She laughed, a pathetic, painful sound. “I’m pretty sure he broke up with me tonight. And who can blame him?”
“He’s in love with you, you know.”
Love? He’d called her that a few times, when they were in bed together, but he had never said, “I love you,” or even hinted it, nor had she. And yet…
She pressed a hand to the ache in her chest. “Tonight, I told him he had no business interfering between Emma and me.”
Helen winced.
Kathleen’s mouth stretched into a painful kind of smile. “Yeah. As he said, I put him in his place. And after he’s listened so patiently to my worries.”
Helen sat silent for a moment. “Well,” she said, “it seems to me that you have to decide whether you love him and want him to be a real part of your life. And if you do, you’d better tell him so.”
“Tell him I love him?” Kathleen said, appalled.
“At least tell him you’re sorry. Tell him why you lashed out.”
A small moan escaped her.
Helen laughed. “You can do it. As for Emma…she’s eating. Not a lot, but enough. Isn’t that what really counts? So what if she screams at you and slams her bedroom door?”
Kathleen blinked. “When you put it that way…”
“Listen to wise Helen. Who,” she stood, “is now going back to bed.”
“Helen… Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Helen disappeared toward the hall, her soft, “’Night,” coming from the darkness.
Kathleen wrapped the afghan around her shoulders and huddled inside it, aware again of the quiet and the creaks of an old house settling and the thump that was probably Pirate leaping to the floor from a bed upstairs to greet Helen. Thanks to her comforting visit, the house felt friendly around Kathleen.
Emma is eating, Kathleen told herself silently. Helen’s right. That’s what is important.
Her mind hopped, as if she’d thrown a pebble to the next square. Do I love him? What if I knew—if I was sure—he loved me?
How could she admit she’d been jealous? She had begged him once not to look deep, not to see the parts of her that she knew to be unworthy. And now she was supposed to confess something so ridiculous, so childish, so sad?
Do I love him?
Abruptly she scrambled to her feet, turned out the light and felt her way through the dark toward the hall. Her trailing fingers found the easy chair, then the wall, and finally the door molding. She crossed the hall to the kitchen, blinking against the light when she flipped the switch.
The canned goods were in a lower cabinet, to the left of the sink. Wishing she wore her slippers, nonetheless she plopped onto the floor, draped the afghan over her shoulders, and opened the cupboard door.
Closing her eyes, she reached in and shoved cans around, willy-nilly. Let them fall where they may.
Do I love him?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“MOM.” EMMA’S VOICE was subdued. Worried. “The phone’s for you. It’s Dad.”
“What?” A bar of soap fell to the pantry floor and Kathleen swore, then looked back up at her daughter, standing in the doorway with the phone extended in her hand. “It’s your father?”
Emma nodded, her eyes huge in her face.
Now what? Muttering under her breath, Kathleen peeled off the latex gloves she’d been wearing to unmold soap—including the bar, still soft and uncured, that had squished into a useless blob on the floor. Even with the newly installed fan running, the mixture of scents in the tiny room was overpowering.
She stepped over the empty molds she’d been setting out of the way on the floor and followed Emma into the kitchen. There, she took the phone.
“Ian?”
“Hello, Kathleen.” She knew his voice as well as her own.
“What is it?” Surely he wasn’t going to insist yet again that she let him pay a settlement?
“I called to see how Emma is. I couldn’t get more than a ‘fine’ out of her. Obviously she’s out of that residential program.”
“Yes, and she’s doing very well.” Gaze on her daughter’s face, Kathleen grabbed for a chair and pulled it out so that she could sit. “She’s still thin, but eating.”
“I’m glad.” He was quiet for a moment. “I’m hoping I can see her.”
“See her?” Kathleen parroted.
Emma’s eyes got even bigger.
“I’m her father.”
Shock hadn’t hit her yet. “May I ask what caused your change of heart?”
“I miss Emma.” Pause. “I miss both of you.”
She should feel something. Anger. A pang for their lost, happy years. Instead she remained remote, as if imagining a scene that hadn’t happened.
She heard her voice, cool and far away. “You’ll have to tell Emma that. Visits will be up to her, Ian. I won’t force her.” She didn’t say, Unlike you.
“May I come over one of these evenings? Talk to you both?”
Kathleen hesitated. Sharon thought it was important that Emma reestablish a relationship with her father. Ian had loved Emma, and she’d loved her daddy. In her mind, he’d become a monster, a hideous image that blocked remembrance of the father who’d carried her on his shoulders and swept her around the dance floor and taught her to ice skate.
What would it hurt if he stopped by? Emma could choose to see him or not. But at least she’d have the opportunity, if that was what she decided.
“All right.”
Emma’s face contorted as she asked silent questions.
“Tomorrow night?” Ian asked.
“Fine.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing you,” were his last, quiet words.
Kathleen in turn pressed End on the phone and set it on the table.
“What did he say?” Emma burst out.
“He wants to see you. He’s coming over tomorrow night to talk to us.”
The teenager’s voice rose. “And you said he could?”
“Emma, he’s your father.” Kathleen felt the tremor in her hands when she laid them on her thighs. “He’s not a patient man, but he does love you.”
“He tried to kill me!”
“He tried to force you to eat,” she corrected. “He thought you were defying him by starving yourself. He lost his temper.”
“It was…” Emma trembled all over. “It was horrible. I don’t want to see him. I won’t!”
“That’s okay,” Kathleen said. “But I think you should. Listen to him just this once. Then, if you don’t want to agree to regular visits, I’ll back you up. You heard what I told him—it’s up to you. But…he is your father, and he used to be a good one. Remember that, Emma.”
“You’re taking his side!” Hysteria edged her daughter’s voice.
“No. I will always take yours. But you know how Sharon feels about this. She thinks it’s important for you to see him and, oh, put him in proportion. He’s just your father, who cracked and did something scary. You’re older and stronger now, and you can face him.”
Face bleach-white, Emma cried, “I can’t!”
“Don’t let him have some kind of power he doesn’t deserve.”
“I hate him.”
“Do you?”
Emma glared. “You sound like Sharon! I do hate him!”
“Okay. Tell him so. Maybe he deserves it.” Heaven knew, Emma was quick enough to yell, “I hate you!” to her mother. It would be refreshing to have her hate someone else for a change.
“You can’t make me see him!” Emma whirled and raced from the kitchen, her footsteps thudding up the stairs. Above, her bedroom door slammed.
Kathleen winced. The whole household probably had. Everyone else must be getting as sick as she was of that furious bang. Sometimes she wanted to take the damn door off its hinges. Emma should count her blessings that she wasn’t living with her father now. If he’d gone off the deep end then, imagine how he’d react to her teenage tantrums now!
Ian. What would he think of this house,
an elderly lady sagging and wrinkling? And of Kathleen’s motley household of women and children and a half-grown cat who could eye two people at once? It was a world apart from the home Ian and she had shared, elegant, spacious, designed for entertainment more than for a family. He would look at her with pity and condescendingly offer the settlement again, Kathleen guessed.
I miss both of you, he’d said. What had that meant?
I’m looking forward to seeing you, he had closed with. Not, I’m looking forward to seeing Emma.
Surely he wasn’t hinting at a reconciliation?
Kathleen got to her feet in agitation, then grabbed her latex gloves and hurried back to the pantry. She had work to do. Soap to unmold and set out to cure.
Ian could hint at whatever he liked. She wasn’t interested. Not when another man’s face appeared before her mind’s eye in unguarded moments, when she felt a leap of hope every time she heard a pickup truck on the street, every time the phone or doorbell rang.
Of course, she should call Logan, not wait for him to call her. She would, when she worked up the nerve. When—if—she knew for sure that it wasn’t best for things with him to end now.
Maybe, in a weird way, seeing Ian would help her decide. She wouldn’t have him back even if he begged, not after what he’d done to Emma. Not after she had found out how much more tender a man could be, how much more glorious lovemaking could be. She didn’t want the life Ian had given her.
What she did want was the question.
EMMA CUT HER LAST CLASS the next day. She was always the good little girl who would never do anything like that. But her stomach had been churning all day, and Ms. Peterson, her English teacher, had said in this irritated tone, “Emma, kindly pay attention!” while in Spanish, Señora McBride had dropped a book with a smack on Emma’s desk, making her start and almost fall out of her chair as the class laughed. Emma couldn’t listen! She just couldn’t. She wouldn’t go to math at all. So what if she had an unexcused absence? Mom was mad at her all the time anyway.
She walked fast, her head down, skipping the first bus stop and going an extra block before she stopped under the overhang in front of a little Italian restaurant to wait for the city bus. Arms crossed, she shivered and wished she could have gone to her locker for her coat before she took off. But then the bell would have rung and someone would have noticed her leaving campus.
Dad was coming tonight. To see her. And Mom was letting him.
Emma couldn’t believe it. She hadn’t thought she would ever have to see him again. She tried not to think about him. Sharon was always trying to get her to talk about him, but she refused. It wasn’t like he had anything to do with whether she ate or not, except maybe in the first place when she’d believed losing weight would also make her beautiful so he’d be proud of her.
What a dumb kid’s fantasy!
He’d been so mad. She cringed at her memory of his face. The very next day, Mom had packed up their clothes and they had moved out. Emma hadn’t seen him since, although he had tried once, coming to the apartment Mom rented. Emma had hidden in the bedroom, listening hard, waiting for raised voices that never came.
Sharon said he was Emma’s ogre under the bed, that she had to lift the bedskirt someday and look, or she’d always be scared. And also that it was really, really important that she recapture the memories of being loved by both her parents.
Was Mom right? Could she face him, and even say, “I hate you for what you did?”
She didn’t know.
Emma rode the bus all the way downtown and got off in front of Nordstrom. She walked, and looked in store windows, and tried not to think about tonight.
Finally, worried that Ginny would beat her home and be there all by herself, Emma caught another bus.
She was late, but Ginny wasn’t on the doorstep. Anxiety rising, Emma let herself into the house. Immediately she felt a rush of relief and remorse. Looking small and scared, Pirate on her lap, the six-year-old sat on the bottom step of the staircase.
She stared at Emma. “You weren’t home.”
“How did you get in?”
“Mom gave me a key. In case. Why weren’t you here?”
Emma dropped her book bag by the coat tree and sank down on the step next to Ginny. “I’m really sorry. I just…I was upset about something, and I took the bus all the way downtown, and then it took too long to get back home.”
“What were you upset about?” Ginny asked, face tilted up. Her fingers kept working in Pirate’s dense orange and cream fur, and he rumbled contentedly.
“You know how I’ve told you about my dad? The way he shoved food in my mouth and almost choked me to death?”
Ginny nodded gravely.
“Well, he’s coming here tonight. He wants to see me.”
“Oh-h,” she breathed, eyes saucer-wide.
“Mom says I don’t have to see him. I haven’t decided yet. Sometimes I want to tell him how much he scared me, and how mad I am.”
Ginny looked awed at the idea of Emma telling off a grown-up.
“But Mom says he loves me, and he just lost his temper that once, and…” She stopped. “So I don’t know what to do.”
Ginny nodded solemnly.
“You won’t tell your mom or anyone that I was late today, will you? I’ll get in trouble.”
Ginny’s forehead crinkled. “No, but I was scared.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I promise.”
The little girl pursed her mouth. “Okay.”
“Let’s do something fun, so I don’t have to think about Dad. Let’s play a game, okay?”
They went upstairs and played Chutes and Ladders and even Twister, although they had to take their hands off the colored spots to spin the dial. Even so, it was fun. Despite being small, Ginny was better than Emma; she could twist like a pretzel without falling down.
At dinner Mom kept watching Emma, which wasn’t new, but this time she didn’t catch Mom assessing how much food was left on her plate. Afterward, when everyone was collecting dirty dishes to carry to the sink, Mom asked in a low voice, “You okay with this?”
Emma didn’t know she’d made up her mind until she found herself nodding. “I guess.”
Mom smiled. “Good girl.”
“What if I do tell him I hate him?”
To her surprise, Mom just shrugged. “He can handle it. You do whatever feels right to you.”
Behind them, Jo growled in frustration. “The damn sink is plugged up again!”
Mom hurried to see what the problem was. Emma knew what Uncle Ryan would say: the plumbing was decrepit. But Mom had shot her wad, as she put it, on the two bathrooms and the new cabinets for her soap-making business. So she kept a plumber’s snake and a big bottle of that toxic stuff that was supposed to unclog drains, and she kept pouring it down and poking in the pipes with the snake. Emma bet Logan would fix it if she asked him, but he hadn’t had dinner here since the problem started. In fact, he hadn’t been around at all in several days. Maybe he was out of town or something. Emma wondered if he’d ever talked to Mom the way he said he would.
When the doorbell rang, Mom was viciously stabbing the snake down the drain. Her head came up, and she said, “Crap!”
She yanked the slimy coils out, dropped them in the sink and grabbed a dishtowel to dry her hands. Her hair was sticking up, and her face was red, and she’d gotten water on the front of her shirt.
“Emma, can you get that?”
Suddenly paralyzed, Emma didn’t get up from the chair.
“Jo? Helen?”
“I’ll get it,” Helen called from somewhere else in the house. She’d cooked, so she didn’t have to clean up.
Mom peered at her reflection in the tiny mirror that was stuck with a magnet to the fridge. Poking at her hair, she muttered, “I look awful,” then scowled as if she’d made herself mad.
Voices came from the front hall. Emma gripped the seat of the chair with both hands, as if someone had thr
eatened to drag her out of it.
Mom came to her. “Are you ready?”
She shook her head hard.
“You know, your dad is a handsome, smart man who can be a jerk sometimes. Don’t give him more credit than he deserves.”
Emma didn’t even know why she was so scared. She knew what Mom meant, and she knew it was true. But still, she saw him coming out of his chair at the dinner table with his face horribly twisted, felt him grip her head and squeeze her jaw so that her mouth opened as he scooped food from her plate and shoved it in, a huge handful of it. Saw the way he looked at her, as if he hated her.
But it wasn’t just that. She almost wished it was, that she didn’t have all this other stuff tangled up inside her. Because part of her wanted to see him, and kept thinking that maybe now, finally, he’d look at her with open astonishment and say, “Wow. My Emma has become a beauty.” She’d see in his eyes that he meant it.
She hated knowing that she still cared what he thought. She didn’t want to care. She didn’t want him for a father at all. She wanted someone like Uncle Ryan, or Logan. Someone who would love her even if she wasn’t beautiful, or the smartest girl in school, or the best dancer or actor or whatever.
Mom touched her lightly on the shoulder. “I’ll go talk to him. When you feel ready, come on out. If you don’t, that’s okay, too.”
Emma gave a choppy nod.
A moment later, she heard Mom’s voice join her father’s out in the entry hall. Their voices receded as they went into the living room.
Jo was the one stabbing the snake down the drain now. All of a sudden, there was a gurgle and she exclaimed, “Hallelujah!”
“Did you fix it, Aunt Jo?” Ginny asked, rising on tiptoe to try to see in the sink.
Jo scrunched up her face. “For now. Emma, do you think your mom would kill me if I ask Ryan to look at this?”
Emma made herself relax her hands, one finger at a time. “Uncle Ryan won’t let Mom kill you.”
“My hero. Well.” She reached for the dish soap. “I guess I don’t have any excuse not to wash dishes now, do I? Are you girls going to dry?”
“I will!” Ginny said. “’Cept I have to get a chair.”
The Perfect Mom Page 17