The Lost Daughter Page 14

  “And your story,” Brooke put in, “is I’m still twelve years old.”

  “If we have another child,” Sean said firmly, “Brooke and I will decide together what the best road is. Same as we did for Meghan. Right, honey?”

  Brooke nodded. His tone of voice brooked no disagreement, and she certainly wasn’t going to argue in front of her mother. From the start, Stacey had treated Sean as a paltry stand-in for the husband Brooke was meant to have. No need to throw gas on coals that still glowed, a little, with disapproval. Quickly, Stacey glanced from one of them to the other. She had barely nipped at her chop—which, Sean assumed, she would judge as too well done. He wanted to pick his up by the bone, but he’d wait until he was in the kitchen, cleaning up.

  “Margaret Mead said one or three,” Stacey said, pointing her fork at Brooke.

  “One or three what?”

  “Kids. She thought odd numbers were better. With two, you just get butting heads all the time.”

  “Margaret Mead faked her research,” said Brooke. Cutting a glance at Sean, she mouthed CD Pyg. They were, for a moment, on the same team.

  “Five in my family,” said Sean, “and there was plenty of head-butting.”

  “Well, that’s a full litter,” said Stacey.

  Meaning, Sean knew, that his mother had spawned children without thought; that he came from a class that didn’t know any better. Best to leave the room before his own stoked coals fanned into flames. He began clearing plates. When Brooke rose, he motioned her to sit. In the kitchen, he cracked another beer and drained half of it at one pull, like a teenager boozing on the sly. As he rinsed pots, he heard the women in the other room. Two of Brooke’s old friends in Windermere had new babies. One had just gotten divorced.

  “Then there’s Alex, you know, back in the country,” Stacey said. Sean turned down the hot water he was running. “So sad,” she went on. “He lost that little boy they had, and then I guess his marriage just dissolved.”

  “I know, Mom,” Brooke said. “Alex caught up with me the other day.”

  “Did he now.”

  “Don’t look like that, Mom.”

  How did she look? Eyebrows lifted by a breeze of hope? That her daughter could leave this shanty Irish and go back to the high school dreamboat? Sean’s heartbeat thrummed in his ears. He didn’t catch Stacey’s words, but Brooke went on. “His company’s got a branch in Hartford. We acted like, you know, old friends.” Then, after Seanhad creaked open the dishwasher door, she said, “I wouldn’t say never, Mom. I’d say unlikely. I’m not going to drive to Boston to have a drink with my high school boyfriend. Sure, yeah, it’s sad. But I’m just saying.”

  He couldn’t stand it. He peeled the rubber gloves from his hands and stuck his head back into the dining room. “Say, love,” he interjected, putting a bubble of brightness into his voice. “Why don’t we have this old boyfriend of yours over for dinner? Sounds like a lonely guy.”

  If there was nothing to it, she would say sure; she’d ask Alex; didn’t know when he’d be back in town but why not; how good of Sean to think of it.

  She wrinkled her nose, from below the bridge to its tip. “It’d be awkward,” she said. “Too much water under the bridge.”

  He couldn’t give up. “I’d like to meet this mysterious guy.”

  “He’s busy getting settled in Boston. I don’t see him coming to Hartford anytime soon.”

  Sensitive as a tuning fork, Stacey picked up the jangling music in the room. “I don’t imagine you bring your old flames around,” she said to Sean.

  “I don’t meet them for coffee, either.”

  “It was just the once,” Brooke said—too quickly, and as she blinked her eyes rapidly at him, Sean knew she was lying. “We’ll save the rest for our high school reunions. Right, honey?”

  Sean retreated to the kitchen, where he finished the beer. For the rest of Stacey’s visit, the name Alex and the word adoption went off limits. Still, over the next three days, every time he stepped onto the back porch where Brooke and her mom were talking and they stopped, he felt a secret hovering in the air. At night, Brooke stretched out against him and sighed. It was so exhausting to have her mom there, she said. Her mom never met a daughterly decision she couldn’t criticize. Her mom had started this new job with the schools back in Pennsylvania, and now she had opinions on schools. Her mom needed a boyfriend, someone to listen to her. Then Brooke kissed him and stroked his body lightly, and thanked him for being patient with Stacey, and they counted the days until Stacey left.

  Still, the next morning, as he came into the kitchen, mother and daughter exchanged a glance, like a plot hatching. They were theteam, now. And last night, after Stacey had finally left—with a grandmotherly hug for Meghan and promises all around to spend one of the holidays in Windermere—Brooke went off on a walk. A long walk, hours after Meghan was in bed. She didn’t ask if Sean wanted to go. She didn’t even take the dogs, who whined and moped till she came home. “Where’d you go?” he asked when she slipped past midnight into bed.

  “Around the park,” she said. “Through the neighborhood.” Her voice was too nervous, too tired for him to press for more.

  Waiting for Meghan to come out of the school, he remembered how he had loved the enigma of Brooke. That Mona Lisa smile of hers—well, she showed her Chiclets teeth, but you could practically hear the stories murmuring behind those curved lips—had been seductive once. Now he could do with a little less mystery and a lot more straight talk.

  He was keeping one secret of his own. Not to do with their family; he would never do that. It was about the Bach. Last Monday, at the chorale rehearsal, during the break, Geoffrey had sidled up to him. How was he liking the music? Magnificent, Sean had said, pausing over one of the brownies the sopranos always brought. That Bach, he knew a thing or two. And did he feel comfortable with the German? Geoffrey asked. Well, sure—he thought he did. Years ago Sean had picked up one of those courses on tape, real Germans after whom you repeated: Wieviel Uhr ist es? Wieviel. Uhr. Ist es. Danke schön. Bitte schön. He thought he’d gotten pretty good; when they went over diction in the chorale, he usually had it dead to rights.

  But Geoffrey, as it turned out, wasn’t asking in order to criticize Sean’s German. The symphony, as everyone knew, had been cutting costs. The oratorio required four soloists, among whom the tenor—the Evangelist—carried most of the weight. The best the symphony could do was to bring professionals in for the three performances and the dress rehearsal. To prepare the thing right, they needed someone internal to sing the parts at the tech rehearsal. “To tell the truth,” Geoff said, leaning close to Sean, “it’s something I’ve been pushing with our board for a while. You know, we should have understudies ready. And ringers for this group.” He glanced around the big square church kitchen where they served snacks. “To keep some of the oldsters on the beat.”

  “Good idea,” Sean agreed, not wanting to report Ed, who always sat to his left, a retired chemistry teacher with a tendency to scoop notes.

  “How much training have you got, Sean?”

  “Training? You mean music?”

  “No, I mean for the long jump. Of course I mean music. You ever get your master’s?”

  “Geoff, I went to Central. Majored in graphics technology.”

  “But you trained your voice.”

  “In the shower.”

  Geoffrey looked nonplussed. “Well,” he said hesitantly, “I’d still like you to do this—”

  “Do what?”

  “Learn the part. The Evangelist. We couldn’t pay anything this year, but when people see what a big help it is, having a soloist for those last rehearsals…” He shook his head. “The problem is your authority with the membership. I hadn’t realized. I’ve approached Betty in the sopranos, Chuck in the bass section—”

  Sean felt his face flush. He knew what Geoffrey meant. Betty taught at the Hartt School, a prestigious conservatory. Chuck had sung opera professionally when he was youn
ger. And the Evangelist! The one who stood forth and announced the decree from Caesar, the shepherds in the fields, the angels, the birth. “You could ask that new guy,” he said. “I forget his name—the skinny guy from New Haven? I think he went to Yale for music.”

  “He doesn’t have your voice.” Geoffrey clapped Sean on the shoulder. “Let me think how we can swing this,” he said. “Meanwhile, d’you mind studying the part?”

  “No. No, not at all. I love the part.”

  And so he had put away his CDs of Bohème and Turandot and spent his commuting time mastering the tricky intervals and precise cadenzas of the Bach. But if Geoffrey decided not to use him—if they thought he’d be an imposter, singing up there in front of the group—he did not want his family, especially not Mum, to hear how he’d gotten his hopes up. Thinks he can sing, that one.

  Finally there was Meghan, pushing through the double glass doors of West Elementary, leggy and distracted, carrying yet another art project too big for her. “Hey, Bug,” Sean said as she found the car.

  “Daddy. Don’t call me that.”

  “No one’s listening.”

  “Granny heard you call me that, and then she called me that. Is she gone?”

  “Left yesterday, don’t you remember?” She nodded as he opened the back door for the unwieldy cardboard. “What you got there?”

  Meghan sighed. “Arithmetic project,” she said. “We had to make up a game.”

  “Sounds like fun. Do we get to play it when we’re home?”

  “No.” She climbed into the passenger seat and strapped herself in. “It’s a bad game,” she said. “Taisha made fun of it.”

  They pulled out of the lot. He glanced over at his daughter. She wasn’t quite holding back tears, but her face looked burdened, for a six-year-old. Tröstet uns, he sang to himself, comfort us and make us free. “I bet Mrs. McIlvoy liked it, though.”

  “She said she did. But she always says that.”

  “Aw, just you wait. Some boy will act up, and she won’t like that.”

  Meghan’s eyes widened. “Some boy did,” she said, as if her dad had ESP. She twisted in her seat to face him. “This boy Christopher?” she said. “He’s got really funny teeth—like this?” Sean glanced quickly to see his daughter clamp her upper teeth over her lower lip. He managed not to laugh. “And he asked this girl Ellen how come she had Chinese and her parents had American knees!” Meghan put her hand over her mouth and giggled.

  “And the teacher didn’t think that was funny?”

  Meghan bounced in her seat. “She made him go to the principal. And he had to write I am sorry, Ellen. He put just one r in sorry. I saw.”

  “Did you think it was funny?”

  “Da-ad.”

  “I’m just asking.” He turned down their street. Fall was in the air, yellow leaves piled against the curb, but the air was still warm. If he met Gerry at the Half Door later they could sit in the back garden. Gerry was having his problems, too, with the baby colicky and Kate still not losing the pregnancy weight. She didn’t want to have sex with him and Gerry was starting to think that was fine; he had to picture other women anyhow—thin women, happy women—to perform. That problem, Sean thought, he didn’t have. He always wanted Brooke—even when she put up her everything’s fine front, even when she was lying to him.

  He parked the car. Meghan was starting ahead, frowning. “What is it, Bug?”

  “What are shy knees, Daddy?”

  “Shy what? Oh. Chinese.”

  “But it’s about knees.”

  “It isn’t really. It’s about being mean to people who look different. We used to tell it this way.” He turned to her in the car. Her summer freckles were fading. At least she had Brooke’s mouth and jawline; she wasn’t all O’Connor. Sean took off his sunglasses and put his fingers at the edges of his eyes. “Chinese, Japanese,” he said, pulling them up then down. “American knees.” He put his hands on his knees. His daughter still looked confused. He felt both silly and embarrassed. “It’s because Chinese people have narrow eyes,” he said, “and Ellen’s parents aren’t Chinese.”

  “Because she’s adopted.”

  “That’s right.” He grabbed her art project as they stepped out of the car. From inside the house they could hear Bitsy yapping, the canaries singing. The new cat would need its medications. Meghan jumped down onto the gravel and slammed her door. “You know what adopted is, right?”

  “Da-ad.”

  “Just checking.” They started toward the house. He put his hand on her shoulder; she was up to his rib cage now. “You learned about it from Mommy.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You and Mommy getting along better now? Now that she let you quit ballet?”

  Meghan shrugged. “I think I want to do ballet again.”

  “But you’re getting along okay.”

  Meghan twisted her head to look up at him, obviously confused. He stopped at the front door and leaned the artwork against the siding. All the dogs were barking now. He knelt in front of his little girl. He took both her hands. “I’m worried about Mommy,” he said.

  Meghan’s face went grave, then slowly lit up. “Is she—is she gonna have a baby?”

  He chuckled ruefully. “I wish, Bug. I think she’s…” He didn’t know how to go on. Guilt caught in his throat. He was using Meghan. But he pressed on. “I wonder if you can keep a secret. Not a big one. Just to be nice to Mommy.” Meghan nodded, her mouth pursed and sober. “Don’t tell her I’m asking you, okay?”

  “What are you asking me?”

  “Where did she—” he started to ask. Then he realized Meghan couldn’t know where Brooke had gone last night; she’d taken the walk after Meghan was in bed. “Does Mommy have any new friends?” he asked instead.

  “I don’t think so.” Putting her finger to her chin, Meghan affected a thoughtful expression. “Mommy,” she said, “is not that friendly a person. Jackie’s mommy has lots of friends over. They play Scrabble.”

  “Does she talk on the phone a lot? When I’m not home?”

  “I don’t know.” She twisted the second hand free of his and started for the door. As he straightened up she said, not looking at him, “Sometimes the phone rings and she won’t answer it. I tell her it’s ringing. She says it’s a junk call. Yesterday I went to answer it and she wouldn’t let me. She pulled my hand away, Daddy!”

  Meghan’s voice had gone quivery and melodramatic. She was a little girl who liked attention, Sean thought. He shouldn’t push this anymore. “Well, Mommy is under a lot of pressure at work,” he said as he pulled out his keys. “You should do what she says and not give her grief. If you think she’s upset about something, you just come tell me. Okay?”

  “Is she ever gonna have a baby, Daddy?”

  “Course she is,” he said without thinking. “So long as we don’t bother her about it. Now let’s play that arithmetic game you made up.”

  Chapter 10

  Brooke shouldn’t have been surprised, she supposed, when Alex came by the Simsbury location of Lorenzo’s Nursery. “You always were persistent,” she told him as he helped her lug a spruce into place.

  “Tell me to get lost,” he said, shaking clumps of dirt from his raincoat, “and I’ll be a disappearing act.”

  “I thought I did tell you. Fifteen years ago.”

  “That was different. I’m not trying to sleep with you now.”

  “You’re not, huh?” Brooke grunted as she ripped open a sack of peat moss. She straightened and brushed her hair from her eyes. It had been two weeks since her mom’s visit. Though Sean’s testiness had not abated, their lives had returned to the rhythms of autumn in Hartford. He rose before dawn and minded the animals; she got Meghan up an hour later and took her to school—real school now, first grade. Then to the nursery, the only change being this new location and Lorenzo’s handing her, every day, more responsibility. A fat raise, he’d hinted, was on its way. Her life’s roots were in the soil here, now. Still, s
he had not completely shaken the ghosts that seemed to haunt her whenever she connected the wires that led her back to Windermere. She eyed Alex. “What are you trying to do, then?”

  He grinned and looked out over the river that ran by the nursery site. “Renew old acquaintance?”

  “I live a hundred miles from you.”

  “Near one of our branches.”

  “Alex.” She straightened the tree, her glove sticky with sap. “We don’t qualify as acquaintances.”

  He pulled off his glasses and wiped mist from the lenses. All day the fog had been trying to lift. “I’ve been seeing a lot of my sister, did I tell you?”

  “Charlie?”

  He nodded. “She’s really great, you know? Scary great, though. She hasn’t got any internal filter. My parents were so old when she came along. And the second she became a teenager, I disappeared on her.” He shook his head. “She never wants kids. She wishes you and I had had a baby. She thinks I should beg Tomiko to come to Boston. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

  “Charlie thinks we should have had a baby? Really?”

  He shot a glance at her before replacing the glasses. “I’d say she was fishing, but she’s not that clairvoyant.”

  “She’s in college now?”

  “Graduating this year. She wants me to take her to Windermere over her fall break.”

  “When’s that?”

  “In three weeks, I think. She’s at Tufts.”

  Tufts. A strange, skittering electrical charge went through Brooke. It had been just this time of year when she visited Tufts with her father. She’d chosen it for the medieval studies professor she’d met. She could still picture him, a slender man who had probably looked too young for a professor until he was past forty and then was suddenly wearing wire-rimmed bifocals and walking with the suggestion of a stoop. “Must be great for her, to have you nearby.”

  “Everything she talks about feels coded, to me,” Alex said. He crouched next to Brooke. “Here, let me help with that.”