She Has Your Eyes (4 page)

Wylie squirmed around me to say hello to her mother, and seemed almost pleased to see the mutual reaction, which made me feel downright woozy.
Oh yeah.
This was more than just a possibility.

“Jane,” David said in almost a whisper.

“Devin,” said Janine.

chapter four

I froze. It had been a long time since I’d heard anyone other than myself or Maggie call David by his escort name. He seemed just as rattled by it. It took a full five seconds before one of us shook out of our trance and let Janine in.

“So,” said Wylie, “obviously you two know each other. But how? I mean, when and where did you meet?”

Neither David nor Janine said a word or moved a muscle. Wylie waved her hand vertically between the two of them to shake them out of it. “Hel-lo?”

“Ms. Baker, can I get you something to drink?” I asked, my voice quavering.

“It’s
Mrs.
Baker, and I’d better not.” It occurred to me that she thought I meant booze.

“A glass of water? Coffee?” I pressed.

David asked for water, but after I retrieved a tumbler and held it out to him, he changed his mind. I sipped from it myself.

David had already shown Janine into the living room, and Wylie followed them. I found myself wondering why Mr. Baker wasn’t with her, if he knew Wylie had been searching for her biological father (and why had I not asked Wylie up to this point?), and if he knew Janine was here, or why. Wylie sat, eager to get on with the conversation.

Janine remained standing. “No,” she said, the word cutting between us. “I am not going to have this conversation in front of my daughter.”

“I’m not comfortable with that either,” said David.

Oh, great—their first official parental alliance.
I shook off the thought as quickly as it came to mind.

“What?” said Wylie. “Why not?”

“Trust me,” said Janine, “you and I are going to talk
plenty
later. But first I want to talk to Devin.”

“David,” he corrected.

“
David
”—she added emphasis to the name as it fell out of her mouth—“alone.”

“So what do
I
do in the meantime?” Wylie sulked.

“You mean you haven’t done enough?” said Janine, raising her voice.

“OK, OK—let’s just keep calm,” said David, putting his hands up as if in defense. “Andi, would you mind taking Wylie into the den while Janine and I talk?”

This time
I
was reluctant to move. I looked at him in protest; he read my thoughts and said out loud, “Please.” And yet his eyes seemed to be saying,
I’d rather not be left alone with this madwoman
. Wylie skulked ahead of me back to the den, and I followed her, looking back at David one more time, feeling as if we were about to be pulled apart, and it would be some time before we reconnected.

The baseball game had finished, and I surfed the channels mindlessly, too nervous to stop at any one show and too
distracted to think about anything other than what was going on in my living room.

“Do you want to watch a movie or something?” I asked.

Wylie shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Whatever you want.”

I stopped on a rerun of
Iron Chef
. We sat at opposite ends of the couch and stared at the screen as Bobby Flay filleted a giant sea bass. Wylie ignored her cell phone alerting her to new text messages.

“So what do you think they’re talking about?” she asked as Alton Brown gave a brief history of the kumquat.

“I have no idea.”

“I mean, obviously they know each other. It was, like,
so
obvious the way they were staring at each other that they’d
done it
.”

I tried to delete the mental images that kept popping up of David and Janine in sexual positions. “It seems that way,” I said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean—” I cut myself off.

“What?” she coaxed, but I didn’t respond.
It doesn’t necessarily mean they loved each other
, I had wanted to say, and realized that would be a horrible thing to tell a girl about her parents. And why did it threaten me so much? I wasn’t naïve enough to think that David had never loved anyone before me. But the magnitude of this particular union—producing
a child
—resulted in a bond that could never be severed. Maybe I was looking for a way to diminish it.

I never missed motherhood. For as long as I could remember, being a mother was as foreign a concept to me as being a safari guide. Both involved developing keen instincts for navigating the jungle (albeit one was metaphorical in nature) and discerning the difference between friend and foe. Unlike mothers, however, safari guides got to carry machetes.

Aside from the fact that I was technically a virgin until my midthirties, I had always been honest enough with myself to know that I was a little too screwed up for parenting. In fact, both my brothers and I seemed to lack the parenting gene.

When I married Sam, we had agreed that kids were not going to be part of our life plan. As professors we could mentor our students without having to pay their tuition too. Kids didn’t fit into our liberal, latte-drinking lifestyle, and the cat filled in just fine when either of us was in a nurturing mood.

When Sam was killed, I was grateful that no child had been subjected to grieving the loss of his/her daddy. Of course, my friends saw it another way—had we had children, Sam would’ve lived on through them. But his writing did that, I argued.

Besides, I was just plain awkward around kids. Babies cried whenever I held them. Sam (and more recently, David) was the one to whom kids gravitated, and who could blame them? Both Sam and David were naturals; in many ways Sam had been a big kid himself, and I think David’s inner child came out every time he got his hands on a set of paints. Without a doubt, Sam would’ve been a great dad, but he had been even more certain than I (if that was even possible) that our bringing a child into this world was not a good idea.

Not fifteen minutes passed before she blurted, “Ugh—this is
killing
me!” She jumped up and stormed into the other room. I followed, calling after her.

“Look,” she said to Janine when she entered the living room, “did you or did you not sleep with this guy?”

“Wylie!” Janine hollered. “How dare you talk to me that way.” Her Long Island accent was as thick as Wylie’s, similar to what David’s used to sound like before he left New York. I guessed she grew up on the South Shore, probably on the Nassau/Suffolk County border.

“Well?” said Wylie.

Janine stood up, crossed the room, and pulled Wylie by the arm. “We’re going.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Tough shit. Get your things.”

“Can I at least use the bathroom?” she pouted.

“Go,” Janine commanded.

I directed Wylie to the bathroom and she stomped off, leaving the three of us in the foyer, even more tense than before. I tried to get a read on what David was thinking or feeling, figure out what had transpired between them, but he refused to even look at me.

“Mrs. Baker,” I started; suddenly I couldn’t remember what I had wanted to say. “Are you going to be able to drive?” I asked after a pause. “There’s a Comfort Inn not too far away.”

“We’re fine. Listen, I’m sorry my kid intruded on you.” Her tone echoed more anger than remorse. “You won’t be hearing from us again.”

“Isn’t that Wylie’s decision?” I asked, and immediately regretted it, especially when Janine looked as if she was about to smack me. Even David looked a little annoyed.

“
I’ll
make decisions for my daughter. This is
none
of your business.”

“Hey—” David interjected. “Andi has been nothing but gracious and polite to you and your daughter all day. And this is
her
home. So I’d say it’s every bit of her business.”

I could’ve kissed him at that moment. But I couldn’t get past his pronoun choice—
her
home? Not
our
home?

Wylie came back into the foyer, her backpack in tow. “Thank you,” she said softly, making eye contact with me for a split second before looking away, as if she were trying to tell me something. I felt a sudden tenderness for her.

“You’re welcome,” I said to her.

“Come on,” said Janine, taking her daughter by the arm and pulling her out the door, neither of them saying good-bye to us.

“I’m sorry,” Wylie called out to David, her voice breaking, and I was pretty sure she started to cry. David closed the door behind them.

The house was eerily silent after they left. David exhaled through his mouth and pulled me to him in an embrace.

“I am so sorry,
cara
,” he said, stroking my hair, knowing how much I loved when he used the Italian term of endearment.

I held him tight. “For what?”

He didn’t answer. Instead he went upstairs, and I knew that was my cue to follow him to the bedroom so he could tell me about his conversation with Janine.

“I’ll be right up,” I called. After taking the tumbler of water back to the kitchen, I was just about to turn out the light when I noticed a napkin with some handwriting on it.

Wylie had scrawled her cell phone number.

Somehow I knew she left it for
me
, not David. And I was touched by this act of trust, this connection. I felt an inexplicable need to protect her, compounded by a need to protect myself as well, although from what I didn’t know. My body felt weak and weary, as if I’d just run a marathon. Hard to believe just yesterday we were so relaxed, so full and content, so
together
.

I folded the napkin, put it into the pocket of my capris, and headed upstairs.

chapter five

When I entered the room David practically pushed me onto the bed, wrestling my clothes off and kissing me hard.

“What the…” I tried between kisses.

“Please,” he pleaded, “I’ve been wanting to make love to you all day.” Having successfully removed my shirt, he then went to work on my capris.

“Seriously? After everything that’s happened, you want sex? Shouldn’t we talk first?”

“I promise I’ll tell you everything after. Right now I need you. I’ll do everything you like,” he offered just as he slid his hands behind my back to unhook my bra and crept them up to slip the straps off my shoulders while nibbling on my earlobe.

“Don’t bribe me, Dev.” I silently chided myself for using his nickname at that moment, but he didn’t seem to catch it. Or didn’t care.

“Fine, then I’ll do everything
I
like.”

I couldn’t help but laugh and give in to his urgency. We shimmied under the sheets and made love until David let out a loud grunt as he climaxed before falling on his back and taking short, quick breaths. It didn’t take long.

“Feel better?” I asked, not meaning to sound so sarcastic.

His breathing evened and he looked at me tenderly, cupping my cheek and kissing me.

“Yeah,” he said.

I sat up and turned on the light beside me. “OK then. Start talking.”