by Mia Caldwell
Returning from a tug boat trip around the pool, he swims up to me, saying, “I am so glad you convinced me to do this. I didn’t realize how much I needed it.” And when I watch them, it’s clear he’s already so much closer to Maeve, so much more her daddy and not just her guardian.
Something sexy about a good father, I’ll tell you that.
When Maeve starts to doze off in her ring, Corbin notices that it’s almost time for his call, so we head inside again.
I get her into dry clothes and into her crib, but she’s perked up a bit and babbles to herself in bed. While I wait for Maeve’s breathing to get regular, signaling that I have an hour or two of nap time, I check my email. There’s a continuation of yesterday’s roll call for who could make the Board of Directors meeting, but dropped into the middle of it is a message from the treasurer. She writes that it would be a good idea for all of us to keep our ears open for job opportunities. She says that the funds just aren’t there and she challenges anyone to dispel the rumor that the school’s air conditioning had broken and had to be replaced before we’d be clear to open. No one does.
My stomach is in knots and I feel angry. Briefly, I even recall Corbin joking that he’d shut down the school to keep me. He didn’t, right? He couldn’t. I don’t really think he would but I wish I had the guts to challenge him, to ask him to keep it open. Just get through the Board meeting, I think, See where we are then.
I’m responding to emails, brainstorming and trying to calm down the Voices of Doom on the list. A knock at my door startles me and I realize I’ve been at it almost an hour, completely forgetting to text Corbin.
He’s there when I open the door, smiling as happily as I’ve ever seen. “I just had a great idea!” he says.
“It must be, you look pretty pleased with yourself, c’mon in! Sorry I forgot to text you, I got wrapped up in school stuff.”
“No problem,” he says, sitting down on the loveseat. “I was making phone calls anyway. What would you say to going to the Adirondacks?”
“Um, I’d say ‘Why? When? What are you talking about?’”
“To camp!”
I shake my head. “Oh no, you are not dragging me off on one of these white people adventures where you give up a perfectly good bed to sleep on the ground. I am happy to hike and kayak and make a s’more, but at night I want to be well off the ground. And not in a hammock, either.”
Corbin laughs and says, “No, not that kind of camp. My family’s camp–it’s a…well, a compound, really. A bunch of cabins on the lake. We used to go every year, but lately it’s only been my folks and a sibling or two. I haven’t been in years. I’d told them I wouldn’t come this year, either, since I really just got out here and started work. But it turned out all three sisters could make it and I thought hey, this place really does run itself and I was having such a nice time with you and Maeve that I thought it would be nice to take a week, go up to New York, be with family like old times,” he takes a breath at last and adds, “and start new times.” His eyes are shining, he’s so excited by this idea, but I’m starting to feel sick. “So what do you say? I called Mom and Dad and told them I’d bring you along.”
I hesitate, wanting to choose my words carefully. “It…feels like a lot. I’m not sure I need to be there. You’d have all those extra people to help out with Maeve. I don’t think you’d need me.” I don’t say Actually, I think I’d rather face a firing line than to drop myself into your huge rich family so they can judge me and see if the waitress you picked up as a nanny is a fit replacement for the sainted dead mother. But that’s totally what I meant.
He takes my hand and pulls me onto the couch beside him. “But I want you with me. Things are more fun with you along. And I want them to meet you, to see how great you are.”
It is disarming to have a hot man tell you that you’re so great you should meet his family. But it doesn’t make it a less terrifying prospect. I decide to come clean, at least a little. “Corbin, the very idea of meeting your whole family at once, on their ground, scares the crap out of me.”
He nods. “Oh, yeah, that makes sense. But here’s the thing–they already think I screw everything up. So if you manage to keep from dropping Maeve into the jaws of a bear or feeding her rat poison, you’ll have exceeded their expectations. I’m the little brother. My sisters have their own kids to worry about, they barely even notice I’m there. Then, at night, you and I can go down to the dock and laugh about them behind their backs. It’s great fun, I promise.”
Okay, that part does sound fun.
“Say you’ll come,” he says in that way that powerful men have of making a request that sounds like an order.
I don’t know whether it’s his boss-man mojo or his infectious excitement or just that stupid need to please a new boyfriend, but I nod. “Okay. I’ll go. When?”
“Next week. We’ll get there on Sunday.”
We hear Maeve start to wake on the monitor. “You promise no sleeping in a bag on the ground, right?” I ask, standing up.
“I’ll make sure you get the best bed in our cabin.” He smiles. “It’ll be the one with me in it.”
“Presumptuous,” I say with a toss of my head as I open the door to the playroom.
“Your daddy is crazy,” I say to Maeve as I pick her up from the crib. “He’s lucky he’s cute.”
“I can hear you!” Corbin calls from the bedroom, but I knew that.
I change Maeve’s diaper and bring her into the playroom. I’m about to set her on the rug with her busy box when Corbin comes in, tapping at his phone.
“Sarah texted me and asked me to bring her old camp sweatshirt. She’s sending Zoe, her ten year old, to sleepaway camp for the first time and wants to give her the vintage Camp Wakota sweatshirt. She says it’s in the pink room.”
“The pink room?”
“Yeah, so your room is just called ‘the au pair suite’ but most of the other bedrooms are called by the color of the walls. I guess it was homier than just putting numbers on the doors so anyone could know what you were talking about. So there’s a Grey Room, a Green Room, and so on. Even when Elise came out here while I was on an India trip and ordered all new everything, she kept the room color the same. Sarah used to sleep in the Pink Room if we came out here. Guess she tucked her sweatshirt away some time in the late 80s and it was never seen again.”
He heads for the hall, so I set the box down and tag along with Maeve.
“Hey, how come I have to be ‘the nanny’ instead of ‘the au pair’?” I ask as we walk.
He waggles his eyebrows at me. “Because you are not a sylph-like young French girl with impeccable credentials, sent from the agency.”
I punch him.
“See? Babette would never hit me in front of the baby.” He grins at me and opens the door. Cad.
The Pink Room is well named. The walls are so pale that they’re nearly white, but the bedspread and that giant pile of throw pillows all the beds seem to have are shades of pink from shell to magenta. And, like all the other rooms I’ve seen, it is immaculate and unused.
Corbin heads for a white trunk with gold fittings and opens the lid. It’s full of carefully folded quilts and hand-knitted sweaters.
“Should I check the dresser drawers?” I ask, pulling one open. It’s empty.
“No, she said it’d be in the trunk. But so is every itchy sweater Nanna ever bought at a charity sale.” He’s moving things carefully, trying to keep them folded as he lifts them out.
“Shouldn’t they go to Goodwill or something if no one cares about them?”
“Probably. Although I don’t know who’d want them.” He turns toward me, unfurling a sweater. It’s a late-80s riot of color and pattern. It has…shoulder pads.
“Dear god, set that thing on fire.” I shield Maeve’s eyes with my hand and she cheerfully bites my thumb. “Don’t let the baby see that atrocity.”
Corbin laughs. “I don’t think anyone ever wore it. But I’m a guy, what do I
notice?” He pulls out an envelope and pictures flutter out. He picks one up and laughs. “I stand corrected.” He flashes it toward me and I see a washed out Polaroid of a thin woman with a blonde bob wearing the sweater. She looks as if she’s trying not to let it actually touch her. Like it’s an anaconda. “Mom, pretending to like her gift.”
He laughs again and picks up the other pictures, flipping through them and chuckling. “Dear god, Nanna gave terrible gifts. She was born rich and stayed rich but she was as cheap as if she’d struggled through the Depression.”
“Well, you don’t get rich giving money away, they say!” I pull my hand away from Maeve. “Little girl, that incoming tooth is going to bite to the bone!”
Corbin smiles at her indulgently and turns back to the trunk. “Ah! I think I see it.” He lifts a stack of clothes with one hand while he fishes down deep. “There!” he says, pulling out a grey sweatshirt with a flourish that also dislodges a picture frame from the pile. It lands with a thud on the rug, face down. “What horror got framed?” he muses as he flips it over. And that’s when all the color drains out of his face.
Maeve does her little butt scootch, getting close enough to pat the frame. Corbin yanks it away fiercely and I can see that it’s a wedding picture. And I can guess whose.
“C’mere, Maeve,” I say, reaching for her. The swift yank startled her and I want to keep that from turning into a wail.
But Corbin softens a bit, strokes her head. “It’s okay. Sorry, sweetie,” he says, his voice tight. He tilts the photo toward her. In the picture, Corbin looks like a child in a tuxedo, but Elise is radiant. A blonde goddess in yards of white silk. “That’s…your mommy,” he says, his big hand cradling her little head as she pats the frame.
I have no idea what to do, so I just try to be invisible. I can barely see through the tears in my eyes and my throat burns with the effort of not crying. Corbin is silent and still. Maeve, however, continues patting the frame and saying “Ba ba ba.”
Finally, I wipe my eyes as stealthily as I can, saying, “Hey Maeve, let’s go see if Marta wants help with dinner!” When I scoop her up, Corbin glances at me, his eyes red-rimmed. “Just text me if you want to talk,” I say and he smiles. But once again, that smile does not reach his eyes.
Chapter Nine
I’d like to punch the photograph, smash out the glass. Cut it up with scissors like a scorned lover in a black and white movie. But I know I’d feel stupid afterward, regret it. But the urge is there, oh yes.
Goddammit, Elise, how are you still fucking up my life?
The picture is only what, nine years old? But it feels like a lifetime away. I look like a stupid kid–which I was, I guess. Elise looks beautiful, of course, she always did. She was one of those women that could look gorgeous as she stabbed you in the gut, like a model as she tossed a sack of kittens into a pond.
I spent almost eight months in India, trying to get past my anger and guilt and anger at my guilt. I think I made a lot of progress, but man, looking at her cold, brittle smile just brings it all back.
I showed Maeve the photo, not that she really understands anything about it yet, because I know I don’t want her to grow up with the idea that her mother was a terrible person. Even though she was. But that can’t be good for a kid. It’s hard enough to grow up with two well-meaning parents. But to have an incompetent father and a dead mother he never loved…good thing we can afford therapy, right?
What was this even doing in the trunk? I look around the room and see that my sisters’ wedding photos are on the mantle. Sarah and Bink, Emily and Esther, Laura and Geoff. And there’s the space for Corbin and Elise. Connie probably stashed it in the trunk so I wouldn’t see it. Ah, the best of intentions… I shove it back in, under the ugly sweaters and vow to take the lot of it to the charity shop. Maybe someone can use the frame.
Out the window, I see Vanessa pushing Maeve around the garden again. I’m angry at myself, of course, not Elise, not really. I’ve come to mostly accept that she was just, as they say, who she was. Expecting her to be any different was like expecting the river to flow the other way. I was stupid to marry her, stupid to stay with her. But then, once she told me she was pregnant, what could I do?
No, as I admitted to Vanessa, I did not want a baby. Not with her. I never thought about it clearly at the time, but I couldn’t bear the thought of watching her be a mother to my child. How could it be anything but a train wreck? How could she be anything but cruel and selfish, it was all she knew. Her own mother was a vain narcissist, as was her father, for what that’s worth. It turns my stomach to think it, but, really, Maeve is better off without her.
How can a good person think that, though, that a baby is better off without her mother? Better off with that mother dead and buried? But it’s true. What I struggle with, is whether she’d have been better off if I’d stayed in India.
Of course, the Hamilton’s threatening to sue spurred me into action. God knows I couldn’t let even a child I’d never met fall into their hands. But if she’d been able to stay with my parents? Well, I don’t know. I don’t know what I would have done. And that bothers me.
I’m good at business. I make decisions, I delegate, I manage. Hell, when it was clear that the winery needed little from me, I started figuring out how I could make things better on the worker end, using the things I’d learned in India. But this personal stuff…I feel like it’s alien ground. I don’t know what I’m doing and I know that the consequences of screwing up are huge.
Vanessa’s down there, handing a flower to Maeve–letting her shred it, taking away the bits before she can shove them in her mouth. She says she’s never even been a babysitter, so how does it come so naturally to her? How does she not feel like a big fraud, like even the baby can tell she doesn’t know what she’s doing?
I know I should go out there and join them. I’ll just check my email first, try to get back into the right space.
I stop by my office and sit down to check my emails, listen to voice mail. I’m idly deleting stuff I don’t need when I spot the subject line, in all caps: CORBIN READ–ABOUT MAEVE
It’s from my lawyer, well, the family lawyer. Elise’s parents are almost certainly going forward with their lawsuit. There’s nothing to be done yet, but I should be prepared and keep my schedule clear in case there are court appearances. It’s not a shock. I mean, the threat of this suit is what brought me back in the first place, but I had hoped that my return would cause them to give up.
I should have known better. They may be evil, but the Hamiltons don’t give up. And they can hold a grudge for a very long time.
I shutdown my computer and rejoin Vanessa. There’s nothing to be done now, the lawyer said, so that’s what I’ll do.
“Are you alright?” she asks. She looks worried. When I nod, she takes my hand, sending a thrill through me like the first time I touched her. It’s a little thing, I know, a thing most people take for granted, but having someone genuinely concerned about me? It’s oddly touching.
“Maeve was trying to eat all the zinnias, so we had to stop playing the rip-up-all-the-flowers game. I don’t know which ones are poisonous and I figure my heart can only take so many trips to the ER.”
“Good call. Thanks for being understanding about this. I know it’s weird. Like being haunted by a less than friendly ghost that pops up right when you were having fun.”
Vanessa chuckles and nods. “Yeah, that’s exactly it. But it’s okay. I don’t believe in ghosts. No matter what Gran says.”
So we walk around the garden as the sun gets low in the sky. We hold hands or take turns holding Maeve and pushing the empty stroller and then it’s time for dinner and then time for bed and she invites me back to her room and I accept.
I manage to push the impending suit from my head so that I can get things in order before our trip to New York. We’ve got another week before the harvest really kicks in, not that they need me for that anyway. I’ve moved a meeting with a labor repres
entative until after we get back. I send Wayne Jarvis, our lawyer, all the info he asked for, and I hope the background check on Vanessa doesn’t turn up any child labor violations or accusations of swindling the elderly.
Every afternoon at one, I meet Vanessa and Maeve for a swim, and every evening I join them for dinner. Every night, I make sure that Vanessa is sleeping deeply enough to drool.
Sunday morning, the helicopter arrives to take us to the airport. In truth, our family’s jet is outdated and I’m sure several of my dad’s friends tease him about it, but I can’t miss the look of awe on Vanessa’s face. I was raised well enough not to go the “This old thing? Why, it’s practically ancient!” route.
“Saves time, having your own plane,” I say, ushering them up the steps. “Yankee Cotton used to use it all the time, but I think it mostly chauffeurs the family around now. Admittedly an extravagant convenience.”
“You’ll get no complaints from me!” Vanessa says, settling Maeve into the car seat already waiting for us. “I’m sure it’s an environmental nightmare, but I hate flying coach.” She looks up at me and laughs. “Although I bet you wouldn’t be flying coach anyway.”
“Uh, no.” I sit down across from her and try not to think about how much Elise used to complain about this plane. She couldn’t imagine why we hadn’t gotten a new one or remodeled this one. It drove her mad that none of us cared enough to bother and that no one would just tell her she could arrange for it.
Get out of my head, Elise.
I focus on playing peek-a-boo with Maeve until her giggles drive Elise’s complaints from my memory.
“Who will be there when we arrive?” Vanessa asks, once Maeve has fallen asleep in her seat.
“I’m not sure. I know my parents are there and I’m pretty sure Sarah and Bink came in early so they could get some quiet time before Laura’s kids came.”
“His name is Bink?”