Where Love Goes (30 page)

All those great plans he had—for taking Ursula to Family Swim Night at the Y, the two of them building a dulcimer, making a terrarium. Those have evaporated. He is lucky if, at eight o’clock, he has enough energy to give his daughter her bath and read her a chapter of
Charlotte’s Web
without falling asleep in the middle, or—as often happens—discovering that though his eyes are open, the words he’s speaking are total gibberish.

“Daddy,” she says, poking him in the ribs. They’ve got to the place where Templeton the rat breaks the rotten egg and Tim has faded out again.

“Wake up, Daddy,” she says gently. “This is the best part.”

After he sings Ursula their song and kisses her good night, he usually turns on the television. He knows he should wash the dinner dishes, but he’s too tired. Never mind grant writing and proofreading. He usually falls asleep within the first ten minutes of whatever show he’s watching. Sometimes, when Claire arrives in the middle of the night, he thinks for a moment he’s just dreaming. She is the one miraculous thing in his day.

T
his is how Claire finds him when she lets herself in sometime around midnight. If he’s on the couch and not in bed she will kiss him very lightly on the cheek and tell him, “I’m here, honey.” He’ll wake up just enough to get up the stairs. He drops his clothes on the floor and climbs under the sheets beside her. His hands find her, if hers haven’t found him first. However weary he is, just the touch of her skin is enough to rouse him. He has never known this kind of wanting before.

One night she told him she was too tired to make love. “You mind?” she said. Of course he said he understood. It was enough just to hold her. Only then, exhausted as he was, he couldn’t get to sleep. He lay there all night, his body aching for her until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Three
A.M
., three-thirty maybe, he woke her.

“Claire,” he said. “I’m so sorry to do this to you, but I don’t think I can stand it, having you so close to me like this and not being inside you.” He felt like such a jerk.

“It’s okay,” she told him, not fully waking, just rolling over toward him and opening her legs to him. “I’m so sorry,” he said as he entered her.

Four-thirty the alarm goes off and she gets up. “Every time I see you climb out of my bed, I want to weep,” he says. “You shouldn’t have to be living this way. I hate it that I’m doing this to you.”

“I’m lucky I have a man I love enough to want to visit in the night,” she says.

“I want to be the man you get up with in the morning, and the man you have your coffee with. In the home where we live,” he says.

“Oh, well,” she says, pulling up her tights. “Nothing’s perfect.”

He walks her down the stairs. He stands on his front step watching her go until he can’t see her anymore. Then he goes inside to get Ursula up and make her school lunch and the day begins again.

I
t’s Parents’ Night in third grade and Claire has come with Tim. She has heard that Ursula’s been having problems at school, so she figured it would be good to meet the teacher, and maybe some of the mothers. Maybe she’ll be able to make friends with one of them and invite her daughter over to play with Ursula at her house after school on her afternoon off.

Claire and Tim are sitting at Ursula’s desk together while Mrs. Kennedy makes her presentation. They are studying the pilgrims at the moment, with the plan of visiting Plimoth Plantation next month. Mrs. Kennedy is still looking for chaperones if any parents might be available. Claire has been to Plimoth Plantation twice, as a chaperone with Sally’s class, and again with Pete’s. In a minute she knows Mrs. Kennedy is going to mention the First Thanksgiving celebration and ask who would like to help the students make the cranberry sauce and cornmeal mush.

“Third grade is such an exciting time in your children’s lives,” she is saying. “Now that they’ve got the building blocks under their belts, they’re ready to have a little fun with reading.”

Nothing Claire has heard about school from Ursula suggests that she’s been having fun with much of anything. “Isn’t there anybody you like besides Brianne?” Claire asked her the other day.

“Yes,” Ursula said. “The janitor.”

“One of our most fun projects so far this year has been writing our autobiographies,” says Mrs. Kennedy. “I thought that would be a good way of getting to know your children, and, of course, helping them get to know each other. You’ll find their work on their desks where they left them out for you. I know they’re going to be eager to hear your comments at breakfast time tomorrow. And while you’re looking at your children’s work folders, be sure and take a look at their dental hygiene pictures and their most recent penmanship practice sheets. The letter
G
is such a tricky one, and I think you’ll agree with me, they’ve been doing a super job with it.”

Ursula is right about this woman, Claire is thinking. She does sound like Marge Simpson.

Tim leans toward Claire. She thinks he’s going to say something about penmanship. What he says is, “I know you’re going to think I’ve lost my mind, but I have to tell you. You’re ovulating right now. I can sense it. It’s making me nuts.”

“…  dioramas depicting the life of Squanto,” Mrs. Kennedy is saying. Claire is no longer sure what Mrs. Kennedy’s talking about. She feels Tim’s leg pressing against her thigh. In a way nobody but Claire would notice, his breathing has also changed. She tries to concentrate on the other parents in the room. She wants to find that mother she’s been looking for whose child can become a friend for Ursula. Somebody other than the very young woman, standing in the back, wearing the shirt with the words
SHIT HAPPENS
. She has a bruise on her arm. She’s very skinny.

“So,” the teacher says, “I’ll just let you wander around and explore your child’s world for a while.”

For some reason the first mother Claire introduces herself to is under the impression that Claire is the mother of a child named Courtney. “I’ve been wanting to get our girls together,” this other mother says. “It’s so important that they spend time with the right element. These days especially.” Then she bends closer to Claire. “And in this classroom, in particular, it seems there is such a rough element.”

“Rough element?” Claire says. “How so?”

“There’s that boy Ricky, terrorizing them on the playground with that trick where he turns his eyeball inside his head,” she says. “You hadn’t heard?”

Claire shakes her head.

“And that poor kid Brianne. Somebody should report her mother to Youth Services. Just look at her outfit.”

Claire can only nod.

“The worst is that disturbed child. Ursula something. The one who pinches. Courtney said she stole Ashley’s scrunchy the other day. She didn’t even wear it. Just threw it in the trash.”

T
im doesn’t have to introduce himself to Mrs. Kennedy. He has spoken with her many times, not only at their conference about Ursula’s problems socializing, but often when he picks her up and drops her off in the morning. Ursula has told him she no longer wants to ride the bus, so he drives her.

“I was hoping you might be seeing her warm up a little,” Tim says to the teacher. “Now that everybody’s getting in the groove.”

“It’s still early,” Mrs. Kennedy says. “And of course ever since hearing the news about her mother, she’s been more distracted than usual.”

“News about her mother?” says Tim. “What news?”

“About her mother coming to see her from New Zealand at Thanksgiving, and taking her to Disney World,” says Mrs. Kennedy. “She already explained to me that’s why she’d have to miss the field trip to Plymouth.”

“I don’t understand,” says Tim.

“And then going to Nashville to meet Dolly Parton!” she says. “We were all so impressed. I hadn’t realized that your former wife is a musician, although after Ursula told us, I could see it, from how musical Ursula is.

“I think the visit will do her a world of good,” Mrs. Kennedy says. “I know you do the very best you can, both you and your friend. But there are just some things nobody can give a child besides her mother. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

MY LIFE
By Ursula Vine

I was born Aug. 17 1985. My mom almost dide wen I came out. Her name is Joan. Shes verry pretty. I look like my dad. His name is Tim.

I wish I dint have red hair.

My dogs name is Jenny. She duznt get to live with us any more. Jenny use to sleep on my bed. We had a speshl trick we did with newspapr.

My dad writes artacals about swamps. Sumtimes we go look for Tadpoles but not so much anymor. I have a pink bike.

Here is the most unuzl thing about me. I no what peple think even if its just in there hed. Like if they betend to like me but I know they really dont.

So you beter not say I hope Ursula drops ded. Even in your hed. Or I’ll no.

Thats me!

Here is the picher of me wen I was a baby. I use to be cute. I wish I was still a baby agen, but I’m not. I way
79
lbs.

O
prah has lost weight again. Ursula was too young to remember the last time she did it, but Oprah often talks about it on her show. The yo-yo syndrome, she calls it. You go up and down. My syndrome, Ursula thinks, is just yo. Stepping on the scale yesterday at Claire’s house when she was over to walk Jenny, she saw that she no longer weighs seventy-nine. She’s up to eighty-three.

Ursula pours herself another bowl of cereal. Oprah’s guest today is a girl about Sally’s age who found out a couple of years ago that the people who had been taking care of her all these years weren’t really her parents. These other people were, who lived in Florida.

It turned out there were two babies born at the same hospital and by mistake somebody switched them. The girl, Tammy, went home with the Harkins family, and the other girl, Maryanne, went home with the Kings. When it should have been the other way around.

Maryanne had this heart problem, though. After a while, when she was about Ursula’s age, she died. By this point the Kings had started to wonder if Maryanne was really their daughter, but they were nice people, so they still took care of her.

But after the funeral the Kings sent Tammy’s parents a note. Actually, the person who thought she was Tammy’s mother had also died by this point and the dad had a girlfriend, but that’s another story. In this note the Kings explained how they had the wrong daughters all these years and now they wanted Tammy back. Mr. Harkins said no.

For a while Tammy didn’t want to go either. She even got a lawyer and signed this paper where she said she didn’t even want to see the Kings anymore ever again. They should just leave her alone. And they did, too.

But here is the part Ursula thinks is amazing. So amazing she doesn’t even notice herself pouring another bowl of cereal as they tell it.

After a while it started to bother Tammy that this person she was living with was telling her she couldn’t go out with her boyfriend and she had to clean up her room all the time and not wear certain clothes, and he wasn’t even her real dad. So one day she just up and left. She got on a bus to Florida, and where does she turn up? At the Kings’ house. Who were so happy to see her, naturally.

“Overjoyed,” Mrs. King told Oprah. “Like my heart was going to burst,” she said. Just hearing this, Ursula feels like her heart is going to burst, too.

In addition to Tammy, the Kings have all these other kids that look just like her, so it turns out she’s not an only child after all. She has a big brother. A couple of little sisters. A bunny. They live close to Disney World. They have an RV.

“I don’t blame Bill,” Tammy tells Oprah. Bill is the man that thought he was her dad. That’s what she calls him now. “He just got attached to me is all. But he’s not the same as my real dad. There’s no substitute for blood.”

Anybody can see that, just looking at them now. Mrs. King even has the same type of glasses frames as Tammy. They show Maryanne’s picture on the studio monitors, and you can see she never looked anything like the Kings. So really, if you think about it, the one Mr. Harkins should be feeling sad about isn’t even Tammy. It’s Maryanne. She’s the one that was blood to him.

“I’ve found my real family now,” Tammy says. “And I’m never leaving them again.”

Ursula sees clearly now what she needs to do: find her real family. She is not sure where they are. Maybe Florida. Maybe someplace she hasn’t even learned about. This man she’s living with now, this red-haired man—he may have stubby fingers like her, but she no longer believes he is blood. If she could just get on “Oprah,” she believes the people she is meant to be with would see her. They would come get her and take her home with them. Everybody would hug each other. They would give her presents. Oprah would ask her to be the flower girl at her wedding to Stedman Graham. Her real mother would say, “I don’t know about that, honey, we’re going to be awfully busy, getting to know our little girl.”

•   •   •

“I don’t blame Tim,” Ursula says, out loud, to Bend ’N Stretch Barbie, in the Loni Anderson voice she would use on the show. “Naturally, he got attached to me. But there’s no substitute for blood.”

T
he items Sally has set out next to the cash register at CVS include Chap Stick, bobby pins, dental floss, aspirin, conditioner, and a home pregnancy test. The idea is to have the pregnancy test blend in, so it doesn’t look like such a big deal. When she picked it up off the shelf (not that anyone was looking, but if they were), she made like this was something she’d almost forgotten to pick up, maybe something her mother had asked her to get.
“Oh, and one more thing,” her mom says to her. “A home pregnancy test.”

It costs $9.95. Enough for the new Tori Amos tape, or that midriff top she likes over at Russell’s. Which wouldn’t be the right kind of purchase right now anyway if she actually is. Pregnant. It can’t be.