“I’ll put them back to bed,” Adam said, rising, but Sara was out of her chair first. “No, I’ll go! I’d like to. It’ll be more effective if a stranger does it. And I need the practice!” She ran up the stairs, shooing the boys ahead of her, looking for all the world like a little mother hen already. Nick smiled after her in a slack, “Isn’t she wonderful?” way that made Ann and Valerie queasy.
“Well, I don’t know about all this claptrap to do with working mothers and the rest of it,” Jeremy said with disgust. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Women used to just have children and get on with it. Work if your husband’s poor, don’t work if he’s rich.” He pointed his glass at Adam. “I’ll tell you who’s got it right, though—your wife. Go ahead and have the little nippers, then hand ’em over to some other gal to raise. Brilliant! That’s the way to do it, if you ask me.”
“No one is asking you,” his wife said tightly.
“Oh, come on, it’s obvious. She’s got the best of both worlds. As free as the wind, but with her genes safely in the pool. And I’m afraid you, Valerie, have got it just exactly wrong. Raising someone else’s kiddos—where’s the mileage in that? All the dirty work and no Darwinian success. I suppose it’s the old biological-clock business. You left it too long, and this was the best you could do so late in the day, eh? Oh, well. Bad luck.” He lifted his glass and drank, seeming to take Valerie’s misfortunes pretty well, all in all.
Valerie and Adam spoke at the same time.
“I am not raising these children!”
“Sophie is an excellent mother!”
Stung that he had leaped to Sophie’s defense instead of her own, Valerie continued hotly, as much for his benefit as for Jeremy’s. “I am not a surrogate mother to Adam’s children. This is a temporary arrangement. If I wanted children, which I emphatically do not, I would have my own.”
“All right, all right.” Jeremy held up his hands. “Keep your wig on.”
“The situation here, Jeremy,” Valerie continued through her teeth, “is obviously beyond your understanding.”
“Like so many things,” his wife hissed at him.
Valerie stood and glared at her guests. “Coffee?”
* * *
At last they were gone. Valerie was craving a real cigarette after hours of barely sustaining herself on furtive puffs out on the patio between courses. Now she stood on the front step smoking deeply, blowing strong jets of white smoke into the darkness. Adam came back downstairs and frowned at the open door.
“Are they finally asleep?” she asked.
“Nearly.” He began clearing the last things off the table.
“Leave that for Milagros.”
“You sacked her, remember?”
“I wish you’d cleaned up your personal life before you got me involved in it.”
“You didn’t give me the chance.”
“Dad-dy!” came a call from upstairs.
“Oh, I’ll go! I’ll take care of this once and for all!” Valerie flicked her cigarette into the darkness and marched up the stairs. At the sound of her footsteps, the boys raced back to bed, and when she got there, they were pretending to sleep, their eyelids fluttering in a telltale way. She sat on the edge of Hugo’s bed. “Okay, you two. Sleep. And I mean it.” Absentmindedly, she picked up the elephant from the bedside table and snapped on its trunk.
Hugo opened his eyes. “Thank you. Can we have a story?” No response. “I’m thirsty.” Nothing.
Matthew sniffed the air. “You smell like fire. If you smoke, you can get sick. My teacher said.”
“Go to sleep,” Valerie said.
“Smoking is bad,” Matthew whispered.
“Shh. Quiet now.”
Hugo whispered, too. “You look very fierce with those hairbrowns.”
She sighed. “No, not fierce. Just tired, Hugo. Very tired.”
“I’m glad you’re not mad,” Hugo said, “because Mommy said we should be nice to you.”
“She did?”
“Yes. Because you’re in our family now.”
She said nothing.
“You are in our family now. Aren’t you?” Matthew asked.
She rose and went to the door. “Time to sleep.”
“Aren’t you?” Matthew insisted, his voice anxious. “Valerie?”
She stopped, her hand on the doorframe, then came back to give them a kiss. On the forehead—first Hugo, then Matthew. She touched Matthew’s cheek. “Sweet dreams, you two.”
Adam finished clearing up the dining room, then set the kitchen table for breakfast, keeping an eye out for Valerie. When she didn’t come back down, he went up and found her in their room, her half-filled suitcase lying open on the bed, her drawers and closet gaping. She was packing, but with more theatricality than firm intention. When he appeared in the doorway, she whirled around, clutching a red silk scarf in one hand, and locked her eyes on his in a challenge. Matthew’s voice drifted down the hall, once, twice, and then Hugo joined in the familiar two-note call: “Dad-dy!” Valerie held Adam with her eyes, willing him to stay with her, supplication in her face, but also a warning. For a moment neither moved. “Dad-dy?” Matthew’s voice was uncertain and vulnerable. Adam straightened up. “Coming!” he called, and with a level look at Valerie he went to attend to his sons.
She hurled the balled-up silk scarf at him, but it was too diaphanous to make a good missile. It faltered partway in the air, then fluttered down like a sigh into her suitcase, forming a puddle of scarlet.
She resumed her packing, this time in earnest.
* * *
After lunch on the first day of the retreat, Sophie and L were stretched out on the stiff winter grass, the cold from the ground seeping through their coats into their backs but the sunshine warm on their faces, talking with their eyes closed in the lazy way of people lying in the sun. “What I love is that ‘two hands feel like one’ thing. Isn’t that wild? And yesterday Malcolm did this amazing thing to me. He put his hand on my hara, and he said, ‘Our edges are blurry, and blurrier after treatment. I want you to think about where my hand is. Is it on you, under you, where?’ I was just thinking that was a stupid question when I went, ‘Hey, where is that hand?’ And you know what? It was inside me. Inside my stomach. Then it floated back up to the surface and stayed there. You know how he always says to take your hand off gently at the end, to not break contact abruptly? Well, I could still feel his hand on me, but when I opened my eyes—Sophie, get this—he was all the way across the room!” L sighed. “Shiatsu’s so cool.”
“Mmm,” Sophie agreed. The sun was making dreamy colored patterns inside her eyelids.
“I love how tactile it is. All that pushing and pressing… and pulling…”
“And palming. P-words, mostly.”
“Yeah.”
A shadow fell over Sophie, and she opened her eyes to see the earth daddy looking down at her with annoyance.
“Go away, please,” L said serenely, her eyes still closed.
The shadow withdrew, and the warm sun spilled over Sophie’s face again. “I think he wanted to be alone with you,” she said, unzipping her jacket and loosening her scarf. It was hot, lying down sheltered from the breeze.
“Let him want.”
“Poor guy. He’s old enough to be your father.”
“He is my father.”
“Oh!” Sophie sat up, cross-legged, and shielded her eyes to look at L. “Really?”
L rolled onto her side and propped her chin on her hand before adding, “In the biological sense, anyway.”
“And all this time I thought he was an old lech trying to seduce you!”
“He’s that, too, in a way. He cleared off when I was little, leaving me to raise my mother alone. Then about six months ago, he suddenly showed up, doing this hip, ‘more a long-lost friend than a father’ routine. I told him thanks, I already had friends. So he signed up for this course, just to be with me. And try to impress me—he’s been a practitioner for years.
Kind of sad, isn’t it?”
“Well… sometimes it’s better late than never. Sometimes not.”
“Oh, I’m going to forgive him, obviously. I’m not going to waste psychic energy on hating the guy.” She yawned. “I’m just unloading a little resentment on him first, is all.”
Sophie laughed. “I like you, L. Tell me something: Why is your name just L?”
“Oh, you know. I thought it would be cool and lackadaisical of me to have only one letter. Sort of in keeping, don’t you think?”
“And I liked that throwaway line about raising your mother.”
“Oh, yeah? You liked that?” L couldn’t help smiling.
As is typical of these things, the retreat was proving to be more of a chance for everyone to “hang out” together—and the organizers to collect their fees—than a serious academic occasion, but the sheer number of hours spent practicing and swapping tips was beneficial, and so was the concentration on hara diagnosis: learning to glean information about the organs and channels by palpating the abdomen—“listening with your fingers,” Malcolm called it.
They were staying in a monastery set in extensive, dreary grounds and sleeping two or three to a room, Sophie sharing with L and Rose. The meals were plain and vegetarian, the heating minimal, the decoration suitably austere. To Rose, a mother of three, it all seemed great fun—no cooking, no responsibilities. A year before, Sophie might have felt the same way, but now she was freer at home than here, and that was a very heartening thought. Henry was in another wing with the men, and Sophie didn’t get a chance to speak to him alone until Sunday morning, when they took a walk together. It had rained all night, the sky was as dark as evening, and the soggy earth squelched beneath their feet.
“I’m going to Seattle on Wednesday,” he said. “I don’t know for how long. I got a cheap one-way ticket. I go every year in March for Arianne’s birthday. I’m looking forward to seeing the Pacific again. I miss it.”
“Wait,” Sophie said. She stopped walking. “What?”
He stopped, too. “What?”
She attempted a little laugh. “You’re going to Seattle, one way, in three days, for you don’t know how long? Do I dare ask who Arianne is?”
“Arianne,” he said, trying to jog her memory. “Arianne, my daughter. She’ll be twelve. Can you help me think of a nice present for her?”
Sophie could hear the blood pumping in her ears. “You have a daughter?”
“I’ve told you about her.”
“No.”
“Really? Well, I have a daughter, nearly twelve years old, named Arianne, who lives in Seattle. I visit her every spring. When she’s a little older, I’d like her to spend summers here with me. Shall I describe her? She’s chiaroscuro, very extreme, all tears or laughter. She has tremendous energy, but when it’s used up, she collapses. She could have yang excess and insufficient yin, I’ve been thinking.”
“And… this daughter of yours… ,” Sophie tried to ask lightly, “does she have a mother?”
“Are you sure we’ve never talked about this?”
“Very sure.”
“Well, it’s hard to believe, but maybe you’re right. It is true, you know, that we’ve talked mostly about you.” He pulled a reproachful face, then smiled. “Well, Arianne’s mother is named Ming Li, and she’s from Taipei. We were lovers in our twenties, and she got pregnant, by accident we thought then, but now I know it was divine intervention. We didn’t want to live together, but we both wanted the baby, so she was born, and…” He shrugged. “Arianne’s the best thing in my life, as I’m sure you understand.”
“Yes.” Sophie focused past him. “Yes. I guess what I don’t understand is how you neglected to mention to me the existence of the best thing in your life.”
He looked at her closely. “Are you angry?”
“It never occurred to you, Henry, in all our talks about parents and children and separation and lovers, to tell me that you had a child, too? It never once crossed your mind that I had a right to know about your child and lover in Seattle?”
“A right to know? What are you talking about?”
“A right to know. You know all about me, my children, my husband—I haven’t kept anything from you.”
“Did you ever ask me if I had a child? No. You’ve monopolized the conversation since we met, and now you’re reproaching me for it!” He laughed, looking incredulous.
“Nice try, Henry, but it’s not going to work. And anyway, you… you insensitive boor—”
“Boor?”
“I’ve been standing here hoping that you would contradict me about your having a lover in Seattle, but it’s not happening. So what is?”
“Did you call me a boor?”
“Are you still involved with your child’s mother?”
“Of course I am. She’s my child’s mother.”
“You sleep with her?”
“What kind of a question is that? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on how we feel, obvi—”
She slapped him across the face. It made a loud crack, louder than she would have imagined; she had never slapped anyone before. Her palm stung. They stared at each other in shock. Then she was gone, splashing across the sodden grass.
* * *
“It’s all over. Finished. That’s the end,” Milagros announced gravely the next afternoon.
Sophie, who had been thinking just that, asked in a startled way, “What do you mean?”
Milagros pointed at the boys playing on the rug and gestured that she didn’t want them to hear, then launched into a long explanatory mime involving much gesticulation, face making, and the emphatic mouthing of words. All very expressive—but of what?
“I’m sorry, Mila. I didn’t get any of that.”
“The fulana. Is gone.”
Sophie sank into a chair and listened to Milagros’s impassioned account of the weekend’s events, beginning with the outrage of her dismissal Friday night and ending with her victorious return that very morning, in response to Adam’s pleas, to a house that no longer contained a single one of her enemy’s possessions. “Not one cigarette butt! Mr. Dean has cleaned all. He’s sleeping in your old room again, too,” she added with a significant nod.
But Sophie held up her hands and shook her head, like one who did not wish to know where Adam was sleeping or had been sleeping. (So they hadn’t been using the old room—good.)
“So she kicks me out, eh? She fires me. Ha! Look who goes in the end!” To this triumphant refrain, in several variations, Milagros returned regularly.
“Maybe it was just a quarrel,” Sophie said finally. “Maybe she’ll be back.”
“I don’t think so.” Milagros leaned closer and announced in a stage whisper, “She took her coffee machine.”
The two woman looked at each other solemnly, then their faces lit up with smiles.
* * *
Henry called Sophie the night before he left for Seattle, and they had a brief, wary exchange.
She apologized for slapping him.
He promised to send her a postcard.
She wished him a nice trip.
* * *
The big news at Adam’s office was that the partnership had gone to Valerie. Most people said they’d known it all along. Some thought she deserved it, others thought she got it only because she was a woman, and others because she was a woman sleeping with the boss. This last group was subdivided into those who thought she’d been sleeping with the boss all along (and cheating on Adam) in order to secure the partnership and those who thought she was only now granting him that favor, having wisely held off until she had the prize safely in hand, making the affair the payoff rather than the partnership—a question of who put out first. Yet others claimed there was no affair at all; it was merely the invention of poor losers. What was undeniable was that the partnership was hers, and certainly Masterson did seem to have a more sprightly air about him. It was also an indisputable fact that Adam did not come in to work for thr
ee days and that Valerie, swanning around in what appeared to be an entirely new wardrobe, didn’t seem to know or care where he was. All of that was true, but the connection, if any, between those facts was anyone’s guess.
And Adam? Only James knew where he was, and he wasn’t telling. James knew that Hugo was ill with the flu, running a high temperature, and that although Milagros had offered to stay with him, the boy wanted his father, so Adam had brought his work home to do as best he could by Hugo’s bedside, amid storybooks and trays for the invalid. He phoned James at the office a couple of times a day, “to touch base,” he said, although a woman might have called it “just to talk.”
“It’s interesting that it’s me Hugo wants, not his mother.”
“Yeah. Well…”
“I am now what the books call ‘his main care provider’—an antiseptic term, isn’t it?—so I suppose it’s only natural, but still, I admit I’m touched. Last night while I was sitting with him, it occurred to me that the next time he’s ill, he may not need or want me. He may have outgrown this phase. This may be the only time in his life that he really needs me by his side, and I feel so privileged, so thankful to be here. I could so easily not have been, you know.”
“I know. Yeah. It’s—”
“In the big picture, what does it matter if I turn in a project a few days late, compared to the importance of being with my sick child, if by being here I can alleviate his suffering?”
“Absolutely. Um… I guess Masterson’s starting to feel a little jumpy, though. He’s been poking his head in here looking for you. I told him you were working from home—and right on schedule!”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Come in on Saturday and catch up, why don’t you?”
“Can’t. It’s my weekend with the boys.”
“I’ll take the boys for the day. If Hugo’s better, I mean.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that.”
“Don’t trust me, huh?” James forced a little chuckle, but Adam sensed he was hurt.
Leaving Sophie Dean Page 23