“So you think I should petition to take her. Keep her.”
“She’s yours, Jared. You didn’t want it or even know it, but now that you do, there’s no forgetting it. If you turn your back on her, you’ll be ashamed of yourself. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day, the shame will come. Regret too. And when that happens, it’s going to bury you.”
* * *
Jared scooped up his keys, wallet, and shades before heading outside. It was hot as blazes, but thinking of Athena’s words—it’s going to bury you—he could remember the sick, icy dread he’d felt when she’d uttered them. She was right. He hadn’t planned on being a dad, but that’s what he was. Time to man up, face the music—or whatever the hell cliché fit.
The transfer was scheduled for noon at the family court building in Brooklyn; that’s where Miranda Berenzweig had been ordered to surrender the baby. He would not be meeting her though. At first she had said yes, but then she’d done an about-face, insisting that the transfer be handled exclusively through the family court system; she would not be present. He was stung by the refusal—wasn’t she even the least bit curious about him?—but he decided not to dwell on it. Things could have been way uglier between them; he was being let off easy and he knew it. Although Miranda had initially planned to fight for custody, in another abrupt turnaround, she had decided to give up the baby without going to court. Had she contested his claim, he would have almost assuredly won, but he would have paid heavily—in time, in anguish, and in money. Now he was freed from all of that. The baby—his baby—would be coming home today.
The morning was already oppressively hot. Jared headed for the downtown subway station, settling his shades over his eyes to protect against the glare. The platform was even hotter and more oppressive than the street, but the train came quickly and he gratefully stepped into the air-conditioned car. The one thing Miranda had agreed to—had actually suggested—was that he hire Supah, the nanny who’d been taking care of his daughter already. So there would be some continuity in her life. He’d also lined up a nighttime sitter, a Barnard student named Olivia, who lived nearby on 110th Street. She told him she was premed and wanted to become a pediatrician; how perfect was that? He did not expect to need her every night, but he did promise her work two or three nights a week.
“You’re bringing home a brand-new baby girl and think you’ll be stepping out three times a week?” said Athena when he told her about his plan.
“Is there a problem with that?” Jared bristled. Now that he’d confided in her, Athena had felt entitled to dispense her advice freely, whether he asked for it or not.
“It just seems like you might be wanting to spend your off hours getting to know her, that’s all.” She bustled back into her office; he scowled at her retreating form. But then he thought of how she’d helped him turn the small second bedroom in his apartment into a nursery, competently ordering all the furniture and equipment—who knew such a tiny person required so much stuff?—and his annoyance dissipated. She was a good person, a good woman. That he had about as much desire for her as he would have for a manatee was a source of ongoing disappointment—to both of them.
Walking from the subway station to the family court building on Jay Street, Jared felt the anxiety whirring around his head, a nasty, insistent buzz. He said he wanted this—he did want this—but what did he know about raising a baby? Not a damn thing. He hadn’t even been able to settle on a name for her yet. Celeste, while pretty enough, was what Miranda had chosen. He thought he should start fresh, so it was either going to be Lily, his mother’s name, or Caroline, for the baby’s own doomed mother. As he reached the elevator, the choice was obvious. He’d call her Lily Caroline Masters. Her initials would be LCM, and when she grew older, she’d have sheets or fancy stationery with this monogram; his mother would have approved. The decision seemed to calm him, and when he went first down the hall and then around a corner to the room whose number he’d been given, he felt a fluttering of something like anticipation as he laid his hand on the knob.
* * *
Her face. Jared could not stop looking at his daughter’s face. After meeting the judge and the caseworker and signing a shitload of papers—so many that his hand began to ache—he strapped her into the car seat that Miranda Berenzweig had not wanted back, and took her in a taxi uptown. The baby’s large brown eyes looked steadily into his, and he found he was transfixed, drawn into the gravitational pull of that gaze. Her face did not look like the face he’d first seen in the photograph anymore. She did not look like him, or Caroline, or anyone else he could point to. Instead she was entirely herself: a stranger, although not entirely strange.
There was traffic on the West Side Highway, and as the taxi moved along in syncopated lurches, the baby squirmed and began to make small sounds of irritation—Eh, eh, eh. “It’s okay, Lily,” he said and gave her his finger to hold. “We’ll be going soon.” Clinging to his finger, she quieted. Then the traffic eased and the taxi was able to move faster, shooting up past the familiar streets: Seventy-second, Seventy-ninth, Eighty-sixth. Lily opened her mouth in a wide, excited grin, and she kicked her feet furiously. “Speed demon,” he said and placed a hand on her head. Her hair was black, but as silky as her mother’s had been.
The sense memory of Caroline was suddenly all over him, crowding out everything else in the cab. She’d had such lovely hair, fine and glistening in the light, or falling in tendrils around her face when she pinned it up. Then there was the powdery smell of her, combined with the faintly citrus scent of whatever perfume she wore. The feel of her nestled within the protective curve of his arm, his hand big enough to span her throat. Her mouth, and the sticky, slightly strawberry taste of her lip gloss, her girlish body, so lithe and lively under his. Her tiny, perfect breasts, the faint line of down that ran along her torso to her pubic bone—the memories were an ambush, an assault. And then, as quickly as they had enveloped him, they were gone—thank Christ. The driver was turning into the exit lane and heading toward his apartment. “Hang tight,” he said to Lily. “We’re almost home.”
He moved anxiously around the apartment, trying to get Lily settled. It felt a little weird to have a baby—especially his baby—in the place. She seemed okay. A little confused maybe, but she wasn’t crying, not really. He carried her into the room that Athena had assembled: canopied white crib and matching dresser, pink and white curtains, sheets and quilt, rug shaped like a large pink and green bunny on the floor. Eh, eh, eh, said Lily. Eh, eh, eh. Jared felt a rising thrum of anxiety; it seemed that this was not a happy baby sound. Just as he was trying to figure out what he should be doing about it, the intercom sounded, and minutes later, Athena was at the door. She was wearing some voluminous caftan thing, trimmed in fringe, and long, dangling earrings.
“I thought you could use the welcome wagon,” she said. He saw then that her arms were laden with shopping bags; a couple were from the Fairway on 130th Street, and another from Bedelia’s, an upscale baby shop in the neighborhood he’d never have even noticed had she not pointed it out.
“This is so nice of you.” He followed her into the kitchen, where she began unpacking the bags.
“There’s something else too.” She gestured to the floor, where a bag from Barnes & Noble sat. “Open it.” Inside were several parenting books. Bonding with Baby. The First-Time Daddy’s Manual. The Single Guy’s Guide to Successful Fathering.
Jared flipped through The First-Time Daddy’s Manual. It seemed daunting. He closed the book. “Thanks. I’m sure I’ll be needing these.”
The intercom buzzed. “Are you expecting anyone else?” Athena asked. He shook his head when the buzzer sounded again. Jared poked his head out the window. There, on the street below, were Gabe, Tyrell, and Shawn; when he buzzed them in, he saw Darius was there too.
“What are you doing here?” Jared said as they trooped into the apartment. Lily took one look at Darius—who had
a full beard—and started to wail.
“Athena told me and I told the guys. We just wanted to say hi to the new addition,” said Shawn. “Jesus, she is loud!”
“Here, give her to me,” Athena said.
Jared couldn’t decide whether to be angry with Athena or grateful. Hell, it would have come out anyway. And he was glad to see his friends.
“The rest of you all know Athena, right?” Jared asked. They nodded. Athena smiled but focused on getting Lily to stop crying. She changed her, walked her, rocked her, and soon the wails turned to whimpers and then the whimpers trailed off. “I think she’s asleep,” Athena said. “But I can’t be sure.”
“Her eyes are closed,” Jared said, flooding with relief. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
His friends meanwhile had discovered the food Athena had brought and began setting it out on the table, along with a big sheet cake whose pale pink frosted surface was embellished with the words World’s Greatest Dad in looping chocolate script. Gabe turned on the television and began channel surfing until he found a tennis match; when Lily woke up, the guys all took turns passing her around and the novelty alone seemed to stave off any further wailing.
They ate all the food, including the entire cake, and polished off two bottles of wine that Jared produced from a kitchen cabinet. He declined to have any himself—considering he was going to have to deal with Lily by himself later, it didn’t seem like a good idea—but he was happy to be with his pals and was buoyed by their company. And it seemed like Gabe and Athena were really hitting it off; the two of them had moved off from the group, and Athena was looking at him with that bright, focused gaze that she tended to use on Jared. Why hadn’t he thought of setting them up before?
It was after nine when everyone left. Athena had shown Jared how to change the baby, and tomorrow, Supah would be here, and she’d help him too. Maybe this dad thing would work out okay. Lily was already drowsy when Jared set her gently in the crib. She stretched her arms up, as if trying to touch the ruffled canopy over her head before curling onto her side to sleep. Jared left his door wide-open and the fresh-from-the-box baby monitor was set up right next to his bed, so that the sounds of Lily’s breathing were amplified and piped into his sleeping brain.
When she awoke, crying, a few hours later, he was completely thrown. He stumbled toward the sound, and once he reached her room, he picked her up. Lily continued to cry. Jesus. What had Athena done earlier in the day to make this stop? He remembered how she rocked the baby, so he tried that. No good. So he started to walk with her, back and forth, back and forth. There, that seemed to be working. She was slowing down, getting quieter, but when he attempted to place her back in her crib, she instantly began to fuss.
Okay, he told himself. Okay. Just get a grip here. Maybe it was the diaper—yeah, that could be it. Tentatively, he put her on the changing table Athena had told him to order. But now how was he going to get the fresh diaper, wipes, and other stuff? So he picked her up and, holding her awkwardly with one hand, he assembled what he needed. Then he tried it again. The diaper was soaked, and he wrinkled his nose in aversion as he wadded it up and pushed it aside, to be dealt with later. He was a little clumsy in cleaning her up—he wanted to be thorough yet didn’t want to be too rough or hurt her—but he managed to get the job done. Now came the diapering part.
He positioned the disposable diaper under her and attempted to fasten the self-adhesive tab. Only the protective layer on the peel-off strip would not peel off; he ended up ripping the tab off entirely, which meant he had to get another diaper and start again. Jesus. Despite the hum of the air conditioner, he’d started to sweat. But he managed to get the diaper, open it, and wrap it around his squirmy little girl. He did the pacing routine again; she fell asleep and this time stayed asleep when he put her into the crib.
Jared stood there watching her for a few seconds. This whole episode had taken about twenty minutes; was this what he had to look forward to every night, maybe multiple times a night? He was totally awake; there was no way he could get back to sleep now. He spied the books Athena had brought earlier, picked the top one off the pile, brought it to bed, and began to read. Eventually, he grew drowsy and put the book down beside him; he’d just drifted off to sleep when there it was: that staccato sound, eh, eh, eh, emanating from Lily’s room. This time, he didn’t even wait for the full-blown wailing to start; he hauled himself out of bed and trudged toward its origin.
FOURTEEN
The first morning without Celeste, Miranda couldn’t wait to get to work; she desperately wanted to believe that the familiar routine would distract and soothe her. But once she got there, she felt cut off from everything, her senses blunted or even warped, so the activity around her—phone calls, texts, e-mail, production meetings, manuscripts—seemed to be happening very far away; she could barely make out the voices. Finally, at the end of the day, she walked into the office of Sallie Scott, the longtime editor in chief of Domestic Goddess, and closed the door.
Sallie was sitting behind her desk—a four-foot, painted baroque extravagance she had paid a fortune for at auction—and looked up when Miranda came in. Her hairstyle, a vigorously hair-sprayed bubble, probably had not changed since Kennedy was in office, and her tailored suit, in ecru poplin, suggested a buttoned-up, rigid demeanor. But in Sallie’s case, appearances were deceiving. Her brown eyes radiated concern, and she tactfully nudged the lacquer tissue box in Miranda’s direction. “You look like hell,” she said.
“I feel like hell too,” Miranda said. “And I’m sorry, Sallie. I’ve been trying. I really have. It’s just that—”
“You don’t have to explain. I really do get it. Take some time off, all right?”
“But we’re so busy now, between the Web site launch and the Christmas issue. And you know I’ve been trying to land Alan Richardson for an exclusive recipe; I’m almost there.” If she could get Alan Richardson, or his partner, Karen Tack, the industry giants responsible for Hello Cupcake, to provide an over-the-top cupcake project for the magazine, it would be a real coup.
“I know,” said Sallie, placing her hands, with their manicured geranium pink nails, on the desk. “You’re a wreck, though. I can see it, and so can everyone else. You can stay in touch with the office and we’ll muddle through until you come back.”
“Well, maybe I should,” Miranda said, both shamed and grateful. So everyone knew she was a mess? Well, why had she thought she could keep that hidden? “Thank you, Sallie.”
“Don’t mention it.” Sallie’s phone buzzed, but before she answered, she added, “I’m so sorry, Miranda. I know the loss has been . . . devastating.”
Sallie’s sympathetic words made the tears rise again, so Miranda just nodded and got out of there before she let loose.
Miranda went home and climbed into bed, where she pretty much remained for the next five days. Yes, she had abandoned her plan of fighting for Celeste. The baby should go to her father. But Miranda was still going to have to grieve her loss.
She used her laptop to watch one old movie after another, all of them frothy and insubstantial confections—Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds dancing with frantic energy, Fred Astaire whirling Ginger Rogers around in his arms. Every now and then, she looked at the upper-right-hand corner of the computer to check the time. It was noon; Celeste usually had lunch at noon and was down for a nap by twelve thirty. She was up by two o’clock and needed a diaper change and a bottle. The passing hours were nothing more than signposts to gauge Celeste’s imagined movements: where she might be, what she might be doing. This was worse than when Luke left her; worse, even, than when her mother died.
Despite what Miranda had said to Sallie, she had not kept in touch with the office, or with anyone else either. She did not check her e-mail, though she occasionally glanced at her phone. In addition to calls from the office, there had been phone calls from Evan—several of these—and her friends, and althou
gh she knew she ought to return them, she did not. Eunice, her father’s caregiver, had been trying to reach her and she ignored her too. When her landlady knocked on the door, Miranda just called out, “I’m fine, Mrs. Castiglione. Don’t worry about me.” She didn’t say anything else, but waited until she heard the creak of Mrs. Castiglione’s footsteps on the stairs as she went back down to her own apartment.
Miranda paused the movie and got up. Her appetite had left her, and she knew she must have lost several pounds over the last few days. The irony of this was not lost on her; she was always thinking she could stand to lose five or even ten pounds, but now that she had, she didn’t even care. She was thirsty, though, and had to steel herself to walk into the kitchen; from the kitchen she could see the door to what had been Celeste’s room. That door was closed, and everything that had belonged to her daughter was inside, including the play yard and the stroller.
Miranda knew she ought to go in and empty it out—surely many of the things inside could be donated to charity—but she could not bring herself to do it. The room had a force field around it and was walled off, like a crime scene, in her mind. She poured a glass of water from the pitcher in the refrigerator, went back to bed, and started the movie again.
Fred spun Ginger, whose long, diaphanous skirt fluttered as she twirled. Miranda let herself be lulled by the music and dancing; when it was over, she simply began another.
Then the knocking started again. “Mrs. Castiglione, you don’t have to check on me. I’m all right. Really.”
“It’s not Mrs. Castiglione,” said a voice from the other side of the door. “It’s me.”
“Bea!”
“Yes, and I flew all the way from Oklahoma, so you’d better open up.”
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