Lies You Wanted to Hear (24 page)

“Not exactly. I called the phone number Monday evening and got an answering machine. I wasn’t going to say anything if she picked up. Not without talking to you and Sara first. I’m not sure why I called or what I was expecting. Maybe just to hear her voice. On the machine she says she hasn’t seen her children since you kidnapped us in 1983. She asks people to leave a message or call her other number if they have any information about us.” He swallowed hard. “Then she speaks directly to Sara and me, except she calls me Nathan. It’s really sad. She says she misses us every day.”

I laid the photocopy of the article on the table and smoothed the creases with my thumb. In the picture the kids looked so cute. I had only a few photos of them before Elliot was about six. Another caution, I suppose—a way to keep the past unseen.

“Tell us what happened, Dad,” he said. “Why did you take us? Did she hurt us or something?”

I blew out a long breath, still struggling for something to say.

Sara said, “You’re the best father ever, Daddy. You don’t have a mean bone in your body.” She pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands, wriggling with anxiety and love. “I know you did what you had to.”

I picked up the newspaper article and looked at it for about ten seconds and put it back down again. “Listen, you guys deserve answers. It’s just I…I’m feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment. I need to clear my head.” I stood up. “I want to go outside and get some fresh air. Just for five or ten minutes, that’s all. Then I’ll come back and we can talk. I’ll tell you everything.” I kissed Sara on top of her head. “Please, honey, don’t be angry at El.”

The air was clear, and the stars shone bright in the sky. I walked down to the grove of lemon trees. Perhaps it was just a defense mechanism, but I had always believed that one day I’d be caught. Some nights I’d lie awake and imagine myself in a courtroom, explaining myself to a judge and jury. I would tell them what I had done might be wrong in the eyes of the law, but not as a father trying to protect his kids. My children were in danger. Sometimes justice works too slowly. I
had
to act. Yet for all my fine reasoning, I never considered what I would say to Sara and Elliot. What did it matter what verdict a jury might reach when the worst penalty could come from my children? Did I assume I would never have to explain myself to them? Elliot wanted to know what had been taken from him, a reckoning between the life he’d had and the one that might have been. In time, Sara would want answers too. The irony was that in my attempt to comfort my children for their loss, I had turned Lucy into the perfect mother. Now I had to tell them the ugly truths, the same ones I’d so often told myself.

“Well, here goes,” I said, my voice cracking a little. We were all sitting at the kitchen table. “You guys have been my first priority since the day you were born. You are my world. Everything I do comes back to you. The trouble is, I told you a huge lie and committed a crime. I told you your mother was dead, and I stole you away. I could lie some more and say it was the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life, but the truth is, it wasn’t that hard at all. I did what I had to do to keep you safe. Over the years I’ve tried to pretend that Lucy was a good, kind, loving mother, but she was not a stable person. She was incredibly irresponsible and self-absorbed. When we were going through the divorce, my lawyer got her to admit to all kinds of bad stuff in a deposition. I tried to get full custody of you kids, but the court wouldn’t allow it. The law bends over backward to protect a mother’s rights. Do you guys remember anything about her?”

“Not really,” Elliot said. “Just a few things you told us.”

“I remember she was tall and pretty,” Sara said. “She smoked. She liked to read to us. She used to call me sugar pop.”

“Do you remember Griffin?”

Sara narrowed her eyes, trying to recall. “The name maybe. Was that her boyfriend?”

“Yes, he was a creep. They did a lot of drugs together. She was involved with him for a few years after college. They broke up and I came along, and Lucy and I fell in love. I did anyway. I think she
tried
. She got pregnant, and we got married. As far as I was concerned, I was the happiest man in the universe, but Griffin was like a dark shadow hanging over us. Sometimes I’d just look at her and know she was thinking of him. He came back, and they started having an affair. I caught the two of them in bed together. They were both high as kites. There was an altercation, and he gave me this.” I pulled the hairs apart to show them the scar above my ear.

“Oh my god,” Sara said. “It sounds like a nightmare.”

I nodded. “With you guys stuck in the middle.”

“Do you remember when you broke your wrist?”

“A little bit. I remember how itchy my cast was.”

“Do you remember how you got it?”

“I fell off a trampoline.”

“You were on it with Griffin. He was probably stoned out of his head. Lucy tried to dismiss it as a simple accident, but I kept thinking how you could have sailed into the jungle gym or landed differently and broken your neck.”

Elliot gave me a questioning look. “And the courts wouldn’t do anything?”

“I didn’t even report it. I told my lawyer, but he just shrugged. It’s ridiculous how biased the system is toward mothers. A woman has to be an axe murderer before she loses custody of her children.”

Sara said, “Is that when you decided to take us? When I broke my arm?”

“That wasn’t the half of it. Every time I turned around, it was something new. Lucy would forget to pick you guys up at day care, send you outside in the middle of winter without your hats and gloves. You remember Nanda, your grandmother? She got arrested for drunk driving with you kids in the car? I couldn’t believe Lucy let you ride with her when she knew the woman was a total lush. One day I found a burn hole in a cushion on your mother’s couch, the kind that goes all the way down into the stuffing. It’s a wonder the whole place didn’t go up in flames. Lucy and Griffin would smoke dope and get so wasted they couldn’t see straight. I’d go on business trips for three or four days and be sick with worry the whole time I was away. I was afraid I’d come home and…” I shook my head. There were tears in my eyes.

“Thank you, Daddy,” Sara said, tears in her eyes too. She came to me and put her arms around my neck. “You did the right thing. I love you so much.”

I couldn’t read the look on Elliot’s face. “I want to meet her,” he said.

“Why?” Sara said. “What good would it do? She means nothing to us.”

He looked at me. “I understand you were trying to protect us, Dad. You were afraid you’d come home and find something terrible had happened to us. But think about her. She really did lose her kids.”

“You can’t do this, Elliot,” Sara said angrily. “If she goes to the police, they’ll arrest Dad for kidnapping and put him in jail.”

“I’ll tell her not to,” he said. “I’ll say if she does, I won’t see her again.”

I said, “You can’t control what she’ll do, El. Why do you feel you have to see her?”

“She’s my
mother
, Dad. Maybe she’s changed. You should hear that message on the answering machine. She’s spent half her life waiting for me and Sara to come home.”

Sara said, “I’m not going to let you do this, El.”

“How can you stop me?”

She glared at him. “Let me put it this way. If you go see that woman, you and I are
done
. I mean it. I won’t have a brother anymore.”

Elliot looked at me, his eyes sad and his mouth tight with resolve.

“I don’t regret what I did, El. I felt like I didn’t have any choice. Not if I wanted to keep you guys safe. But you’re a grown-up now. I raised you and your sister to think for yourselves. If you want to go see Lucy, I won’t try to stop you. You’re my son and I love you, simple as that. Sara loves you too. She’s angry now, but she’ll get over it.”

Sara looked at me like I was the enemy and went to her room and slammed the door. Elliot and I couldn’t think of anything to say, and he went off to his room as well.

I sat at the table alone, wondering what my future held. I probably should have gone into more detail about Lucy’s failings, but no doubt there would be more time for that. Elliot’s description of that message on her answering machine was poignant, but I couldn’t dredge up any pity for Lucy. There were so many unforgivable things she had done. For the first few years after I’d left, I used to find myself going down the list. Not a fun exercise, but I guess it was my way of reminding myself that I was right to have taken the kids. In time those bad memories began to fade. But the one that stuck with me as vividly as any was the photograph I’d seen on the mantel the night I’d gone into her house—her and Griffin and the kids smiling brightly in the snow.

My cell phone rang. It was a prospective client calling to clarify a few items. While I was trying to rush her off the phone, Sara stormed through the kitchen and went out the door. I heard her drive off. The woman on the phone said she was ready to give me the job. I told her I’d come by in the morning to get the paperwork signed and pick up a deposit.

Elliot came out of his room and sat across from me at the kitchen table. “I’m going to go to see her, Dad. I booked a flight online.”

“When?”

“I’m going tonight on the red-eye. It was really expensive. I used the credit card. I’ll pay you back from my savings.”

“I don’t care about the money, El. When are you coming back?”

“Saturday, around one-thirty in the afternoon. It was the only flight back I could get. We’ll still have Christmas together.”

“Did you call her? Does she know you’re coming?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t think this is the best plan. You don’t know anything about her life. She may be going away for the holidays. She might not even be there.” He shrugged one shoulder, a stubborn look on his face. Once he made up his mind about something, wild horses couldn’t make him change. I stood up and said, “I’m going to make more coffee. You want some?”

“Okay.”

He was silent while I got the coffee going and sat back down.

“I’m not trying to hurt you, Dad. I’m really not.”

“I can see that, El. I’ve known you for a long time.” I grinned at my feeble joke. “I think I understand you pretty well.”

“When I was growing up, even when I was a little kid, I always felt like I was
different
. Not a weirdo or anything like that. But we were always moving around, and I felt like an outsider, even in our own family. You and Sara are so close. For me…I don’t know. It’s like I keep trying to understand how I fit in.”

His words stung. I didn’t want them to be true. I was afraid I was going to break down. “Did you think I loved Sara more than I love you?”

“I’m not talking about more or less, some number you can record on a chart. I know how much you love me, Dad. You tell me all the time. But with Sara it’s like you don’t even have to say anything. It’s just there—the way you think, what you guys like to do, the things that make you laugh. I’m not jealous. I’m just…different.”

“Do you think you can find that connection with your mother?”

“I don’t know. Yeah, maybe.”

A better father would have said,
I
hope
you
can
. But I said, “I don’t want to lose you, El.”

He gave me a sweet smile. “You’ll always be my dad.”

I smiled too, but I could feel him slipping away.

Lucy

Wednesday evening, three days before Christmas, William came to JP and I cooked him his favorite meal of wiener schnitzel and dumplings, a reminder of one of his mother’s specialties from his childhood. He and I hadn’t seen each other much over the past few weeks as he had been working sixteen-hour days, trying to get out a new release of one of his company’s widgets. Over dinner he told me they’d gotten over their last big hurdle and were on track to meet their deadline.

“That’s great,” I said. “Maybe you’ll have some time to relax a little?”

“You bet. Maybe we could go away someplace next week. Fly down to some island for three or four days and lie around in the sun.”

“No, we don’t have to go anywhere. I’d rather stay here and sit by the fire and just hang out with you.”

“Done. Let’s start this evening.”

He went into the living room to build the fire while I cleaned up the dishes. When I was finished, I dried my hands and called Thorny.

“Hey, Lucy,” he said. “How’s my little girl?”

“I’m great. William’s here. We just had dinner.”

“You guys still planning on coming down for Christmas?”

“Of course, Daddy. We’ll be there in the early afternoon.”

Thorny lived at an upscale retirement community called Deer Hollow. His mind was as sharp as ever, but his physical ailments were mounting fast—macular degeneration, heart problems, a painful old spine injury from the Navy that sometimes made it difficult for him to walk. It wouldn’t be long before he would have to transfer to the nursing home wing of the complex. He and Amanda had sold their house and moved into the community three years ago. They’d barely gotten the pictures hung in the new place when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She refused all treatments and was dead in seven weeks. Deer Hollow women started buzzing around Thorny like mayflies, but he wasn’t interested.
Your
mother
was
the
only
woman
for
me
, he told me without a trace of irony.
She
had
as
much
spunk
as
Amelia
Earhart. Just as pretty too.
I figured his prostate surgery a few years before her death had slowed him down with the ladies as much as anything.

I said, “You want to go to a movie or something before we have dinner? There are a few good ones playing.”

“Sure, why not? I haven’t been anywhere in days.”

I made a mental note to work on ways to get him out and about when I wasn’t around, maybe hire a companion who could take him into the city once in a while. I kept worrying that he’d fold up his tent and start to die. My brother Mark and his wife and their two children were coming home for a visit the day before New Year’s, so that gave Thorny something to look forward to. Mark’s wife was a Swedish physician with Médecins Sans Frontières, and they had spent the past few years living in Zambia. I was always glad to see Mark and tried not to be resentful that I’d been handling all this stuff with our parents on my own.

I said to Thorny, “What’re you reading these days? You want me to bring you some books?” Meaning books on tape. With his eyesight even the large-size print was a chore.

“Oh sure, something by that
Get
Shorty
fellow.”

“Elmore Leonard.”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Funny as hell. Kind of like eating chocolate cake with nails in it.”

We spent a few more minutes on the phone. When I hung up, I went into the living room and cuddled up next to William on the couch. He’d thrown some sticks of palo santo on the fire, and its sweet aroma filled the room. So far I had managed not to fall into my usual pre-Christmas depression, each day getting a little harder as the holiday drew near, thinking about the kids and where they were and what they were doing—not kids anymore, of course, but young adults, eighteen and twenty-one. I was still unwilling or unable to believe they were gone for good, which in some ways was the hardest part of all, the insidious side of hope. That was what I was trying to tell Winnie sixteen and a half years ago. What I told her again when we went out for coffee last week. People say,
Don’t lose hope, miracles happen,
as if hoping might have some bearing on the outcome. But hope can be such a cruel companion. Hope never lets you grieve and be done with it. Hope is the abuser you keep hoping will change.

***

Thursday was the last day of school before Christmas vacation. The kids were too excited to have story time in the library, so I concentrated on helping them find books to read over the holidays. It was mostly wishful thinking on my part—they’d be too busy with their new toys and games to get much reading done—but there were always a few who would come back from vacation and surprise me, not only having finished their library books but telling me about the ones they’d gotten as presents. After school I went to Harvard Square to do some shopping, then stopped in at the Class Report Office where I used to work so I could meet up with my old friend Anita. She and I had reconnected a few years ago after I ran into her on the street. The two of us went out to dinner and a reading of
A
Child’s Christmas in Wales
. Afterward, we had a drink so she could tell me more about how she’d been dumped by her latest beau. I sipped a glass of wine while she downed two margaritas and got so buzzed I insisted on driving her home.

It was nearly midnight when I got back to JP. On my way to the kitchen, I noticed the blinking red light on the answering machine in the hall. Two messages. My mind immediately jumped back to the call I’d gotten Monday evening, the one where the person hesitated before hanging up. Hope, my old nemesis, tormenting me again.

I pressed the button and the machine said, “Thursday, one fifty-four p.m.”

“Hello,” a young man said. “Hello, this is your son”—he cleared his throat—“Nathan.” I let out a soft cry. “I’m sorry. I know how nervous I sound, but please don’t think this is a hoax. When we left Boston in 1983, my dad told us you died in a fire, but I found out recently that you are still alive. I talked to him, and he told me what happened. I love him. He’s been a great dad and all, but I…He said it was okay for me to contact you. You are probably at work now, so I’ll call you back around eight-thirty this evening. Thank you. Bye.”

I was standing by the credenza with my fists tucked under my chin. The machine beeped again and said the next call had come in at eight twenty-nine.

“Hello, this is Nathan again.” His voice was more assured now. “I hope you haven’t gone away for the holidays. I’ll try to reach you again tomorrow morning. I called you on your other line but didn’t leave a message. Bye.”

Sam came into the hall and rubbed against my leg; I picked him up and listened to both messages again. The fact that the boy said it wasn’t a hoax seemed to increase the likelihood that it was. There wasn’t anything in his message that couldn’t have been gleaned from my outgoing message on the answering machine, but he sounded so nervous, especially on that first call. Then there was the way he said
, I love him. He’s been a great dad and all…
Somehow that made the whole thing seem true to me. But what about Sarah? Why didn’t he mention her? Had something horrible happened to her? I was reeling, unsure what to think. I needed to talk to someone. My first thought was Jill, who had been through it all with me, but she went to bed early and I didn’t want to scare her by calling so late. William was a night owl. I went to the kitchen and got the portable phone and dialed, and he picked up on the second ring.

“William?”

“Hey, honey, what’s up? Are you all right?”

“I’m not sure. I went out to dinner and the theater with Anita tonight, and when I came home, there were two messages on the answering machine in the hall. You know, the one on the kids’ line?”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to hold the phone next to the machine and play them for you. I need you to tell me what you think.”

After he listened to the messages, William said, “Lucy, this is fantastic. Amazing.”

“Really? You’re not suspicious?” Hearing the boy for the third time, I was convinced it was Nathan—his voice was so gentle and conflicted and yearning—but I needed reassurance. “Maybe it’s a prank.”

“No one is
that
cruel, Luce. Or that good an actor. You must be jumping out of your skin. Do you want me come over?”

“Yes, William, please.”

He lived in Winchester, a half-hour away even with no traffic. This morning I’d left the coffee pot to soak in the sink. I filled it with warm water and rinsed it out and started a fresh pot. I noticed a reddish stain on the counter and sponged it off, then my eye went to a greasy fingerprint on the toaster. Moments later, still in my school clothes, I kicked off my low heels and turned into the white tornado, huffing loose hairs from my eyes as I scrubbed and mopped and shined, thinking, Nathan, Nathan, Nathan. Sarah? Then William came in the door and I ran to him and he held me and kissed my temple.

He went over to the answering machine and said, “I want to hear the messages again.”

My heart sank. I was afraid that he’d thought of something on the way over that convinced him the calls were bogus. But he smiled as he listened and pumped his fist, and I felt giddy again.

I said, “Come on out into the kitchen. I made coffee. I don’t
want
to sleep. I’m afraid I’ll wake up and find out it’s all a dream.” He sat at the table, and I poured him a cup. “Sorry for how I look. I went a little crazy cleaning the kitchen, waiting for you to get here. I wonder what time Nathan will call in the morning. I’m so glad I don’t have school. Not that I’d go if I did, of course. I wouldn’t leave the house for anything, but I get scared just thinking about the fact that he might have called when I was away traveling or something, like last summer when we were in England.” I had a sponge in my hand, wiping the counters again, too worked up to sit. “We were gone two weeks. He could have given up and disappeared again.”

“Lucy, Lucy, relax. It’s gonna be all right. He’ll call tomorrow.”

“I wonder where he was calling from. I wish I had caller ID on that line. Is that something the telephone company can do remotely? Just add to your line from the central office? I should call them first thing in the morning.”

“You need to sloooow down, honey. Nathan is reaching out to you. Just give it time.”

“That’s easy enough for you to say. You’re not the one who’s been waiting for half your life, waking up every fucking morning hoping
somebody
will call. You can just sit there and…
Arrrgh
.” I threw the sponge into the sink. “Oh, William, I’m sorry. Sorry. Thank you for being so positive. I know you’re trying to help. But if this isn’t real. If this is…”

He stood up and put his arms around me. “Let’s go to bed, hon. I’ll listen to you talk all night if you want. Or maybe you’ll be able to get some sleep.”

We went up to the bedroom. As William held me, I started talking about Nathan when he was a little boy, how he was so quiet and contented playing with his trucks and trains, rarely calling attention to himself while Sarah was bouncing around, saying,
Look
at
me, Mommy.
Where was she, my little sugar pop? William let out a soft snore. I cuddled up against him, and he pulled me closer in his sleep. But my mind was still churning, and I got up and went downstairs and listened to the messages I already knew by heart.

***

I woke up at twenty past six, surprised that I’d gotten as much sleep as I did. I went down to the kitchen, and William was mixing scrambled eggs. He’d already set the table, and I sat down and took a sip of orange juice. Maybe he was waiting for me to go first, or perhaps we both felt it would be bad luck, but neither of us said anything about Nathan and the messages. William had to go to work. As he was leaving, he said,
Call
me
, and I said I would. I wanted to shower and wash my hair, but I was afraid of missing Nathan’s call. I thought about phoning Jill or Carla or Thorny, but I kept thinking it would be a jinx. I put on a pair of tights and a loose-fitting shirt and did a few yoga exercises to try to calm myself down; then I went back downstairs and started cleaning again, triaging the kitchen drawers, getting the dead bugs out of the crystal globes in the chandelier in the dining room. Each time I looked at the clock, I got a little more discouraged. Then the phone in the hall rang.

“Hello,” the boy said. He paused. “This is Nathan. Is this…?” He didn’t know what to call me.

“This is Lucy Drobyshev. Is it really you, Nathan?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry to be skeptical, but I’ve had…People can be cruel sometimes.”

“I know. I was afraid you might think it was a hoax. I asked my dad how I could prove it was me, and he said to tell you your first date was at the Café Budapest. He was wearing his police uniform, and you put a rose in your hair.”

“Oh my god, it really
is
you.” For a moment I was too choked up to speak. Through my tears I said, “There’s so much to talk about. Where do we start?”

He laughed nervously.

I said, “You’re all grown up now. Nineteen next month.”

“I, uh…I thought my birthday was February second?”

“Actually, it’s January seventeenth.” What other lies had his father told him? I said, “Do you go to college now?”

“Yes, I’m a freshman.”

“What about your sister?” I held my breath.

“Sarah’s a senior. She’s a great student.”

I felt a surge of relief, knowing she was okay. “I’m not surprised about that. You were both so smart. She started reading when she was three. Where do you…?” I was going to ask where he went to college but cut myself off. He’d been cautious so far, his answers short and spare on details; I’d have to be careful and not seem to be probing.

“Ma’am?”

“I’m sorry. I’m a little overwhelmed right now.” A strong feeling suddenly came over me—a mother’s feeling—and I realized he was nearby. “It’s amazing to be talking to you like this. You sound like you’re so
close
.”