One Small Thing (11 page)

Dan wiped sweat off his forehead and sat back. The room was pulsing with heat and talk, Avery telling Valerie about some recipe she read in a magazine, Luis cooing at Tomás. No one was talking about Daniel or what had happened less than twenty-four hours ago. Not one of them said the words DNA or paternity or custody. None of them mentioned the crib reduced to parts, folded up and leaning against the garage wall next to the cans of paint and the dresser. No one mentioned the drugs, the stealing, the police.

Randi moved behind him now, hugging him around the neck, whispering in his ear. “Let’s blow this joint. You know you’re bored out of your mind. What’s your problem? Come on.” He breathed in quick, swallow breaths, drowning in Randi’s scent of cherry lip gloss, Charlie perfume, and cigarette smoke.

“Kind of anti-climactic around here after last night,” Valerie was saying. “I think we’ll have to wait for Halloween for any excitement like that in the neighborhood.”

Dan almost jerked out of his chair, certain Valerie was talking about Midori’s call. He leaned back, trying to find a resting spot on Randi’s arms, but all he felt were wooden chair rails.

“Frank and Ralph have an idea for some kind of Christmas Tree Lane,” Luis said quickly. “You know, with lights.” Luis jiggled Tomás. “Ralph will probably put on some kind of suit.”

Valerie glanced at Avery and then Dan. pushing her food around on her plate.

“Halloween. Christmas. Who needs it?” Randi tightened her grip. “Boring! A real Bore-O-Rama!”

Blinking, the room swimming out of focus, Dan tried to stand. He grabbed on to the table, the placemat under his fingers. “I . . . I—“ he began, but he saw stars, orbs of white circling the room. Everyone, even Randi, stared at him.

“Dan? Dan?” Avery stood up and grabbed onto his arm. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s all my fault,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

Avery looked at him and pulled him close. “Do you mean the boy?”

He felt his legs trembling and let her help him sit back down. “Yes. And Randi. I didn’t know. I didn’t know she was going to die.”

“Oh, that’s fine. Worry about me now.” Randi loosened her arms from his neck, but her long, purple nails dug slightly into his collar bones. “Not a call the whole time you were in your fancy college with the prepsters and fluffy sorority sisters. She was one, huh? I can tell. Don’t lie to me.”

“You didn’t know,” Valerie said. “No one let you know.”

“It’s my fault,” Dan said, wishing Randi would let go, her nails so sharp.

“For Christ’s sake! Get over yourself,” Randi said, sitting on his lap, her hand overlapping Avery’s. “It was my life, Dan.”

“It was her life,” Avery said slowly, as if she’d been thinking about that exact sentence all afternoon. “She made her choices. She chose not to tell you about anything. You made choices, too.” She looked at her plate, and he heard what she didn’t say:
You chose to not tell me a thing.

“Yeah, man,” Luis said. “Don’t beat up on yourself. It’s done. Water under the bridge.”

And then Dan realized it was actually Avery hugging him lightly, her skin, her touch pushing Randi out of his lap and away from the table. Her smell, her creamy soap, her Redken shampoo, her Green Tea perfume. Avery. His wife.

“I’m outta here,” Randi said. “Just like, take care of shit, will ya? I mean, God. That’s all I wanted, after all. I wrote that letter for a reason. Duh!” She flicked her hair behind her shoulder, put her hands on her hips, and gave him one last look. “Jeez, Dan. Get on with it. Like you did ten years ago. Move. Just get on with it. Take care of your son.”

As she walked away, he thought to wave, but she was already gone, and the only thing left was Avery in his lap. Not Randi. Not the past, but the future. Closing his eyes, he hugged Avery back, the room still again, the stars gone, his breath deep and slow.

FIVE

Monday morning while Dan was in the shower, Avery went into the kitchen and grabbed the portable phone. Her old boss Brody Chovanes was bound to be in the office early after a holiday weekend, ready to pounce when other people took off the week following the Fourth. As she dialed his number, her hands stiff and cold in the sealed air-conditioned air, she could see him sitting at his desk, pressing through his contacts on his Blackberry, searching for the one person who would land him an account. Today. And he would.

Back when she worked with him, she loved the mornings as much as he did, knowing that when a vice president in charge of technology wanted change, he or she wanted it fast. All week, while Lanny was working on specs and packaging with the staff, Avery would be organizing a Power Point presentation that would dazzle even the most stolid accountant. Meanwhile, Brody was visiting the site, charming the client, making promises Avery knew they could keep. In the afternoons, they would all confer about the deal, the excitement building as they continued organizing over dinner at Andres. At ten, Avery would straggle home, her calves aching from her high heels, the small of her back tense, Dan already asleep.

But by Friday, if the sales meeting went well, the client nodding and clapping and shaking their hands, they’d won. How sweet a Friday evening after that! How wonderful the weekend. But by Monday morning, they were back at it.

Even as she waited for the voice mail system that would eventually allow her to press in Brody’s extension, she could feel the old excitement, the one she’d traded in to have the baby. By watching Valerie, she knew that a baby didn’t provide the rollercoaster of the workweek, the flush of adrenaline during negotiation, the thrill of the sale. Being a mother was a long, slow day, full of sleepiness and dirty diapers and crying.

That life wasn’t for her, she knew that now. It wasn’t what she would have. It wasn’t what she was allowed.

“Brody! It’s Avery.”

“Avery! My God, woman, why are you calling? Aren’t you supposed to be doing the housewife thing? Shouldn’t you be scrubbing the sink with Comet? No, wait. You should be at the club working on those thighs. Are you fat yet?”

“You ass!” Avery felt herself smile, from her mouth down into her chest, her muscles letting go just a little. “I should sue you for something. Maybe for being an idiot.”

“Too late. Alix already has that lawsuit covered. I’m surprised we’re still married.”

“It’s only a matter of time before some office assistant nails you,” she said. “And then, wham, you’ll be out. Way, way out. And guess who they’ll hire? Guess who really knows how to play the game?”

“Right. Like you want to be here. Soon you’ll be knee-deep in kids. So, what’s up?”

Avery looked over her shoulder, paused, heard the shower echo down the hall. “I want my job back.”

For an instant, Brody was still, the hum of his computer in her ear, but before she could say anything else, he said, “Fine. I’ll just fire Lanny.”

“You know that’s not what I meant. Well, sure, I’d like my exact job back, but really, I’ll do anything.”

“But,” Brody said, his voice soft, “what about the baby?”

Don’t think about it
, she thought, swallowing down her sad story. And even if she did tell Brody, she wouldn’t be able to finish it because neither she nor Dan knew how it would end. She held the phone between her jaw and shoulder and wrapped her arms around her chest. “It’s not going to happen right now. And I want to come back. So are you sure you won’t fire Lanny?”

“Lunch. Tomorrow. Twelve?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Wear a short skirt, or I’m not hiring you back.”

“If you show up in your underwear, it’s a deal.”

Avery hung up and looked back over her shoulder again. Dan had finished his shower, and now she could hear him walking around in the room, opening and closing dresser drawers. He’d called in sick at work, and she’d promised to come with him to the doctor and then to see the Contra Costa County social worker, the one Midori Nolan had referred them to.

“I guess we’ll learn more about him. Daniel,” Dan had said last night in the voice he’d seemed to develop since all the phone calls, light, sad, and stuck in his body. Avery bit her cheek every time he spoke. She wanted to shake him and yank his voice out of him. She wanted to shout, “Stop feeling so fucking sorry for yourself! What about
our
baby? What about what
I
wanted?” But when she saw his dark, full eyes, she couldn’t say a thing. When she saw his eyes, she imagined the boy’s, his eyes wide in the empty trailer as he listened to the wail of the ambulance taking his mother away. She felt him in the way she’d felt herself sitting in the waiting room of the hospital as her father’s blood slowly stilled.

After the dinner at Luis and Valerie’s, Avery had gone out only to work out or go to the grocery store, ignoring Val’s and Isabel’s phone calls. She and Dan had taken the rest of the baby clothes and furniture out of the nursery, cleaned the rest of the house, and eaten silent meals together at the table. At night, she listened to him fall asleep and kept on her side of the bed, fearing his unconscious touch, a circling arm, a searching thigh. If he touched her, she imagined he might suck her dry, like the terrible monster on the
Star Trek
rerun on Channel 44 she’d watched as a child.

During the long afternoons after school when their mother slept, Loren and Avery would sit on the couch on the den and watch
Partridge Family, Little Rascals, The Three Stooges
, and
The Brady Bunch
reruns. In this one
Star Trek
episode, the monster could change into a pleasing shape—a trusted friend, a devoted wife—but when the sad Enterprise officers got too close, it placed its greedy sucker-pad fingers on their bodies and slurped up every last bit of juice, leaving nothing but fluttering skin and bone.

She couldn’t do more than she was doing, every minute the new story flashing through her head:
Husband finds Child, Plans for Baby Scraped
. As she emptied the dishwasher, worked out on the Stairmaster, shopped at Safeway, she thought of Daniel, of Randi, of an eight-year love affair Dan had never told her about.
How?
She thought as she lay next to him, listening to his sleeping noises.
What else don’t I know?
Even though Dan had promised he’d told her everything, she held herself back, away, knowing that one more thing would knock one of them loose, send someone running from the house. Alone and for good. The less time she spent here, turning the corners of her house that suddenly seemed different, the more opportunity she had to think about Dan’s past. That’s why she had called Brody.

“Are you ready?” Avery jumped and turned to face Dan. He’d put on a suit and tie as if he were going to work and not to talk with a stranger about a boy who may or may not be his; all dressed up to have cells carefully scraped from the inside of his cheek. If they had to test her, Avery thought, there would be no cells left, just grooves all along her mouth from her teeth.

“Sure. Yeah.” She smiled slightly, feeling how hard she had to work to make her muscles pull up the corners of her lip. Looking briefly in Dan’s eyes, she let her gaze fall to his tie, the one she’d bought at Nordstrom only last week, before any of this had happened.

“Okay. Let’s go then.” He cocked his head, trying to find her gaze. She breathed in and looked up, let herself be taken in, seen, without looking away.

“Are you okay?”

At his question, she dropped her eyes. “Yeah. Let’s go.” She picked up her purse and put it on her shoulder.

He opened the door to the garage for her, and she pressed the opener. “Were you on the phone? I thought I heard you talking to someone.”

Opening the Lexus’ passenger door, she slipped into the leather seat. “Oh, it was someone from the damn United Bank,” she said, putting on her seatbelt. “Nothing really.”



After providing the DNA sample as well as two glass tubes of blood—
for disease?
Avery wondered but didn’t ask—they went to the Contra Costa County social services department and waited in a bright, noisy waiting room on plastic aqua chairs. Avery crossed her legs, jiggling her foot, and Dan sat with his elbows on his knees, seeming to find the white flecked linoleum interesting. Rather than watch the way he creased his forehead and rubbed his hair back periodically, talking slightly under his breath, she watched a mother and son arguing in a corner.

“You can’t tell him about your daddy coming over. What did I tell you? What did I say?” The mother jerked her purse strap up on her shoulder.

The boy, who seemed to be about twelve, had a green and gold A’s cap pulled down almost to his nose. He kicked at the legs of the chair in front of him. “So?”

“Now think about what’s going to happen. God dammit!” She squeezed an empty pack of cigarettes, the wrapping crinkling in her hand.

“I don’t care.” The boy pulled his cap down even further, and the mother slammed back in the chair and looked up at Avery.

“Going to be the death of me,” she said and then turned to stare at the long line of people inching toward the clerks behind the counter.