So Much More (24 page)

Claudette is holding my hand with her left and fiddling with the clasp on her purse with her right. The fiddling is a passive attempt to speed this along, silently chiding the sluggishness of the process.
 

“Faith Hepburn,” a guard’s voice booms through the small holding room we’re seated in. It rattles me like two giant hands clutching my shoulders, a stiff jerk forward and back. I look around the room and feel heat light on my cheeks like a beacon exposing my whereabouts.

Claudette hesitates at my new-to-her legal name, but rises first, and I follow her lead.

We walk wordlessly behind the guard through a maze of secured doors before we’re seated in front of a reinforced window with an old school phone receiver on each side. The chair opposing ours is vacant, but only for a moment.

The orange jumpsuit-clad midsection of a body comes into view. He’s moving slowly, indicating physical ailment, stubbornness, or laziness; I guess when I meet his eyes they’ll tell me which. His wrists are cuffed, his fingers interlaced. His hands are rough, knuckles calloused, gnarled by years of mistreatment or hard use, and covered in poorly executed tattoos.

I don’t have the courage to look up at his face, but our eyes lock when he drops laboriously into the chair. And at once, all three become glaringly apparent: physical ailment, stubbornness, and laziness. He also looks like a first rate asshole.

He’s scowling at me with cold eyes. They’re dark like they died years ago. His head is shaved, and his skin is pale, except his cheeks. They’re ruddy but lined with broken capillaries that weave across each other like roads on a map.

We both pick up our phones.
 

He doesn’t talk.

I clear my throat.

“What do ya want?” His voice cuts like a file and makes me flinch.

I clear my throat again.

Claudette takes the receiver from me. “Mr. Groves, this is Meg Groves, the child you adopted twenty-two years ago. She’d like to ask you a few questions about her birth mother and her adoption.”

His eyes widen before they narrow back into their scowl. “I ain’t got nothin’ to say to you.” He glances at me before resting back on Claudette. “That little bitch put me in jail.”

Claudette squeezes my hand. It’s both reassurance for me and anger at his choice of words. “Mr. Groves, the circumstances behind your incarceration were no fault of a child. We don’t care to take up too much of your time. Do you remember any details regarding the adoption?”

He grunts, “Nope.”

“You don’t remember anything? Names? Places? Dates?” she presses.

“Nope.” He smiles at me when he says it. When he agreed to the visitation, he didn’t know who I was, but now that he does he’s enjoying denying me.

“What about your wife? Maybe her memory is better than yours?” Claudette asks. She’s trying to remain calm, but I hear impatience driving her questions.

“Doubtful. She ain’t real talkative these days,” he says.

“Why is that?” she asks.

“She’s dead. Died ten years ago,” he says it with no emotion like he’s talking about what he ate for dinner last night, instead of the death of his spouse.

The news is disturbing and quiets Claudette.

“We done here?” He’s done, that much is clear.

“Is there anyone else we can talk to who may have some information? Another family member, perhaps?” It’s Claudette’s last ditch effort to salvage this trip.

“Nope. The old lady did the deal. Ain’t nobody else involved but her and she took it to the grave.” He hangs up the receiver, stands, and lets the guard remove him from the room.

Just like that, I watch him walk away. With
my
secrets. Whether he remembers them or not, my secrets are there. People who aren’t capable of harboring our memories with integrity, shouldn’t be allowed them in the first place. I’ve never wanted to open up someone’s brain like a book and start reading—looking for answers in his memory bank—until now. I want to tear my pages out, run away with them like a thief, and greedily read them over and over until I memorize every word. Until every word becomes
mine
, instead of
his
. That’s what I want.

You don’t always get what you want.

Even if you want it more than anyone’s ever wanted anything.

The calendar is now sacred

present

I’ve contacted several lawyers. Most declined interest in representing me based on the current custody arrangement and accompanying incriminating documents calling it futile. Futile is a label I put on the passage of unproductive time and complacent existence. Futile is not my kids. Futile is not our situation. So, I kept searching until I found a lawyer who sees the potential in righting the wrongs and doing what’s best for my kids. Futile is not in his vocabulary. He’s building a case, putting together a solid fight, and hoping to initiate proceedings in mid-January, which is a month from now.

The calendar is now sacred. I mark off each day with newfound determination.

Fool me twice, fuck you

present

I’m supposed to have my kids for a week during Christmas holiday according to the current custody arrangement—pick them up Christmas Eve and drop them off New Year’s Day.

After Miranda’s Thanksgiving stunt, I don’t trust her to not run off with them again.

Which is why it’s December twenty-first and I’ve just pulled up to the gate in front of her house.

Fool me once, shame on me.

Fool me twice, fuck you, Miranda.

I smile as I think the thought and dial my phone.

The housekeeper answers on the third ring, out of breath like she’s run to the phone. “Buckingham residence.”

“May I please speak to Kai?”

“Hold,” she replies and sets the phone down on a hard surface.

Kai picks up the phone seconds later. “Dad?”

Everything inside me is smiling, because not only is his voice in my ear, but I know the rest of him is inside the house in front of me. “Hey, buddy. Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure,” he sounds confused. This isn’t how our typical conversations go.

“I want you to hang up the phone and get Rory and Kira and walk out to the mailbox together. I sent you all a surprise, and I’m sure it arrived this morning.”

“Can we just talk for a few minutes first?” Kai asks, he sounds hurt I’m rushing to end this call.

“I promise we’ll talk in a few minutes. I’ll call back after you check the mail.”

“Okay,” he says still sounding disappointed. Gifts, material things, have never meant much to Kai.

“Talk to you soon. Love you.”

“Love you, Dad.”

What’s most likely a minute at most, feels like an hour, before the front door opens and I see my kids.

My kids.

I’m standing in front of my car, one hand wrapped tightly around the decorative iron bars on the gate and one wrapped tightly around the grip of my cane, both steadying me. I want to scream their names, but my throat is closing in on itself with overwhelming emotion. I knew I would be happy to see them. I had no idea it would be so overpowering. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. It doesn’t. It’s more, so much more. This is like witnessing their birth all over again. I’m in awe. They’ve grown so much over the past few months. And while I want to mourn the time I’ve lost with them, I can’t bring myself to it. My happiness won’t allow it. It only allows the present, everything else is irrelevant.

They haven’t noticed me yet. Kai and Rory are arguing, or more accurately Rory is arguing with Kai, and Kai is ignoring him watching the ground pass beneath his feet. Kira is trailing behind. She’s still in her pajamas even though it’s almost noon. She looks tired. Until she sees me waving at them and then all hell breaks loose. It’s probably the most noise that’s filled the air on this street since I was here last. “Daddy!” she screams.

Kai and Rory stop walking at the sound of her scream, and she races past them. Their delay to process what’s happening is only a second or two before they’re running across the lawn after her.

Kai reaches the gate first and enters a code into a keypad to open it. The gate retracts slowly, and they all three try to push through, unsuccessfully, at the same time. Within seconds, they’re all bundled together in my arms. Kira’s arms are wrapped around my right leg, Rory’s arms are waist height, and Kai’s are chest height. I almost forgot what this felt like.

When I look up, the housekeeper is walking toward us like she’s on a mission, but she’s smiling. “You full of surprises, Mr. McIntyre.”

I decide now is a good time to attempt a truce, so I smile in return. “Hi, Rosa.” This is the first time I’ve ever called her by name. I only know it because the kids say it so often.

“What you doing here?” she asks, but her tone isn’t confrontational like the last time we did this.

“I needed to see my kids.”

“They need to see you too,” she says quietly as if the admission is a betrayal of her employer that she refuses to contain, but doesn’t want anyone to hear.

Rosa ushers all of us inside with the practiced efficiency of someone who’s served others for years.

I call Miranda’s cell. She doesn’t answer, so I leave a message.

Rosa calls Miranda’s cell. She doesn’t answer, so Rosa leaves a message.

Rosa prepares lunch and feeds us while we wait out Miranda’s ire. She tells me it’s a traditional dish her mother taught her to make when she was a young girl in Mexico: potatoes, onions, and tomatoes, inside homemade flour tortillas. I’m shocked as I watch Kira eat it.

Rosa is firm with my kids, but there’s a gentleness that suggests she enjoys being with them. I can see it in her eyes when she watches them, and they don’t know it. She’s fond of them. She’s bonded with them. She’s protective of them. I’m guessing she’s old enough to be their grandmother. I’m glad my kids have her here.

Hours later, Loren arrives home and Miranda isn’t far behind. She releases the kids to me days early, at Loren’s prompting, and we pack their bags and leave on our very own Christmas adventure. I don’t know where we’re going yet, and I don’t care as long as we’re all together.

Miserably imperfect saccharin happiness

present
 

“Miranda, we need to talk,” Loren calls through my closed bedroom door. It’s late. We have separate bedrooms. He won’t let me step foot in his in all the months I’ve lived here.
 

My heart beats double time in reaction to his voice, his words. It makes me angry that his attention can still set off a Pavlovian response, especially after the way he’s been ignoring me, but that’s all it is—an unconscious response. It’s not desire. It’s not need. It’s a physiological chain reaction that begins and ends with my loneliness.
 

I pull back the covers and crawl out of bed, cloaking my naked form with a silk robe. It’s tied loosely in front, but the two halves aren’t drawn closed when I meet him in the hallway.

He sighs when he looks at me. It’s not the sigh of irritation I’ve grown so used to. It’s sympathy, sadness, something I didn’t think him capable of. “Can I come in?” he nods his head at my door.

My heart has squashed the synthetic excitement and is beating rationally again. “It’s sad you had to ask that question,” I mutter as I turn and walk into my bedroom. He trails behind, both of us weighted by the uneasiness of our fucked up situation. Two adults, three children, one housekeeper: all living separate lives under one giant, dividing roof.