She Has Your Eyes (33 page)

“I’m not a mom,” I started. “And that was by choice. I didn’t have a good relationship with my mother. In hindsight, I gave her a raw deal. I didn’t understand her, misinterpreted a lot of her treatment of me as unloving.”

“It must be difficult to live with that, knowing you don’t have much time left with her,” she said. I surmised her delivery of words to be more jagged than her intent behind them.

“It is,” I said. “But here’s the thing: I was always a good teacher. And I love doing it. Especially for college kids. They’re at an age where they’re learning to think for themselves, figure out their place in the world. And I get to help them make sense of that with words. Better yet, they let me in on
that process. Sometimes we end up being counselors to our students, sometimes mentors. It’s both an honor and a responsibility.”

I wondered if I was rambling.

“I want to be a part of Wylie’s life. But not just as a teacher or a mentor, and certainly not as a counselor. I want to be more.”

Janine stiffened. “Andi, I know I was harsh the day you came here, and I’m sorry about that. Especially after Wylie told me it was the anniversary of your first husband’s death. I should’ve apologized to you myself, but I was too angry. You have to understand what Wylie’s actions—her seeking out David and bringing you both, these two strangers, into our lives—has done. It’s put quite a strain on our family. On my husband and me.”

Tears came to her eyes, and I restrained myself from offering some physical gesture of comfort, like taking her hand, that I would’ve extended to Maggie or Miranda.

“Us too,” I confessed. We both fell silent as the truth consumed us. I could almost see the fights Peter and Janine probably had in their bedroom at night, after Wylie and Trish went to bed. The days of not speaking to one another, of tension thick as a forest, of being on the same side yet acting as if in opposite corners. And I felt such compassion for them, given what David and I went through.

“You know,” I started, “I knew David when he went by Devin. Knew what he did for a living. In fact, that’s sort of how we met. By then he was—how shall I say this?—withholding certain services. But we got to know each other, and became friends. And let me tell you, I was quite taken with him. He was rather aloof, however. Would only let me in so far, then kicked me right back out.”

I could see Janine going back to that time and place, a twisted grin, no doubt remembering that charismatic guy turning on his charm.

“I thought he wanted
me
,” she said. “You know what it’s like to be young and stupid, thinking you’ll change ’em after one night.”

I nodded in validation. “Hell, yes.”

“I know I should’ve told him about Wylie,” she said. “Believe me, I have felt guilty about that.”

“But you didn’t think he would care?”

“Maybe. Maybe I was afraid of being rejected twice. Worse still, that he’d reject my child.
His
child.”

“I can understand that,” I said. “But David’s so not that guy anymore. He’s present and loving and committed. He’s
vulnerable
. He goes to church and always strives to be a better person.”

Janine seemed to be trying to conjure an image of David on his knees in prayer. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. I could hear the trepidation in her voice, however.

“You and Peter are Wylie’s parents. We don’t want to insert ourselves and take over as her parents. But we do want to be a part of her life. Both of us. And we want her as part of ours.”

Janine paused for a beat, taking everything in. “Ever since Wylie found out Peter wasn’t her biological father, she stopped trusting me. I just want my daughter back—the one who believed in me.”

“I think she does. In fact, I suspect she gets her best qualities from you—her tenacity, her honesty.… And just from the few conversations we’ve had, I can tell that you’re the most important person in her life.”

“Wylie and Trish were both too young to remember what it was like when Peter and I blended our families. And Trish’s
mother was a nightmare to deal with. I guess we didn’t want to go through it again.”

“And here we came in like gangbusters, or so it must have seemed to you both,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not a bitch, Andi,” said Janine.

“I
never
thought you were,” I said. “Look, I’d like for us to start over. I’m not saying we can all be one big happy family, but at least know we’re all on the same side.”

Janine deliberated before speaking. “I won’t restrict you from seeing or speaking to Wylie anymore. I know she likes you. But if you both could just slow down a little,” she said of David and me. “Give her time to breathe, and us too. I don’t think Wylie has had a chance to process this. She’s thrown herself in without stopping to think of the consequences.”

“I think you’re right. That’s something we can all talk about,” I said.

With that, we both returned to the living room to rejoin David and Peter. When we got there, however, the room was empty. A puzzled look came across Janine’s face. “Where did the guys go?” she asked, She went into another room to look for them, calling out Peter’s name. I followed her. We returned to the kitchen when, at the same time, we heard voices outside. I followed Janine out the side door to find Peter and David in the driveway, involved in a game of hoops. It was the male equivalent of what Janine and I had been doing in the kitchen, I realized. She and I watched them for a couple of minutes; they were unaware we were standing there. We then looked at each other, and I could’ve sworn we were thinking the same thing:
Men.
We even smiled and rolled our eyes in agreement.

chapter forty-two

Just as I had asked David for one-on-one time with Janine, I made the same request regarding Wylie when she got home from Christmas shopping. I suggested the two of us take a walk around the block. She seemed hesitant, perhaps even a little scared. But when Janine gave her a nod of approval, she agreed.

We were about fifty feet away from the house when I broke the ice.

“I want to apologize for breaking communication with you. I know you were hurt by it.”

Wylie crossed her arms and looked at the houses we passed. “I know why you did. It was because of my mom. We had a big fight after you left, and I’m still really mad at her for it. I just don’t understand why you caved so easily.”

“Because I knew how important it was for David to have a relationship with you, and I didn’t want to get in the way of that happening. I also thought disrespecting your mother’s wishes and talking to you behind her back would only make more trouble for everyone.”

“So, what, you don’t want a relationship with me?”

“I absolutely want a relationship with you, Wylie. In fact, your mom and I just had a really good talk about it. I’m so sorry you thought otherwise. I’m sorry I let you down.”

She pursed her lips and watched her footsteps on the pavement. “It’s OK,” she finally said.

I didn’t expect to be overcome with emotion. “It took a lot of courage for you to do what you did—finding your biological father, I mean. Tracking him down that way. I didn’t have that kind of moxie when I was your age.”

“What’s moxie?” she asked.

I smiled. “Pluck,” I said. “Sass. Guts. You’re never afraid to speak up for yourself. In fact, I wish I were more like you.”

“Really?” she said. “My mother says I tore the family apart. Sometimes I think she’s right.”

“It may feel like that right now, but I think you did something much bigger. You gave David, and yourself, the gift of getting to know each other. You gave everyone a second chance.”

We got to the end of the street and turned around.

“Is your mother dying?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “She has cancer.” I wondered if this was something I should be discussing with a fifteen-year-old. But I found that I wanted to. “We’ve gotten really close in such a short amount of time. I spent most of my life being mad at my mother, and I regret every single minute of it now. I know you’re mad at your mother for certain things, but you’ve got to keep the lines of communication open with her.”

“OK,” she said in a contemplative way. As we approached the house, she confessed, “I wasn’t just mad at my mother. I was mad at you too. I’m sorry for that.”

“You had every right to be mad at me.”

She waited a moment before asking, “Are we OK now? You and me?”

“Yep,” I said with a smile. “We are.”

And in that Wylie way, she changed the subject when the moment was over. “I got an A on that English paper, by the way. It brought my average up to a B.”

I practically hooted as I pumped my fists in the air. “That is
fantastic
, Wylie. I am so proud of you!” And without thinking, I put my arm around her. And without warning, she stopped in her tracks and started to sob. I didn’t ask why, didn’t need to know. But I put both my arms around her, she took hold of me, and the two of us cried together.

chapter forty-three

When we got back to the house, Wylie asked David and me for a rain check on lunch. We rescheduled for the following week, said good-bye to and thanked Janine and Peter, and walked back to the car. I stood on my toes, reached up to David, and kissed him; his face felt so warm against my own.

“You’re cold,” he said.

“You’re hot.” I winked. And then I blurted, “Let’s elope.”

He blinked in rapid succession. “What?”

“Let’s get married right now. Just the two of us.”

“Are you crazy? Do you know how many people you’re gonna piss off, your mother being at the top of the list?”

“We can still have the ceremony she wants us to have, but we’ll do this one first, just for us and no one else.”

“What about Wylie?”

“She can come to the other one too. C’mon, where’s your sense of adventure?”

He took hold of my hands as if to steady me. “I’m chalking this up to the stress of recent events temporarily freezing your brain.” I didn’t reply. Just looked at him in a sort of mischievous, seductive way. Then he broke into a smile—the electric
Devin
smile. He was
considering
it. “Hmmmm…”

We talked about it during the ride back to Northampton—laughing like campy villains planning our coup: getting a justice of the peace, to tell or not to tell the families, to honeymoon or not to honeymoon.… The closer to home we got, however, the increasingly quieter we became. When we pulled into our driveway we looked at each other, and you could hear the momentum
whoosh
out of us, like a deflating balloon.

“Face it: your mother would’ve known,” said David. “And she would’ve killed us.”

I concurred. “So would everyone else. No way I could keep something like that a secret.”

“And the real wedding would feel anticlimactic. Like cutting into a cake after someone’s already put their fingers in it.”

“It probably wouldn’t even feel like the real wedding. It would feel like we were fooling everyone.”

We sat in the car, silent and sad.

“But the idea of having something just between the two of us is so appealing to me right now,” I said. “Why is that?”

“Because it’s not the two of us anymore, I guess,” he said. “There’s Wylie now.”

“Am I wrong to want it, though?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Do
you
want it?” I asked.

He stared straight ahead. “I don’t know what I want right now.” He looked pensive, wistful, searching.

“What is it?” I asked. “You can tell me.”

David cut the engine, and we sat like still lifes.

“That’s not my house,” he finally said.

My heart stuck in my throat.

“It never bothered me until now. And that scares me a little, because I know what it means to you.”

I stared at the house too, and for the first time could see what he was seeing: Sam. Larger than life, casting some kind of dome over us.

“I now know why you sometimes feel threatened by Wylie. It’s how I’ve been feeling about Sam lately. Maybe it’ll pass, but, Andi, he never leaves. I’ve always been OK with it, but right now, right this moment…” His eyes misted over.

“Let’s go to the Cambridge house tonight,” I suggested.