Leaving Haven (36 page)

“Okay,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

The baby, his little bowed legs dangling in midair, began to cry. John's eyes never left Georgia's face. “I came here to apologize, and because I want to talk to you about our family, about us, about the future. I'd rather talk to you alone”—he shot a look at Chessy—“but if you want me to get on my knees here, in front of your sisters, and beg you to forgive me, I'll do it.”

“I don't want to talk to you,” Georgia said. The hurt she felt was deep and true, and John on his knees on the worn painted floorboards wasn't going to change that.

“Georgia, please. I fucked up—God, did I fuck up!—and I am so, so sorry.”

“Hey,” Chessy said. “Watch your mouth. There are children here.” She put a hand over one of Lily's ears.

The baby cried harder, and John cradled him against his shoulder. He rubbed the baby's back and murmured something to him in a low voice. Georgia remembered how he had held Liza like that, walked through the house with her at night, murmuring recipes and cooking wisdom in a soothing voice.
Always use a stainless steel pan to brown butter; you can see the butter change color better. Once you've browned the butter, stir in the balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper.
“Why recipes?” Georgia had asked him once. “Why don't you sing to her?” John had looked at her in genuine surprise. “Recipes are what I love,” he had said.

John caught Georgia looking at him and returned her gaze, staring at her in that way he always had, like he saw something pure and strong inside her, the sculpture beneath the stone. Before this, it had always made her feel seen and known in a way she hadn't felt with anybody else, as though her flaws, both real and imagined, had vanished and she was her most beautiful self.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she said.

“We are a family,” John said. “And I don't mean the kids. I mean you and me.
You
are my family. We're, we're—
mated
.”

Georgia felt her tears rise. “Not anymore,” she said.

Polly took a step forward. “I think you should go,” Polly said.

John looked at Polly in shock. “I don't want to go. I drove all night to get here.”

“Take the baby and go,” Georgia said.

“Georgia, please. I don't even have diapers or formula or that thing for him to sleep in, that cot thing. And I'm not here for him, I'm here for you.”

“The bassinet,” Polly said.

“Whatever it's called,” John said. He looked at Georgia. “You're my family,” he said, his voice stubborn. “We're mated.”

“That's a stupid thing to say,” Georgia said. “I don't even know what it means.”

Haven's cries grew louder and he began to wail, in that high-pitched newborn scream of distress. It was too much for Georgia. She walked over and took Haven from John, patted the baby's small back, and rubbed her cheek against the top of his soft head.

“All right,” she said. “I'll finish feeding him before you go, and Polly will get his things together for you.”

Georgia knew that Polly and Chessy wanted her to keep the baby, believed that she was
meant
to keep the baby. But
she
didn't feel that, and she hoped her eyes said as much now. Polly held her gaze, sighed, then nodded and went back inside, returning to hand the bottle to Georgia before disappearing upstairs. Georgia could hear her folding up the Portacrib, zipping up bags as she packed the baby's things. Chessy stayed on the porch, swaying to and fro with Lily, glaring at John.

“It's fine, Chess,” Georgia said to her. “You can leave us alone.”

Chessy wrinkled her nose at John, then shuffled back inside in her big boots.

Georgia sat down in one of the old green wooden rockers and tried to give Haven the bottle, but he turned his face away and cried. “He won't take a bottle from me,” she said, “but he took it from Polly and he'll probably take it from you. I've got five or six bottles of breast milk you can have, and once that's gone he should take four ounces of formula every four hours.” She unbuttoned her shirt again and pulled the baby to her.

“I'm not going to remember what to do,” John said. “I don't want to make a mistake.”

Georgia grabbed the Little Mermaid beach towel Chessy had hung on the back of the rocker and draped it over her shoulder, to keep the baby warm and because she didn't want John to watch him nursing and get any warm-and-fuzzy, let's-be-a-family ideas.

“You can ask
Alice
what to do,” Georgia said. “She's very well organized.” Her words came out as short and tight as if they'd been snipped off with scissors.

“Georgia, I am not asking Alice about anything. I have seen Alice exactly
once
in the last six weeks, and that was only because I was in a complete panic about how to handle this baby on my own. That is
over
.” John paused and looked at her. “Can I sit down? Is it okay if I sit down?”

Georgia nodded and he sat down in a rocker next to her. She thought about telling him that he should sit in one of the uncomfortable, straight-back wooden chairs, but then she dismissed the thought as petty and remained silent.

They rocked in silence for a few minutes; the baby, full of warm milk, nodded off to sleep in Georgia's arms. She reached one hand under the towel to button up her shirt.

“You should take him now, when he's full and sleepy,” Georgia said.

“I don't want to take him,” John said, “without you. I mean, I love him, I want him, but I came here for
you.
”

Georgia had nothing to say to her husband, really. She wanted only to rock, back and forth, back and forth, and to stare at the lake and not think.

“I don't want him,” Georgia said. “I thought I did, but I don't. He looks like Alice. I'm afraid that every time I look at him, I'll think about”—she saw again the image of Alice's long, lean legs wrapped around John's hips, John thrusting into Alice, John shaking his head back and forth the way he did when—“about you and Alice. And when I think about you and Alice . . .”

Georgia's throat was so tight it was hard to get the words out. “When I think about you and Alice, I feel hurt and rage. The baby deserves better than that. He should have a mother who can look at him and feel nothing but love. I can't do that.”

John was silent for so long that Georgia finally stole a look at him, to see if he had heard her. He sat rocking next to her, his feet flat on the worn, gray-painted floorboards, his hands on his thighs, staring at the lake. Tears filled his eyes.

Georgia's heart was a stone, and stones did not melt.

“Chessy said you wanted the baby back,” she said. Her voice was even now. “I was worried you were going to call the police and have Chessy and Polly—and me—arrested for kidnapping. They thought if I spent time with the baby I'd change my mind, that I'd want to keep him. But they were wrong.”

John continued to rock. “The only call I made to the police,” he said at last, “was when you disappeared. Because I was worried about you.”

“I wish you'd been worried about me a little sooner,” she said. “Like before you screwed around with my best friend.”

“I was lonely,” he said. “I know that's not an excuse, but it's an explanation.”

“It's a cliché,” Georgia said.

“There's nothing I can say that isn't,” John said. “Is there? But I miss you; I miss Liza; I miss our family. I love you. I want you back. Having you gone makes me feel, I don't know, unconnected from everything, from my entire life.”

“I'm sure,” Georgia said.

“Oh, come on, Georgia,
talk
to me. You've refused to see a marital counselor, you wouldn't let me be there for the birth of the baby, you won't answer my letters or phone calls—you're pissed, and you have every right to be pissed. But we had sixteen years of a pretty good marriage before this. Doesn't that count for anything?”

“Seventeen years,” Georgia said. “And evidently it didn't count to you.”

“Bullshit.” John stopped rocking. “I love you. I have loved you from the day you walked into Truscello's. But this didn't happen in a vacuum.”

“Don't you dare make this my fault.”

“I'm
not
. God, if you would listen for
one minute,
maybe we could actually have a conversation. I was scared, okay? You are a great mother, the best. You've done an amazing job with Liza. But sometimes—” John looked around the porch, as though the words he wanted might be hanging from the rusty hook on the wall, scrawled across the checkered oilcloth on the table. “Sometimes, you're
too good
a mother.”

Georgia sat up straighter in the rocker. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means that from the minute Liza was born, I was a second-class citizen in my own house. I didn't know how to deal with an infant but you knew everything, because you'd taken care of Chessy. Every time she cried, every time she had a fever or stubbed her toe—I love her, she's my daughter, but you did
everything
for her, and your attention always went to her first.”

“Of course. She was a baby.”

“She hasn't been a baby for ten years.”

“So you felt compelled to have an affair with my best friend?”

“
No
. Maybe. I don't know. All I know is that I've been irrelevant for a long time now. Even once Liza wasn't a baby, then it was all about trying to have
another
baby. I've spent more time jerking off into a jar over the last ten years than I have making love to my wife. You know what
real
loneliness is? It's living in a house with someone who's so preoccupied with what they
want
that they pay no attention to what they
have
.”

“John—”

He shifted in his chair, so he was facing her. “We spent almost ten years focused on trying to have another baby. And I love you and I knew that's what you wanted to make you happy, so I went along with it—even with using donor eggs from Alice, which, to tell you the truth, made me pretty uncomfortable. Then you were on bed rest, and terrified about losing the baby. Alice came to me about what was going on with Liza and Wren because she didn't want to worry you.
Finally,
a parenting thing I knew something about! I was
needed
. So I spent more time with Alice than I should have.”

“And then you had to fuck her.” Georgia used the harsh, ugly word because the pain inside her felt so harsh and ugly.

“No,” John said.

Georgia braced herself, her shoulders tense, awaiting his anger.

“And it makes me sadder than I can tell you that I crossed that line,” he said.

Georgia bent forward, curling over the baby in her arms. She and John had shared a bed every night for more than eighteen years. Often at night when she climbed into bed, John would reach over for her cold hands, press them between both of his own, then raise her hands to his lips and blow his warm breath on her fingers until they were warm. “Give me the fingers that can out-chill sorbet,” he would say, “the hands that put granita and gelato to shame,” and she would offer her hands to him, pressed together as though in prayer. She had missed the warmth of John's hands at night, missed that familiar ritual. She understood loneliness, too.

“I've spent the past eight weeks sleeping on a couch in my office in the restaurant,” he said, as if he had read her mind, “and even if I were sleeping in a penthouse it wouldn't change anything. I hate it. I miss you.”

She wouldn't look at him now, so he talked to the top of her head. “I'm not proud of what happened; I feel shitty about the whole thing, about myself. I never thought I was the kind of guy who would cheat. But I did. I can't change that.”

He was so close to her she could smell his skin, the familiar scent of garlic.

“You know, Georgia, I'm as comfortable with you as I am with my own shadow. You fit me. I can't get from anyone else what you have given me, and you know that applies vice versa. We're
mated
.”

We're soul mates,
that's what he means, Georgia thought, even if he couldn't articulate it. She buried her face in the top of the baby's head. She had always felt that way about John, too, until the discovery of his affair with Alice made her wonder what she lacked, made her feel fat and uninteresting and disorganized and awful.

The chittering birds and the breeze in the forest filled the silence between them. At last John said, “You know, there's this Japanese word, umami, that describes a fifth taste. It's not salty, sweet, sour, or bitter. It's a, a”—he searched for the word—“a
sensation
that makes your mouth water, something so delicious you can't explain it as one thing. It's full and rich and coats your tongue and it has an aroma, too. It's what you taste in a perfectly dressed Caesar salad—that tang of Parmesan cheese and anchovies and Worcestershire. It's the mating of the things together that makes it work, elevates it to something beyond.”

Screw John and his stupid TV chef shows. Georgia wouldn't look at him.

“That's our marriage, our family,” he said. “I want you back. We're
mated;
we're something different together, something better.”

Georgia leaned in deeper toward the baby in her arms, curled herself around him. She thought of herself curled into a ball at night, alone in their big bed. She thought about John rolling out gum paste and cutting out rose petals to help her with the cake. She thought about John murmuring recipes to infant Liza, trying to soothe this baby she held now. She thought about the hammer he had given her, about his unwavering belief that she was so amazing she could do anything—bake a cake for a senator, carve a dovetail joint, have a baby, even when she had failed at it again and again.