by Linda Bleser
I didn’t turn when Bob came back in the room, or when the mattress dipped and I felt the heat of his body against my back. I stayed perfectly still, even when his arm came around my waist and his lips pressed against the pulse right below my ear. “Goodnight, sweetheart,” he whispered.
I felt a slow shiver deep inside me. “’Night,” I murmured back, snuggling against the curve of his body. We fit perfectly together. Feeling safe and secure, I drifted effortlessly into a deep and dreamless sleep.
13
I woke to the smell of sizzling bacon. I drew the aroma deep into my lungs, stretched, and greeted the new day with a smile. I wondered if Bob usually rose before I did, or whether he’d purposely given me time alone this morning to avoid any awkwardness. I appreciated the thought but honestly didn’t feel awkward at all. In fact, I was a bit disappointed not to wake up pressed against his warm, hard body. Who knew where that might have led?
Oh, who was I kidding? I knew exactly where I wanted it to lead. Every nerve in my body tingled with anticipation. I wanted to seduce my husband. I wanted to make wild and crazy love to him, but it looked like I might have to settle for bacon instead.
I climbed out of bed and made my way to the bathroom. A glance in the mirror caught me by surprise. Who was this smiling woman with the glowing skin? I ran a brush through my hair, marveling at the shine. Is this what contentment did to a person? If so, it was better than Botox.
I changed into a pair of soft, worn-in jeans and a royal-blue tank top. The clothes fit me perfectly, which shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. What especially surprised me, however, was a small tattoo on my inner left forearm. I studied it closely. It was a delicate white swan. I rubbed my skin gently just to be sure it was permanent.
How odd. I’d never been adventurous in any way. The only things pierced were my ears, and up until now there had been no ink anywhere on my body. I made a mental note to ask Bob what significance it held.
I made my way downstairs and watched Bob from the kitchen doorway. He looked even more appealing in the morning. His hair was slightly mussed, as if he’d just run his fingers through it after climbing out of bed. The gray T-shirt he wore looked soft and well worn. I made up my mind to steal it at the first available opportunity so I could surround myself with his scent. He tossed a sizzling pan of home fries with the finesse of a master chef. There is something incredibly sexy about a man who knows his way around a kitchen.
I cleared my throat, and he turned with a smile. “Morning, gorgeous.”
Who, me?
“I wasn’t sure if you wanted French toast or chocolate chip pancakes and I didn’t want to wake you up, so I made an executive decision and went with the pancakes.”
“Perfect choice,” I said. I didn’t even know I liked chocolate chip pancakes until just this moment, but suddenly that was exactly what I wanted.
He motioned me to a small bistro-style table already set with plates, linen napkins, and a crystal decanter of chilled orange juice. In the center of the table was a bud vase holding a single pink carnation. I remembered reading in the journal that pink carnations were something special between them … between us. I sat while Bob brought breakfast to the table. I could certainly become accustomed to this.
“May I ask you a question?”
He pulled up a chair beside me. “Of course. You can ask me anything.”
I held out my arm. “When did I get this?”
“Ahhh, your animal totem?”
I frowned. “My what?”
“You always said the swan represented every aspect of your life that you wanted to work on. The ‘S’ stands for spiritual growth, the ‘W’ for work ethic, the ‘A’ for acceptance, and the ‘N’ for nutritional health. You said if you spent part of each day attending to each of those four areas of your life, you could transform from an ugly duckling to a swan.”
“Wow.”
“I never understood it myself,” he said. “To me you’ve always been a beautiful swan.”
“Awww.” I traced my fingers over the tattoo—spirit, work, acceptance, and nutrition. It felt right. “I love it!”
“Of course you do,” he said with a quirky grin. “It was your idea.”
I dug into my pancakes as if I hadn’t eaten in years. They were light and fluffy and delicious. I glanced up and saw Bob watching me. He smiled, but not before I caught the guarded expression in his eyes. Did he know I was an imposter wearing his wife’s clothes? I reached across the table for a slice of bacon, but he caught my wrist and stopped me.
“You’re a vegetarian,” he said.
“Oh? You didn’t say anything at the restaurant last night.”
“Why would I? You ordered eggplant. I didn’t think anything of it.” He snatched a slice of bacon and crunched down on it.
“But you eat meat?”
“It’s one of my many faults. Lucky for me, you love me in spite of them all.”
I seriously doubted he had any faults to speak of. Differences maybe, but isn’t that what made life interesting? I tried not to think about bacon. It was important to me to honor the body I temporarily inhabited. Unless, of course, that included yoga. In that case, it was on its own, swan or no swan.
I glanced again at the pile of bacon. If he was the only one eating it, why had he made so much? My question was answered when Cassie barreled through the door, mumbled something that almost sounded like “Morning,” then swept past the table, grabbed a slice of bacon, and stuffed the entire thing in her mouth.
“Help yourself,” I said, watching her chomp on the bacon with more than a little envy.
“I have to,” she replied. “Ever since you became a vegetarian, I’ve had to help poor Bob eat your share of breakfast meat. He can’t figure out how to cook bacon for one.”
I washed down my grumpiness with a swig of coffee. Thank goodness I still had that. I glanced at Bob, just in case, but saw no sign that I’d given up caffeine as well.
“So,” Cassie said. “Are you up for a visit with Dad this morning?”
Something in the tone of her voice sent up a red flag. “Sure,” I said hesitantly. “Why not?”
Cassie shot a glance at Bob. “Well, the last time you talked to him you two had an argument.”
“About what?”
Cassie looked down, then up again. “Just stuff,” she said. “Stuff that happened a long time ago.”
I had a feeling that some of it might be related to what happened to Cassie. I know that for a long time I resented my father’s absences. He shouldn’t have placed so much responsibility on my shoulders. Maybe if he’d been around, things would have been different. Was that it? Did I blame him for what happened to Cassie that night? Maybe it was easier than carrying all of the guilt on my own shoulders.
I shook my head. It didn’t matter. He was the only living link to my mother’s past. If I was going to find clues to the life I came from, I had to start by talking to him. “I’m ready if you are,” I told Cassie.
She snatched another piece of bacon for the road. “Let’s go now then, before he has his second round of boilermakers.” She glanced at her watch. “If we wait until noon he’ll be half in the bag.”
It was mildly reassuring to know that some things never changed. I knew from past experience that there was no reasoning with my father when he was drunk. If Cassie was right, then we shouldn’t waste another minute.
*
My father seemed to have aged twenty years since I’d last seen him. His face was drawn in downward lines, and his grizzled chin was speckled with salt-and-pepper whiskers. He seemed sad and vulnerable. I wanted to hug him, despite our differences. He wasn’t perfect. None of us is. But maybe he’d done the best he could. Maybe he drank to blot out his own regrets.
He held my gaze with a hard-eyed stare. “You look different,” he said.
Odd that he’d be the one to see through my disguise. “I changed my hair,” I said.
He frowned, then looked away. E
ither I was a convincing liar or he didn’t really care one way or the other. My relationship with my father had always been strained, even before my mother’s death. It seemed like this life was no different.
Cassie came around and gave him a peck on the cheek that looked more like obligation than affection. She dropped into a muddy-green armchair covered with dark stains. The arms were worn down to the cotton batting, and it let out an ominous creak when she settled into the cushion. I looked around for something less repulsive to sit on and settled on a metal folding chair. I followed Cassie’s gaze to the half-full shot glass and beer bottle on the side table. It was ten o’clock.
I thought back to the last time I’d tried to visit my father, to the neat little house and manicured yard littered with little-boy toys. I remembered the protective wife who’d stood guard between my father and me just a few days ago. The comparison made his present state even more depressing.
I decided to get right to the point. “Dad, I need to find out more about what happened to Mom.”
He let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “Why dredge all that up again?”
“Because it’s important to me,” I said. “All these years I’ve worried that I’d inherited whatever weakness caused her to take her own life. I keep thinking I’ll do the same thing.”
He shook his head. “No, your mother’s problems weren’t genetic.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do,” he said, avoiding my gaze. I knew he was hiding something. His shoulders were hunched in a defensive posture, his lips clamped tight together.
I’d heard all the whispers and innuendo about my mother’s state of mind, her depression, the dark strain that ran through all of her writing. But there had to be more to it. The mother I’d just left was as far away from the suicidal mother of my memory as she could be. So what had changed?
There was only one thing I could think of: Parker. Taking a deep breath, I decided to take a chance and ask the obvious question. “Did Mom have a son before I was born?”
My father’s shoulders sagged in resignation. He sank onto the couch, his eyes looking everywhere but at Cassie and me. “I kept hoping this day would never come. Guess it was only a matter of time before you found out.”
Cassie’s eyes widened. She looked at me questioningly, but I just shook my head. I felt guilty for not warning her in advance, but it was important that we both hear my father’s story at the same time.
He reached for the whiskey and swallowed it in one long gulp. “Your mother and I were engaged when I went in the service,” he said hesitantly. “I went off to war, and when I came back ten months later she was pregnant.” He rolled one shoulder and shook his head. “Obviously it wasn’t mine.”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. One fingertip traced lazy figure eights in the ring left on the table from his beer bottle. “I blame myself,” he said. “If I hadn’t made her choose …”
The import of what he was saying had barely sunk in when Cassie spoke up. “You made her choose between you and her baby?”
He nodded. “I was so full of anger. I couldn’t look at the boy without feeling betrayed. He was a painful reminder of how your mother cheated on me while I was overseas fighting a senseless war.”
Cassie’s voice was a whisper. “He was just a baby.”
“I know. And you can’t imagine how many times I wished I’d been more tolerant. But I was just a kid myself. A kid who’d grown up too fast in the front line of a foreign country. I only cared about myself, not what it would do to your mother.” He exhaled and seemed to shrink before my eyes. “The war broke my spirit, but your mother broke my heart.”
I thought about the grown-up brother I’d met in a world where my mother had made a different choice. Things were beginning to fall into place.
“For a while it looked like everything would be okay,” my father said. “She got pregnant almost immediately with you, Jenna. I thought another baby—my baby—would take away some of the pain. But it only made things worse. She became obsessed with finding out what had happened to her son, but the adoption agency wouldn’t tell her anything. She walked all over town looking for children of the same age, the same complexion and hair color. She’d stop strangers on the street and ask about their child’s birth date. She couldn’t let it go.”
Cassie stood up and started pacing, but our father seemed not to notice.
“I thought maybe if I gave her a son …” His voice trailed off.
Cassie stopped and stared, realizing what he was referring to. “Sorry to disappoint you,” she said. The bitterness in her voice broke my heart.
He glanced at her, then away again. He continued speaking, more to himself than to us, it seemed. “After Cassie was born, she had complications and couldn’t have another child. It didn’t really matter. All the children in the world couldn’t make up for the one she’d lost.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s when she started drinking to try to ease the depression. I guess I started drinking then, too. It was the only thing we had in common anymore.”
He reached for the shot glass, found it empty, and pulled his hand back. “One day she read a newspaper account of a little boy who’d been beaten and killed by his foster parents. She was convinced it was the son she’d given away. She had no proof, but the ages were the same and the boy had the same hair and eye color, even the same birthday.” He shook his head. “I tried to tell her that there were probably hundreds of kids born on that day, but it didn’t help.”
I could have told him he was right. I knew that Parker was alive. I’d seen him at the hospital just the other night. He had a different name and a different profession, but I knew it was him.
“Your mother was convinced it was her son,” he continued. “Social Services wouldn’t answer her questions, and the guilt and self-hatred ate away at her. She became more and more depressed. After that, she couldn’t even look at either one of you without feeling shame and guilt. Her poetry became darker and more desperate. And finally …”
I knew how it ended. My mother simply couldn’t live with the choice she’d made. Now I knew where the split occurred. On one side my mother chose her son, raised Parker, and lived a happy and fulfilling life. On the other side, she chose her husband over her child and paid the price with her own sanity.
“It wasn’t the first time she had tried,” he said. His eyes, rheumy with liquor, grief, or guilt, shifted from me to Cassie and back again. “Each time she failed, she learned how to do it better. The pull to die was greater than her will to live.”
For a brief moment my father’s eyes darkened with sober clarity. “Such a waste,” he murmured. “She was so talented, so brilliant. I always wondered what her life would have been like if I hadn’t forced her to choose.”
I could have told him. I could have painted a picture of a woman living a life without regrets, a life where guilt wasn’t eating her from the inside out, sharp teeth ripping her heart open a little bit at a time. But what good would that do?
Beside me, I heard a pitiful sob escape from Cassie’s mouth. She stood and faced our father, her entire body trembling. Tears shimmered in her eyes. “So you’re saying I was just an afterthought? I was conceived as a Band-Aid to fix Mom’s broken heart, huh? And I didn’t even do that right? I could never be the son she’d lost.”
Dad’s eyes widened in shock, as if she’d slapped him. “I didn’t say that, Cass.”
He hadn’t said it, but he’d implied as much. No wonder Cassie was upset. Her voice trembled with anger. “How dare you! First your selfishness takes our mother away, then you leave us to practically raise ourselves, and now we find out we have a brother you couldn’t bother telling us about? How dare you keep that a secret?”
He seemed stunned by her outburst. “I expect that from your sister,” he said with a glance in my direction. “But not from you.” He reached out for Cassie, but she turned away.
I was just as stunned by Cassie’s outburst. Apparently I didn�
�t have the market cornered on resentment. How long had this anger been simmering beneath the surface? Had I been too self-absorbed in my own misery to notice?
I couldn’t count the number of times Cassie had laughingly called me the Patron Saint of Self-Righteous Misery. Maybe she felt I was sullen enough for both of us, and she was obligated to be the cheerful, optimistic one, the yin to my yang. I wondered which was worse, me wearing my depression like a cloak or Cassie burying it deep inside until it erupted like an infected abscess.
Cassie whipped around and stormed out. With only a single look back at my father, I turned and followed Cassie out the door. He’d had a lifetime to live with his own regrets. For Cassie, it was brand new. She needed me more than he did right now. I rushed to keep up with her.
“How long have you known?” Cassie asked, climbing into her car.
“I wasn’t sure,” I said. That was mostly the truth. The sister Cassie knew had no way of knowing about Parker. And even though I’d met him just a few days ago, I hadn’t put it all together. I couldn’t have known how much his birth had impacted our mother’s life, and our lives as well.
“We have to find him,” she said.
I nodded, joining her inside the car. Neither of us spoke for a long time, each lost in our own thoughts. I could only imagine what Cassie was thinking. For myself, I worried that perhaps I’d made a mistake. Maybe I’d set in motion a series of events that had no business existing in this timeline.
“Ten little fingers,” Cassie whispered.
A chill ran down my spine at the familiar words. They were indelibly printed on my memory even though I hadn’t heard them aloud in over twenty years. I remembered my mother walking the halls late at night with all the lights off, her voice a whispered monotone as she repeated the rhyme.
Ten little fingers
Ten little toes
Hazel eyes and a button nose
Where did you come from?
Where did you go?
Ten little fingers
Ten little toes
Not a nursery rhyme, as I’d thought all those years ago, but a haunting requiem. It was the epitaph my mother had carved on the stone monument of her heart, written for the child she’d lost.