The Day We Met (7 page)

Caitlin was six when she first actively noticed that she was the odd one out at school. Even the kids whose parents were no longer together had dads somewhere on the horizon, and even if they rarely saw them, they knew of their existence. They knew, at least approximately, where they were in the world. There was a vague connection to them, a tenuous sense of identity. Caitlin, though, had none of that, which is perhaps the reason that, one day, on our usual walk home from school, as she plucked the tulips and the daffodils that strayed between garden fences so she could make me a stolen bouquet, she asked me if she was a test-tube baby. The question, the phrase, so awkward and unnatural, so obviously implanted in her mouth by another, shocked me. I told her that she wasn't a test-tube baby, and that she'd been made in the same way most other babies were. Hurrying on before she could ask me exactly how that was, I told her that the moment I'd known about her, I'd wanted her, and I'd known that together we could be a brilliant little family and as happy as could be, which we were. I hoped that would be enough, and that she'd run ahead like she usually did, and hop and jump in an effort to pull sprigs of blossom off the cherry trees that lined the road. But instead she remained thoughtful and quiet. And so
I told her that if she wanted me to, I'd tell her all about the man who'd helped make her, and help her to meet him. She thought about it for a long time.

“But why don't I know him already?” she asked, her hand slipping into mine, leaving a trail of fallen petals behind. “John Watson, he knows his dad, even though he lives on an oil rig and he only sees him twice a year. He always brings him loads and loads of presents.” Her tone was wistful, and I wasn't sure if it was because of the visits or the presents.

“Well…” No words came. I was ill-prepared for this moment, although I should have seen it coming; I should have practiced and rehearsed and been ready. And so I told the truth that somehow became a lie. “When I found out that you were in my tummy, I was very young. And so was your father. He just wasn't ready to be a dad.”

“But you were ready to be my mummy?” Caitlin had looked puzzled. “It's not very hard, is it?”

“No,” I said, squeezing her warm sticky fingers gently. “No, being your mummy is the easiest thing in the world.”

“I don't want to know about him, then,” Caitlin had said, quite determinedly. “I'm going to tell everyone at school that I
am
a test-tube baby.”

Then, with an unexpected bound, she did run ahead, leaping up at a low-hanging branch laden with blossoms, creating a fall of pink confetti all around us as I walked under the tree. We laughed, tipping our faces up as the petals floated down, all thoughts of dads forgotten. I had thought that the time would come again when she'd want to talk more, and next time she'd be older and I'd be better prepared, but it never did.

That was the only conversation in which he was ever mentioned to her, and it was all she ever asked. And yet I had the
uneasy feeling that Mum had always been right about this, and that the quietness, the uncertainty in Caitlin, the shyness she hides so well behind the black eyeliner and hair, and the always-black clothes that she wears like a shield…it might all have come from that one ill-thought-out conversation. It might all be my fault. And that idea, the thought that the one thing I always thought I could be proud of—being her mother—might be untrue, fills me with horror. I'm going soon; I'm going and I need to make things right.

So this afternoon I pulled out a dust-filmed shoebox and found this letter, which I pasted into the book. It was folded around a photo of him holding my hand. Taken on a sunny day, we were both laughing, sitting on swings in the park, our fingers outstretched to claim the other's, leaning toward each other in a concerted effort to remain connected, no matter how gravity and kinetic energy might try to pull us apart. I must have been just pregnant with Caitlin by then, not that I'd known it. Strange how quickly that determination to touch dissolved so absolutely, so quickly, into nothing. I tucked the letter and photo into the back of the book, and I waited for Caitlin to come down to dinner. That would be the right time, I decided. With everyone here who cares about her: Esther to make her smile, and Greg to offer her support. That would be the best time to set things right.

“Well, she can't just turn up on his doorstep and find out that way, if that's what you are thinking. Imagine it!” Mum raises a brow as she sets out a trio of objects around my memory book. I slide it off the table and hold it to my chest, feeling the chill of the fifty-cent coin against my skin.

“Of course I don't think that,” I say softly, suddenly exhausted.

Mum stirs something, a sauce she's made to go with the
meat that's in the oven. “I mean, think about her,” Mum says. “Think about what she is facing now. A dad might come in handy.”

This time, I don't answer. Instead, I find myself resting my head against the book, laying my cheek on its uneven surface. I've run out of effort.

The front door opens, and I am grateful to see Esther running in, clutching a bright-pink teddy bear, which must be a present from her other granny. Greg has been to his mother's. She rarely comes here. She did not approve of her son's aged wife even before I officially became a burden, and now she is distraught at his predicament. The sight of me does actually move her to tears. Greg did offer to take me along as well, and for a while it was a close thing: an afternoon with my mother, or his…. But in the end I chose my own. Better the devil you know.

“Look!” Esther shows me her bear, proudly. “I'm going to call him Pink Bear from Granny Pat.”

“How lovely,” I say, smiling over her head at Greg, and for a second we share a familiar joke. Esther's literal soft–toy animal names are legendary. Lined up on her bed right now are, among others, Ginger-Colored Dog with One Eye, and Blue Rabbit That Smells a Bit Funny.

“I don't know why it has to be a pink bear,” Mum says, regarding the creature scathingly as if it were Granny Pat herself. “Why is it that just because she is a little girl, she must have pink foisted upon her?”

“Pink is my favorite color!” Esther tells my mum, eyeing the food that Mum is putting into serving dishes. “It's much nicer than blue or green, or yellow or purple, or something. Actually, I do like purple, and that really bright green, like grass. I like Granny Pat, but I don't like broccoli or meat.”

“You are just like your mother.” Mum doesn't mean it as a compliment, but Esther takes it as one, and beams.

“How was school?” Greg asks me, sitting down. He reaches out to touch me, and then, seeing how uncomfortable I am, withdraws his hand. I just can't hide it, even though I try to because I know that he's my husband, Esther's dad, and that I have loved him very much. I've seen the wedding photos, the video. I remember the way I felt about him—I feel the memories still, like an echo, but they are in the past now. In the present, I am numb. I see him, and I know him, but he feels like a stranger. It hurts him—the awkward small talk, the polite chitchat we make. Like two people stuck in a waiting room forced to discuss the weather.

“Sad,” I say, like I am apologizing. “I still don't know why I can't teach. I mean, I can't drive, fine, but why can't I teach? It's so…” I lose the words. They fall away from me, cruelly answering my own question. “And then I tried to talk to Caitlin about her father, but I don't think it went very well, so I thought I'd try again when we were all together.”

“Daddy is Daddy,” Esther says helpfully, as Mum puts a dish of orange on the table. “I don't like carrots.”

“Oh.” Greg is taken aback. “What, now?” Greg never asked me about Caitlin's father, and it was one of the things I do remember I loved about him. Caitlin was just my daughter, the person who came with me, no negotiation, and he accepted that right away. It took him a long time to make friends with Caitlin: years of inch-by-inch dedication that slowly allowed her to relent and accept him in her life, long after she'd accepted Esther, who was instantly just one of us, an Armstrong girl, from the moment she was born. “Will she be okay with that?”

“She doesn't know,” Caitlin says, arriving in the living room. “She doesn't like the sound of it, though, whatever it is.”

“It's carrots and them other vegibles,” Esther commiserates.

“You look refreshed,” I say, and smile. Her black eyes, along with the cascades of dark hair and her strong chin, stopped being reminders of her father when she was only a few months old: she owned them from the very beginning. Now, though, with Paul's photo tucked in the back of the memory book, I see him in Caitlin's eyes, which are watching me, warily.

“But you've got my eyebrows,” I say out loud.

“If only that were a good thing,” Caitlin jokes.

“Darling, I want to talk to you a bit more about your father….”

“I know.” She seems calm, thoughtful. Whatever it was that made her lock herself in her room for the afternoon seems to have subsided a little. “I know you do, Mum, and I know why you want to do it. I get it. But you don't need to, you see? You don't need to tell me, because it won't make any difference, except to maybe make things even more complicated than they already are, and none of us needs that, trust me….” She hesitates, watching me closely, and her face, which I used to be able to read like an open book, is a mystery. “I thought about it, because it's what you want. I thought about seeing him, but I don't want to. Why would I give a stranger a chance to reject me again? Because I'm pretty sure he doesn't care at all that he's had a child in the world all this time. If he were bothered, if he cared, then we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we? I'd have his number on speed dial.”

Mum puts the gravy jug down on the table with a thud.

“Guess what my bear's name is?” Esther asks Caitlin, sensing the tension spilling over like the gravy.

“Tarquin,” Caitlin says. Esther finds that hilarious. “Marmaduke? Othello?”

Esther giggles.

“The thing is…” I start again. “What you need to remember is…”

“Just tell her,” Mum says, thumping the meat down on the table as though she is intent on murdering it twice.

“Gran, Mum's told me she'd tell me about him when I wanted to know,” Caitlin says sharply, protective of me. “Please, can we just drop it? I've got stuff I need to talk about too, before I…before tomorrow.”

Mum looks at me expectantly, and I wait to know what to say, but nothing comes.

“What?” Caitlin says. “Come on, Gran, say what you're thinking. I'm sure we'd all like to know.”

“It's not for me to say,” she says.

“What's not for you to say?” Caitlin asks her, exasperated, rolling her eyes at me.

“Claire?” Greg prompts me with a frown—the frown I can't read anymore.

I close my eyes and force out the words. “Your dad. Paul,” I say. “He didn't walk out on me, or abandon you. I mean, if I'd known that's what you were thinking all these years, I'd have told you sooner. I said I'd tell you when you were ready, but you never asked again….”

“What do you mean?” Caitlin rises from her chair. “What are you saying—that you sent him away?”

I shake my head. “No…I never told him I was pregnant,” I tell her. “He doesn't know you exist. He never has.”

Caitlin sits down again, ever so slowly, and Mum joins her, the righteous wind blown right out of her battleship sails.

“I found out that I was pregnant, with you,” I continue slowly, choosing words I know won't fail me, so that I won't say anything wrong. “And I knew what I had to do, for me, for you, for him. I knew I wanted to keep you, and I knew that I
didn't want to be with him. So I didn't tell him I was pregnant. I just left. I left university, and I left him. I didn't return his calls or letters. And after quite a short time he stopped trying to get in touch. So he didn't abandon you: he never knew about you, Caitlin.”

Caitlin is still for a moment. Her voice is quiet. “What I've always thought,” she says, looking at me, “is that you had a choice to make that would change your life forever, and you chose me.”

“That was true,” I say. “I still chose you.”

“But for all these years, you've let me think that he
didn't
choose me. When he never had a choice. And now…” She stops talking. “What do I do now, Mum? What do I do now? In my head I thought he'd be waiting for me to arrive one day, expecting me. That maybe he might even find out about you, and maybe even come and find me!”

“But…”

“And now…what do I do now?”

There is silence in the room; the family I thought would be supportive seem remote and distant. I've forgotten how to touch them, reach out to them—even Esther, who's crept onto Greg's lap with her bear.

“Whatever you want to do,” I say calmly, carefully. I think hard before trying to speak any word; I check and double-check that I am not making a mistake. I can't afford to make a mistake now. “If you want me to, I'll contact him, tell him about you. We can do it together, if you like—whatever you want, Caitlin. I understand why you are angry with me, but it's because you don't know everything. You can't possibly understand why I did what I did. Let me try to…make you see. And don't worry, because there is time, all the time in the world for you to make everything exactly how you want it to be. I promise. I'll help you do whatever you want.”

All color drains from Caitlin's face, and she places an arm on the table, steadying herself.

“Are you okay?” Greg asks her.

“I'm not okay,” Caitlin says matter-of-factly. She looks at me, her chin set just like it always is whenever she is doing her best not to cry. “I don't think I'll stay for dinner. I think I'll go back to London tonight.”