by Grace Sammon
Roy’s already sitting at the dining room table, back to the kitchen, when I go and join him facing the parlor, the large windows, and orchids behind me. I utter my first words. “The molding looks great. Thanks.” I’m only slightly aware that although he’s been working all day, he’s taken the time to wash up and comb his hair. I still have manure on my sneakers.
He starts to get up to get more wine, asking me if I want more water, and if I had noticed the work on the first-floor bathroom. I interrupt him as he babbles, telling him, “I’ll get it. Let me pour the wine, you got dinner.”
I pour my vodka, before his wine. I didn’t, of course, notice the bathroom. How did I get by until now with only one bathroom? I toilet trained and raised the two kids with just one bathroom on the second floor. I remember, silently, how we stayed upstairs for weeks on end playing Candyland in the hallway, rushing to the potty at the right moment, until they got it right. The transom skylight in the bathroom illuminated their efforts day and night—an odd, yet comforting feature that I want to make sure we keep intact. Somehow, we got by with the one bath through all the high school parties and after-school hanging out. Yet, Roy’s idea of a downstairs bath was a good idea, mostly because of my current sleeping arrangement.
Rejoining him at the table he wants me to consider redoing the two top bedrooms as the next project to be tackled. “Not yet,” I say as simply as I can.
“Then next up,” he says, “is finishing the front hall. I’ve taken down the Post-It Notes stuck on the back of the front door so I can scrape and refinish it the same way we did the doors to the parlor. I also assume I can move your bike-turned-coat-rack to the storage in the basement.”
There is suddenly no air in the room. I try not to reach across the table and grab his shirt collar when I ask, “Where are the notes from behind the door?”
“Easy, Jes, I put them all together and put them in your office.” I can tell he senses the controlled panic in my voice. I excuse myself and take the steps two at a time, round the landing, pass their bedrooms at the top of the stairs, pass the bath, my bedroom, and launch myself into my office at the front of the house. There is a folder neatly labeled “Notes from back of front door.” Inside is the stack of stuck together notes. I pull them apart desperate to find it. It’s in the middle, a two inch by two inch yellow Post-It-Note. Two words, in pencil, in Adam’s childhood handwriting, Out biking.
Oh, God, when will the pain stop rushing in? I clutch the note and know Roy’s standing behind me waiting for an explanation. Before I can begin, I walk past him, the bath, their bedrooms, the landing. I head down the stairs practically tripping over the bike at the foot of the stairs, on my way to the kitchen. I have the decency to pour him a glass of wine before I pour myself a drink.
I walk back down the hallway toward the front door. “This note stays here. Please.” I say, handing him the note, inhaling deeply, and leaning against the bicycle to slip off my sneakers.
Dinner ruined, he puts the note, deferentially, on the back of the door, walks down the hallway to the kitchen, quickly disassembling our meal, and tending to the trash. I pick up my glass in the dining room and move to the parlor bed. Minutes later he joins me. The silence painful, he sits across from me on the piano bench and waits. The vodkas give me the excuse to retell the story that Sonia knows all too well.
“I’m sorry,” I begin. “I know it’s a small thing. You’d have no way of knowing. It’s difficult.” I gulp. I inhale. “My story goes like this. I met James while I was in college. He was in medical school and teaching undergrad Biochemistry at Incarnation University near Sarasota. I was his student. I knew there were other students he dated, but I wanted to believe what he saw in me, and what we had, was different.
“If you could ask him, he’d say that I kept him waiting for sex. When he threatened to move on to someone else because I wouldn’t sleep with him, I gave in. I was a virgin. It sounds so stupid to say that now, as if it mattered. But, do you remember? It once mattered. Back then, even the decision to have sex ‘out of wedlock’ mattered. It mattered who you ‘gave’ your virginity to. He was considerably older than me, and experienced. I wanted to believe that he knew best.”
Roy shifts uncomfortably on the bench. By now I don’t care. Once started the story erupts out of me.
“I got pregnant and he insisted on an abortion. He’d set it up with a friend of his from medical school. He wasn’t willing to risk his Catholic school fellowship being jeopardized by the indiscretion of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. It was in an era where abortion was just becoming legal, state by state, across the country. I went, alone, to his friend’s office, but couldn’t go through with it. I can remember having my left hand on the doorknob and tracing the letters on the door with my right finger, ‘Dr. Patrick Tasco, OBGYN.’ I turned around and left. Later, I lied, telling James I’d gone through with it but had not used Tasco, using instead a reference from a friend of mine. I then quickly applied for a semester abroad and later gave birth to a son in Norway.
The dark and gloom of Oslo in mid-December matched my mood. When it came time, I left my son behind for adoption. Only Sonia knows that someplace out there I desperately hope there is a Derek or Sven looking for me.
“When I returned, James and I simply picked up where we left off. I never shared the secret that we had a child. Together James and I had a history. Three years later we were married. We were, I thought, pretty happy. There were the typical doctor-wife tensions of my husband always being too busy, working late, and having the hospital staff fawn all over him. I suppose I should have known things were going on, but I thought being invisible was what I deserved. Incarnation is a teaching university and a hospital, so he was able to continue his teaching as he practiced medicine. He developed the plastic surgery specialty at just the right time as sunbaked Florida women wanted to balance youth with the ever-desirable tan. There were many occasions where I suspected his drug-prescribing practices, as well as his own abuse, but there was nothing I could put my finger on.”
Listening to myself, I sound bitter. Roy sits in silence twirling a ring on his right hand. I take this as permission to continue.
“We waited a while, before we had children. Cathryn came first and quickly turned into the ebullient and talented ‘Ryn.’ Then just over two years later, Adam slipped into our lives, as simple a delivery as you could imagine. He was quiet and peaceful. Observant from birth. They inherited the best and the worst of both James’s and my characteristics, I suppose. They were also more talented than either of us put together. To me they were pure joy.
“Our marriage lasted 10 years on paper, a lot less if you think of how separate we were. We divorced shortly after Adam’s birth. Later, it never seemed to matter that James was nearly $100,000 short in child support or that he had so many women in his life. It was over. I am sure we each have our own versions of this tale. However, I do think we remained a team, both worked at being good and present parents to our kids.
“The divorce was hard on Ryn. She knew at a very sensate level that she missed her dad and his nighttime storytelling, and the comfort of toys left behind in Sarasota. For Adam, it was always more primal. He was just so damn little. I remember before he was born being embarrassed as I waddled through the divorce proceedings awaiting his birth, feeling utterly rejected. Afterwards, my mother moved in with us for a while. That helped so much. I never properly thanked her for getting all of us through. The years just went too fast.”
I get up. Roy follows me to the kitchen. There is just a slight lift of his eyebrows as I pour another drink. He declines my offer of more wine. Returning, I try to drag a chair from the dining room into the parlor so he’s more comfortable. Ever the gentleman, and motivated I am sure by not wanting to scrape up the floors, he takes the chair from me and carries it in.
“The kids and I, the three of us, did all the regular things families do—go on vacations, take music lessons, play sports, have frien
ds over. We had routines and traditions. Each year, on the first crisp autumn night, a night like this one, we’d take blankets and comforters onto the roof of the porch just outside my office window. When the city quieted a bit, we’d listen for the roars of the lions from the zoo. Really. Three miles from the White House, but under a mile from here, we could hear lions. You still can if it’s the right type of night and the wind is blowing from the west. We never ceased to marvel that we could hear them.
“School seemed easy for them, inheriting their father’s brains, not mine. Our house was the ‘drop over after high school spot.’ Everyone could walk here from school, and they did. Living here the kids quickly picked up on the languages our neighbors spoke, especially Spanish. It probably set the stage for the work they would choose as adults.
“I can’t say there was any huge drama in being a single parent. Even with James living so far away, they saw him quite a bit. I guess it’s never enough, though, when you are the ‘other’ or absent parent. They were always hungry for him. His wealth allowed for him to travel up here quite a bit and he’d usually stay with us. If he wasn’t here for holidays, the kids would go there. If he wasn’t dating someone at the time, I’d stay with them in our old house on Casey Key.
“Ryn, Adam, and I, the three of us, were about as solid as it gets as a family, both with and without James. We were so honest with each other. They knew, mostly, about my past and I knew more about them than most moms knew of their kids.
“When I was at work, and Adam was out riding his bicycle, he’d leave me the Post-It-Note. It’s just always been there, on the back of the door, moved to the front of the door when he was ‘out biking.’ It let me know he was out, but that he was coming home.” I say this looking toward the front door, assuring myself it’s still there.
“For my fiftieth birthday they gave me this.” I get up to get my iPod from the kitchen console, enough of an excuse to pour another drink. I don’t bother to offer him wine. Handing him the iPod. He looks at me, at it, and flips it over. Inscribed, it says simply, ‘For a Rock Star Mom. Love always, Ryn and Adam.’
“Next thing you know, they are all grown up and old enough to be running a small nonprofit their dad helped them establish. The purpose was to help inner-city youth get a solid education and into college and careers.”
Resettling on the couch, I simply continue with my story, “We were divorced twenty-three years when rumors of the federal lawsuits began to surface. James called me asking for my silence and support. I knew so little of his work at that point I was surprised at the call. He wanted to see if he could get all the legal matters handled without going to court. I had no desire to see him suffer, then, so I was passive for a long time. I grew more concerned when the investigators called. Through just one of their seemingly offhanded questions I put all the pieces together. James had been dispensing controlled substances, defrauding health-care benefit programs, and was involved in wire fraud. The investigators wanted to specifically prosecute on five cases in which deaths had resulted. James faced life in prison. The enormity of that stunned us all. But it was the wire fraud charge that tipped me off to a greater danger. Ryn and Adam could be implicated and harmed.”
For the first time, Roy interrupts me. “Jes, I get it, it’s complicated. I don’t want to be rude and interrupt, but you don’t have to go here.”
Ignoring him, I feel my anger rising. “Don’t you see? I realized that James had been channeling money through the kids’ nonprofit, putting them at the risk of being charged on multiple counts. I wasn’t sure how this part of the prosecution would proceed, but my own lawyer made it very clear that Ryn and Adam could take the hit for much of this. At every visceral level possible I was set to protect them. Protect them from prosecution and protect them from the knowledge that their father had thrown them under the proverbial bus. He was more than willing, in my opinion, to pass on his own guilt to them.
“I really believe the kids were oblivious to all of it, as kids should be, about some parts of their parents’ lives. I wanted more than anything to figure out a way that I could both unravel the kids from James’s situation and to keep them from knowing that the whole basis for their nonprofit was a fraud. I was working on this when James told them that I was going to be deposed in the case. The kids called to ask me not to testify, as if that could happen once, I was subpoenaed. They called me from Adam’s house in Ohio and asked what I knew, and if I could tell half-truths if it was bad. I told them I couldn’t. They said they loved their dad and didn’t want to lose him.
“I said that I thought it was going to be a really hard trial and that they should hold off on coming to the depositions. I told them that I was going to tell what I knew, the illegal abortions dating back to the mid-‘70s and the drugs, and the other practices. I didn’t want them involved. Ryn railed at me first. She wanted to know how I could hurt her dad, a man she so admired. She wanted to know if I was doing this to get revenge on her dad for making me abort my baby. “Maybe your dead baby is more important than your live daughter,” she wailed.
With that, I began to feel the flood of bile in my throat and my fists clench.
“Adam took no time going for the jugular either. He wanted to know if this was all revenge for the divorce. Both of them asked me to stay out of it. They were coming to counter my testimony. They would prove that their dad was innocent.
“They decided to drive through the night in order to make the depositions. They called me as they came through the Allegheny Mountains to ask me again not to testify. I could hear the rain pounding the windshield. I said, without elaborating, that I had no choice but to testify. I wanted them to just concentrate on their driving. I hung up with an, ‘I love you and be safe.’
“They must have called James right after that. Ryn assured him that they were driving fast, even with the huge storms all night. They assured him that they loved him, that they would be there on time to watch their mother be deposed. A gigantic thunderclap interrupted their call.
“James loves to remind me of this conversation and that he was on the phone with them when Ryn ran off the road hitting the tree. As if his own pain could add to my own. Adam died instantly. Ryn took a little longer.
“I didn’t testify, but James was still convicted on all counts. He was sentenced to twenty-five years to life imprisonment. It didn’t matter. I had my own sentence to deal with, life without my children.”
Finished, I look up at Roy.
“Out biking, almost four years, he’s not coming back.”
Silence. The air is heavy.
Roy’s face is pained. He’s still holding the iPod, staring at it and then at me. He moves to the bed-turned couch and puts his hand over one of my shaking, balled-up fists. I think he is going to lean in to hold me.
“Stop. You need to go. Please.” I said. Again, “You need to go.”
“I am going to go, Jes. I’m not sure what you were thinking. I just wanted to say I am sorry and thank you.”
I’m relieved to hear the door shut as he leaves, more secure in knowing that Adam’s note is on it. I don’t even check if Roy locked the door as I pass it and move the bicycle away from blocking the hall closet. On the bottom of the closet is a wooden chest I’ve taken from my parents’ house. Even to me it looks like a coffin. On top there is a thick sealed envelope. Inside, I gently take out the baby clothes and the few pieces of their artwork. I flip through the crewel work muslin squares that Ryn and I started as part of a quilt project in Girl Scouts. We had promised to make the quilt together, but we ran out of time.
Tomorrow really isn’t promised, I think as I feel the panic rising in me.
I’m digging now. I know what’s at the bottom of the box, just on top of their birth certificates. Two separate small pieces of paper with their tiny, paint-dipped three-year-old handprints. Adam’s is red, Ryn’s blue. Their names are written under their hands, protected forever by clear contact paper. On the back of eac
h print their pre-school teacher has cataloged how many times they were line leaders, or did the weather, or helped with snack and such. There is a notation for “upstairs” and “downstairs” with counting hash marks next to them. I have no memory of what this can mean, and I can no longer ask. I trace their handprints over and over. I lay my hands over theirs, and then hold them to my heart.
Sonia needs to be less observant, no, I didn’t trace the handprints earlier today. Maybe she just needs to let me alone. We’re supposed to be friends. I’m not one of her projects! I carry my children’s hands with me, returning to the parlor and lifting the iPod from where Roy left it. In the kitchen I pour vodka, tuck their handprints under the iPod console, slip the iPod into the console and hit play. I have the presence of mind to check that the door is locked as music fills the house. Roy has taken care that I am safe, locking the door behind him. I reach to pick up the obese Gabler. At least for a while tonight she will be happy to exchange the warmth of the radiator for that of my body. I don’t even bother to pull back the drop cloth as I slump to the bed, trying to stifle the wail rising in my throat.
yesterday: forty acres and a mule
W
hen I wake, the bitter taste of last night’s drinking coats my mouth. Knowing that I don’t remember all that was said the night before I make my usual mental note that I should probably drink less. Gabler is calling me to the kitchen for her breakfast. Noisy cat. While I wait for the coffee to brew, I see the handprints, unremembered from last night. Damn.