Here to Stay (29 page)

She reached to her knife block and plucked out her kitchen shears. “Herb garden,” she said. “Cut me a big handful of thyme. The lemon kind. You know what it is?”

“I know,” Erik said, and shouldered out the screen door with the odd sense of importance he always felt when Francine entrusted him with a kitchen chore.

After a budget honeymoon in Key West—frequent flier miles and the use of Christine and Fred’s condo—the newlyweds came back to La Tarasque for two weeks.

“You’re supposed to be on vacation,” Francine said, protesting as Daisy and Erik pulled on boots and gloves, picked up hoes and rakes and marched into farm life.

“I love it here,” Erik said. “It is a vacation.”

“When you don’t have to do it, you love it,” Joe said.

True, they weren’t up at rooster crow and heading out to the fields. They slept in and shagged and got up when it suited them.
Then
they headed for the fields and were swept up in the buzzing activity of farm and orchard.

The hard, outdoor work made Erik hungry. Hungry as the summer he was fifteen and had grown four inches overnight. When his young bones ached and his stomach was a constant gnawing knot of hunger. He could feel himself growing, stretching and arranging and shoving things around to make room.

He remembered fifteen being an insatiable year of extremes. He was exhausted, starving, needing, wanting, stretched from one end of his limited universe to the other. A quivering bundle of muscle and nerve, a moody hair-trigger, a speechless porcupine of desires. He wanted his mother then suffocated in her arms. He pushed her away so she would track him down. Girls irritated him to distraction. He fled from their giggling double talk and passive aggressive tactics and then lay awake in the dark of his room, utterly consumed. Hard and frustrated with thoughts of skin and mouths and kissing and sex. And food. Never enough food.

“Good appetite,” Francine said, beaming at this man-boy as she filled his plate with more roasted beets.

He liked the beets. He liked growing them and being the “to” in farm-to-table. He knew what lemon thyme was, just as he knew a fresh duck egg had a bright orange yolk and an almost powdery shell. He knew you let the garden dictate what was for lunch or dinner, and La Tarasque in late summer was a benevolent despot. Poached eggs laid half an hour before. Tomatoes still warm from the sun. String beans no bigger than matchsticks. Corn that barely needed a kiss of boiling water. Potatoes dug and scrubbed, then roasted crisp outside and velvet inside. Meatless days passed in simple food of the earth with no violence attached. And then a local cattle farm would butcher and Erik would find himself devouring perfectly-grilled steak and drinking the bloody pan juices like a vampire.

“Good appetite,” Daisy whispered in the dark as he took her again and again, his plate un-fillable. Consumed with a different hunger. Marriage was sweet, savory and spicy on his tongue and he couldn’t get enough. Couldn’t sate the desire to sink into her body and gorge on her attention. To stuff the lost years down his throat and feast on what had been returned to him.

Forever.

He loved his wife. He ate. He cleared the table then he shouldered out the screen door and went back to whatever task was allotted him. He found the work on the farm grounding. A connection to a simpler way of life. It was good work. Hard work, but everything was hard. Erik often paused and looked around at the property, wondering if maybe it were time for a different kind of hard.

Watering and weeding and harvesting, he daydreamed. Imagined a time when Dais would retire, hang up her pointe shoes entirely and she and Erik would move down here to Pennsylvania and slowly take over La Tarasque. He thought how it would be different though, if they had children.

He admitted it freely: whether here or in Canada, being just a couple allowed them to live an indulgent existence. Long hours of uninterrupted work or play. Bedtimes negotiable or ignored. Potato chips and beer for dinner. Sex wherever they felt like dropping their pants. No stopping to feed, change or tend to others. Just them and what they wanted when they wanted it.

I just want us.

I want her to myself.

I want to be the center of her universe and not share her with anyone.

Ever.

But little moments kept intruding on the greedy reverie. Sitting around the table with Joe and Francine, Erik would look for a high chair. Or stare at Francine’s empty lap. Or look at Joe with a dish towel thrown over his shoulder and think it ought to be a baby.

I want a family. Someday.

We can’t wait too long.

But I want her to myself.

Back and forth between the two wants he was volleyed like a ball.

I want so much.

I want everything and I wasted so many years.

I want my youth back.

I hate what I did.

I want.

THEY CAME HOME TO Barbegazi and slipped into their routine. The seasons turned, birthdays and holidays passed. Then came the cold, dark months of early winter.

Talk of children was casual and hypothetical. Couched in somedays, whens and ifs. Truth was, in watching and listening to the men closest to him who were parents, Erik felt in no burning rush to join the club. Pete Fiskare was out of his mind with worry over his son Aaron, whose daily struggles with dyslexia and ADHD were a never-ending source of anxiety. His daughter Valerie, on the other hand, was a Renaissance woman of effortless talents and intelligence, yet she was devoted to being a world-class underachiever.

“Aaron wants the world,” Pete said. “Val’s pursuing a degree in bare minimum. I want to swathe him in bubble wrap and throw her out the window.”

Next door, Will and Lucky were occupied with finding a speech therapist for little Sara.

“Speech therapist?” Erik said. “She never stops talking.”

“I know,” Will said, his eyes shadowed with worry. “But she’s not
saying
anything.”

At her kindergarten registration, questions were raised about “developmental milestones” and now the Kaegers were running around getting her evaluated. Meanwhile, Jack’s second-grade class was having a bullying issue and Jack was a nervous wreck, often flat-out refusing to go to school.

Lurking behind the promise of day-to-day logistical stress, out beyond the occasional health alarms, the pressing emotional issues and the complex social dramas, was the most sinister threat of all: the phone call.

Joe and Francine, Maurice and Ségolène, Christine and Fred and even Judy Dare—they all got The Call.

There’s been an incident.

Your child was involved.

You need to come.

Erik observed, gathering intelligence and analyzing hard truths: to become a parent was to go around with your heart flayed open for the rest of your life. Moving the earth and giving your best for your kids, with no guarantee your best would be enough to keep them safe.

Fuck this,
his genes thought.
Me, Dais and the cat. That’s enough.

Except it wasn’t.

He chewed at it through the winter, more and more conscious he was chasing down forty now.

“You’ll know, mon pote,” Joe said.

“You’ll know,” Fred said. “It’s like love. It sneaks up on you.”

It’s just one of those things,
Mike Pettitte texted in one of their frequent electronic exchanges.
You do it because you know.

“Dude, you’ll just know,” Will said.

“I know I’ll know,” Erik said to them all.

One March morning, they awoke to three feet of snow with more coming down. The roads closed and a bank holiday was upon them. Will and Erik took Jack and Sara outside to build a fort. They fought a merciless snowball war and then trooped back into Barbegazi’s kitchen, numb-fingered and runny-nosed and ravenous. Lucky and Daisy were baking. The tea kettle sang. They bellied up to the kitchen table and dug into the bread and treats.

Jacy woke up from her nap and came stumbling in, her blonde curls smashed flat along one side of her head, a blanket dragged behind. She climbed into Daisy’s lap and put her thumb in her mouth. Daisy kissed the tousled head and reached arms around to butter a slice of bread. Jacy closed her eyes and rested her temple at the V of Daisy’s sweater.

Erik stared, his mug frozen halfway to his mouth.

Daisy kept the child perfectly balanced in her lap as she poured and sliced and arranged for the others, laughing and talking. She siphoned some of her tea into a clean mug and topped it off with milk. Then held the cup for Jacy to sip. Buttered another piece of bread. Like a trusting newborn bird the little girl accepted food and drink, then laid her head against Daisy again.

Erik stared.

Jacy caught his penetrating gaze, smiled around her thumb then reached out her arms.

“Careful, honey,” Daisy said, shifting a leg to balance her. “What do you want, you want Uncle Erik?”

Jacy never wanted him. Now her arms reached further across the gap. Erik took her on his lap. She burrowed into his chest, her little fingers curling around his shirt cuff, playing with the buttons.

He was steel. Her head was a magnet. Slowly his chin lowered and he inhaled the smell of her hair. Powder. Sleep. An indescribable sweetness. His heart pounded slow and steady against the plump, warm weight in his lap.

The overhead lamp splashed a circle of gold across the feast. Steam rose from tea mugs, weaving with the talk and chatter to make a wreath around the two families. Jack’s arms crossed around Will’s neck from behind, chin on his father’s shoulder. Will’s hand laced carelessly with Lucky’s on the table. Sara rocked in Lucky’s lap, eating a cookie. Daisy poured and sliced and fed. Her hands busy. Her lap empty.

“Unca fower,” Jacy said, her finger now drawing a circle around his daisy tattoo. “Fower pretty.”

Erik’s hand gently closed around the little girl’s wrist as he looked at it all. For the first time in his life, he
saw.

Later in bed, he lay on his side, resting on his elbow and running his hand over Daisy’s body. Fingertips caressing the little red fish, then moving to draw circles around her stomach. He spread his palm wide, fingers reaching, feeling her belly button rise and fall beneath him with her breathing.

Her hand caressed his head. “What?” she whispered in the dark.

He opened his mouth then closed it. “Nothing,” he said. And kissed her before she could call bullshit.

He loved her hard that night. With a strange desperation. Throwing himself into her. Even after he came, he kept pushing into her, further and further, gripped in a frustration of inability. His throat was coming apart with it.

“Honey, you’re hurting me,” she said, hands on his shoulder blades. “Stop.”

His body collapsed down on hers. “I’m sorry.”

“What is it,” she said. She peeled his head off her shoulder and held it propped above hers, running her thumb along his lip. “What is it, what are you trying to do?”

“Make a baby,” he said.

She gathered him back to her, winding arms and legs around his body and pulling him close. “You will,” she said, rocking him.

“I know,” he said, exhaling, wrapped in an assured conviction. “I know.”

HE HADN’T HAD A physical in years. Hadn’t even been sick since he moved to Canada, so he didn’t have a regular doctor. He went to Will’s guy, who pronounced him in boringly good health and recommended a urologist. The urologist took Erik’s medical history and immediately referred him elsewhere.

“You’re in luck,” the doctor said. “Up until now, New Brunswick’s best fertility clinic was in Moncton. They just opened their Saint John satellite six months ago. Urology and reproductive services all under one roof. You’ll want to get in to see Martin LeBlanc before he accumulates a waiting list.”

“Is he good?” Erik said.

“He’s the one you want.”

Erik called the practice in Rochester to have his records transferred. He sat in Dr. LeBlanc’s handsome office and they went through it together. Besides all the obvious questions, LeBlanc seemed interested in the arc of Erik’s life story. His bedside manner was so superb, Erik spilled it all out with ease: his youth, the shooting, the aftermath, his first marriage, the fertility troubles, the divorce and finally, the reconciliation with Daisy.