She Has Your Eyes (3 page)

Wylie handed the phone back to me.

“What’s your name again?” Janine Baker asked me.

“Andrea,” I replied. “Call me Andi.”

“I’m on my way now. Keep an eye on her. I don’t care if you or your husband have to lock her in a closet.”

“I don’t think there’s any need for that.”

“Fat chance. If she’s gone by the time I get there, I’m holding you responsible, and I’ll sue your ass until you’ve got nothing but the clothes on your back, you hear me?” She had a thick Long Island accent.

“Absolutely, Ms. Baker. I understand. Thank you.”

Wylie smirked after I hung up. “Wow, she is
pissed
.”

“She has every right to be,” said David.

“She’s probably more worried than you realize. Mothers’ anger usually stems from worry,” I said.

“Do you guys have any kids?”

“No,” I answered.

“Then how do you know?”

“We know enough to know that,” said David. He seemed mesmerized by her, staring at her with a combination of fascination and anger.

“Your mom’s afraid you’re going to sneak out before she gets here,” I said. “Can we trust you not to do that? It’s going to take at least an hour, probably longer with the Labor Day traffic. We don’t want to watch you every second. I’d really hate to have to treat you like a prisoner.”

Again she rolled her eyes. “I
promise
I won’t go anywhere. Besides, I was really hoping I could talk to you; you know, get some background information,” she said to David.

He stared at her blankly, but I knew the expression well enough to read his mind:
Are you nuts?

“Excuse me,” he said, and turned to me. “I’m going upstairs.” He pulled me out of earshot from Wylie and spoke in a low voice. “Set the house alarm so that it goes off if she tries to leave.”

“Really?” I asked. David’s adamant stance overpowered my skepticism, however, and he set it himself before shooting up the stairs. I returned to the kitchen and sat at the table again, wondering whether David was going to hide out upstairs for the entire hour. Wylie seemed to be waiting for me to say something.

I’d been dealing with nineteen- and twenty-year-olds for most of my teaching career, thus had mastered a communication model that worked ninety-five percent of the time. The key was to listen to them (
always
listen), but not pull any punches. Additionally, always try to show them the other side, the bigger picture, regardless of whether it was for the purpose of analyzing a text, drafting a piece of writing, or solving a problem. Don’t invalidate them, but don’t let them get away with murder either. Most of all, remember what it was like to be nineteen.

Did it work with fifteen-year-olds too? I was about to find out.

“Listen, he’s not mad at you,” I said. “He’s just… in shock. We both are. I mean, what if some strange guy suddenly showed up at your house one day, completely out of the blue, and claimed to be your dad? And you’d basically gone your whole life having never thought such a thing was possible? You would totally freak out.”

“I guess so,” said Wylie as she wiped the condensation from her iced tea glass and contemplated.

“And he’s right. There are a bunch of legal issues to consider.”

“Look, I’m not after your money, if that’s what he’s worried about.”

I shook my head in frustration. “Wylie, this is huge.
Huge.
It’s a very, very complicated issue. It’s not some Lifetime movie.”

Rather than display any of the usual teenage body language—rolling eyes, impatient huffs, shrugging shoulders—Wylie hung her head, then picked it up again. Her eyes had grown dark with regret.

I’d seen that look before. Only not on her. A shiver ran up my spine.

“I know,” she said. “And I’m really sorry. I probably didn’t think this through.”

I paused for a moment, allowing the weight of it to sink in for her, and I began to see her actions less as reckless and more as proactive. She’d taken matters into her own hands. Such determination in a fifteen-year-old was admirable, even if her execution was flawed.

I looked at the clock on the wall: a little after four thirty.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Starving.”

I went to the fridge and rummaged through the remains of yesterday’s barbecue feast before pulling out some grilled chicken, potato salad, corn on the cob, and two hamburger patties. I filled an aluminum pie pan with portions of the chicken and the corn, covered it in foil, and set the oven to 350 degrees.

“Why don’t you just nuke it?” she asked.

“Oven heating preserves the texture of the food. But if you’re really starving, I can nuke it for you.”

She nodded, and I removed the foil, transferred the contents except the two patties to a plate, and placed it in the microwave oven. Then I re-covered the two patties with the foil and placed them into the oven without waiting for it to preheat, knowing how much David hated nuked leftovers. When the microwave oven beeped, I removed the plate and set it in front of Wylie, accompanied by a serving of potato salad, a cold can of Fresca, plastic utensils, and a napkin.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Would you mind if I went upstairs to check on David?”

“Sure thing. I can’t stand when people watch me eat.”

I bounded up the stairs and went into what used to be Sam’s study. Shortly after David moved in, we’d replaced the old leather sofas and painted the walls to a woodsy, green-umber hue, maintaining its warmth but more suitable to David’s tastes, complemented by several carefully chosen paintings. I’d burst into tears when the sofa came out, having spent many hours on it, especially in the months following Sam’s death, but had since made the adjustment, grateful that David kept Sam’s stupid bobblehead collection intact and on display out of respect, all encased in glass now.

David was sitting at the desk, typing furiously on his laptop.

“Whatcha doin’?” I asked, feigning nonchalance.

“Writing a very nasty letter,” he replied, without looking away from the screen.

“To whom?”

“The President of the United States.”

“What for?”

“Drone attacks, unemployment, health care… pick something.”

“I think his Final Four bracket was way off this year,” I said. “That right there is grounds for impeachment.”

David stopped typing and looked up at me and I knew I’d disarmed him when he tried to shoot me a dirty look that broke into a twisted grin.

“You suck,” he said.

“Because I killed your bad mood? Sorry, hon.”

He slid his chair out and motioned for me to sit on his lap. I obliged.

“Christ, Andi. This kid comes out of fucking nowhere…”

“I know.”

“Claims to be
my daughter…
”

“I know.”

“And expects me to be all Ward Cleaver.”

“I doubt she knows who Ward Cleaver is.”

He furrowed his brow and looked at me suspiciously. “How come you’re so calm about this?”

“Oh, I’m freaked out, believe me. But the professor side of me is kicking in. It’s best not to lose your cool. Besides,” I said, pushing a strand of hair away from his face, “I think the magnitude of it is starting to sink in for her.”

He took a whiff of my hair before giving me a kiss.

“What’s she doing right now?” he asked.

“I fixed her a plate of food. One for you too. It’s warming up in the oven.”

“That was sweet of you, thanks.” He paused for a beat. “You really think it’s OK to leave her alone?”

“We’ve already hot-wired the house; what more can we do? Listen, Dev,” I started, shifting my weight. “Is there any possibility that she really is your daughter?”

He pushed me off his lap and stood up. “No fucking way. I was
always
careful.”

David’s past had, for the most part, stayed there. Few consequences came back to haunt him, and certainly nothing of this enormity.

“There’s no such thing as ‘always’ when it comes to birth control. Maybe something went wrong, something you didn’t know about.”

He paced across the room. “Andi, this can’t be—
she
can’t be…”

“She has your eyes, Dev.”

He stopped and turned to me. I looked into his sienna irises, ablaze and frightened, and I knew what he was thinking, knew that he couldn’t bring himself to agree with me.
It was possible
. More than possible, even. And if it was more than possible, then what would it mean for him? Not just legally and financially, but emotionally? What would it mean for
me
? For us?

It was eighty-five degrees outside, and I was shivering inside. And not because of the air conditioning.

I sucked in my fear and went back into professor mode. “Let’s wait until her mom gets here,” I said, and made a feeble attempt at reassurance: “She’s probably just a drama-prone kid who’s rebelling.”

“Why can’t she read the Twilight books like everyone else?”

chapter three

An hour never passed so slowly. David and I changed our clothes to something more company-friendly and then ate as we watched TV in the den while Wylie sat in the recliner in the corner, glued to her cell phone, her thumbs tapping away furiously. She occasionally caught David staring at her accusingly, until she finally had the guts to say, “What,” in an irked tone.

“I’d better not find anything about this on Facebook or Twitter or whatever,” he threatened.

“I’m just talking to my friends is all.”

“I mean it,” he said.

She got up and demonstratively exited the room, and I followed her into the kitchen.

“Wylie, he’s just upset about all this.”

“Well, how do you think
I
feel?” she said, tears welling up. “Is he always like this? Because if he is then I don’t think I want him as my dad.”

“He’s really not,” I assured her. “He’s scared, that’s all. Same as you.”

“I wasn’t scared until I got here.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing.”

“So how come you guys don’t have any kids?” Her sudden change in emotion and subject caught me off guard.

“We got together kind of late in the game,” I said. “In fact, David and I aren’t married.”

“Were you married to someone else?”

“I’m a widow.”

She gasped. “Wow,” she said. “I usually only associate that word with older women. You know, like grandmothers.”

The word still rang awkwardly for me too.

“What happened?” she asked.

“My husband was killed by a drunk driver.”

There was a time when telling a stranger, or even a friend, about Sam’s death felt like the ground was going to open up and swallow me whole at any given second. Panic would flood my lungs and seize my heart. But since his death—four years next month—it had become something I’d learned to live with, like being nearsighted or having a bum knee. I’d grown detached, and not in the grief-stricken, denial kind of way. It was what my former therapist Melody Greene would’ve called “allowance.” However, any mention of him still seemed to summon his presence.

She hesitated before asking her next question. “Were you there? In the car, I mean.”

“Nope. I was right here. It was the night of our fifth wedding anniversary. He went to the store to pick up something he’d forgotten to buy and never came back.”

Wylie looked down at the table; the purple strand of hair swung across her face. She pushed it away.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “My grandfather died last year. He had Parkinson’s. You know, the Michael J. Fox disease?”

“I’m really sorry. That must have been very hard on your grandmother and your mom.”

“It was my stepfather’s father. I guess that means he technically wasn’t my grandfather, but I’ve always thought of him that way.”

“I’m sure he never thought of you as anything other than his granddaughter.”

Just then David entered the kitchen. “Wylie, I want to apologize. I had no right to be so rude and accusatory, especially since you’re a guest in our home.”

Her face turned red, and she avoided eye contact with him. “It’s OK.” The three of us returned to the den to wait out Janine’s arrival.

Twenty minutes later, we remained in limbo as the uncomfortable silence saturated the room despite the annoying sports commentators rambling on the TV in the background. “Who’s winning?” I asked David in an attempt to break the tension.

“Mets just scored again.”

“That’s rare,” I said deadpan. David returned my teasing with a smirk, and I couldn’t help but release a flirtatious smile. For the first time since Wylie showed up, his eyes brightened as he nonverbally responded, and for that split second I think we both forgot she was in the room.

Our mental foreplay was interrupted by a forceful knock, and we both jumped.

“That must be my mom,” said Wylie.

My stomach instantly filled with rocks. David’s did too, I could tell. Together we walked to the front door and opened it. A woman stood before us. At least five-foot-nine. Frosted hair that was once dark. Her eyes made up the same as Wylie’s. Full lips, as if injected with collagen. Thin. Full busted. Tanned. She wore black cotton shorts, a fitted white V-neck T-shirt, and gold lamé sandals. One look at David, and her eyes went
from angry to stunned, as if an apparition had appeared. Her jaw dropped. I glanced at David, and could read his expression: he
knew
her. And I could practically see his inner wheels spinning as their past relationship, whatever that encompassed—a one-night stand, a summer romance, a former client in the early days of his escort business—zoomed in front of him like a subway train. The floor suddenly felt wobbly. Yet when I looked down, the surface was perfectly flat.