The Youth & Young Loves of Oliver Wade: Stories (20 page)

“No rights?” My father laughed in a disbelief that was
morphing into denial. “Jesus Christ, Oliver. You need to get them back. We need
to talk to a lawyer.”

“Dad. No, see— It’s done.”

He looked down at the red-and-white checkered tablecloth and
traced one of the white squares with his thumbnail, leaving dents in the
fabric. Without looking at me he said, “Please tell us you’re kidding. Please
tell us this is just some joke. Did they move April Fools?”

“It’s the truth. I’m happy about it. I thought
you’d
be happy.”

“
Happy?
That we’re
going to have a grandchild you’ve signed over to other people like goddamn real
estate? People we’ve never met? Are we ever going to meet
him?
”

“We don’t know it’s a him, I’m just—”

“Ollie, Jesus, it’s irrelevant. Him, her, it’s irrelevant.
Are we ever going to meet our own grandchild?”

“Probably, I guess. Dad—”

“Oh Jesus, Oliver.”

“Why would you
do
a thing like this?” my mother said. She had tears in her eyes now.

Seeing her, it was the first time I wondered if I’d made a
mistake, if I’d been too rash and not thought this through. In fact I
hadn’t
thought it through, it had been
one of the most spontaneous things I’d ever done. It had felt right, though. Up
until today it always felt right, not the kind of thing that needed second
thoughts or second guessing. You don’t weigh pros and cons when you’re giving a
gift. But now, seeing my parents—

Under the table my knee started to shake, and anger came
swooping in and bolstered me and overwhelmed my sudden doubts. Just then the
waiter arrived with our food. We smiled, said thank you; he went away.

In front of me spaghetti steamed and I spoke as calmly as I
could. “In case you two forgot, I’m a homo. How many more opportunities in life
do you think I’m ever going to get to have a kid? This might be it for me.” My
face was getting flushed and it was starting to feel hot in the restaurant. The
steaming windows were dripping. It felt like a hothouse, a sauna. “Harriet is a
good person. I’m sure Trudy is, too.”

“
You’re sure?
” my
mother gasped. “Have you even
met
this person?”

“Of course I’ve met her. A bunch of times.”

“Oliver,” my father said.

“I’m spreading your genes, Dad! I thought you’d be happy
that for once I wasn’t dumping them into assholes!”

“Oliver!” my mother cried.

My eyes were bugging. Had I ever been this angry? And part
of it, I was sure, was because by now I was afraid they might be right.

But my dad seemed chastened, and I knew then that he had not
taken my outburst as a wild insult or as an outrageous accusation but as some
kind of bitter truth.

A silence fell over our table and the restaurant’s ambient
sounds filled the gaps. Orders being mumbled, the chime of silverware against
plates.

Finally my mother pushed her untouched meal away from
herself. “I don’t feel hungry,” she said. My father did the same, then got up
and went outside. It was hard to tell but I think he was crying. I paid the
check and drove back to Amherst.

***

My parents and I didn’t speak for three months after that.
It was the longest I’d ever gone without talking to them. Eventually there was
a thaw, though, because after each milestone in Harriet’s pregnancy I
understood more and more why they had freaked out. Harriet and Trudy were
drifting away from me on a course that seemed natural and that also had been
documented and prepared for and agreed to in pages of legal jargon. This was
their journey; they told me about it but I wasn’t on it with them. Harriet
excitedly showed me her sonogram photos but didn’t invite me to be there for
their taking. She told me the baby names she and Trudy were considering but
didn’t ask for my opinions. Each milestone left me with less. Not less than I
expected, but less, it turned out, than I wanted. I had thought of fathering
the baby for them as a gift but now I was realizing that in order to give a
gift you have to give something away.

My parents had understood that right away. Maybe only
parents understand it.

I went home to see my mother one day in April when my father
was out of town. I showed her the sonogram photo. Her eyes welled up and she
laughed and put her hand over her mouth. “She’s beautiful,” my mom said.

“I miss her already and she’s not even here yet, Mom.”

“Oh Ollie,” she said, pulling or letting me push my face
into her shoulder. “That just means you’re a parent. To be a parent is to miss
your kid. Take it from me, kiddo.”

It made me remember: Back when I was going off to college my
dad had mentioned the existence of mother miles, and I thought back then that
if there are mother miles there must be father miles too—maybe not as
long, like cat years to dog years, but still there. What would the father miles
be for a father like me?

“What do I do?” I said.

She was rubbing my back and she took a long time to answer,
and the answer was honest but tinged with regret. “I think you be what Harriet
and Trudy need you to be, when they need you to be it. And I think for now that
means you let them be.”

***

Harriet and the baby were in UMass Memorial, in Worcester.
I didn’t rush. I wanted to give her and Trudy time. I drove there after I got
off work at the mall. It was hot out; my daughter was a summer baby like me,
and in fact had missed my birthday by less than a week—a near miss. I
would’ve liked to have shared the day with her.

In the visitor lot I parked my Jeep and sat for a while
wondering what I would say. I’d never been near an infant before, let alone my
own. Would she look like me? Would it be better if she didn’t?

I got out of the Jeep and took off my Fantasy
Foto
t-shirt and replaced it with the ironed button-down I’d
hung up in the back to keep it from getting wrinkled. I hadn’t known what to
wear to meet my kid but I thought an ironed button-down would be OK.

As I entered the hospital I saw a giftshop and went in and
bought a cluster of shiny balloons, one of which said
Congratulations!
, and another,
It’s
a girl!

“Well that’s happy news,” said the woman at the register,
pointing up at the balloons with one hand while she rang up the sale with the
other. “Who’s the lucky parents?” she said. “Family? Friends of yours?”

I looked at her and felt confused in a way I’d never felt
before and yet would feel often in the days and years to come, and ultimately I
said not much of anything. “Yeah,” I told her, and handed her my credit card.
By then she was already waving to someone else who’d come into the store.

On the elevator I held the balloons low, my fingers up near
their tied-off foil nubs, and the colorful strings swirled around my sneakers
on the blue linoleum floor.

“Ollie, hi!” a voice behind me called as I was walking
down the pink hallway of the maternity ward. “Hi! Ollie!”

I turned. It was Trudy.

“Were you sleepwalking?” she laughed as she jogged over to
me. She looked a crazy mixture of exhausted and deliriously happy, as though
she might collapse right here in front of me with a smile on her face. Her
shoulder-length brown hair was tied back in a ponytail. She had on a yellow
t-shirt with a wet spot, probably baby spit, on the shoulder. She hugged me. I
put one arm around her and held the balloons away from us with the other.

“Oh Ollie, she’s just beautiful. She looks so much like
Harriet, it’s crazy.”

I smiled. I found I didn’t know what to say. “Everyone’s
good?” I asked. “Healthy?”

“So good.”

“Good.”

“Ollie, I’m a mother!” Her eyes brimmed with tears and she
laughed and rubbed them away. “I need to run back to Amherst to get some
things. Harriet will be happy to see you. Some people were here earlier but
right now it’s just her and the baby.”

“Is her room—? I think I might be heading the wrong
way.”

“You came from the elevators?”

“Yeah.”

“You went past it, silly. It’s back this way. I’ll show you.”

Harriet was sitting in a rocking chair near the window
with a pink-blanketed bundle in her arms.

“Visitor,
hon
,” Trudy said, and
then after casting a longing gaze at Harriet she left us.

My fingers released the balloons and they bumped against the
ceiling tiles, forgotten in the presence of this better, brighter thing.

“Hi, Mama,” I said.

“Ollie,” she said, in a you-devil-you way. “Nice shirt,
dude.”

I approached her slowly, and the balloon strings danced
ahead of me and then out of my way.

“Oliver Wade, this is Abbey,” she said, turning to show me
the perfect little face, red with a newborn’s rash. She was wearing a little
yellow hat.

“That’s her name?”

“Abbey,” Harriet repeated, delighting in the sound. “Not
Abigail, just Abbey. With an e-y. Like Abbey Road.”

“Abbey Road?”

“The Beatles. You know?”

“The Beatles?”

“Ollie, the Beatles!” she laughed. And only then did I
notice the sound of John Lennon singing softly from an iPod speaker dock by the
bed. Everything Beatles.

“Oh. Of course,” I said. “Yeah. I’ve always been more of an
R.E.M. guy.”

“Look at her hair,” Harriet said, peeling off the little
yellow hat. “Isn’t this the cutest thing ever?”

The baby had what could only be called a mohawk, a crest of
thick brown hair running down the middle of her otherwise bald head.

“She’s a little punk,” I laughed. I stroked the baby’s
mohawk with my thumb. The hair was as silky and fine as the thread inchworms
use to repel out of trees.

“Get a chair, Ollie,” Harriet said, gesturing to one against
the other wall. “Just throw Trudy’s stuff on the bed.”

Among the clothes on the chair was a camera, and I
remembered I’d forgotten to bring mine. I’d been so worried about the shirt, I’d
forgotten myself.

“She’s been taking a billion pictures,” Harriet added,
seeing me looking at the camera. “We’ll do some of you before you leave.”

I pulled the chair over next to hers and sat down. With my
elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands, I stared at the baby and her little
mohawk. And I thought again, with pride,
I
work
.

“Did you ever think, Harriet— When you met me, when I
was a dorky freshman sleeping on your floor, did you ever think that I was the
guy who was going to be your baby’s father someday?”

“I definitely didn’t, Ollie. But, you know, if some time
traveler had come and told me, I would’ve been glad.”

That made me feel nice. “When Wesley left and I was freaking
out,” I said, “I remember you telling me something about how there’s no way to
tell what can happen in a year or two years or whatever. And at the time I didn’t
know what you meant. I mean it was obvious but I was so wrecked I didn’t know
what you were getting at.”

She smiled. “I guess I just meant that you can’t get too
bent out of shape about anything, because you never know how things will turn
out. The worst thing can lead to the best thing. The shit is the shit that
flowers grow out of.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I think you meant, too.”

For a long time Harriet and I watched the baby’s face. It
was the most interesting thing in the world for us, the way the mouth opened
and closed, the little nose, the hint of eyebrows.

“My parents are going to want to meet her at some point,” I
said.

“I know. I know they are. That’s fine. They should. But for
now—maybe a picture will do? Just until we get settled?”

“Of course. There are so many grandparents.”

“So many.”

“Are Trudy’s parents coming out from Seattle?”

“They might. But I don’t know. We might be there soon, so it
really depends on what kind of flights they can get, if it’s even worth it for
them to come right away.”

“You’ll be where soon? In Seattle?”

“I didn’t tell you? Trudy had a second interview the other
day. By phone this time, thank god. If she gets the job, we’re going to go.”

“But you guys won’t be married there.”

“I know, it’s a huge drawback, but we think it’s worth it to
have her family close.”

“Oh. Yeah. That’ll be really helpful, to have her parents
nearby to help, and stuff. Yeah.” I went quiet again, thinking, and then I
said, “Can I hold her?”

“Of course,” Harriet replied, blushing. “I’m so sorry, I should’ve
offered. Of course you can. It’s so hard to let her go! Be careful of her head.
Her neck isn’t strong enough to hold it up, so you have to hold it, see?”

She passed the baby to me slowly, from her arms to mine. The
little bundle was light but delicate; in a weird way, light enough to drop
easily. I almost wanted a cake pan or something to put her in. “Am I doing it
right?”

“I think so.” She laughed. No, she giggled, like a girl. “I’m
still figuring it out too.” She picked Trudy’s camera up off the bed and told
me to smile. She took a few for good luck. “I’ll have Trudy email them to you,”
she said. She watched me hold the baby for a little while. I can’t say for sure
how long. It wasn’t a time for noticing time.

“Do you want to hang out with her a while, just the two of
you?” she said finally. “I’d love to go take a walk, stretch my legs. Trudy’s
been a regular Nurse
Ratchett
, not letting me leave
the bed.”

“Sure, OK.”

She looked from the baby to me, and put her hand on my
shoulder. “I’ll love you my whole life for this, Oliver Wade.”

I smiled. “No problem, Harriet.”

When I looked up a minute later I noticed she was gone. The
aloneness, just me and Abbey, felt heavy with importance, but I didn’t know
what to do or how to make use of it in a worthy way. Carefully I freed a hand
and turned off the Beatles music and held the baby in silence. I tugged off her
little hat to see her hair again.