Heart Like Mine (12 page)

Dad sat down with us on the couch, in between Max and me. His skin looked gray.

“What’s going on?” I asked again. “Is Mom okay?” My blood pumped so hard through my veins, I felt dizzy.

He took a deep breath. “No, honey. She’s not.” My dad’s eyes filled with tears and I put my hand on my chest to help me stop breathing so fast. I’d never seen him cry before. His words came at me in slow motion—I fought the urge to push them back and clamp my hands over his mouth.

“She got sick,” my dad said, reaching out to hold one of each of our hands in his. “Really sick. So fast we didn’t even see it coming.”

“But she’s
okay
,” Max said quickly. “She’s in the hospital and the doctors will fix her and make her better. Right? ’Cause that’s their
job
.” The hopefulness in my brother’s voice reached in and squeezed my lungs until I thought they’d burst.
Don’t say it. Please. Don’t say it. Please, please, please.

“I’m so sorry, Max, but they can’t fix her. They tried, but . . .” His voice trailed off a moment before he swallowed hard and almost whispered the words. “Your mommy died today.”

Max erupted off the couch and yanked away from his father’s touch. “You’re a
liar
!” he screeched. “My mom’s not dead!” His hands formed fists and the tendons in his neck extended tightly beneath his skin. Dad stood up, still holding my hand; I stared at the carpet, my shoulders shaking. He let go of me and reached
for Max, but my brother cringed and leapt backward, as though Dad had tried to hit instead of hold him. Max sped down the hall toward his room, sobbing.

Tears began to stream down my cheeks. My whole body jittered; it felt like an electric current was shooting through it. I couldn’t speak.
This isn’t happening. This is all just a horrible dream. I’m still lying in my bed, waiting for my dad to come home. I’m going to wake up, and this all won’t be true.

Dad looked at me, helpless, his eyes still glossed with tears. “Grace?” he called out, and she rushed in from the other room, stopping short when she saw me glare at her, then quickly look away. I didn’t want her anywhere near me. I wanted her to leave.

“Go,” she said to my dad, somehow knowing what had happened. She must have been listening from the den; she must have heard everything. It was a small house; it wouldn’t have been hard to do. “It’s okay.”

Max wailed in his bedroom, a high-pitched, keening cry that pierced through the walls. My dad bent down and touched my face, pushing my hair out of the way. “Ava, baby? I’m so sorry, honey. It’s so, so sad.”

I nodded briskly but didn’t look at him. “Is it okay if I go talk with your brother?” he asked me, and I nodded again. I didn’t know what else to do. “Grace will stay right here, if you need her. I’ll be right down the hall, and then I’ll come back.” He left, and I sat with Grace in silence for a few minutes.
She knew Mama was dead when she picked us up. She knew and she didn’t say anything.
I sniffled a little, then raised my eyes to hers.

“I don’t need you,” I said. “I
have
a mom.” My words were ice. Fury swelled inside my chest, trying to claw its way out up through my throat. Grace remained unmoving, with her hands in her lap. All the color drained from her face and she blinked, but
her expression didn’t change. She didn’t frown, she didn’t twitch; she just sat still and spoke in a calm, measured tone.

“Of course you do,” she said. “I would never try to take her place. Never. But I can be here for you as a friend, if you want me—”

“Well, I
don’t
.” I stood up, arms stiff at my sides, fists clenched, tears still streaming down my face. “I hate you! I wish
you
were dead!”

Grace’s green eyes went wide. “Ava—” she began, but before she could continue, I spun around and ran to my room, slammed the door, and locked it tight behind me.

“I’m nervous,” I told Melody when Victor first suggested it was time for his kids to get to know me. We’d been dating about three months. “What if they hate me?”

“They’re not going to hate you,” Melody said, shaking her blond head and tucking her slender legs up beneath her on the couch. We sat in the living room of her Queen Anne Hill apartment overlooking downtown, sipping mojitos and munching on chips and the fresh fire-roasted salsa she had made for our weekly girls’ night in. “The best thing you can do is let Victor take the lead and not push yourself on them.”

“Push myself on them how?” I asked, reaching for another handful of chips to dig into the salsa. After cooking for my family when I was a teenager, I’d lost any interest or enjoyment in the task—Victor laughed when I told him my idea of meal preparation as an adult consisted of properly heating up a Lean Cuisine—but my best friend definitely prided herself on her culinary skills.

Melody screwed up her face a bit, thinking before she spoke. “You know. Like being way over the top, cheerleader-friendly with them. ‘Rah-rah, I’m your dad’s new girlfriend! Yay!’ ” She waved a couple of tortilla chips above her shoulders next to the sides of her head like they were pom-poms.

I laughed. “So, no back handsprings?”

She smiled and her dark brown eyes sparkled. “Exactly. Just be yourself. It’ll take time for them to warm up to you.”

She was right, I knew. But Victor hadn’t introduced any of the other women he had dated since the divorce to his children, so I felt a deep need to make a good impression. I thought about buying them gifts, the way I would bring a bottle of wine to a dinner party to show appreciation to the host, but I had no clue what they’d like.

“No bribes,” Melody instructed. “Kids can smell you trying to suck up to them a million miles away. Plus, it’ll piss off the ex-wife and you don’t want to do that, either.”

So, unarmed and a little scared, I arrived at Victor’s house on a Saturday morning in late October, ready to face the firing squad of his children. I walked up the front steps of his house, taking deep breaths before I knocked on the door. “I got it, Dad!” a little boy’s voice yelled from inside, and the door flung open. Max stood in front of me, his hand still on the doorknob. “Who are you?” he asked.

I gave him what I hoped was a friendly but not over-the-top kind of smile. “I’m your dad’s friend Grace. I’m going to the pumpkin patch with you guys today.”
Didn’t Victor tell them I was coming? Maybe Max is just forgetful.

He stared at me for what felt like a full minute before speaking again. “You’re bigger than my mom,” he said, and then spun around and raced through the living room and into the den, where I could hear the loud racket of cartoons.

Wonderful
. I wasn’t overweight by any means, though I was on the heavier side of normal according to my doctor’s charts. Exercise wasn’t high on my list of enjoyable activities, so I had a wide variety of Spanx to create the illusion of firm thighs and stomach, but overall, I felt pretty good about my body. Of course, I’d seen
pictures of Kelli in Ava’s bedroom. She was barely over five feet tall and almost as thin as her daughter, with disproportionately large breasts. (Fake, I suspected, since rarely does a petite woman sport such a substantial rack naturally, but there was no way to know for sure.) I was secure enough in my looks to not feel terribly intimidated by her beauty; men often commented on the appealing combination of my bright green eyes and wavy auburn hair, and Victor told me I was gorgeous every day. But there was no doubt about it. As a woman, there was no way to take “bigger” as a compliment.

I stepped through the doorway and Victor appeared from the hallway. “Sorry,” he said with the sideways grin of his I loved. “He didn’t mean to be rude.”

“It’s okay. I get it.” I smiled and let him give me a quick kiss on the cheek. We’d agreed not to show any physical affection in front of the kids, but I fought the urge to throw myself into his arms and have him reassure me that everything about this day would go well. I peered over his shoulder. “Where’s Ava?”

“Trying on a fifth outfit.” He rolled his eyes. “I told her, it’s a pumpkin patch, not a fashion show, but who am I to argue? You women change your clothes as often as you change your minds.”

Max ran back into the living room from the kitchen, hopping in place with his feet together and his arms ramrod straight at his sides. “Dad! It’s sunny! Can we play soccer before we go?” I smiled, thinking that Max was exactly as Victor had described him to me: “a jumping jack of a boy, with enough energy to power a small nation.”

Victor walked over to his son and dropped into a squatting position so they were face-to-face. Max stopped jumping. “I don’t think we have time, buddy,” he said. “It’s a little bit of a drive to Snohomish and we don’t want to wait too long. All the good pumpkins will be gone.”

“Mom already
got
us pumpkins at the grocery store.”

Victor threw a glance at me, then looked back to Max. “Well, this place doesn’t
just
have pumpkins. It has a petting zoo and arts and crafts and caramel apples. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

“No,” Max said. “Can I bring my DS? I want to play Mario Kart.”

Victor sighed and stood back up. “In the car only.”

Ava chose this moment to emerge from her bedroom, entering the living room with slow, deliberate steps. She wore slim-fit jeans, a blue windbreaker, and knee-high green rubber boots.

“Hi, Ava,” I said brightly. “I’m Grace. It’s so nice to finally meet you. Your dad has told me so much about you both.”

She made brief eye contact with me and gave a short nod of acknowledgment before walking over to her father and hugging him tightly, burying her face into his stomach. Victor leaned down and kissed her on top of her head, his lips landing on one of the fluorescent orange hair clips she wore.

A few minutes later we loaded into Victor’s SUV, both of us making idle conversation about pumpkins and the upcoming Halloween holiday. I shifted in my seat to look at the children. “What costumes are you going to wear this year?” I asked them, figuring this was a neutral enough subject to get them to engage with me.

“Iron Man!” Max offered. “With real lasers on my hands!” He held his palms out at me, making pretend electronic shooting noises. “Pew! Pew!”

I laughed. “Awesome. I loved that movie.”

“You did?” Max asked, an edge of doubt in his voice.

“Totally. Iron Man
rocks
.” I grinned at him, and he grinned back.

“Pew! Pew!” he said, again pretending to shoot me.
Victory!

“What about you, Ava?” Victor prodded, looking at his
daughter in the rearview mirror. “What are you going to be for Halloween?”

Ava shrugged, staring out the window. “I don’t know.”

“It’s next weekend,” I said. “Do you have any ideas at all? Maybe we could help you figure something out.”

She looked at me, pressing her lips together in a thin line, and shook her head. I sighed a little internally, wondering why she was so unresponsive. Had I already done or said something that bothered her? Maybe she simply hated me on principle, just because I was another woman, invading her time with her father. I could handle kids who were more like Max, open and mouthy. Or maybe it was because he was a boy, and I was used to how my brother behaved when he was Max’s age. I knew how to relate. Ava’s silence made me extremely uncomfortable.

The afternoon went well, all things considered. I even got Ava to laugh when I did my impression of the llama that had spit at her dad over the petting zoo fence. Momentarily disregarding Melody’s advice to avoid bribery, I bought them caramel apples covered in miniature chocolate chips and paid for the sepia photo of them with their dad dressed up in old western frontier clothes. Victor tried to get me to dress up and take the picture with them, but I felt like a family photo would be pushing things too far for a first meeting. I snapped many pictures of the three of them together that day, though, planning to put them together in a small album for both of the kids as a kind of thank-you for letting me join them. I went back to my condo after we returned to Victor’s, even though at that point, I was already accustomed to spending almost every night at his place. There was no way I was going to freak the kids out by sleeping in their father’s bed.

The next day, we went to brunch together at IHOP, then to the beach to collect shells before taking them to Kelli’s house.
She immediately seemed uncomfortable with my presence, even though Victor had prepared her by saying I would be there. I’d asked to meet her, thinking that if I were a mother and my ex-husband started dating someone, I’d certainly want to get to know the person spending time with my kids.

“What do you do for a living, Grace?” she asked me. Her voice wavered a bit as she spoke. Her tiny frame was clad in the tight black skirt and white blouse she wore to wait tables at her job. Both kids clung to her after being away from her for the weekend, and she wrapped her arms around their shoulders protectively.

“I already told you that,” Victor interjected before I had a chance to answer her, his voice holding a twinge of annoyance I hadn’t heard from him before.

“Do you have any kids?” Kelli continued, ignoring his remark.

I shook my head, and a brief, smug look flashed across her face. She tried to hide it with a quick smile, but it was too late—I’d seen it. I didn’t understand why so many women seemed compelled to pit themselves against others who had simply chosen a different path. Stay-at-home moms against those who worked; women who breast-fed against those who chose to use formula; and my personal experience—women who had children against those who did not. Luckily, it wasn’t the first time I’d faced this issue, so I gave my standard response to smooth her ruffled edges: “It must be amazing to be a mother.”

She softened a little in that moment, when she saw I wasn’t intent on proving myself a better or more evolved woman because of my focus on my career. “It is amazing,” she said, moving her gaze to Victor then, her eyes suddenly seeming darker and more intensely blue. “They’re what keep me from falling apart.”