Beneath the Night Tree (14 page)

A one-armed shrug was Daniel’s only reply.

I should have told my son to be nice to Parker, to be polite, but a part of me wanted my son’s absentee father to see him exactly as he was. No special manners, no affected niceties that would fade the moment we got in the car and pulled away from the park. Daniel was a kindergartner, a little boy who belched at the table, thought farts were hysterically funny, and more often than not forgot to say please and thank you. Parker was about to get a dose of reality—life with children was never easy or neat.

Daniel sulked all the way back to the bench where Parker and I had fumbled our way through introductions and casual revelations. I was both relieved and disappointed to find that Parker still perched on the uncomfortable seat, his back ramrod straight and his head held high. Even from a distance, I could see that anxiety emanated from his every pore—there was a fine mist of tension around him that was almost palpable.

“That’s him,” I said when we were still far enough away to speak without being heard.

“Why are you wearing his coat?” Daniel asked.

I had forgotten that the suede jacket still covered my shoulders. Slipping out from underneath the lightweight proximity of
him
, I caught the coat in the crook of my arm. “I was cold. I’m not anymore.”

Parker either heard us or sensed our approach because he rose from the bench and turned to face us. We were mere feet away, and I could see something rush across his features, a mutiny of emotions, a tangle of hopes and dreams and fears and regrets. It looked for a moment like he might cry; the corner of his mouth shook for a split second, but then he composed himself and stepped forward with a smile.

“You’re tall,” Daniel said.

It was two words, but by the way Parker reacted, you’d think Daniel had shouted,
“I love you.”
Parker’s eyes lit up and he laughed out loud. A resonant, genuine laugh that was like nothing I had ever heard from his lips. He stared at Daniel, taking him in with long, hungry gulps of concentration as if he were memorizing every hair follicle, every nuance of movement and personality. “I am tall,” he eventually agreed. “And so are you. You must be, what, seven or eight?”

Daniel grinned. “I’m five.”

“Five? I can hardly believe that. You look much older than five.”

As I watched my son swell with pride, I tried to reconcile my preconceived notions about Parker and his qualifications for fatherhood with reality. He was good with kids. I knew it in less than a minute. Innate child appeal is one of those things you either have or you don’t, and Parker had it in spades. Already I could see that Daniel was forgetting about the pond and his quest for water bears.

“I’m pretty smart, too,” Daniel told his new friend. “My teacher says I have a big imagination.”

“I’m sure you do.” Parker closed the chasm between us and extended his hand to Daniel like a true gentleman. “My name is Patrick Holt,” he told his son with all the formality of a stranger, “but you may call me Parker.”

“Hi, Parker. I’m Daniel Peter DeSmit, but you can call me Daniel. Simon calls me Danny sometimes, but I don’t like it.”

“Daniel it is, then,” Parker said amiably, but his brow furrowed in confusion at the mention of Simon. “And Simon is . . . ?”

“Simon is my younger brother,” I cut in. “He’s ten. He lives with us.” It was enough of an introduction for now. I wasn’t willing to let Parker in any farther than need be.

“Yeah, Simon is my uncle, but really he’s like my brother.”

“You’re a lucky boy,” Parker declared. “I’d like to meet your brother sometime.”

“You can right now,” Daniel said, taking Parker by the hand. “He’s down by the pond with Grandma.”

The pure shock on Parker’s face was altogether authentic. I didn’t know if he was moved by the feeling of Daniel’s hand in his, by the innocent trust of a little boy who had nothing to doubt or fear, or if he was afraid of offending me, of wading in too deep on his very first meeting. In all honesty, I was just as stunned as he was. I hadn’t expected Daniel to be so friendly, nor had I planned on introducing Parker to the entire family on our very first awkward meeting. I floundered for something to say, some way to discourage Daniel’s ingenuous idea.

“Honey,” I called, jogging a little to catch up, for they were already several paces away. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Parker has to leave pretty soon and we don’t want him to get his nice clothes dirty.”

“We’re hunting for water bears,” Daniel informed Parker as if he hadn’t heard me. “I’ve never seen one before, but I brought my magnifying glass just in case.”

“Tardigrades?” Parker asked. “Oh, you can’t see those with a magnifying glass, I’m afraid. They’re microscopic.”

Daniel whirled to face the man whose hand he still held. “What?” he screeched. “I’ve been hunting water bears for nothing?”

I tried to get Parker’s attention so I could put an end to this runaway train of scheming and bonding. But he was wholly fixed on Daniel; I wasn’t entirely sure he knew I was even there.

“You can see some phytoplankton in pond water, like clumps of algae,” Parker explained, “and there are a few platyzoa that are easy to find. Have you ever seen a flatworm?”

“Yes, lots of them,” Daniel sang, obviously happy that at least he could claim some knowledge of his adored pond life.

“Did you know that if you cut a flatworm in half, each half will grow into a new worm?”

Daniel looked awestruck. He dropped Parker’s hand and gaped at him with the sort of wonderment that he usually reserved for superheroes and Grover. It was unsettling. I went to stand behind him and placed my hands on his shoulders protectively.

“Mom,” he gushed, “did you know that you can cut flatworms in half?”

“Yeah, sweetheart, I did know that. But I don’t think that now is the time to—”

“Mom.” Daniel spun in my hands and wrapped his fingers around my wrists. He gave me his best puppy-dog eyes and said, “Please, can Parker help me find some flatworms? He knows all sorts of stuff about . . .” He searched for the complicated vocabulary that Parker had used and came up blank. “About water stuff.”

I shifted my gaze to Parker and saw the hope in his eyes, the raw longing to connect with his unknown son in this particular way. It had never occurred to me before that Daniel was a scientist in the making. The constant parade of worms and frogs and snakes and pond life . . . He took after his father in more ways than his appearance.

“Okay,” I murmured, the word falling from my lips like a sour pit. I said it quickly—spat it out, really—before I could change my mind.

Parker looked as if he could kiss me, but he tore himself from my troubled stare and bent to address Daniel. “I have a microscope in my trunk.”

“You do?”

“I’m a scientist,” Parker said, clearly savoring the word and loving the effect it had on his son.

“A scientist?”

“Yeah, I study this stuff. And you’ll never believe this, but I have slides and dyes and all sorts of stains in a box, and we can use them on the critters we find.”

“Critters?”

“Critters, creatures, pond flora and fauna . . . you know, like water bears.”

“Think we’ll find a water bear?” Daniel’s joy was almost uncontainable.

“We’ll try.”

Without a backward glance, Daniel raced off in the direction of the pond, whooping as he went. There was a vacuum in his absence, as if Parker and I were left in the afterburn of our son’s excitement, singed by the ferocity of his delight and the thrill of young discovery. But it was more than that, and we both knew it.

“Wow,” Parker whispered. He looked deflated, emptied of every secret wish and expectation he had harbored at the thought of finally meeting his son. But he didn’t seem spent, merely lovesick and poured out, ready to be filled up.

I wanted to ask him what he meant by
“Wow,”
but I already knew. I imagined he was feeling the same thing I felt when they delivered that tiny infant into my arms over five years before. Back then, Daniel was a stranger to me, an unknown entity, a mystery. But I loved him the moment I laid eyes on him, and I knew without a doubt that Parker could now say the same. It was written all over his face.

“I guess you’d better go get your microscope,” I whispered around the knot in my throat. But Parker didn’t notice. He was already on his way to the silver Audi.

I stood by myself in the middle of the park and clutched Patrick Holt’s suede coat to my chest as if it were an anchor, a weight that pulled me beneath the surface of water so vast and deep that I feared if I went down, I might never be found.

Part 2

Trust

“I like him,” Simon said out of the blue.

We were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, doing homework on a school night like a typical sibling pair, even though we were anything but. Every once in a while I glanced at him and realized that our youth could have been like this, that we could have been children around the same table, working math equations and reading primer books with our index fingers as a guide beneath each boldfaced word. In a different life. Now I was more his mother than his sister, a woman already rocketing past her prime. A woman who found herself doing the schoolwork of an eighteen-year-old and the housework of a middle-aged mom. I rubbed my eyes with my knuckles and stifled a groan. Abandoning my chart of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I tried to focus on Simon.

“Pardon me?” I asked.

“I like Parker.”

“You do?” I tried not to sound too surprised, but Simon’s smirk reminded me that I wasn’t very good at hiding my emotions.

“I do. He doesn’t treat me like a kid.”

Since our initial meeting at the park, Parker had made the trek to Mason two more times, and each visit only endeared him more to the boys I considered my own. I had protested his sudden overinvolvement, but it was hard to prevent his visits when Simon and Daniel longed for his attention. It galled me. One pond-side encounter and Parker was a hero in my home. Granted, his on-the-spot laboratory setup and kid-friendly experiments were pretty cool, but I wasn’t convinced that scientific know-how should inspire unabashed worship.

And my boys’ overinflated opinions were only the beginning of my long record of grievances against Parker. Next on my laundry list of complaints was his second, completely unannounced trek to Mason. He simply showed up on our doorstep exactly one week after he breezed his way back into my life, holding a wrapped package in one hand and wearing a sheepish grin.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

“I have a present for Daniel and Simon,” he said, rounding his shoulders in what could be interpreted as embarrassment.

“You should have called.”

“I know, but I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“How did you even find us?”

“Phone book.”

Duh. I wanted to snatch the blue-beribboned gift out of his hand and send him home, but before I could drive him away, Daniel realized that we had a guest at the door.

“Simon!” he shouted from the doorway to our drafty mudroom. “Parker’s here!”

I didn’t stand a chance. Even Grandma seemed somewhat pleased to see him and almost immediately invited Daniel’s biological dad to stay for supper. She either didn’t see my look of horror or chose to ignore it.

The rest of the afternoon unfolded with all the delight and excitement of a trip to the county fair for my starstruck boys. Parker had brought a special gift indeed, a set of framed digital photographs that showcased the microscope slides the boys had made that day in Fox Creek Park. He regaled us with stories of his artist friend, a man who was intent on making scientific tedium and other so-called thrilling discoveries the foundation of his art. Then Parker helped Daniel and Simon each hang two carefully chosen photographs on the walls of their bedrooms and took them outside to play football on the front lawn while Grandma and I peeled potatoes for a meal I dreaded.

And though I had expected supper to be the epitome of awkward, there was laughter around the table. Then games and stories before bed. Of course, I played games with my boys and read them books, but even
Stuart Little
couldn’t compete with the fantastic tales that Parker made up on the spot with promptings and cues that he elicited from the boys. Simon relished throwing wrenches into the story, introducing errant knights in the middle of a baseball narrative and killing off the princess before she could be rescued. Parker laughed at it all, rolling with the punches and earning an uncharacteristic hug from Daniel before he made his way upstairs to bed. Even Simon softened enough to give Parker a pound with his closed fist.

“He’s cool,” Simon said, dragging me from the memory of that unexpected night to the present reality of my open books, my brother before me.

“Cool,” I repeated because I couldn’t quite get my mind around the fact that Simon thought Parker was anything but just another guy. Simon had never really warmed up to Michael; in fact, he seemed to avoid contact with older males altogether. As I glanced down at the child psychology book before me, it occurred to me that Simon seemed stuck on the third tier of Maslow’s famous pyramid: social needs. Some of the necessary relationships in my brother’s unpredictable life had never fully developed. Or even developed at all. Who was a father figure to Simon, to Daniel? I had assumed that it was Michael, but watching Simon across the table made me realize for the first time that maybe my hopes were unfounded.