The Unwelcomed Child (32 page)

Terror shot through me.

“Grandpa?” I cried from the doorway. He didn’t move. “Grandpa!” I shouted, and stepped in. His body shuddered, and he opened his eyes.

“Wha . . . what?” he said, and sat up.

I breathed relief. “I’m sorry I woke you, but you’ve been sleeping so long. You haven’t eaten anything. I was worried,” I said.

“Oh. What time is it?” He looked at the clock. “Oh. Okay. I’ll come down. It’s all right,” he said, wiping his cheeks vigorously. He looked at me and smiled. “I’m fine, Elle.”

“I’ll make you a ham and cheese sandwich, toasted,” I said. I knew that was one of his favorites.

“Okay. Thanks.” I thought he still looked a little dazed. I was sorry I had woken him. “Give me ten minutes or so. I’ll wash up and wake up proper,” he said.

I left and went down to make his sandwich. I knew he liked coffee at lunch. Grandmother Myra usually simply heated what was left over from breakfast, but I also knew he loved having a fresh cup. While I was preparing it, the phone rang. I stood staring at it. We had so few calls. When it rang again, I thought Grandpa Prescott must be in the shower, otherwise he would have answered. After the third ring, I picked up the receiver. My hand was trembling as I brought the receiver to my ear. Was it the hospital or Grandmother Myra’s doctor calling?

“Hello, the Edwards residence,” I said.

“Elle,” I heard. “It’s Claudine. Can you talk?”

“Yes,” I said. I didn’t remember giving her or Mason our telephone number, and I was sure we weren’t in the phone book. My grandparents didn’t want any solicitations over the phone. “How did you get this number?”

“I paid two dollars and ninety-five cents. This was easy, as was finding the man I’m sure is your father.”

Those words took the breath out of me the way a punch in my stomach might.

“Hello? Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes. How?”

“Tracked him through that bar, Barrett’s on Greene Street. It’s still there. It’s probably some sort of landmark by now. He’s listed as the owner of record. I checked him out, Elle. He’s the right age. I even found his home address. Our parents are leaving tomorrow. Maybe we can go up there the following day.”

I heard Grandpa coming down the stairs.

“I have to get off the phone,” I said quickly. “We’ll talk later.”

“Gotcha,” she said. She sounded so excited it was as if she had found her own father.

I hung up quietly.

Grandpa Prescott turned toward the kitchen. I fixed his sandwich and put it in the toaster oven just as he entered.

“Did I hear the phone ring?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“It wasn’t the hospital, was it?” he asked quickly.

“No, Grandpa. It was someone calling the wrong number,” I told him.

“Oh. Good. I mean, good that it wasn’t the hospital.”

“It will be just a few minutes for your sandwich. I made some coffee. It should be ready any minute.”

“Oh, fresh coffee. Good. You’ve stepped right into your grandmother’s shoes smoothly, Elle. She would have done just what you did, come upstairs to tell me I’d been sleeping too long.”

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“No, no. It’s fine. I’m actually pretty hungry.”

“Just sit, Grandpa. I’ll get everything,” I told him.

When the coffee was ready, I poured his cup and cut his sandwich in half and then into quarters, which was the way Grandmother Myra always prepared it for him. After I served him, I sat watching him eat.

“I pity those your grandmother’s and my age who have no one but themselves,” he told me, and started eating.

My whole body was trembling. Should I have told Claudine it was all right for her to find my father? What if he wasn’t my father? What if my mother had made him up or didn’t know who my father was?

“This is good, Elle.”

“What do you think is going to happen with Grandmother Myra, Grandpa?”

He shook his head. “We won’t know for a while. For now, we’ll do the best we can,” he said. He looked at the clock. “We’ll head back to the hospital in half an hour, and afterward, we’ll go out to dinner as I promised.”

“Okay, Grandpa,” I said, and began to clean up. I could feel his eyes on me.

“We had no reason to be afraid you’d turn out bad, Elle. I’m sorry,” he said. “Watching you, I don’t see any resemblances, bad resemblances, between you and your mother. By your age, she was more than a handful for us.”

It seemed funny to thank someone for saying you were completely different from your own mother, but that was what I did.

Before we left, I went into my room to change into one of my new dresses and brush my hair. Grandpa hadn’t said a word about how I was wearing it since I had come back from lunch with Mason and Claudine. Grandmother Myra was always after me to keep it pinned. When I stepped out, he smiled.

“You are much prettier than your mother was at your age, Elle, and I don’t see that as a bad thing, not at all.”

“Thank you, Grandpa.”

“Well, we’d better go. As your grandmother would say, procrastination doesn’t change what’s waiting for you.”

This time, when we arrived at the ICU, Grandmother Myra’s doctor was in the lobby, talking to the relatives of another patient. He signaled to us that we should wait. He was a young man with wavy golden-brown hair. When he started toward us, we both rose.

“Mr. Edwards,” he began, and looked at me.

“This is our granddaughter, Dr. Rosen,” Grandpa Prescott told him.

He smiled. “Very pretty young lady,” Dr. Rosen said. He lost his smile immediately when he turned back to my grandfather. “As I told you earlier, Mr. Edwards, your wife has suffered an ischemic stroke.” He looked at me. “Blood was blocked from her brain by a blood clot. She suffered from a condition known as atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heartbeat, which was responsible for the clot. Brain cells in the left hemisphere of her brain were destroyed, and that area controls the right side of the body and speech ability. We’ll continue to evaluate her for a few days, and then, if she stabilizes some, we’ll move her to a room where she will still get intensive care and start therapy.”

“Will she get better?” I asked.

“It’s difficult to predict precisely how much of what she’s lost she’ll regain. The important thing is to make her comfortable, prevent any more damage, and get her spirits up. I know that’s going to be hard,” he added quickly. “Right now, she’s pretty angry.”

“We know,” Grandpa Prescott said.

“Well, visit, spend time with her, keep talking to her. I’ll let you know when we’re moving her.”

He smiled at me again and walked away.

“We’re in for the long haul,” Grandpa Prescott muttered.

I followed him into the ICU. One of the nurses brought a chair for him. I stood beside him as he talked to Grandmother Myra, telling her how I had made him his lunch, cleaned up the kitchen, and been a great support. She looked at me with less anger this time, I thought. Her face seemed to tremble. Grandpa Prescott clung to her good hand and spoke softly, telling her that she was going to get stronger and better. She shook her head, but this time, she didn’t even attempt to speak. After another ten minutes, the nurse thought we should let her rest.

I promised her I would look after Grandpa Prescott. When she looked at me this time, I thought I saw a keener look of suspicion in her eyes. It was almost as if she knew what Mason, Claudine, and I were planning to do. There were many times when I believed she had the power to read my thoughts, even when I wasn’t close by.

Grandpa Prescott was very subdued after we left the hospital. I tried to buoy his spirits by reminding him that when the doctor said it was impossible to predict how much recovery she would experience, he was also saying that she could recover a great deal.

“I know now what it is about you that’s so different from your mother, Elle,” Grandpa Prescott said as we drove to the restaurant he wanted us to try. “She was always dark and pessimistic, always predicting the worst for all of us, especially herself. Despite everything, you never lost the sunshine in your face.”

It was then that I felt like crying. I sucked back my tears, because I didn’t want him to be any more despondent than he already was. On the way to the restaurant, we passed Burger City, and I smiled to myself. My life was going to change now, I thought. It would be better, and not just because Grandmother Myra wasn’t ruling over us anymore. I was really going to enter the world. So much of what other girls and boys my age were experiencing and doing would be brand-new and exciting for me. They wouldn’t understand, I’m sure, but that was what it would be, and I had no intention of hiding my joy so that I could cover up what sort of life I had led. If I had gotten anything from Claudine, it was a stronger sense of self-confidence, even defiance.

Grandpa Prescott took us to a small Italian restaurant called Dante’s Inferno. He told me he had wanted to go there for a long time, but Grandmother Myra told him the food would be too spicy for him. She said that was why it was called “Inferno.”

“She meant well,” he added. “She was only looking out for my welfare. You can’t hate people whose intention is to help you.”

The restaurant had small booths and was a lot darker than Chipper’s, but I thought it had more atmosphere. The aromas of garlic, tomatoes, and cheese permeated the air. Grandmother Myra would have liked this place, actually, I thought. Now she’d probably never see it.

“I don’t hate her, Grandpa,” I said.

“Good. You’re my strength now, Elle. I have faith in you,” he said.

We ordered and enjoyed our dinner. He was far more forthcoming about his younger years and told me stories about him and his brother, Brett, that I had never heard. It was always difficult for me to imagine either of my grandparents younger, but his anecdotes about school pranks and the things he and his brother had done brought laughter and smiles to both of us.

It was terrible to think that as a result of my grandmother suffering a stroke, my grandfather and I would become closer and more loving. I didn’t want to be happy that she was sick, but it wasn’t easy not to when I considered how things were a short time ago, how they were now, and how they were surely to be. It felt sinful, and I knew I would pray and ask God to forgive me for having these thoughts. I hoped he could see what was in my heart instead. It wasn’t easy ignoring all the fire and brimstone I had heard. The God Grandmother Myra worshipped was just as capable of anger as he was of love. He could lay down punishments on your head as easily as he could lay down blessings.

That night and the following morning, I worked harder than ever in the house. I told Grandpa Prescott to go to the hospital without me, because I wanted to keep up the schedule Grandmother Myra had created. I was going to work over the living room, polish furniture, vacuum, and air things out the way she liked. I would also do the windows. And then I would plan our dinner.

“She’ll be happy to hear about all this,” he told me. “It’s the best way to show her how much you care.”

I smiled, but deep inside, I knew that I was working harder not to please my grandmother but to perform penance for the bad thoughts I had and the pleasure I was taking in how her illness opened up my life.

Later that morning, the phone rang three times. The first time, it was Grandpa Prescott telling me he was having his lunch in the hospital. The second call was Claudine.

“My parents just left,” she told me. “What time do you think you can get away tomorrow?”

“I don’t know if I should do this, Claudine.”

“Of course you should. You have a right to do this. Mason is really for it now, too.”

“Maybe I should ask my grandfather first,” I said.

“Are you crazy? I thought you were afraid to tell him about us.”

“I am, but maybe not as much now. I think he’d understand my having friends.”

“Yeah, whatever, but he’d surely tell you not to do it, that it was only going to cause more trouble. Look, this is something you owe to yourself, Elle. Stop worrying about everyone else for a change. Get a little selfish. It’s how you survive out there. You’ll see. Better you start thinking this way now. If we leave at ten, we can be there just after twelve, you can be back before dinner, and no one has to know anything. How’s that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It scares me.”

“There’s no reason to be afraid. Mason and I will be right beside you the whole time. Don’t think about it any more. We’ll be at your house at ten.”

Before I could say anything more, she hung up. Five minutes later, the phone rang again. This time, it was Mason.

“I heard the way she was talking to you, Elle. I want this to be something you really want to do.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you want to see him? Do you want to learn about him? Do you want to talk to him? Did you ever want to do this?”

“I’ve thought about it, even dreamed about it, yes.”

“So?”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go.”

“I can come over to see you,” he said. “We can talk about it some more.”

“I don’t know when my grandfather is coming back, Mason. He’s having a hard time. If something happened, I wouldn’t be able to go tomorrow.”

“All right. Call me whenever you want,” he said. “Regardless, we’ll be there at ten.”

“Okay,” I said.

After the call, I had to sit for a while. My legs felt weak. I thought I was being courageous and adventurous meeting them at the lake, but now, going to Albany and confronting my father? Did I have the courage for that? Grandpa Prescott really seemed to like me, even love me, so much more now. Wasn’t I risking all that?

Claudine had told me to be a little selfish. Was she right? Was that what I needed to survive? Was I too soft, too innocent and trusting, to succeed?

I began a debate with myself.

Why do you want to see the man who raped your mother? Will this help you answer the question, “Who am I?”

Yes, it might. Didn’t all children look at their parents and search for resemblances, not just physical ones but mental and emotional ones? Didn’t that help them understand their own identities, guide them when they made their choices, and strengthen them when they had to face challenges? Didn’t I feel like half a person?