“Don’t,” she warns me. She reaches for the bowl of Doritos without taking her eyes from me, and finds it empty.
“Do you think we’d have a boy or a girl?”
“Caleb…”
I take another two steps before she dips her mop in the bucket, and whacks me in the stomach with it.
I stare down at my dripping clothes with my mouth open. She knows what’s coming next because she drops the mop and runs for the living room. I watch her grab onto furniture as she slips and slides across the wet floor. I go after her, but she’s such a cleaning addict she can practically ice skate over wet marble. Amazing. I fall flat on my ass.
I stay there, and she comes out of the kitchen carrying two glass bottles of Coke.
“Peace offering.” She extends one toward me.
I grab the bottle and her arm and pull her down on the floor next to me.
She slides around until we are sitting back to back, leaning on each other, our legs extended outward. Then we talk about nothing. And it feels so damn good.
My daughter was born on March third at 3:33 P.M. She had a shock of red hair that stuck straight up, like those toy trolls from the 90s. I ran my fingers over it, smiling like a goddamn fool. She was beautiful. Leah had convinced me we were having a boy. She’d stroked my face and looked at me like I was her god and practically purred, “Your father produced two sons, and your grandfather had three sons. The men in your family make boys.”
I secretly wanted a daughter. She openly wanted a son. There was a Freudian element to our gender preferences, which I didn’t express to my wife as she bought and decorated the nursery in greens and yellows “just to play it safe.” Though she wasn’t playing it safe when I noticed a teether in the shape of a dump truck appear in the mounds of baby things, or the tiny baseball-inspired onesie. Since I played basketball in college, the baseball selection could only have been a salute to her father, who never missed a Yankees game on TV. Her lying, playing it safe ass was cheating. So, I cheated too. I bought baby girl things and secretly hid them in my closet.
On the day she went into labor, we were planning on going for a walk on the beach. She wasn’t due for another few weeks, and I had read that most first-time pregnancies went past the due date. Leah was climbing into her side of the car when she made a noise in the back of her throat. Her hands were tan; I watched them clutch her stomach, the white fabric of her dress bunching between her clawed fingers.
“I thought they were just Braxton Hicks, but they’re getting closer together. We might want to go to the hospital and save the beach for another day,” she panted, closing her eyes.
She leaned across the center console, started the car and positioned all three air conditioning vents at her face. I’d watched her for a minute; unable to comprehend that this was actually happening. Then I ran inside and grabbed her hospital bag from the bedroom.
I was shocked when the doctor loudly announced “Girl” before tossing her onto her mother’s chest. Not shocked enough to keep the stupid grin off my face. I named her Estella from Great Expectations. That night when I went home to take a shower, I pulled a box from the top of my closet. It had shown up in the mail a month earlier, with neither a note nor a return address attached. I was baffled, until I opened it.
I sliced the tape open with scissors and pulled a lavender blanket out of the box. It was so soft; it felt like cotton between my fingertips.
“Olivia?” I said softly. But, why would she send me a baby gift? I shoved it back in the box before I could overthink things.
I stared at it with a smirk on my face. Had she known Leah desperately wanted a boy and sent a girl gift to spite her? Or had she remembered how much I wanted a daughter? You could never really get a firm grip on Olivia’s motives. Unless you asked. But, then she’d just lie.
I carried the blanket with me to the hospital. When Leah saw me with it, she rolled her eyes. She would have done more than roll her eyes if she’d known where it came from. I wrapped my daughter in Olivia’s blanket and felt euphoric. I am a father. To a little girl. Leah seemed less excited. I chalked it up to the disappointment of the missing boy child. Or maybe she had the baby blues. Or maybe she was jealous. If I’d said the thought that my wife would be jealous of a daughter hadn’t crossed my mind, I’d be lying.
I held Estella a little tighter. I’d already wondered how I would protect her from the ugly things in the world. I never thought I’d be wondering how to protect her from her own mother. But, that’s the way of things, I thought sadly. Leah’s parents were emotional black holes for most of her childhood. She’d get better. I’d help her. Love fixed people.
She was in better spirits when we drove home from the hospital. She laughed and flirted with me. But, when we got to the house and I handed her the baby for a feeding, her back stiffened like she’d been punched between the shoulder blades. My heart dropped so deeply in that moment, I had to turn away to hide my expression. This was not what I had hoped for. This was not what Olivia would have done. For all of her decorated hardness, she was kind and nurturing. With Leah, I always thought there was good in her … somewhere beyond what her parents had done to bring out the bad. Maybe I thought she was capable of more than she really was? But as it was said, if you had faith like a mustard seed, one could move mountains … or soften hardness … or love someone into healing. God. What had I done?
Later that night, I’m going for a jog. When I reach the lobby in my building, my steps die. At first I don’t recognize him. He’s not as put together as the last time I saw him. What is it about men refusing to shave when their hearts are breaking? Fuck. How is this happening? I run a hand along the back of my neck before taking the necessary steps toward him.
“Noah.”
When he turns, he looks surprised. He glances at the elevator, then back at me.
Man, the guy looks ragged. I’ve looked like that a couple times in my life. I almost feel bad for him.
“Can we talk?” he asks.
I look around the lobby and nod. “There’s a bar on the corner. Unless you want to come up to my place.”
He shakes his head. “Bar’s fine.”
“Give me ten. I’ll meet you there.”
He nods and walks out without saying another word. I go back up to my place and call Olivia.
“Noah’s in town,” I say as soon as she picks up. “Did you know?”
There is a long pause before she says, “Yeah.”
“Has he been to see you?”
I feel the tension creep into my shoulders and spread to my hands. I grip the phone a little tighter as I wait for her answer.
“Yeah,” she says again.
“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”
I hear her shifting things around, and I wonder if she’s in court today.
“Did he come to see you?” she whispers into the phone. I can hear her heels clicking as she walks.
Fuck. She is in court, and I’m dropping this on her.
“It’s fine. I’ll call you later, yeah?”
“Caleb-” she starts to say.
I cut her off. “Focus on what you’re doing right now. We’ll talk tonight.”
Her voice is breathy when she says, “Okay.”
I hang up first and head back downstairs. I walk along the crowded sidewalk, barely seeing anything. My mind has latched onto her voice — or maybe her voice has latched on to my mind. Either way I can hear it. And I know something is wrong. I’m not sure I can handle all of this at once. Estella is my priority, but I don’t think I can do this without Olivia. I need her.
Noah is sitting at a small table to the rear of the bar. It’s an upscale place and like everything in this neighborhood, you pay dearly for its services. There are only two other patrons aside from him at this hour; one is old and one is young. I walk past both of them, my eyes adjusting to the dim light. When I pull the chair back and take a seat, the bartender approaches me. I wave him away before he can reach
us. Noah is drinking what looks like a scotch, but my only interest is being in full control of my mind.
I wait for him to speak. I really don’t have anything to say to him.
“I told you to stay away from her,” he says.
I lick my lips as I watch the poor son of a bitch. He’s scared. You can see it all over him. I am too.
“That was before you left your wife alone to deal with a stalker.”
He cracks his neck before he looks up. “I’m here now.”
I want to laugh. He’s here now. Like it’s okay to just be part of a marriage part time and show up when you please.
“But, she’s not. That’s what you don’t know about Olivia. She doesn’t need anyone to take care of her. She’s tough. But, if you don’t force yourself in and do it anyway, she moves on. She’s moved on. You fucked up.”
Noah’s eyes flash. “Don’t talk to me about my wife.”
“Why not? Because I know her better? Because when you were gone on one of your damn trips and she needed help, she called me?”
We both stand up at the same time. The bartender sees the commotion and slams his fist on the counter. The bottles around him rattle with the impact.
“Hey! Sit down or get out of here,” he says. He’s a big fucking guy, so we both sit down.
We take a moment to calm down — or to think — or whatever men do when they are compelled to beat the shit out of each other. I’m about to leave when Noah finally speaks up.
“I was once in love with a girl, the same way you’re in love with Olivia,” he says.
“Hold on right there,” I cut him off. “If you were in love with a girl the same way I’m in love with Olivia, you wouldn’t be with Olivia. You’d be with this girl.”
Noah smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “She’s dead.”
I feel like an asshole.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Think about what you’re doing, Caleb. She’s not yours anymore. We made a commitment to each other, and it’s like you said — I fucked up. We need to be able to work on what we have without you showing up every five minutes getting her high on nostalgia.”
Nostalgia? If only he knew. You couldn’t sum Olivia and me up to nostalgia. The day I met her under that tree, it was as if I breathed a spore of her into my lungs. We kept coming back to each other. The distance between our bodies grew wider over the years as we tried to live separately. But that spore took root and grew. And no matter the distance or circumstance, Olivia is something that grows inside of me.
His nostalgia comment pisses me off so much; I decide to go with a low blow.
“So, you’re going to have a baby then…”
The shock that passes through his eyes is enough to tell me I’ve struck a nerve.
I rotate my phone between my fingers as I watch his face and wait for the answer.
“That’s none of your business.”
“She’s my business. Whether you like it or not. And I want to have a baby with her.”
I don’t know why he doesn’t hit me. I would have hit me. Noah is a classy guy. He rubs his hand across his stubble, which hosts mostly gray, and finishes his scotch. His face is wiped of emotion, so I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
“My sister had Cystic Fibrosis,” he says. “I used to go with her to her support groups. That’s where I met Melisa. She had it too. I fell in love with her and then had to watch her die before she had the chance to turn twenty-four. My sister died two years after her. I’ve seen two women that I love — die. I don’t want to bring a child into this world with the chance of passing them the gene. It’s not fair.”
I order a scotch.
I try to rub my headache away. This is becoming more complicated by the minute, and the last thing I want to do is feel sorry for this guy.
“What does Olivia want?” I don’t know why I’m asking him that instead of her, but all I can think about is the way her voice sounded on the phone. What is she going to tell me?
“She wants to save what we have,” he says. “We met last night to talk about things.”
I’ve felt so many forms of pain in my years with Olivia. The worst was when I walked into the hotel room and saw the condom wrapper. It was a jealous, ripping pain. I’d failed her. I’d wanted to protect her, she wanted to self-destruct, and I couldn’t stop her no matter what I did or how hard I loved her. The only thing that came close to that pain was when I showed up at her apartment and found out that she’d left me again.
What I feel now may be worse than that. She’s leaving me, and she has every right to. There is nothing I can do to morally justify her walking away from her marriage for me. Noah is right, but that doesn’t mean I am able to accept it.
The last few months we’ve gotten to know each other as adults, made love as adults, seen into each other as adults. And Olivia can deny it until her snobby face turns blue, but we work together as adults. How can she walk away from me again? We were in love. We are in love.
“I have to talk to her.”
I stand up and he doesn’t try to stop me. Had they planned this together? Noah would come tell me what her choice was? I’d have to deal? She’s obviously forgotten what I’m willing to do to have her. I drop a twenty on the bar and walk out.
One week before my baby came into this world, I received a call from Olivia’s office. Not Olivia. Just her secretary. It was a new secretary, thank God. The one she had when she first started at Bernie’s firm was a psycho. The new girl’s name was Nancy, and in her clipped, professional voice, she informed me that Ms. Kaspen had asked her to make the call. Three weeks ago — she said — a woman named Anfisa Lisov contacted Olivia, claiming to have seen an American news story on CNN in Russian. She said she was the mother to the woman in the picture with Olivia, Johanna Smith. I almost dropped the phone.
She wanted contact with the woman she suspected was her daughter. I collapsed into a chair and listened to Nancy talk. No one knew Leah was adopted. We kept it out of the press; we were careful — so careful not to let that information be released. It would have jeopardized Leah’s testimony, or at least that’s what the partners said. I think it would have jeopardized her mental health. And nothing had changed. Courtney was in an assisted living facility, a vegetable. Her mother was an alcoholic. Leah was balancing a fine line of sanity. And she was having my baby. Whoever this woman was, I couldn’t let her near my wife.
“She said she gave up her baby while working as a prostitute in Kiev when she was sixteen.”
Fuck fuck fuck.
“She is flying to America to meet Johanna,” Nancy said. “Ms. Kaspen tried to deter her, but she was insistent. She wanted me to call and warn you.”
Fuck. Why hadn’t she told me sooner?
“All right. Give me all the contact information you have for her.”
Nancy gave me the hotel and flight times and wished me good luck before hanging up.
Anfisa was flying into New York first and catching a flight a day later to Miami. No doubt she was who she said she was. Who else knew Leah’s real mother was a sixteen-year-old prostitute in Kiev? Her parents certainly wouldn’t have told anyone. When I tried sending an email to Anfisa using the address Nancy gave me, it came back saying the email had a faulty address. The phone number had been disconnected. I Googled Anfisa’s name and the search came back with a picture of a striking woman with short, red hair, cut no longer than my own. She had written and published three books in Russia. I put the titles into Google translator and they came back as: My Scarlet Life, The Blood Soaked Baby and Finding Mother Russia. She hadn’t published a book in four years. I booked a trip to New York right then and there. I would fly out to meet this woman, send her away, and be back in time for my baby’s birth. I had no idea what she wanted to gain out of this reunion, but the fact that Leah came from a wealthy family was at the forefront of my thoughts. She wanted a new story to tell. Reuniting with her daughter would either give her plenty of money
to take a writing hiatus or it would give her the story she was looking for. There was no way Leah would want to meet this woman — mother or not. I needed her to focus on being a mother, not have a mental breakdown about her own. I’d take care of it. I’d give her money if I had to. But, then Estella came early.
I’d told Leah that I had a business trip. She was upset, but I arranged for her mother to come for the days I would be away. I didn’t want to leave Estella, but what choice did I have? If I didn’t stop this woman from boarding a plane to Miami, she’d be knocking on our door in a few days.
I packed a small bag, kissed my wife and daughter goodbye and flew to New York to meet Anfisa Lisov, Leah’s birth mother. I could barely sit still on the plane ride. I’d asked Leah on our honeymoon — just a few days after she told me she was adopted — if she’d ever want to meet her birth mother. Before the last word was out of my mouth, she was already shaking her head.
“No way. Not interested.”
“Why not? Aren’t you curious?”
“She was a prostitute. My father was a disgusting pig. What is there to be curious about? To see if I look like her? I don’t want to look like a prostitute.”
Well then…
We hadn’t spoken about it again. Now here I was, doing damage control. I probably drank too much on the plane. When I got off, I booked into my hotel and caught a cab to hers. She was staying at a Hilton close to the airport. Nancy hadn’t known which room she was in. I asked the front desk to call her and tell her that her son-in-law was there to see her. Then I sat in one of the lounge chairs near a fireplace and waited. She came down ten minutes later. I knew it was her by the picture I’d seen of her on the Internet. She was older than in the picture, more worn around the eyes and mouth. Her hair was dyed, no longer naturally red, still spiky and short. I eyed her face, looking for traces of Leah. It might have been my imagination, but when she spoke, I saw my wife in her expressions. I stood up to greet her, and she stared up in my face with complete calm. My little surprise trip hadn’t rattled her at all.