Leaving Haven (32 page)

Alice and Duncan didn't have a village the way Georgia and John did. They just had each other. And Alice had no idea what would happen now that each other wasn't enough.

T
HE
NEXT
SURPRISE
came an hour later, when she called the restaurant to talk to John.

She wanted to find out two things: if Georgia was all right, and whether or not Georgia wanted to keep the baby. She had discussed this with Duncan after they came home from the beach, because she wanted to be totally transparent with him.

“I want to call while you're here, so you can listen to our conversation and know there is nothing going on,” she had said.

The corners of Duncan's mouth had tensed, just for a moment. “You can call John,” he said. “I don't need to listen in.”

“But—”

Duncan shook his head. “It's fine.”

And Alice had said what she said at least ten times a day: “Okay. I'm sorry.”

“Mr. Bing is out of town,” the voice on the other end of the phone said now. “He won't be back for several days.”

“Out of town?” Alice stood in her front yard, in her running shorts and T-shirt, with a squirrel chirruping at her from the upper reaches of the old cherry tree. “Do you know where?”

“No,” said the voice, a woman who had identified herself as Mickey when Alice called. “Would you like to make a reservation?”

“No,” Alice said. “I'm a friend, a family friend. I need to speak to Mr. Bing. Do you know how he can be reached?”

“I'm sorry,” Mickey said, her voice polite and upbeat. “I don't have that information. Are you sure you don't want to make a reservation? We serve brunch all day today.”

“
No,
” Alice said. “Thank you.”

She hung up and stared at the street, unseeing. Had John gone to retrieve Georgia, wherever she was? Had he brought the baby with him? She tried to imagine John racing off with the baby to persuade Georgia to come back. But her imagination failed her. She couldn't get further than picturing John trying to strap a screaming baby into a car seat, fumbling with buckles and straps and tiny flailing arms, and then swearing a blue streak before deciding to just stay home.

Alice tucked her phone into the pocket of her shorts and started to jog down the street at her usual quick pace, her mind so busy she didn't see the lush June gardens clamoring against the walkways in front of the houses she passed, the carpet of pale pink petals from late-blooming cherry trees beneath her feet.

She turned the corner and ran down Columbia Street, under a green cathedral arch of white oaks and elms and maple trees. Maybe she wasn't meant to have the baby. Certainly if John could talk Georgia into a reconciliation, maybe the next logical step was for Georgia and John to raise the baby. If that were the case, of course, she, Alice, would get out of the way and out of their lives and accept that the baby was forever lost to her. But if Georgia and John got back together but Georgia didn't want the baby, or if Georgia and John divorced and neither of them wanted the baby, why then . . .

Alice slowed her pace as she turned onto the pebbled path that led through the park. She had thought, back in those heady first few weeks of her affair with John, that she might really love him. John was lively and unpredictable and outgoing—all the things Duncan was not. He appealed to her even as she didn't understand him. For instance, why in the name of God would John lose his temper over something as silly as the rules of a card game, something she had witnessed one summer at the lake when they'd all been playing Hearts? Or how could he go weeks on end without working out? But then she didn't really understand Duncan, either, with his long silences and inscrutable looks and mild manner. The punch he had thrown at John was the first completely unpredictable, emotional thing she had ever known him to do.

“I'll tell you the secret to men,” she remembered Rita saying one day, sitting at the kitchen table in the little apartment they shared when Alice was eleven or twelve. “They want to be liked.” She had blown out a long stream of smoke. “That's it. That's all they want.”

Alice had looked up from the macaroni she was eating and nodded. Well, of course. Everyone wanted to be liked, didn't they?

“Most women don't really like men. At least, they
act
like they don't, always criticizing what they do or what they say.” Rita had flicked the ash from the end of her cigarette into the pink-and-gold ashtray.

“I like men,” Alice had said. She thought of her father, whom she couldn't really remember but who sent her presents from all the faraway places he worked. She thought of her grandfather, who had blown that warm, sweet cigar smoke into her sore ear.

Rita had given Alice a skeptical look. “You weren't very friendly to Eddie.”

Alice had hated Eddie, Rita's last boyfriend, who had talked to her in a baby voice as if she were about four. She narrowed her eyes. “He was dumb.”

“You see? That's exactly what I'm talking about,” Rita had said. “That attitude that women get, that they know a bunch of things men don't. Women are scary to men. They have monthly cycles and they're emotional. They talk a lot and they laugh at inside jokes. They look fragile but they're not, really. They're very confusing. So if men know you
like
them, they relax and they're happy.” Rita had paused. “Remember that, kiddo,” she said, pointing her cigarette at Alice. “That's all you need to know.”

Alice jogged past the swings where she and Georgia had spent countless hours pushing the girls back and forth, back and forth. As far as she was concerned, men were just as confusing as women, no matter what Rita thought.

For the last part of her run, Alice sprinted in intervals—one minute of sprinting, one minute of running. Arms pumping, knees high, heart racing—she loved pushing her body to its limits, feeling every bit of herself pulse with life. She rounded the corner to her own house, the house with neat black shutters on red brick, window boxes spilling over with variegated ivy, blue lobelia, red geraniums. She slowed to a walk, then paused and leaned forward, hands on knees, to catch her breath and allow her heart to slow down.

If she was able to keep the baby she could get one of those running strollers and run with him. And Wren, who loved babies, would be a wonderful babysitter. Alice felt warm thinking about Wren as a big sister, about Wren moving forward in her life with the comfort of a sibling. If Haven was hers, then Wren would never know the odd loneliness Alice had always experienced, would never have to say, “I'm an only child.”

“Haven Kinnaird.” Alice said it aloud. “Haven Duncan Kinnaird.”

The name felt good in her mouth. It sounded just right.

W
HEN
ALICE
WALKED
in the front door she caught sight of the stack of mail on the hall table that had piled up while they were at the beach: catalogs, bills, and flyers for GREAT DEALS on everything from oil changes to Tahitian vacations. A colorful photo caught her eye and she pulled a postcard from the pile.

“¡Saludos de Valparaíso!”
it read on the front. The photo showed a small city on a bay, with craggy, snowcapped mountains in the distance. Alice studied it. She had never been outside of the United States, except the one time she and Duncan had gone to Quebec for a long weekend when she was pregnant with Wren. She flipped the card over.

Dear Ally,

Well, here I am in Valparaiso for my honeymoon. My first time in Chile and my first wedding and I'm 52. Who would have thought? It is winter here but not too cold; much better than Ohio in January but not as good as Ohio in June! Ha! We got married in Santiago and go back there on Sunday. Tell Wren I saw ten pelicans and they are the biggest birds I ever saw. Wish you girls and Duncan could visit us here—you should come! Finally your mom is a married woman.

She hadn't signed it—Rita struggled with the same thing Alice did in figuring out her nomenclature; she was unwilling to be “Mom” but not quite hip enough to be truly comfortable with being called “Rita” by her only daughter. Alice read it through twice. So her mother, who had refused to marry Alice's father, was now married to a man named Oliver whom Alice had never met. Not only that, but her mother hadn't even told Alice she was
thinking
about getting married, let alone asked her if she might want to come to the wedding, or be a part of the wedding.

Rita had moved to Chile in early February; Alice's affair with John had started two weeks later. Alice thought now that if her mother had just stayed put in Ohio, indifferent but still present, the affair might never have happened. But her mother's move to South America had left her with a sense of free-falling, as though the rickety rope bridge to which she'd clung all her life had suddenly given way. She had not realized how much she needed or wanted or, yes, loved her mother, how much she hoped that even after all these years her mother might one day be the loving, attentive, reliable mother she had always longed for.

And now, now here was this postcard reminding her yet again how little she mattered.
Screw you,
Alice thought, surprised at her own rage.
I don't need you, either
. She ripped the postcard in half and dropped the pieces on the floor.

“Mom?” Wren appeared at her elbow, barefoot, wearing boxer shorts and a tank top.

“Yes. Hey.” Alice felt flustered, and bent to pick up the pieces of postcard. “You missed a good sermon at church this morning.”

“I like sleep better,” Wren said. She paused until Alice was upright again. “So you're cool with this whole Lake Placid thing?”

“The Lake Placid thing?” Alice turned to look at her daughter.

“Yeah, with me and Dad. You know, this week.”

“This week?” Alice couldn't mask the shock in her voice. She saw the puzzled look on Wren's face and tried to make her voice sound neutral, casual. “Right,” she said.

Wren yawned. “It's kind of a pain since we just got back from the beach so I won't have any time to see my friends, but I really want to see Liza.”

Alice drew in a deep breath. “Remind me of the plan.”

Wren gave her a strange look. Since when did Alice, master organizer, not remember what was going on with the family?

“Dad and I are leaving for Lake Placid tomorrow. Visiting Day at Liza's camp is Tuesday.” Wren looked at her as if to say,
You remember all this now?

Alice wondered for a moment if she might have dementia. The lyrics of a song her mother's boyfriend Steve used to play on the record player, back when Alice was six or seven, echoed in her head, a song about finding yourself in a place both familiar and strange.
You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

The front door opened and Duncan walked in, his skin damp with the midday June heat, the hair at his temples dark with sweat.

“Oh, good,” Wren said. “You're here. Mom's confused about our Lake Placid trip. You explain. I need to eat.”

Wren flitted off toward the kitchen. She often moved through the house in dance steps, a pas de bourreé from the living room to the kitchen, a series of jetés into the dining room. She did that now, a little cabriole down the hallway.

Alice turned to Duncan. “Lake Placid?”

He put his briefcase down on the floor with a sigh. “Can we talk in the bedroom or the office, someplace with a door?”

He didn't want Wren to hear whatever he was about to say. Alice nodded. She put one hand on the table, bent to untie her running shoes, slid them off. She stood up and walked down the hall to their bedroom, trying to still the rising sense of panic in her chest. Duncan followed her and closed the door behind them. He sat down on the edge of the bed, their bed.

“Alice, I want to get over this, but I can't—at least not yet. And I don't know if I can ever.”

Hope was a warm thing, and now Alice felt cold.

Alice sat down across from him, on the ottoman of the cream-colored armchair where Duncan often sat to read at night.

“I spent the morning consulting with a colleague of mine who's an expert in family law.” Duncan looked at her. “I don't wish you ill—I really don't. You seem to want this baby very much. You did relinquish your parental rights in the contract you signed when you agreed to be an egg donor.” He rubbed his forehead with one hand. “The courts won't like the fact that you changed your mind—it makes you seem a little flaky. If, on top of that, you're separated or divorced, that's another strike against giving you custody, you see?”

Alice sat very still, her back erect, the the ottomn warm under her thighs.

“And you have to think about John and Georgia. I have no idea whether or not they're trying to salvage their marriage, but do you think you can support this baby without any child support from John?”

Alice couldn't even shake her head or nod. She sat, frozen.

“Well, I assume he'd offer child support,” Duncan said, “but if I were Georgia I'd be fairly unhappy if my husband were paying child support to you for this baby.”

He cleared his throat. “Then there's the whole issue of Wren and Liza. That's not a legal issue so much as a moral one. How will you explain to Wren that Liza's baby brother is now
her
baby brother instead? And how do you think it will affect Liza?” He sighed. “There is a lot to think about here, and a lot at stake. I can go into it with you in more detail later if you want.”

Alice's lips were dry, and her throat felt parched. She licked her lips so she could speak.

“What does this have to do with Lake Placid?”

“Wren, for whatever reason, is eager to see Liza. She's been upset about not going to Lake Con for the first time ever. There's a masters vaulting camp in Placid this week. I talked to Georgia before the baby was born about taking Wren up to visit Liza for a day at camp, and she thought it was a good idea. So I made reservations at a hotel in Placid for four nights. We'll drive up tomorrow, Wren will see Liza on Tuesday, and we'll drive back on Friday.”