Chapter 16 Deal Breaker #3
“It just happened this morning, and now it looks like she’ll need surgery to put a pin in—so I need to be there with Bella.”
“Okay,” Pam says, trying not to let her disappointment show. “We can reschedule. I just wish you’d called me.”
“We were still figuring out what to do.”
“But if I’d known I wouldn’t have taken off work—”
“Well, it’s an emergency.”
“Yes but.”
He stares at her. “What do you mean but?”
She tries not to let her disappointment show, but she can’t help it. “I feel like we’re cursed or something.”
“What are you talking about?” His eye is twitching, just a little. He is looking at her as though she is an alien, thinking about museums at a time like this. “Alison’s in the hospital.”
Isn’t she always in the hospital? Pam thinks. Doesn’t she work there? “Okay. I guess I’ll just go over to your house and wait.”
“No, I’m taking Bella for the weekend,” he tells her.
Pam nods, because of course she can’t be at the house with them. Bella hasn’t even met her. “I guess I should just turn around and drive home.”
“No, don’t do that,” John says as he sits at his desk.
She feels distant as a client. “You didn’t call me.”
“The situation was unfolding!” he bursts out.
The situation? she thinks. What is the situation here? All she wanted was to meet his daughter. He’d suggested it himself, but there’s no room for her. His heart is with Alison and Bella because he is a good person and they are family. “You have your hands full,” she says.
“I’m not trying to ruin your plans.”
“They’re my plans now? I thought we were planning to take Bella to the Gardner together.”
He is astonished. “Pam, Alison’s foot is very badly broken!”
“It’s always something.”
“This is not just something.”
Tears start in her eyes. “It’s never going to happen. You’re not going to let it happen.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’ll never get to the museum.”
“Why are you still talking about the museum? This has nothing to do with the museum.”
“I know,” says Pam. “It’s about not seeing me.”
He looks at her across his desk and says, “Do you think I’m trying to avoid you? Or exclude you?”
She takes a breath. “I don’t feel excluded.”
“Thank you.”
She stands up. “I feel extraneous.”
“I don’t know what that means,” he says.
“It’s just that I’m alone,” she tells him. “And my feelings are extraneous.”
“Pam!” He walks around his desk and reaches for her. He is always reaching, but when he embraces her, she feels as though he’s somewhere else. All the action in his life is happening without her. It’s all offstage where she can’t see. No. It’s just the opposite. She’s the one offstage in shadows.
“I’m sorry about Alison’s foot,” she says, collecting herself.
“I know.”
They are standing there together, doing the right thing. Her voice is muffled because her face is pressed against his chest. “I just have a feeling that we’ll never get to the Gardner.”
“We will,” he says. “We’ll go together.”
Just us? she thinks. Just us, without your daughter?
She had envisioned stepping from winter into the pink courtyard and seeing it through Bella’s eyes.
She had imagined that surprise. The mosaic and the ferns and the climbing vines.
The sudden burst of Italy. “I wanted to be there when she walks in for the first time.”
“She’s been there,” John says with some surprise. “She went on a field trip with her class last year.”
Pam pulls away. “You never told me that.”
He points out the obvious. “Her school is right there.”
“Oh.” She should have thought of that. Winsor is practically across the street. Of course the girls would visit the Gardner. “I had a whole story in my mind!”
“What story?”
She is half laughing at herself. “I made up a whole story and none of it was true!”
“We’ll figure it out,” he promises.
She doesn’t answer.
“Don’t you believe me?”
She just shrugs. She can’t give him what he wants. She doesn’t have it in her to say yes.
“I’d better pick her up,” he says.
“Okay.”
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“How do I look?”
“Crestfallen,” he says.
And it’s true. She is so anxious and dramatic. This is the gulf between them. She has never been married. She has never been a parent. “You think I’m selfish.”
“No,” he says. “You’re just not used to—”
“Putting other people first?”
“Changing the schedule sometimes.”
“But I am used to it!” she says, because how many times have they postponed the museum trip? How many times have they rescheduled? She’s been flexible. She’s been hoping.
“And we will get to the museum.”
“No, that’s okay.” Her voice sounds small and cold, but she can’t help it.
That’s how she begins to feel. Chilly, as though she were outside again.
She’s zipping up her coat and John looks so sorry!
He looks sorry for her. Righteous anger rushes in—or is it self-respect awakening?
“Don’t do me any favors,” she says, because she has no desire to walk through the Gardner’s doors.
To see the Madonnas or the bits of lace, the altarpieces, the Rembrandt self-portrait.
The one where he’s so young and self-assured.
Quietly, John says, “I’m going to be late.” He is disappointed in her. She can see it in his face. He is shocked by her behavior (as if she’s in the wrong!), but even now, he’s kind. “I’ll call you later.”
“Okay.” With a sinking feeling she remembers that she called her parents from the road. She told them she was going to the Gardner with John and Bella that afternoon.
He drives off to collect his daughter. She sits in her car trying to figure out where to go. Not to the museum. Not to her parents’. They’re just a few minutes away, but she can’t face them. No way can she tell them about all of this.
She drives to Providence and picks up Rosie. Her dog panting, unquestioning, always thrilled when she returns. Jamie, the dog sitter, is surprised to see Pam back so soon.
“We were just going for a run,” Jamie says.
“That’s okay. I’ll take her.” Pam pays for three full days and takes Rosie home.
Her parents refrain from calling. Pam can tell, because they don’t call for three days. They don’t even text, but she can hear them wondering about her. They are in suspense. Then they are speculating. Didn’t she say she’d tell them how it went?
She hears them wishing she would call, or at least send them a few words. Tap the hull of her drowned submarine. On the fourth day she texts to say she’s fine.
Her mother texts back immediately That’s good to hear. And Pam hears everything in those few words. Reproach, concern, regret.
That night Pam fortifies herself with a few drinks and answers when her parents call.
“Hello?” she says.
“Pam?” her mother says.
Who else would it be? Pam thinks. She says, “Hi. Yes.”
“How are you?”
“Good,” says Pam.
“Hold on. Let me put you on speaker.”
“You’re doing all right?” her dad asks.
“I’m fine.”
“I figured as much,” Helen says, because of course she has figured out everything.
“Yeah, we didn’t get to the museum,” Pam says.
“What happened?” Charles asks.
“I don’t know. Scheduling. Medical emergency.”
“Really!” Charles says.
“I mean, it wasn’t life-threatening.”
“I’m sorry,” Helen says. For a split second it sounds like she’s sorry the emergency was minor—but Pam knows what she means.
“It’s okay,” says Pam. “In the end I didn’t really want to go.”
“You broke up with him!” Helen is direct as always.
“Well,” says Pam. “We’re still speaking. He is very—”
“Very what?” says Helen.
“Committed.”
“That’s a good thing,” Charles ventures.
“To his ex-wife and daughter.”
Her mother says, “Oh.”
Alone in her kitchen where no one can see, Pam tilts back her chair. “What do you call those trees that hold on to all their leaves even in the winter?”
“Persistent?” says Charles.
“Marcescent,” says Helen, because she knows the word for everything. She is such a puzzler.
“That’s how he is,” Pam tells them.
“Good for him,” says Helen, and Pam knows she means good riddance.
Charles’s voice is gentler. “So, you haven’t met Isabella.”
Pam can hear his wistfulness and longing. She senses it in both her parents, although it’s hidden in her mother.
“I told you not to get your hopes up,” she says, but this is harsh, and she regrets it. “We’re still friends,” she amends. “We’re on good terms.”
They say nothing.
Their silence lasts so long that Pam asks, “Are you still there?”
“We’re here,” says Charles.
“Mom?”
“I’m here,” she says. “I was just thinking.”
“What are you thinking?” Pam asks, although she can imagine.
Helen is thinking that John was a mirage and there won’t be an instant granddaughter.
Not even a granddaughter once removed, a step-granddaughter, a granddaughter by adoption.
Helen says none of this, however. She asks, “Why don’t you come here for the weekend? ”
“I mean—” Pam starts.
“So you won’t be alone.”
“I’m not alone. I’m sitting here with Rosie.”
“Wonderful.”
“We’re taking obedience classes.”
“That’s a good idea,” Helen says.
“That way when she graduates, we can visit you together.”
“No,” Helen says immediately. “You are always welcome here. Without the dog.”
Pam laughs at that. Strange to say, her mother’s retort comforts her.
Any wistfulness on Helen’s part is over.
She will not suffer fools or dogs or trees.
She will not sigh about what might have been.
Pam’s dog will not return, and John won’t set foot in Helen’s house either.
Has he failed a test? Absolutely. Pam can’t help but admire her mother’s clarity.
Helen is difficult. She’s daunting, but she is crisp.
She never clings. She does not remain on good terms to avoid a scene, nor does she stay friends when she doesn’t feel friendly.
Helen has never met John, but that’s no impediment.
She is disowning him. She has never spoken to him, but it doesn’t matter.
If she had spoken to him, she would never speak to him again.