A Kiss For You

by Rachel Van Dyken

  I reminded myself that foster kids moved around from place to place all the time. The possibility was high that she wouldn’t even still be there.

  I had to try anyway.

  I waited across the street in a vacant lot, for what seemed like hours, in the blistering heat. When the front door opened, out came a short haired woman holding the hands of two little kids about the same age.

  Between the picture on King’s dresser and the small glimpse of her I’d gotten the only night I’d ever seen her, I recognized her right away.

  Max.

  The woman maneuvered the children into a waiting mini-van. I followed them to a building where other men and women were shuffling their kids in through the door. A wooden sign, barely legible, having been faded by the brutal Florida sun, announced that the place was called Maria’s Learning Academy and Day Care Center. The woman who brought Max inside, emerged childfree. I waited until she drove off to make my move.

  I tried my best to unwrinkle my knee-length pleated skirt with the palms of my hands, but there was only so much I could do after hours of straddling the moped. I ran my fingers through my hair and took a deep breath.

  Bells chimed when I walked through the door. Sounds of laughing and crying children sailed through the air. It smelled like disinfectant and sugar. “Can I help you?” asked a bright-eyed pudgy woman sitting behind a partition.

  I plastered on the biggest and brightest smile I could muster.

  You can do this.

  “You sure can, ma’am. I’ll be taking classes at the university in the fall and I’m looking for a great day-care for my son. I was hoping to tour your facility,” I said sweetly.

  The woman examined my face like she was waiting for me to tell her the punchline to a joke. “You’re just a baby yourself,” she quipped. “You ain’t old enough to have babies of your own.” Her eyes were soft and kind.

  “Don’t I know it,” I agreed. “So how about you show me around a bit?” I pressed.

  She shook her head and shuffled around some papers on her desk. “Oh, I’m sorry darlin’. Maria, the director, isn’t here and she’s the only one authorized to give tours. It’s a safety thing and we’re all about the safety here.” Another worker wearing the same turquoise shirt as the receptionist entered the waiting area. She gave a little wave and the woman pushed a button on the wall next to her. A buzzing sound came from above the door that connected the tiny waiting area with the rest of the building. The woman opened the door and passed through and when it closed again, it made a loud clicking sound. “See?” She pointed toward the door. “Safety first.”

  “Oh.” My face fell and my shoulders slumped.

  She explained further, “She is usually here around this time, so you can come back tomorrow if you want. But if she doesn’t attend the public funding meetings, then we don’t get the foster kids, and if we don’t get the foster kids, then we have to rely on the families who can afford day-care.” She sighed. “Which means I’d be out of a job, ’cause there ain’t many of those these days.”

  My confidence suddenly renewed, I leaned into her window and smiled sweetly. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Name’s Audrey, Miss,” she answered with her own sweet smile.

  “Well, Audrey, if funding is your problem, I happen to know a senator who might be able to help you out…”

  Five minutes later, I was following around Audrey as she gave me a personal tour of the day-care center. I wasn’t lying about the funding. I would talk to the senator and see if I could help them.

  I just didn’t know if it would work.

  Audrey brought me out into the main room filled with cafeteria-style tables that were low to the ground, with equally tiny chairs surrounding them. “We feed them both breakfast and lunch plus two snacks. The rooms are arranged by age. Babies in one. One-year-olds in another, and so-on…” Audrey kept talking, but when I spotted Max only feet from where I stood, I faked interest in the bulletin board hanging above the table she was sitting at.

  “That’s our activities board,” Audrey said, coming up to stand beside me. “That’s the schedule of music time, numbers time…” Her voice faded into the background when another one chimed in.

  “You’re really pwetty,” sang a small sweet voice. I looked down into familiar bright green eyes that literally took my breath away. They were the same color as his, but where King’s eyes held the harsh and bitter reality of the life he’d lived, hers were void of any contempt and alive with innocence.

  I knelt down next to her. “Thank you. You are too,” I said. She giggled, her little tiny square teeth reminded me of Sammy. She chewed on her fingertips.

  “I like dis,” Max said, reaching out to touch a bracelet I’d put on that morning, in an effort to look more like the Ray Price in the framed pictures in my room.

  I pointed to the tiny purple plastic bracelet on her little wrist. “I like yours even better.”

  Audrey cleared her throat. “I’d like to show you to the playground. It’s modernized and we firmly believe in at least thirty minutes of physical activity a day, as long as it’s not hotter than the surface of the sun outside.”

  “I have to go,” I told Max, who hung her head in disappointment. “But I’m sure I’ll see you again,” I whispered. She lifted her head and her father’s eyes met mine. It hurt my heart, but I had to rip my gaze from hers so that I wouldn’t lose it right there in front of Audrey and the thirty or so toddlers in the room.

  I stood to leave, but a tiny hand wrapped around one of my fingers and tugged. “Here,” Max whispered. She took off the purple plastic bracelet and put it around my wrist.

  My heart exploded in a flurry of warmth.

  Love at first sight was not something exclusively reserved for lovers, because that day, I’d truly experienced it. In the span of three minutes, I’d lost my heart all over again.

  I didn’t want to leave her. I wanted to pick her up and run as fast as I could, out of the buzzing door, and straight to the house on stilts. Her and Sammy both.

  First things first, I told myself.

  I unclasped the silver and gold roped bracelet from around my wrist. I knelt down again, and with my back to Audrey, I carefully looped the delicate chain around Max’s little wrist, twice.

  I didn’t stay to see her reaction to my gift; afraid that if I spent one more second with her, I wouldn’t be able to walk out the door.

  I stood and turned back around to Audrey, hoping she wouldn’t notice the sudden pain in my voice or the tears in my eyes. “Now show me this wonderful playground,” I said with a sniffle.

  Audrey continued her tour, and as I followed her, I felt the gaze of a pair of beautiful green eyes on my back, as I walked out the door and into the blinding light of day.

  Doe

  When I told my father that King was dead, his only concern was how the hell he’d gotten out of prison in the first place. I didn’t have the time or energy to explain what had really happened, because what I really wanted was his help. “I want to adopt King’s daughter,” I told him, standing in front of his desk while he clicked away on his computer.

  The senator rolled his eyes. “You’re a teenager with no source of income. The court isn’t exactly going to look upon you favorably for an adoption,” he’d told me, clicking away at the keyboard on his computer.

  “You said you know the judge. You can put a word in,” I stated.

  “Yes, that I can do. But that’s just a recommendation, Ramie. Even with a favor from the judge you’re still going to have to follow proper procedure. Being a single woman is not looked upon as being a favorable applicant.”

  “Then I’ll fix that.”

  “It will increase my chances of being able to adopt her,” I finished. I was sitting on Tanner’s couch in the pool house while Sammy watched TV, wrapped up in his favorite blanket on the floor. Every so often he would look back at me, and after seeing that I was still there, he’d smile and turn back to Elmo.<
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  “Okay,” Tanner agreed, way too quickly.

  I shook my head. “No, Tanner. It’s not that easy. You have to take time to think about it. Just because it wouldn’t be a traditional marriage, on paper only, doesn’t mean it wouldn’t affect your life in some ways. You have to consider all that before you make a decision. Come to think of it, there really is no upside in all this for you. You’d have to be crazy to agree to it.”

  Tanner wagged his index finger in the air. “And this is why you were never on the debate team, Ray,” Tanner said. “You’re arguing the wrong side,” he added.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “This is serious.”

  Tanner smiled. “I know. And I know it doesn’t mean much, but I really am sorry about King.” It was the first time Tanner had said his name.

  “Thanks. I want to do this for him, but for me too. Maybe it’s selfish, but I want to keep a piece of him close to me.”

  “And see, that right there is the very reason I accept your proposal,” Tanner said, “because I want to keep you close to me.”

  “But it won’t be—”

  Tanner raised a hand to stop me. “You don’t have to keep saying it, I totally get it. But I have terms.”

  “What terms?” I asked.

  Tanner crossed his ankle over his knee. “I will accept your proposal and agree to marry you on the condition that you have to try. Not at first, I know you’re still grieving, but eventually I want you to try and make what we have a real marriage. We’ll make an effort together. For us. For Sammy.” He reached out and grabbed my hand. “I promise, if you try and if after a year you still feel nothing for me, then I will back away as far as you want me to go.”

  “I…” I started to argue. But then Sammy turned around and smiled up at me. I had been willing to whore myself out to a biker in exchange for protection, why was I so unwilling to give a little part of myself for the only family I had left?

  “Okay,” I agreed. “But I need time, Tanner. I mean it. I don’t know when I’ll be ready,” I said.

  Tanner kissed the back of my hand and went back over to the kitchen where he retrieved the ring box he’d showed me the day he took me and Sammy to the alligator park. “I guess this is yours again, then.” He didn’t try and get down on one knee. He didn’t try to put it on my finger for me. He just tossed me the box.

  And it was the best thing he could have done, because just then, I had real hope that he really did understand why I was doing this. And because he understood how important getting Max was to me, I could try and understand how giving our marriage a real shot in the future was important to him.

  I opened the box and stared down at the little diamond, “I guess it is.”

  Doe

  The morning of the party I went to the courthouse with Tanner and picked up the application to start the process to become Max’s adopted mother.

  It was also the morning I became Mrs. Tanner Redmond.

  And while I was dying inside, it was the thought of being there for Sammy and Max that kept me breathing. They were the ones propelling me forward, moving my feet, one in front of the other.

  King was willing to do whatever it took to get his daughter back. He proved that when he was willing to let me go. Now it was my turn to do this for him.

  Choosing something to wear to a wedding where I’d be the reluctant bride was a daunting task. I didn’t want to pretend the marriage was something it wasn’t. I skipped over the rows of knee-length sundresses, pausing for a moment at a white one with a halter top, but it was too ‘wedding,’ and this wasn’t a wedding.

  It was just paperwork.

  Business.

  Family business.

  I finally decided to pass on the dresses altogether and instead chose a pair of dark jeans and a fitted black V-neck.

  I was doing this for King. I wasn’t ready to be a show pony led around by her halter. King would have liked my choice of outfit. And the senator may have succeeded in containing me, but I was never going to be tamed.

  I wasn’t about to wear white and pretend to be an angel, when I’d lived and fallen in love with the devil.

  There was a wild part of me that flourished when I was with King. I liked who I was with him. I knew who I was with him. That part, the part that couldn’t be controlled, belonged to King, and no matter where I was or where he was or what either of us were doing, no one could ever take that from me.

  At the courthouse I fully expected to sign some papers. Signature and stampings. That was it. But when Tanner and I had finished signing the license and the woman behind the desk handed us our IDs, she stood and slid her chair back against the linoleum floor. To my great surprise, and horror, she started to speak. “Do you Tanner Redmond take—”

  “Wait,” I said. “I thought we could just do the paperwork.”

  The woman looked down at me through her thick glasses in a manner that made me feel like I was nine years old. “Miss, the ceremony is less than a minute long, and in the state of Florida, a ceremony needs to be performed to make the marriage legal, and since you checked the box that you’d like to file the license today…shall I continue?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Tanner grabbed my hand and squeezed it. I was tired of him needing to feel like he had to reassure me. I didn’t want reassurance; I wanted to stop having to go through things that required it. I nodded and the woman started back up. She was right, the ceremony was short. Just under a minute.

  “Do you take Tanner to be your lawfully wedded husband…?” They weren’t romantic words, but nonetheless they were promises. Promises spoken out loud in front of the clerk and whatever God might be up there listening. I robotically recited my vows, lying to Tanner with each false promise I spoke. In order to push down the need to flee, and make it through without running screaming down the courthouse steps, I imagined playing with King’s daughter. Pushing her on a swing set. Building her a treehouse. Running through the sprinklers with her. Then the picture shifted, and I was exactly where I was standing, in the courthouse reciting vows, but only it wasn’t Tanner I was making promises to. It was King. And they weren’t lies at all, they were real. My heart soared and I smiled, happily imagining that I was promising to love King in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, until the end of our days.

  When the officiant said, “You may kiss the bride,” I’d gone as far as leaning in, before I came back down from my daydream, turning my head at the very last second, so that Tanner only caught the edge of my mouth. When he pulled back, despite my obvious aversion to his kiss, he was smiling as if I really was his wife.

  Then it hit me.

  I really was.

  I must have looked like I was about to have the stroke I was almost positive was about to happen, because the officiant kept asking me if I was okay. “Mrs. Redmond, are you alright?” I nodded and smiled the best I could manage. Tanner paid the forty-two dollar fee for the license and filing. I didn’t speak again. I couldn’t. Because if I’d answered her question, if I’d opened my mouth to speak at all, I was afraid the truth would have come tumbling out of my mouth. So, I kept quiet and Tanner and I walked in silence from the courthouse and remained silent during the entire drive home. I didn’t even say good-bye when he’d dropped me off at my house.

  I didn’t speak again until I was alone on my bed in a room I didn’t remember, in a life I didn’t want, in a family that was built on a foundation of lies. I rolled over and pressed my face into the pillow.

  And just like millions of other brides before me, I cried on my wedding day.

  Doe

  I’d thrown up three times that morning and was still queasy, threatening to expel whatever contents remained in my stomach, if any. I had no doubt that what I was experiencing was a full body rejection of my current circumstances.

  The party, or fundraiser, was being held at Tanner’s family’s backyard, and it was the last place I wanted to be.

  The senator was in his elem
ent, shaking hands and recalling the names and occupations of each and every guest at the party as if he were a best friend to every person in attendance. The Olympic-sized pool had been covered with plexiglas to create the illusion of walking on water.

  How appropriate, I thought as I saw my father cross over the pool.

  My mother held court by the bar with several women wearing varying shades of the same style sundress and the same chunky jewelry and French twist hairstyle. They weren’t doing half as good of a job pretending to be sober as she was. And as my father was, acting every bit the practiced and perfected politician. I was learning that my mother was every bit as equally practiced in the art of public intoxication.

  FLASH: My ninth birthday. My mother stumbling into the backyard wearing a low-cut tight blue dress and gold heels. She has a glass of wine in one hand and knocks over a table full of my birthday gifts in front of my friends from school. Nadine cuts my cake and my mother tells everyone that we shouldn’t eat cake at all because it is high in calories and will make our asses fat and men don’t like fat asses. Her wine sloshes over her glass, and the magician Nadine hired has to grab her by the elbow to save her from crashing into the pool, when her heel catches on the pavement.

  Miraculously, she manages to catch her falling wine glass. “I saved it!” she shouts, holding it up to our little group like it’s a trophy. “Totally saved it,” she says again, before walking back into the house without another word.

  I guess she wasn’t always that good.

  It was too hot for the white cardigan I was wearing, but I was playing by my father’s rules tonight which meant covering up any signs that I wasn’t the picture-perfect daughter of the picture-perfect senator. Several people came up to me to welcome me home and shake my hand. I smiled politely and asked them how their summer was and what their plans were for the fall. The senator had told me a secret of his, which was when you don’t remember the person, name or face, ask them about themselves.