“This is the kind of thing I want you to consider together,” Judge Kid said. “Am I perfectly clear on this? I’ll expect to hear from you . . . this is Wednesday. By Monday. We’ll get a conference call . . . Bridget?” He summoned his assistant. “Can I do a meeting on Monday at three?”
They waited, their breathing gusting over the line.
“At three on Monday. I wish you Godspeed.” Kid’s tone softened. “I mean that.”
The McKennas tried that night to talk together, choosing a restaurant in Merrill, a quiet Italian place where they assumed no one would recognize them, until the owner came bobbing out of the kitchen, wiping the backs of his hands on his striped apron, telling them their meal was on the house; he’d seen them on NBC. They’d eaten quickly, then sat on the porch on Cleveland Avenue, letting the mosquitoes feast on their bare arms undisturbed.
“We can’t give up,” Lorraine said. “Greg says the judge is harder on people he knows have the best case. That’s why he’s being so hard on us.”
“Maybe if we let him decide, he’ll make that call,” Gordon suggested listlessly.
“But what if he makes the other call? What if he does actually consider allowing Keefer to be placed for adoption?” Mark asked the night. The moon rose, dull and nacreous as an oyster, and dappled the treetops in the cemetery.
“We’d have some control, we’d see her,” Gordon said.
“How can you say that?” Lorraine cried, leaping up from the stone steps. “How do you know that Delia would honor anything she promised? How do you know Diane Nye wouldn’t talk them right into moving back to Florida?”
Gordon felt as if he certainly was dying. His hands and feet were chilled, cumbrous, despite the eighty-degree mug of the ten o’clock air. When he’d finally left his parents, he’d sought the salvation of the plastic bottle, along with half a joint Tim had given him on their last drive through the subdivision, then two bags of Cheetos and three bottles of Labatt. Still he’d been unable to sleep. Finally, he’d driven back to Cleveland Avenue. The grave was adorned, he knew, by Nora, with a spangled flag and the silvered cardboard representation of a firecracker. The firecracker gaped, unglued by the previous week’s rains. Gordon disengaged it gently from the flag and pressed it flat, folding it to discard at the trash basket near the gates.
How the dead celebrate, he thought.
Long after midnight, he drove out Q to his uncle Hayes’s farm. A light was on in the kitchen. He peered into the glass back-door pane. Nora was patching jeans at the broad single-planked table. He did not knock, but let himself in, and Nora did not startle or lay her large flat hand to her chest, telling him he’d given her a turn. She simply turned to him her tired, tanned face and said, “Honey, do you want coffee?”
“I don’t know, Auntie. I don’t know what I want.”
“Well, I’ll have a cup, then.”
Gordon held the seat of his uncle’s faded dungarees flat while Nora placed, then whipstitched a red patch. She was wearing a bright orange sweatshirt, and something about it reminded Gordon of . . . of church. He had thought as a child that his aunt Nora resembled the large, sad carved wooden saints that ranged along the outer aisle in Our Lady of the Lake. Especially Saint Michael. “That’s Georgia’s,” he said suddenly.
“I wear it to sleep,” Nora told him softly.
“I can’t sleep,” Gordon said.
“None of us is doing a bang-up job of that.”
“Do you think he would actually take her and give her to someone and we’d never see her again?”
“No,” Nora said, selecting another pair of jeans from her stack. “No, I think he’d catch his ass in a wringer if he did that.”
“But he might give her to the Cadys.”
“Actually, I think there’s every chance he will do that, Gordie. I’m an old fool, and I never gave up hoping that there would be a miracle, and Georgia would get up out of that bed and walk away cured . . . but I knew, even as I prayed, she was going to die. And I had to admit to myself that a part of me was going to die, too. I had to get my heart ready to let that part of me die.”
“And did you?”
“I guess I did,” Nora said, “ ‘cause I’m still here, breathing.”
“How?”
“I think about . . . I know you don’t hold with this, Gordie. But I think about the life of the world to come. And in my mind, that life is a restoration of all that you’ve lost in this life. Georgia. The baby I lost—”
“I didn’t know you lost a baby.”
“At seven months. A boy. Before Rob and Dan.”
“Was he . . . did the baby have birth defects?”
“No, perfect. Just not for this world.”
“I’m sorry, Auntie.”
“I am too, honey. I’m still sorry, thirty years and more later.”
“So what do I do?”
“When I can’t sort myself out from the blues, I think, what really matters, Eleanor Jane? What will last?” She said, “Maybe you can ask yourself. What’s the most important thing in the world to you, Gordie?”
“Keefer,” he said. “That’s easy.”
“And the next most?”
“Georgia.”
“And then?”
“My mom,” he said, “and Dad.” He hesitated. “And you.”
“Don’t have to say that.”
“I know I don’t. But that’s true. You. My family. Much, much more now than before all this.”
“Well, I say the same things. Hayes and my boys. And you and Georgia. But right up there, with them, Mark and Mike. My brothers. And Lorraine.”
“But she’s just your sister-in-law.”
“No,” said Nora, “She isn’t. Of course, that’s not what she might say.”
She bit a thread. “She and Mark and Mike. Ahead of my mother and father. Ahead of everything except God,” Nora went on. “No, that’s not quite true. Ahead of God.” She crossed herself, making a lattice in the air with her middle finger crowned by her thimble. “Because I don’t know God.”
“Okay.”
“You’re more closely related to your siblings.”
“That’s true genetically, of course. More than either to your mother or your father.”
“Gordon Cooper McKenna. You know that genetics is not what I’m referring to. I’m referring to . . . being family. Even when we fight—”
“I never think of you and Hayes having an argument.”
“We didn’t used to. Now a week doesn’t go by. But I think it’s good for us. The fights we have. It gets your blood going. People are what tie you to this life, even when you want this life to let you go.”
“That’s how I feel, like letting it go.”
“But you don’t. Otherwise, you’d be out there running that car into a tree. Like Ray did. He cut the ties.”
“The insurance company ruled it wasn’t a suicide.”
“But you know it was.”
“I didn’t ever really think about it much after it happened.”
“I think it was. I think he wanted to let Georgia be free. And he couldn’t cut the tie to her, from him. So he had to go, too.”
“What makes you think that?”
“A stupid thing.”
“Tell me.”
“That they took out the car seat. And took the old car.”
“Huh,” Gordon said.
“But you’re holding on to your life. You want to see what’s around the corner. In spite of how much this all hurts you.”
“I guess.”
“I know you do. You know you’re going to heal. That is . . . the terrible legacy of being a person. But you’re going to bear Georgia’s witness, take the past you had with her and add on to it, and add on to it, and give that to Keefer. All except for that one part, that’s gone. You can’t ever replace your sister.”
“No, I can’t.”
“You put her before Mark and Lorraine. And why’s that?” Nora asked.
“B
ecause, I never thought about it, a sister knows you better . . . you can let her see . . . things even your parents or maybe your wife . . . I couldn’t fool her. My sister.”
“So you would say, from a child’s point of view, you need a brother or a sister?”
“Not need. But yes, it’s the most important thing.”
“Well,” Nora said, “you sure you don’t want some of this coffee? It’s hazelnut.”
On Sunday night, Gordon did a full circuit with his weights. He splashed his face, but did not shower. He sat down at the phone.
Alexis answered on the first ring.
“Speak,” she said.
“This is Gordon McKenna,” he said. “I need to talk to Delia. I need to talk to your mom.”
“Mom!” Alexis shrieked.
He heard Delia say, with laughter beneath her voice, “Stop that noise right now,” and when Keefer shouted “Mom!” as well, “This means you, too, Miss Kathryn,” and then she was on the line, her “Helloooo” filled with Florida banjo.
“This is Gordon,” he said.
“Gordon.” The damper of Delia’s hand went down over the line. “Hush now! Take them, honey.” She was back. “Gordon, I don’t think we’re supposed to talk with you right now. I think Mary Ellen said we should meet tomorrow. I was going to call her tonight. The judge said we should talk in person.”
“He said we were to work it out between ourselves.”
“He meant our attorneys, I believe.”
“Well, I’m tired of attorneys, Delia. What I have to say I want to say directly to you, in plain language and not in legalese.”
“Gordie,” she breathed, and the use of his diminutive disarmed him, “I know how you—”
“You have no idea what I’m going to say, Delia. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Just as I have no idea why you’ve put my family through this, that having been said, I know that my sister treasured your friendship, and Ray loved you. And that’s good enough for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I will withdraw my petition.”
“You will? But, why?”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
“Of course it is. But, why now?”
“I guess . . . because I love her so much. I can’t stand for her to be pulled in two directions anymore. And I know you’re sick, and struggling, and for a good reason, to bring a baby into the world. For which I admire you, though I also hate your guts, in a way. But also because if there is any reason on earth why Ray and Georgia would have decided, together, in favor of you over me, it’s because their child was a girl who needed a mother, and a child who needs a sister. I’m willing to let you be that . . . mother. I know you want to be. But I have conditions.”
“Go ahead,” Delia said evenly. “But wait just a minute. I want Craig to pick up—”
“No,” Gordon interrupted her, “no, I’m talking to you, Delia. Not Craig. You’re the blood relative.”
“Okay,” she said, and he liked her for a moment, when she continued, “okay, shoot.”
“Her name is Keefer. Keefer Kathryn Nye. Not Kathryn. Not Kathryn Keefer, and definitely not Kathryn Cady.”
“But the children—”
“You already have one daughter who has a different last name from yours. Have two. You’re going to have a kid with another last name altogether, aren’t you?”
“Okay. But I think that Ray—”
“Ray would want his child to have name forever. I mean no disrespect to Craig. This is my gesture of respect for Ray. And her first name is Keefer. She’s to be called Keefer.”
“Okay.”
“We want access to Keefer two weekends each month. Either me or my parents. And if I go back to school . . . in Madison”—Gordon hoped he did not sound as though he was making this up as he went, though he was—“I’ll want her to stay over one night a week.”
“That’s being a stepfather, Gordon. Not an uncle.”
“These are my terms, Delia. I’m not negotiating now. I’m not mediating. I’m telling you. This is how it has to be. This is what my sister would want for her child. She would want her to have more than a cursory knowledge of her McKenna relatives.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, okay. I accept your . . . terms.”
“We want her for a month in the summers.”
“That’s ridiculous. She’s a baby.”
“Okay, for two weeks. And then more when she’s older. More if she chooses more.”
“And what else?”
“Before I go on to what else, I want to hear you say you agree to as much vacation time with her McKenna relatives as she wants, barring the necessary things with school, and so on.”
“And?”
“I want you to say you agree.”
“I agree. Now, and what else?”
“You’ll stay here.”
“Here.”
“Here in Wisconsin. In Madison, for at least five years, and here in Wisconsin forever.”
“I can’t promise forever.”
Gordon massaged his eyes. No one could promise forever. “Okay, five years here, and then we work together to come up with a plan for Keefer if you should move.”
“This is joint custody, Gordon. I don’t even have this kind of arrangement with Alex’s father.”
“I’m not Alex’s father. You’ve told everyone over and over that this isn’t personal, that you have nothing against me or against my parents. We aren’t getting divorced, Delia. We’re starting a life of sharing a child.”
“It might as well be a divorce.”
“Suits me. Withdraw your petition and you can never see me again.”
“Keep going, Gordon.”
“There’s only one last matter.”
“Which is?”
“I will be the one in charge of Keefer’s inheritance.”
“Gordon,” Delia’s voice spiked sharply. “That’s a no-go. That’s not possible. We need to be the ones to make the decisions about her education, her needs, whatever they are.”
“You can ask me about those things, and I will agree to any reasonable request. I will be more than generous.”
“You’re going to spend it on your parents’ legal fees.”
“I couldn’t do that, Delia. Not that they don’t need it. If my parents end up in . . . subsidized housing someday because of this, I’ll never forgive you. But no, not a nickel of it will go to my parents or to me. And I want to make sure not a nickel of it goes to you, either. To Craig buying his own dealership. To a nice place in Florida for you guys.”
“That’s an insult, Gordie,” Delia said. “That’s a damned insult.”
“Yes,” Gordon said, “it is.”
“Well, you are honest.”
“I’ve never been more honest.”
“I don’t think I should make decisions like this without consulting Mary Ellen Wentworth.”
“Okay. We will not be meeting tomorrow. See you in court.”
“Now, wait. Don’t get all twisted around the propeller. If you think that any of our interest in raising Keefer Kathryn—”
“Keefer. Her name is Keefer.”
“In raising Keefer had anything to do with that money—”
“I don’t think that, Delia. Don’t make me even entertain the thought. Just agree.”
“All right. I agree. Now, what else? Do you intend to come and live in our screen porch?”
“No, that’s all there is.”
“Gordie, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m not doing this for you, Delia.”
“But thank you. This is the right thing.”
“I pray to God it is, Delia. If it’s not, if anything should ever hurt my . . . this . . . her. . . .” Gordon mastered his voice. “Anyhow. That’s my piece. Said.”
“Gordie?” Delia asked breathlessly, her thin voice thinner, “Gordie, are you still there?”
“I’m he
re.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Bless you.”
Gordon replied, “I’m going to call my mother.”
He hung up the phone. It rang. Gordon reached over and switched off the answering machine. The phone continued to ring. He did not answer it.
CHAPTER twenty
When small things went wrong, the child Gordon would comfort himself with the thought that somewhere someone was having the best day of his life. Someone had been drafted on the first round. Someone had gotten into M.I.T. Someone had inherited a bright red Sebring from an old lady he used to mow the lawn for.
As he began a slow circuit of his apartment, setting aside those things to bring, those things to give away, those things to store with his mother, Gordon attempted this. He sketched a memory picture of Georgia hurtling into the house, throwing down her backpack, bellowing, “I’m Emily, Mom! I’m Emily! I got the lead part!” He saw himself at four, a bright red moto-cross bike under the Christmas tree. Envisioned a man his own age, or older, getting news . . . I’m pregnant . . . I’m not pregnant . . . I got the job!
Rain rapped insistently on the bay window, and the thirsty, bedraggled August foliage rattled. Gordon found six of Keefer’s seven hundred socks, one stitched with tiny blue cats all around the ankle by his aunt on her Singer. He found spoons from the period when Keefer would eat only yogurt, when he’d been so frightened that she would starve; he’d purchased a dozen rubber-coated spoons that he carefully lined up before each feeding attempt so that he could keep on shoveling, even when she threw one over his head.
He opened his drawers and his files from school and began to prune. Teacher of the Year. All District. His first year. His teacher’s test keys, his plan for his mating-dance class. He made a note to himself: Secure a biohazard bag for the disposal of the frozen products in his classroom. Plants and frogs trapped in time by cold, their wonders transformed into maps. Vials of insect egg sacs. A human placenta.
People were trapped. When things were ending, the past blossomed. Everything past seemed better. The legacy of people.
When his father phoned, Gordon thought, oddly, this might be one of the last calls he ever received in Tall Trees. Mark said that there was an old colleague in Madison who had, at one time, collected derelict farmsteads he planned to rehabilitate and sell as hobby homes after his retirement from the faculty. And sure enough, the man was juggling three of them right now, and one only eight miles south of the city, a perfectly serviceable three-room house that needed only a couple of coats of paint and a good airing after the eviction of some renters who’d turned out to be more like squatters. If Gordon wouldn’t mind ripping up some decent carpet that had been ruined by cat urine, Mark’s friend would be entirely willing to let Gordon live rent free until fall. It wouldn’t take that long for him to find a place, Gordon had ventured, touched by his father’s munificence.