The Unwelcomed Child (33 page)

Until now, I had accepted my grandparents’, especially my grandmother’s, view of me. Whenever I looked in the mirror, I believed I saw the same face hiding potential evil that she saw. She had molded and shaped me as if I was a chunk of clay, but suddenly, now there was a heartbeat in that clay and a mind that had other thoughts, other questions.

Maybe it was like what Dr. Rosen said had happened to Grandmother Myra, only it had happened to me. Blood had been blocked from my brain, and in that blood was my true self, my true nature, and my true soul.

Going with Mason and Claudine to see my father was my therapy. It was my road back, not to who I was in the past but to who I was now.

I would have to be a little deceitful about tomorrow, I thought, but I had to do it. Strengthened with this new resolve, I went back to my work, and when Grandpa Prescott returned, I listened to his description of how Grandmother Myra was and what the doctor had decided.

“She’s going to be moved tomorrow,” he said. “I want to be there early. I’ll probably be there most of the day. It’s better if you come after she’s been set up. Besides, the weather looks good. You should be outside. Don’t spend the day working on the house anymore. It’s fine, Elle. Go back to your art, and finish that picture.”

“Okay, Grandpa, but I will get something prepared for dinner before I do.”

“That’s fine. We’re going to get through this together,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”

He did look more cheerful and hopeful. I watched television with him after dinner and then went to bed when he did. I said my prayers to the picture of the baby Jesus, and I asked him to forgive me for any sins I had committed and sins I might commit.

As Grandpa Prescott once told me after my grandmother had ordered me to say my prayers that way, “A little insurance doesn’t hurt.”

Nevertheless, I took trepidation and great concern to bed with me. It wasn’t an easy sleep when it came, either. I had all sorts of terrible dreams. In one of them, Grandmother Myra rose from her hospital bed and made her way back to the house to face me after I had returned with Mason and Claudine from Albany. She was as twisted as she looked in the hospital, and she lifted her bad arm along with her good one, but both of her hands were on fire, all of her fingers like candlewicks. I thought I must have screamed in my sleep and woke in the darkness, trembling.

Slowly, I looked down the hallway to see if she was there the way she often was, spying on me, watching me, waiting to see if Satan would visit my bedside.

Maybe, I thought, he had, and that was why I had those dreams.

I didn’t fall back to sleep easily. In fact, I think I did just before it was time to get up, but I didn’t want to be lying in bed when Grandpa Prescott came down. Everything had to seem as normal as ever, especially today, I thought, and rose quickly.

He seemed to be in good spirits and ate a bigger breakfast than usual. He began talking about Grandmother Myra in a more positive light.

“When she comes home,” he said, “we’ll need to make some changes. I met someone at the hospital whose husband had a stroke, and she told me about this mechanical chair that takes someone in your grandmother’s condition up and down the stairway. I’m going to look into that.

“Soon you’ll be busy with your schooling. Obviously, she couldn’t continue homeschooling you, even if she had changed her mind and thought that better. So I’m getting information about some private-duty nursing at home, at least for the first few months.

“Even after she’s home, I’ll have to take her to therapy back at the hospital almost daily. I was thinking about finally trading in the old jalopy for one of those vehicles that has more comfortable seats and a place for a wheelchair. So I might be home later than I ordinarily would today,” he continued. “If you get hungry and want to eat earlier . . .”

“Oh, no, that’s fine, Grandpa.”

He nodded. “Lots to do. Lots to think about. But don’t worry yourself about any of this. I have it under control. Just go about your day.”

“I will,” I said. I was glad he wasn’t asking me anything about how I intended to spend it. I could see his mind was elsewhere.

When he rose, he paused to hug me and tell me again how proud he was of me.

“She’s calmed down a lot,” he said as I walked him to the door. “She doesn’t have to speak for me to know what she’s thinking or what she wants to know. I told her all you’ve been doing, and I can see that it pleases her.”

He hugged me again and left. Everything he had said and done made me think again about taking the ride with Mason and Claudine. If, for some reason, I didn’t get back in time, he’d be very upset, heartbroken. Once again, I questioned whether I should do it. As I cleaned up the kitchen, I was tempted to call them and tell them not to come. I even lifted the receiver once, but I put it back.

“I’ve got to do this,” I told myself. “I’ve got to.”

Just before ten, I went outside and waited. My heart was pounding. When I saw their car approaching, this time with the top up, I started down the short stairway, but it was as if I had thick glue on the bottoms of my shoes. They pulled up and waited.

“Who had the stroke, you or your grandmother?” Claudine joked.

“I have to get home early enough to set out his dinner,” I said.

“No problem,” Mason told me. “This car can move when it has to.”

“Stop worrying. Let’s make a fun day of it,” Claudine said when I still didn’t move toward the passenger’s side.

Fun?
I thought. This didn’t feel like fun. Was that how she saw it?

Mason read my thoughts. “What Claudine means is that this won’t all be full of tension for you. We’ll find a nice place for lunch, and you’ll see a little of a city you’ve never seen. We’ve not been up there in years. Luckily, I have a GPS, so we’ll have no trouble finding our way around. C’mon, Elle. Let’s get moving so we can get it all done and be back when you want.”

I hurried around the car and got in. Claudine had left the front seat for me again.

“We’re off,” Mason said, and sped away from my house.

I glanced back only once, took a deep breath, and sat back. I was either crossing a great divide or creating an even bigger one between myself and the only family I had.

Needless to say, this was the longest ride I had ever taken and the farthest I had ever been from home. I knew both of them were trying to calm me down by talking about everything under the sun except my seeing and maybe talking to my father.

Did you really call men who raped women fathers? I wondered. Shouldn’t
father
mean more than just procreating?

“Tell me about your father,” I said. “I mean, he seems very nice and lots of fun, but what’s he really like?”

What I really wanted to know was what a father was like. What should anyone expect of his or her father? Surely, they were different from grandfathers.

They were both silent a moment, each waiting to see who would begin.

Mason started. “Dad’s dedicated to his profession. He brings a lot of work home, but somehow he always finds time for us. I’ve never felt afraid of asking or telling him things.”

“Some things,” Claudine corrected.

Mason shrugged. “We’re not any more secretive in our house than other families.”

“You want to put your hand on a Bible?” she challenged.

He glanced at me and looked ahead. “Claudine and I are certainly no angels. Sure, there are things we’ve kept to ourselves, but if we ever got into trouble, he was always there for us, right?”

“Usually, it was too late for anything else by then,” she said. “He’s all right. We love him, and he’s always bragging about us. He’s done a lot more with us than our mother, especially on vacations. We would never have learned how to water ski, ice skate . . .”

“Play pool,” Mason added.

They both laughed and then started talking about their mother whenever she joined these activities.

“Who else had to have her hair done before she went skiing in Aspen?” Claudine said. “The simple answer, Elle, is we love our parents, accept their faults, and don’t blame them for anything. At least, I don’t.”

“There’s nothing magical between you and them, then?”

“Magical? What do you mean?” Mason asked.

“I read this novel about a mother who lost her little boy during the Second World War. It was part of suggested reading for my homeschooling. At the end of the war, she went from one camp to another where lost children were being housed. It was some time afterward, but magically, she was drawn to him.”

Neither spoke for a moment.

“It made me cry,” I said.

“Don’t expect any magic now,” Claudine said. “He’d probably walk right by you on the street. Nothing unusual might happen even if you stopped him to ask a question.”

I nodded. We rode in silence, and then they started talking about the music again. A little more than an hour later, Mason took the exit the GPS told him to take, and we were entering the city. I couldn’t help being fidgety and nervous.

Claudine put her hand on my shoulder. “Just relax. We’ll be right beside you the whole time.”

I nodded and gaped at the traffic, the people, the buildings, just the excitement that came from so much activity. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could find his way home over so many streets and corners. It was a world of strangers, people who walked past each other, concerned only with getting to where they were going and avoiding bumping into anyone on the way. Unless they were walking in groups or couples, they didn’t speak to those they passed by or faced on the sidewalk. Horns sounded, music poured out of other cars, people shouted, all of it making me turn this way and that. I’m sure I looked like someone who had just been released from prison after having gone in before cars or electricity was invented.

Claudine leaned forward to look out at everything with me. “This whole city is like one neighborhood in New York,” she said.

“I can’t imagine,” I said.

“One day soon, you’ll come see us in the city,” Mason said.

“Really?”

“We have a beautiful guest room in our Manhattan apartment,” Claudine said. “We’ll take you to shows on Broadway, to Central Park, to the Village, SoHo, even to the top of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, if you want.”

Could I really do all that? Surely I was feeling like a newborn chick as the shell began to crack and fall away. All sorts of new possibilities loomed out there. Things I wouldn’t even dare to dream were suddenly realities. The day would come when I could go anywhere I wanted and do whatever I wanted.

When we stopped at a traffic light, Mason looked at me. “You doing all right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“We’re almost to Greene Street.” He nodded at the map on the GPS.

“This oughta be something else,” Claudine said. I turned to look at her. Her face was full of excitement.

“You’re something else,” Mason told her.

“I hope so,” she said.

I wanted to laugh with them, but my heart was beating too hard and fast. I just wanted to be able to keep myself from passing out and be able to walk when I had to.

“Here we go,” Mason said, turning onto Greene Street. “Watch the numbers, Claudine.”

“I see it,” she said. “Look for a place to park.”

Right ahead of us was a sign on a brick building that simply read, “Barrett’s.”

Mason had to drive by it to find a place to park. I saw a sign on the door that said, “Restaurant and Bar.” Two men in jeans and T-shirts were entering. After we parked, Mason leaped out and came around to my side of the car quickly. When he opened the door, I took a deep breath and stepped out with him holding my right arm. I think I wobbled.

He reached in to release the seat and let Claudine get out. The three of us stood there for a moment looking at the bar.

“What’s the plan?” Mason asked Claudine.

It didn’t occur to me until that moment that we didn’t have one.

“I think we go in, ask to speak with him, and hit him right between the eyes with the number one fact.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You,” she said, and hooked her left arm onto my right. “C’mon. This is like making a parachute jump out of a plane. If you think about it too hard or too long, you won’t do it. Just do it,” she urged, tugging me a little forward.

We walked down the sidewalk to the front of Barrett’s.

“‘Onward Christian soldiers,’” Claudine sang, and opened the door for me.

I looked at Mason, who nodded, and then I entered the bar. They came up beside me. The three of us stood looking around.

On our left was a bar almost the length of the room. It was built out of dark mahogany and had a brass-plated foot rail. The top looked recently redone. There were at least twenty bar stools, all made of the same wood as the bar itself. Right now, there were about a dozen men sitting, having beers and drinks, snacking on peanuts and chips, and talking. Two bartenders were dressed in very neat white shirts and bar aprons. Behind them running the length of the bar were large panels of mirrors framed in the same mahogany. Below that were shelves and racks of bottles in all sizes. At the center, separating the mirror panels, was a table with a computer register. At both ends of the bar were six different beer taps.