“Well!” Ma says. “I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever see you again! Goodness!”
I pick up a bag, then another. They’re all from the Christmas Tree Shops, Ma’s addiction.
“Nanette! What are you doing, lurking in the car? Come carry some of this in. I got the cutest rug for your room!”
Nan looks apprehensive as she climbs out. Christ knows what the “cutest” rug might be, but I’m betting it won’t go with her new look. I’m guessing kittens in a basket. With hats.
“Look at this!” Ma says, pulling something out of a bag. “Can you stand it?”
It’s a four-foot-tall stuffed elf, in an apron that says THE HELP YOURSELF ELF, holding a bowl labeled SWEET TREATS. Piss-awful, but suddenly there’s this this wave of—I dunno, sympathy, pity, love, whatever, and I start to give Ma a hug just as I hear a shrill “Raaaaaaaa!” from the car.
“Uh-oh,” Nan repeats.
“What’s that?” Ma cranes to see around me. “What’s that sound?”
“Here, I’ll get those.” Nan grabs about seven of the bags and bounds up the steps into the house.
“Timothy?”
“Oh, yeah . . . um, it’s uh . . .”
“RAAAAAAAA!” Cal sounds both loud and alarmed.
I hurry to open the back door and reach in for him.
Geez, Dad. I had no idea where you were! Don’t do that again! It’s scary. It makes me hungry! Raaaaaaa!
Ma has her hand to her mouth. and her face, always rosy, is completely white.
“Timothy Joseph. How did this happen?”
Let’s see. Possible answers:
Well, Ma, I had sex with a stranger. But don’t worry, I don’t remember a thing about it.
God, I have no idea. I knew I should’ve taken better notes in health class.
Well, it turns out they were wrong, and kissing does make babies.
I tell the truth. “Uh, accidentally, Ma.”
She marches up to me. “Like everything else in your life, Timothy! Oh, sweet Lord, I cannot believe this! What will your father say!”
I jiggle Cal a little and he settles, slightly, then turns his head, with the expression he always wears when he does that, as though it’s taking an enormous amount of energy and concentration, and focuses his blue eyes on Ma.
She looks back at him and I notice that her eyes are that same intense blue. Her red hair is fading into gray, but it has the same wave as my own. And Cal’s.
Her voice is low. “How could you? We raised you better than this.”
You guys raised me better, Ma. This was all on me.
The Jaguar reels into the driveway, as always reserved only for Pop’s car. He’s on his phone. Ma clucks her tongue. “I just can’t imagine what he’ll say. I’m afraid you’re in for it, laddie.”
But when he gets out, Pop barely looks our way. He lowers the phone, shields it with his hand, and says, “I’ll see you in the office in a bit, Tim. I’ve made some calls about your situation with the child.”
The shock, incredulity, and devastation show on Ma’s face, plainer than the wrinkles and the makeup she hides them behind.
“I guess this is old news to everyone but me, then.” She turns and walks into the house, stumbles for a second on the first step, leaves a bunch of Christmas Tree Shops bags in her wake.
I start to go after her—to apologize, hug her, to do some freaking—God, I don’t know, whatever—thing. But the door closes behind her with a click. I stand there, look down at Cal. He gives me the calm face back, then the goofy grin, like he’s all full of confidence that I’ll figure this out.
And again, I’m looking for direction from an infant.
Bring the bags in one-handed, Cal propped in my other arm.
Inside, Ma’s nowhere to be found. No Nan either. I’m about to knock on Pop’s door when there’s the familiar rhythm of footsteps on the stairs. Ma’s face is blotchy, her eyes blue blue against pink, puffy skin, and it near about breaks me. Sure, we Masons cry easily, but I don’t get the idea there was anything easy about these tears.
“Well, then,” Ma says, all hold-it-together smile and straight back, “now you’ll be filling me in on the episodes everyone else has already seen.”
Alice’s “so we’re playing it like this?” hits me. Mason family mode—moving right along, nothing to see here, folks.
From there, the conversation rolls pretty much as you’d expect.
Me: And then, blah-blah-blah.
Ma: Oh my sainted aunt!
Me: So she blah-blah-blah.
Ma: Stars above! This cannot be good for your father’s blood pressure!
Me: Then I blah-blah-blah.
Ma: Sweet Mary and all that’s holy!
Cal, finally fed up with the swaddling and maybe the exclamations: Raaaaaaaa!
Except for this part:
“He looks just exactly like you did,” Ma says. “More like your twin than Nan ever was. Goodness!”
“Goodness had nothing to do with it, Ma.” Ha-ha. I’m unsnapping the sleeper thing, getting ready for a diaper change.
To my surprise, she smiles, sets a hand lightly on my shoulder. “Let me do that. You’re making a mess of it. Just like a man!”
On cue, the man of the house emerges from his gray cave, looks at us, says, “I got in touch with Gretchen Crawley, who runs that Crawley Center for Adoption Services in West Haven.”
Cal, freed from his blanket, kicks his feet at me, his eyes shining. I cup my hand around his face, rest my fingers in those red curls.
“Excuse me? What happened to ‘I won’t fix this for you,’ Pop?”
“This is strictly big picture. Not your strong suit.”
“Maybe not, but I thought the deal was that you were out of this particular picture. Like Ma was. Apparently.”
“Tim,” Ma interjects, “you don’t need to—”
Without looking at her, Pop holds up a staying hand.
“So what happened to this ‘changing nothing about December’?”
“What about December?” Ma asks, looking confused.
In the dark about that too, looks like.
“She’ll be happy to meet with this girl to discuss placement.”
I focus way harder than I need to on the task of diaper changing, something that’s pretty automatic at this point, and I’m acting as if it requires incredible reflexes, split-second timing. Cal snags my fingers as I peel off the tape, yanks them to his mouth, watching me intently.
“And with me, right?”
What he says: “It’s not necessary.”
What I hear: “You’re not necessary.”
Why does it piss me off so much to be shoved out of a picture I don’t even want to be in?
The meeting I flee to, right after this? It’s a topic one—and the topic is “acceptance,” which generally makes people either eloquent or pissed as hell. Vince, who lost a leg and an arm in Afghanistan, yells and throws his crutch across the room, “Accept this? Fuck no.” This other guy talks about how his wife accepted him, despite all his drinking and cheating, for years, then when he finally got sober, she got lung cancer and died before he could “give her all those good memories to replace the bad ones.”
I talk about Ma, and her unexpected acceptance of Cal, and about the Garretts and how acceptance is a given there . . . then a word or two about Pop.
Jake sits next to me at the top of the long steps to St. Jude, after the meeting. Tears a bag of root beer barrels open with his teeth, holds it out to me, saying nothing.
I take one, slide it to the side of my mouth, just sit there, legs splayed, hands hooked together between them.
“Giving up the cigarettes.” Jake says. “Again. This time, I hope to hell it’s for good. You’re a power of example, kid. And that is the last thing I ever thought I’d say to you.”
I glance at him, manage a smile, turn my eyes back to my hands.
“Thing is,” he continues, “when my partner told his par
ents he was gay, they called their pediatrician hoping there was an immunization to fix it. My folks, they called him to ask what he wanted for dinner so they’d be sure to have it ready for him.”
Jake looks at me sort of meaningfully. Then sighs, smiles. “Sometimes . . . if we’re lucky . . . we can find family in unexpected places.”
ALICE
“So this is what normal people do for fun, huh?” Tim asks, sticking his head out the passenger window of the Mustang as it jounces over the dirt road.
“Who knows?” Samantha gathers her hair in a messy bun. “It just seemed like the thing to do. It’s been all work and no play for most of us lately.”
“Ooooo,” Cal contributes. He’s in his seat between Sam and me, wide-awake at eleven o’clock at night, eyes shining, arms waving. I look at him, look at Tim. His dad.
His dad.
Roll that around my head for a little.
I’ll get there.
“This on Joel’s patrol route?” Tim asks, catching my eye in the rearview mirror.
I grin. He flashes the dimple back.
“I don’t think Stony Bay’s finest bother with the corn maze at Richardson’s Farm,” Jase says from the driver’s seat. “Let’s park here before the underbody gets destroyed.”
Actually a bit spooky. Richardson’s Farm has a huge amount of acreage right along the salt marshes off the coast of Seashell Island where the marshes run into the bay. Tonight it looks beautiful and desolate, completely abandoned except for us.
“If we don’t see the Great Pumpkin, I want my money back,” Sam says, clambering out of the backseat, throwing her arms around Jase, who’s stretching, fingers laced, looking out at the water.
Automatically, I’m pulling Cal out, holding his wiggling body tightly to my chest, reaching for a blanket. Tim’s buckling on the BabyBjörn, muttering “Don’t start” in response to Jase’s muffled laugh.
Then I’m tucking Cal into the front pack, adjusting his fiercly kicking legs, snapping him in. Tim’s pulling Cal’s fingers away from my ear, my upper lip, the front of my hoodie, all the things he’s determined to grab. We’re in sync in a surreal way that I’ve seen with my parents, anticipating each other, compensating, filling in.
Crazy.
I’m doing this. I’m with a boy who has a baby and I’m right here acting like a mom.
I stumble over a rock concealed in the high grass, whoosh of exhale loud in the still air.
Temporary. This is all temporary.
By this time next year—God, by springtime—Cal will be with another family, Tim’s deadline will have come and gone, maybe I’ll be in Manhattan.
I don’t get the rush of comfort I expect. Instead, my breath snags harder, my lungs too small. My phone chooses that second to buzz and I don’t even want to look at it.
Ally, please. I can’t give up. I won’t. Where are you? Out with that kid? Alice, we’re not
“All good?” Tim asks, his hand on my elbow, looking into my face, glancing at my phone.
I nod, shoving the phone into my pocket. All good if I don’t need to use any air to talk.
He stops on the path. “Alice.”
Sam and Jase are farther down the hard-packed dirt trail, almost to the maze, arms looped around each other’s waists.
“What is it?”
I remember this from that seventh-grade year—one thing gets to you and then the others come in like a football pile-on. The good—Tim. The bad—this with Brad. The ugly—Grace Reed. In this moment, they’re all stealing my breath.
Stay in the moment, stay in the moment, stick with what’s happening.
Deep breath.
“She’s really getting back into politics? Grace?” I ask. “They actually called you?”
“I see the romantic atmosphere is getting to you, you softie. Yeah, kiss-ass Brendan did. Not much time to assemble a team—since it’s already October and elections are less than six weeks away. Don’t worry, I’m not working for her again. Though it would certainly make Pop stand up and cheer if I did. Or at least give a faint smile.”
“He’d honestly want you to do that?” Dumb question. I saw Tim’s father in action.
“Baaa,” from Cal. We’ve entered the maze now, with its high hay-bale walls closing us in, away from the sweep of field running down to the ocean.
“Shit. Forgot the pacifier thingie.” Tim offers Cal his thumb, notes my expression, pulls his hand away. “You betcha Pop’d want that. He doesn’t know the reasons Grace pulled out of the race. Hardly anyone does. Your family. Me. Samantha, who was there when it went down. And Grace’s boytoy Clay Tucker, who has reasons of his own to keep his lip zipped. There’s only one real witness.”
And no notarized document. Grace Reed can, once again, get away with it all.
I swear under my breath.
“There’s an answer. We’ll find it. Grace has plenty of chinks in her armor.”
“We?”
“We. You get my political savvy and my sleazy, manipulative mind along with all my other many irresistible charms.”
Cal’s started bumping his head against Tim’s chest, rooting for food, whimpering a little. We make a left turn, then another. The wind is rising, the autumn chill deepening with the night. Another turn and we practically stumble over Jase and Sam, all wrapped up in each other against a prickly wall of straw.
“A roll in the hay is supposed to be a figure of speech, you two,” Tim says, bumping his shoulder deliberately into them.
“Move on,” Jase says, out of the corner of his mouth, barely taking his lips off Sam’s.
Tim reaches for my hand, tight grip. Warm. Down a long corridor, past a few moth-eaten scarecrows pinned against the side, and a bedraggled Jack Sparrow propped against a wooden stake. Two more turns and he backs me into a corner, rests his long fingers on either side of my face. “You asked for a kiss?”
“I didn’t ask!”
“You’re right. It was more like a demand. You wanted me to lose all self-control.”
I hear Samantha’s laugh, not far away.
“Not the ideal moment for that, Tim.”
“Sometimes you just have to take the one you’ve got.”
We’re kissing in a corn maze twenty feet from my younger brother, with a baby wriggling between us.
And I wanted things simple.
TIM
“I think about sex too much,” I tell Dominic, who’s walking on the beach with me, exercising Sarge, his massive German shepherd. God forbid Dominic not have a dog as macho as he is. I’ve got Cal in the pussy front pack.
“There’s a limit?” Dom picks up a piece of driftwood and tosses it with a neat flick of his wrist. Sarge catches it, shakes it ferociously, and then drops it at Dom’s feet in a killed it, next challenge? way.
“Every second. Sometimes twice a second.” I’m an asshole, because it’s not sex I’m thinking about, it’s Alice. All of Alice.
“Huh.” Dom shoves his hand into the pocket of his jacket, yanks out a tennis ball, and hurls it. “Sounds normal, Tim.”
“Freakin’ inconvenient. Not to mention scary as hell.”
“Wanting sex—or wanting it with Cal’s mom?”
“Nope. God no. Kinda general. Kinda specific. Just constant,” I continue, picking up a flattish rock and winging it into the water. My skipped stones always sink like . . . uh . . . stones. “You know how they say you don’t do anything when you’re wasted that you wouldn’t do sober?”
“Yeah, they say that. Think it’s bullshit myself.”
“Really?” I’m relieved. “Because my sister keeps telling me this is all some elaborate plot of Hester’s. I get paranoid and I think maybe Nan’s right, because when I see Hester, I can’t imagine, like, jonesing for her. Ever.”
My voice is rising, and Cal squirms, twisting his neck as if to face check and make sure I’m cool.
“This while thinking about sex every second,” Dom mutters. “Here. Can I hold him for a sec? It’s b
een . . . a while since I held a kid.”
“Sometimes twice a second. Yep.”
I unsnap the harness thing and Dom moves his hands around in this awkward way, like he’s trying to figure out where to pick up something hot so it won’t burn him. Then he finally settles them under Cal’s armpits and lifts him up, looking him in the eye. And Goddamnit, he’s got tears in his own eyes.
I reach down for a stone, even though this one’s not nearly flat enough, rub my thumb against the mica, focus on the little flakes that flicker in the sunlight, not the wetness on Dom’s cheeks.
“So damn small. You just forget,” he says finally, and wipes his face on the shoulder of his jacket. He clears his throat, once, twice, this hollow, hacking sound, looks out at the water, adjusts Cal’s collar, swipes the back of his hand over his eyes again. Finally, “Why scary?” He reaches into his apparently bottomless pocket and places a flat stone in my hand. “It’s all in the wrist.”
“I dunno. Don’t want anyone hurt.”
“You want to bag that chance, stick to celibacy.”
“Yeah, and just keep beating my dick like it owes me money.”
“That’s beautiful, man.” Dom shakes his head. “So—sex but not specific, huh? That even possible?”
“What about, uh, someone I’ve known for a while?” I ask, in this fake casual voice.
“Like . . . ?” Dom says.
“No one in particular,” I mutter.
He gives me a yeah right look, sighs heavily. “Take it easy, Tim. Work on self-control. You’re just beginning to think straight.”
Here’s the thing, though . . .
I am, I am thinking straight—about Alice. For, like, the first time, about her, about anyone. But I’m . . .
“Skip the stone, man,” Dom says. “That you can control.”
“I’m no good at that.”
“Do it anyway.”
“I feel like the frickin’ Karate Kid. Are you trying to give me some, like, lesson in letting go or something?”
“I’m Portugese—we like to keep busy. Wouldn’t do you any harm either. So I’m trying to teach you to skip stones. It’s a dying art, like whittling.”
“No way am I learning to whittle.”
“You’re always saying you need stuff to do with your hands,” he points out. “Aside from the one you’re already doing. Unlike that, it’s something you can teach your kids.”