Is it possible to just know something like this about herself, to just know, suddenly, that what she suspects is true? If it is, it will be the first time she’s known herself at all.
* * *
“Mae, please, what’s going on? Are you sick? Come out. Talk to me.”
She’s sitting on the bath mat on the bathroom floor upstairs, with her back against the tub and her head against the door. She has the test stick in her hand. She thinks about sliding it under the door, but it won’t fit, and anyway, that isn’t the best way to tell him this kind of news. But what is the best way? How do you tell something like this to someone you’ve been with for only a month? How do you tell him you’re pregnant with another man’s baby, that it can’t possibly be his baby, that instead the father is a man who is a felon, soon to be convicted?
He knocks again. “Mae!”
She unlocks the door. He enters, stares at her sitting on the floor.
She holds up the test.
“There were two in the box. I did them both. Both positive.”
He takes the test from her.
“Yikes. A baby,” he says. Mae reads his expression easily. It’s like he’s an animal caught in headlights, an animal about to turn and run away into the forest.
But he doesn’t run. He lowers down to the floor and sits beside her with his back against the tub. He reaches for her clammy hand.
She says, “I’m about two months pregnant, I think.”
His expression doesn’t change.
“I’ve been feeling sick for a long time. And we didn’t . . . It hasn’t been long enough.” A slow dawning on his face; she’s nostalgic for every moment that came before this one—all gone now.
“So that means . . . ?” He’s staring over her shoulder now. Will he ever look her in the eye again?
“The baby is Peter’s. My ex-fiancé’s. He’s the father.”
He pulls his hand away. “Are you going to tell him?”
“I don’t have any way to reach him. And I don’t want him in my life.”
“Are you going to keep . . . it?”
Her heart sinks past the rock bottom she believed she had already reached. “It?” she repeats.
“Well, you don’t know if it’s—sorry—if it’s a boy or girl.”
“Stop. Just stop saying ‘it.’ ”
He goes silent on her. He’s waiting for an answer to the question. “I’m still the mother. You realize that, don’t you?” she says. “But because you’re not the father, you think I shouldn’t keep the baby?” She hates the way her voice sounds in her ears. She hates how angry she is at him, and how bewildered he is, how distant now. She hates that what she wants so much involves sacrificing the person she needs most.
“That’s not what I meant. I just wanted to—”
“Never mind,” she says. “The answer is yes. I want a baby. This baby. Despite the circumstances.” Her eyes fill with tears. “For a few minutes, before I realized, when I thought it was ours, I felt so happy. Even though I was scared. And when I did realize—I’m sorry. But it didn’t change the way I felt. I guess this means I’m losing you.”
“You’re not losing me.”
“No?”
There’s too much silence, but then it’s over. “No. This is a lot to take in. But I’m still here.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to. But I want to. Nothing has to change, okay? I’ve never thought about having kids, but that’s only because there’s never been anyone I wanted to have kids with. It’s still us. We can do this.”
She manages to take a breath, letting his words reach her, yet again, reaching for that lifeline, as she always does with him. Will there be a last time? He moves closer. He’s there. He is. He’s holding her hand again. She leans in close; she needs to see his eyes. “I love you,” he continues. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I love you, too, she wants to say, but nothing comes out. She can only squeeze his hand, hard.
Is it Sunday? Buy the New York Times and read it from cover to cover.
A man a few chairs down in the waiting room was reading a newspaper but is now incessantly cracking his knuckles. Gabe tries to ignore him but this becomes impossible when the man speaks to him. “Nervous habit. And it’s our third—you’d think I’d be used to it by now.”
Gabe smiles and nods.
“Is it your first? Seems like it. You look really nervous.”
“Uh. Yeah.”
“Well, I won’t scare you, then. The wife’ll never try to punch you out while she’s in labor. And changing diapers? Just great, man, totally fun.” Gabe looks away. Just then the nurse comes into the room and says, “Partner of Amanda Edwards?” and the man jumps up, spilling the newspaper pages to the floor. “That’s me! Good luck, man.”
“Yeah—thanks. You, too.”
Gabe leans over and picks up the pages of the paper on the floor. He scans the headlines, but can’t focus. Mae seems to have been in there a long time. But what does he know about how long is too long? If something is wrong, will they come out and get him? What if something is going to happen to her, what if this baby is going to hurt her in some way? It makes his hands sweat and his eyes water, this idea. And there’s resentment, too. This baby. He’s stopped calling the baby “it”—but he can’t start calling it “his.”
He’s relieved when he looks up and sees Mae hovering in the door frame at the front of the waiting room.
But then he remembers this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He jumps up, and the newspaper is on the floor again. “Are you okay?” he says when he gets closer to her. “Is the baby okay? What happened?”
“It’s just—I’m fine. We’re fine. I think the radiologist didn’t know you were supposed to come in. Maybe because I didn’t have you as my partner in my intake file. Sorry. Next time?”
“Oh. Sure. Yeah. Next time.” His gut churns. There’s more to it. She won’t look at him. And he knows what it means: she didn’t want him in there. She didn’t want to share the experience with him. If she can’t accept him as the father, how will he be able to?
He helps her into her coat and they leave. They wait for the bus to take them to Alexandria Bay from Watertown. It starts to rain and he pulls her into the shelter. He can’t stop doing these things for her now; he wants to protect her, and the baby.
Or maybe he wants to protect her from the baby. This baby who isn’t his, and never will be his.
“What was it like?” he asks. “Seeing . . . the baby?” I wanted to be there. That was the moment the baby was supposed to become mine, too. Why didn’t you let me?
Her eyes light up. “I heard the heartbeat. And he—or she—was sucking a thumb.”
He forces a smile. He can do this, because he would do anything for her. He loves her. “We didn’t talk about that part,” he says. “Do you want to find out the sex? It doesn’t matter to me, truly. Whatever you want.”
She looks away from him. “There’s the bus” is all she says.
I know I’m always suggesting getting in the car and getting out of here when it’s raining; maybe it’s because I’ve hardly ever left this town myself. But driving in the rain can be a nice way to pass the time. Go to Canton, a few towns over, for some great pizza if you need a destination.
George is on an underpass, stuck in afternoon traffic, on a street called Spadina. He turns right and crawls along. A streetcar clangs past, red, white and black. Cars honk. A man wanders the rows of cars with a coffee cup and a sign that says “Down on My Luck.” George opens his window and hands the man a twenty, and the man says, “Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir,” over and over, until George closes the window because he doesn’t know what else to do.
“Don’t do this, George,” Lilly says once the window is closed.
“I told you, I have to. You know I do. Will you leave me for good if I do?”
Traffic is stopped again; he looks over at her. Her eyes are sad and sh
e seems less substantial than usual. “I’m already gone, George,” she says. “You know that.”
“Because of me.” His voice cracks like a dish dropped on the floor. “Because of me, you’re dead, you’re gone. And that’s why I can’t be her one and only official living family member. I’m not to be trusted. That’s why I have to do this. To make amends. Give something back to Mae.”
Bud scrambles to attention because George has raised his voice. He puts his head on George’s shoulder. George shrugs him off.
“You know that when Virginia set her mind to something, there was never going to be any stopping her,” Lilly says. “If you’re thinking it’s your fault she died, it’s mine, too.”
“No. It’s the father’s job, the man’s job, to lay down the law.”
Lilly laughs, surprising him. “You were never the sort of man to ‘lay down the law,’ George.”
“You’re ridiculing me.”
“I’m not. I love you for it. You’re kind, gentle, accepting. If we had tried to bend a child like Virginia to our will, we would have lost her long before.”
“If Everett had lived, everything would have been different.”
“Of course it would have. But I was happy I got to spend my life with you, George. That’s the truth.”
It always ends and begins in the truth.
George feels confused. Confused by her words, by the traffic, by the unfamiliar street names. “I need to find my way,” he says. He stops the car at a gas station with a phone booth. But before he gets out, he faces Lilly. “Don’t go,” he says. “Please just stay with me while I do this. Don’t leave me.” She doesn’t answer.
He goes inside the gas station and gets change for a five, asks for it in quarters, fills his pocket with change. “I would have felt rich with all these quarters when I was a little boy,” he says to the man behind the counter. But the blank look on the man’s face makes him wish he hadn’t spoken. He’s always experiencing this now when he’s out in the world. He doesn’t translate as a person in general. He is a relic. Everything moves so fast, and it’s passed him by. He jingles the quarters. He buys some breath mints and some terrible coffee.
It’s cold inside the phone booth. Cold people, that was what Lilly had always called the Rutherfords, Chase’s parents. They proved that, irrevocably, when they came to take their son’s body home and refused to see Mae. They were too broken to fight a battle they would probably lose to people with money and power they didn’t have. And, George remembers, in his paralyzing grief, he had blamed Chase for what happened. He had wanted him gone, no matter the pain it might cause Mae, whose father would become nothing but a black hole—a black hole shaped like all the things Chase could have been but never was.
George expects he’ll have to call all the D or A Rutherfords in the phone book, but he gets Delia on his second try.
“Yes?”
He is silent. Frozen. Cold people.
“Who’s there? Who is this?”
“Delia?”
“Yes?” she repeats, irritation creeping in. “Who is calling?”
“George Summers.”
“What is it that you want?”
“I’m in Toronto,” he says. “I came to see you and Anthony.”
“Why would you do such a thing?”
“Because I’d like to talk to you.” Silence. “Lilly has died,” he adds, and this feels disloyal. He can see her, sitting there in the car. He’s relieved she’s still there. She waves at him and he waves back.
“Where are you, exactly?”
“Downtown. Spadina and . . . Front Street, I think. I can see the CN Tower.”
“You can see that vulgar phallus of a tower from most places in Toronto. Anyway, I’m in the north end, nowhere close to where you are. The Bridle Path. Eleven Hill Point Road.” She hangs up without saying good-bye.
“Eleven Hill Point Road,” he repeats to Lilly when he gets in the car.
“Oh, George.”
He finds the street on his map, then drives back the way he came and out onto a highway that curves around the city. Lilly is silent, staring out the window at the pitiful brown river that has appeared beside them.
He drives through a vast, treed valley and under bridges. When he’s in Delia’s neighborhood there are no more tall buildings, just houses larger than most of the houses George has ever seen in his life, with huge columns at the front, or sweeping balconies on all sides, or multiple gables with peaked, churchlike windows. There are tennis courts, swimming pools, multicar garages. Delia’s house has all three of these things, and a fountain in the driveway that’s filled with leaves.
“Okay, then,” he says to Lilly. She reaches out her hand toward him, but he draws back just as they are about to touch. He gets out of the car.
Bud is hesitating at the bottom of the stone staircase. “Come on, boy. Nothing to be afraid of.” He wishes he could believe this himself.
Man and dog approach the door together: it’s large, wide, glossy black. No bell that he can see, just a knocker in the shape of an angry lion’s head. George doesn’t want to touch it but he must. He lifts his hand, he knocks. Enough time passes that he thinks perhaps she won’t answer, but then the door swings open. Delia is swathed in a tawny-colored fur coat and is wearing large diamond earrings that pull her earlobes down in a manner that George finds obscene to look at. Her hair is still auburn, but there is white showing at the crown.
“Hello, Delia. Thank you for allowing me to stop by at such short notice.” He has the urge to bow, to laugh stupidly. Bud sits back on his haunches.
“Hello, George.” Her skin is like crepe paper. The rouge on her cheeks is not quite rubbed in. “You didn’t mention a dog.”
“All right with you if he comes in?”
“Not really, but if you leave him running around the yard I’ll be stepping in his shit for weeks.”
Inside, he gives her his coat when she offers to take it; she hangs it unceremoniously over the banister. As soon as his coat is off he realizes the house is freezing. He wonders if she has fallen on hard times and can’t afford to heat the house, or if the heat is broken, or if she’s just cheap. Maybe she turned it off when he said he was coming, so he wouldn’t stay long.
“Why have you come?”
“Lilly is dead.”
“You said that on the telephone. I’m not sure that merits traveling here to tell me in person. I didn’t call you when Anthony died.”
He clears his throat. “Oh. I didn’t know your husband had died. Well, I’m sorry. But . . . Mae—you remember who she is, of course?”
Delia doesn’t nod.
“Chase’s daughter. Your . . . granddaughter. She has no family now, no blood ties. I . . .” Another throat clear. “I won’t live forever. And I just thought— I thought you should know that she’s out there, on her own, and could probably use—”
“What do you want, money for her?”
“No. No! It’s not that at all.”
“Then what?”
“You have a big family, don’t you? Chase had sisters? So there must be . . . there must be more of you. Cousins, grandchildren? People for her to call family.”
“Do you want money, George?”
“For crying out— You are a horrible woman, you know that?” Oh, damn it, no, that’s not what he meant to say. It’s true, but now he’s done it.
“I don’t appreciate it when people come into my home and insult me to my face. General custom in the circles I travel in is to do it behind a person’s back, but you wouldn’t know that, would you, being of such low breeding? And I’ve heard you perfectly. But you’re not making sense. What do you really want?”
George is feeling dizzy. He has to concentrate to breathe and then speak. “What I want is to know why, for all these years, you have refused to know her, when she’s a blood relation of yours, when she’s your grandchild. Is she not good enough for you, is that it? Because of Virginia, because of us? She’s not even mine,
you know. Virginia wasn’t my daughter, she was the daughter of a close friend who died in the war, a hero, a brave man, a worthy man with better breeding than me.”
At this, Delia’s face registers surprise. She blinks a few times. George reaches into his wallet and takes out the photo he carries of Mae, taken at her college graduation. She’s throwing her cap in the air and laughing into the camera. He extends his hand and tries to give the photo to Delia, but she doesn’t take it, doesn’t even look at it. “She’s a wonderful girl. She’s kind and honest and a good person, and she’s your son’s child. But she’s lonely. She’s a lonely person. And you’re depriving her.”
“Depriving her?” Her laugh is phlegmy, horrid. “She doesn’t need me and she certainly doesn’t need us. My son died a long time ago. And a lot died with him. Do you understand that? This is not the kind of family your Mae should want anything to do with. We are not warm. We are not welcoming. And we won’t be, to her. Perhaps your grief is making you delusional. Our family despises yours, and we have our reasons.”
He thinks of Lilly out there in the car and looks down at his shoes. “I’m not delusional.”
She takes a step toward him. “You killed my son.” He sways backward as if she’s hit him. “You allowed those two to ride around in that boat, a boat that was put together by a drunk. What kind of an idiot allows his daughter to do that?”
He grabs his coat, then the dog’s leash at his feet, makes it to the front door and out of the woman’s house. He puts the dog in the backseat of the car and sits in the driver’s seat, his heart pounding.
“It wasn’t your fault, don’t let her get to you,” Lilly says to him. “She’s just a mean, lonely old woman. There was nothing we could have done. Please, my love. Please believe that.”
He does it, finally. He reaches out and tries to touch her cheek, but nothing is there. She’s gone.
“Come back,” he whispers.
But she won’t. He knows it. This is it. He turns on the car and backs out of the driveway.
Do you have a whole crew of bored kids to entertain? Have them put on a play.
Things to Do When It's Raining Page 17