“Well, sweetie, what I said about putting chocolate on fruit, that was just a joke. I was agreeing that the raisins were healthier without the chocolate...”
A car pulled over then, a big black Escalade. The tinted side windows purred down, and a young voice yelled, “Look, Mom! That little girl is a bird trainer!”
At the same moment, Felicity shouted, “No! Sparrow, come here right now!”
Her terror knocked the wind out of me. It took me a moment to say, “It was just a little kid. With her parents.”
Felicity said nothing, crossing the thin horseshoe of sand to grab Sparrow’s arm, none too gently.
“Stop!” Sparrow cried. And Felicity stopped, but still looking wildly around her with those darting-goldfish eyes I remembered from court. Then she apologized, leaning down to give Sparrowa kiss on the top of her head and half a stick of gum. Sparrow did not look convinced.
We walked all the way back to the car before Felicity said, “Reenie, you know why that happened? I saw that big black SUV and what do you think I thought?” I shrugged. I shook my head. “I thought, Jack Melodia. He’s finally got us. He would grab the child and throw her in the back, and we would never catch up with him. The last thing I would see would be her little face crying in the back window, if I could even see through those windows.”
What a heel I felt then. Felicity must feel this dread descend on her like sleet every time she stepped out into the sunny street with Sparrow. It waited for her on every sidewalk, beach, and playground, in the children’s museum, the grocery store, the shoe shop, and the haircut salon. She must hear that threat in every slammed door, every broken shutter, every playful drunken argument between two frat boys at bar time. Everything was a menace. “I’m scared to death,” she said.
She thought about it ten times a day.
Sometimes, a grave and simply dressed social worker with a no-nonsense French twist would come to the door. A simple DNA test, and Jack was established as the rightful biological father of Sparrow Irene Wild, a longed-for daughter whose lying slut of an ex-convict former prostitute mother had conspired with her own murderous mother to cause him anguish with a lie about the baby’s supposed death. There would be a hearing. Felicity would be given supervised visitation, on the basis that she posed no physical threat to Sparrow. Then sometimes, she believed Jack would bypass the law. She would wake up one morning and Sparrow would simply be gone, the bright, star-embroidered curtains in her room gently billowing in the dawn breeze. And then, she sometimes thought that Jack would just chalk it up. He was no stranger to lies. He’d told his share. He was no stranger to cold treachery or cold pragmatism. Perhaps an all-out brawl over thislittle girl, conceived outside his marriage, risked the kind of attention even Jack Melodia could not manage or control, like the murder trial, with its appallingly appealing Lucrezia Borgia of an accused and its dozen hairpin plot turns.
So she was safe. It was all fine. She was just on edge. Paranoid! That’s all it was.
She would lean into that assurance for two hours, sometimes three. And then she’d give herself a recovery lecture: Jack Melodia was not desperate. He was not reckless. So get a grip. Felicity, haven’t you spent enough time in misery? Girl, learn how to be happy! Sparrow was happy!
So much could have gone wrong between Felicity and Sparrow, and yet, mostly they seemed enclosed by a protective circle of light. Felicity sometimes felt like the emotional equivalent of people who crawled out from under cars that had fallen on them. (“Miraculously, with only minor injuries!”) Everything was just fine!
But it wouldn’t take long for the central fear to snap a rubber band against her wrist...Not so fast, my pretty, and yes, I do mean you!There was always another mental movie to make about how Jack could destroy her.
Jack had been in love with her, for a long time. He once considered her his possession. He would consider Sparrow his possession. If he believed that Sparrow was his possession, he would never part willingly with her. Or had he parted with her already? Maybe he had.
Felicity would feel okay for a tiny window of time. And then she would think of a new scenario. “What can I do? Move to Italy? Walk around there by myself? Even though I survived the loneliest time in my life and the only thing in the world that makes me feel safe is to be around people I care about? There’s nothing I can do.” There was nothing she could do. Just listening to her, imagining a life like that, had given me the emotional equivalent of a migraine.
Felicity could hardly call the police to report that baby’s biological father might try to claim her. Well, right, no, he hadn’t done anything to try to get her. And yes, he had every right to do that. He had no criminal record. He was a businessman. And unless you counted grooming and sleeping with a teenager... but you know, boys will be boys!... unless you counted that, he wasn’t a bad guy in a way anybody could prove. Should Sam approach Jack with a plea for Felicity’s custody of her child? Or not? Would doing that rock the boat? Would it rouse Jack to devastating action? For on the other hand (there were plenty of other hands) Jack could have taken steps to claim Sparrow, if he knew about Sparrow, at any point since Felicity got out of prison. He was a lawyer. He would know what to do. He hadn’t taken that step. Did that mean something? Or would he draw that gun the moment that Felicity dropped her guard, breaking the bubble and stepping into the dreadful and lovely real world?
“Where’s Ruth when we need her?” I asked, half kidding, then fully humiliated by what I’d just said, literally slapping my hand over my mouth. There were times when I had to remind myself that Ruth was Felicity’s mother, as the rupture seemed too real and of such long standing. “Jesus, Felicity. I’m sorry. I’m an asshole for saying that.”
“No, no, no. I know how you meant it, Reeno. How could anybody have those thoughts? But that’s exactly what I think too. If he comes for me, if he comes for my child, what will I do?”
“We’ll make a plan. We’ll bring Sam in on it too. We’ll find someone who’s an expert in personal security. Also, he hasn’t come anywhere near you yet. Let’s not go looking for trouble,” I said, sounding like Miranda.
That night, when Felicity and I again fell asleep talking, I had no energy to get up and find my own bed, much less seek out my husband or my mother or even change my clothes. Wasn’t a sundress sort of like a nightgown anyhow? In the morning, I woke to Sparrow staring at me from a distance of about eight inches, her concentrated silence loud as a shout.
“You didn’t put on your jammies,” she said. “You must feel really ick.”
“I was too tired.”
“So will I have to take the airplane to my school? My friends miss me.”
“What are their names?” I asked.
“Andre and Mary and Christopher and Sally Marie. I have a lot of friends.”
“What is your school?”
“I go to Three C’s. Cocoa Consolidated Christian. You don’t have to be a Christian to go there. Andre is Jewish.”
Felicity came in and sat down beside Sparrow on the foot of the bed. She asked, “Are you a Christian?”
“I don’t know,” Sparrow said. “I think so. We pray at school but only for one minute. And we sing a song. It’s not that great a song usually. We get more vacation.”
