Wedding in Great Neck (9781101607701) (19 page)

“It’s about Eve,” he said.

Just the name uttered here in this room felt like a slap. Gretchen could see the girl’s pale, miserable face after she had appeared at their house and told Gretchen she had only minutes before swallowed thirty Ambien tablets, a month’s supply; she proffered the empty bottle as proof. She said she had decided to do it when Ennis was teaching, because she hadn’t been able to face him. But she’d had no problem facing Gretchen, had she? And what about the girls? Had she thought of what it might be like for them if they found her in their home in that condition? So Gretchen had dialed 911 and done her best to soothe Eve until the ambulance arrived. And then, because she really was so pitiful and seemed to have no one to lean on at all, Gretchen rode with her to the hospital and waited outside the emergency room until she was sure Eve was all right.

“What makes you think I want to hear that name ever again?” said Gretchen. But she did want to know whether Eve had had her baby yet and whether Ennis was as smitten with it as he had been with Justine and Portia. The twins did not yet know they were going to have a half sibling. They had reacted so poorly—Justine in particular—to the separation that Gretchen had not wanted to tell them immediately.

“They’ll hate you for keeping it from them,” Ennis had pointed out during the tense phone call they’d agreed upon to discuss the subject.

“I don’t care!” she’d said hotly. “It’s just too much to handle right now, and I want you to back me up.”

“It doesn’t seem right,” he had said. “You’re coercing me into keeping a secret that I don’t want to keep.”

“Ennis,” she said, “if you tell them now, I’ll keep you from seeing them.”

“No judge would go along with that,” he said. But he didn’t sound so sure.

“Oh? How about when the whole sordid story of how you knocked up your
student
comes out? Maybe a judge would view you as a less-than-fit sort of parent.”

Ennis was silent. “All right,” he’d said sullenly. “You win.”

Her eyes had filled with sudden, hot tears; she was grateful he could not see them. “Ennis, you lied to me, cheated on me, and someone
else
is having your baby. How can you say I’ve
won
?” And then she’d gotten off the phone.

Ennis stared at her now. “But I have to talk about it,” he said. “You’ll see why when I tell you.”

“All right,” Gretchen said. She sat up as straight as she could, still sucking in her stomach. Damn, but this proper posture business was
work.
“Shoot.”

“After I left,” said Ennis.

“You mean, after I kicked you out,” Gretchen said.

“After you kicked me out,” he repeated, rubbing his fingers over the bridge of his nose, “I felt terrible. As if I’d ruined everything, thrown away everything that ever mattered to me.”

“You did,” Gretchen said. She had always loved Ennis’s elegant, aquiline nose and was supremely gratified when it appeared, in a somewhat modified form, on the faces of their daughters.

“But I also felt this—this sense of responsibility to Eve. I’d done this monumentally stupid thing that affected her too. She was really and truly devastated by what had happened.”

“Ennis,” Gretchen said sharply. “Spare me these details.
I don’t care
one iota about Eve’s feelings! Do. Not. Care. Get it?”

“Would you let me finish?” he said. “Please?” But a knock on the door silenced him. Gretchen glanced in his direction before saying, “Come in.”

“Mom, have you seen—Oh! Daddy! I didn’t know you were in here,” said Portia, looking from Gretchen to Ennis and back again.

“Sweetheart, hey,” Ennis said. “I like the hair.” Portia was sporting a newly shorn coif, which had the perhaps unintended but nevertheless fortuitous result of neutralizing—almost eradicating, in fact—the fuchsia streak in her hair.

“Do you? I do too. I wanted to show Justine, but I can’t find her anywhere, so I thought I would check up here. Have either of you seen her?”

“I haven’t,” Gretchen said, and Ennis added, “Neither have I.”

“Can you help me look?” Portia asked. Gretchen suppressed a sigh. She did not want to look for Justine at the moment; she was keenly aware that Justine had no desire to be found by her. And though she was reluctant to admit it, she wanted to finish the conversation with Ennis, wanted, despite everything, to hear whatever it was he thought was so essential to tell her.

“Not right now,” Gretchen said. “Your father and I are…talking.”

“Talking?” Portia was instantly suspicious. “I thought you two weren’t talking. That was the whole point of Dad’s moving out, wasn’t it?”

“Just because I’ve moved out doesn’t mean I don’t talk to your mother,” Ennis said with unexpected dignity.

“Well, okay. I’ll look for her myself,” said Portia, and she turned to go. But then she stopped. “Mom, do you like my hair? You didn’t say.” There was something shy, almost pleading in her tone.

Gretchen, not one of those mothers who cooed,
It’s a masterpiece!
over every scribble her kids produced, looked hard at her daughter. “Come here,” she said, and when Portia complied, Gretchen took her chin in her fingers, tilting it this way and that, to see how the haircut played off the various angles of Portia’s face.

“It’s very sophisticated,” she said at last. “It makes you look older.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Definitely.”

That seemed to be the right answer, for Portia responded by grabbing each of her elbows and squeezing as if giving herself a hug. Then she was gone, closing the door behind her. Gretchen waited a moment and said to Ennis, “Go on.”

He went and stood by the window. “I didn’t feel I could just abandon her,” he said, staring out at the rain. “She really had no one.”

“I thought she was going back to Kansas or wherever it was that she came from,” said Gretchen.

“Wisconsin, and, no, she didn’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“She said she wanted to have the baby here.”

“Why? Aren’t her parents out there?” But Gretchen knew the answer. Eve must have thought that if she was nearby, Ennis would be more likely to soften, to change his mind. Maybe he wouldn’t marry her. But she’d have the baby to draw him to her, and babies cast a powerful net. When Ennis didn’t say anything, Gretchen added, “So she had the baby in New York?”

Ennis nodded. “April eighth.”

Even though Gretchen had known about the pregnancy, the news of the birth still felt like an ambush, swift and sudden. So that meant Justine and Portia had a half sibling, who was now almost two months old. Clearly Ennis had kept his word and not told them. Oh God—how would they take it? Gretchen sat back down on the bed and resisted the urge to slide under the covers and pull them up to her chin—no, over her head. She was freezing; the air-conditioning was turned way up, and the room had a meat-locker chill.

“Well, congratulations,” she said, barely able to get the words out. “I guess you’re a dad—again.” She stood, pulled on the sweatshirt she had pried from her suitcase, and sat back down.

Ennis ignored this and came over to the bed. He hesitated for a moment before sitting, and Gretchen toyed with the impulse to ask him to please get up. But the king-sized bed allowed him to keep his distance, so she let it go.

“I had seen her throughout the pregnancy,” he continued. “Just to make sure she was getting to her doctor’s appointments and that she had enough money. There was nothing else”—he paused for emphasis—“and I mean
nothing
else between us.”

“Was that what she wanted? Or was it you?” As soon as she said these words, Gretchen wished she could take them back; she didn’t want to let him know that it mattered to her one way or the other.

“It was my choice. What happened with her was a onetime thing. It was wrong, I was wrong, and even though I can’t undo it, I didn’t have to keep doing it either.”

“All right,” Gretchen said. “Keep going.”

“So when she called me to say the baby had been born, I said I wanted to come see her in the hospital. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

“And doing the right thing is clearly so important to you,” she said, unable to contain herself. “So deeply, truly important.” He had the effrontery to look hurt. “What?” she asked. “You deserved that, you know.”

“I suppose I did,” he said, looking down at his hands. Gretchen had loved his hands too—strong, firm, and well shaped. She had loved so many things about him, hadn’t she? Well, she’d just have to get over them, every last one. “Anyway, she didn’t want me to come to the hospital. She kept saying that it wasn’t necessary, she’d get along just fine, she knew I wasn’t planning on being a father to this baby, so there was no point in my getting to know him.”

“So it was a boy.”

“A boy. Yes.” He continued studying his hands. “This was kind of strange, hey? All during the pregnancy she had been so eager to see me. She talked about the baby and said that even though I didn’t want to get married, she hoped I could have some role in its life. So her reluctance to see me was a switch. Something new. Something I didn’t expect.”

Gretchen had nothing to say; she buried her own hands in the kangaroo-like front pocket of the sweatshirt and waited for him to continue.

“I decided to go to the hospital. I checked the visiting hours; I bought flowers and a couple of things for the baby. One of those little outfits with a hood, hey? A teddy bear. And I planned to give her some money too. I figured she would need it.” He stopped, and the only sound in the room was the rain, which continued to patter heavily against the panes.

“Was she glad to see you?” Gretchen found herself increasingly drawn—despite her resistance, despite her quiet fury—into this narrative.

“Was she glad? No, I wouldn’t say glad exactly. Surprised was more like it. Even alarmed.”

“Alarmed? I don’t get it. You
are
the father. Even if you’re not going to
function
as the father.”

“That’s what I thought too. So then I asked to see the baby. He had been taken for some test or shot, and they were just about to bring him back. I said I would wait. She didn’t want me to, though. She thanked me for everything but told me not to bother staying, just to go. Practically begging me, in fact. Stranger and stranger, hey? She was almost pushing me out the door. But I didn’t go. No, I sat and I waited. She looked more and more uncomfortable. Nearly jumping out of her skin. And when they brought him in, I understood.”

“What do you mean? Was there something wrong with him?” This was going from bad to worse. Not only a half sibling but a half sibling with
issues.

“Wrong? No, nothing was wrong with him. He was beautiful. Perfect. A perfectly beautiful, beautifully perfect baby boy.”

“So what was the problem?” Why was he drawing this out? Did he enjoy hurting her?

“Gretchen, the baby was black.”

“Black!” Here was a piece of information lobbed in from left field. Gretchen felt as if she had been physically hit by it, squarely, right between the eyes.

“Well, part black anyway.”

“So that means…”

“That means that he isn’t mine. He never was. And whatever happened with Eve, he was not the result.” Ennis exhaled mightily.

“What a story.”
What a stroke of luck.
Gretchen’s first thought was relief. There was not going to be a half sibling added to the family equation after all. No long and undoubtedly teary discussion with Justine and Portia—that whole scenario had just been eradicated. And then there was Gretchen’s own reaction. Even though she and Ennis were separated, it would have hurt her to know he had fathered a child with someone else. She may have exiled Ennis from her life, but she was not ready to give him over to anyone else.

“What a story,” he agreed. “I held the baby for a few minutes. He was a cute little guy. I gave her the gifts, the money. And then I walked out of that hospital feeling so—free! So wonderfully, marvelously free, hey? You can’t imagine what a weight it was, thinking about that baby and what I was and wasn’t going to be to him. And now it’s all just gone, vanished, just like that.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that it’s all gone,” Gretchen said carefully. “It’s not like the whole thing never happened. You did sleep with her, and she did pull that stunt with the pills. What if the girls had been there when she showed up? I haven’t said a word to them about her, you know. Not a peep.”

“I appreciate that,” Ennis said. “It’s very kind of you.”

“I didn’t do it for
you
,” she said. “I was trying to protect
them
.”

“Well, whatever your motive, I’m grateful for it. I don’t want them to despise their old man, hey?”

“They don’t despise you,” Gretchen said. “So you can stop worrying.”

“What about you? Do you despise me?”

Gretchen inched away as far she could from him on the bed; if she moved any more, she’d be on the floor. “I don’t know how I feel,” she said finally. “You hurt me, Ennis. You hurt me more than I knew I was capable of being hurt.”

“I know I did. And I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. But I thought if you knew about Eve, it would change things.”

“How? Why?”

“Because you’d understand that I really am done with all that. Finished.”

“Well, that’s all very well and good for you. But I still don’t see how it affects me. You still betrayed me. Betrayed all of us. And as for the baby not being yours, that was just luck, Ennis. Pure dumb luck.”

“Isn’t everything?”

“No,” she said. “Some things are the result of rigorously delayed gratification, meticulous planning, relentless hard work, and obsessive attention to the smallest detail.” She stood and stretched; sitting so tightly wound in the room’s unrelenting chill had made her stiff. And she’d heard enough anyway. Time to get moving.

“That’s it?” Ennis said when he saw he was being dismissed. “That’s all you have to say to me?”

“What were you expecting?” She was still reeling from his news. So the conversation with Justine and Portia about a new baby brother would never—thank you, God—have to take place. But how could Ennis show up here and think that revelation would wipe away all the hurt of these past months? There was something so cavalier about the expectation, so clueless, selfish, and entitled. She looked at her estranged husband, and she realized she was even angrier than she’d been before he had made his grand confession.
The nerve of him
, she thought, adopting an expression that had tumbled so effortlessly from Lenore’s lips throughout her childhood.
The nerve.