One Week In December

by Holly Chamberlin

  “But what about all of the friends Rain has made over the years? What about school? She’s been with some of the same kids since first grade. It would be terrible if she had to transfer now. Especially—especially without her family. Without those of us, including the boys, who spend every day and night with her. We’ve been her daily support system for all these years and she—she’s been ours.” Naomi pulled a tissue from her sweater pocket and wiped her wet eyes.

  “The boys would miss their sister terribly,” Julie said, almost as if to herself. “What would we say to them? How could we explain?”

  The mention of the boys, Rain’s ostensible brothers, called Becca up short, again. She hadn’t thought about them at all when she was planning her new life with Rain. She felt uncomfortable. Was it possible that Rain would miss her little brothers so much that she would choose to return to them? Of course it was possible.

  Becca took a deep and steadying breath. “Look,” she said, “I’ll admit that I haven’t ironed out all the details and considered all the logistics yet but—”

  “And yet you’ve been claiming exactly the opposite!” David cried. “You keep telling us you’ve thought everything through!”

  Naomi hushed him with a significant look. The last thing they needed was Rain coming downstairs to see what all the noise was about.

  “Becca,” her mother said now, leaning forward as if to emphasize her point, “if you want to be a parent, the kind who is responsible for the day-to-day raising of a child, you have to focus on the details. You have to plan every little thing, from what the child’s going to eat for breakfast to what vaccines she’s going to need at her annual physical. I can’t believe you can sit here with us and demand the right to tell your daughter the truth of her birth and say you want her to come to live with you and yet you haven’t even thought about, oh, I don’t know, which doctor she’ll see or what school she’ll attend.”

  Becca was at a momentary loss for words. She didn’t want to feel chastened, but she did and it annoyed her.

  David was now talking at her, again. “God, Becca, even if you planned on Rain staying in New Hampshire with us—her parents!—what did you expect to have happen? You drop your bombshell, then walk away and leave us to deal with the emotional mess you’ve created? Is that it? Are you trying to punish us or something? Because if you’re angry with me or with Naomi, fine, tell us, but don’t drag your child into it.”

  “All children get dragged into other people’s dramas.” Olivia’s second enigmatic pronouncement of the evening also went unanswered.

  Thus far in the conversation, Steve had remained a silent but emotionally involved observer. Now he felt the need to speak; at the same time, he seriously doubted that anything he might say would make much of a difference to his daughter.

  “Why are you doing this, Becca?” He knew his voice sounded pleading. “And why now? Please, tell me. Help me to understand.”

  “Why?” she shot back. “So you can try to change my mind about wanting Rain to know the truth before any more time is wasted in deception?”

  “No,” he said calmly. “So that I can—so that I can help you.”

  Becca felt helpless to stop a smirk from appearing on her lips. “I don’t need any more help, Dad, thanks. You and Mom and Grandma have already done quite enough for me.”

  Nora rose to her feet. She was actually trembling. Becca had never seen her grandmother so angry. “Do you really have to be sarcastic?” she said. “Do you really have to talk this way to your mother and father? It’s unworthy of you, Becca.”

  Again, Becca felt chastened. Things were getting out of hand. She was losing control. She had spoken disrespectfully and had made her eighty-six-year-old grandmother scold her. But really, a small voice inside Becca challenged, what did you expect? You are threatening to destroy the peace in which this family has existed for close to twenty years. You are threatening to undermine the structure of the family. You have announced yourself as the enemy of a system that works without a hitch, a system that has served everyone well for many, many years.

  Everyone, the voice said, even you. Everyone, Becca said back, except me.

  “We agreed,” her grandmother was now saying, repeating the same old argument they all had been using. “We made a deal. We all promised, each one of us. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? You gave your word, Becca, that you would keep the truth of Rain’s birth a secret until—if—we all agreed it was best for her to know.”

  “My word was given under pressure,” she replied. “You can’t hold someone responsible for a promise she made when she’s under duress.”

  And there was that voice again. But isn’t that selective morality, Becca? the voice asked. By that reasoning, any promise could be broken with a claim—true or false—of duress at the time the promise was given.

  “Oh, please,” David spat, “you were fine! Maybe a little scared, but come on, Becca, you were perfectly lucid, even eager for us to do something with—to take care of Rain.”

  “I never wanted to abandon my child.” Becca hated the note of desperation she detected in her voice.

  “No one is saying you abandoned your child,” Naomi pointed out. “You placed her into the care of your brother and sister-in-law. That’s quite a different thing from abandoning.”

  Becca wasn’t quite sure it was, and opened her mouth to say something—she wasn’t sure what, exactly—when David cut her off.

  “This is insanity,” he said. “We’re making no progress here at all. Becca, you haven’t even tried to see things our way. How can we come to a compromise if—”

  “I don’t want a compromise. I want my daughter.”

  “Speaking of whom.” Nora turned to Lily. Thus far, Lily had said nothing. “Lily, do you know if Rain suspects anything—odd—going on?”

  Lily seemed uncomfortable being the center of her family’s attention. “Um, no,” she said, fidgeting with a button on her wool sweater. “She hasn’t said anything to me.”

  “You’ll let us know if she does?”

  Lily agreed that she would. She hoped, though, that her niece could be spared a too early knowledge of the common practice of duplicity, even the kind meant to protect someone from harm. Lily was still processing—and would be for some time, she thought—the news of her grandfather’s affair, and the knowledge that at the heart of the Rowan family lay not one but two big secrets.

  No one, not even David, seemed to have anything to say, until Julie cleared her throat and spoke.

  “Becca,” she said, “I am asking for your promise not to approach Rain until the family can meet again after the holiday. This is absolutely not the time for such a conversation with her.”

  “It wouldn’t be a conversation,” Nora corrected. “It would be an ambush. You must see that, Becca. It would be grossly unfair of you.”

  “Please, Becca,” Naomi pleaded, “if things are going to—change—at least let her enjoy one final Christmas as . . .” Again, her words were cut off by tears.

  Becca shifted in her seat.

  “You’re demanding something enormous from us, Becca,” her grandmother went on. “The least you can do is meet this simple request for time and more family consideration. If Rain is to be told the truth of her birth, then there must be preparation.”

  David opened his mouth—no doubt to argue that there would be no telling of the truth except on a family consensus—but Naomi’s hand on his arm stopped him.

  Becca felt the eyes of her family upon her, anguished, angry, and confused.

  “All right,” she said after a moment, her reluctance obvious. Vaguely, she wondered if she would lose resolve over time. It worried her but at the same time, she knew the wisest strategy was to go along with the others. This one last time. “I agree.”

  25

  Becca went to bed that night—rather, to the old leather couch—feeling very unhappy and not at all triumphant, as she thought she would feel once her decision had been annou
nced.

  Why was it that in her professional life she was strong and confident, unafraid of criticism or argument, but that in her personal life, while with her family and the few acquaintances she could count, she was defensive and suspicious, and yes, let it be said, afraid?

  She wondered. Had this been the dynamic only since her pregnancy? Yes. She thought that it had. She had been a rebellious kid, a good kid overall but never one to slink around or feel put-upon. She had been happy.

  A strange thought suddenly occurred to her. Had her family really been the cause of this change in attitude and behavior—or had she?

  Troubled, Becca pushed the thought aside. Earlier she had brought a decanter of scotch to the den and now she got up from the couch and shot a glass, in spite of the headache that still loomed. Her trainer would not be happy if he knew how many empty calories she was consuming this holiday season, but for once, Becca just didn’t care. Again, she tried to fall asleep. She relaxed her body, part by part, from feet to stomach, from shoulders to head. It was no good. She turned on her side and curled into the fetal position. Still, consciousness prevailed. Another shot of scotch was out of the question. She didn’t need to face the morning with a Brandy Alexander /scotch hangover. After over an hour, she succumbed to her mind’s refusal to let go.

  Becca reached for the lamp on the end table, and pulled its frayed cord. She crawled out of her makeshift bed, drew one of the heavier blankets around her, and walked over to the room’s only window. It faced the rear of the house; though Becca couldn’t see much outside with the light on behind her, she knew that she was looking in the direction of a thick stand of pine trees, like sentinels on guard, or like an army amassed before an attack. Neither image made her feel good.

  Nor did the fact that the wind was gaining in velocity and power. The dark pines, the howling wind, and the relative isolation of the house all compounded Becca’s already melancholy, lonely mood.

  Appropriately enough, her memory conjured a line from a poem by Anne Sexton entitled “Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward.” She had first come upon the poem in a college course on American women poets. It had touched a nerve in her then, with its exploration of the relationship between the maternal bond and the sometimes very different maternal role. It had upset her by coming too close to her own truth, with which she was struggling. Now, in a soft whisper she recited the line that had stayed with her all these years: “Yours is the only face I recognize.” Yes. In a way, Rain was the only face—the only person—she recognized in her life.

  But unlike the experience of the poem’s speaker, it hadn’t been that way at first, not until about Rain’s fifth birthday. She had fallen in love with her child, but it had taken time. First, she’d had to get past all of the negative and confused emotions swirling around the arrival of her child—guilt, shame, self-reproach, and anger—at herself, at Rain’s father, and at her own family. Well, if she hadn’t exactly gotten past those debilitating emotions, at least she had learned to keep them in check. Mostly.

  In fact, during those first few years, her daughter had been largely a stranger to her. No one had given Becca a set of rules to follow; no one had counseled her or explained to her what rights she might have or what duties she should shoulder. Yes, David and Naomi were to be Rain’s parents. That much was clear. But how was the sixteen-year-old “aunt” supposed to behave? What was she supposed to feel?

  Becca had a vague memory—more a sense, really—of her mother having approached her a few times, wanting to talk about “the situation,” but Becca hadn’t wanted to, or maybe she simply hadn’t been able to articulate feelings and questions. Becca did remember that she had very much wanted to move on. And more than that, she had wanted to make a success of her life so that never again would she be thought of as a problem for her family to solve.

  Initially, Becca hadn’t felt guilty about her—distance—from Rain, but over the years, as Becca matured and her maternal feelings blossomed, she grew to be horrified at her original lack of strong feeling for her daughter. What was wrong with her that she hadn’t felt an immediate bond? Was she some kind of an emotional cripple?

  Maybe. Because in her harsher moments Becca couldn’t help but wonder what sort of normal, healthy person would have done what she had done—have unprotected, spur-of-the-moment sex.

  Becca shivered as the memories came back, as they too often did. She had been frightened yet anxious for the experience. It wasn’t what she’d thought it would be—but what had she thought it would be? The truth was that she didn’t remember much about that night, but memory didn’t matter. All that mattered was the end result. All that mattered was the product.

  God, she thought, holding the blanket tighter around herself, I’ve made my daughter, a human being, sound like something on a belt in a factory, a widget, whatever that is, or a cupcake packed in plastic. The end product of my thoughtless action.

  She supposed people, most of her family, assumed that she’d been drinking that night, that fateful night, but she hadn’t been. The guy—she refused anymore to name him, even to herself—had had a few beers, but there’d been no coercion, no bullying, not even any pleading or pathetic attempts at evoking pity in her tender female breast for an adolescent boy’s desires, his needs.

  No. She’d gone with him willingly, like a lamb to the slaughter.

  Becca laughed out loud at herself. There was that old, long-repressed flair for the dramatic. A lamb to the slaughter, indeed!

  Anyway, that wasn’t quite right. Becca was pretty sure a lamb had no idea what was in store for it at the end of the evening, while at least she’d had the clinical facts down and some brief, incomplete experience to guide her. Tales from her friends were of no use; the girls she knew who had “gone all the way,” who had “hooked up,” were of two types—those who obviously exaggerated the experience and those who spoke with an annoyingly romantic vagueness. Both sorts of tales were useless.

  And Becca’s having sex with that guy hadn’t been premeditated, not like what a few girls she’d known had planned down to the last plan-able detail. They’d set out to lose their virginity as if they were setting out on a mission for NASA. How, when, where, with whom—it all was organized and arranged and there was no room for the slightest bit of emotion in it all. There was even an escape plan in place, in case something went wrong, like the unexpected arrival home of a parent.

  For Becca, had it been passion or perversity that led her to spend those minutes with the guy, Rain’s father? No, it definitely had not been passion. And if it had been perversity, it was of the curious kind, on the order of “I know that if I put my finger in this candle’s flame, my skin will burn. And yet, I can’t resist.”

  Well, Becca reflected, burns heal and sometimes don’t even leave a scar, so that the memory of the burn eventually fades away, too, but a baby conceived because a girl was too perverse to do what she knew was right and use birth control, well, that baby isn’t going to become a faded memory. That baby is going to be a living, breathing reality for as long as Fate would allow.

  She thought about Rain’s father. About how there was a good chance he didn’t even know a baby had ever been born. She hadn’t even told him that she was pregnant. It was news she could barely bring herself to articulate to her parents, so deep was her shame and terror. And the father—he was, after all, a stranger to her. Besides his first and last name, Becca had known virtually nothing about him. Still, the idea of ending the pregnancy was something she couldn’t face. She couldn’t say why, exactly, but every feeling rebelled against the idea. So, nine months later, Rain had been born.

  Suddenly, standing at the window of her parents’ house, Becca remembered an incident that had taken place a long time ago. She had been out of college two, maybe three years, and was living in a small apartment in Somerville. She’d gone home to spend the weekend at her parents’ house; Saturday afternoon her mother realized she was out of milk, and Becca had offered to go to the supermarket.
Once there, she was waylaid in front of the display of one percent milk by a man about her parents’ age, a man she vaguely remembered as having been to a party at the Rowan house many years before, when she was still in middle school. Had he been a neighbor? Whatever he’d been then, at that moment in the supermarket he was a nosy, insinuating man who stood too close to Becca as he introduced himself and then, to her horror, had said: “Wasn’t there some—difficulty—with you a few years ago?” Briefly, she’d been paralyzed with fear, and then anger had gotten the better of her. She felt violated. “The only difficulty with me,” she spat, taking a large step away from the man, “is having to endure another second of your presence.” She’d left the supermarket in a hurry, without the milk; she could pick up a half gallon at the gas station’s convenience store.

  Becca sighed. Yes, anonymity. Silence. These had been her only and her constant companions; one certainly couldn’t call them friends.

  She felt terribly, overwhelmingly alone. And she felt scared. But when she tried to identify just what it was that scared her, she couldn’t. Not really.

  Becca turned from the window, crawled back into her makeshift bed, and switched off the lamp. The wind was still growing in intensity, roaring now, and rattling the windowpanes. It was a mournful sound to match her mournful mood.

  Sleep was a very long time in coming.

  26

  Saturday, December 23

  Julie was dusting the furniture in the living room when her oldest child confronted her. That’s how it felt when Olivia approached you, Julie had decided. Like you were being confronted. And it had gotten far worse in the past few years. Julie wondered if the sight of Olivia first thing each morning made her employees cringe. It was an uncharitable thought but there it was.

  “Mom,” she said, “I was looking for that old salt cellar, you know, the silver one with all the chasing. I can’t seem to find it. I could have sworn I last saw it in this breakfront. But that was more than a year ago. What did you do with it? Did you move it somewhere without telling anyone?”