Her Designer Baby

by Shawna Washington

  My instinct, my gut, tells me that she is in danger. I don’t know if it’s an immediate danger. I don’t know if it’s even a physical kind of danger. But those feelings aren’t things I ignore.

  And I will not stop until I find her. I will not stop until I convince her to come back home with me.

  Radiah

  The sun is setting in the west. Pinks and blues lace the sky above the tree line and between the buildings. Battery Park is one of my favorite places to lose myself in. To walk. It slows my mind down when my thoughts don't seem to stop racing. But this evening nothing seems to lift my mood. Not even the moms pushing their babies in the strollers, not even the babies that smile and coo as I pass by them makes me feel any better. Of course, I smile back. I always smile back, even when I don’t feel like smiling at all.

  And right now, there isn’t a real smile inside of me. The shock of what happened isn’t so easy to let go of.

  I can’t believe how quickly Emilio turned on me. I don’t understand why. All of the possibility, all of the excitement I’d felt at meeting someone who’d seemed to want the same things I wanted was gone now. I feel like a fool.

  But Emilio turning on me isn’t the thing that I can’t stop thinking about.

  I can’t stop thinking about why—and how—I let myself start falling him. I hadn’t even known him, like Carla had been saying all along. I was just so desperate for someone to feel the same way I felt. Had I been so heartbroken because Alexei had refused to consider a future together that I’d started to fall for the first handsome man who’d told me exactly what I’d wanted to hear? It hadn’t felt that way, and it hadn’t seemed that way. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. I know that. But it’s hard to believe I might have so easily fallen for a charade. Or a game.

  Everything is gone now.

  I feel utterly alone.

  I feel even more alone as I walk. I feel more alone when I hear a child call out, “Mama, look at me.” Everywhere I turn I see women holding their hands out behind their backs; I see children rushing the few steps to catch up to them, to clasp their hands together before they cross the streets. It makes my heart hurt. It’s something I’ve longed to be called since I was small...Mama. Now, it’s word I don’t think I’ll ever hear, not in the way I want to. That closeness I’ve ached for, that empty space that never got to use that word I’d wanted to when I was little…

  Was it worth it? Giving Alexei up for a dream? Giving up the wonderful things I did have for the wonderful things I might never have?

  It seems like everyone has someone. I know it’s not true. And I hate feeling sorry for myself when I have so much good in my life. I’m healthy. My family is healthy. I have a job I love doing everyday. I have tomorrow. I know all of those things, and I am grateful for all of those things and still, the melancholy I want to dispel won’t leave. Sighing, I look down, and when I can turn deeper into the park, away from the path where the people are, I take it. The quiet feels more soothing to me than all of the sounds of the city right now.

  I just want to walk. I feel like I need to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Maybe it’s a metaphor for the thing I feel like I need to do with my life. Maybe I just need to somehow physically feel like I’m moving forward until I can make my heart and my mind catch up.

  The quiet and the dark fit my mood; the silhouettes of the trees crouching low over the path make the shadows turn deeper with the dusk. Only the staccato of my footfalls seems to break the silence. Rhythmically, again and again, my sneakers slap against the asphalt.

  One foot in front of the other, Radiah, I keep telling myself. One foot, and then another foot...the path winds deeper into the park.

  Far away, the honk of a car horn sounds. It’s a distant thing. Distance is what I want. I want to get away from it all. It’s amazing how, in the middle of one of the biggest, busiest cities on earth, even in a public park, it’s not too hard to feel completely alone. There is no one else around me.

  At least, that’s what I think.

  Until I hear the scuff of something that sounds like a footfall behind me. Then, the quiet I’ve been craving, the distance I’ve put between the city and myself feels like too much space. Suddenly, I realize just how alone I really am.

  If anything were to happen out here, no one would know it.

  My heart leaps into my throat.

  Whirling on the empty path, I turn. Then I turn again, to look over my shoulder. Except for a few scattered leaves blowing across the ground, I don’t see anyone; I don’t even see anything moving. It’s a warm spring evening and the last of the light is disappearing above the canopy. Only a few specks of light glitter against the leaves. Above me, the lamplights are already on, shining against the black asphalt. Maybe it was those leaves I’d heard, and maybe it was the shift in those shadows that had made me jump.

  Maybe. And maybe not.

  For some reason, the tiny hairs on the back of my neck rise. I feel alert.

  I feel like I’m being watched.

  I’m not usually paranoid. I’m not even the kind of woman that jumps during horror movies. When Alexei offered, almost ordered, that I start taking a bodyguard with me everywhere I went, I’d laughed at him. I don’t intend to live life afraid.

  I know the other night has a lot do with my uncharacteristic nerves. Emilio, and the way he’d turned like that, the way he’d seemed to change so quickly, has set me on edge. I’m not used to men yelling. I’m not used to men that throw their size around. There is no way Alexei would ever raise his voice with me. Alexei ever used his height, or his weight, to make me feel smaller. Real men, I think, never would. Real men carry their size carefully.

  Alexei, I realize, is my understanding of what a real man is. And really, I’m realizing more and more, there are not many men like him.

  Letting out a long breath, convinced I’m letting my mind play tricks on me, I start forward again—and then, suddenly, I freeze.

  I stop breathing.

  I see him.

  Or I see someone, just ahead, lurking behind the stand of trees. Emilio! Has he been following me? Stalking me? My heart hammers hard in my chest. My palms go clammy. It’s just him, and it’s just me, and if he were to try anything now, no one would ever even know where I was.

  Turning on the path again, not thinking about what I’m doing, just knowing I want, I need, to get away from him, I scream as I turn because as I’m turning, I’m bumping into something, someone behind me! I don’t have to see to know that, whoever it is, whoever he is, he’s someone big.

  Pulling back in a startled rush, trying desperately to remember everything I’d learned in the self-defense class I’d taken with Carla, and trying to remember everything Alexei has taught me about defending myself, I lift my knee. Whoever it is, he’s going to get it in the groin. And then, when he doubles over in pain, I’m going to run past him. I’m going to run as fast and as hard as I can and I’m going to scream and keep screaming at the top of my lungs.

  But again, this time with my knee bent at the ready, I freeze.

  I freeze because the person I see in front of me is the person I least expect to see. The person I don’t want to see and the person I want to see more anything in the world.

  My ex-boyfriend.

  Alexei.

  Confused, I look back over my shoulder, towards the tree where I’d thought I’d seen Emilio lurking.

  All I see now is the empty path and the field.

  “Radiah. Are you alright?” The low rumble of his voice is calm, steadying.

  Confused, I turn back to Alexei.

  He looks me up and down like he is searching for some kind of hurt, then his eyes move past me, scanning, likely to try to ascertain what I might have been running from.

  “Yes. Of course, I’m fine.” I don’t want him knowing about what’s going on, so I hurry to add, “Nothing’s wrong.” Maybe a little bit overkill, considering I’d just screamed at the top of my lungs. But… when I’d looke
d back, there had been nothing there. Nothing but the dark silhouettes of the trees. My nerves must be getting the better of me. I frown at him. “Why are you here? Are you following me? Are you spying on me?” Maybe it had been him I’d seen lurking in the trees and, maybe, somehow, he’d managed to dart back, to get behind me. I know Alexei knows what he’s doing. If he hadn’t wanted me to see him, then I wouldn’t have seen him.

  “No. Of course not, Radiah. I’ve been calling. You haven’t answered. So I started looking for you. I thought I’d start with some of your favorite places.”

  There is a small hurt in his voice, as though he doesn’t like me thinking that he’d do that. To be honest, I really don’t think Alexei would spy on me either. I just can’t figure any of this out.

  “I needed to see you.”

  The way he says my name, the way he says that he needed to see me, makes my heart ache. A part of me wants to reach for him. A part of me wants him to reach for me. I look up at him and the small things, the hard cuts of his jaw, the deep dark of his eyes, the way his soft lips always seem on the verge of scowling or smirking, all those things and all of the big, warm size of him, make me want to nestle against him. I want to feel his warmth. I want the scent that is his alone. I’ve missed him. I’ve missed him so much, it’s why I can’t bring myself to answer his texts or to return his calls.

  In order to make a clean break I know I can’t see him. Hearing his voice, I’d thought, might have even been too much.

  “You need to come with me,” he says. The way he says it is almost brutish. He’s telling me what to do. A part of me loves this side of him, the way he is standing here, like a mountain that is not going to move until he gets what he wants. And the other part of me…I can’t give in because I want to give in so much.

  “No,” I tell him. I swallow, hard. I almost don’t want the words to come out. It’s so hard to say this. It’s so hard to think of Alexei as my ex-boyfriend. But that’s what he is. It’s what he has to be because we have no future together. The things we want are far too different. It’s a gulf neither of us can cross. “Alexei. We’re done. I can’t.” I shake my head. My hands are shaking too. “I can’t do it anymore. I want things that you don’t. And it’s not… It’s not fair to either of us anymore.”

  He doesn’t shift his eyes from mine. The breeze blows and his shirt ripples across his chest and I feel it stir through my hair and I feel my own eyes waver, but his eyes are hard, intense. It hurts to look at him. Inside, I am scattering just like the leaves had scattered across the path. I don’t know where to start and I don’t know how to start putting all of those pieces back together again.

  “You’re not safe.” His eyes search through mine. His voice softens. “Come home, Radiah. Let me make you safe.”

  Home. Home is where Alexei is. And where Alexei is, is also the one place I know I will feel my saddest. Because being with him makes me want it all. After what happened with Emilio, I’m afraid that the truth is I don’t want to make a life with anyone else. Being with Alexei hurts more than anything. How can that even be? How can my sorrow also be my joy? I don’t understand it.

  Determined to stay strong, I decide to push the issue. “Oh?” I arch my eyebrow at him. “And why is that, Alexei? Why aren’t I safe? I’m just going for a walk, right?”

  He looks away. He looks over the grass, between the trees. Is he looking for someone? Or is he just being cautious. Maybe he’s only looking away because he can’t look at me when he says, “You’re not safe because you’re mine, Radiah. People will try to use you to get to me.” He says it as plainly as he ever has. Says it like is repeating a weather forecast. “I never hid what I do from you.” His shoulders square. His hand hovers at my side. His eyes come back to mine. “I tried. I tried to warn you.”

  It’s true. He hadn’t lied. He’d been straight up with me from the get-go. But I’d been younger then. I hadn’t realized the full scope of what he’d meant. I hadn’t fully understood what I was getting myself into. And it had all been worth it. Until now. Now, what he does is keeping us apart and as much as I love him, and as much as I want to be with him, it’s too much to sacrifice. It’s too much, the things he’s asking me to give up. I can literally feel time ticking away from me. Next year, I’ll be thirty-five. I don’t have forever. No one does. The window for what I want to have is literally closing with every passing day.

  Consciously, I know nothing has changed since the night I walked out on him.

  And still, I want to go home with him. I want to forget everything else and just go home with him. I want to so much and the more I look at him, the more I want it. His eyes shadow and he exhales and his shoulders rise and the scent of him rises too. I can hardly look at him without aching for the touch of his hard hands, without thinking about the way it feels when he smiles at me, without thinking about the way it feels when he lays against me and when all of the weight of his muscular body makes love to mine. I can’t look at his lips without dying to kiss him. I miss his laugh. I miss making him laugh. He never laughs much at all, but I can make him do that. And he can make me do things I never thought I could. I’m strong, but he makes me stronger. In so many ways we are so perfect for each other.

  But the way we’re not perfect for each other is going to destroy us. I don’t want it to end badly. I don’t want fights. I don’t want tears. I don’t want to hate Alexei and I don’t want him to hate me. If we can’t have a future together then, at the very least, I want to protect the past we’ve shared.

  The irony of it kills me. Alexei has helped to make me strong enough to do what I need to do now.

  “I can’t go with you. Neither of us would be happy, Alexei. Not in the long run.” Shaking my head, I fight back the tears. I won’t let him see me cry. “It’s better this way. Trust me.” Trust me, baby, I almost say.

  “Radiah.” He says it quietly. There is less than a few feet between us but it feels like he is miles away from me now. He holds his hand down, out, palm up towards me. “Radiah. Come home with me. Please.”

  Please.

  I’ve never heard him say please before, not this way, not like this. I’ve never seen this look in his eyes before. His dark eyes are reaching for me, reaching out to me the way his hand is. I want nothing more than to take his hand and to take his eyes. In them, I see my home. In him, I see my heart. I almost say it. I almost lean forward. I almost say please right back to him. Please, I almost say, please let me be important enough to you. I want our fingertips to touch. I want that chasm between us to close, I want to seal away into nothing.

  I want to be with him. I want us to be together.

  But I know I’m not enough for him. And, as much as it hurts to admit it to myself, I know he’s not enough for me either. The reason he is here now says more than any words could. He’s here because he’s afraid for me. And it’s that fear that will stop him from giving himself to me, it will stop him from giving us... us. If he really wanted children too, if he really wanted me, I know nothing would stop him from doing what had to be done, as hard as it might be. Alexei is a fighter. He’d fight for me.

  Looking into Alexei’s eyes, I know this is a man who can move mountains. His sheer willpower awes me sometimes. And this is something he won’t will himself through, even though I believe in him. I know he can.

  Instead, he is letting his past bury him. He is letting his past bury us. Our future is already in ruins. The might-have-been, I know, will haunt me for the rest of my life. I think I know him well enough to know they will haunt him too. All of that hunted, haunted space in him is so overcrowded with ghosts. Now, I will be another.

  For a long moment, we say nothing. There is nothing but silence. We are nothing but silence.

  Silence is so much. The silence of eyes. The silence of an almost touch. The unsaid words that pass between us could make a mountain. It is a mountain. A mountain neither of us can cross.

  We stand still, alone with the silence and the turn of the
path narrowing with the dark of the sunset. The faraway corners of gray buildings, and the distant honks of the car horns, the whole murmur of the city that never sleeps, is quiet now. We could be anywhere. If one moment could last forever, if we could be timeless, we could be anything. I know, looking at him, that we could be in love. I know, despite everything, we probably are. I light his torches in the dark and Alexei lights mine. That will never change. But, as much as we don’t want it to, time keeps moving. That’s the whole point...time keeps moving. If I’m ever going to have the family I want, I need to let him go. I can’t make one moment last forever no matter how much I might want it to.

  “Come home,” he says. “Radiah.”

  There is the heat of something that is almost desperate in his eyes, as though he can see my thoughts. It feels like he knows. He knows that we are standing here together, inches apart, losing each other.