Somebody Else's Daughter (35 page)

“For someone with such a sheltered life,” she told him, “you're a very accomplished lover.”

He laughed. “Coming from you, that's a compliment.”

“I actually miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

“I guess I'm more conservative than I realized,” she said uncertainly.

“
Conservative
is not a word I'd use to describe you.”

“I need to find someone who's available for a change.”

“Yes, you do. And you will, Claire. I'm sure of it.”

“Are things okay with Candace?”

“Yeah, they're okay,” he said. “Aside from a little collateral damage. I appreciate what you did, actually. You inspired me to work on my marriage.” He laughed a little then said, as if to make it official, “I am attempting to honor my commitment to her.”

“Good for you.” She used the German accent. “A little head shrinking can go a long way, yes?”

“I know it's hard to believe, but I just might be cured.”

“Ya, it's good.”

“It's good to be away, as a family.”

“Good boy,” she said. “I'll let you go.”

“I'll see you.”

It was a nice conversation and she was happy they'd talked, but she felt a little lost when she hung up. It always came down to her being alone. That's just how things worked out for her. She'd give a lot of herself to people, men, and end up empty-handed. She didn't blame them, it was her own doing. She had no one to blame but herself for being unattached. But now she wanted someone in her life. She didn't want to be alone anymore. She wanted to live out the rest of her days with a man she adored.

She thought of Nate Gallagher driving around in her father's truck with her picture on the visor and laughed out loud. He had called it fate. It occurred to her that she wouldn't mind riding around with him for a while,
years,
maybe.

She wondered how he'd look without that beard.

She went downstairs and fixed herself some tea.
A simple life,
she thought, dunking the teabag, lifting it up on a spoon, wrapping the string tightly around it to squeeze the water out. Her mother had taught her to do it. And her father would scoop the sugar and hold his spoon on the tea's surface, letting the tea seep into the sweet mound gradually, so it would evenly disperse. She could almost imagine him sitting here now, doing it. “The sweet things in life take time,” he used to say. “You have to be patient.”

On the way up to bed, the DVD in the trash caught her eye. In the interest of parental surveillance, she decided to have a look. She took it from the trash and went upstairs to her room. She studied the box, the picture on the cover, noting, with amazement, that the actress bore a striking resemblance to Joe's wife. In illegibly small print, the credits revealed it as a
J & H Production
. “As in Joe and Harold,” she announced to the room. “Well, what do you know?”

Joe had failed to mention that his wife was an—ahem—actress. Claire felt an irritable mixture of feelings, one of which, regrettably, was jealousy. Because even though a certain part of her hated Joe Golding, and regretted sleeping with him, it could not be disputed that, with his lovely peasant hands, he had vigorously turned her on.

Mustering an open mind, she pushed the disc into the machine and watched the film, trying to imagine how the images translated in Teddy's teenaged brain. The fact that the actress was indeed Candace Golding thirty years younger was highly disconcerting. Claire felt clammy and a little strange, feverish.
Did people really do this stuff?
As the men entered all three of her orifices at once, Claire tried to comprehend the physical ramifications of such a position. It made her feel terribly sorry for Candace, it made tears spring to her eyes. How was it possible that she'd ever done this? No wonder Joe hadn't wanted her to watch it. Yet still, she couldn't take her eyes away. It was like watching some kind of bizarre circus act. She sat there, her heart pounding in her chest. Was this normal behavior, she asked herself, or was it abnormal? Was it instinctual, stirred up from some primal place?
No,
she thought emphatically. She couldn't help remembering Joe's words,
We're bigger, stronger.

What was it about men that made them like this?

Claire had taken her share of Women's Studies classes in college and she'd learned that feminists were divided on the issue of pornography. Some were ardently opposed to it. Others categorized porn as an aspect of freedom that was protected by the first amendment and therefore permissible. It was better to allow it than censor it, they argued, because censorship was a tactic of repression, but it seemed to Claire a stupid rationale. Yeah, she didn't like the idea of censorship either, but no matter how you sliced it, getting fucked three ways at once was
getting fucked.
No matter what sort of free speech you used to describe it.

32

It was an honest mistake. After his mother had gone to bed that night, he'd gone down to the kitchen and retrieved the disc from its plastic box, then put the box back into the wastebasket. In the morning, she'd emptied the wastebasket into the large plastic bag in the kitchen, which in turn went out to the curb for the garbage trucks to take away. She never suspected that he'd taken back the disc.

He'd put it in a ziplock bag in his backpack, fully intending to return it to Rudy that afternoon, but during study hall Willa had asked to borrow a pencil, and she'd gone digging around in his backpack. She'd pulled out the disc, examining it in her hands, curious about the title, “What's
this?
” she'd said, wide-eyed. “Is it contraband?” Then Marco had grabbed it, announced the title, and started making fun of him, and then Monica took it and wouldn't give it back. A huge ruckus ensued, one that Teddy could do little about, and everyone was laughing and accusing him of being a pervert. After school, Willa came up to him and asked him about the film. “I want to see it,” she said.

“No you don't.”

“Why not?”

“Because, you won't like it. It's not for girls.”

“What? That's ridiculous.”

He shook his head. “You won't. Trust me.”

“Where did you get it?”

He started walking.

“Answer me!”

“Rudy, all right? I got it from Rudy. And I'm bringing it back.” They rode the bus together, as usual. He got off at her stop and walked over to the barn. She barged into Rudy's place and said, “Show me that film or I'll tell my father.”

“Tell him what?” Rudy said. “I don't really give a fuck.” But then he said, “Show it to her, then. She's going to find out someday. May as well be now.”

“Find out what?”

Rudy took the disc and put it into the machine. Willa sat there and watched it. “Is that—?”

But before they could answer she ran out.

33

She ran for a long time. She ran into town. The sun was sharp. She found her reflection in the dark window of a shop. There were two of her looking back, identical outlines of a girl in a stupid uniform, someone she was supposed to know yet who seemed like a stranger. The lines could not contain her, she thought. She was spilling over into someone else.

Who am I?
she thought.

She had some money. She bought a pack of cigarettes. She didn't care. She went into the park and sat on the swings. She smoked. The sun was falling down behind her back. Time passed, an hour, maybe more. It was getting cold.

She felt something wrap around her shoulders, a coat. She looked up. Her father was standing there. She ignored him, but he said, “Let's go home.”

In the car, he told her what he did for a living. “It's a business,” he said. “Like anything else.” He told her how he'd met her mother when she was only eighteen. “It was a hard time for her. She didn't have many options.”

“That's so gross,” she said. “I can't believe she did that. What's wrong with her? I would never do that.”

Her dad squinted into the setting sun. “We all have things that we regret, Willa. That's one of your mother's.”

“I don't,” she snapped. “I won't. I won't ever. I won't make mistakes like that.”

“I hope you don't, honey,” he said. “But you might. Sometimes you get into a situation. Sometimes things just happen. You open a door and walk through it and suddenly there's no getting back. I'm not trying to make excuses. It's just the way it is in life. It's just how things turn out.”

She thought about Mr. Heath and started to cry.

“I don't like what you do,” she said finally.

“I don't like it either.”

She looked over at him and felt her heart breaking a little bit.
He's
my daddy,
she thought, and touched his arm. His eyes were teary, she realized he was crying.

“It's okay, Dad. I'm not mad anymore.”

But he kept on crying, mopping his eyes with a handkerchief. “I just want you to be happy,” he said. “That's all I've ever wanted.”

“I know.”

“I would do anything for you, Willa. I want you to know that. Your mother too. She loves you very much.”

They drove the rest of the way in silence. The road was getting dark. He pulled up in front of the house.

“I'm not going to say anything to her about this,” she said. “It's in the past. It should stay there.”

“Okay.” He touched her cheek, gently, and kissed her forehead. Then they got out of the car and went in for dinner.

34

Candace's husband was like a man under a spell. It was as if he'd been struck by lightning or, as in a Shakespearean play, had drunk some intoxicating potion, and when he'd woken up from a murky sleep, it was her, once again, that he loved. When he looked at her, she saw desire in his eyes, and it made her shy sometimes and uncertain. Often, when they made love, her eyes would tear. Her love for him had been buried for a long time. It had languished under layers of dirt and now he was digging into her, grasping what was left and blowing off the dust. There it was, their love, it shone in his hands like some archaeological treasure.

On the one hand, she was grateful that he still loved her, on the other, she trusted none of it.

The trees were black and bare, the fields the color of cornmeal. That morning, Willa had woken her to ride. Together, they rode the trails in silence as the sky came to light. The sky was pink, the blush of carnations. It was almost winter. Steam flowed out of the horses' mouths. Her daughter's skin was flushed with health.

Over breakfast, Willa told her about a girl she'd met at Sunrise House. “She's a prostitute,” she informed her, darkly. She seemed to be watching for her reaction.

Candace shifted in her chair. “I'm all for community service, Willa, but I'm not so sure I'm comfortable with you having a friend like that.”

“Why?” she said, her voice verging on antagonism. “She's just a person like you or me. She made a bad choice, that's all. She opened a door and walked through it.”

“Okay,” Candace said, sensing some subtext to the conversation. That was one of Joe's lines, about the door.

“She needs some money,” Willa continued. “I told her I'd give her some.”

“How much money?”

“Not very much. She's in a bad situation. I want to help her. She doesn't have anyone else.”

“What will she do with the money?”

“She wants to go home. She's from Poland.”

“Ah, she's from Poland,” Candace said, as if that made a difference. “Well, of course I'll give you some money.” She reached for her purse and gave her a hundred dollars. “But be careful. You don't want her to think there's more where that came from. You never know with these people.”

“Yeah,” Willa said. “You never know.”

“Just don't forget that she's a stranger, that's all I'm saying. You have to be careful.”

“I know, Mom,” she said, but Candace wasn't so sure. She looked across the table at her daughter, wanting to tell her about her own life when she was her age, but she couldn't push the words out. “It's sad,” she said finally. “The things people do,
women,
to get by.”

Willa met her eyes. Candace took a deep breath, trying not to cry. Sunlight filled the windows. The trees moved in the wind. The kitchen gleamed and sparkled. “We're so lucky,” she nearly gasped.

“We are.” Willa came over and put her arms around her and gave her a kiss. “I'm the luckiest girl in the whole world.”

They could hear the bus coming up the hill, its squealing gears. Willa grabbed her backpack and ran out. Through the window, Candace watched her running down the driveway, remembering her little girl in her various stages of growth. Now she was tall and gangly and her feet were too big for the rest of her and her hair was long, down to her hips. She was a woman now, Candace thought almost mournfully. It was only a matter of time before the world rushed in and had its way with her.

Joe had flown to California that morning. It was parent/teacher conference day and Candace wasn't looking forward to going alone. Not that she had anything to worry about. Willa was a good student; they always had good things to say about her. But it was hard for Candace going down to the school. In truth, she felt intimidated. Just pulling down the long driveway made her nervous, finding a place to park on the field of expensive cars, many of which had the names of colleges affixed to their rear windows.
Bates, Colgate, Princeton.
Today, the school was all dressed up for the occasion. The dead mums had been replaced with holly bushes and there were pretty wreaths on all the doors. Inside, humble Hanukkah and Kwanzaa decorations had been placed strategically on the walls. In the auditorium, there was a special meeting about college taking place for the parents of juniors; Greer Harding was already on the stage. Candace slipped inside as silently as possible and sat off to the side. In her usual supercilious twang, Greer Harding detailed the horrors of the application process. “Applications are at a record high,” she warned. “It will be a sincere challenge for your children to get into their first-choice schools.”