Four of a Kind (30 page)

Harvey stared into the girl’s face, and couldn’t help but see his own reflected there. “I need to sit,” he said suddenly.

He didn’t make it to the couch. He fainted, dead away, in the middle
of the living room, a klatch of Barbies arranged in a circle breaking his fall.

“Oh, shit!” said Robin. One of the Barbie’s was jabbing him in the eye. No blood.
Whew!

Stephanie, hopping up and down, thrilled by the novelty of a prostrate man on the carpet, said, “Can I call 911, Mommy? Please? Or I could run across the street and get the firemen?”

“Calm down,” said Robin. She bent over, and slapped Harvey’s cheek, repeating his name. Nothing. He was out. “Get me the phone.”

The girl pounded into the kitchen and grabbed the handheld. Robin dialed quickly. When she got an answer, she said, “You’ve got to drive over here, now. Emergency! Code red!”

“An emergency is code blue,” Carla answered calmly.

“Just hurry. I’ve got a man down.”

Carla was a rock
, thought Robin, hanging up. She’d be here in fifteen minutes. Not soon enough. She dialed Bess. “Code red! I mean blue! Man down!”

“I’m sorry?” said Bess.

“Stop apologizing and get over here! It’s an emergency.”

“Did you kill someone?” asked Bess, hushed.

Robin pulled the phone away to look at it. Is that what Bess thought her capable of? Murder on a Saturday afternoon?

“Come over to find out,” said Robin, hanging up.

Stephanie peered into Harvey’s face, squished as it was on plastic limbs. “Who is he, Mom? He looks familiar.”

“No one! Go to your room,” said Robin.

“Like
that’s
gonna happen,” said Stephanie with a snort.

Robin took a moment to admire her flinty child, and then flew right back to panic.

The buzzer made Robin’s heart jump into her throat. Bess must have sprinted the two blocks. She buzzed her friend in.

A minute later, two huge men with cardboard boxes arrived in the hallway.

Stephanie said, “Fresh Direct.”

Robin looked up. The delivery guys took in the scene. A mother and daughter poking an unconscious man on the floor.

As if they happened upon men in dubious stages of consciousness every day, one delivery guy said, “Where do you want the boxes?”

Stephanie directed them toward the kitchen, signed the receipt, and had the good sense to go into Robin’s purse (thank God the pack of cigarettes was in her bedroom) and find a fiver for a tip.

The guys left, and moments later, Bess appeared in the doorway. The delivery guys must have let her in. They should know not to hold the door open for just anyone. Robin made a mental note to complain, but she was interrupted when Bess gasped and threw herself on the carpet at Harvey’s feet.

Bess’s blue eyes bugged, and she mouthed, “Harvey Wilson!” She’d read his blog, after all, and looked at his many pictures. “Why is he in your living room?”

“Which room would be better?” ask Robin.

“Did you invite him over?” she whispered. “Oh my God, did you invite him to meet Stephanie?”

“Shut up,” whispered Robin, checking to make sure Stephanie was in the kitchen, pawing through the food boxes. “He just showed up. Saw Stephanie, figured it out, and fainted.”

“Can’t say I blame him,” said Bess.

“For being so rude as to pass out on my floor? In front of my kid? I blame him,” said Robin.

Stephanie called from the kitchen. “Mommy, can I open the cookies?” Apparently, the kid was already bored by their immobile guest.

“Go ahead!” yelled Robin.

Buzzer. Carla. Robin leapt over the body to let her in.

Carla was huffing when she got to Robin’s apartment door. “I broke the speed limit, left my kids at home, and ran from the hospital parking lot,” she said. “This had better be serious. I hope you cut off your finger, at least.”

Robin brought Carla into the living room and presented the body.
“Ta-da,”
she said. “He fainted. Killed, like, six Barbies.”

“Breathing?” asked Carla. “How long has he been out?”

“Since I called,” said Robin. “Ten minutes?”

“Did you slap him? Cold water?”

“I did slap, yes,” said Robin.

“It’s Harvey Wilson,” stage-whispered Bess.

Carla got on her knees to check vitals. Robin and Bess joined her on the carpet. The doc rolled him onto his back, freeing the dolls under him. She leaned forward, examining his face.

“What?”

“He sure looks like Stephanie,” said Carla.

Robin and Bess, too, came in close to examine his face, the distinct nose, his rounded cheeks and gentle jawline. The dark eyebrows, and the eyes below. Eyes that, suddenly, opened.

The three women screamed and fell backward.

Harvey said, “Where am I?” Leaning left, he pulled a Barbie from underneath his hip, looking at it as if it were a hand grenade.

“He’s awake. Not dead,
yay
,” said Stephanie at the doorway, munching a cookie.

Carla recovered her breath and said, “Lie down, Mr. Wilson. Let your blood pressure stabilize for a minute.”

He looked a tad frightened by the female faces peering down at him. “Look at the bright side,” said Bess to him, all smiles. “This’ll make a great blog entry.”

While Robin unpacked the groceries, Carla gave Harvey a cursory exam. She advised him not to drink tonight. Harvey laughed in her face, but then he politely apologized.

Robin had to take Stephanie to her friend’s house for the sleepover. She directed Harvey to Pete’s, the bar around the corner, and asked
him to wait there for her. It was a good plan. She assumed Harvey wouldn’t yell at her or try to kill her in a public place. Also, he’d have twenty minutes or so to calm down before she arrived.

She saw his bike chained up outside Pete’s. He’d found it, no problem. Robin walked inside. Harvey was seated on a stool at the bar, a beer in front of him. She took the empty seat to his right, and ordered a vodka tonic.

“I suppose you hate me,” she said. “Should I bother explaining myself or is it not worth the breath?”

Harvey said, “Tell me about Stephanie.”

Robin painted the thumbnail sketch of her child. The girl’s health, her happiness, their dime-sized life together.

“You were selfish,” he said. “You kept Stephanie from me because you didn’t want to share her. You had her so you wouldn’t be alone.”

What a great load of “you” sentences. If he knew anything about productive conversation, he would’ve used “I” sentences, “I think,” and “I feel.” As in, “I think you’re selfish, greedy, and lonely.”

Robin said, “I understand why you’d jump to those dubious conclusions without knowing the subtle psychological issues.”

“Huh?”

“I’m not saying I did the right thing,” said Robin. “But I had my reasons. A long list of them. I’m sorry I never got around to telling you about Stephanie. Now you know.”

“Never got around to telling me I had a daughter,” he said. “Slipped your mind, did it?”

Honestly, it had. For months at a time, Robin didn’t have a single thought or pang of guilt about the Big Secret of her life. Who was Harvey Wilson to her? No one. Nothing.

“On some level, I must have known,” he said. “Why else would I still think about you and that one night? I have, you know. A lot over the years. After our run-in at Barnes and Noble in December, I felt compelled to find you—which wasn’t easy. I had to search property
records in Brooklyn. The whole time, I kept asking myself why I cared. You were like a pebble in my shoe. But maybe it wasn’t
you
. It was an awareness.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Robin. He was a lunatic. But, she would grant him, he had no earthly reason to fixate on her.

Harvey scowled and drank his beer. He seemed young, although he was around her age. “At Barnes and Noble that day, it wasn’t a random encounter,” she said. “I was looking for you.”

“To tell me about Stephanie? But then you lost your nerve?”

She said, “I just wanted to get a look at you, actually. I was curious.”

“If I looked like her,” he said.

“I was nudged by my friends,” she said. “I’d come out to them about the Big Secret. First people I’d ever told. I kept the secret for ten years. And then it just popped out over cards, like it was no big deal. But it is a huge deal.” Robin felt her voice shake. She wrestled for control and continued. “I was just ashamed back then. Everything was mortifying,” she said. “I was three hundred and forty-two pounds! I felt ashamed walking down the block. Getting knocked up on a one-night stand? That was the mountaintop of shame. I didn’t even know I was pregnant for months. My periods were irregular, had been since I was a teenager. I was sick for a while. I thought I had a twenty-four-week stomach bug. When I finally realized I was pregnant, my doctor put me on a strict diet. My weight put the baby and me at high risk of a host of complications. It was a terrifying, horrible mess, the whole pregnancy. And then I had a gastric bypass operation soon after Stephanie was born. I was in transitional mode for years, adjusting to the changes. It’s not easy, having a stomach one day, and not the next. Stephanie was a colicky baby, and I had virtually no help with her. Then 9/11. I fell into a depression that I’m still not quite
 … what
?”

“It’s all rationalizations and bullshit,” he announced. “It never
occurred to you that I might’ve
helped
you? That I could have lightened the load? No cruel pun intended?”

Robin gulped. What did it say about her that, no, it hadn’t occurred to her that Harvey, or anyone, would willingly help her through those years of physical and emotional upheaval? Her parents had always treated her problems like an unwelcome burden, a test on the limits of their patience, another mile in their marathon of parental disappointment. Her friends back then were wrapped up in their own dramas, and drifted away from her at the first sign of trouble. She had no one and nothing. And then she had Stephanie.

“I was selfish,” she said. “And greedy and lonely.”
Still am
, she thought.

He said, “Well, I’m not. I would have stood by you and helped. If you hadn’t run out on me, you might’ve learned that.”

He kept talking as if he would’ve wanted a relationship with her former gigantic self.

“Are you a chubby-chaser?” Robin couldn’t help asking.

Harvey drew back on his stool, incredulous. Considering everything he’d seen and heard today, Robin didn’t get why that question would floor him. “I don’t know which is worse: How little you think of me, or how little you think of yourself.”

“As a narcissist, I’d say how little I think of myself,” she answered. “You could use that line, by the way, on your blog. A follow-up to the post you wrote about seeing me in December.”

“I won’t be blogging about this,” he said.

“Bess was right. This is great material!” said Robin. Seeing his face drop, she let it go. “I like your blog, by the way. You write well. I found myself getting involved in your stories, even though I don’t care about biking. You should do more with it.”

He shrugged. “Do you write?” he asked.

“No discipline,” she said, shaking her head.

“I’ve taken some workshops,” he said. “The instructors always
talk about the writer’s detachment. The writer experiences life, but has to be able to detach from it to look at it objectively. You, Robin, have taken detachment to the extreme.”

“Is that a compliment?” Robin had noticed the phenomenon. She often felt like she was a character in her own life, making it up as she went along, without actually living it. The result was that she mistakenly thought her choices were inconsequential.

“No,” said Harvey. “It’s not a compliment.” He drained his glass. “This is overwhelming. I’ve got to go. I’ll be in touch soon. We have to discuss what to do next. Obviously, I want to be a part of Stephanie’s life.”

They exchanged phone numbers and email addresses. Robin should’ve felt relieved that the awkward (to say the least) confrontation was over. But, instead, she felt a sense of loss. “Don’t go,” she said, sounding desperate to her own ears.

Harvey shook his head. “I’m sorry, Robin, I would stay and keep you company. But I simply can’t stand to be in your presence for one more minute.”

“Oh, well, when you put it like that …”

And he was gone. She finished her cocktail in one swallow. At least he hadn’t threatened to have his lawyer get in touch, as she feared. He still might. Robin didn’t have a clue about the legal ramifications. Stephanie was his genetic offspring, but she was her mother.

Robin closed her eyes and visualized purple smoke swirling out of a shapely bottle. If only she could get the genie back
in
.

The bartender came over, took away her empty. He said, “Need another?”

“Are you kidding?” she asked.