Riverside Park (11 page)

“
WELL THAT'S JUST
great,” Sam muttered, pulling at the knot in his tie with one hand and throwing the mail down on the kitchen counter with the other.

“Now what?” Harriet said wearily. It had been a horrible couple of weeks. It was like an alien had dropped in from outer space to replace the daughter they loved. Sam kept rubbing his eyes and staring again at his nineteen-year-old daughter, trying to fathom what the hell was going on in that pretty head of hers, what the hell
had
been going on that had led to this. Sullen, angry, her abdomen looming large, Samantha spent most of her time sitting in the wingback chair with her feet up on the ottoman watching TV. She was being belligerent to
them
, as if this was all their fault.

“There's an eleven-hundred-dollar credit card bill for Samantha,” he said, yanking his tie off with a flourish.

“I had to get some winter clothes,” Samantha's voice said
from the back hall. “Or did you expect me to fashion a loose garment made of rags for protection against the cold?”

Harriet didn't bother trying to calm Sam down because now it was she who felt so distraught. She had been on a Planned Parenthood board for sixteen years and contraception had been such an important part of the girls' upbringing that she swore to Sam the only way Samantha could have gotten pregnant was if she had tried to get that way. But Samantha wasn't saying much. Just that the baby was due in February, the adoptive parents would pick up the baby from the hospital and then she would go back to school.

“Come in here, please,” Sam said.

After a few moments, Samantha appeared. She looked radiantly healthy. She had her hair braided today and was wearing a flattering red dress. Sam held out the bill. “I'll pay this and then I'm cancelling the card.”

“You can't, it's mine.”

“I repeat, I will pay this and then cancel the card, and you will use your ATM card from now on, which means if you don't have the money in the bank to pay for something, then either you talk to us or you don't get whatever it is you think you can't live without.”

She exaggerated her condition by plunking one hand on her hip and jutting out her hips. “It's my card. I'm over eighteen, I can keep it if I want.”

“And who's going to pay it?”

“I will,” she said, snatching the bill out of his hand.

“Yeah, right,” he said, turning away.

When they heard her bedroom door slam Harriet came over to him. “Where would she get the money to pay it, Sam?”

“She doesn't have any money. She's just giving me b.s. to get a rise out of me.”

“Sam—”

The tone of her voice made his heart skip. “What?
What?
” he said.

“She keeps saying the adoptive parents will come to the hospital. There can't be adoptive parents already, can there? Unless—” Tears welled up in her eyes and she reached out to the kitchen table for support as she sat down heavily in the chair and dropped her face in her hand.

“I don't get it. What do you mean?”

“I mean—” She looked up at him. “I think she may have already taken money for this baby.”

“What? Are you out of your mind? What does she need money for? Why would she do that?”

“I feel sick,” Harriet said, holding her face again.

“No, babe, no, hang on.” Sam grabbed a paper towel, stuck it under the ice water tap on the refrigerator and then went over to put it on Harriet's forehead. She opened the towel up and covered her whole face with it. When he saw her shoulders start to quake—she was crying—he felt a kind of fury he had not felt for years.

“I just want to lie down,” Harriet said, lowering the towel. “I'm fine, Sam, I'm just tired.” He helped her up and walked her to their bedroom. She stretched out on the bed and he took off her high heels. He pulled up the quilt to cover her and sat down next to her. “I'm sure you're wrong. But I will find out.”

“I'm so exhausted I don't know if I'm coming or going anymore,” she said, covering her face with her arm.

“You haven't slept through the night since she came home.”

“I'm just so scared, Sam. She feels like a stranger to me.” She let her arm fall back on the bed. “Althea feels it, too.”

“Althea's just upset because your heart's broken, honey, and she can't stand to watch. Not that I can.”

She sighed. “I suppose.” She closed her eyes, felt around for his hand and found it. “We'll get through this,” she whispered. Then her eyes opened to look up at him. “We will, Sam, won't we?”

“Of course we will.” He kissed her hand. “I'll make something for dinner.” He got up.

“Could you make sure that Samantha eats something?”

“Obviously I can't make Samantha do anything, but I will try,” he promised.

Fifteen minutes later he knocked on the door of his daughter's bedroom.

“Come in,” she called.

Sam balanced the tray in one hand to open the door. “Since we're through yelling at you for the day,” he began, “your mother thought you might want something to eat.”

Samantha was sitting on her bed with a book and a highlighter. Any fantasies he had maintained that Samantha might be in here crying her eyes out with guilt were utterly dispelled. She looked extremely comfortable and happy in her flannel nightgown and slippers.

He put the tray down next to her on the bed. There were two slices of toasted seven-grain bread with peanut butter and sliced bananas on it. There was a tall glass of organic two-percent milk. There was also a quartered orange.

“Did Mom sneak wheat germ in this?” she asked, pulling the tray closer and peering at the suspect peanut butter.

“No,” Sam said. “But I did.” He walked around the bed and picked up her book. “
Abnormal Psychiatry and the American Social Model
,” he read. “Sounds like fun.”

“It's pretty interesting, actually. How our system fails the most disturbed people, who then drag down the whole system so it can't function well for anyone else.”

Sam was going to take a seat but the only chair was the old rocker and just now he couldn't face it. He had spent too many hours in that chair, holding Samantha in his lap, reading her stories.

She had been a beautiful child. She was still beautiful, with her square face, high cheekbones, aquiline nose and pouting mouth.

He walked over to the window facing 90th Street and rested his arms on the windowsill. He heard Samantha bite into the toast.

All he could think about was Samantha must have been pregnant last August when she had been working at a community health center. While she had been advising inner-city teenage girls of color about love, family and clean living. She also must have been pregnant when she was a bridesmaid in her cousin's wedding. For weeks and months Samantha must have known she was pregnant and yet had said nothing, only to show up at Thanksgiving and let her condition announce itself.

At first he had been furious with Rosanne for trying to run interference for Samantha. That quickly dissipated, though, because he had just been looking for somebody who was strong enough to endure his wrath. Rosanne had known Samantha her entire life. She had done the right thing. And she had run interference as much for the whole family's sake as for Samantha's.

Rosanne had always warned him that Samantha got away with murder simply because she was the daughter he carried no guilt about. (“No, that's not it,” he would say.)

(“Yeah, okay,” Rosanne would say, “but you're not drunk anymore, so maybe you could just be a little nicer to Althea. Who's exactly like you. But we won't even go there, Mr. W, will we?”)

“Your mother's afraid you might have already signed some sort of adoption agreement,” he began, watching the dog walkers head toward the park.

“I haven't.”

Thank God for that. “Samantha, you haven't taken any money from a couple or anything, have you?”

“No,” she said.

“Your mother was wondering how you could afford to pay that credit card bill.” He hazarded a peek over his shoulder. She was eating and didn't look in the least upset.

“I got a partial refund from school. I was going to tell you about it.” She lowered the glass of milk. “But you made me mad. And I know I was wrong to charge all those clothes but I don't think I was completely sane when I did it, you know?” She was squinting at him. “My brain gets wicked weird sometimes.”

“Hormones,” he said, going over to sit down in the rocker. “You've got tremendous changes going on in your body. Your mother had that, too. With both pregnancies.” He leaned forward, holding his hands in front of him. “We want to do what's right, Samantha. For you and for the baby. We get upset because we love you so much—” His voice started to break, but he cleared it and pressed on. “I know you said you got counseling in Utica, but we'd still like you to see someone here.”

“Why?”

“Well, to start with, to make absolutely sure that you really do want to give this baby up—”

“I don't want it!” she said, voice rising. “I'll give birth to it, find it a good home and then I'm going on with my life, Dad. There's no way I'm keeping it.”

He held his hands up slightly. “I understand. Don't get upset.”

“You guys keep looking at me like I murdered somebody. I got pregnant, big deal, and I keep telling you, I'll take care of it.”

“But it is a big deal,” he said softly.

“I knew you'd want me to have an abortion, that's why I didn't tell you guys before.”

“That's not true, Samantha.”

“Oh, yes, it is. This isn't even really about the baby. It's about Mom's image in—” her head accompanied an imaginary dance step to the side “—
the community
, and what it will do when it gets out her teenage daughter is an unwed mother.”

“With you walking in Riverside Park every day,” Sam said, “you think anybody's
not
going to know you're pregnant?”

“Oh, so you want me to stay inside? You want me to pace in my room for the next two months?” She craned her neck forward. “Maybe you could send me to Africa, Dad. With any luck I'll get murdered in the Sudan and Mom's image problem will be solved. Then she can become a widely admired martyr and get even more awards.”

She's jealous.
Sam was thunderstruck. Samantha was jealous of how many people admired her mother.

“Enough nonsense,” he said, getting to his feet. His back was killing him. “And for your information, yes, I probably would have advised you to have an abortion. But not your mother. Your mother only wants to understand why you wanted to get pregnant.”

“Is that what she thinks?” she said, pushing the tray away from her. “That I did it deliberately?”

“She's worried about you, Samantha, get it through your head. You are her baby and she would do just about anything in this world to protect you. She's scared because she doesn't understand how you got to this place, why you couldn't come to her. Is that so hard to understand?”

After a moment Samantha relented, letting her head sag. After another moment, she said, “I thought about telling her.”

“Were you raped?” Sam quietly asked.

She looked up at him in horror. “No.”

“Because that's the first thing that crossed my mind.”

Was it his imagination or did she smile slightly?

“Who's the father, Samantha?”

She shook her head.

“He has a right to know.”

“He knows. I told you, I got counseling, all of that's been taken care of. So you can go tell Mom I didn't sell the baby down the river. It's a legit adoption agency.”

“So you've talked to an agency?” He needed to get this straight.

“Yes,” she said impatiently. “That's where I got the counseling.”

“But you didn't sign anything.”

“You can't sign off until after the baby's born. You're allowed to change your mind.” She tossed her book to the floor and pulled herself toward the edge of the bed. “Anything else?”

“What's the father's race?”

She shook her head again. “It's not happening, Dad. And if you don't give it up I'm just going to leave.” She pushed herself up from the bed.

“You will see the obstetrician, right? The one your mother made the appointment with?”

“
Yes
.” She was looking around the room, he presumed for her robe, which was on the floor on the other side of the bed. Sam went over to pick it up. “Thanks,” she said when he helped her on with it.