Undone (15 page)

Chloe pretended not to understand. “Miss Simmons,” she said, naming the teacher who had reported Dez’s infraction. “She’s sort of crazy.”

“No, sorry,” Jasper said. “The male teacher. The one who, um, who …” For some reason, he found it impossible to say the words
kissed you.
“The one who was fired.”

“Oh!” she said. “Mr….” She paused. There was no way she was going to utter Dez’s real name. “It was this teacher—Mr. Butler.”

Jasper could see by her hesitations that she did not feel
comfortable discussing the incident. Nor did he, particularly. He let it drop.

They drove for a time in silence—a perfectly comfortable silence, he thought, punctuated by frequent glances at one another and smiles. An easy accord seemed to be growing between them, Jasper decided—a harmony that lay beyond words. He attributed this, in part, to the illusion caused by her resemblance to Holly, but also perhaps to some silent signal, an emanation of pheromones, perhaps; some part of a biological fail-safe warning system that was bound to exist in humans, a subsensory alert that informed people when they were in the presence of their own kin. Wouldn’t such an adaptation have evolved in the species if for no other reason than to minimize the risk of accidental inbreeding in parents and children long separated?
Did
such a thing exist? He must google this. And if it did exist, was he feeling something like that right now?

He turned and looked at Chloe. Her face was directed away from him as she watched the farmers’ fields and the distant mountains stream by out her passenger window. He lightly inhaled through his nostrils, trying to detect that theoretical silent signal, or early warning system, of paternity. Instead, all he could discern was the aroma of ginger and vanilla that wafted from her—a fragrance so evocative of Holly, that scent which made the years disappear, carrying him back to that grove of willows at the edge of the club beach where he had held Holly in his arms. He remembered now how she had seized his hand from where he had been tentatively touching her breast, and guided it down her flank, over her hip and under the hem of
her flimsy party dress, onto the indescribably smooth skin of her inner thigh, and finally up to the hollow between her legs where she pressed his cupping palm against the cotton-covered mound, moaning into his open mouth as he kissed her.

His gaze, driven by memory, unconsciously strayed up Chloe’s legs to an area on the inside of her thigh. A slant of sunlight through the windshield brought out a gleam on the mirror-smooth, matte brown skin.

He raised his eyes and was startled to discover that she was looking at him. He felt his face scalded by a blush of embarrassment and confusion, but was surprised to see no corresponding discomfort in her; indeed, she simply smiled demurely and drooped her eyelashes. Aghast, he whipped his head around to look out the windshield. In his peripheral vision, he could see that she continued to gaze at him with that strange serenity. He furthermore could see that she did not shift position. He expected that she would, as an act of reflexive modesty, close her legs a little or pull down on that infernal skirt. But she continued, with an apparent lack of any self-consciousness, or awareness, to offer to his gaze the smooth expanse of inner thigh while looking with sober innocence and seeming unknowingness at the side of his face.

In fact, she was overjoyed finally to have caught him in what seemed an act of ogling her, but she was confused by how he had looked away and was now so easily keeping his eyes off her; had she misconstrued his reaction? Had he actually been looking at her quite innocently, with nothing more than a warm, paternal regard?

“I thought you might be asleep,” he said, his eyes aimed strictly forward at the highway. His face was on fire.

“No,” she said. “I was just wondering.”

“Wondering,” he echoed. “About what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, finally closing her legs and turning toward him. She drew her feet up on the seat so that her body formed a Z. “About what we’re going to
do
in Connecticut.”

“I’ve given that quite a bit of thought,” Jasper said, taking up the subject energetically, to dispel his embarrassment. “I thought you should just take it easy. After all, it’s only about four weeks until school. I think you should get to know your new family and your new home and your new town. I’ve got a membership at the country club. I thought you might like to take some tennis lessons and maybe hang out there at the club. You can swim, sail, and there are a lot of kids your age. You can make friends.”

“I don’t care about other kids—I just want to be with
you.
But I’ve never tried tennis. Can you teach me?”

Jasper chuckled. “I’m afraid my days as a tennis pro are behind me. Besides, I’ve got work to do. I’m writing a new novel. I don’t have much time for tennis.”

“So I won’t ever
see
you?” she said on a note of real panic. She pictured him hidden away behind an office door day and night, writing. How would she enact the plan?

“Oh, you’ll see far too much of me, I’m sure.” He glanced over and smiled. “Every day at breakfast. At lunch, if you’re around. Dinner. And in the evenings. You’ll get your fill of your old dad.”

“Never,” she said, relieved. “I want to be with you every second!” She leaned across the seats and nuzzled Jasper’s ear. “I’ll sit on your lap when you’re writing. Like a little cat—you won’t even know I’m there.” She made a purring sound, and then placed her arms around his neck. She rested her head on his shoulder. “Oh, Dad,” she said, “I’m so happy we’re together!”

Jasper murmured his assent. And he
was
happy; indeed, he felt his heart brimming with that paternal pride that had so surprised him a month ago. But he continued to feel a peculiar rigidity, a constraint and physical awkwardness at her touch. Why could he not relax? Why was it so difficult to return her physical affection? Was it that he’d fallen out of the habit of touching and being touched? Since Pauline’s stroke, he had lived so much in his mind, as a writer, struggling with phantoms, locked away in his work cave down the hall, an ascetic. But no. He was not a complete stranger to physically expressed love. He hugged and kissed and touched Maddy every day. Why should Chloe be any different? Yes, Chloe was, of course, older—a woman, really. Or almost. But Jasper saw men cuddling their teenaged daughters all the time. Why could he not take one of his hands—which gripped the wheel with white-knuckled tightness—and slip it round her shoulders? Draw her face to his and give her a kiss on the cheek? The hell of it was that he could feel the yearning in her body, the sense of her straining to press herself against him, to express and receive physical affection—and no wonder, given her recent loss and the period of foster care she had endured. Yet here he sat, absurdly distant and cold, like a statue, with her warm, quiveringly alive body draped upon him.

He must get control of himself. He forced himself to remove his right hand from the steering wheel. He awkwardly snaked his arm around her shoulders. She moaned softly and snuggled still more closely to him. Yes, he thought. Yes, this is fine. He felt himself beginning to relax a little. Actually to enjoy the feel of her, the weight of her head against his shoulder, the feel of her breath on his neck, the sending aroma of her skin. He responded by giving her a quick peck on the forehead.

She murmured, “So, what’s your new novel about?”

Jasper never talked about works in progress with anyone but Pauline, but he sensed an opportunity now to let Chloe know him better by taking her into his confidence about his writing. Besides which, he thought she might be amused to learn about how she had, inadvertently, inspired him. “Well, as a matter of fact,” he said, “you had quite a bit to do with my new book.”

“Me?” she said, lifting her head from his shoulder. Her forehead had puckered into soft wrinkles.

“Yup,” he said, turning his eyes back to the highway. “I dreamed up the idea after I first learned about you. Writers often take a real situation—something from their own lives—and play with it; they ask, ‘What if?’ In this case, I asked myself, ‘What if a person tried to
pretend
he was someone’s child and faked a DNA test to prove it?’”

Chloe whipped her arms from around his neck.

Jasper, startled, turned and saw that she had retreated from him, actually pushing her body back against the passenger door. One of her hands was on the door handle—as if she were contemplating jumping out onto the highway. (She was
certainly prepared to do so—depending on where this conversation was going.)

“What’s wrong?” he said, frightened. She was watching him, clearly terrified, as if she expected him to pounce at her, to attack her. He could not imagine what had gotten into her. “What’s
wrong
?” he repeated.

“Why would you think something like that?” she said, her eyes on him, her fingers still on the door handle. “Why would I make you think of someone playing that kind of trick?”

He realized his terrible mistake. He was so used to discussing his working methods with Pauline—a former
editor.
Yet here he was, talking to a high schooler about the mysteries of literary creation and expecting her to understand. All he had succeeded in doing—by speaking of falsified DNA tests, impostors and lies—was to make her think he had entertained such suspicions about
her
! How could he have been so stupid, so insensitive?

He apologized, explaining that his novel had
nothing
to do with their situation, that he had merely used a kernel of information about DNA testing to play a game of make-believe.

Inexpressibly relieved—for a nightmare moment, she truly thought he had somehow learned of the plan—Chloe felt the tension drain from her body. She let go of the door handle and resettled herself in her seat. “Well, that’s a crazy idea anyway,” she said. “No one’s going to believe it. It’s impossible to fake a DNA test.”

“Of course,” Jasper said. “But it’s pure fantasy. My books are just for fun. Like puzzles—they’re not supposed to be real.”

“Okay,” she said, pouting. “But I still think it’s stupid.”

Jasper, duly chastised, sat in shamed silence. The relentless highway, cutting through featureless tracts of farmland, flowed past. After a few miles, Chloe edged toward him. She reached over and took his hand off the wheel and placed it around her. She leaned over and once again cushioned her head on his shoulder. “I forgive you,” she whispered.

The aim of this long drive was to draw her out, to touch on subjects they had not discussed on the phone, to talk about things they might feel uncomfortable discussing in front of the rest of the family. There was one topic, in particular, he had wanted to be sure to bring up on this drive. There seemed no time like the present.

“So,” he said, “we haven’t really talked about your mother.”

“What about her?” Chloe said, once more going on alert. She felt, instinctually, that it was best to keep him off all topics related to her life at home, in New Halcyon.

“Just how sorry I was to hear about what happened.”

“I don’t really like to talk about it,” she said. “It makes me sad.”

“I understand. But it can be good to talk about things that make you sad.”

“Yeah, that’s what all the social workers and shrinks keep telling me,” she said, tipping her face up on his shoulder and looking at him with what she knew was one of her most ardent, knee-weakening expressions. “But I don’t want to think about Mom right now. I don’t want
you
to think about her either. I just want to be
your
daughter who you can kiss and hug and hold. I just want you to fill me up with love.” This was pushing
it, she knew, but it felt imperative that she somehow deflect Ulrickson from this paternal line of inquiry.

He looked down at her face. She was staring up at him with a gaze so intensely beckoning that it took an effort for him to disentangle his eyes from hers. He looked back out onto the highway. He felt her wriggle against him, repositioning herself. For some reason, his heart was pounding so hard in his chest that he was sure Chloe could feel it.

She
could
feel it, like a trapped bird beating against the inside of his rib cage and sending its tremor against her hand, which lay on his chest. So she was surprised that when he next spoke, it was to voice the most banal of questions.

He asked if she was hungry.

In fact, she was. But determined to keep up the pressure, she snarled and took a playful bite at his neck—actually catching some of his flesh between her teeth and giving a painful little pull. She quickly kissed the spot, and said,
“Starving.”

They stopped at the next fast-food place and went inside to stretch their legs. Jasper was again forced to endure the spectacle of males—seemingly of every age, ethnicity, social class and education level—staring hungrily at his daughter, looking up from their burgers and fries and milkshakes. As usual, Chloe seemed oblivious of the quiet chaos her presence caused. She simply swayed against him as they waited in line. Jasper could feel the envy that radiated from her admirers. In a gesture half protective, half defiant, he put his arm around her and pressed her against him.

Surprised and encouraged, she smiled up at him. “Oh,” she said, giggling, “McDonald’s makes you romantic, huh?” She
raised herself swiftly on tiptoe and kissed his chin. She dropped back onto her heels and continued to scrutinize the menu posted above the workers’ heads.

Jasper looked around the room. Burgers were arrested in midair; straws, unsucked, lay against protruding tongues. He smiled blandly, and then stepped up to the register.

They ate in the car as Jasper drove. Chloe picked lightly at her Filet-O-Fish sandwich, left more than half of it for Jasper to finish, and took only a single bite from one of his fries. She did, however, greedily suck down all of her strawberry milkshake, and half of his chocolate one.

Feeling that they had, in the humble act of eating side by side in the car, fallen into a dangerous dynamic of actual parent-and-child intimacy, she decided that dramatic measures were called for. She stuffed the trash into the takeout bag and tossed it into the backseat. Then, in a single fluid motion, she lifted her legs, swiveled in her seat, ducked her head under his extended arms and laid the back of her head on his lap. She rested her bare feet on the passenger seat.