The Good Father

by Diane Chamberlain

  In order to continue the pregnancy, I had to stop taking a couple of my medications and that’s when I discovered how sick I really was. Those drugs had been keeping me stable. Making me feel well when I was anything but. Without them, I grew sicker and weaker. So weak that my father traded in my home teacher for a home nurse and I spent most of my time in bed, barely conscious. I’d had a couple of sonograms and everyone seemed amazed that my baby girl looked perfectly normal, which made me so glad I was giving her a chance at life. Lying there in bed, day in and day out, I felt her move and kick and punch my belly and I hoped she would keep going like that. I hoped she was full of fight, because I was losing all of mine. It was all I could do to drag myself to the bathroom without passing out.

  Finally, thirteen weeks before my due date, they moved me to the hospital, where I would have to stay until the baby was born. I was so, so sick. Dozens of doctors passed through my room, all of them messing with a concoction of medications and IVs, all of them trying to keep the foolish girl alive. I knew what I’d never wanted to admit: my father had been right. I should have had an abortion.

  After two more weeks had passed, I didn’t need my father or my doctor or the hospital social worker to tell me that if I survived the pregnancy—which was now an honest-to-goodness concern—I would be far too sick to take care of a baby. I didn’t even want the baby by then. I’d been so stupid. My father hired a lawyer who could help me arrange an adoption. The lawyer came to my hospital room, cranked up my bed and logged me into a website that described a bunch of couples, all of them longing for a baby of their own. I was too tired and weak to care by then and their images and profiles ran together in front of my eyes.

  “I don’t care,” I said to the lawyer. “You pick.”

  He looked hesitant. “Well,” he said, “I’ll tell you about three of the couples, all right? And you can decide between them. I want you to have a choice in this. If… When you recover, I don’t want you to feel as though you were coerced in any way.”

  He described three couples but I couldn’t keep them straight. Which was the guy who worked for IBM? Which was the woman who’d lost three babies? Which was the airline pilot who planned to retire to be a stay-at-home dad?

  “The middle one,” I said, after the lawyer had described all three. I thought he said the middle couple was rich. I wanted my baby to have everything if she couldn’t have me.

  “The Richardsons.” He looked pleased as he closed the computer screen. “They’ll be so thrilled, Robin. You can be as involved in your baby’s life as you want. You can—”

  “I just want her out of me,” I said. “She’s killing me.”

  He took a step away from me and I thought I’d shocked him. I was too tired to explain that I didn’t mean it quite the way it sounded. Or maybe I did. I was sorry I’d fought so hard to have this baby. She was killing me. I would do everything I could to make sure she got her chance at life, but I was angry she seemed to be stealing mine while she was at it.

  Every day, one doctor or another would explain his or her treatment plan to me and I began to lose the ability to make any sense of what they were saying. I knew they were telling me they’d take the baby early. I knew I would have a Cesarean section. I knew that I wouldn’t be leaving the hospital until they found a new heart for me. I knew I’d done it all to myself when I chose the baby’s life over my own. The doctors’ words grew mushier in my head day by day, until I slipped into a world where I couldn’t hear them at all.

  One day, while I was stuck in that foggy world between life and death, I became vaguely aware of a woman leaning over the side of my bed. She was holding something in her hands. A notepad or chart or something. She lifted the side of the oxygen mask from my face.

  “Are you awake, Robin?” she asked. “I need the name of the baby’s father for the birth certificate.”

  “Not supposed to…” I murmured, trying to remember what my father had said about the birth certificate.

  “Are you awake, dear? Who’s the baby’s father?”

  “Travis Brown,” I whispered, and it felt so good to feel those two words on my lips. She was out the door before I remembered they were the words my father had told me never to say.

  21

  Erin

  I pulled into the driveway of the house I’d shared with Michael for the past ten years and was disappointed to see his car through the windows of the garage door. It was five o’clock and I’d hoped I’d beat him home so that I could get in and out of the house without having to talk to him. I knew he’d be working on a game in his first-floor home office and I wondered if I could just sneak by him.

  Travis and I had talked for a long time at JumpStart that morning. It had been obvious by the way he’d handled my iPad that he was no stranger to computers and the internet, and when I pointed that out, he told me he used to use a friend’s Mac to design cabinetry. We started talking about the internet and before I knew it, I was telling him about Michael being a video-game designer. Travis was fascinated.

  “I never knew someone could have a full-time job inventing games,” he said. “Cool.”

  “They’re not your usual games,” I said. “They’re collaborative, so thousands of people play at one time, and they’re designed to try to solve real-world problems. Like the energy crisis or forest fire prevention. He won an award for a game that had the goal of curing a certain kind of cancer.” I felt some of my old pride in Michael rise to the surface as I talked.

  “Very cool,” he said again, and I wondered how someone who couldn’t find a job, had a child to feed and was probably homeless could possibly see the redeeming qualities in game invention.

  “He thinks games are a cure for everything,” I said, moving into my putting-Michael-down mode, where I was more comfortable these days. “Pollyanna thinking.”

  “I bet he’s a nice guy,” Travis said.

  I nodded. “Yes,” I said because I couldn’t argue with that. Suddenly, I missed him. I missed our “before everything went wrong” life. “He is a nice guy.”

  Our 1930s craftsman-style house was small and cute and it sat on a corner in Five Points, one of my favorite neighborhoods in Raleigh. I loved our house, even though space was always at a premium. We knew we’d have to move to a larger home once we had a second child and we’d been carefully saving for that day. Now it all seemed pointless. Our savings were being eaten up by my rent.

  I turned off my car and took the short path around the side of the house to the back door. How many hundreds of times had I walked this path? How many times had I fiddled with my key chain, searching for the back door key? How many times had I climbed these old porch steps, which I now noticed Michael had painted? He’d rebuilt them before I left as one of his many recent home maintenance tasks, designed to keep him from thinking about the unthinkable. The things I’d pleaded with him to do for years were suddenly all getting done.

  I was about to slip my key into the lock when he opened the door. His smile was wide and I hoped he didn’t think my showing up there meant anything.

  “Hey,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You too,” I said, politely. Even though I hadn’t wanted him to be there, it did feel good to see him and that surprised me. We hugged awkwardly. I kissed his cheek without thinking and felt something visceral and traitorous in my body as the familiar scent of his aftershave caught me off guard. I let go and took a step away from him.

  “I’m sorry to just barge in, but I need to pick up a few things,” I said, moving past him into the room and setting my purse on the kitchen table.

  “Sure.” He motioned toward the box of penne on the counter. “I was just about to make dinner. Why don’t you get what you need and then join me?”

  “I can’t,” I said. I hoped he wasn’t eating pasta every night. That made me feel guilty. I was the cook in the family, he was the cleaner-upper. “I’m starting back to work next week and need to get some clothes.” It was a lie. I�
��d packed plenty of clothes when I moved out. You didn’t need much in the way of a wardrobe when you wore a white jacket all day. What I’d come to the house for was in Carolyn’s room—books I could give Bella. Maybe a toy or two. Something small she could carry in her purse.

  “That’s great, Erin,” he said. “It’s going to be so good for you to start working again.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Do you need some help?” he asked as I headed for the stairs.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Give a shout if you change your mind.”

  I climbed the stairs, hoping he’d stay in the kitchen because I didn’t want to explain what I was doing in Carolyn’s room, a room I’d only peered inside once since her death. That one glimpse had been too much. I’d psyched myself up for this visit on my way to the house today, though, picturing myself walking into the room and straight to the bookcase. I even knew which books I would pull out: The Winnie the Pooh books Carolyn had been a bit too young and hyper to sit still for, but which I thought Bella might love. And there was also a book about a blue-eyed lamb somewhere on those shelves. Bella would like that one, too, since she never let go of that stuffed lamb of hers. I imagined Bella sitting on my lap as I read the books to her. New-to-her books, unlike The Cat in the Hat. Unimaginable to have only one book. Carolyn had been so lucky. We had all been so lucky, once.

  As I reached the top of the stairs, I pictured myself walking to Carolyn’s bookcase, picking out the books, then looking up at the shelf where we’d kept most of her stuffed animals and pulling one of them down. Maybe the giraffe. That hadn’t been one of Carolyn’s favorites so it wouldn’t be worn or soiled. It wouldn’t hold any scent of her. Carolyn’s favorites had always been lined up on her pillow and I assumed they still were—except for the fuzzy brown dog she’d had with her on that trip to Atlantic Beach.

  The hallway was long and the old floorboards creaked exactly where they’d always creaked, surprising me with homesickness. At one end of the hall, the door was open to our bedroom. Michael’s and mine. There were four other doors—one to my combination home office and guestroom, one to the bathroom, one to the attic and one to Carolyn’s room. That was the only door that was closed and hanging from the knob was a sign she’d made in preschool the week before she died. Below a felt flower, her name was spelled out in wooden beads, the Y and N crammed in the corner below the Carol because she’d run out of room. I stood still in the hallway, staring at the sign, remembering how much she’d loved it. How proud she’d been of it, because her teacher told her she’d picked colors that harmonized beautifully, and harmonize became her new word of the week. “Do these colors harmonize, Mommy?” she’d ask, looking at the pages of one of her picture books. “Do these colors harmonize?” she’d ask, picking out a shirt to go with her shorts. Standing in the kitchen, Michael and I had sung “Way Down Upon the Swanee River” in passable harmony to try to teach her a second meaning of the word. She’d pressed her hands to the sides of her head. “That hurts my ears,” she’d said, and Michael and I had laughed. Even now, remembering, I smiled before I caught myself. Judith had told me, “Someday memories of Carolyn will make you smile as well as cry.” I hadn’t believed her. Smiling had seemed like a betrayal, and standing outside Carolyn’s room, I thought I won’t tell Judith about this. Why not? Would it mean progress? Did progress mean I was leaving Carolyn behind?

  “I will never leave you behind, sweetheart,” I whispered to my daughter as I turned the doorknob to her room.

  I opened the door and stood there for a moment, taking in the room. It smelled a little stale and the scent of her was truly gone. It was lost forever, and I wondered if Michael had opened the windows to get rid of it or if somehow the air moving in and out of the room over the past few months had simply carried it away. Her big-girl bed was neatly made as it had been that Friday morning we’d left for the beach. Five stuffed animals were lined up in front of the pillow on the blue-and-green bedspread she’d picked out herself. Do these colors harmonize, Mommy? In the corner stood her play kitchen, and across the room was a low table flanked by two small chairs. Sticker books, coloring books, crayons and small containers of clay were piled neatly on one side of it.

  “I love you,” I whispered to the air. “I will always, always love you.”

  Across the room from where I stood was her bookcase. It was long and low enough to fit beneath the windows. I could see the spines of the books and from where I stood, I could make out a couple of the titles I wanted. The others, I would have to dig for a little. It would take me five steps to cross the room. One minute to squat down and pick out the books. But I felt frozen in the doorway. The floor of her room might as well have been the Grand Canyon.

  “Erin?”

  I turned to see Michael in the hallway behind me. I hadn’t heard him on the stairs.

  “I haven’t touched her room,” he said.

  “I know. Thank you.”

  He stood next to me. “Do you want to…I don’t know… Would it help you to go through her things? Start cleaning it out?”

  “I’m nowhere near ready to do that,” I said. “I don’t want to touch it.” Maybe that was why I couldn’t cross the room to take the books. It was like taking Carolyn out of the room, piecemeal. A book here, a toy there, until she was gone.

  “All right. I just thought…” His voice trailed off. “Seriously, I made way too much pasta. How did you always manage to make just the right amount?”

  “Remember how she’d ask if colors harmonized?” I asked. “Remember when we sang ‘Swanee River’ in the kitchen?”

  “Yes, I remember.” He was talking to me in that slow, measured way he’d used ever since things started falling apart, as though he was afraid he’d pick the wrong word or the wrong inflection and send me into a crazy-woman tirade again. I really couldn’t blame him for that.

  “Do you ever come in here?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t like to. It’s too hard.” Gingerly, he rested his hand on my back. “I think all her toys and clothes should be donated, Erin. I think we should—”

  “Stop,” I said. “I know what you think. That we should take all her stuff out and bring in a treadmill, but that’s not going to—”

  “I wasn’t going to say that.” He sighed, dropping his hand from my back. “Look, I’m going downstairs. I just wanted to say, this house is still your house. Your home. You can come anytime. You don’t need to apologize for showing up without calling. I miss you.”

  “You miss the old me,” I said. Just like I missed our old life. “You can’t honestly miss the me I am now.”

  He looked down at the floor, hands in his pockets. “How’s it going with Judith?” he asked. He was waiting for the magic cure.

  “It’s fine.” I stepped back into the hallway and pulled Carolyn’s door shut. “I’ll get the things I need and leave,” I said, knowing I’d be bringing nothing of Carolyn’s to the coffee shop for Bella. I’d go to my closet, take some clothes I didn’t need and then I’d drive away, wishing I’d never tried to come home at all.

  22

  Robin

  I sat on a chair in the bridal shop holding Hannah on my lap and staring into her amazing little face. She was a month old now and I couldn’t see Alissa or any of the Hendricks family in her features. Her hair was blond and flyaway and she still had the dark, blue-gray eyes of an infant. Eyes that followed every move I made, I could swear, though Mollie said that just wasn’t possible yet.

  Mollie circled the platform where Alissa stood sulking in her sleek black bridesmaid’s dress as the seamstress pinned the hem.

  “I told you I’d never fit into this thing!” Alissa said. The dress was a little snug. It had been hard to order the right size for her when she was pregnant, since we had no idea how much baby weight she’d lose by the wedding.

  “It looks great on you, Ali,” I said. “You’ll probably drop another pound by the wedding and it will be perfe
ct.”

  “What if I don’t? And my boobs are still enormous.”

  “Enjoy it while you have it,” Mollie said. I liked that about Mollie. Appearances were important to her and she was probably slightly freaked out about the poor fit of Alissa’s dress, but she acted like it was no big deal and that was really kind of her. I could tell how self-conscious Alissa felt on that platform and that self-consciousness on top of her depression was just too much for her. I knew better than anyone how upset she was these days. She was confiding in me a lot now, and I felt the weight of her secret longing for Will. That relationship had been far deeper and gone on far longer than anyone knew. Not only had her friend Jess taken her on those pretend dates where she’d meet up with Will, she’d also sneak out in the middle of the night and meet him in the Old Burying Ground. She told me the caring things he’d say to her and all the plans they’d had for the future. Every time I pictured those clandestine meetings, Will’s face would morph into Travis’s in my imagination.

  I’d already had my turn on the platform. The seamstress had altered Mollie’s wedding gown to fit me a couple of weeks ago and had only had the hem to do today. I’d stared at myself in the mirror as she worked. The dress was amazing. The only real change the seamstress had made to it was to add a bit of lace to the neckline to hide my scar. Yet I hadn’t liked my reflection. Maybe it was because my hair was down and sloppy and I wasn’t wearing any makeup, but in spite of the dress, I didn’t look like a bride. I looked like a girl playing dress-up, wearing a dress that didn’t really belong on her. Mollie and the seamstress oohed and aahed over it, but I wondered if they, too, could see how false I looked. I’d felt the same way the day before at the jeweler’s, where Mollie took me to have Dale’s grandmother’s wedding ring resized for me. I was already wearing her engagement ring, the diamond so big I felt silly in it. The wedding ring would add another band of diamonds to my finger. The jeweler actually touched the nail of my index finger. “I can give you the name of a good manicurist,” she said, and I curled my untended fingertips beneath my palm. Mollie just laughed, but I wondered if she was thinking the same thing.