A Measure of Blood (18 page)

“Tell us your name.”

“Sharon Abo.”

A
,
B
. That's why she's first.

“Tell us something about yourself.”

“I have a little sister.”

“Okay. How old?”

“Two months.”

“So still pretty new to the family. Anybody in between?”

“No.”

“Thanks. Sharon Abo, everybody. Next. Matt Brown.”

“Can I wait?”

She considers it. “Okay.” And the class proceeds.

Anita Buhpalla says, “My father is a lawyer.”

Lee Chang says, “I play baseball in a league.”

Johan Friedman is a big kid who gave Matt a cross look when he first sat down. Johan says he spent the summer in Germany, where his father had a research project.

“Germany!” Ms. Conti says. “That sounds exciting.”

She asks Matt if he feels ready. He goes up to the front of the room. “Matthew Brown,” he says.

“And tell us something about you.”

He can't think of anything to say. The other kids get restless.

“Like where did you go last summer?”

She puts her fingers to her lips. “Can you tell us just anything?”

“I'm in a play.”

“Really? What play?”

“
A Midsummer Night's Dream
by Shakespeare.”

“Oh, that's a good one. Who's doing it?”

“It's at Pitt.”

“Terrific. I'm definitely going to come see you in it. Maybe we can all go.”

The rest of the day isn't so bad, not quite a nightmare, and then it's over. Arthur and Jan pick him up in the afternoon. Arthur says, “One down. Your first day.”

He still wants his old school. Why does everything have to be different?

The new parents smile at him with eyebrows going up, up. “I really want to know everything you did,” Jan says quietly.

Arthur nods. “Anything you can tell us. We're going out to dinner so we'll have time to talk.”

“I introduced myself. I did best in the reading.”

“What do you mean, ‘best'?”

“I knew the most words.”

“Did it feel good?”

“Yeah.” He doesn't know what else to tell them. At recess he was afraid of Johan but then later Johan was his math partner and he wasn't mean.

He eats a burrito and it's okay, spicy, something Jade would like.

Then they go to the first rehearsal.

Arthur comes into the auditorium to wait for him because he's only allowed to stay for the first part. He knows people are looking at him. The one named Beattie comes up to him, smiling broadly. “Hello, again.”

“Hi.”

“What we do here is we sit in a circle,” Beattie says, “and read the play. And learn everybody's name.”

More names. He feels panic rising. He can't remember his old life. He can't remember his mother's face.

HE SITS IN
THE LIBRARY,
reading the
Pitt News
, an old one in his backpack with his ad in it. He turns a page and freezes. Why did he not look at the whole paper before? One picture of a beautiful woman is labeled
Marina Benedict
. She's an actress in a play. But the other picture next to it is labeled
Janet Gabriel
. The caption says she's the director. He studies her face. Then he reads every single word she said to the interviewer about the Shakespeare play she is directing. The student journalist has focused on the long hours it takes to do a play. First the mind work of preparation, then weeks of blocking, then revised blocking, then work-throughs of scenes, then the polishing of scenes. At the end there are more run-throughs for getting the flow of the play. She rehearses four hours a night, six days a week.

How can she take care of his son?

When he leaves the library that night, he passes the theatre where the rehearsals take place. It's right on the way to his apartment and it's a public building. People are coming and going from it. A couple kids go in with drinks. Some come outside to smoke. An old woman comes out carrying a shopping bag.

And then the thing happens that proves fate is on his side. A man comes out with a boy. And Nadal, afraid to look closely, turns and hurries up the steps that lead to the patio above the theatre level. He sits on a bench and opens his backpack, practically putting it in front of his face as he does, even though he's up a level, not particularly in the line of vision of anyone walking below. Yes. It's his son. It's Matthew. He can see him getting into that black car.

His mouth goes dry. He licks his lips. Waits.

They drive away.

Wednesday

LATER TODAY ZIAD WILL
have to go in to the office to teach his piano students. He's hardly moved away from the table and his work since the detectives were there; he didn't even go for a run yesterday. Or buy food. The refrigerator sat almost empty, cooling a quarter bottle of milk, some soda, a few limp vegetables, and an old chunk of cheese until last night when Kate went out and filled it up again.

“What's the matter with you?” she asked as she unpacked the groceries.

He's never kept a secret from Kate before. He couldn't tell her. How could he tell her?

Outside the window of this place, Kate's condo, is a city garden, crowded with plants, the blooms going or gone. The gardeners keep after it daily, but sometimes he catches that moment when the bloom dies—like a head tilted to the side.

This morning he carries his coffee outside to the deck. The sun is not visible today. The air is moist. Even though his feet are cold from the cement deck, he doesn't want to go back inside.

He will defend in November. They will marry in December. She's pregnant, three months, but she doesn't want to deal with a wedding until the dissertation is done.

The cold of the cement deck—funny to call it a deck—seeps through to his bare feet. He steps back in, goes into the bedroom, and, forcing himself, puts on socks and shoes and gets the set of house keys he takes when he goes running. It's a gray day with clouds moving in toward his neighborhood. Pushing himself, he takes the stairs, passes his mailbox, but then goes back to it, checking. No, of course, nothing. Not yet. What did he expect? It will take time. It will come when he's not watching. Or it will be a special FedEx package. He puts everything back into the box and heads out.

As he runs, he gives in to the comforts of routine: slow speed until he gets to the fountain that marks ten minutes of running and the spray hits him in the face, on the shoulder, invigorating him. He picks up speed, circles the fountain twice and moves on to the running path. Ten minutes on the circular path and back to the fountain. He'll do two more laps on the path and then the ten minutes back home.

During the first lap he thinks about how and when to tell Kate about the form he will soon sign, about his history. He imagines her listening, speaking in that logical way she has—kindly—about the emotional upheaval it must cost him. By the second lap, she has become cold and frosty, disappointed in him. She says terrible things.

He thinks perhaps he can't tell her after all. How can he undo the miracle of her loving him? The image that will remain with him forever is the night he was playing music and she sat in the club with friends. She had such a confident manner, he assumed she must be rich and privileged. He was dead wrong. She'd come up from poverty.

He runs and runs, doing a third lap, trying to put the whole sad circumstance out of his mind. Just tire the body, he tells himself, but, starting on a fourth lap, the thoughts creep back, images of Kate, shocked at first, then unable to forgive him.

By the time he reaches the fountain, he is soaked with sweat and wrung out emotionally.

Back around the fountain, slowly this time. He lets some of the spray hit him. And then he canters home slowly, thinking how strange it is, the way people change. He needed money eight years ago. He listened to a friend. He wishes he'd washed dishes, dropped out of school.

He picks up the mail, reads the paper, eats breakfast, showers, and dons clean, decent clothes.

He sits down at his computer. He must work. He must.

But his email is up on the screen and he sees immediately that there is a message from an unfamiliar person. It's flagged red—important, urgent.

Mr. Zacour. I represent Arthur Morris and Janet Gabriel. The following is a formality. You have already terminated parental rights at the Family Fertility Clinic. However, should it turn out as we expect, you will be shown to be the biological father of Matthew Brown. The prospective adoptive parents as well as the judge in the case wish to have your signature on a TPR so that they can proceed swiftly through the adoption process. In the interest of celerity, I am taking the liberty of attaching the TPR by jpeg. Let me know that you have received it. Are you able to print and sign, then scan and send it back and follow by sending the hard copy? In the meantime, I will start the other paperwork on my end.

Jeremy R. Blackman, Attorney at Law

He rereads the message several times. That simple? Print out, sign, scan, and send back.

He clicks out of his email and into his dissertation—which includes both a symphony he has written and an exploration of the balances between harmonic and nonharmonic elements from the composer's standpoint.

The hard part for him is not the composing, it's the talking about it, the qualifications, the analysis, the saying exactly what he means and not something else. The dissertation is the last of several difficult gates: the Peabody audition—terrifying enough. The prelims, the orals, and now just this monster project to finish. And then, if God wills it: employment, marriage, happiness, time to play music, a healthy baby with Kate, a life, a future.

AT A BIT
AFTER LUNCHTIME
on Wednesday, the cheerful woman comes into the computer lab, waves at Nadal, and takes a station. He watches her, flushed to think she's interested in him. She is typing fast, looking sure of herself.

When she prints out, he figures out who she is by studying the log. Her username is ALA21. A few more keystrokes and he learns that she is Angela Anderson. He delays taking her printout to the table—girding his courage. She stands patiently, hopeful looking, waiting for her anthro homework. Finally he snatches up the papers and goes to her. “How's it going?”

“Very well. Thanks.”

“You're Angela?”

“Yes. Oh, I see. You have my name there on my paper.”

He hands over the papers with the pink ID page on top. She smiles at him. “Thanks. And you know, I've been studying up in the restaurant in Posvar—your suggestion. It's good. Just enough people moving around to keep me awake, but nothing too intrusive.”

“So I helped.”

“Oh, yes, you did.”

“When will you be up there? I could take a break, come up, and buy you a coffee.”

“Oh … well … I'm going up there now. But if you're up there, let me treat you instead. You got me through the first day. When do you have a break?”

“In about an hour. Will you still be there?”

“Yes. I expect to be. And if for some reason I leave before your break, I'll treat you another time.”

Breaks come only every two hours and are only ten minutes—and he's just had a break. He fiddles at his computer, trying to do the homework for tomorrow night's class. The reading is boring. He won't stick with it anyway. With luck, he'll be gone.

“Did something go wrong with my paper?” a man asks. “I put it through a good fifteen minutes ago.”

So, all right, he's late, he's late. He grabs up the new pages, alphabetizing by username as he walks to the shelving table. What he guesses are the angry man's pages are fourth, but he tucks them back at the end so they will be the last he gets to.

Students flock around like hungry hens at the feed.

Suddenly it's as if he has cornmeal in his hands; he's a boy in Puerto Rico, barefoot, on a small farm, his mother pushing him to feed the chickens, pick up the eggs. The hot sting in the air. Humidity and earth and shit, waste from all creatures.

When the distribution of pages is done, he tells the other worker, a young woman who is at one of the lab computers troubleshooting a problem of some sort, that he is taking a break. He grabs his backpack and leaves.

Yes, Angela is still there at the café, studying with just a bottle of water in front of her.
Angela
. He likes her name.

“Hello, there,” she says, looking up from her books. “I realize I never got your name.”

“Nate.”

“Nate? Nathaniel?”

He shrugs an assent.

“My treat. What do you want? Espresso? Latte?”

“Plain coffee, black.”

“Okay.” She gets up to get it. Very neat hair, very neat clothing. Takes care of herself.

He watches her order, pay, and carry back a latte and a plain coffee. She places both carefully on the table and slides into her chair, managing to return change to her wallet in her open handbag. “There,” she says. She sips her latte. “Lovely. I'm hooked. You're sure plain coffee was what you wanted?”

“Yes.”

“Well it's a small thank-you for that first day. When I think how nervous I was! I still am, sort of, but things change so much in a single week. It's amazing. I think I'm going to be able to do this school thing. I love it.”

He can't think of anything to say but “Good.”

“Your classes? Going well?”

“Excellent.”

“So you balance school and work … very impressive. You must be busy all the time.”

He nods slightly.

“Do you have a long commute?”

“I live in the suburbs.”

“Oh, like me. Which?”

He picks a direction. “North.”

“Ah. And you have a girlfriend, I'll bet.”

“Not at the moment. I'm available.”

“Best to take your time.”

“And,” he blurts, “I have a son. I take care of my son.”

“Oh. Just by yourself?” She sips her latte.

“Yes. It's a lot of work, but worth it. He's my pal.”

“Of course. Fathers and sons. It's enviable, that bond.”

“I can manage to go to a movie. If you'd like to go to … a movie.” Before he finishes saying it, he's aware she's stopped moving. “My mother can watch him.”

“That's very kind. I appreciate it. But I don't think it's a great idea. For your sake, for one thing.”

“My sake?”

“You need to be with people your age. I believe that. I have a son who's a freshman—at another school, he's at Dartmouth, thank God, and I don't have to run into him crossing the lawn, when I'm looking panicked about this or that—but even in a couple of years I wouldn't want him to spend time with someone older. I want him to be with people his age.”

“I'm not that young.”

“Still.”

“My son is eight.”

“I see. I'm sorry if you took something I said wrong. I'm very appreciative of you and your skills and your complex situation, the way you handle it all.”

It wasn't a marriage proposal. It was just a movie. She must think an awful lot of herself. “I ought to get back,” he says, standing.

“Please don't be angry. It's my fault. I come across as overly friendly—I know that about myself.”

“Yeah, well, you seemed interested.”

She's biting her lip; she doesn't look so attractive now. “I have an awfully full life. I'm seeing a man I like.”

That classic thing they say. The dust off. The brush-off. Whatever the hell it's called.

He doesn't look back. He just walks away.

He doesn't go back to the lab either, but finds himself outdoors, heading to one of the benches to open his textbook and his laptop and to try to get hold of his class assignment.

He's sitting with his head in his hands when his phone rings. It has to be his mother, the only person in the world who has his number. He lets it go to voice mail.

It's only a few hours until he can watch the theatre to see if his son is there again.

COLLEEN HAS SPENT
the afternoon in the Strip District, following up on a tip about a stabbing there three months ago.

Her mind is much more on the visit she made yesterday with Christie to Baltimore.

“What did you think of him?” Christie asked as soon as they left Zacour.

“He's lovely.”

“Funny word, but yeah, he is.” They started toward the hospital to find Kate McCauley, but they decided to spare Zacour, if possible, the embarrassment of having his partner questioned at her place of work. So instead they went to the restaurant where he said he'd had brunch.

It was easy. The manager found Zacour's charge slip from that day and he also remembered him.

They got into Christie's car and started back to Pittsburgh. “Talk to me. More of your impressions.”

“About Zacour?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, he's a musician. An artist. Lots of feeling. He believes in feeling. He lives by feeling. He's sweet-natured.”

“You liked him.”

“You didn't? I thought you did.”

“It's just that he threw me for a loop.”

Colleen knew why. She understood Christie. They both saw the same thing: Zacour was the right father for Matt—but it was too late to try to persuade him. The machinery was already in motion for the other folks, Jan and Arthur.

Now Colleen hurries back to Headquarters and to Christie's office. She makes her report of zero progress on the Strip District stabbing. “And what's with the Zacour situation?” she asks almost breathlessly.

“Jan and Arthur contacted their lawyer right away. I mean right away. He got out an email to the guy. They want to expedite.”

“Email?”

“In lieu of fax. A form. Termination of Parental Rights. It should be all done in matter of hours. A week before we even have the definitive DNA.”

“But we know. The boy
looks like
Zacour.”

“He sure does.”

“Boss. I know what you're thinking. You got an idea yesterday. I got the same idea. But you can't control everything.”

“I don't want to control everything.”

She smiles. “Okay then, let it go. Don't you think?”

“Sure. Of course I think that.”

CHRISTIE HAS HEARD
the criticism about playing God before. All right, all right. He has to let it go.