Chapter Thirty-Five
Family Reunion
Rod
If Big Lacrosse wasn’t bad enough, Charlotte Harris can put Carl and company to shame on a dime. It’s not the way I remembered her, but when the yearly visits began around Tali’s third birthday, I started to notice the change. It was here to stay.
‘I’m going to need a little more than that, Rodney,’ Charlotte says to me now.
‘More than what?’ I sound terrified, which I honestly am. ‘Charlotte, when you gave me custody of Tali, nowhere was there a deal where you get to decide who enters her life.’
‘But I am her mother.’ Charlotte’s firm statement echoes off the narrow hall of the gymnasium. ‘And that deal is implicit in all of this. When was that ever unclear?’
‘What, that you get to vet my girlfriends?’ I practically spit.
‘Oh, but I sure do get to vet who goes near my daughter, Rodney.’ She’s using her cutthroat meeting voice on me. Great. ‘One Google search, and seriously? You’ve found a pro athlete? Two of you, so you can both ruin Talise’s childhood together?’
‘She is incredible with and for Tali—’
‘Let’s …’ She holds out a hand, shaking her head. ‘Let’s put a pin in that now. Perhaps I’m being too harsh. I ought to give her the benefit of the doubt. It’s you I’m disappointed in.’
I hear applause go up through the walls, the tournament still ploughing on in the gymnasium.
This is the last place I wanted to have this conversation.
I might not have done everything right with Tali, I might have done most of my learning in that rocky first two years, but I have always lived by the principle that I will never, ever let Tali see us fight.
It’s not as if we do much of anything else.
We haven’t, really, since Charlotte came back after Tali turned three and stayed the summer in Whittaker, a visit that had ended in an explosive rage-fest over dinner one night.
It has frankly been raging on from then, ever since we agreed on visitation on paper.
We’re fortunate that Charlotte and I have always been quiet fighters – snapping at each other in hushed tones, wrapping it up quickly.
Except I could say a whole lot about this ‘disappointment’.
The time Charlotte insisted she wanted to be a constant presence in her daughter’s life and that turned into yearly drop-ins, maybe. Disappointing? I’d say so.
‘How did this happen?’ Charlotte says around a sigh, as if she’s assessing the damage left behind by a teenage rave held in her house while she was out of town.
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’
‘I have yet to call it a good or a bad thing, Rodney.’
‘Just …’ I groan. ‘We worked together this summer. It wasn’t serious at first, but then we realized we had a lot in common.
Good for each other. Good for Tali. She gets me, Charlotte.
She waits, she understands, she cares about Tali, and she doesn’t try to change me.
She just gets it. Do you know how hard that’s been? ’
Charlotte is quiet for more than a few moments, arms crossed. Then she says, ‘Let’s just go back inside. I don’t want to miss the trophy.’
I don’t force it. We head back down the hall the way we came, and push through the doors to the gym.
At our seat in the bleachers, Jordan’s face is a pained mixture of concern and confusion.
She holds it down well. We cheer civilly when the trophies come out, and Tali is presented with hers.
I’d like more than anything to tell Charlotte how much it matters that Tali has people in her life who will stick around for the journey, not just for the trophy, but I keep my mouth shut.
When it’s time for her photo, Tali grins up at us, totally oblivious to the tension in that na?ve child way, and we make our way down the stairs. Trophy in hand, she runs right to me and hugs me tight as I lift her into my arms with an exaggerated grunt. ‘Forty-something pounds of lean muscle.’
It’s then that Tali sees both her mother and Jordan and, with an outstretched arm, reaches out and calls, ‘Jordan!’
A bolt of something unexpected flashes across Charlotte’s face. My heart wrenches for her. At the end of the day, it’s her daughter. But Tali makes it clear. She beams at Jordan, her eyes drifting to her mom for just a moment with a chirpy, ‘Hi!’
Jordan looks as uncomfortable as I feel, but for Tali’s sake, she slaps on a big smile and comes forward so Tali can pull her into the hug. ‘You did so good, sugar.’
Tali’s grin gets that much bigger. Jordan’s Southern-isms are one of her favourite things. I can tell because no kid from New England would walk around ‘y’all’-ing her way to high heaven unless there was someone she was trying to be just like.
The hug disbanded, Tali hops down, looks up at her mother once more. The connection in her eyes is superficial.
‘You were excellent, baby,’ Charlotte says, her voice wavering.
‘Thank you!’ replies Tali, and then she’s back to yapping all about her trophy and her sparring match, as if that’s that. Nothing more.
That’s kind of the thing with kids. They usually tell the truth as it is. And it usually isn’t pleasant.
Explaining the entire mess to Jordan is made a lot easier by the fact that I find her outside that evening. Outside, for some reason, feels easier than inside right now.
She sits by the bonfire we’d lit up the Friday night of the championship game, a glass of whiskey in her hands.
She’s curled up in one of the three lawn chairs.
A horseshoe-patterned blanket is draped across her shoulders.
The dogs, who seem to follow her every move these days, lie by the legs of the chair and, as I approach, they both look up at me with protective glares in their eyes.
I’ve never loved bringing up the subject of Charlotte. I like to think I left everything well in the past when I decided I was going to raise Tali alone – when Charlotte stopped showing up every month and started showing up once a year – but I know it is never that simple.
‘Can I sit?’ I ask quietly as I near the fire, beer in hand. It’s one of Jordan’s Redbridge stash. I didn’t really expect to develop a taste for them, but here we are.
She gives me a nod, patting the chair next to hers. I sit down, and she throws me the right side of her blanket. I’m not really too cold, considering the T-shirt and sweats I’m wearing. I accept it anyway.
‘Jordan …’
‘You can tell me as much or as little as you choose,’ she says, still not meeting my eye.
I didn’t put her in an easy situation. Sure, I had no idea that Charlotte would show up, but no context.
Maybe she was under the impression that Tali’s mother had left our lives completely.
It’s definitely not her fault she had to deal with any of that.
She has every right to be upset, though what’s scarier is I don’t think she is. Just confused and uneasy.
‘I think I owe you more than a little after that.’
She doesn’t reply, just takes a sip of her whiskey. I take that as my cue.
‘Charlotte and I got together sophomore year of high school. By senior year, we were endgame. I was playing lacrosse for Whittaker-Joyce. She was a cheerleader. We had our eyes on Mass State, together. At which point Tali happened.
‘We were nineteen, first year at Mass. Definitely not something we’d planned on, but Charlotte came to me, and she was really excited, actually.
We were both pretty unprepared. We were confident we’d spend the rest of our lives together, and we knew we wanted a kid, so – even though it was way sooner than we’d expected – we got ourselves ready. It wouldn’t be easy, but we’d do it.
‘That was when it all went to hell.’ I swallow hard.
I don’t know how much my word will mean to Jordan after the events of this morning, but I have to believe she still trusts me.
‘It wasn’t really anyone’s fault. It kind of just …
happened. After Tali was born, Charlotte became distant.
I was worried, I asked the doctors, and for a while, we thought it was postpartum depression.
But every passing day, she withdrew, and eventually, I realized it was because our paths had divided.
Charlotte wanted more out of her twenties.
She felt stuck, and honestly, I couldn’t blame her.
I still don’t, and I never will. Nothing about mixing college and pregnancy had been easy.
We talked. I agreed to take Tali. And we split up, amicably. ’
Jordan leans forward. A curl of her hair falls to the side of her face as her eyebrows furrow.
‘After that, it just got … bad.’ The thought of recounting everything claws pieces out of my heart.
The best and worst years of my life. I feel a strange mixture of guilt and fear.
‘I’d taken on too much. Eventually I got help.
I even got on meds, but I’d still find myself listless, staring off into fucking space while Tali cried in my arms. I didn’t know where to start.
Ma was worried. Dad was disappointed, which was worse than pissed, and any time he was over, he’d start on this shit about my lacrosse career being over before it’d even begun.
I took a break from it all for a year. College altogether.
I went on and off my SSRIs. I did everything I could for Tali, but some part of me still felt like I wasn’t enough, like I was failing her.
Once she could walk, she’d run around the house calling out for her mom, and I didn’t know what to say.
She didn’t realize it was just me, and it felt like I was breaking it to her ages after it happened.
‘And two years later, Char was at my doorstep.’ I blink back tears I don’t expect to start pricking my eyes.
‘Smiling like nothing had ever happened. Asking to see her daughter. I was … overjoyed. I mean, I thought this was it, and we’d mend things.
She came back to Whittaker for a month, then two months.
She even moved in with us for the summer.
I was hopeful. Tali was little, but I think she understood it, too.
Man, I thought things would finally work out, that I’d found the bridge between Charlotte’s universe and mine.
‘Then we got into this blowout argument over dinner. She’d seen my away game schedule for the next season at Mass State.
The matches I’d be on the road for. She didn’t want anything to do with it.
’ I laugh humourlessly. The words we exchanged might have been from years back, but they still sting just the same.
‘We were the skeleton of what we’d built in high school.
It was never gonna hold. I understood that she was pissed at me: that was okay.
I was pissed at myself. But the person who had to shoulder all of it was Tali.
‘That kid grew up on the road with me, with my team. She’s probably seen more US states at seven than most people see in their entire life.
And yeah, it’s all fun and games until she hasn’t had any stability.
Because since then …’ I shrug, taking a swig of my beer.
‘It’s been this. Annual visits without warning. Staking claim.’
I don’t want or expect pity from Jordan.
I feel like that’s the reason everything’s been so easy with her.
She’s a sounding board, not a sympathy greeting card.
Right now, she sets her whiskey glass in the cup-holder of her chair and looks at me with a sort of weight in her gaze that I know means she has really heard me. ‘God,’ she says.
‘Yeah.’
‘You’ve both had a tough go of it.’ She leans back with a sigh. ‘First off, if you’d failed when you were raising Tali, she wouldn’t run straight to you whenever you’re in a room the way she does. I want you to really let that one sink in, Rod.’
Of course, she’s right. It’s a little harder to absorb than I thought. I take a deep breath. ‘Okay.’
‘Okay. And I … wish I’d had a bit of subtle foreshadowing.
’ A little smile finally sneaks out, replacing the empty look that had definitely been freaking me out.
‘But all I will ever need from you, Rod, is to keep it real with me. I know it’s hard to find it in you to trust someone – anyone – after it all came apart like that.
Just know that you don’t owe me, or your dad, or anyone else anything.
You made every decision you did out of the heart of a father who truly loves his daughter, including the decision to try and mend things with Charlotte.
And if anyone asks, I am proud of you for that. ’
‘You know exactly what to say.’ It’s not a lie. Her patience is a different kind of virtue. It has this way of taking all the nasty feelings away.
‘I’ve been told.’ She leans all the way over and presses a gentle kiss to my cheek. Her fingers brush the other side of my jaw. Her black hair just skims my shoulder before retreating with her. ‘So. My time in Whittaker’s almost over. We gonna do this thing?’
Typically, although it should feel like a bigger step forward, never having been in a serious relationship since Charlotte, it would feel easier than that with Jordan.
Like all summer has led up to this, and it’s just a formality.
Except that no matter how many times I replay Jordan’s words, the way she’s promised to stick by me and Tali, both of us, and that means everything, some strange feeling still pokes at my stomach.
That this won’t work. That it will be like things were with Charlotte.
That bringing these worlds together will fail miserably, and it’ll hurt. Badly.
‘Seeing as I already told Charlotte you were my girlfriend,’ I say instead. Jordan lets out a laugh.
‘That was the most pitiful declaration I’ve ever heard, Rodney.’
‘I’ll do you one better.’ I tuck the stray curl in front of her face behind her ear, and my thumb travels across her lips. ‘Be my girlfriend.’
‘Now that’s more like it.’ She grins, and even as she kisses me, I can feel her grinning still. I know in that moment that I can try, but I’ll never find anyone with that same kiss – the kind with the smile. I’ll never find anyone like her.
So why, now, do I feel like this is such an enormous mistake?