. This wasn’t the kind of thing she did. “Anyhow,” she said, “you can write, can’t you?”

  He nodded but didn’t answer her question about a cover-up.

  “Max?” called someone from the doorway.

  It was the hostess, who had come to seat them.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked as Jen and Max sat down.

  “I’m fine,” Jen told the hostess. But she wasn’t; sitting was hell.

  “Just water, for both of us.” As the woman left, Max noticed Jen’s discomfort. Abruptly, he stood. “I’ll be right back.”

  He went toward the kitchen and returned several minutes later with some clean folded towels. “See if you can use these to keep the pressure off those burns. You can prop yourself up on other parts of your body.”

  “Right,” she agreed, and arranged the towels on her seat. “Better.”

  With water and chips in front of them, Max asked, “If there was some kind of a cover-up with Makal Canyon, are you interested? If we could make a film about the fire? Interview survivors—and fire managers. Hunt down the principals.”

  “What do you know about filmmaking?” She sounded waspish, but she didn’t much care.

  “Half my undergraduate work was in film studies. It’s not much, I know, but it’s something. I’ve also helped make a training film for wildland firefighters.”

  Jen considered. “It’s still impractical. I’d have to support myself—” and our daughter “—in the interim. Also, finding people, witnesses, survivors, former supervisors, isn’t always easy.”

  “Well, Teresa was there,” he said. “Presumably, you know your own sister’s address.”

  Teresa? Interview survivors…

  But it was hard to call Teresa a survivor. Or rather, she’d survived so much more than the fire. There were the dead, including Salma.

  And the other dead.

  The living dead.

  That’s not fair, Jen. You know perfectly well that Teresa’s far better off than if she’d died, that her life, her existence, has value.

  “You’re not talking,” Max observed.

  Could she tell him that Teresa wasn’t okay?

  No, actually she couldn’t. Teresa was sensitive, and sometimes hypersensitive, about her mental health issues, not wanting anyone to know about them. But it was hardly a secret to anyone who interacted with Teresa.

  And saying that it had been caused entirely by the fire was untrue. Teresa’s psychiatrist believed it was also at least partly hereditary. Though the trauma, he acknowledged, couldn’t have helped.

  “Teresa won’t take part,” Jen said.

  “Why not?”

  “She doesn’t like…the limelight.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  Teresa had liked the limelight. Teresa had believed herself brilliant and she had been proud of that brilliance. Her plan had been to specialize in burn treatment. But the plan had gone awry.

  “What’s she doing?”

  Jen eyed him. His steady gaze read more than she told. She felt herself being read, felt exposed telepathically. Well, she could keep up the charade. Because she could say a great deal more and neither lie nor betray her sister. “Going to school.”

  “Did she finish medical school?”

  Ah, to the crux. “No.”

  Two things he did seem to pick up—that Jen didn’t want to discuss her sister, and that something was wrong.

  He would assume, she thought, that the fire had been the catalyst for all possible disasters. Perhaps it had led to Teresa’s change, of course; the disappointment of her dreams.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” he asked, “what really happened?”

  “It’s your quest,” she said. “I mean, you’re the one with the interest, not me.” But that wasn’t true. Her survivor’s guilt after Makal Canyon had been minimal, but it hadn’t stopped what she’d felt on Teresa’s behalf. In hindsight, it had been obvious that the west flank crew, of which Teresa and Salma had been a part, should never have been where it was, that the safety zone was less safe than it should have been and that the firefighters had been given inadequate air support before the blowup. As Max had pointed out, similar things had happened earlier that summer in Colorado.

  But Jen hadn’t had the leisure to brood about what had gone wrong. Six weeks after the fire, she’d discovered she was going to have a child. And by then Max Rickman was out of the picture. She was pregnant and alone.

  Now he wanted her to look into the Makal Canyon fire that had killed his fiancée?

  She wouldn’t do it—do something that would bring the two of them into extended contact—and perhaps bring him and Elena to each other’s attention.

  Is it your right, Jen, to make that call? Didn’t she ask you on the phone tonight if you’d run into any old acquaintances?

  Our life is simple now.

  But it wasn’t, really. There was nothing simple about their all-female household, directed by a sometimes unstable matriarch and inhabited by Jen’s equally unstable sister. It was Jen’s family, but there was no pretending that any of its attributes could compensate Elena for the absence of a father. Didn’t Jen owe it to her daughter to at least confess the truth to Max; to at least find out if he was interested in meeting Elena, getting to know her, even assuming some of his parental duties?

  Part of her screamed, Don’t do it! Don’t tell him! You won’t be able to take it back.

  But it was for Elena—she must do this for Elena. Thirteen years ago it had mattered that Max didn’t love her; that he was mourning Salma. Yet now, she was older, and she could tell him the truth. She didn’t need his financial or emotional support. She had raised Elena alone up to this point, and she could certainly go on alone. Her revelation would be no threat to him.

  And she was equal to dealing with the unlikely possibility that he would be angry. After all, why should he be? He hadn’t loved her and had told her so. If she’d told him that she was pregnant, who knew how he would have reacted?

  She thought this over, as he let the subject of Makal Canyon drop and picked up his menu. She followed suit, and it wasn’t until their waitress had come and taken their orders that Jen spoke to Max again.

  “Max, I have something to tell you, something I never intended…” She took a sip of water.

  “Drink more,” he said, seeming not to have heard. “I’m considering you under my care this evening. In addition to eating a good meal, you need to drink plenty of water.”

  “Yes. Max, the thing is that Elena…”

  “Elena?”

  Maybe she would keep it to herself.

  “My daughter. She’s twelve. She’s…”

  All of a sudden, his look turned sharp, aware. He waited, staring, hawklike.

  “You’re her biological…natural…father.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MAX SAID, “Why are you telling me this?” then wished he could call back the question.

  “If it makes you happier, forget that I did.” Jen drank more water and helped herself to some chips.

  Her manner had become almost indifferent, but only on the surface. She was brusque, concerned with rearranging herself slightly on her stack of folded towels, confident in her own person. This was all visible. Less apparent was whatever his question had actually made her feel.

  “I told you,” she said, “because it seemed decent to do so.”

  “‘Decent’ would have been telling me thirteen years ago when you found out you were pregnant.”

  “You didn’t love me. We only ended up together because of the fire. You moved on to other things, mourning Salma, and I figured the pregnancy was my responsibility. I didn
’t use birth control.”

  “Obviously, neither did I.” And he’d known she was a virgin.

  “Well, I’ve found life goes more smoothly for everyone if I take responsibility for my actions,” Jen said, lifting her chin and smiling. Not the sudden radiant smile that showed her teeth, that made anyone who saw it smile back. A closed smile. It seemed peaceful, accepting—and utterly unlike the Jen he knew. Granted, Max didn’t know about her life with her—their—daughter, but he knew her essence. They had been friends.

  I don’t want children.

  He had decided not to have children—and fairly soon after his affair with Jen. He’d begun to use condoms. He’d even considered having a vasectomy until a lover told him that she never had sex without condoms even with men who’d had vasectomies, because as far as she was concerned, there were just too many sexually transmitted diseases around. He’d become fastidious in this regard.

  But before that he had fathered a child with Jen Delazzeri.

  Yet he still wanted to say, in some kind of accusing way, I don’t want children.

  It didn’t sound as though she wanted help with her—their—daughter. Yet now this child was a fact.

  She changed things.

  Max knew he’d have to think, spend time thinking, before he decided what to do.

  “We should,” he said, grasping for something to say, “exchange permanent contact information.”

  Jen opened her handbag and, from her wallet, produced a business card.

  I have a child. He tried to say something positive, to thank her, perhaps, for raising his child. He could have asked to see a photo. But none of those thoughts occurred. “You should have told me when it happened.” Another recrimination. All he seemed able to utter.

  I have a daughter.

  “I’m just shocked,” he managed to say, when she didn’t answer. “I’m not handling this well.”

  “And I’m asking nothing of you,” she said. “I never expected to see you again, truthfully. Not after a certain point.

  “I’m telling you now because here you are….” Her voice drifted off.

  Max stepped back, held the news he’d just received at a distance. He thought about the smoke jumper he was, carefully distant from ties of love, suspicious of commitment, which was—somewhere in his heart—associated with loss.

  Jen asked for no commitment. Yet the sense of commitment was there now.

  Feeling helpless, he said, “I work in fire, Jen. That’s the choice I’ve made. I like it. But as long as I’m a smoke jumper, I can’t deal with children.” Because smoke jumpers were away from home too much. Because their work was too dangerous. Because to have children was to belong to them and, so, to have to take care of himself… Not the way he did take care of himself—but like someone, or something, that belonged to someone else.

  But as soon as he’d spoken, he saw something happening in her eyes. A veil coming down, hiding her emotions, hiding the hurt.

  Did he have obligation in this situation? “Is my name on her birth certificate?”

  “Of course not.” She sounded and looked disdainful. “Did you think I was going to come after you for child support?”

  “I don’t care about that. I would help. But I don’t want her to know me.”

  “I don’t want anything from you,” she said, and this time she sounded disgusted. “I didn’t tell you about Elena so that you would do something. Does she want to know her father? Yes.” That was why Jen had told him the truth after all this time.

  “Do I want her to know you?” She shrugged. “If you and Elena both wanted that, I would say, ‘Sure, go ahead.’ But you’re pretty clear that you don’t want that. So…my life is easier.”

  Had she intended to wound him with her indifference? He wasn’t wounded. Just curious. “What have you told her about her father?”

  “That we were hotshots together.”

  “Hasn’t Teresa put two and two together?”

  “Teresa’s always known the truth. But she wouldn’t tell Elena.”

  Still observing himself from the outside, Max surmised that his own behavior marked him as someone who maybe should not be told by a woman that she had conceived a child with him. He’d responded with selfishness and insensitivity and he knew it.

  “And you said she wants to know her father? Elena?” He tried out the name.

  “Yes.”

  He remembered this straightforward honesty. It was trademark Jennifer Delazzeri. She’d never been given to scenes, for instance. She remained, to this day, one of the most levelheaded lovers in his life. She said what she thought and felt without fanfare and without deception.

  He had treated her insensitively, and she’d said so. Not then, but today.

  He liked her. There was nothing not to like.

  Except that now he knew he was a father, and he didn’t know any positive way to react because it wasn’t what he’d planned for himself.

  I can’t. I just can’t be a father to someone. He was a father biologically, but he couldn’t meet this daughter he and Jen had somehow produced; couldn’t let her know him, come to depend upon him. And not only because he expected to die fighting fires—which he didn’t. He hoped to move up through the hierarchy of firefighting strategists to take charge of the biggest blazes, always learning more about the best ways to manage wildfire. Smoke jumping was for now, and it was just a rung on the ladder.

  I don’t want anything from you, she had said.

  He believed her. If she wanted something from him, she’d have come out and said so. She wasn’t a schemer.

  “Do you want me to know her?” he asked.

  “I already answered that.”

  He supposed she had.

  “In any case,” she said, “I think your answer puts paid to my helping you with a documentary on Makal Canyon. It’s not a sure thing that Elena would put two and two together, but she might. And if she asks me outright if you’re her father, I won’t lie to her.”

  He could see the wisdom of that.

  Strange, before Jen had sprung this on him—and he couldn’t stop himself from framing her announcement in that accusatory way—he’d wanted badly to return to Makal Canyon with her. He needed others who’d been there, others who’d experienced that fire, that day, to be with him, to look back with him.

  But her news complicated everything.

  Why hadn’t they used birth control?

  What does it matter now, though? She doesn’t want anything from you.

  But he couldn’t forget. Now, he had a daughter and he knew he had a daughter. His life was different.

  He was ashamed that Jen or any human being alive should see this side of him, should see him not welcome the news that he was a father. What would his father say if he knew of Max’s reaction?

  Max preferred not to consider that. His father had always taken parenthood seriously. When Max’s mother had been diagnosed with cancer, when Max was twelve and his sister thirteen, his dad, an orthopedic surgeon, had expanded his already active roles as soccer coach, faithful attendant at plays and homework tutor to do the carpooling and cooking. Six years later, Max’s mother had died, and his father had never turned his back on his role as husband and father.

  A paragon.

  And I’m headed for the title of Deadbeat Dad of the Year.

  Why?

  Why was that the choice he wanted to make, now that he was confronted with the existence of a child of his own?

  “Remind me how old she is,” he said, doing the math one more time.

  “Twelve. She was born April nineteenth.”

  He blinked. “That’s my birthday.”

  “I know.”

  Max wondered what, if anything, this meant. He couldn’t remember Jen’s birthday, if he’d ever known it.

  But he had known it. It had come sometime during the week after the fire. He’d bought her flowers and dinner. Nothing permanent. Nothing was permanent. “Yours,” he said finally, “is at t
he end of July.”

  “The twenty-sixth.”

  She appeared not to care much about her birthday—or his.

  The waitress brought their food, and Jen began to eat. Elegantly, simply.

  Max changed the subject. “Jen, would you want to work on a documentary on Makal Canyon? Would you at least be willing to go back with me, to do some research, to hunt down supervisors?”

  “I have a job.”

  “Could you take a leave of absence?”

  Jen shook her head, thinking that if she left the station, it would be for good. She’d been considering a move, perhaps even to a station in another part of Colorado, but that didn’t mean she could afford to go without paid work while investigating the Makal Canyon fire.

  Also, she was reluctant to step away from the job she had without rising in her career. Making a documentary about a little-known wildfire that had happened more than ten years ago and completely overshadowed by fourteen deaths on Storm King Mountain did not seem like the smartest move. More like a distraction from everything that mattered to her.

  She supposed Max’s reaction to the news of Elena didn’t surprise her, but it did disappoint her. He was still a handsome man, of course, but any attraction she’d once felt had evaporated when she’d seen how he felt about her daughter—biologically, also his. His presence as a firefighter that afternoon had been powerful. His presence as a man with other values was weak, clearly. He’d become a smoke jumper probably for the thrill, the pleasures of the work; he was about being a smoke jumper.

  In her mind she consigned him to a shelf with other men “of that type.” She had a child and a family who relied on her. And as for Max, he wanted no ties of any kind, not even to his own daughter.

  Jen shifted on the folded towels and considered standing up for a moment or taking a pill for the pain.

  “What if I paid you?”

  She stared at Max, and couldn’t stop herself from half laughing. “How could you do that?”

  “I have some money.”

  “You don’t have the kind of money I make,” she told him flatly.

  “I remember this about you.”

  “What?” she demanded.