One Week In December

by Holly Chamberlin

  “No one.”

  “Come to think about it, you’re my only friend.”

  Naomi lightly slapped his arm. “Oh, come on, David. Don’t sound so self-pitying. What about Johnny, at work?”

  “Sure, he’s a good guy to go bowling with. But . . . I wouldn’t call him a friend. It’s not like we talk about anything but work.”

  “And bowling.”

  “Yeah,” he conceded, “and bowling. I don’t know, Naomi. I guess I’ve never been very good at keeping friends. Do you realize I don’t keep in touch with one buddy from high school or college? Not one.”

  “What about your father? Wouldn’t you call him a friend?”

  David thought about that. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “Dad became my friend over time. When I was growing up, he was only my father. That was good. I didn’t need another buddy to hang out with. I needed a parent to guide me, to teach me right from wrong. But now . . . Yeah, it looks like you and Dad are my best friends. Now that Grandpa is gone.”

  “You’re a pretty lucky guy, you know.”

  David lifted Naomi’s hand and kissed it. Yeah, he was pretty lucky. He got to spend every day of his life with the woman he adored. “I do know, Naomi,” he said.

  “So no more talk about rubbing out your sister.”

  “I didn’t say we’d have to kill her,” he argued. “We could, I don’t know, inject her with a drug that would erase her memory and then pack her off to start a new life in—in the Siberian arctic.”

  “You know how Becca hates the cold weather.”

  “Maybe she wouldn’t be able to remember that she hates it.”

  “David.”

  “All right,” he said, with exaggerated reluctance. “No more fantasies of Becca disappearing from our lives.”

  “Good.” Naomi kissed her husband’s cheek again and got up from the bed.

  “But maybe she could just go away for a little while, like a couple of months.”

  Naomi turned back to her husband, her hand on the doorknob. “You always have to have the last word, don’t you?”

  David grinned. “Yes.”

  32

  Rain was sitting cross-legged on the living room couch, flipping through yet another of the seemingly endless supply of glossy fashion magazines she’d brought with her. Becca, coming into the room from the direction of the kitchen, opened her mouth to say hello, or maybe to comment on the magazine—and suddenly found that she couldn’t speak.

  Because for the very first time in sixteen years, Becca had caught a glimpse of Rain’s father in the girl on the couch. The recognition had been fleeting but all too real. The tilt of her daughter’s head as she read—it had been nothing more than that, but that was everything.

  Becca felt as if she had been issued an emotional slap so brutal it had sent her flying to the hardwood floor of the living room, where she lay prone, unable to summon the energy to rise.

  It was crazy, she knew, but over the years she had almost come to believe that Rain was the product of her body alone, just another version of her own self, uncontaminated by the genetic contributions of anyone else.

  But she was not. Rain was unique. She could not be incorporated or consumed or even claimed. She was not a copy, not a clone. And she was not entirely a Rowan.

  Becca walked to the closest chair and sank into it.

  “What’s wrong, Aunt Becca?” Rain said, finally looking up. “You look like you just saw a ghost. Hey, you know what? I don’t think I’ve ever actually used that expression before.”

  With supreme effort, Becca managed to reply. “Everything’s fine,” she lied. “I just—I just remembered something I’d forgotten. Something I was supposed to have remembered.”

  “Getting old, huh?” Rain teased. “Having a senior moment? Don’t worry. I’ll come visit you in the nursing home.”

  Becca smiled weakly in response. Rain went back to her reading and Becca watched her. And as she watched she wondered what exactly she had given Rain in terms of genetics, biology. Her lanky build certainly. The Rowan eyes. An interest in fashion maybe, if such a thing could be passed along via DNA. Her high spirits? Maybe. But Rain’s father also had been full of high spirits. . . . Was there nothing else?

  Not for the first time, Becca wondered how much more Rain would be like her, her biological mother, if they had lived together from the start, if Becca’s presence had served as a primary example of being and conduct, and not Naomi’s. And would Rain’s being more like Becca be a good thing or a bad thing or something in between? It was impossible to say, and almost as impossible to imagine.

  “Hey, Grandpa.”

  Becca jumped. She hadn’t heard her father come into the living room. Abruptly, she got up from her chair.

  “Hi, Rain,” he said. “Becca.”

  Rain unfolded her legs and got up from the couch. “Well, I’m out of here,” she said. “I promised to let Lily hear this new CD I got last week.”

  “She’s growing into a lovely young woman,” Steve said when she had left the room.

  “Yes.”

  The silence that followed this brief exchange was awkward but not hostile. Becca waited.

  Finally, her father spoke. “I’d like us to talk. Please.”

  It was a moment before Becca could reply. “I can’t, Dad,” she said, her voice unexpectedly wavering. “Not now.”

  Steve nodded. “All right. I can’t force you to talk to me. I wouldn’t force you even if I could.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, though she wasn’t quite sure what she was sorry about. At that moment it could have been nothing, or everything.

  Becca stood perfectly still until her father had disappeared upstairs. Then, she escaped into the den—and that was how it felt, like an escape—and shut the door behind her. Her breath was coming rapidly now and she wondered if she was having a panic or an anxiety attack. She’d never had either sort of experience; she’d never allowed herself to feel enough of an emotion that might upset her so.

  Becca sank onto the couch and concentrated on getting her breathing under control. But it was not so easy. The fact was that she was as scared now of a confrontation with her father as she had been eager for it only a few days earlier. Her confusion troubled her. What had happened to her steely resolve?

  And her father’s latest request coming hard upon the heels of Becca having seen evidence of Rain’s biological father in her daughter . . . well, it had thrown her.

  She felt very unhappy about having made Naomi cry, and so often. Until this week she’d never made anyone cry, not that she knew of. And really, Naomi had always been so generous with Becca, offering her access to Rain and, though she didn’t strictly have to, even asking for Becca’s opinion on certain matters of Rain’s upbringing.

  And then there was the latest argument with David. There had been moments when she had felt unable to control the words coming out of her mouth. There had been moments when those words—her own words—had befuddled her. It was almost as if she was losing hold of her original desire, her primary goal, and fighting blindly, for the sake of the fight alone.

  Something concrete and clear and without passion. Something she could fix or solve without emotion. That’s what Becca badly needed right then. That’s what would bring everything back into hard, clear focus.

  So she checked her e-mail. There were no messages from anyone at the office, or from clients. She checked her phone. There was one message, from her dentist’s receptionist, confirming an appointment for a cleaning on January 2. For a moment she considered calling Mary, her assistant—she had Mary’s home number—just to be sure she wasn’t needed, but she abandoned the notion. Mary didn’t need her few days off interrupted by her boss. Becca had never considered it before, but now she wondered what Mary and the other staff thought about her. She knew she was a fair leader; she knew she had never been and would never be an abusive boss. There could be no, or very few, complaints there. But did her staff, her colleagues, f
ind her to be . . . odd? One of those slightly strange single women who didn’t seem to be quite—complete—as a person? Did they think of her as a character, rather than as a woman, a human being?

  Becca slumped back onto the old leather couch. She felt vaguely disappointed that there was no crisis to be solved or critical decision to be made. She wondered: Of what did her life really consist?

  Becca searched for a word that could describe what she was experiencing right then. It came after a few moments. She felt—desperate. She felt as if she could jump out of her skin and through the window. She felt as if she might start screaming and not stop for a very long time. She had never felt this way before, so unmoored, so untethered, and it scared her. Maybe, she thought miserably, Olivia wasn’t the only Rowan woman with a serious emotional problem. Working out at the gym and eating right was all well and good, but the body wasn’t of much use if the mind and the heart were ailing.

  Beccca lay back on the couch. Take deep breaths, she told herself. Just take deep, slow breaths. And you might want to call your doctor when you get back to Boston.

  33

  “This is nice, just the two of us. It can get a little—close—with everyone at the house.”

  James waited for a response from his wife, seated next to him in the passenger seat of their car. “Liv?” he said.

  Olivia started, as if she had been a million miles away in her thoughts. “What?”

  “Nothing. Just . . . Nothing.”

  He had persuaded her to take a drive with him this afternoon. It had taken a good degree of coaxing, too. Olivia had been reluctant to leave the house and her hunting and cataloguing—or, was it that she’d been reluctant to spend time alone with her husband? James couldn’t dismiss the thought, not entirely. True, they spent much of every day together at the office, but there, talk was of business. Evenings were invariably spent at home, but for a long time now, there had been little real communication. Most nights Olivia bolted her dinner and headed off to her computer, where she spent hours reading through Web sites that focused on ancestor searches and family trees. Olivia had made it perfectly clear that she’d rather spend time e-mailing the strangers she met on those sites than watching television—or doing anything else—with her husband.

  “Oh!” she said now. James was glad to hear her so animated. “Guess what Hilary told me the other day! I can’t believe I forgot to mention this.”

  “Who’s Hilary?” he asked.

  Olivia shot him a look of supreme annoyance. “I’ve only told you about twenty times. She’s one of the coordinators of the FamilyTime chat room.”

  “Oh, yes. Sorry.” James tried but he couldn’t remember the names and obsessions of his wife’s new online friends. When, he wondered now, was the last time Olivia had met with one of her flesh-and-blood friends in town? Not that she had many friends, but James knew of a few nice women with whom his wife used to socialize.

  “Anyway,” Olivia was saying, “she told me that someone stole her list of members’ e-mail addresses. She thinks it was probably someone from a rival site. Can you believe that?”

  James really didn’t know what to say in response to his wife’s question. It didn’t seem like such an unusual crime to him. “Huh,” would have to suffice.

  He waited a few moments before speaking again. “We could probably still catch the Quilt Show if you’d like.”

  Olivia frowned. “No, thanks.”

  James took a chance. “Quilts play an important part in folk history, don’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they’re often made by several generations of women within a family, aren’t they? Women working as a sort of team.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I just thought that since—”

  “The Rowans have no really old quilts. It’s too bad. I’ve been through every trunk in the attic and there’s simply nothing. Grandma says she has a vague memory of her mother having an old quilt, but she has no idea where it went. Can you believe that?”

  Again, James just said, “Huh.”

  So this was the nature and extent of their communication. And it had been months—almost half a year—since they’d had sex. James didn’t like to think of himself as one of those selfish, sex-obsessed men, but he did have a normal appetite, and the prospect of adopting a celibate life while still in his forties didn’t excite him. He wouldn’t cheat on his wife; he didn’t have the stomach for such crude behavior.

  Besides, it wasn’t just about the sexual act. What bothered James about the distance that had grown between Olivia and him was that it was not only physical but also emotional. Olivia’s lack of interest in making love was, to James’s perception, a lack of interest in maintaining his friendship and his affection.

  He was certain there was no other man in Olivia’s life. If he were a dramatic sort, he supposed he could feel jealous of her preoccupation with the Rowan family’s past. But James didn’t think anyone could feel jealousy over a rival that didn’t seem able to bring any real joy. In fact, Olivia seemed to grow increasingly unhappy the longer she spent poring over census reports, chatting online, and digging through her parents’ attic.

  Still, James did feel a bit like the proverbial third wheel in his marriage these days, that or an afterthought in his wife’s frantic schedule. But he hadn’t given up trying to assert and maintain his position as partner.

  “I thought,” he said now, “that on the way home on the twenty-seventh we could stop in Portland. We could go to the museum, or maybe visit the Victoria Mansion. I’ve heard they decorate really beautifully for Christmas. Then we could get lunch somewhere. We could go to that funky old bar on the water, what is it called, J’s Oyster? Remember, they have those raw scallops you love.”

  “I can’t,” she said quickly. James thought he heard a hint of panic in his wife’s tone. “I can’t miss my Wednesday night chat group. We’re meeting at five and we’ve got a renowned social anthropologist joining in. It should be fascinating.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Okay.” He was disappointed but not surprised by Olivia’s answer. For close to a year now, Olivia had seemed entirely uninterested in all their old routines; she’d showed absolutely no interest in doing the things they used to enjoy doing together, like taking walks and hunting out funky little restaurants and watching old movies. James had wondered if maybe Olivia was clinically depressed, but he had resisted talking to her about this, scared off by her continual rebuffs, some of which could be angry and cold.

  Still, James continued to tempt Olivia with suggestions of her usual favorites. And yet in return she never offered a kind word or a compliment; she never made a gesture toward him, to let him know that yes, he still mattered to her. James wasn’t looking for any special favors, just some recognition that she was still aware of him as a person—and as her husband. James didn’t think he was asking for too much. . . .

  But maybe this was just the way his marriage was going to be from now on. Maybe he would just have to learn to accept conditions the way they were. Lots of couples simply existed side by side without any particular warmth or real companionship. Lots of couples survived if it seemed they couldn’t actually thrive. He’d just never thought he would be part of one of those couples.

  James sighed. He hadn’t meant to. He glanced over at his wife, but she didn’t seem to have noticed. Her head was turned to the passenger’s window and to the snowy landscape outside. James wondered what it was she actually saw as they drove through the Maine landscape.

  34

  She’d seen Alex from the window of the den. He was doing some work out back, by a small toolshed her grandfather had built many years ago. At least, Becca assumed he was working. Alex was wielding a hammer. That’s what people did with hammers. They built things or destroyed them.

  On impulse, she bundled into her coat and boots and joined him. Maybe, she thought, fresh air, no matter that it was cold, might make her feel better. Calmer. More normal. Maybe. When you felt
as desperate as Becca felt then, anything was worth a try.

  “What are you doing out here?” Alex asked when he looked up to find her standing a few feet away. His nose was red-tipped with cold and he wore a suede and shearling hat with earflaps. Becca thought it made him look slightly goofy but not in a bad way.

  Becca shrugged. She hadn’t thought of what excuse she would use for being out behind the house, where there was absolutely no reason for her to be unless she wanted to build a snowman or go cross-country skiing, nether of which she wanted to do. Ever.

  Before she could make up a hopefully plausible lie, Alex went on. “Not that you need a reason to be out here. It is your parents’ property. I just meant, what are you doing out here in the cold? It’s only just above freezing, you know.”

  “Thanks for the reminder. What are you doing out here? Well, I mean . . .”

  She gestured to a pile of tools laid out in a large, rough suede pouch.

  “Those heavy winds we had the other night just about finished this old shed. Your father was going to repair it himself, but I didn’t think it was a good idea. He’s not as young as he used to be. . . .”

  “Is he sick?” The question was out before Becca could grasp the genuine concern she felt for her father.

  “Not that I know of, no.”

  “Isn’t it an odd time of the year to be repairing a shed?” she asked. “I mean . . . there’s snow all over the place.”

  Alex grinned sheepishly. “You caught me. I’m avoiding work at the moment. One of the projects I’m supposed to be finishing in the next weeks is . . . Well, it’s giving me some trouble. So I’m hoping that some physical exercise will, I don’t know, renew my energies.”

  “You’re a procrastinator.”

  “Guilty as charged. But at least I’m doing something positive for someone else while I’m procrastinating. Steve’s really such a good guy that—”

  “Why are you always defending my father?” Becca asked, cutting him off.