Mating for Life (23 page)

“A lot. How about this? If things seem to be going well, I'll pretend my skates don't fit or I'm hurt and I'll go sit on the sidelines?”

“Let's just wait and see what happens. Thank you for doing this with me. You're a good friend.” And Samira stretched out on her single bed and soon fell asleep.

• • •

They skated in wide circles. Because she was beside him and because she had to watch where she was going, she couldn't
look at him and study his face. Romy did indeed pretend to hurt her ankle, then sat on a bench and played with her phone, although Samira suspected she was trying to listen to what they were saying every time she and Tim skated past. They weren't saying much, though. Samira had dozens of questions—about what her mother was like when she was young, about what New York City was like, and about those boys he had mentioned, her half brothers—if they were any good at hockey, for example. She wanted to picture them. But how could she say any of this? She was too nervous. They both were. It felt strangely like a first date. When he had arrived at the rink, he had handed her a small wrapped gift. “Because Christmas is next week,” he had said. She had wondered if she was supposed to open it. She didn't. She put it in her backpack.

Her toes started to get numb. Her skates were too small. They had belonged to her mother. “Your feet are bigger than mine,” Marta would say. “That means you're going to be taller.” But Samira had ended up about the same height and size, which meant that they had often traded clothes. Still, Samira had given most of her mother's clothes away to charity, even the ones she had coveted while her mother was still alive. She often regretted this. Once, she had seen a woman in a dark green peacoat similar to one her mother had owned and had imagined it really
was
her mother's jacket.

“How do you like Vienna?” she asked Tim, in an attempt to make conversation.

“Oh, it's gorgeous. Especially in winter. I've never seen it in winter.”

“That's right, when you were here it was . . .”

“Summer,” he said. “When I was here and I met your mother, it was summer.” That was the closest they had come to talking about any of it. They skated around the rink one more time. She noticed that the spot on the bench where Romy had been sitting was empty, and she felt a little bit grateful and a
little bit nervous. She opened her mouth, but Tim spoke first.

“I'm not going to lie to you and say that your mother was the great love of my life, Samira, but I did care for her. I have always had fond memories of her. She was a beautiful young woman, and you look just like her. She was beautiful on the inside, too. Smart. Kind. Practical. I want you to know that I have no excuse for the fact that I never sought you out. I wasn't sure what to do—it's not an excuse, and you probably know this: Marta was very strong and forthright and just . . . if I'd had any doubt that she'd be able to take care of you on her own . . .”

“She took great care of me,” Samira said firmly. “We never needed anyone else.”

“But still,” said Tim. “I'm still sorry I wasn't around. I hope that maybe one day you can forgive me.”

They skated twice more around the rink before Samira spoke again. “I'm not mad at you,” she said. “I never was.”

They both slowed until they were standing on the ice beside each other.

“I think I've had enough skating,” Samira said.

He seemed not to want their outing to be over. “How about you go and open that present I brought you?” They went back to the bench and she reached into her backpack and unearthed the small parcel. Under the paper, she found a photograph of her mother in a small silver frame that felt heavy and expensive. The photo was sepia and her mother was young, looking away from the camera at someone else, her mouth open, talking or laughing, her hand up, moving through the air, a blur. She had always used her hands when she talked. Samira ran her cold finger over the glass. Then she put the framed photo in her bag and started to cry.

Tim hesitated. Then he reached across what seemed like a very large divide but was in fact only about a foot or so of space, and her face landed on his shoulder.

At one point he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to her and she thought,
My father is the sort of man who has handkerchiefs
on his person at all times.
At another point, she said to him, “I don't cry very often,” and hoped that this provided some sort of explanation for why she had been crying into his shoulder for so long. Eventually she lifted her head and looked down at the shoulder of his jacket and saw the marks of her tears there and forced herself to stop. He looked down at the tear marks, too, and then at her.
This is your father,
she thought as she stared up at him. She realized she had hoped that if she found him, if he came, it might help to fill the hole her mother's death had left.
I'm your mama
and
your papa
, Marta had said.

But simply finding that long-lost papa didn't make the loss of Marta feel any smaller.

“I really miss her,” she said to him.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I don't think so,” she said.

“But you know that I would, right? If there was anything you needed, you know that I would do it, or at least try?”

And suddenly there it was. A very slight parting of the waves of her grief.
But you know that I would, right?

“Thank you, Tim,” she said.

12

Red-Tailed Hawk
(
Buteo jamaicensis
)

The red-tailed hawk is generally a monogamous bird, often pairing for life or at least for many years. During courtship, the male and female fly in wide circles while uttering shrill cries. The male will dive steeply, then climb again, then repeat, showing off for his potential mate. He will sometimes also grasp her talons briefly with his own, as though trying to hold her hands.

L
iane was lying on the couch in the living room of Laurence's town house, looking up at the ceiling and around at the bookshelves, the colors—taupes and navies; the style was manly, and yet also there was a slight feminine touch: he
had
once lived here with his wife and daughters and she was okay with that, not being the jealous type. At least she hoped.

The stereo was on. The music, much like his reading taste, was mostly from the sixties and seventies: Arlo Guthrie, Neil Young, Bob Dylan. He had asked her what she liked and she had said, “I like listening to the music that makes
you
happy.” She closed her eyes for a moment and then he was there, holding two glasses of wine. “What are you smiling about?” he said.

“I was smiling?”

“You were. You were lying there with your eyes closed,
smiling.”

“Then I must have been smiling about you,” she said.

He smiled. “I'm smiling about you, too,” he said.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too.”

The song changed to “Sundown” by Gordon Lightfoot and he said, as she knew he would, “I
love
this song.” She was growing to know the songs he would say he loved, growing to appreciate how important music was to him, growing to love the way he would always, always tell her
why
he liked a song. Mostly it was because of a line, a certain lyric that appealed to the writer in him. “This part, this part,” he was saying now. “‘
Sometimes I think it's a shame, when I get feeling better, when I'm feeling no pain
.'
That's
the line. It always used to make me think about how maybe you can't create something beautiful unless you're suffering.” Now he put down the wineglasses, and ran his hand along the side of her body and up to her face. “I'll probably never write anything good ever again, because I'm so happy. And I'm fine with that.”

“Have I destroyed your literary career?”

“Can you be happy being married to a librarian?”

Being married to.
They hadn't actually talked about getting married—they'd only been together for five months—but sometimes it came up, casually, in moments like these. And Liane would thrill silently but try not to analyze it too much. Really, the only thing she cared about was being with him, and she
was
with him, right that very second, and she
would
be with him, for as long as they—

They were kissing, but the slamming of the front door, hard, twice, caused them to jump apart, and Laurence spilled one of the glasses of wine. “Shit.”

Now, in all the commotion, they could hear Beatrice upstairs crying. “Shit,” he said again. And then Isabel was in the kitchen, lifting the lid of the pasta sauce, sticking her finger
in. “Ouch! That's hot.”

“Iz, you've woken your sister,” Laurence said. Liane was now sitting, then standing, not sure what to do with herself. Laurence returned to the living room with a bunch of paper towels, and Isabel followed him, approaching him and kissing him on the cheek. “Hi, Daddy,” she said. “Sorry. I just didn't want to walk in on anything, so I decided to be as loud as possible.” And she gave Liane a look. Or maybe she didn't.
Be nice, be nice.

“Hi,” Liane said, feeling awkward. Beatrice was now howling, “Moooommmmmy.” It made Liane feel awful, out of place. Events like this were the chief reason she didn't truly like to come over during weeks that Laurence had the girls—but of course she never lasted in her resolve. Neither of them could stand to be apart for more than a day or two, so a week was unthinkable.

Laurence's hands were full of sopping paper towels. “Coming, Bea!” he shouted. “Daddy's here, coming!”

“I'll finish dinner,” Liane said, wanting to feel useful.

“It's okay, it's done, we'll eat when I come back down. Just let me finish cleaning this up.”

“I'll finish, you go.”

“Really, I can do it.”

“It smells good, Daddy,” Isabel said.

Liane excused herself and went to the first-floor powder room, where she splashed cold water on her face because it had turned red.

Back in the living room, she found Isabel sitting on the couch. She'd turned off Gordon Lightfoot and was flicking aimlessly through the television channels. She was wearing a tight Decemberists T-shirt and low-slung jeans and she still had her shoes on and her feet were on the fabric.

“Hey,” Liane said.

“Hey,” Isabel replied, still staring at the television. It was an infomercial for a Shammy. “That would have cleaned up that
wine my dad spilled pretty good. Look, they're even doing a demo with wine.”

Liane nodded. “Yeah, for sure,” she said, thinking that it was strange that whenever she tried to talk to Isabel she was reduced from being a PhD graduate to sounding like a monosyllabic teenager. “So, uh, what did you get up to tonight?” Isabel's eyebrows shot up and she looked at Liane sideways.

“I
told
my dad where I was,” she said. “I was with Mykayla. We went to Starbucks. And now I'm here.”

“Yeah, great, cool,” Liane said, trying to indicate that she wasn't trying to grill her but knowing she just sounded dumb. She had the sudden urge to go home, make tea and toast, get into bed, and read magazines.

But then Laurence was at the bottom of the stairs and she looked over at him and experienced that shock of recognition that happened almost every time he entered a room.
You
.
There you are. The One.

“There,” he said. “She's back to sleep. Iz, maybe next time you come in the house, even if you're afraid you might interrupt something, you can be a little more quiet?”

And that was all it took to set her off. She rolled her eyes, tossed the remote to the floor, shouted, “Thanks a lot, blame it all on me!” and stomped up the stairs. When she reached her room, she slammed her door, and Beatrice, of course, began to cry again. For a moment Liane thought Laurence was going to cry, too, there was such despair on his face—and also anger; his jaw worked with it, she could tell he was holding it in.
But she deserves it,
she wanted to say.
You can't be the nice guy all the time. You're not doing her any favors.

Liane wasn't the mother, though. What did she know? Gillian and Laurence had been talking a lot lately about how to handle Isabel, and apparently disciplining her, for anything, wasn't an option just then.

“I can go up,” Liane offered, but they both knew Beatrice
would just cry harder, probably start crying for her mother again if she saw Liane. So instead she sat back down on the couch and watched Laurence walk away, then turned her attention to the TV, where the man was wiping up spill after spill after spill.

• • •

Their beginning was now a story they passed back and forth when people asked. “I would check her out every day from the end of the dock,” Laurence would say. “I lost my nerve several times as I drove,” Liane would say. “Once, I stopped at a rest stop and almost decided to turn back—” “I actually thought for a moment I was dreaming, that it couldn't really be her . . .” Then Liane would start blushing and they would both falter. Really, it was almost too personal. She had stepped onto the dock, walked toward him. He was in a sweater, looking out at the lake. The sun was setting fast, because it was fall. He had heard the creaking of the dock and turned when he had seen her. She was holding the beat-up literary magazine in her hands, but of course it was practically mush at that point, so she had to explain what it was. She had faltered, thinking,
This is crazy, so she had red hair, maybe it wasn't me,
but he had stopped her and said, “It was you, I wrote that because of you. I know I don't know you, but I want to.” It was the culmination of every single fantasy, every single make-believe crush she had ever had. But despite their relationship happening quickly, despite it feeling exactly right, they had agreed that they would wait before introducing Liane to the girls.

“Maybe we should even wait a year,” Liane had suggested at the start. It seemed like a good time limit back then, mostly because she was a little intimidated, and also because she wanted her relationship with Laurence to remain insular, to be able to grow the way other relationships did without the pressure of a family. She wasn't sure if this was fair. She didn't
say this to him.

But after just a few months it became clear that it didn't make sense to keep Liane and the girls in two different compartments. The first step had been to meet Gillian, Laurence's ex-wife, who had insisted that she meet anyone Laurence introduced the girls to. (There had not been anyone else.) Liane had dreaded this, but Gillian hadn't been as bad as she had thought she'd be. She seemed defensive, a bit jumpy, and very much like she didn't
want
to like Liane, but Liane could tell she didn't hate her. For Liane's part, she felt relieved. Gillian was pretty enough, almost frenetically skinny—Laurence had once mentioned that she ran obsessively—but she wasn't gorgeous, as Liane had dreaded. Not like Ilsa, for example. Not sexy, not namelessly alluring, not the kind of woman a man could never get over. Liane wouldn't have been able to handle an Ilsa. In some ways, she supposed, Gillian reminded Liane of Fiona, but she wasn't quite as together, not as solid. Plus, she'd cheated on Laurence. Fiona would never do that.

That night, after meeting Gillian, Liane lay beside Laurence on his bed and asked him questions she had been afraid to ask before, about his marriage, his relationship with Gillian, their parting. And he said things to her that she always carried with her. “Did you love her?” Liane had asked, hating herself as soon as she had said it. “Of course you did, sorry. She was your wife.”

“I loved her at first more than I did later, and I loved her later because I felt like I had to try. But I didn't
know,
Liane. I didn't know what love could be. And now I do.”

“Do you miss her?” she'd asked. “Like, when you're taking care of the girls, and you're tired, and maybe you . . . just feel alone. Do you miss her?”

“When I feel alone, it's because I miss
you
.”

“But what about before me, before us?”

He had rolled over on his side to face her. “It feels like
there was always you. You on the dock and then you not on the dock. That's all I remember about feeling loss and longing during that time. When you were gone, I missed
you
. I never missed her the way I missed you, and I didn't even know you. I only knew who I thought you might be.”

They'd made love then, and the next day, barely four months in, Liane had met Isabel and Beatrice—and unfortunately, on nights like this one, Liane found herself wishing they'd waited.

• • •

“Maybe I should just go home,” Liane ventured when he came back down.

“Do you
want
to go home?” He sounded hurt.

“Well, no, but . . . I can't help you. I mean, I can't go up there if she cries again, and Isabel clearly doesn't want me around, and—”

“Why would you say Isabel doesn't want you around?”

Liane's heart was pounding. They'd never had a fight.
Is this a fight? Or are we about to have one?
“Well, look at the way she behaves when I'm around. It's pretty clear she's not thrilled that I'm here. And sometimes I think . . . it's probably not fair to her for me to be here, kissing you on the couch, when she gets home . . .”

“You think that's because of you? She's thirteen, almost fourteen. Teenage girls are like that. And yes, the split hasn't helped but we're trying to keep things as stable as possible and work through this.” Now he sounded exasperated. “Maybe if you'd actually talk to her, instead of acting like you didn't want her around—”

Liane gasped. “I don't act like I don't want her around. I do want her around!”

Another sob from Beatrice, above them. Laurence turned and stomped up the stairs, much in the same manner his
­thirteen-year-old daughter had moments before.

Of course he knew the truth about how she was feeling. It was one of the reasons she loved him: because he knew her thoughts and feelings sometimes better than she did. Liane listened to his heavy footfalls and wondered for the first time,
Is this going to work?
Because what if her thoughts continued to go in this direction? How could a man love a woman who didn't truly accept his children? They had a connection, they loved each other deeply, this couldn't be denied. But they were his children. That was a different kind of connection. Liane could never compete, and if she started wanting to, if she started feeling envious, she knew she was probably going to have no choice but to end it, for all of their sakes.

• • •

She did go home, even though as soon as she walked through the door of her apartment, she knew she'd done the wrong thing. She had wanted to avoid a fight, but her departure had drawn a line in the sand she hadn't meant to draw. She felt panicked. What if she had ruined everything? She called him. “I'm so sorry,” she said. “I shouldn't have left. I should have stayed and talked to you.” “I'm sorry, too. It wasn't fair for me to say what I said. Parenting isn't always easy, and I shouldn't take it out on you.” He lived in Riverdale and she lived on Queen Street West, but still, she said, “I could come back,” and he said, “Part of me wants you to. But it's far and it's late and Bea is still out of sorts, and—well, Isabel and I are going to watch a movie.” He sounded like he felt guilty to admit it, and this made her feel terrible. “You shouldn't have to sound like that. It's fine. It's good. She needs that time with you. It's your last night together for a week. Maybe we need to respect that a little—respect that during the weeks you have them, they might need a little space. With you.”
And also, that I might be part of the problem.
“Please, try not to worry so much,” he
said. “Gillian is picking up the girls from school tomorrow. I'll come to you?”