One Week In December (14 page)

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Authors: Holly Chamberlin

BOOK: One Week In December
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25
Becca went to bed that night—rather, to the old leather couch—feeling very unhappy and not at all triumphant, as she thought she would feel once her decision had been announced.
Why was it that in her professional life she was strong and confident, unafraid of criticism or argument, but that in her personal life, while with her family and the few acquaintances she could count, she was defensive and suspicious, and yes, let it be said, afraid?
She wondered. Had this been the dynamic only since her pregnancy? Yes. She thought that it had. She had been a rebellious kid, a good kid overall but never one to slink around or feel put-upon. She had been happy.
A strange thought suddenly occurred to her. Had her family really been the cause of this change in attitude and behavior—or had she?
Troubled, Becca pushed the thought aside. Earlier she had brought a decanter of scotch to the den and now she got up from the couch and shot a glass, in spite of the headache that still loomed. Her trainer would not be happy if he knew how many empty calories she was consuming this holiday season, but for once, Becca just didn't care. Again, she tried to fall asleep. She relaxed her body, part by part, from feet to stomach, from shoulders to head. It was no good. She turned on her side and curled into the fetal position. Still, consciousness prevailed. Another shot of scotch was out of the question. She didn't need to face the morning with a Brandy Alexander /scotch hangover. After over an hour, she succumbed to her mind's refusal to let go.
Becca reached for the lamp on the end table, and pulled its frayed cord. She crawled out of her makeshift bed, drew one of the heavier blankets around her, and walked over to the room's only window. It faced the rear of the house; though Becca couldn't see much outside with the light on behind her, she knew that she was looking in the direction of a thick stand of pine trees, like sentinels on guard, or like an army amassed before an attack. Neither image made her feel good.
Nor did the fact that the wind was gaining in velocity and power. The dark pines, the howling wind, and the relative isolation of the house all compounded Becca's already melancholy, lonely mood.
Appropriately enough, her memory conjured a line from a poem by Anne Sexton entitled “Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward.” She had first come upon the poem in a college course on American women poets. It had touched a nerve in her then, with its exploration of the relationship between the maternal bond and the sometimes very different maternal role. It had upset her by coming too close to her own truth, with which she was struggling. Now, in a soft whisper she recited the line that had stayed with her all these years: “Yours is the only face I recognize.” Yes. In a way, Rain was the only face—the only person—she recognized in her life.
But unlike the experience of the poem's speaker, it hadn't been that way at first, not until about Rain's fifth birthday. She had fallen in love with her child, but it had taken time. First, she'd had to get past all of the negative and confused emotions swirling around the arrival of her child—guilt, shame, self-reproach, and anger—at herself, at Rain's father, and at her own family. Well, if she hadn't exactly gotten past those debilitating emotions, at least she had learned to keep them in check. Mostly.
In fact, during those first few years, her daughter had been largely a stranger to her. No one had given Becca a set of rules to follow; no one had counseled her or explained to her what rights she might have or what duties she should shoulder. Yes, David and Naomi were to be Rain's parents. That much was clear. But how was the sixteen-year-old “aunt” supposed to behave? What was she supposed to feel?
Becca had a vague memory—more a sense, really—of her mother having approached her a few times, wanting to talk about “the situation,” but Becca hadn't wanted to, or maybe she simply hadn't been able to articulate feelings and questions. Becca did remember that she had very much wanted to move on. And more than that, she had wanted to make a success of her life so that never again would she be thought of as a problem for her family to solve.
Initially, Becca hadn't felt guilty about her—distance—from Rain, but over the years, as Becca matured and her maternal feelings blossomed, she grew to be horrified at her original lack of strong feeling for her daughter. What was wrong with her that she hadn't felt an immediate bond? Was she some kind of an emotional cripple?
Maybe. Because in her harsher moments Becca couldn't help but wonder what sort of normal, healthy person would have done what she had done—have unprotected, spur-of-the-moment sex.
Becca shivered as the memories came back, as they too often did. She had been frightened yet anxious for the experience. It wasn't what she'd thought it would be—but what had she thought it would be? The truth was that she didn't remember much about that night, but memory didn't matter. All that mattered was the end result. All that mattered was the product.
God,
she thought, holding the blanket tighter around herself,
I've made my daughter, a human being, sound like something on a belt in a factory, a widget, whatever that is, or a cupcake packed in plastic. The end product of my thoughtless action.
She supposed people, most of her family, assumed that she'd been drinking that night, that fateful night, but she hadn't been. The guy—she refused anymore to name him, even to herself—had had a few beers, but there'd been no coercion, no bullying, not even any pleading or pathetic attempts at evoking pity in her tender female breast for an adolescent boy's desires, his needs.
No. She'd gone with him willingly, like a lamb to the slaughter.
Becca laughed out loud at herself. There was that old, long-repressed flair for the dramatic. A lamb to the slaughter, indeed!
Anyway, that wasn't quite right. Becca was pretty sure a lamb had no idea what was in store for it at the end of the evening, while at least she'd had the clinical facts down and some brief, incomplete experience to guide her. Tales from her friends were of no use; the girls she knew who had “gone all the way,” who had “hooked up,” were of two types—those who obviously exaggerated the experience and those who spoke with an annoyingly romantic vagueness. Both sorts of tales were useless.
And Becca's having sex with that guy hadn't been premeditated, not like what a few girls she'd known had planned down to the last plan-able detail. They'd set out to lose their virginity as if they were setting out on a mission for NASA. How, when, where, with whom—it all was organized and arranged and there was no room for the slightest bit of emotion in it all. There was even an escape plan in place, in case something went wrong, like the unexpected arrival home of a parent.
For Becca, had it been passion or perversity that led her to spend those minutes with the guy, Rain's father? No, it definitely had not been passion. And if it had been perversity, it was of the curious kind, on the order of “I know that if I put my finger in this candle's flame, my skin will burn. And yet, I can't resist.”
Well, Becca reflected, burns heal and sometimes don't even leave a scar, so that the memory of the burn eventually fades away, too, but a baby conceived because a girl was too perverse to do what she knew was right and use birth control, well, that baby isn't going to become a faded memory. That baby is going to be a living, breathing reality for as long as Fate would allow.
She thought about Rain's father. About how there was a good chance he didn't even know a baby had ever been born. She hadn't even told him that she was pregnant. It was news she could barely bring herself to articulate to her parents, so deep was her shame and terror. And the father—he was, after all, a stranger to her. Besides his first and last name, Becca had known virtually nothing about him. Still, the idea of ending the pregnancy was something she couldn't face. She couldn't say why, exactly, but every feeling rebelled against the idea. So, nine months later, Rain had been born.
Suddenly, standing at the window of her parents' house, Becca remembered an incident that had taken place a long time ago. She had been out of college two, maybe three years, and was living in a small apartment in Somerville. She'd gone home to spend the weekend at her parents' house; Saturday afternoon her mother realized she was out of milk, and Becca had offered to go to the supermarket. Once there, she was waylaid in front of the display of one percent milk by a man about her parents' age, a man she vaguely remembered as having been to a party at the Rowan house many years before, when she was still in middle school. Had he been a neighbor? Whatever he'd been then, at that moment in the supermarket he was a nosy, insinuating man who stood too close to Becca as he introduced himself and then, to her horror, had said: “Wasn't there some—difficulty—with you a few years ago?” Briefly, she'd been paralyzed with fear, and then anger had gotten the better of her. She felt violated. “The only difficulty with me,” she spat, taking a large step away from the man, “is having to endure another second of your presence.” She'd left the supermarket in a hurry, without the milk; she could pick up a half gallon at the gas station's convenience store.
Becca sighed. Yes, anonymity. Silence. These had been her only and her constant companions; one certainly couldn't call them friends.
She felt terribly, overwhelmingly alone. And she felt scared. But when she tried to identify just what it was that scared her, she couldn't. Not really.
Becca turned from the window, crawled back into her makeshift bed, and switched off the lamp. The wind was still growing in intensity, roaring now, and rattling the windowpanes. It was a mournful sound to match her mournful mood.
Sleep was a very long time in coming.
26
Saturday, December 23
 
Julie was dusting the furniture in the living room when her oldest child confronted her. That's how it felt when Olivia approached you, Julie had decided. Like you were being confronted. And it had gotten far worse in the past few years. Julie wondered if the sight of Olivia first thing each morning made her employees cringe. It was an uncharitable thought but there it was.
“Mom,” she said, “I was looking for that old salt cellar, you know, the silver one with all the chasing. I can't seem to find it. I could have sworn I last saw it in this breakfront. But that was more than a year ago. What did you do with it? Did you move it somewhere without telling anyone?”
This time, Julie didn't have to feign absentmindedness. For a moment she really couldn't remember what had become of the silver salt cellar her grandmother had bought in a flea market—so the story went—when, as an eighteen-year-old, she had traveled to France for a month with a wealthy aunt.
“Now, let me think for a minute,” she said, squinting as if that action might aid recall. “Oh, yes, I remember now. I sold it.”
Julie wasn't a sentimental person. To her, expediency and practicality mattered far more than tokens or things and the arbitrary meanings people attached to them. To sell an object almost never used—and one she didn't think very pretty—meant nothing more to her than what it was, a sale. It was a business transaction, and emotions had nothing to do with business transactions.
To her oldest daughter, however, it meant something quite other. The look on Olivia's face startled Julie.
“Liv, dear, what's wrong?” she asked.
“I cannot believe that you sold your grandmother's most precious possession.”
Julie shrugged. “Actually, she didn't much care for it, which is why she gave it to me.”
“That's not the point,” Olivia retorted. “Your grandmother touched that salt cellar. For all we know, her fingerprints were still on it!”
The thought struck Julie as slightly macabre. Her daughter wanted to collect the fingerprints of a dead woman, who, from all Julie could remember, wasn't a very nice woman to begin with. She thought of the old habit of putting a bit of a dead loved one's hair in a locket and shuddered. “Oh, Liv,” she said, “aren't the living more important than the dead and their artifacts?”
“No, they're not! How can you say that? If everyone took the position that history didn't matter, then—”
Olivia stopped abruptly. Julie watched her daughter carefully. She seemed overwhelmed by her own emotions.
“Then what?” she prompted. “Oh, honey, I'm not saying we can't treasure and cherish memories and stories and traditions. And I certainly believe that we should learn from mistakes made in the past. All I'm saying is that—”
Olivia interrupted her. “I'm going to get that salt cellar back. When exactly did you sell it? Who did you sell it to? Maybe I can still track it down. Was it to a dealer in Boston? Do you have the receipt? If I leave early tomorrow morning, and if the snow slows down, I can make it to Boston in time to—”
Julie reached for her daughter's arm, but Olivia stepped away. “Olivia,” she said. “Don't be absurd! That troublesome old salt cellar is probably long gone. Besides, your proper place is right here with your family. And with your husband. Not chasing down some dusty old—artifact.”
Olivia stalked off a few feet, then abruptly turned to face her mother. “Why did you sell it anyway?” she demanded. “On a whim?”
“No, not on a whim. The boiler needed to be replaced and I didn't want to dip into our savings. That old salt cellar was just sitting there, doing nothing but taking up space and collecting dust, so I thought I'd see if it was worth something. Well, it turned out it was worth something, just about the cost of a new boiler.”
“A boiler!” Olivia cried, her face a mask of horror and incomprehension. “God, Mom, why didn't you ask me for the money?”
“Oh, Liv, don't be absurd,” Julie said with a laugh. “I'm not asking my children to pay for repairs to my home. Besides, I didn't say your father and I didn't have the money. I just didn't want to spend it.”
“So you sold a precious family heirloom instead.”
Julie was beginning to lose patience with her oldest child. “Liv, it was only a salt cellar! It wasn't, oh, I don't know, a functioning body part! I'm not dealing in the illegal selling of human organs!”
Olivia suddenly stalked off to the other end of the room, and then back, as if her body contained negative energy it just had to burn. “Mom, don't you understand that objects have meaning beyond their physical presence or their usefulness or their monetary value? The objects we own are—they're talismans. They bespeak memory. They're treasures.”
Julie sighed. How had her daughter become so . . . What was the word? Fixated. Obsessed. It didn't seem normal.
“Well,” she said, “in my opinion, these objects we say we own far too often own us.”
“That makes no sense, Mom. And anyway, that salt cellar wasn't yours to sell!”
Julie raised her eyebrows. “Oh? Then whose was it? Yours?”
“It was no one's to sell. We are the custodians, our family, we are the keepers of our past.”
“Custodians!” Julie couldn't help but laugh. “That's ridiculous, Liv. This is a family, a living, breathing organism, not a museum.”
“Yeah, well, next time don't do me—don't do this family—any favors.”
Julie felt hurt, and annoyed. But she tried to retain an even temper. Shouting wasn't going to get her point across; maybe reason would, and maybe it wouldn't. It was still worth a try. “I truly don't know why you're so upset, Olivia,” she said. “We have plenty of family heirlooms. I'd be more than glad to give you a few special pieces. James likes to cook, doesn't he? Well, we still have all of Great-Grandma Rowan's recipes.”
“This is not about James. This is about the family.”
If James wasn't Olivia's family, then her daughter's marriage was likely in worse shape than she'd imagined. Julie sighed. She felt defeated and, more annoyingly, puzzled. “Well, it's too late to do anything about the salt cellar now. What's done is done, what's gone is gone.”
Olivia rubbed her eyes and it suddenly struck Julie that her daughter looked older than her forty-two years. There were lines around her mouth that hadn't been there six months ago, and deep shadows ringed her eyes. Could sadness—emptiness—really wreak such havoc? Apparently it could.
“I've got some sorting to do,” Olivia said, dropping her hands and turning toward the stairs.
“Liv? Before you go . . .”
“What?” she said, turning back with obvious reluctance.
Julie wasn't a coward. She would risk an explosion on the chance that her daughter would open up about any trouble she and her husband might be having. “Is everything okay between you and James?”
Olivia looked stunned. “Of course it is,” she said. “Why would you even ask?”
“Well, I don't know, you both seem a little—well, not yourselves. I couldn't help wondering if maybe the subject of adoption had come up again.”
“No,” she said flatly. Firmly. “It hasn't.”
“Oh. Well, and then this news about Becca wanting to tell everything to Rain . . . I thought it might—upset you. After all you and James went through trying to start a—”
Julie stopped mid-sentence. A look had come across her daughter's face that frightened her. It was a look of—fury. Olivia stalked back toward her mother.
“You want the truth, Mom?” she said. “I'll tell you what upsets me. I'll tell you what's upset me for the past sixteen years. The fact that you and Dad and Grandma decided to give Rain to David and Naomi and not to me.”
Julie was alarmed by her daughter's anger. She wasn't afraid, at least, not for her own sake, but for her daughter, she was. She'd had no idea Olivia had been harboring such terrible resentment toward her family, a resentment that easily might have been fueled by the trouble she'd had conceiving—and by the ultimate acceptance of the fact that she would never be a biological mother.
“But, Liv,” she said, hoping her sympathy was obvious, “you were single, on your own, working your way through grad school. David was married, settled. And he and Naomi planned on starting a family soon, anyway.”
Olivia poked her forefinger at her own chest. Julie flinched at the force of the gesture. “I'd planned on having a family, too, Mom,” Olivia said. “And my being single was no reason for you to deny me custody of Rain. Plenty of single people are parents, and damn good ones at that. I've always been responsible. For God's sake, Mom, I babysat for David, Becca, and Lily. It's not as if I had no experience being around children. And you remember I took that child psychology class in college.”
One college course didn't make you an expert on anything, but Julie let that comment slide. “I'm sorry, Liv,” she said. “But . . . why didn't you say anything to us back then? At least your father and I would have known your feelings on the matter.”
Olivia let out a brief and nasty laugh. “Because I was a fool. I thought you or Dad or Grandma would know how I might feel. But you probably never even considered my feelings, did you?”
“We're not mind readers, Olivia. I'm sorry, but as far as I recall, you never indicated to any of us that you wanted to be Rain's adoptive mother.”
“Yeah, well, what good would it have done, anyway? You still would have chosen David. David is the favorite. He always has been and he always will be.”
“Oh, stop that, Olivia,” Julie said, with rising anger. “You sound like a child. David and Naomi came to us with an offer to be Rain's parents. And their willingness convinced us that giving Rain to them was the right thing to do. I refuse to be made to feel guilty about this situation. By you or Becca or by anybody.”
Olivia shook her head. “Fine. Wash your hands of all responsibility. Sell off the family's property. Deny any guilt in passing over your oldest child in favor of the favorite child. Life must be really easy for people like you. People without a trace of sentiment or family feeling. People who don't give a damn about anyone but themselves.”
Before Julie could open her mouth to reply—and she had no idea what to say to that horrible and unfair accusation—Olivia stormed from the living room and clomped up the stairs, leaving her mother feeling, for the first time in years, truly wounded.

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