The Mothers (17 page)

“I know about you and Nadia,” she said. “I know you slept with her.”

He couldn't see her face. She was still bent away, one hand holding her hair out of the zipper's track. He froze, unsure whether to deny it or apologize.

“It's okay,” she said. “I just want you to know that I know.”

How did she know? What had Nadia told her? Or maybe Aubrey had sensed it on her own, like spotting paint clinging to their fingertips that neither had been careful enough to wash off. Only hours into their marriage and he'd already hurt her. But he would be smarter now. He ran his hands along the smooth cups of Aubrey's shoulders and kissed the back of her neck. She was better than him but that would make him better. He would be good to her.

—

O
N THE FLIGHT
back to Detroit, Nadia dreamed about Baby. Baby, no longer a baby, now a toddler, reaching and grabbing. Pulling at her earrings until she unhooks his chubby fingers. Baby hungry always for her face. Baby growing into a child, learning words, rhyming
-at
words from a car seat on the way to school, writing his name in green crayon in the front of all his picture books. Baby running with friends at the park, pushing girls he likes on the swing. Baby digging for Indian clay in the sandbox and coming home smelling like pressed grass. Baby flying planes in the backyard with Grandpa. Baby searching for hidden photos of Grandma. Baby learning how to fight. Baby learning how to kiss. Baby, now a man, stepping on an airplane and slinging his bag into the overhead bin. He helps an older woman with hers. When he lands, wherever he's headed, he gets his shoes shined and stares into the black mirror, sees his face, sees his father's, sees hers.

S
cripps Mercy Hospital called at midnight, and Nadia knew before answering the phone that her father was dead.

She had been half dreaming and she might have slept through the shrill ringing altogether if Zach hadn't jabbed her in the back. As soon as she'd cracked open an eye and seen her phone screen light up with an unknown number, she knew that something terrible had happened to her father. A car wreck. A heart attack. He'd left the earth while she was sleeping, slipped away as silently as her mother had. But when she'd answered, a nurse told her that her father had dropped a barbell on his chest while lifting weights in the backyard. A crushed diaphragm, two broken ribs, and a punctured lung. He was in critical but stable condition.

She hung up. Beside her, Zach groaned into his pillow. She'd met him in Civil Procedure I when they were both 1Ls. He was the golden boy from Maine, skin tanned from summers spent boating,
blond hair ruffled like a Kennedy. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been attorneys. She was the first-generation student who checked out textbooks from the library because she couldn't afford to buy them, whose stress about her mounting student loans only offset her fear of flunking. When he'd first asked her out at a party after their first-semester finals, she told him she doubted they had anything in common.

“Why?” he said. “Because I'm white?”

He liked to refer to his whiteness the way all white liberals did: only acknowledging it when he felt oppressed by it, otherwise pretending it didn't exist. She had been wrong after all—they did have a few things in common. They both wanted to practice civil rights law. They both knew what it was like to grow up in towns hugged by the ocean. And they both liked to text each other at the end of long nights studying, inevitably ending up together in bed. She didn't expect much from him, which was liberating. He was a good time and she needed one. Breaking up with Shadi had drained her and law school had turned her into a stressed-out wreck. She drank so many pots of coffee while she studied that the smell of coffee made her feel anxious. Zach's good humor, his easy looks, his expectation that life open itself to him were a comfort. She'd never asked him for emotional support before, but later, she felt grateful that she hadn't been alone when she received the phone call about her father. Zach drove to her apartment and helped her pack a bag. She was moving numbly, grabbing handfuls of clothes out of drawers and stuffing them in a suitcase.

“You know I haven't visited my dad in three years?” she said.

She hadn't flown home since Aubrey and Luke's wedding, since Mrs. Sheppard had cornered her in the lobby of the reception hall.
In the years that followed, she'd reexamined everything about that summer before college: the pastor's tentative visit, when he'd seemed unusually invested in her well-being, as if surveying damage he'd caused; Mrs. Sheppard's coldness at work, how surprisingly kind she'd seemed right before Nadia left. Had she thought that Nadia might tell? Was that the real reason she gave Luke the money for the abortion? Not to help a girl in need but to make her go away? Nadia imagined the pastor's wife in line at the bank sliding her withdrawal slip to the teller, how quickly she must have stuffed the cash in an envelope, paranoid that she might encounter a congregation member who would see the stack of money and somehow know what it would purchase. For years, Mrs. Sheppard had known her secret. For years, Nadia had thought she was hiding, when hiding had been impossible all along.

Her secret had unraveled, and Luke had never planned to tell her that his parents knew. He could've warned her when he'd brought her the money. She would've been upset with him for telling them, of course, but she had been too desperate to complain about where the money had come from. Now she only felt angry. She imagined her father settling in his pew each Sunday, sedate and unaware as the Sheppards eyed him. Poor Robert, too busy carting loads in his truck to know what had happened in his own household, blind to everything but his grief. And when was the last time she'd even spoken to her father? Really talked to him, not just called on Christmas or left a voice mail for his birthday. He didn't like talking on the phone much and she'd been so wrapped up in her own life. She sat on the edge of her bed, suddenly exhausted. She hated hospitals and didn't want to see her father in one.

Zach peeked out of her bathroom, where he was packing her
toothbrush inside a ziplock bag. He looked strange in her apartment. She always slept over at his place.

“We should hurry if you wanna catch your flight,” he said.

“Three years,” she said. “Jesus, what did I think was gonna happen?”

“Look, I'm sorry about all this but we gotta get to the airport. And I have work in the morning.”

He fidgeted a little, her toothbrush still in his hand. Of course he wanted to leave. He was helping her pack in the middle of the night, which was already more kindness than she could expect from a man who wasn't her boyfriend. Or even, really, her friend. She nodded, zipping her suitcase shut. Not until she glanced out the airplane window at the neon lights outlining O'Hare Airport did she realize that she had no idea when she would be back.

—

H
ER FATHER CRIED
when she stepped inside his hospital room. Because of the pain or because he was glad to see her, or maybe even because he was ashamed for her to see him like this, in the hospital bed, his side bandaged, a tube sprouting out of his chest. She paused in the doorway, rocked by the sight of him. She hadn't seen him cry since her mother's funeral but that was different. Hunched over a church pew in his black suit, he had seemed dignified. Stately, even. But in a mint green hospital gown, plugged into beeping machines, he just looked fragile.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Got you flying all the way out here—”

“Daddy, it's fine,” she said. “It's fine. I wanted to see you.”

She hadn't called him Daddy in years. She'd tried it out when he first came home from overseas, rolling the word around in her mouth,
wondering how he might react to it. She'd been so desperate for him then, following him around the kitchen, climbing on his lap while he watched television, patting his face as soon as he'd shaved to feel his smooth cheeks. But then he'd settled back home and she'd grown up and found Dad fit him better—a curt word, a little removed. The nurse rolled in a cot but she stayed in her chair, holding his hand while he slept. His palm felt rough and worn. She couldn't remember the last time she'd done something as simple as hold her father's hand and she was afraid to let go.

She fell into a fitful sleep, and when she awoke in the morning, she found Aubrey sleeping on the cot, covered in a thin hospital blanket. She suddenly remembered calling Aubrey from the airport—she was frantic and needed someone to talk to before the four-hour flight. Aubrey hadn't answered. Even in California, it was late. But Nadia had left a long, rambling voice mail. She'd felt comforted hearing Aubrey's voice, even if it was just her outgoing message.

She knelt by the cot and stroked Aubrey's hair.

“What're you doing here?” she whispered.

Aubrey's eyes fluttered open. She always woke slowly, returning to the world in waves. How many mornings had her face been the first thing Nadia saw?

“I got your message,” Aubrey said. “Of course I'm here.”

They hadn't seen each other since the wedding. Every time they talked on the phone, Nadia tried to convince Aubrey to visit her in Chicago. It would be easier seeing her that way. She couldn't imagine spending the night in Aubrey and Luke's guest room, surrounded by all the pictures from their new life. But Aubrey always gave an excuse for why she couldn't make the trip: she was too busy, she had just started at KinderCare and couldn't ask for time off yet, she had promised Mrs.
Sheppard she would help her with the Women Who Care conference, the children's church play, the annual picnic. Maybe she was too busy or maybe she didn't want to leave Luke behind. Maybe she had become that type of wife, the ones who couldn't go anywhere apart from their husband, who kept calling him to check in and spent the whole time feeling guilty and displaced, like an organ that had managed to exist outside of the body. Who wanted to be that type of wife? Afraid to leave her married home, like if she left her life for a few days, it might not remain once she returned. Or maybe it wasn't fear, but something else. A deep satisfaction. Maybe she just didn't want to be apart from Luke. Maybe he just made her that happy.

“I'm sorry,” Nadia said. “I didn't mean—”

“Shh.” Aubrey pulled her into a hug. “How is he?”

“Stable. That's what they're saying. I don't know, the doctor hasn't been by yet. How long have you been here?”

“Don't worry about me. Do you want coffee? Let me get you coffee.”

Aubrey returned ten minutes later holding cups from a café that Nadia didn't recognize. She accepted it anyway, even though the smell, wafting through the lid, reminded her of libraries and textbooks and exams. She was already anxious, a cup of coffee couldn't make her feel worse. She and Aubrey sat in the waiting room, while the doctor examined her father's chest for any sign of infection. Her father couldn't sit up by himself yet. He was still struggling to breathe.

“They said—” Nadia paused. “If he hadn't been in such good shape, he probably wouldn't have made it.”

“Don't think about that,” Aubrey said. “He made it. That's all that matters.”

But Nadia couldn't stop imagining her father pinned under his barbell in the backyard, trapped and alone. If one of the neighbors hadn't been grilling in his yard, if he hadn't heard a scream, her father might have died there. And she, so concerned with studying for the bar exam and having noncommittal sex with white boys, might not have called home for weeks. She wouldn't even have known that her father was gone. Would anyone have? She rested her head on Aubrey's shoulder. She smelled like Luke, like she had unwrapped herself from his arms and driven straight to the hospital, and Nadia closed her eyes, breathing in his familiar scent.

—

A
FTER A WEEK
, her father was finally released from the hospital. Nadia was relieved to go home after a week of living out of her haphazardly packed suitcase, a week of barely sleeping on the hard cot, a week of sipping watery coffee while her father underwent chest scans and breathing tests. A week in which an endless parade of Upper Room members filtered in and out of her father's room: Sister Marjorie, carrying a slice of her homemade pound cake; First John, bringing a Miles Davis biography that he'd just finished; the Mothers, fussing and fawning with the socks they'd knitted because hospitals just got so cold and you could never have too many pairs of thick socks; even the pastor, who'd come by one morning to pray, laying a palm on her father's forehead. Everyone seemed a bit surprised to see Nadia there, like Third John, who'd jolted when he saw her in the doorway.

“Look who's here,” he said, with a grin, as if he had fully expected her not to be.

Of course she was there. Of course she had flown home to visit
her father in the hospital. How could anyone think that she wouldn't? Was that why the congregation had flocked to see him? Everyone had been so convinced that she wouldn't visit her sick father, that she would leave him there all alone, so they'd all made sure to visit him themselves. She could imagine them already, whispering about her after Sunday service. How they would pity her father with his dead wife and his daughter too busy to visit home. How they would feel noble, honorable even, for standing in the gap and serving as the family he ought to have.

On the cab ride home, her father turned toward the window, like he was grateful to see sunshine again. He still couldn't walk on his own, so she helped him into the house, grabbing him the way the nurse had taught her. She realized, lowering him into bed, that she hadn't been in her father's room since it had become his room only. He still slept on the left side of bed like he used to, the other half untouched as if her mother had just rolled out of bed to get a glass of water.

“Go rest,” he said. “I'll be fine.”

She hesitated before finally slipping out his door. What good could she do him half asleep? She showered and crawled into her bed, drifting off to sleep, when she heard the doorbell ring. When she opened the door, she found Luke Sheppard on her steps. He held a red Tupperware container under one arm, his other arm leaning against his wooden cane.

“I'm with the sick and shut-in ministry,” he said. “Can I come in?”

Marriage hung on Luke's body. He looked older and fuller now, not fat, just satisfied. He filled out a baby blue sweater that Aubrey had obviously bought him—the soft color he never would have chosen, the careful stitching he wouldn't have noticed—with the
satisfaction of a man who no longer had big decisions to make, who relied on a woman to buy his sweaters. He slowly wandered into her kitchen, leaning on his cane, and asked where he should put the food.

“I don't need your food,” she said.

“It's not from me,” he said. “It's from Upper Room.”

He'd stopped shaving too. She imagined him abandoning his razor in front of the bathroom sink—he was satisfied, why groom?—and Aubrey teasing him when she passed to brush her teeth. Maybe she loved his beard, the way his hair tickled her when they kissed. Maybe he only did things that she loved.

“You told your parents,” she said.

“What?”

He looked confused, then his face washed over and his shoulders slumped. He stared at her tiled floor.

“I needed the money,” he said.

“Then make up a reason!”

“They would've said no.” He stepped toward her. “It had to be a really good reason.”