Authors: Robin Antalek
“Here,” she said breathlessly when she reached them, thrusting the bag against Sam's chest. “It's the best I could do. My dad keeps some extra golf clothes here. You can just say you were caught in the rain if anyone asks. ”
Frankie laughed and grabbed at the bag, pulling out a pair of lime green plaid pants.
“Is everything, uh, did things work out okay?” Bella asked.
“If we tell you we'll have to kill you too,” Frankie joked. He held up the pants, tugged on the waistband, and raised an eyebrow as if he were considering buying them.
Bella took a step back. “What?”
Sam laughed and shoved Frankie. “Bella, we left him in his car at the train station to sleep it off. By the time he wakes up and remembers where he is, Suzie and Michael will be long gone.”
Bella smiled. “You did good, Sam.”
“How about me?” Frankie asked. He had discarded the plaid pants for blue seersucker shorts.
“Both of you,” Bella said, but she was still looking at Sam.
“So everything is okay inside?” Sam asked. “I mean, no one knows or . . .” He wanted to ask why Bella had been out in the rain screaming Ted's name earlier, but he couldn't think of how to phrase it tactfully.
“Don't worry. Everyone is drunk and dancing.”
“Sounds like my kind of party,” Frankie said as he discarded his shirt, jacket, and tie for a pale pink polo shirt.
Bella shook her head but she was smiling. “I'll let you guys change.”
“Heyâwhat's your dad going to say when he sees us in his clothes?”
Bella was already walking toward the club. She waved a hand in the air. “Don't worry about it. I already told him you guys got caught outside. He thinks you're both dimwits anyway, so . . .” Bella was laughing and Sam started laughing too.
Dimwit
was a step up from
loser who abandoned his daughter when she needed him the most.
“Save me a dance,” Frankie yelled to Bella's retreating form. Sam wished he had gotten the words out first, but then he had no right to ask. Instead he picked up the clothes Frankie had left in the bag and turned his back modestly away from the club as he undid the fly of his ruined suit pants.
W
hen Michael got caught up with a patient and had to
cancel lunch with his father at the last minute, Suzie didn't mind. She enjoyed spending one-on-one time with her father-in-law, even if it was as simple as grabbing hot dogs from a cart and walking through Central Park.
After the hot dogs had been eaten, Suzie and Hunt took a bench by the entrance to the zoo. Suzie must have been staring too hard at the ice cream vendors, because Hunt got up and returned with two ice cream sandwiches. Suzie unwrapped the paper eagerly. Pregnancy was making her ravenous. She and Michael had agreed to keep it quiet until she hit the twelve-week mark, and she had four more to go before she could tell Hunt they were going to give him a grandchild.
“So, not the healthiest lunch, huh?” Suzie smiled at Hunt. “Michael is going to kill me for allowing you to eat a hot dog and ice cream. It's not like I don't know any better.” She tugged on the lapel of her white lab coat.
Hunt shook his head. “I have to indulge every now and again; otherwise I couldn't face another bowl of quinoa and kale.”
Suzie made a face. All she had wanted to eat since she found out she was pregnant were carbs, tangy meat, and sugar. She was already thinking about the pot roast she'd started before the sun had even come up that morning, when she was bleary-eyed from lack of caffeine. She had hoped for the best as she tucked the meat into the snug bowl of the cooker along with a pile of plump baby potatoes and carrots, thanking God that she didn't have any morning sickness. Surely a slab of veined bloody meat would have brought it on.
Maybe she would pick up brownies and ice cream for dessert. She had no idea if Michael would be home for dinner, and what she truthfully cared about most was eating that delectable soft, greasy meat and crawling into bed by eight. Food and sleep seemed to be the only things she craved. She was going to have to slow down if she didn't want to gain eighty pounds by delivery.
Hunt took the napkin Suzie offered him and wiped his mouth. A few pieces of shredded napkin dust got caught in his midday stubble. Suzie put her index finger to the corner of her mouth and Hunt mirrored her, ridding himself of the flecks of white. He relaxed back against the slatted bench in his suit and tie and raised his face to the late-September sun. Suzie smiled. Hunt had taken care of his sons when his wife decided she no longer could. He never seemed to judge anything either of them did. Suzie hoped she would be that kind of parent, the kind of parent she imagined Michael would be. She thought of Sam, still drifting. And how still Hunt seemed to be willing to let Sam figure it out. Would Suzie be that generous? She couldn't be so sure.
Lying to her parents had always felt too natural, the truth rarely a consideration.
As if he were reading her mind Hunt said, “I called Sam to meet us too, but he didn't answer.” He paused. “Have you seen him?”
“Michael did, last week,” Suzie said cautiously, not wanting to say anything else. She was pretty sure Michael had lent Sam money. She and Michael had a joint account, and she had noticed a withdrawal of five hundred dollars on the day he and Sam had met for drinks. She hadn't asked Michael about it, but had hoped he would bring it up to her instead. She had never told him not to give Sam money, so she wondered why he hadn't.
Hunt nodded, his shoulders relaxed. “That's good. I'm glad they make time for each other. Sam's working hard. They both do. I always wished I had someone growing up, you know? The perils of being an only child, I suppose.”
Suzie did know. She had always felt like an only child. Josh was finally going to graduate from college after an extra semester, and Eli had graduated eighteen months before. He was living in Boston sort of near their mother's condo, bartending and selling solar panels and trying out for semipro athletic teams. But he was good to their mother, checking on her, bringing her food, and forcing her to leave the condo at least once a week for lunch or dinner. He was better to her than Suzie had ever been. After Sarah left Silver Hill, she seemed to blame Suzie more than her brothers for this drier version of her new life. So Suzie called once a week and stuck to a script they had been working on for years. When Suzie found out she was pregnant she did have a moment of panic: How would she become a mother if she had never felt mothered? But then she quickly pushed that out of her mind. She had to, that was all.
Hunt stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles. He
didn't seem in a hurry to get back to the office, but Suzie checked her watch and he noticed. “Have to go?” he asked.
“I do. I have paperwork to finish before the shift change.” Suzie didn't move. The last thing she wanted to do was paperwork. She could feel the midafternoon slump coming on hard and fast.
“Can I get you a coffee for our walk back?”
Suzie debated the offer. She wasn't technically drinking coffee, but there were professionals on both sides of the caffeine debate for pregnant women. She probably wasn't going to be able to get off this bench if she didn't have a little push. Besides, wasn't that hot dog she inhaled worse than coffee? She nodded at her father-in-law, grateful. One cup couldn't hurt.
They retraced their route out of the park at a slower pace, coffee in hand. As they approached the park exit, Hunt hesitated. He looked left, then right, but didn't make a move. A crowd of people crossing the street parted around them as they stood on the curb. Suzie touched him on the elbow. “You okay?”
“Yes, absolutely,” Hunt said. But he didn't make eye contact with her.
“Is something wrong?” Suddenly Suzie felt a catch in her throat. What if it was his heart again? What if it was something with Marguerite? Hunt looked down at the coffee in his hand as if he had never seen it before. Slowly he raised the cup to his face, but didn't touch it to his lips before he lowered it again. “Hunt?” Suzie said again. “Are you going back to the office?”
“The office?” Hunt repeated.
“Yes,” Suzie said slowly, wondering if she should assess him for a stroke or call Michael.
“Well, I suppose I have to.” Hunt turned and smiled at her. Now he seemed fully present. He shrugged. “If only to set an example.”
Suzie smiled back. Perhaps it was her hormones that were making her such an alarmist. Certainly her early-pregnancy brain had made her foggy. Hunt offered her his arm, a courtly gesture, as they stepped off the curb, and Suzie rested her hand on his forearm. It struck her then that Hunt was the closest thing she had ever had to a father, a father in the truest sense of the word, and she didn't know what she would do if she lost him.
Suzie had landed
in the field of adolescent psychiatry because she was drawn to teenagers' tender souls. At first it was disconcerting to glimpse her vulnerable teenage self peeking out from behind the scrim of bravado; but then it became like seeing an old friend, one you were once close to, had moved on from, but still remembered fondly.
It was a pregnancy scare that actually made Suzie want to have a child. She and Michael were only a month into marriage and her shoulders still bore the shadow outline of her bathing suit straps from their Italian honeymoon. It wouldn't have been a surprise to be pregnant; Suzie wasn't on the pill because she hated what it did to her body, and they had been lazy about birth control. They had so much sex during that golden ten days that sometimes she wasn't sure where one orgasm ended and the next started. So when her period, regular to a day since she was fourteen, was ten days late and she had to bite down on her lip when Michael even gently grazed her breasts with the back of his hand, she was convinced she was pregnant.
Suzie had been so freaked out that she had called her mother, which turned out to be a disastrous idea. Instead of offering any sort of comfort or congratulations, Sarah Epstein had said ominously that now Suzie would have to start behaving like a mother. Suzie had no idea how to do that, no idea what her mother even
meant. Instead Suzie bought a multipack of pregnancy tests, peed on three plastic sticks, and found them all negative. As if on cue, her period arrived the following day.
Suzie had been in an inexplicable funk for days after, and when Michael asked her why, she had blurted out that she wanted a baby. Her admission had taken them both by surprise.
They had moved to the bed, because the weight of the conversation felt manageable if they were touching. Neither of them had said they were in a hurry to have a family. Suzie knew Michael thought children were something that would happen eventually, later, in those hazy future years when they might own a car and live in the suburbs. They spooned beneath the blankets and talked about the impossible, demanding schedules of a resident and a doctor. They knew people in their programs who'd had babies during this time and it wasn't easy. But then Michael had asked Suzie another question: “When would it ever be perfect, really? Wouldn't we always find an excuse?”
Suzie had felt a fluttering of nerves. “So you're saying you want a baby?”
“I'm saying that sometimes you can't overplan.” Michael paused. “I feel like I've been planning everything forever.” He laughed. “I'm kind of tired of planning.” He nuzzled her neck and that liquid feeling flooded her limbs. “Suzie, you are the best thing that has happened to me and you took me completely by surprise.”
Suzie smiled. “I can say the same thing about you.”
Michael pulled back from the exploration of her ear to look her in the face. “Then why shouldn't our baby be just as much of a surprise?”
“Our baby, really?” Suzie had said as she slipped a hand inside his boxers. “You're telling me the truth, right? I can take it.”
Michael laughed, and then tried for a deep, sober voice even though Suzie was distracting him with her hands. “Scout's honor.” He sighed as soon as she touched him. “But I'm easy,” he said as he helped remove his boxers and lifted her T-shirt over her head. “Obviously.”
Suzie shivered, giddy with anticipation as she climbed on top of him and showered his face and throat with kisses. Michael pulled her hard against his chest and flipped her onto her back as he slowly began to move inside of her. As her hips moved in sync with his, she rationalized that it almost never happened the first time. And then she forgot that they were even trying to make a baby.
After her mother's
initial reaction Suzie never brought up the pregnancy again, and neither did her mother during their weekly calls. It was a testament to their powers of avoidance. Their relationship seemed to work only when her mother was happy with her own life, which she never would be sober. To make things even harder, Suzie knew her mother would never forgive her for excluding her father from her wedding.
Suzie's mother had been nearing the end of her rehab when Suzie had taken her out on a day pass to go shopping for a mother-of-the-bride dress. There was a quaint village shopping area in town, complete with cobblestone walkways, concrete planters filled with flowers, and striped awnings, and Suzie had planned an early lunch. She had called ahead to the restaurant to ask that they not offer her mother any cocktails. It turned out to not be that unusual of a request; the restaurant catered to a large clientele of patients on day passes and had a dry menu.
Suzie's mother had put on some weight while in the facility. Part of the program was three healthy meals a day, as well as
cooking classes, which were intended to, as the center put it in all the literature,
enhance the quality of healthful living through hobbies
. Suzie thought her mother could afford to put on another fifteen pounds, maybe more, but at least some fullness was back in her face. At the dress shop she stood in her slip on the elevated platform. The flesh on her chest was mottled and freckled and her breasts had disappeared. She had looked a little overwhelmed, her veiny hands fluttering at her neck, the wedding rings on her fingers spinning round and round.
Suzie rifled through the rack of suits and picked three of her favorites. Two suits in shades of blue and one a pale violet. She held up all three for her mother's approval. Sarah pointed to the violet suit and Suzie handed it to her. As she took the jacket from the hanger she said, “Your father has always liked me in this color.”
“Mom, you remember that he's not coming?”
Suzie's mother shrugged into the jacket. She fussed with the collar, frowning. “They have their own seamstress here, right? I think this needs a little something.” She pulled back a handful of the suit at the waist.
“Dad's not invited, Mom. You know that, right?”
Her mother met her eyes in the mirror. “I assumed you and Michael would change your minds. I thought that was just you being you and making that typical first hothead response you always do before you calm down.”
Suzie swallowed hard. She really didn't want to get in an argument with her mother today. “It was not an easy decision. But I can't.”
“You mean you won't. You will deny him the right to give his only daughter away?”
“You really think he earned that right?”
“Did he not clothe you and feed you and house you?”
“Seriously?” Suzie asked, feeling fifteen all over again.
Susie's mother stepped into the skirt and fumbled with the button. Her torso through her hips was like a reverse hourglass, the bloated alcoholic belly and stick-thin legs. “Suzie, you always wanted something more than you had.”
“How can you say that? I did everything you wanted. I helped raise Josh and Eli.”
Suzie's mother sighed. “I think you exaggerate your role, Suzie.”
“Okay, okay,” Suzie said, wanting to appease and not argue. “But did I also hallucinate the emotional abuse my father inflicted on you? On us?”