“I didn’t mean to startle you. My apologies.” He does a funny little formal bow, then he says, “May I?” and gestures to the end of the couch farthest away from her. She nods, and he sits. She catches a whiff of aftershave. Kristie tilts her body to look out the window, where she sees shadows moving across the grass, too fast to be Danny and Steven. The kids must have abandoned the dishes. Maybe they’re catching fireflies. Do contemporary kids catch fireflies? She and Twyla did, long ago. “I’m glad you came tonight,” Martin says.
Kristie waits a beat, to see if anything more is coming, and when nothing does she says, “I am too.”
After that there are a lot of things Martin Fitzgerald doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, I’m sure that by now you understand my predicament upon learning about your anticipated birth. He doesn’t say, The good I accomplished in my career has far outweighed the loss of you as a daughter, and I’m sure you understand that too. He doesn’t say, That is exactly how it had to go, the greatest good for the greatest number. He doesn’t say, Your mother was the love of my life and her absence is like a canyon through the center of my heart.
He stands, walks to the wall of photos, and motions for Kristie to join him. One by one he points and explains. Here is Annie in a graduation cap and gown, standing between two people: her parents. Here is Louisa with Annie and Martin in front of Ships View. Louisa is six or seven, grinning widely, no front teeth. Kristie is able to follow Louisa’s life by looking at these photos as Martin points: here she is as a teenager, still smiling, but more guarded than in the younger photos. Here she is at her wedding, stunning in a simple strapless gown and a flower crown. Here she is holding Matty as a baby. Matty is impossibly small and is wearing a tiny blue cap. Here is Abigail, here is Claire.
Kristie thinks, This man is a stranger, showing me photos in the lives of other strangers. Nothing about him is familiar, not his spotted, veined hands, not the slight forward curve of his shoulders, not his gravelly voice nor the smell of his aftershave. What had she expected? That something about himwouldseem recognizablein some way—that upon seeing him there would occur some ancient, tectonic shift, that plates would slide apart and revealfather?
He turns toward her and looks at her for a long, long time, and she looks back at him, and it goes on for so long, one set of blue eyes staring into another. There is an instant—quick as a caught breath, the beating of a butterfly’s wing—when Kristie panics, wondering if he’s forgotten why Kristie is here, or maybe even who she is, until he says, “Kristie.”
She waits. Then, cautiously, “Yes?”
“You seem like you’re happy. Are you happy?”
She thinks about it and realizes she is. Danny outside, so proud about his flowers. The dark times with Jesse in Florida behind her. The loss of her mother beginning to feel like a weight she can bear rather than one that will pull her under by the ankles. The new life inside her. Happiness on her own terms. For the first time in she doesn’t know how long there’s more promise ahead of her than behind her. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, I’m happy.”
He nods. “I hear you’re going to have a baby.”
“Yes.” It comes out in a whisper, like a secret.
Martin Fitzgerald’s smiling face reveals his age more than his face does in repose: deep fissures appear along the sides of his cheeks and around his eyes. “A baby is a wonderful thing,” he says. “A wonderful, wonderful thing. A blessing.”
“Daddy?” says Louisa, who is suddenly in the doorway next to them. “Mom is looking for you, in the playroom. Okay?” She points.
“I know where the playroom is,” says Martin, somewhat irritably.
“I know you do, Daddy.”
Martin walks out of the living room without another word, without a glance backward, forward, or sideways. Kristie tries to figure out what she’s feeling. Is it disappointment? Heartache? Longing? Then she figures it out. It is relief. It’s over. She met him, and she talked to him, and the world didn’t implode, and she didn’t implode either.
Louisa pushes her hair out of her face and then allows it to fall back exactly where it was. One of Louisa’s eyebrows, the left one, has slightly more of a natural arch than the right one. Kristie’s eyebrows are like that too. She wonders: Does Louisa have one foot bigger than the other by about half a size, as Kristie does? Do her fingers go numb when she’s nervous? When she sneezes, do hersneezes blow the roof off, like Kristie’s, or do they come in a dainty trio, three puffs of air? These are things she may never find out.
“Listen,” says Louisa. “I have something to give you.” She pulls something out of her pocket and unfolds it. It’s a check. She holds it out, and Kristie takes it. In the corner she sees the names Louisa and Steven McLean, and a Brooklyn address. The check is for $150,000.
She says, “What?”
“It’s for you,” says Louisa.
It’s more money than Kristie has ever held at one time—it’s more money than she’s even thought of at one time. She closes her eyes, to test if they’re working correctly. Maybe it actually says $1,500, which is still a lot of money. Even $500 is a lot of money. When she opens her eyes, the check is still there, with her name on thePAY TO THE ORDER OFline, andOne hundred fifty thousand and 00/100on the next line.
“But your mom—” she says. “You said that your mom couldn’t do this. I wasn’t going to tell anyone about your dad, you know. I know I said I would, I know I threatened. But honestly, I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t even know where to start. I’d be such a bad blackmailer.” She holds the check back out to Louisa and says, “You don’t need to do this. Please, take it back. This is too much money. Take it back. Tell your mom thank you, but I can’t.”
“My mom doesn’t know about this,” says Louisa.
“She doesn’t?”
Louisa shakes her head. “This is mine and Steven’s money, and we talked about it. We agreed on it. It’s the first thing, moneywise, we’ve agreed on in months. And I’m not doing it because of the . . . uh, the attempted blackmail.” She twists her lips—it’s a half smile that tells Kristie she didn’t have much faith in Kristie’s blackmailing either. “I’m really not. Danny said you want to move out to Oregon. Or maybe you haven’t decided—maybe you want to stayhere. Either way, you’ll want to lay down roots, pay off your bills, and get a start in your new life. You can put down a solid down payment on a house out there, and get you and your baby on the right track.”
Kristie looks again at the check. Her eyes fill with tears, thinking about how good it will feel to get the bill collectors off her back. (She hopes Sierra will get some sort of a bonus once Kristie pays up.) “You must need this money. I mean, three kids...? College and all of that?” Her voice trails off. She has no concept of Louisa’s finances, what she needs or what she has, what anything costs for someone like Louisa.
“You’ve paid enough,” says Louisa. “I’ve done a lot of thinking about safety nets this summer. You never had one. I always did. And if it’s time for me to live without one for a little bit—well, I’m ready to do that. Steven and I need to be each other’s safety net for a while.”
Kristie has to wipe at her eyes, because the tears are starting to leak out. Louisa reaches out and squeezes Kristie’s hand just as Danny appears in the doorway. The doorway has now apparently become the wing where all the actors take a turn entering, while Kristie remains onstage.
“Come in,” says Louisa. “I was just leaving.”
Kristie is so taken aback by everything that she has to sit back down on the couch. Danny sits next to her, scooches closer, and puts his hand on her knee. “How’s it going? You hanging in there? Strange night, right?”
