Just Like Other Daughters (25 page)

I think about Jin and Abby’s relationship. It’s unconventional for obvious reasons, but they’re not living together twenty-four hours a day, either. When Abby moved in next door again, she kept her job in Baltimore, and her house. She still stays there three or four nights a week.

“Just something to think about,” Abby says. “Especially with the baby coming. Your hands are going to be full with your classroom schedule and Chloe and the baby. Maybe you don’t need Chloe’s husband here every night.”

I think about the Eldens’ situation and my fear that Margaret will move to Ohio to be with Danny. Then I won’t have an option, will I? Maybe Abby is right; maybe I need to loosen up a little. Thomas is obviously not going to be able to take responsibility for his child. Why am I pretending he is? Especially when I’ve secretly been critical of Margaret for that very same illusion—believing Thomas is more capable than he ever will be.

“Maybe you’re right,” I muse. “Maybe—”

“No!” Chloe screams from the living room. “Give it back!”

I look at Jin and Abby.

“No!” Chloe screeches.

“Excuse me,” I say, pushing back my chair. I know Chloe is hormonal, but I’m frustrated with her temper tantrums. She doesn’t seem to have an ounce of patience with Thomas lately, and she insists on having her own way entirely too often. “I’ll be right back,” I say to Abby and Jin, then, “Chloe!”

“I . . . I d . . . don’t l . . . like it!” Thomas is shouting as I walk into the living room. The two of them are standing in front of the TV. Chloe snatches the
Aladdin
DVD box out of Thomas’s hand.

“I . . . I wanna w . . . watch
T
. . .
Toy Story
!” He grabs wildly for the box, flailing both arms.

“No!” my awkwardly pregnant daughter screams in his face, stomping her foot as she moves the box just out of his reach. “It’s my TV!”

He lunges for the box. She puts it behind her back.

“Chloe Mae—”

The words aren’t out of my mouth before I see Thomas lunge forward and push Chloe back. There’s only a few feet between us by then, but I can’t get there fast enough and I watch my pregnant daughter fly backward into the TV cabinet.

T
he back of Chloe’s head hits the open door of the TV cabinet hard. The door snaps back on its hinges. The DVD box flies from her hand, through the air.

“Chloe!” I cry, stepping in front of Thomas.

By the time I get to her, she’s already scrambling up, arms pumping, screaming at Thomas. “I want
Aladdin
! Where’s my
Aladdin
?”

I try to keep her from getting up so I can make sure she’s okay, but she’s strong and she’s fighting me. I can’t believe how strong she is. On her feet, she lunges toward Thomas.

He’s sobbing. Cowering. “K . . . Koey. Koey.”

He didn’t do it on purpose. I
know
that. And he didn’t hurt her; I can see that. But when I turn to him, I’m so angry. I’m so scared. “We do not push, Thomas! You do not push your pregnant wife!” I’m trying to grab Chloe, to pull her into my arms, but she throws herself at Thomas and shoves him hard. He goes down like a giant in a fairy tale, hitting his arm on the coffee table as he falls.

“Chloe!” I holler. “Enough!”

By now Jin and Abby are in the room. Abby drops to one knee to see to Thomas. Jin is trying to help me wrestle Chloe back. I’m afraid if I don’t get her attention, she’s going to tackle him on the floor. I’ve never seen her so enraged.

“I want my
Aladdin
!” she screams. “I want Prince Ali!”

Jin has her arms around Chloe, around her big belly. “Chloe, Chloe, calm down. Listen to me.”

I spot the DVD box on the floor. I take two steps and grab it. I take it to my daughter and place it in her hands. I’m shaking.

She’s still screaming at Thomas.

“Come with me, Chloe,” Jin insists, pulling her away from Thomas, who’s still on the floor.

“
Aladdin
,” Chloe sobs.

“Right here. Right here.” Jin taps the box in Chloe’s hands and ushers her toward the kitchen. “You okay?” she’s saying. “Did you bump your head?”

When they disappear into the kitchen, Chloe is still going on about Prince Ali.

I look down at Thomas, on the floor. He’s lying on his side, knees drawn up, holding his arm against his chest and rocking. I put my hand on the coffee table and squat down. Abby’s behind him.

“Is he okay?” I ask.

She’s rubbing his back. “He’s okay. Thomas is okay,” she says, soothing him. “You’re going to be okay.” She looks up at me. “Chloe?”

I swallow and nod. “She hit her head, but I think she’s fine. She’s too angry to be hurt.”

Abby holds my gaze for a second. “You need to call Thomas’s mom.”

“I need to call his mom,” I repeat, momentarily in a daze. “Right. I should call Margaret.” I look down at Thomas. He’s still sobbing, his eyes squeezed shut. As I get up, I smell urine. I see the stain on his pants.

I grab the cordless phone off the end table near one of the couches and head upstairs to get Thomas a clean pair of sweatpants. I realize I’m still shaking when Margaret picks up.

“Margaret,” I say.

“Is everything all right? The baby?” She can hear the distress in my voice.

“Everything is okay,” I say. I take a deep breath. “But I need you to come get Thomas.” As I pull a pair of pants out of Thomas’s dresser, I relay what happened.

By the time Margaret arrives, red-eyed, Thomas is sitting on one couch, in clean underwear and sweatpants. Chloe is sitting on the opposite couch, glaring at him. I’m making her hold a bag of frozen peas to the knot on the back of her head, so she’s not happy with me right now, either.

Thomas has tried to apologize to Chloe and to me several times. He knows he did something wrong. My darling, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to get that this is bad. It’s very bad. She has no idea what domestic violence is, nor does she understand that she could have been seriously injured. What if she’d been at the top of the staircase when he pushed her?

I know that Thomas only reacted to her taunting. He didn’t mean to hurt her; he would never hurt her intentionally. But he’s so big.

“I just . . . I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Tommy.” Margaret sits down beside her son; she’s still wearing her coat. She looks at me, sitting beside Chloe.

Jin and Abby have gone home.

“I don’t understand what got into him,” Margaret says to me.

I know exactly what got into him. I glance at Chloe. “Put the peas back on your head,” I tell her.

She makes a face but does as she’s told. I return my attention to Margaret. “As I said on the phone, I know he didn’t do it intentionally. He was upset. They were both upset.”

“But we can’t have pushing or hitting.” Now
her
voice is shaky.

“No. We can’t have pushing or hitting,” I agree.

She looks at Thomas. “We should go, son. And let Chloe get some rest.”

Thomas gets to his feet awkwardly. We all go to the door, and I take his coat off the coatrack and help him into it.

“Bye, honey,” Chloe says and lifts up on her toes.

“B . . . bye . . . baby,” he says softly. He kisses her on the lips.

Tears spring in my eyes. Standing there watching them, I think I knew in my heart where this was going. It was just so sad. So unfair.

“I’ll call you,” Margaret says and they hurry out into the cold.

Chloe closes the door behind them and waddles away, the bag of frozen peas in her hand. “I’m watching
Aladdin
.”

 

Margaret calls the next day. There are no long, drawn-out discussions. No argument from either side. She’s talked to Danny. He thinks she and Thomas should go to Ohio for a while. I speak briefly to Randall. He hints around that I may have caused the unrest between Chloe and Thomas because I didn’t let them function more independently from me. But in the end, he’s just not all that interested. He offers to pick up Chloe on Tuesday and take her to Chick-fil-A.

Margaret and Thomas come by to get his things. I hadn’t noticed, but apparently he’d slowly taken most of his belongings home. They carry a suitcase and a laundry basket out.

Chloe waves from the vestibule door. I don’t think she understands the seriousness of Thomas’s departure. I do think she knows I’m sad, though, because she slips her small hand into mine. Together, we watch Thomas and Margaret load his things and pull away from the curb. He waves.

She lifts her hand and lets it fall.

 

Thomas went away. Because there’s no hitting and no pushing. We hit and we pushed. That was bad. But he made me mad. He wanted to watch dummy head movies. He cried because he wanted his mom. All the days. Now I can watch movies I want.

Sometimes I’m sad because Thomas isn’t sleeping in my bed. He was warm and he put his hand in my nightgown when we went sleeping. But now I’m fat because I have a baby in my belly. It wiggles in my belly. I can’t sleep good. Thomas would have to sleep on the floor so it’s good he went to Hi-O.

When I have a baby maybe he’ll come and kiss it. You kiss your baby. And change the diaper. If it pees or poops.

Thomas has to change the diaper if it poops. Maybe he’ll come on Wednesday.

 

Life goes back to the way it was before Thomas came into our lives two and a half years ago. Except, of course, for the obvious: Chloe’s big belly and the looming, momentous change the birth will bring into our lives. Margaret calls every day for a few days, then every other day. Then only twice a week. I understand why she thinks a separation between Thomas and Chloe, for a while, is a good idea, but I don’t understand her flagging interest in the baby.

“It’s her grandchild!” I tell Jin, trying to keep my voice down, so Chloe doesn’t hear me. She’s in the kitchen, making a snack for us. We’re in the living room. Abby has flown to the West Coast to visit her parents. Huan is with his new girlfriend in Philadelphia (a Chinese American girl!). Mark is spending a week with his kids in Vermont, skiing. It’s quiet here. A little lonely, because we’ve made quite a family in the last few months, the five of us: Abby and Jin, Mark, Chloe, and me.

The house is decorated for Christmas. We put a tree up yesterday and have started decorating it. Chloe and I have a tradition of hanging mostly homemade ornaments on our tree. I have boxes of paper cup and noodle ornaments she’s made over the years.

Chloe is excited about the presents under the tree. There are several for Thomas. We picked them out and wrapped them together, but she hasn’t asked if he’s coming for Christmas. There had been discussion that the Eldens might, but that was when they first went to Ohio. Margaret hasn’t called in over a week, and I feel guilty because I haven’t called her . . . but not guilty enough to call her.

“I’m sure she still feels bad about what happened.” Jin is threading popcorn on fishing line.

I pick through a bowl of cranberries, looking for ones that aren’t too squishy. I must have bought a bad bag because most of them seem soft. “But this is her grandchild,” I repeat.

Jin looks at me. “Maybe she can’t handle it, Ally.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, maybe having a handicapped grandchild is more than she can handle. Maybe she’s distancing herself because she just can’t take it emotionally. Especially with the marriage now being over.”

I look at the cranberries in the bowl. I want to argue that the marriage isn’t over. But it is. I know it. When I first realized it, I was upset, not because it was over but because I ever let it take place to begin with. Mark was the one who talked me down off that ledge. He was so sweet. He said, as a parent, I did the right thing at the time. He said that there was no way I could have anticipated that Thomas wouldn’t be able to adjust to the marriage and all it entailed. It was nice of him to say it that way because we both know Chloe didn’t adjust all that well, either. Her way of adjusting was simply to resist any change, and I probably didn’t do enough to facilitate change in our house, for Thomas’s benefit.

Mark also said that I couldn’t blame myself for the pregnancy. He reminded me that it could have easily happened without nuptials. The way he’d said it had me smiling for days. Mark made an additional comment that day when he ended up helping me box stained-glass sugar cookies for my colleagues. He said that I shouldn’t assume that the baby was a bad thing. He said maybe the marriage didn’t fail. Maybe the arrival of the baby was supposed to be the end result, all along. Not the union between Chloe and Thomas.

I think maybe he’d had one beer too many.

I look at Jin, sitting across from me on the couch. I listen to my daughter singing “Dalmatian Plantation,” at the top of her lungs. I smell the heady scent of the fresh pine tree and feel the warmth of the fire on the hearth. I imagine holding an infant in my arms, an infant that looks at me with the same love in her eyes that I saw in Chloe’s eyes as a baby. Her disability never impeded her love for me.

I’m not the kind of person who believes in fate, but maybe this really
is
what is meant to be.

 

Christmas comes and goes, and Thomas’s gifts remain unopened under the tree. I finally buckle and call Margaret on the pretext of giving her a report on Chloe’s pregnancy. She doesn’t pick up her cell phone. I leave a message: “Just wanted to let you know that Chloe’s appointment went well today. Baby’s heartbeat is great. Chloe’s blood pressure was okay. So . . . no news is good news. I hope you all had a nice Christmas. Chloe was hoping we would see you, but . . .” I hesitate. “But maybe we should send Thomas’s gifts?” I sound cheery. “We’ll . . . talk to you soon.”

Margaret doesn’t call for several days. I’m already back in school: a new semester, new classes, new students. I’ve made arrangements for Sue Chou to cover my classes when the baby is born. I’ve started the process of finding someone to care for the baby. Chloe is still going to Minnie’s, still participating in all the activities. The pregnancy really doesn’t seem to have slowed her down all that much.

I smile when I see the name on the caller ID. “It’s Mom Margaret.” It’s after dinner and Chloe and I are sitting on my bed, folding tiny flannel receiving blankets and towels with hoods.

“Thomas,” she says, holding up a white T-shirt with pink and blue kittens all over it. “He’s my honey.”

“Margaret, good to hear from you,” I say into the phone. “I hope you—”

“Alicia—” She sounds upset.

“Is everything okay? We were worried when we didn’t hear from you—”

“Alicia, we need to talk about the kids.”

I glance at Chloe, wondering if I should get up and go down the hall. “Okay . . .”

“Tommy’s in a new daycare, he’s doing great, and while Danny and I don’t usually agree with divorce—”

She continues to talk, but I don’t really listen after that. I didn’t see this coming. I mean . . . I suppose I did. The fact that the Eldens went for a
visit
to Ohio and didn’t come back was a clue, but . . . divorce?

I look at my daughter, with her enormous belly. She’s trying to fold a little yellow thermal blanket. She folds it, unfolds it, then folds it again. I notice her wedding band on her finger; there’s no way I’m going to get her to take it off.

Margaret is still talking.

A
divorce?
That would certainly cut the ties between us, but how Margaret and Danny . . . I can’t wrap my head around it.

They’re abandoning Chloe. Their grandchild. I can’t decide if I’m hurt or angry. Both, I suppose. I could never forsake my grandchild, no matter what the circumstances. I understand that having my daughter pregnant brings the whole situation closer to me, but even if Thomas was my son and Chloe was Margaret’s daughter, I wouldn’t walk away. I could never walk away.

I think about what Jin said. About the possibility that Margaret and Danny just don’t have the emotional capacity to handle another handicapped child. About how they might not be strong enough.