A Little Hope(49)
How many years she just stared, stayed silent. Alex had his job, his big company to go back to. After Benny’s funeral, he stayed home with her for four or five days where he watched the news, the weather, Jeopardy, and they ate what people brought them, but then he slipped back to his work. She remembers how she’d whisper things to Benny in the empty house (Where are you? Are you okay?), how she looked at Toby, their small white dog, every time his stare went somewhere else. “Who do you see?” she’d say, hoping, hoping he was sensing Benny. She remembers walking outside and staring at the quiet fish pond, and when she couldn’t take it anymore, she remembers trudging back upstairs to bed. How the sheets welcomed her, how the pillow felt like the only thing that could save her. When someone called, she usually let the phone ring and ring, enjoying in some odd way its echo in the empty house.
How many days Alex would come home and find her like that. He tried to bring her sister, Ruthie, over to help. He held the phone to her ear with her father on the line. He suggested she take a class in European history at the University of New Haven. Or a knitting workshop at the community college. He brought home brochures for aqua aerobics, for a creative writing group at the library. He’d sit at the foot of the bed and hold her ankle and suggest a trip to Hawaii, a drive to the casino. His sincere eyes. His patient face. How he wanted her to keep going the way he kept going. How he knew sadness could swallow people like them with no other children, with no nieces and nephews.
The affair wasn’t her fault. Of course.
It wasn’t her fault.
Was it his?
He did what he did. He was desperate, too. She never hated him for it. She hated what he did, but she didn’t want him to leave. She couldn’t bear losing another person. She sometimes was surprised she wasn’t angrier, but their circumstances were unlike anyone else’s. She knew he knew it was a mistake. In a way she enjoyed the hurt. It felt good to hold on to it, didn’t it?
If her faith taught her anything, it taught forgiveness. She focused on that.
He told her everything: the woman he was with, the child he found out about years later. When she asked him to, he never mentioned it again. She didn’t want to rock the boat, she didn’t want to change how she felt about Alex. She could pretend it didn’t happen if there weren’t reminders. He did what he did: visited the girl, sent her money. Whatever. He kept it away from her. They buried all that, too. They could bury anything.
Until months ago when he brought it all up again: the daughter had grown, and was having a baby of her own. He wanted Kay to give her a chance. He knew how it could help her, which seemed ridiculous at first. His love child. For years, Kay felt bitter that this new child got to live instead of Benny. Their lives were connected, she was an offshoot of Benny dying. “Trust me,” he said. “You’ll like her.”
She wants to call him now and tell him something has shifted in her. After all this, after the world ripping their son away, she finally feels something about being alive that she hasn’t felt before. Life, this up and down life. What a gift, isn’t it? Maybe it’s the thought of poor Greg. Isn’t it what Greg is fighting so hard for? For life. For this small girl in the kitchen with flour on her hands. This day where Freddie and Greg are doing their best to win. This spring sun outside, the little wishing well in their side yard with the trickling fountain. Yes, she would definitely do it all over again. She and Alex had that boy for fourteen years.
She thinks of Iris then, Alex’s daughter, whom she met in December—about Iris’s baby on the way. Alex was right, wasn’t he? The smart businessman, the risk-taker. He knew they were up for this again, and Addie here, even just for this brief moment, has reminded her of the possibilities. Won’t this baby stay with them sometimes the way Addie is here now? Won’t they keep stuff like a high chair in the kitchen? Won’t they put drawings on the fridge, fill a cupboard with special kid cups and plates. Won’t they welcome this child in a Halloween costume, won’t they want to start putting up a Christmas tree again? She feels a hint of excitement.
She and Addie drop balls of dough onto the greased cookie sheet. “Can we leave the oven light on?” Addie says. “Can we watch them?”
“Well, sure.” Kay wants to hug her. She thinks of Greg changing into a hospital gown. She thinks of Iris rubbing her pregnant belly. Of Benny riding his bike that last day, of all the things he has missed. She thinks of the courage, win or lose, it takes to live. She wants to be more courageous. She closes her eyes for just a few seconds as they watch the heat in the clean oven slowly sizzle the dough and flatten it.
What surprises Kay over the next few days:
The smell of chocolate chip cookies renews her. The scent stays in the house for hours.
Addie. She settles in so quickly. By the first evening, she is opening the refrigerator and carefully pouring herself some cranberry juice. She stays for days and days. She misses her parents, but she is fine with Alex and Kay. The Tylers are grateful. Freddie drives back and forth between Wharton and Boston. She looks tired as she eats Kay’s meat loaf. She tells them about the first part of the transplant: conditioning, almost done. The chemo has made Greg so sick, he has such a weakened immune system. He is almost finished with this part. A few days of radiation will follow, and then the transplant. Freddie says he is noble, a soldier.
Alex. He is better than Kay even knew he’d be. He loves having Addie there. He ties her socks in knots while she’s wearing them. She giggles. He cuts her chicken for her. He makes her try asparagus. They sit on the couch and watch a show called Tiny Town that Addie loves. He helps her build a fort out of the sofa cushions. He leaves work early to get home. It is his idea to have Addie stay longer (Freddie was planning to bring her back and forth to Boston so she wouldn’t burden the Lionels). “But only if she wants to,” he says.