The Paternity Test (33 page)

“Thanks,” I said. “I didn’t expect . . .”

He shrugged. “Why waste money on a cab?”

He offered nothing more effusive than that as we drove off. He steered us silently home with one stiff arm.

The cottage smelled of vacuuming, of dusty agitation. The living room chairs looked repositioned by two or three degrees. We both stood there, seemingly in fear of impoliteness but not knowing what politeness called for.

I had long admired Stu’s pose of calm, his airman’s training:
Buckle up your seat belts, folks; stormy skies ahead; heading for a safer altitude
. But now I was wishing he would strip the seat belts off, for once, and fling us into the turbulence, and
feel
this.

I fell back on a stranger’s questions: How had the weather been up here? What was his take on the latest news, terror attacks in London?

The weather: “Nothing much.” The terror attacks: “Awful.”

If I had to, this was what I’d settle for, I thought. This was a start. At least I had him talking.

Stu said he was going to bed. A flight tomorrow, early.

I was longing to lie with him, to press against his warmth. But I stayed up, watching the late-night comics, drinking beer. I drank one can too many, and left the empties around me, to give us both a ready excuse for why I crashed on the couch. I hadn’t wanted to make Stu say he’d rather sleep alone.

The next day, when Stu was gone, I tried Debora again. Nothing sneaky or sexy now—an overdue apology. To tell her why I’d leveled with Stu. To ask about the fallout on her end.

I called at ten: no answer. Again at noon: nothing.

I thought to try e-mail, and started to type a note, but what if Danny had her password? What if he would read this? I had no idea what, if anything, she had told him. I couldn’t take the risk. I hit Delete.

When, at last, she called us, Stu and I weren’t ready. We hadn’t talked of how we’d face this moment.

We took the call the way we’d taken the one, fve months back, when Debora frst had test results to share: Stu and I were standing in the living room, on separate phones, staring past the deck, toward the dunes. This time, though, we didn’t take each other’s hands. Or touch at all. We hadn’t touched since I’d returned from Joseph’s.

Why had we not spoken of our hopes for Debora’s news, of how we’d now navigate this crossroads? Stu, I figured, maybe didn’t want to jinx the outcome. The thing was, I didn’t know what outcome he desired, and I was scared of what he might be feeling. All these months, we’d hoped and hoped to spark the start of life, but might he now be thinking that the best result was failure? Or, if not the best, the least hurtful? Maybe he thought another “no” would let us end things cleanly here: dismiss Debora, bury our mistakes. And then what? Mourn, forgive? Try with a different surro? (How could we? I couldn’t picture anyone else but her.) Or maybe, worse:
not
forgive,
not
try someone new. Maybe dismiss not just her but me.

Too late, now, to ask him: the phones were in our hands; Stu and I stared out at Sandy Neck. In February the view had been brown and bare and calm. Now the marsh was stuffed with light, belligerently sunny; the steep, glaring dunes looked like icebergs.

“It’s me,” she said. “It’s Debora.”

“Yes,” I said. “We know.”

“I did the test. I checked two times. Pregnant.”

An “oh” rose from my throat. Another, louder: “Oh!” I had planned to wait for Stu, to hear how he reacted, but I could not contain my welling joy. “Deb,” I said, “thank you! I don’t know what to say.”

Neither did she, apparently. Quiet on the line.

I turned to Stu, to hug him, and saw his blurry eyes, the lines of complication in his face. “Stu, we did it. We did it,” I said. “Finally! Let’s be happy.”

He was crying, accepting my hug but not reciprocating. I could feel the trembling in his core.

Through the phone I heard that Debora, too, had started crying. What was she saying? “I” something? Or no, not even a word at all. An exclamation, pure emotion:
Ai!

“Guys,” I said, “we’re here. I know I fucked up,
getting
us here. I know I have to answer for a lot. But now, right now, listen to me: we’re here.”

I tried to hold Stu tighter but he turned and slid away, hanging up the phone as he escaped; I only grazed his elbow as he rushed out to the deck. Rina’s pendant, the Holy Rose, was knocked against the sliding glass. A shrapnel of light. A sound like snapped bone.

“Pat?” said Debora.

“Yes.”

“I thought that you hung up.”

“No,” I said. “That was Stu. I’m here.”

The phone’s empty-seashell hum. Debora’s broken breath.

“You should go?” she said. “Go after him. To talk.”

“Yes, I should. I will,” I said. “But quickly: what’s the deal? Called you a dozen times, you know. Guess I can’t blame you for not answering.”

Debora made the
psh
of a tire being punctured. “I didn’t have my phone,” she said. “He took it from me. Danny.”

“Oh my God. Really, Deb? It’s that bad between you?”

“More bad than you think,” she said. “I’m calling from a pay phone. How did Danny know, Pat? How did he discover? He made me tell him everything. I had to.”

My blood banged in every throbbing vein: guilt, guilt. “Deb, it’s all my fault,” I said. “I told Stu, and he told Danny. I didn’t mean to—Jesus, I’m so sorry.”

Silence for the longest time. I yearned to scream, to crack it. But I did not deserve to say a thing.

Finally she said, “You?” Again, more softly: “You?” A mewling. A tiny, abandoned sound.

“What about Danny now?” I said. “Deb, are you okay? What does he say? He knows the test was positive?”

“No,” she said. “I called you frst. How I am going to tell him?”

I thought of the Samaritans sign, of all the tempting cop-outs. But no, I was finished, now, with cowardly evasions. “We just have to tell,” I said. “Like I said:
we’re here
.”

“Yes, but Pat—”

“We’ll work it out together, okay? We will. But listen, I really have to go; I have talk with Stu. I’ll call you back. I’m sorry, Deb. For everything.”

“No,” she said decisively. “No, I think you’re not.”

“I am, I swear. It kills me. I never meant to screw your life up, too.”

“But not sorry for what’s inside me. Don’t be, Pat. We can’t be. This is not a thing to make us sad.”

“Oh!” I said. “Oh, Deb. You know I’m not. I’m thrilled.” Despite myself, I told her what I’d never said: “I love you.”

Stu stood at the deck’s far end, holding to the rail, as if on a blizzard-tossed ship. His eyes were shut against the slashing sun, or with emotion. I called his name, trying not to spook him.

“Hi,” he said, eyes still shut.

“Hi,” I said. “Just me.”

His shoulders rose. He took a deep and careful breath. “You smell that?”

“What?” I said. “The marsh? Or no, I guess, the water.” What I smelled was salty, unadulterated, boundless.

“I love these days,” he said, “when the wind pattern turns around and we get all that open-ocean air. It smells like—I know this will sound stupid, but who cares—it smells like we can smell our own future.” He opened his eyes. He set his hand lightly on my elbow. “Sorry about just now,” he said. “It
hit
me. I needed a minute.”

“No,” I said. “Me, too. It’s—God, you can’t prepare.”

He hadn’t moved his hand. His touch was soft, surprising, a butterfly that I might scare away.

“And so?” I said. “How do you feel now? Are you okay?”

He turned to me, fixed me with his close, imposing gaze. “Okay? What do you mean, ‘okay’? Isn’t this what we wanted?”

“Yes! Oh, yes, yes. But I was worried that you might . . . that you might not, anymore.”

Now his touch got harder. He gripped me, pulled me close. “Really, Pat? Still?” he said. “After all we’ve been through? You still have so little faith in me?”

The rest of the day, we were at a loss for what to do. Nothing was required of us logistically, not yet. Our lives in every aspect stood to change, but nothing had changed. Plus, we were out of practice being glad together.

Any flashy celebration would have felt improper—our pleasure still provisional, perhaps two separate pleasures. We hadn’t talked of how we’d handle Debora now, for nine more months, or Danny, who I feared would sulk and snipe. We still had some delicate work to do.

Finally Stu proposed a walk in the woods. I agreed.

We headed for a lane I remembered from my boyhood, supposedly an old stagecoach route. Now the lane was overgrown with puckerbrush and prickers. We took turns clearing a path through.

We passed a caved-in woodshed, a tumbledown stone fence. The ground beneath our feet was damp and giving. Stu seemed not to want to talk; that was fine by me. I was mute with wonder at the thought of Debora pregnant. Something of Stu’s or mine inside her—must it matter whose? Something of
us
was how I hoped we’d see it.

Across the Cape Cod Railway tracks, over a little knoll, and down to the surprise of a leafy cranberry bog. (Was it new? I had not recalled it.) A row of beehives along one side, a pile of surplus sand, and then the placid Christmassy sweep of berry-studded shrubs.

Stu leapt over the ditch. He knelt to pick some berries.

“Don’t,” I said. “Too tart.”

“I like them tart,” he said. Chomping one, he winced with satisfaction. Then he turned a circle, scanning the scrubby lowland. “It looks so different, doesn’t it, when you’re standing here?” he said. “I mean, as opposed to from the air, flying over.”

Our flight in the rented Skylane, my special birthday treat, shortly after we had made the move: swooping above the fallow bogs, like purple square-cut gems. Stu’s confession:
I see what I was missing
.

“That was another season, though,” I said. “The end of March?”

“I know,” he said, “but that’s not why it’s different. Not all of why. It’s not as grand, up close; it’s uglier, in a way. But then, it’s also prettier, too: you see every little shining berry.”

He bent down and plucked another one, and gave it to me. I bit it in two, and swallowed half, spat the other out. I saw what Stu liked: the acid woke my tongue.

“What a crazy thing,” he said. “What we did? Moving up here?”

What was he saying—did he regret it? Did he plan now to say he’d had his fll?

Then he added, “
You
were crazy. To give me another chance.” He shook his head, surrendering to what might have been a smile.

I could only hope I understood his point correctly: against his judgment, he would try to stand by me now, too.

Stu looked quickly around the bog, as if we might get caught here. “Hey, should we collect a bunch of cranberries?” he said. “For pie?”

“No,” I said. “Not ripe enough. Not for two, three months.”

Stu made a pout of disappointment.

“Blueberries, though—is that okay?” I said. “We should have plenty.” The bushes I’d de-brambled when we frst moved to the cottage had responded well, thriving in their new light. A bumper crop had ripened in the time I’d been at Joseph’s.

“Sure,” said Stu. “You want, I’ll help you pick.”

“Maybe we’ll make
two
pies,” I said. “An extra one. For them.” Danny and Debora, I meant. A peace offering.

We walked home quickly through the sunlight-marbled woods. The way was freer, cleared by all the work of our approach.

We were picking berries together, around the biggest bush, each with a cleaned-out yogurt tub to hold our yield, when something cracked: a gunshot? I flinched, dropped the tub. Berries tumbled all around my feet.

Then I heard an engine; another, softer crack: gravel on the driveway, that was all. Danny’s blue Explorer, gleaming and imperial, skidded to a stop beside our car.

At frst I was relieved. Just Danny, only Danny. “Shoot,” I said, trying to save the fruit I hadn’t stepped on. “I lost almost everything I’d picked.”

“Leave it,” said Stu. “Just leave it now. Come on, Pat. Get ready.”

Then it started to hit me: Oh.
Danny
.

He was in the driver’s seat, a pale Debora beside him. Stepping out, she staggered slightly. (Morning sickness, already? Or maybe it was emotional: a vertigo of chagrin.) Danny stepped out, too, with seemingly willful calm, and said, “We have to talk about this. Now.”

“Yes, we do. Of course,” said Stu. “Why don’t you come on in?”

Danny paused, as though he’d envisioned something different: A shouting match in the driveway? A fistfight?

The four of us, in sleepwalk steps, fled into the house—as far as the living room, where we stalled.
Wheel of Fortune
tinkled from the TV (had I left it on?). I muted it, then thought again, clicked Off.

Danny and Debora, it suddenly struck me, had never seen our home. All our meetings had taken place at their house or in public. I would have liked to think this was an inadvertent omission. But surely they had noticed; probably they were hurt. Why had we not thought to have them over, or they not asked to come? Had they—or had we—felt unworthy?

Weeks ago, I’d feared the prospect of Danny bursting in on me—on me and Debora, catching us in the act. Why did I feel now as I had dreaded feeling then? I saw my piles of magazines, my laptop, empty beer cans: not immaculate, but not especially messy. On the wall: Stu’s travel posters, a photo of us in Prague, possessions neither damning nor salacious. What was Danny seeing that he shouldn’t, that was private? Nothing but my life with Stu. Our life.

Stu asked, “Can I get you something? Drinks? Fresh-picked berries?”

“No,” said Danny. “Sit down”—as if this were his house.

Compliance was hardly conscious; his voice’s gravity moved me. We all sat in various rigid poses.

I stole a glance at Debora, who seemed dazed, deflated; even her hair, in cluttered strands, looked thin. She was in a halter top that showed a sunburned shoulder. At least I thought the roughed-up swath was sunburn.

She saw me staring. “From cooking,” she said lowly, not meeting my eyes. “The pressure cooker. Making some beans. I opened it too soon.”

But how would it have burned her only there, on one shoulder? And what about the Band-Aid on her palm?