“So you just let him have his way?”
“I thought he would outgrow it. He was only a few years older than I was. I thought he would learn to bridle his anger and that he would learn to trust me. He couldn’t stand to have another man so much as wish me a good day, and I thought in time hewould realize that it was my full intent to be faithful to him and that I didn’t see other men the way he thought men saw me. And I mistakenly thought that when I told him I was expecting a child, that would also soften him. But it didn’t.”
Candace is holding on to my every word, despite their awful weight. “What happened?” she asks, nearly breathless.
“I lost that baby much like you lost your first son,” I say, and that is all I will say. “My child came too soon.”
Candace’s eyes are rimmed with silver now. “Was he angry at you for losing the child?”
My silence at her question allows her to think that he was.
“Did you leave him?” she asks. “Is that why you came to America? To get away from him?”
“No. Sadly, he died.” My tone is flat and I cannot help it. “He had too much to drink one night on his boat and got clumsy. When it was discovered he had fallen overboard it was too late. He’d drowned.”
Candace seems to need a moment to take this in. And I am glad for the seconds of silence.
“Did you mourn him?” she finally asks.
“I mourned the death of a life I might’ve had,” I say. “If things had been different.”
“So you came to America to start a new life.”
“You could say that.”
“And it turned out to be a terrible one?”
“Life in the tenements and the factory was very... difficult,” I reply. “After everything I’d already had to bear, Martin’s advertisement seemed quite inviting.”
“And his bed?”
I ponder this for a moment. “Colm was at times a gentle loverand at times a beast. But I wasn’t missing a man in that way. At some point I thought I would be ready again for the marriage bed and so I asked Martin from the very first if he would wait for affection to grow between us. He didn’t seem to care one way or the other. He didn’t even ask why.”
“Because he didn’t need you for that.”
“No. He didn’t. And then when I thought I was ready for such things, he didn’t put up a fuss. But he never kissed my mouth, never told me I was beautiful, never looked at me the next morning like he couldn’t wait to do again what we had done the night before. I realized in time he wasn’t ever going to love me. I had decided that having Kat was enough and that I didn’t need love from a man if I could have love from a child.”
“It’s not the same thing,” Candace says, almost scolding me.
“No. It’s not. But it’s as grand in its own way.”
She leans back into her pillows, satisfied. And I am glad.
I can see now she views me as perhaps a sister of sorts, rather than a contender.
I have told her the truth about who I am, and how I am like her, and it has bonded us.
It isn’t the whole truth, but my words included no lies.
23
A week passes in Tucson, and then another. Our days are the same from one sunrise to the next. Kat and I spend the mornings in town, sometimes reading or doing puzzles or taking a walk or plucking out notes on the piano in the hotel lobby. We spend the latter part of the afternoon with Candace.
At first Kat seems happy with our slow-paced daily routine. She is as relaxed as I have seen her in quite a while, and she has even started to grace us with a few words, here and there. Thankfully Candace does not make a big show when Kat answers one of her questions with her voice instead of a nod.
But as the hot yet tranquil days pile on, I nevertheless begin to sense a restlessness in Kat, a tendency to stare off into the distance as though she’s heard her name being called from somewhere far away. Candace notices it, too, after a few days and asksme out of Kat’s hearing if I think the child is remembering what happened on the stairs. But I don’t think that is what is occupying Kat’s thoughts. She seems a bit troubled in her spirit, true, but not anguished. It is something else, some other concern she has. I begin to wonder if she’s sensing that at some point she’s going to have to choose between her mother and me. Even if the real choice is made for her, which it likely will be, she will have to choose how she will accept it.
On one of our trips back to the hotel, on a particularly burning-hot afternoon, I ask Kat if there’s anything I can do for her. I want to help her feel comfortable with the transition that we can all sense is coming. Candace and I both know living in a hotel is no life for a child and that at some point a more permanent arrangement has to be made. We are living in limbo every day we are here. It is so disconcerting that I sometimes find myself staring off into the distance.
