Once Upon a Day (36 page)

Janice plopped down while Lucy eased herself into her chair. Janice could never hide her feelings well and Lucy knew just by looking at her that she was nervous, but also excited. Now she was thinking that Stacy had heard from Stanford. Or Peter got the court appointment. Or even Janice herself got the raise she obviously deserved.

Then Janice said, “I have some good news for you.”

“For me?” Lucy blinked.

Janice reached forward and took Lucy’s hand. “It’s really good news, Lu. The best kind. You’re not going to believe this, but Dorothea is—”

Living in Wyoming. Taking classes at an agricultural college in Georgia. Working at an art gallery in New York. Appearing on an infomercial for an exercise machine.

She’d heard all of these things and many more. Most of the people who wrote Lucy were well-meaning: they remembered the story from years ago, or they read something about her in a “Where are they now?” type piece. “Your daughter Dorothea is my daughter’s roommate at Penn State.” “Your daughter Dorothea coaches my five-year-old’s peewee soccer team.” Janice herself had told Lucy she saw a young woman who looked very much like Charles clerking at a bookstore in Santa Monica. They’d rushed over there and the woman didn’t look anything like the Charles she remembered. Of course it wasn’t her daughter. Lucy tracked down all the leads, but they were never her daughter, any more than the leads to Jimmy were really her son.

“You’re not going to believe this, but Dorothea is coming here.”

“I don’t believe it,” Lucy said, and exhaled.

“Lu, he called me.” Janice squeezed her hand. “Last night, he called me out of the blue and I almost fainted. That’s why I came here, so I could tell you in person. I figured if you heard this on the phone you would keel over.”

Lucy swallowed. “He?”

“The prick himself. Charles.”

“Charles called you?” she whispered. “Are you sure it was him?”

“Positive. He said she’ll be here in the next week or so.”

“Charles said Dorothea is coming to L.A. Those were his exact words?”

Janice nodded.

“Did he mention Jimmy?”

“No, but maybe he’ll come later.”

“But Dorothea is really coming here?”

“Yes, really and truly.”

“Will I . . .” Lucy’s voice was quivering. “Will I get to see her?”

“Charles said she’s coming to see her mother. That’s you, honey, last time I heard.”

Lucy closed her eyes and opened them, but Janice was still there. The room hadn’t changed into a winding staircase leading to doors and more doors with nothing on the other side. There was no long dark hall with a child always running just out of her reach. No sunlit park where Dorothea was hiding behind a bush only to disappear when Lucy saw her pink sneaker peeking out and rushed over to see her daughter, ready to say, “There’s my little pumpkin!”

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Janice said she really had to get going. “Oh,” Lucy whispered. She looked at her friend. “Thank you.”

“I’ll call you later.”

When Janice was gone, Lucy wrapped her arms around herself as tightly as she could and leaned the side of her face into the soft chair. Later, she realized that the emptiness in her mind was probably shock, but at that moment, the blankness felt like a reprieve, and she was afraid to move, in case her body reminded her that something was different. If she felt her arms shaking or her knees loosening or her stomach lurching, she would know that it was too late, she’d given herself over again to hope.

She finally moved when she heard a shriek in the waiting area. She made her way into the front of the center and found one boy whacking another over the head with a large blue bunny. The shriek wasn’t pain, but laughter. None of the toys were dangerous. Charles had bought them.

Terry, one of the counselors, said, “Great, you’re here. I really have to get to work on a grant proposal.”

“Sorry,” Lucy said. “I’ll take over now.”

She watched the little boys playing. About five minutes later, when they turned their interest to the tub of plastic blocks, she went over and picked up the blue bunny. It wasn’t Dorothea’s favorite
bunny, that one had been white with a green silk bow, but maybe it was something her daughter would remember. She put it next to her purse, to take home.

By Sunday morning, the waiting had become too much for Lucy, and it took everything she had to get out of bed.

“It’s only been five days,” her husband said, after reminding her that Charles said sometime in the next week. “I’ll bet Dorothea has a good reason for not coming yet.”

“Maybe,” Lucy said. She’d made it downstairs to the breakfast table, but she had no interest in the crab omelet Al was trying to tempt her with, even though Al was a good cook. They took classes together wherever they traveled. They’d learned to make torts in France, pasta in Italy, tortilla soup in Mexico. The classes weren’t fancy or expensive, and Al knew they were for tourists, but he didn’t care. “We are tourists,” he’d say.

“She could be in grad school taking finals,” Al said now, tearing into his own omelet. “She might be studying oceanography or photography or even film, planning to be an actress like her mom used to be.”

“Charles was the one who went to film school. You know that.”

“Meaning what?” Al looked at her. “Are we back to how much better he is than you?”

Lucy shrugged.

“Let’s count the ways then. Number one, he’s a criminal. Number two, he’s a moralistic jerk. Number three, he deserted his wife. Number four, he—”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“Neither do you. Dorothea will be here any day and then she’ll learn for herself what the real story is.”

“The real story is that Charles was a better parent than I was.”

“No. The real story is that he was sixteen years older and already
successful. He didn’t care anymore about working, but you were a kid trying to make something of yourself. How is that bad?”

“Al, you know I was taking pills.”

“Because he drove you to it with his insanity.”

Lucy knew Al really believed this, even though she didn’t and never would. She smiled at her husband, but a minute later, she was pensive again.

She knew how lucky she was that Dorothea wanted to see her. She’d read a bunch of stories on the Internet about fathers who’d kidnapped their children, and if the children weren’t located until they were adults, most of them didn’t want anything to do with the mothers. Al said this was because the dads had poisoned their minds, but Lucy didn’t care about the reason; it was the fact that devastated her. She hated thinking about what Charles might have told Dorothea and Jimmy about her.

“Maybe she isn’t here yet because she’s spending the weekend with her boyfriend.” Al stood up and walked toward the sink, holding his plate. “I’m sure she’s in a relationship.” He winked at Lucy. “She’s your daughter. She has to be.”

“What if she’s already married?” Lucy said. “She might even have kids. It’s possible. I was younger than she is when I had her.”

“It’s possible, but not likely.” Al smiled. “If she did though, I’d get to call you Granny.”

Lucy’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t think I can handle this.”

She got up and left the kitchen. Al found her in the playroom, curled up on the love seat, holding a rainbow-colored blanket that had been Dorothea’s.

“What if she won’t even let me see her baby?” Lucy whispered.

“If there’s a baby, which there probably isn’t, she’ll let you see it.” He sat down and put Lucy’s feet in his lap. “Once she gets a look at the spread we have, she’ll want to leave the baby with us whenever she goes on vacation.”

Lucy looked around the room. “Unless she thinks I’m crazy for keeping all this stuff.” She smiled weakly. “Like you and Janice do.”

“We never said crazy. We just thought it might help you to pack it up. But like I told you when I first agreed to move out here, whatever makes you happy, that’s all I want, babe.”

She leaned over and patted his shoulder, but a minute later, she said, “I wonder if I’ll recognize her.” Lucy wrapped the blanket around herself. “I think I’d have to recognize my own daughter, don’t you?”

“You will,” Al said.

“I hope she’s not disappointed. I’m sure she’s seen all of Charles’s movies, and she might expect me to look like I did as Joan.”

“Didn’t you tell me she was always smart?”

“They both were, Jimmy and Dorothea.”

“Then she won’t expect her mother to look nineteen.”

“True,” Lucy said, but she was already distracted by her next worry. She told Al about it, and about the next one, and about the one after that.

After almost an hour of this, Lucy said she was going back to sleep for a while. She wanted the time to pass as quickly as possible until she could see her child again. This was nothing new: she’d felt the same way for the past nineteen years. What was new was that it might finally be about to end, and Lucy would be really, fully awake.

M
Y FIRST IMPRESSION
of Janice Fowler was as someone I shouldn’t trust. Though it was Father himself who asked me to come to California and see Mrs. Fowler, I was wary of her from the moment she greeted me at the airport by remarking, with quite obvious relief, that I looked more like my mother than
him.

Father had told me nothing of what to expect from this woman. When he’d wired me the money on Wednesday, his message said only that Mrs. Fowler would be expecting my call when I arrived on the airplane he’d chartered to take me to Los Angeles. The airplane was prepaid, he said, with a hefty retainer so that I could leave St. Louis any time in the next week, the sooner the better. I’d told him when he called on Friday that I wasn’t ready yet, but I didn’t tell him that I was waiting until I’d decided whether it was fair to ask Stephen to accompany me on this trip.

It was just this morning when I wrote him a note and left his apartment, very early. I took a plain yellow cab to the hospital and spent a
few hours with Jimmy before going to the airport. I finally gave in to the impulse to cry on the plane, but now my tears were spent, and I was sitting in a crowded restaurant in a city I didn’t know, with a woman I didn’t know, who was forcing a stack of paper into my hands.

She’d asked me what I knew about my parents’ lives in California, and I’d admitted the answer was very little. “Your parents were big shots,” she said. “Here, see for yourself. I went to the library this morning and made copies of the articles they had.”

The waiter brought my orange juice and her margarita. She sipped her drink as I began looking through the papers, reluctantly, fearing what I’d find there.

The articles and photographs convinced me at once of the truth of Mrs. Fowler’s claim that Father had been known as Charles Keenan, and I myself as Dorothea Keenan. Mother’s name was not Helena, but Lucy. But only a person of no imagination whatsoever would assume that a change of name was in and of itself proof of a deceitful nature, as Mrs. Fowler suggested when she called Father “tricky.” My books were filled with people who had to use aliases to protect their very lives. Of course Father must have had a good reason to rename us O’Brien, and I planned to discover the reason, with or without Mrs. Fowler’s help.

“Where did you say you’re living now, Dorothea?”

“I didn’t say.” I was still looking at the last article. It wasn’t blurry like the others; Mrs. Fowler told me she’d clipped it out of the original magazine and kept it all these years. I was glad she had because inside were color pictures of my mother, and she was more beautiful than I’d ever dreamed. Her hair was just as I remembered, my brother’s hair, but much longer and thicker. She was very small, with a heart-shaped face, penetrating blue eyes and a mouth that, all by itself, seemed capable of compassion. She looked straight into the camera with a confidence and zest for life that made me want to break into a smile and sob at the same time. In one picture, Jimmy was standing next to her, and in her arms was a little girl. I was two years old, and this was my mother.

“What are you thinking?” Mrs. Fowler said.

The truth was that I wanted to hold these pictures in my arms and take them home with me. But I couldn’t ask for such a thing from a stranger. I told her I was very tired, which was also true.

“It’s after nine. I bet you are tired,” she said. “Maybe we better make this quick. I already told Al we’d come by the club tonight.”

“I’m sorry, who is Al?”

“I’ll explain in a minute. Before I start, I want you to take a few deep breaths. I don’t want you to pass out, honey.”

I looked at her then. She had blond hair, a broad flat face, thin lips, but there was a kindness in her eyes. She’d told me that she knew me when I was a little girl; maybe it was true. Maybe she was there when my anxiety attacks first started.

I would have been worried myself if I hadn’t taken the bottle of miracle pills from Stephen’s medicine chest before I left this morning. He’d told me that he never used them, and I knew this day would require far more boldness than I possessed.

I told her I would be fine.

“And you’re sure you’re not hungry? The fries are great here.”

“Thank you, but no.” I’d never eaten in a restaurant with anyone but Stephen and the idea of doing so now was too sad.

Mrs. Fowler said she had to use the restroom first. As she walked away, I let my gaze wander to the tablecloth. It was blue but without the greenish twinkle of Stephen’s eyes. Every time I thought of him waking up alone on the couch, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. I had his phone number written on the back of my poem, and I kept wanting to call to make sure he’d recovered from his terrible sadness last night. But if I was the cause of that sadness, then of course I could do no such thing.

If only I hadn’t told him about my feelings, which even my dating and love book had warned me against. But Stephen’s mother had given me the impression he would welcome knowing that someone cared for him. “He’s been so lonely since the accident,” Mrs. Spaulding said. I asked if this accident had caused the weakness
in his foot. She said yes, he broke it, but the reason he limped was he’d refused to have it put in a cast. “You are the first good thing that’s happened to him in two years. I know you haven’t known him very long, but if you just wait a while, you’ll see, he can be a real sweetheart. Before the accident, he was the most easygoing boy. Even if he’s hard to handle now, he’ll get better if you give him a chance.” I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, but I told her he was very nice to be with now. Then she asked if I was hoping for a future that included him, and her reaction to my answer was so enthusiastic I assumed his would be the same.