Father Of The Brat (15 page)

The pink stain in her cheeks became red, and her gaze darted to her left. “Yes,” she finally said. “You’re wrong about that.”

“I see. And how, may I ask, can you be so certain that I’m so wrong?”

Maddy’s gaze remained diverted for some moments, then suddenly returned to meet Carver’s. Met his intensely and dead on target. “Because there’s no such thing as a love like that,” she told him without an ounce of skepticism. “There’s no such thing as a meaningful, lasting,
loving
relationship.”

She honestly believed that, Carver realized with no small amount of astonishment. She was truly of the opinion that feelings of deep, long-lasting affection didn’t exist. More than that, she was convinced of it.

In spite of his certainty, however, he said, “You don’t believe that, Maddy.”

“Yes, I do,” she replied without hesitation.

“You can’t.”

“I do.”

“But what about…what about your parents? My parents? Our folks had great relationships. And don’t try to tell me otherwise, Maddy, because you know what I’m saying is true.”

She nodded. “You’re right. Our parents did have solid, loving marriages. But they grew up and died in completely different times. Marriages, relationships like that were possible in our parents’ time, but not now. The world’s a different place now. People are different. Relationships are different. And they just don’t last anymore.”

“Look, just because your first marriage didn’t work out doesn’t mean—”

“It’s not just me and Dennis, Carver. It’s everywhere. In my job, I’ve seen a million families break apart. I’ve seen what happens to people who thought they loved each other at one time. Who thought they wanted a family. And who realized pretty quickly that the reality of Mom and Pop and kids seated around the Thanksgiving turkey doesn’t look anything at all like the Norman Rockwell storybook version. Too often, that Mom is alcoholic and that Pop is abusive and those apple-cheeked kids are torturing neighborhood pets and starting fires in their spare time.” She leaned in closer. “Here’s a news flash for you, Carver—Life isn’t the cover of the
Saturday Evening Post.”

“It’s not the cover of
Psychology Today’s
dysfunctional issue, either,” he shot back.

She relented at that. “You’re right. Not every family is dysfunctional. But even the best ones fall apart.”

“Not always,” he pointed out.

“Too often,” she countered.

“But not always.”

She gazed at him in silence for a moment. “I’ve seen too many families destroyed. Why would I want to start one of my own?”

“Maybe because you’d know how to do it right.”

She uttered a small sound at that, something that was at once sad and wistful and longing. But she said nothing in response to his assertion. Carver decided that maybe her silence wasn’t such a bad thing. It gave him a chance to elaborate, a chance to change her mind.

“All I’m asking is that you give this thing between us a chance. You and I were starting to get along great. Friday night was incredible. We make a good couple, you and I. We’d make a good family.”

More warning bells erupted in Maddy’s muddled brain at Carver’s roughly uttered declaration. Something about it troubled her even more than anything else he’d said so far.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked softly, not certain she wanted to hear his answer.

He smiled at her, a warm, fuzzy, toe-curling smile that was almost too much to resist. “I mean just what I said. You and I would make a good family. We’re reasonably intelligent, relatively good-looking…You’ve got a good sense of responsibility, I’ve got a good sense of humor…” His smile broadened. “Let’s face it, we’ve got good genes. You always said you wanted a passel of kids when we were kids. I always said you were nuts. But now…”

She sucked in an anxious breath. “Now…?”

He settled his chin in his hand, a posture that left him looking handsome and winsome and thoroughly at peace. “Now I’m beginning to understand the attraction,” he told her.

“You…you want a bigger family?” she asked. “As in, you want to have more children?”

He nodded and smiled again. “Yeah, I think I do. It’s crazy, isn’t it? But I can’t quite rid myself of the thought of having more kids.”

“Then you’re out of luck again,” she told him. “Because even if I thought things between the two of us, by some wild miracle, could work out, I won’t have children.”

“Look, Maddy, if this is about your job, about all the suffering you see kids go through, that wouldn’t be an issue with us. We’d love our children to distraction. We’d give them the best of everything.”

She expelled that oddly sad laugh again. “Listen to you. Already making out Christmas lists.”

“Hey, why wait until the last minute?”

“Because I just told you, Carver. I won’t have children with you. I can’t.”

“But, Maddy—”

“Carver, I can’t. Don’t you understand? I
can’t.

He looked mildly bemused, then realization seemed to dawn on him. Dawned on him like a good, solid blow to the back of his head, she thought sadly.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean thanks to a very serious bout with endometriosis when I was in college, I am physically unable to have children. If you want that Norman Rockwell turkey thing complete with kids, you’ll have to look somewhere else. Because you won’t be getting it from me.”

He said nothing in reply to her announcement, a response Maddy took to be less than encouraging. What the hell? she thought. He might as well know it all.

“It’s why Dennis and I split up,” she told him. “Before we were married, he said remaining childless wouldn’t be a problem, that he didn’t care about having kids. But somewhere along the line, he did start to care. And because I couldn’t give him a family, he decided to find someone who could.”

Once again, Carver’s response to her revelation was silence. He didn’t seem to be upset or angry or disappointed. He simply seemed to be…confused. Maddy sympathized. She had been confused for a long time, too. Nowadays, however, everything was perfectly clear to her.

This time when she pushed her chair away from the table, it was with a slow, unnerving scrape. “It’s not that I don’t want children, Carver. But this is how things have turned out for me. I made my peace with my fate a long time ago, and I’m as content as I can be with the way my life is. All in all, it’s not nearly as unfulfilled as some of the lives I’ve seen.”

She stood and moved to stand beside him, but he continued to stare wordlessly at the seat she had vacated. “I can be relatively happy without the kind of life you want,” she said as she settled a hand briefly on his shoulder, hoping he couldn’t detect the lie she heard so strongly in her voice. “But something tells me it wouldn’t be as easy for you to give up the fantasy as it has been for me. I’m sorry. But like I said, life isn’t perfect. There’s always something that’s going to screw up an otherwise adequate relationship.”

And with that, she turned and picked her way carefully toward the exit, hoping all the while that Carver wouldn’t follow her, hoping at the same time that he would.

But he didn’t. And maybe, Maddy thought as she pushed her way out into the cold afternoon, that was the most telling evidence of all that the two of them just didn’t have what it took to make each other happy.

M
addy’s departure—or rather her flight—from Carver left him to face the other woman in his life alone. For the most part, however, he had few complaints about his developing relationship with his daughter. During the month that followed Maddy’s retreat, Carver found Rachel to be a surprisingly reasonable kid, someone who was eager to please and grateful to be praised. She was quick-witted and articulate once he got her talking, something that only reinforced his conviction that she was generally more advanced than what he assumed the typical twelve-year-old must be. She had a wry sense of humor and a frightening amount of savvy. He was daily amazed at how much the two of them found to talk about.

It became a morning ritual for them to share the paper, and Carver was stunned when Rachel turned out to be an even bigger news junkie than he was. At some point, she had invited herself to raid his CD and vinyl collection, and he felt a thrill of delight every time she raved about how much
she liked “The Last Waltz” or “Hotel California” or “Love It to Death.” In turn, Carver found himself warming to bands like Counting Crows, Spin Doctors and Deadeye Dick. He helped her with her homework. She helped him balance his checkbook. And when she decided to become more environmentally conscientious by adopting a vegetarian diet, they discovered the joys of broccoli and bean sprouts together.

Things still weren’t perfect by any means, however. Rachel continued to have occasional outbursts of misdirected adolescent outrage that Carver simply couldn’t understand or abide. And he did come home from work in the middle of the day once to find her and her friend Lanette watching a rented copy of
Friday the Thirteenth Part Whatever
when he had expressly forbidden her viewing of such violence, not to mention when she should have been at school. He still balked at letting her get her nose pierced. She still complained that he was too old to relate.

Nevertheless, the skirmishes of adversity slowly diminished, and the bouts of collaboration increased. Gradually, father and daughter settled into a fairly comfortable, if not exactly quiet, routine.

There was only one thing missing, Carver thought now as he warily watched his daughter put the finishing touches on what she had christened Rachel’s Rutabaga Surprise. Maddy. Maddy was missing from his life. His and Rachel’s both. Because even though Rachel had never said anything about Maddy’s sudden disappearance, he could sense somehow that she missed her, too.

“So, what exactly is the ‘Surprise’ part of this recipe?” he asked his daughter for perhaps the tenth time.

Rachel scraped the last of the purplish yellow mixture from the bowl and smoothed it into a casserole pan. Although his knowledge of rutabagas was limited, Carver was pretty sure they weren’t that color. In fact, he couldn’t imagine much of anything that was that color. Nothing that was edible, anyway.

“I’ll tell you after you have a taste,” she said as she licked a substantial glop of the concoction from the back of her hand.

He waited to see if she would suffer any ill effects as a result. When she didn’t, he found some comfort, but still harbored a heavy measure of doubt. “I think I’d rather know before I have a taste.”

“No, ‘cause then you’d never taste it.”

“That’s why I want to know in advance.”

“Come on, where’s your sense of adventure? Quit being such a pain.” She shook her head. “Man, you have been so cranky lately.”

“That’s because I’m trying to quit smoking. You haven’t exactly been a picnic yourself, you know.”

She smiled. “This is going to be good—you’ll see,” she told him. “Lanette’s mom makes this all the time.”

“Then why are you calling it
Rachel’s
Rutabaga Surprise?”

“I made a few alterations.”

“Uh-huh. Like what?”

“You’ll see,” she repeated. “Trust me.”

Yeah, right,
Carver thought.
The last time I put that much faith in an adolescent girl, she still had me spinning on my ear twenty years after the fact.

“Why don’t you call Maddy and invite her to dinner?”

Rachel’s casually offered question snapped Carver out of his reverie like a slingshot. “What?”

She didn’t look up from her task as she repeated, “Maddy. Why don’t you invite her over for dinner tonight? You guys don’t seem to see too much of each other lately, and I think she’d like this.”

Carver wasn’t sure how to explain to Rachel what had happened between him and Maddy. But not because he didn’t think a twelve-year-old claimed the ability to comprehend such a breakup. And not because he was afraid Rachel’s feelings might be hurt at the realization that someone she had started to care for would possibly be removed
from her life for good. No, the main reason Carver didn’t know how to explain his separation from Maddy was because he wasn’t sure he understood it himself.

He hadn’t tried to contact her since their last meeting, simply because he didn’t know what to say to her. She had dropped a bomb on him a month ago, there was no question about that. He had been stunned by her declaration that she was unable to have children. Not because
he
so badly wanted kids
now,
but because
she
had wanted kids when the two of them had been teenagers. She’d wanted them badly. He couldn’t imagine what it had cost her to accept the fact that she would remain childless. He’d never been denied something he’d wanted that much.

Oh, wait, yes he had, he remembered. He’d been denied Maddy.

That afternoon a month ago, she had told him she had made peace with her fate. That she was as happy and as content as she could be. But somehow, Carver didn’t quite believe that. And he didn’t think Maddy did, either. He just wasn’t sure how to go about making her realize or accept it. No more than he knew how to convince her that her inability to have children was completely immaterial to him.

He would be lying if he said that he didn’t want to have more children beyond Rachel. Since his daughter’s sudden arrival in his life, Carver had wondered a lot about the growing up she’d done before, growing up that he had missed. And a little part of him still harbored a desire to father another child. He wanted to know what it would be like to witness the birth of life and watch his child inhale that first gasp of breath. Wanted to experience the thrill and pride of watching a child take her first steps and utter her first words. Wanted to share in the wonder of a baby’s single-minded fascination with something as simple as a button or a piece of string. A part of Carver would always want to experience those things. And, if the truth was told, he would always miss them.

But he would miss Maddy’s presence in his life more. A lot more. He could live without having another child. But he wasn’t certain he was going to make it without Maddy. He just didn’t know how he would ever be able to convince her of that. Her first husband had told her the same thing. And her first husband had taken a powder when he’d changed his mind. Why should Maddy believe that Carver would be any different?

“Uh, Rachel…” he began.

She continued with her dinner preparations as she uttered a distracted “Hmm?”

“About Maddy and me…”

“Yeah?”

“Uh, we could try inviting her to dinner tonight, but I don’t think she’d come.”

“Why not?”

“Because…because I don’t think she wants to see me.”

That was enough to make Rachel pay attention. She gazed at him with wide blue eyes that made him feel as if he were staring into a mirror. “Why not?” she repeated.

“We sort of, um, split up.”

Her expression clouded, and she seemed to become agitated about something. “Because of me, right? Because I showed up on the scene.”

Carver crossed the kitchen in three long strides to drape his arm over her shoulder. He still wasn’t completely comfortable with physical displays of affection—and neither was Rachel, he knew—but the two of them were gradually getting better at it. He gave her shoulder a quick squeeze before pulling away again to give her some breathing space.

“No, we did not split up because of you. You’re the one who brought us together.”

She smiled. “Oh.”

He scrubbed a hand thoughtfully over his rough jaw. “It’s kind of complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

He sighed, wondering where to begin. “I’ve known Maddy since we were teenagers.”

Rachel grinned. “Since the Stone Age, huh?”

He grimaced. “Please, I’m not that old. It was the Ice Age when Maddy and I went to school together.”

Rachel grinned again. “Oh. Sorry.”

“No problem.”

He told her about his youthful exploits with Maddy, about how the two of them had driven each other crazy throughout high school, had gone their separate ways for college and had been reunited by Rachel’s arrival in Philadelphia. He told her about how he supposed he’d never stopped caring for Maddy. And he told her about the changes in Maddy that he hadn’t been able to comprehend. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, he began to understand.

Back in high school, Maddy hadn’t been the only one who’d thought she could change the world. Even though he’d been unwilling to admit it then, Carver had thought she could, too. He’d chosen the cynic’s way for himself, had accepted that the world was a rotten place and that the only thing left to do was expose that rottenness to the light. But Maddy had taken the high road. She’d chosen to see the good and work on that instead. Maddy…Maddy had been the light.

Somewhere along the way, however, that light had dimmed. It hadn’t gone out completely, but it was sputtering for life. Maddy had experienced a few rough spots, he thought. Hell, she’d been to the earth’s ugly underbelly and back again. Fate had dealt her an unkindly hand in denying her something she’d always wanted—children. Then, to make matters worse, fate had given her a job to make her feel grateful for her loss by showing her how much worse others had it. No wonder Maddy had lost her optimistic bloom, he thought. Life had ripped it right off of her.

“Rachel,” he said, not certain what he planned to do, but knowing he had to do something. “We’ve got to help Maddy out.”

“Boy, I’ll say. Her life sucks.”

He frowned at his daughter. “I’ve told you how I feel about you using that language.”

“That’s not swearing.”

“But it is offensive.”

“I’ve heard you say it a million times.”

“I’m a jaded old man. I’ve earned the right. I’ve told you over and over that you have to pay your dues if you—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I gotta pay my dues if I wanna sing the blues. And I know. It don’t come easy. But I still don’t understand what that means.”

“It’s incredible wisdom,” he assured her. “Someday you’ll thank me.”

“And I don’t understand what it has to do with me using offensive language, either,” she added.

“We were talking about Maddy.”

“Actually,
you
were talking about Maddy. And no offense, Carver, but you make me wanna hurl with all the drooling you do whenever you say her name.”

He opened his mouth to deny the charge, wasn’t sure he could in all honesty do so, and chose to ignore it. Instead, he said, “You and I have a job to do where Maddy’s concerned. I need your help.”

“Yeah? With what?”

“We’ve got to help Maddy get back that fiery righteous indignation that made her so driven so long ago. We have to find out what made her lose hope and help her get it back again. We have to show her that some things in life do turn out for the better. And we have to make her see that the world can change as long as it has people like her in it.”

“Uh-huh. Okay. And how are we gonna make that happen?”

“I’m working on it.”

Rachel nodded. “In the meantime, I’ll check the rutabagas.”

“You do that.”

When the telephone rang at 10:00 p.m., Maddy was certain somehow that it must be Carver calling, even though it had been over a month since she had heard from him. For that reason, she was inclined not to answer. But when the ringing went on for more than a minute, finally totalling twenty-two, she couldn’t stand it any longer. She snatched the receiver from its resting place and snapped, “Hello.”

“Maddy?”

A young person’s voice from the other end of the line called out to her in distress, and immediately Maddy felt guilty for neglecting the phone. Her number was unlisted. She gave it out only when absolutely necessary, and usually to kids she thought were in some kind of danger. If her phone rang this late at night, it was generally because someone was in trouble. And anyway, why would Carver be calling her? she thought further. He’d made it clear just how little he wanted to do with her now that he knew she wasn’t the Fertile Crescent.

“Yes, this is Madelaine Garrett,” she told her unknown caller. “Who is this?”

The voice hesitated a moment before replying very quietly, “It’s Rachel. Rachel Stillman. Do you remember me?”

As if I could forget the person who brought Carver Venner back into my life,
Maddy thought dryly. Then another thought struck her. Things had been going pretty well with Carver and Rachel the last time she had seen them. If Rachel was calling her now, it could only be because something had happened. Something that probably wasn’t good. She inhaled a deep breath and told herself not to worry, then ran a shaky hand through her hair.

“Of course I remember you, Rachel,” she said as calmly as she could. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

Rachel sounded alarmed and terrified when she replied, her words rushed together like an express train out of control. “I…I don’t know where I am. I had a fight with Carver, and I ran out of the apartment and got on a bus. It left me here, but I don’t know where here is. I don’t have any money, and I’m afraid to go home. I didn’t know who else to call. I have your card in my wallet. I don’t know what to do. I’m so scared.”

Great, Maddy thought. This was just great. A frightened kid stranded out in the middle of nowhere who had no one to turn to but her. Just what she needed on a Friday night after a week spent wondering whether she’d be better off performing some really world-saving work like carpet cleaning or tending bar.