by Sue Margolis
At night before bed, Charlie and Sam would have play fights on the floor. Sam, who always lost, would “die” with such long, drawn-out death throes and general melodramatics that they would all be in stitches. These days it was often Sam rather than Amy who Charlie called upon to read his bedtime story. More than once, Amy dared herself to imagine the three of them as a family.
She knew she owed it to Sam to tell him that he could be Charlie’s father, but guilty as she felt, she kept holding back, hoping that tomorrow he might tell her that he loved her. When he didn’t, she convinced herself that he needed more time.
Once or twice, he picked up on her preoccupation and asked her what was bothering her. She always managed to persuade him that there was nothing wrong and that she was fine.
By now, Amy had told Sam that she was happy for him to sleep over in her bed, but he said he would rather not. When she asked him why, he said he was still worried about how Charlie might take it. Amy assured him that Charlie would be fine, but Sam insisted they give it a bit longer.
It was around this time that she noticed Sam starting to change. It was subtle at first. Sometimes, when they met up, he seemed not quite as sunny as usual. Then he started to find excuses not to come on outings with her and Charlie. If he did come, he seemed distant and self-absorbed. When she asked him if he was okay, he always apologized for being a misery. “It’s just that I wish we could spend more time alone together. I miss spending hours in bed, making love, laughing, and talking about nothing.”
“I do, too, you know that. But we always knew that this relationship would involve compromises. I’m not sure what I can do. The last thing I want is to lose you, but this is starting to feel like history repeating itself. If our relationship is getting too much for you, I’d rather know now.”
Then he would tell her to stop being so daft. “I’m having a moan, that’s all. It doesn’t mean I want to end it.” This would be followed by a kiss or a reassuring squeeze. “Come on, I’ve cheered up now. Why don’t the three of us go out for pizza?”
When Val rang to say that she and Trevor had arranged to rent a trailer in Dorset for the weekend and would like to take Charlie and Arthur away with them, Amy decided that her mother had to be telepathic or have second sight. She assured her mother that Charlie would love to come.
Of course, they got to chatting about Joyce. “She may be a drunk, but by all accounts they’re swinging from the chandeliers. Why couldn’t I do that with your dad?”
Amy told her what Phil had said about her not needing him.
“All I did was get a few qualifications and get a job. That was no excuse for him to neglect our marriage. Of course I needed him.”
“So how are things with you and Trevor?”
Val explained that things had come to a head after a “sweat lodge” incident.
“Trevor said he had arranged for us to spend a Saturday at a sweat lodge in Gloucestershire. I assumed it was a kind of spa and that he was treating me to a day of pampering. I was so excited, and then it turned out to be this ceremonial sauna in a giant tepee in the middle of nowhere, filled with chanting half-naked hippies.”
“Oh, Mum.”
“I left him to it and took the car to the nearest village. I treated myself to a pub lunch, and he rang me when he wanted picking up. Of course on the way home we had the most almighty row.”
“And?”
“I told him that I felt the shamanism thing was dominating our lives and that in order for us to have a future, it had to stop being his entire focus. I said he had to become more involved in the things that I enjoy, like eating out and going to see plays and films.”
“How did he take it?”
“Really well. You could have knocked me down with a feather. He said he didn’t realize how selfish he was being, but we’ve still got a long way to go. If Trevor and I are going to make it as a couple, it’s going to take a lot of give-and-take from both of us. So far, I’ve given him an ultimatum about cutting down on the chanting and not seeing patients in the house and he’s taken me to see Oliver. So I’d say we’ve made a start.”
Val, Trevor, and Arthur collected Charlie on that Friday evening. An hour or so after she had waved Charlie off, Sam arrived, straight from work, bearing a bottle of vintage Chablis. They stood in the kitchen drinking the wine while she began preparing Gordon Ramsay’s roast lamb stuffed with apricots, which she planned to serve with new potatoes and green beans.
“By the way,” he said at one point, “I’m off to Rwanda again in a week.”
“Wow, that’s sudden.”
“I know. I got an e-mail today from the head of the construction team working on the new school. A problem has cropped up with the flat roof. It’s collecting rainwater, which is seeping into the building. Since I was mainly responsible for the design, they need me to look at it and see if it needs to be replaced with a pitched roof. I’m sorry I have to go. I’m going to miss you.” He came over to where she was chopping apricots and gave her a squeeze.
“Hey, it’s not your fault,” she said. She asked him how long he would be away. He said a couple of weeks at least. Maybe longer.
“I’d love to come with you. It’s getting on about fifteen years since the genocide. There’s probably a great story to be done on how the country has come on since.” She said she would add it to her list of feature ideas.
“By the way,” he said, going over to his briefcase, “you had any news from that food testing lab yet?”
Amy shook her head. “They warned me it could be weeks, but I need to hurry them up.”
“I thought you might like to see these,” he said, producing a wallet of photographs. She stopped chopping apricots and wiped her hands on a clean dish cloth.
“THIS IS a photograph of the school we’re replacing.” Sam handed her a picture of a building that was little more than a dilapidated concrete box with a tin roof.
“God, look at all the bullet holes in the walls. I assume they’re left over from the genocide.”
He nodded.
He explained that the school was in a village about fifty miles south of the Rwandan capital, Kigali. “The people are Tutsis. Half a million of them were butchered by the Hutus in ninety-four. They have seen so much violence. Some of them have been left badly maimed. Others saw their entire families wiped out. And yet they are the kindest, most welcoming people you could hope to meet. I don’t know how they manage to keep going after what they have been through. It says so much for the human spirit.”
He showed her a picture of a young African couple. They were wearing rubber flip-flops and shabby, ill-fitting clothes, but they were both beaming. In front of them were four equally smiley children.
“The man is Jean Baptiste. That’s his wife, Delphine. He was sixteen when his parents and his five siblings were killed. And here he is nearly two decades on with his wife and kids. He is one of the most special people I have ever met. With the help of foreign aid, he went to college, became a teacher, and got married. Somehow he found the determination to make a life for himself. I wish I had a fraction of his courage.” He looked preoccupied, as if he was gearing up to say something.
Amy, too, had become thoughtful. Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the talk of Jean Baptiste’s bravery, but she was suddenly overcome with the feeling that the time had come. Sam was leaving for Africa in a few days and wouldn’t be back for weeks. She had already left it too long. She had to tell him that he could be Charlie’s father.
“Sam, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Actually, there’s something I need to talk to you about, too,” he said, sounding anxious now. “Would you mind if I went first?”
“I guess not. Go ahead.” She was curious more than alarmed.
“Amy, I don’t have the words to describe how much I am in love with you.”
Her face broke into a smile. “You do? I love you, too,” she said. Her voice was soft and gentle.
“I think
I’ve known that for a while. You are the first person I think about when I wake up and the last one I think about before I got to sleep.”
“Ditto.”
“But …”
Amy frowned. Despite the letdowns she’d had in the past, she wasn’t expecting a “but.”
“You know, I’ve really come to hate that word,” she said.
“I’m sorry, but I owe it to you to tell you how I feel. I adore Charlie. He’s a wonderful, brilliant little boy. I think the absolute world of him …”
“Sam, what’s going on? I don’t understand. For weeks you have been reassuring me that you are okay about Charlie.”
“I thought I was.”
“So I guess you’re about to tell me that you’re very sorry, but you’re not ready to parent a child that isn’t yours.”
“It’s not as simple as that. Please, just hear me out. When my father left us, I was five.”
“I know.”
“That left me pretty damaged emotionally.”
“I’m sure it did, but when I tried to get you to talk about it, you refused. Why?”
“I couldn’t risk telling you how much parenting frightens me. After all you’ve been through with these other losers you dated, you would have walked away, and the last thing I wanted was to lose you.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I would have listened and tried to help you.”
“That didn’t occur to me. Instead, I’ve done my best to enjoy the moment and not think about the future.”
“You mean a future with you as Charlie’s stepdad?”
He nodded.
“But now you’ve started thinking about it and you’re petrified.”
“Of course I am. From the day my father left, I had no male role model. I have absolutely no idea how to be a father. He left me with nothing other than the certainty that all fathers are bastards who have affairs and abandon their children.”
She was shaking her head. “Is that it?”
“Isn’t it enough?”
“Sam, look at me.” She placed her hands on either side of his arms. “When we first become parents, none of us really knows how to do it. We go on instinct and make it up as we go along. All parents get it wrong one way or another, and often all we remember is our mistakes. We try not to repeat those, but guess what, we make new ones. That’s just how it is.”
“It’s more than that with me. When Dad left us, I felt so abandoned. I still do. I’m thirty-seven, and I haven’t gotten over that feeling. I’m still a kid looking for a parent. I’m needy and selfish, just like kids are. I know how pathetic and feeble this must sound and I’m not proud of it, but I’m not sure I have anything to give a child.”
“Of course you do. You’ve been doing it. Surely you can see that. You know, Brian has some of these issues. His parents died in a car crash when he was thirteen. Talk to him. He’s been there.”
“He can’t help me. I’m not going to change. This is who I am. You don’t know me. The me you have been seeing since we started dating isn’t real. I’ve just been putting on an act.”
“No you haven’t. Nobody could fake the way you are with Charlie. And I bet you’re equally fantastic with your nephews.”
“Yes, but I will never have to raise them. I spend time with them and get to go home. I’m running scared about us because I’ve realized that parenting isn’t just for a few weeks. It’s forever. It feels like I would have to sacrifice myself and my needs, and I’m not sure I can do that.”
“So that’s it? We’re finished?”
“Amy, from the bottom of my heart, I don’t want us to split up. I love you, but I’m just so confused. I can’t see a way forward.”
She took a deep breath. “Right. Well, what I have to say is going to confuse you even more.”
“What?”
She blurted it all out.
“Amy, you brought this up the other day. I thought it was just a joke.”
“It was, but now I’ve got more information to go on. The clinics were linked. You might not be sterile. They told men they were sterile to get out of paying them.”
“Okay, but why would they hang on to it for so long?”
“Sam, the clinics were in chaos. They often had no idea what sperm they were storing or who it belonged to.”
“Sorry, I don’t buy any of this. You’re just letting your imagination run away with itself. And you’re wrong; Charlie and I don’t look alike.”
“You do. You just can’t bear to see it.”
“Rubbish.”
“It’s not just me. I told you how other people can see the likeness. Look, this could be nothing or it could be something. We have to do a DNA test.”
“What! No. Charlie is not my son.”
“You’re probably right, but we need to know for certain.”
“I can’t handle this—not on top of all the other stuff I was feeling.” He was running his hand through his hair and starting to pace up and down the kitchen.
“Sam, I know that I’ve sprung this on you and it’s hard to take. Plus I’m probably barking completely up the wrong tree, but will you at least agree to a DNA test? We have to know the truth. And so does Charlie.”
“I know the truth.” More pacing.
“You can’t be certain.”
He stopped and looked at her. “This is total madness. I am not Charlie’s father.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Okay … Just tell me where I have to be and when.” He picked up the wallet of photographs and his briefcase. “I’m going. I need time to think. I can’t discuss this anymore tonight.”
“Sam, please don’t walk out. We need to keep talking.”
But he was out of the door.
THE NEXT morning, Bel popped around unannounced to see Amy.
“I brought croissants,” she said, putting a paper bag down on the kitchen counter. She paused. “By the way, you heard from this lab place yet?”
Amy shook her head.
“You must be on shpilkes.” Bel was using the word regularly now and pronouncing it to perfection. Zelma would have been delighted. “You know this Crema Crema Crema thing story is going to go global. You are so going to become a star.”
Amy laughed.
“Oh, major headline—I dumped Ulf. Turns out he’s been shagging some nurse at the hospital. Can you believe it? There I was, petrified of ending it with him, and all the time he’s been shagging somebody else. What a slimeball.”
Amy said the words “pot,” “kettle,” and “black” were coming to mind.
“Ah, there is that,” Bel said. “I suppose I was the first to stray.”
She paused. “Amy, you look awful. You okay? … Oh, no. Crap! Sam’s here. I’ve burst in on your weekend. Amy, forgive me, I totally forgot.”
“It’s okay. Sam’s not here. He left after I told him he might be Charlie’s dad.”
“Oh, Amy. I’m so sorry.” Bel came over to Amy and hugged her.
“He says he’s not up to becoming a parent because being abandoned by his father left him feeling needy and without anything to give a child.”
“So is it over?”
“I don’t know,” Amy said, shrugging. “He said he needed time to think.”
ON MONDAY morning, Amy phoned Sam from the café to say she had contacted her doctor’s office about the DNA test. “The practitioner nurse will do it. All you need to do is call and make an appointment.”
“Fine.” He sounded less than enthusiastic.
“So maybe,” she ventured, “we could get together sometime and talk about things some more.”
“I guess, but my head is still all over the place. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to tell you what you want to hear.”
She flipped her phone shut. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting him to say, but disappointed didn’t begin to describe her emotions. She must have been standing staring into space for a while, because eventually Brian came over to ask if she was all right.
By then he and Zelma were up to speed on the state of play between Amy and Sam.
“I’m assuming that was Sam on the phone,” Brian said.
She nodded. “He says he’s still confused and can’t tell me what I want to hear.”
“Amy, would you like me to speak to him? Our backgrounds aren’t dissimilar. If it would help, I’d be more than happy to.”
She shook her head. “Thanks for the offer, but he’s so mixed up. I’m not sure he’d be very receptive just now.”
“You want to take the rest of the day off?”
“Nah … it’s better if I’m working. Gives me something to think about … Oh, by the way, did Bel tell you she dumped Ulf? Been cheating on her with a nurse, apparently.”
Brian managed to look shocked and thoughtful at the same time. “No … no, she didn’t,” he said.
Zelma made Amy a mug of tea with two spoons of sugar. “You and Sam are going to sort this out, you know.”
“I doubt it, Zelma.”
“Oh, you will, and you know why? From what you’ve told me, this Sam of yours is a good man. I admit that he’s got some growing up to do, but if he’s got anything going for him, he won’t let a beautiful intelligent woman like you slip through his fingers. He’ll come around. You just see if he doesn’t.”
Amy gave Zelma a hug and said she wished she had her faith.
AMY HATED herself for lying to Charlie, but she could hardly tell him the truth about why the nurse needed to take a sample of his blood. Amy thanked God that he didn’t have a fear of needles. If he had, she would have felt even worse. She told him he was going to the doctor’s for a routine blood test that people often had to check that they were healthy. He didn’t question this and beyond a slight wince and sharp intake of breath made no fuss when the nurse inserted the needle into his arm. To Amy’s surprise, he even insisted on watching the blood being drawn into the syringe. Afterward, he accepted his strawberry lollypop and smiley sticker and jumped out of the chair. Amy said he had been such a good boy that he could have anything he wanted for supper. “Burger King,” he announced. Amy and the nurse exchanged amused “What do you do with them?” glances. “You’re on,” Amy said.