Chapter 20
Holland
Natalia’s running shoes are still in the entryway, next to Lina’s boots. They’ve been there five days and she hasn’t come to get them and I haven’t had the courage to move them.
She left them tied, the way she always does, because she steps out of them in two quick kicks without undoing the laces, ready to take off anywhere at any moment. The first time I saw her do it I didn’t think anything of it. Now, every time I walk past, I remember that detail.
Lina asks about her every morning. I tell her she has a lot to sort out these days and I turn my face away so she won’t see my eyes water. It’s not entirely a lie, because four years ago I promised myself I’d never hide the important things from this kid.
But it’s not the whole truth either.
The renewal was already on the table and she let me believe there was nothing.
The France offer was even worse, because she hid it from me.
Same as the other offer she got from the UK and turned down a few days later.
She had one foot out the door and I didn’t know it, thinking our life was perfect.
If I show up at her door and throw it in her face, I’m right. Completely right.
But being completely right doesn’t fix anything.
Because I have my share of the blame too, and I wasn’t even aware of it.
So on Friday, when Lina stays to play with Wesley at Zoe and Tessa’s, I grab the car keys and drive to Capitol Hill, hoping she hasn’t already left.
***
Natalia’s apartment is the same as ever.
Now it makes sense, because she’s about to leave for Europe, but it’s been like this all season.
The hummingbird painting is still on the floor, I guess she’ll take it to the next place and it’ll stay on the floor there.
Maybe nobody will ever hang it on a wall.
She’s surprised to see me, and for a couple of seconds neither of us knows what to do with our hands.
“Before you say anything, I didn’t come to ask you to stay,” I beat her to it, without even saying hello. “And I’m not here to make a scene either, you can relax,” I add.
She doesn’t answer, just steps aside to let me in.
“I came for three things. The first is to tell you it hurt me so much that you lied to me, or hid information from me, which to me was lying. You already had the renewal and the offer and you let me think there was nothing. I’m not going to pretend it didn’t hurt,” I admit with a long sigh.
“Holland, I…”
“No, let me finish!” I cut her off. “The second was more my problem, and I think it bothered you, even though you kept quiet about it. I made you swear that anything touching Lina we’d decide together, and I broke my own rule by kissing you in front of the cameras with her in your arms. I apologize, because now I see I jumped the gun, I thought this was completely serious, and clearly you didn’t see it the same way. ”
I pause and take a blue plastic folder out of my bag with all of Lina’s paperwork.
“This is the worst part. Maybe it seems like a small thing to you, but to me it’s what hurts most, because I own my fault in it.
It’s from school. Authorization to pick her up, emergency contact if I’m not around, you know, that kind of thing.
I convinced myself we were already a steady couple, and yet your name isn’t on any of these papers. Not even as an emergency contact.”
Natalia looks at the folder without saying anything, without meeting my eyes.
“I’d just like to understand what happened. That’s all. Why you didn’t tell me something so important, knowing I was counting on us keeping on living together.”
Again, she stays quiet, and that infuriates me. She looks at the folder. She looks at the painting against the wall, and then she turns on her heel and goes to her bedroom. I’m about to yell at her when she comes back with some stapled pages and a pen.
“I hid that information because I’ve spent eleven years boarding a plane at the end of every season, and I’ve gotten used to not telling anyone until I practically have the ticket in my hand. I convinced myself it hurt less that way.”
“Natalia, I understand you’re a pro player and that in France they’re offering you a contract with a lot more money than here, but you could have trusted me. It’s your career and I would never have gotten in the way of it.”
In that instant, she turns a little toward the wall and stares at the hummingbird on the floor, talking to it and not to me.
“A few weeks ago your daughter called me mommy. She was half asleep, not really aware of what she was saying. I went still, waiting for the urge to bolt, but that urge didn’t come, and that scared me a lot more.”
Suddenly she picks up the pen and smooths the pages flat.
“In the end, I guess Iris is right. She’s half crazy, but I have to give her this one.
In France they pay me more money and it could be my last big contract, but here I have a family.
And that’s what really matters,” she confesses, slamming down her signature.
“There, the renewal’s signed. Well, now I’ll have to pretend to sign it again at Drummond’s office in front of the cameras, but there it is,” she repeats.
I don’t know what to say. I stand there looking at the hummingbird tattoo on her forearm, the one that goes from flower to flower without ever staying still.
“My grandmother would say it’s a really bad sign,” she says out of nowhere, and half a smile slips out of her. “Staying in one place for a person.”
“And what do you say?”
“That maybe it’s a bad sign, but it’s worth it.”
***
A week later, the club announces the renewal with a lot of fanfare, with photos in Alex Drummond’s office and plenty of smiles. Lina celebrates by ordering pizza two nights in a row.
That Saturday Megan comes. We decided the first visit would be here so we wouldn’t change the kid’s routine all at once. She takes our daughter to the zoo while I spend four hours pretending to organize the garage.
She brings her back at six, with a stuffed otter and her face sticky with cotton candy. Lina runs in to show me the otter and tell me in exhaustive detail that she saw a sleeping bear. Megan stays in the car.
I watch her from the kitchen window. She doesn’t drive off. Her hands are clenched on the wheel and her head is a little down. Even though she’s fifty feet away and behind glass, I know she’s crying, because I was married to her long enough to recognize that posture.
I go out, open the door, and sit in the passenger seat without asking permission, like when the car was both of ours.
“I’m not going to tell you I forgive you,” I admit, lowering my voice.
“Maybe someday I can. But I am asking you to be the mother Lina needs. Don’t leave her high and dry again, please.
If you say you’re coming to get her, come.
If you say you’re going to call, call. And if one day you decide again that this is too much for you, you leave with plenty of notice, not all at once, and you explain it to her yourself. Not me.”
Her chin trembles, but she nods. When I go inside, Lina’s waiting for me with the otter held up high, telling Natalia a very long version of the bear’s nap.
***
Natalia brings the hummingbird painting over one afternoon at the end of November, wrapped in a blanket.
“I’d like to hang it on a wall in this house,” she says, and it takes my breath away, because I know for her that’s the biggest gesture of commitment there is.
“So Natalia’s staying forever?” Lina asks when we tell her she can choose where to hang the painting. “Forever forever? Not just one more season?”
“Forever forever,” Natalia repeats.
In the end, my daughter decides to hang it in her own room, and when Natalia reaches out to straighten it, the hummingbird tattooed on her forearm ends up next to the hummingbird in the painting, the two of them still at last.
Lina says something that makes us laugh, and I slip my arm around Natalia’s waist without noticing, natural as anything.
For four years I’ve had this house made for two.
And it turns out there’s room enough for three.