A Happy Catastrophe

by Dawson, Maddie

  “Did you know that you’re my bio-daddy?” she said. He saw she was missing one of her front teeth, and the other one was only half grown in and had a jagged edge. He remembered that phase, when new permanent teeth looked like jigsaws.

  “Before now, I mean,” she said. “My mum says you didn’t know because she didn’t tell you when I was growing in her uterus, and anyway you weren’t around, and also, she said that you and her were just not really friends or anything, so you didn’t know. But I thought maybe you did think about it.”

  “I didn’t know. No.” He was dizzy from hearing her talk, so he just fixed his gaze on the top of her head, unable to quite turn away. And, just by the way, he wondered, what the heck is the world coming to if bio-daddy is a word kids use now?

  “Give Patrick a moment,” said Tessa. “You’re crowding him. Come over here.”

  He felt a flash of gratitude. The crayon and macaroni smell was truly overpowering, and he couldn’t have those jagged teeth so close to him right now. Also, he felt like his brain was short-circuiting as it flailed around, trying to work out the news flash that because he slept with this woman two times nine years ago, that the result was . . . this.

  He got up and went to stand next to the mantel, inexplicably. Maybe he thought it could hold him up when his brain completely shut down and he crashed to the floor.

  And that’s when Marnie walked in. He watched her face, and he could tell by her expression as she looked from one face to another that she figured out the whole scene in a matter of seconds. Knew who everybody was and probably how they got there and what they wanted and how it was going to all turn out. That was the way women were. They just got stuff. And that’s when Marnie invited them to stay for chicken, and after that, the evening was out of his control, just like his life was probably about to be.

  Once in the kitchen, after the introductions have been performed (and not by him), he opens a bottle of wine when Marnie says he should, and he stands back and watches as Tessa walks around, admiring the refrigerator, which Blix had painted turquoise (always a crowd-pleaser), and the scarred old oak table and the view of the water towers from the window, just now losing color with the black clouds looming overhead. She has questions about Brooklyn. Do they like living here? Are the schools good? It seems like such a lively place. Hot and humid, though. Does Marnie like owning a business? Fritzie had thought the little shop was so cute.

  Fritzie, not Frisky. Thank goodness for that, at least.

  The last light glints from under the storm clouds on the windows of apartment buildings down the street as he pours the wine into three bowl-sized glasses. Marnie puts on music—easy jazz, her favorite for dinner parties, which this is possibly becoming, a celebration of sorts, the weirdest one ever—and then she phones Paco, who bops right over carrying a container of mashed potatoes and broccoli rabe and some snowflake rolls. He comes in and has to shake hands all around, and he cannot seem to wipe the big, pleased smile off his face every time he looks at Patrick. Like Patrick has gone and accomplished something amazing.

  “You gonna introduce me to your new family member?” he says, beaming at the kid, who is cartwheeling all over the place now, dodging people and chairs except when she gets going too fast and crashes into the adults. Patrick can’t believe that Tessa doesn’t stop her. Paco is saying to him, “They were over at my place earlier, and I saw her and when Tessa here asked me if you lived nearby, I got it. I said, ‘This girl is a little Patrick.’ Dunbar and George—we all saw her. We all thought the exact same thing.” He turns to Marnie. “I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you. But a big surprise, no? Patrick’s life before you? You not upset by this, I bet. You open to everything!”

  Marnie is smiling, loading up the mashed potatoes into a bowl. “Yessir. That Patrick sure can keep secrets,” she says, and Tessa says, “No, no! He didn’t know! I’m the one who kept the secret. I never told him I was pregnant. We were”—she smiles coyly—“just ships passing in the night. Well, two nights, actually. He was such a youngster! It was when he had an art show—and I was in town interviewing for a teaching position, and I slightly knew his sister . . . Hey, remember our trip to the boys’ locker room?”

  Patrick can feel himself groaning inwardly. Why give Marnie an image? She’s already rolling her eyes at him, and when she passes him on the way to get her purse to give money to Paco, she touches his arm and whispers with a deep chuckling laugh, “You got a lotta ’splainin’ to do when this is over, you youngster you.”

  But he finds himself wondering: Will it be over? Why are they really here? What is his role supposed to be? He eyes the Little Mermaid suitcase, over in the corner, being sniffed at by Bedford, and feels a bit uneasy.

  During dinner, he is placed next to Fritzie, who animatedly resumes talking about Disney princesses again. “Why do we even have them?” she says. “Boys don’t have movies about a prince, do they? And also in the movie Cinderella, did you ever notice that the prince has to have a big dance so he can find somebody to marry him? Like, why can’t he just talk to women he knows and find out if he loves them or not?” She is gesturing with her dinner roll. “And doesn’t he totally know everybody in the kingdom already?” She shakes her head like this is the most ridiculous thing in the world. “What’s he gonna learn about girls at a dance?”

  “I have to agree,” he says. “So maybe he shouldn’t have looked for Cinderella with the glass slipper, then?”

  She nods. “The glass slipper was the worst idea ever.” And then she laughs, such a delighted little laugh. “Like, every time you would step on it, it would probably crack. I bet her feet were literally bleeding all over the place!” He’s struck by how the word literally sounds like yiterally when she says it. He doesn’t think he used that word when he was eight.

  “I can see your point,” he says, the slightest bit charmed. He’s less charmed, though, when she picks up two of the snowflake rolls and starts tossing them into the air and catching them again. “Here! Patrick! Can you catch a roll in your mouth if I throw it right to you?”

  “No, I’m sure I can’t,” he says. But then he has to anyway, because she tosses one at his face. It hits him in the eye, and he reaches up to grab it.

  She stares at his hands. “Ohhhhh,” she says. “The fire hurt your hands, too.”

  “Yes. I had surgeries to fix them.”

  She looks at them appraisingly. “Let me see them. I bet it was hurting for a long time.” She reaches out to touch his hand, and he lets her, even though he hates his hands being touched and every fiber of his being is yelling out for him to pull his hand back. The nerves never healed right, and now he knows they never really will.

  “You know,” she says, and her face is so serious that he thinks she’s going to come out with some from-the-mouth-of-babes observation, even though he doesn’t really believe in that kind of thing. Still, he’s heard from people who like children that it happens. She doesn’t, though. She says, “I kind of wish I had a Spider-Man suitcase instead of the mermaid one. It wouldn’t be pink, it would be red or black. And when I fly on an airplane—and ohh! Did you even know I just came from London? It is five whole hours LATER in London, and we were staying with my grandmum.” She’s bouncing up and down on her chair, and now she takes on the voice of a much younger child, singsongy and possibly bratty. “You don’t know her, but she’s nice. ’Cept she doesn’t want to keep me. She can’t, ’cause she’s mad at Mommy. That’s the only bad thing. The fighting. So we came here. To see you. Only I didn’t know that’s why we were here. I didn’t even know about you!”

  Tessa, who is talking to Marnie, suddenly looks up. “Fritzie,” she says warningly. “Let’s not get into all that, shall we?”

  But Fritzie is too manic by now. Even Patrick, who knows nothing about children, knows that he’s watching a situation spin out of control. Fritzie laughs and gets to her feet and cups her hands around Patrick’s ear and whispers into it, loudly and wetly: “So. My mommy is in love w
ith Richard, and they want to live together in Italy, but the trouble is, Richard doesn’t want a kid. So we hope I can come and live with you.”

  Marnie and Tessa stop talking. “Oh my God,” says Tessa. “This is not—”

  “What?” says Fritzie to her mother. “That is what we’re doing. We might as well tell them!”

  “Oh, well,” he hears himself say over some unpleasant buzzing in his ears.

  Tessa starts to laugh. “Fritzie! I can’t believe—” She looks around at the silent, shocked faces that are looking back at her. He can see that she’s embarrassed almost beyond excruciation. He’s actually fascinated with the whole scene, as if it has nothing to do with him, as if it’s a television show about human beings who had a crazy, madcap plan, and he wonders how they’ll resolve this and what will happen next. Tune in next week, folks.

  Tessa stands up. “You know what? Never mind. This is such a stupid idea. I’m out of my mind, and I just realized I probably sound like I’m the worst mother in the world. Come on, Fritzie. We should go.” She glares at Fritzie, who bursts into loud, uncontrollable tears.

  “Come on,” her mother says. “Stop it. You’re just overtired. Let’s go. NOW.”

  Patrick, for one, is all for letting them go. It is dawning on him that this is what this oddball sitcom was leading to—having Fritzie live with him and Marnie. Huh! He doesn’t even know this kid that’s supposed to be his, and she doesn’t know him. How was he supposed to be able to raise her? And exactly what kind of mother would plan in advance to drop off her kid with strangers, even if she believed one of them might be the “bio-daddy”? Because he is fairly certain that a man doesn’t turn into a father within a matter of seconds, and he certainly has no intention of even trying. He’ll be reasonable about sending checks and presents, he supposes, if that’s what’s called for—but when he looks at this presumed daughter of his, he’s not feeling a requisite desire to give her fatherly advice or correct her homework or walk her down the aisle at her wedding.

  In fact, he’s all for cutting things short right this minute, shaking their hands, rolling out their Little Mermaid suitcase, and saying good-bye. He might thank the child for giving him some things to think about with regard to well-loved fairy-tale stories and Disney princesses before he closes the door.

  He stands up, too.

  “Wait,” says Marnie. “No, no. Stay right here.” She’s looking at Tessa with an expression on her face that Patrick knows all too well. Oh God, she is seeing a love story. Her eyes have lost focus. “Tell us what’s happening. Tell us what you need,” she says, and she reaches over and touches Tessa’s hand. Fritzie stands next to Patrick, her fingers in her mouth, looking contrite, and then she slowly settles herself against him. Nestles, really.

  Marnie says in a dreamy voice that makes Patrick almost groan out loud: “Start from the beginning. You’re in love with somebody? Tell me the whole story.”

  And then Tessa, dabbing at her eyes, sits back down next to Marnie and starts in talking about some professor poet named Richard, and blah blah blah . . . Italy . . . never in love before . . . overwhelming . . . just a year . . . and she goes on and on, until Patrick, frankly, can’t take any more of the embarrassment of it all. He looks over at Fritzie at about the three-minute point, and says, “Hey, kid, why don’t you and I go up on the roof before the storm gets here and see if we can see all the way to the river?” It’s lame, but it’s the only thing he can think of, and she considers the option for a moment, cocking her head, and then she looks at her mom and Marnie and accepts, but only if Bedford comes, too.

  And there it is. He knows, watching the storm clouds roll in, that when he goes back into the kitchen, everything will be different. And by the time the first flash of lightning and crack of thunder happen, Marnie comes up to the roof to tell him he’s right.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MARNIE

  “So can we go over this one more time?” Patrick says to me three days later. We’re alone at last in the kitchen of the basement apartment—his old apartment, where he lived when I first came to Brooklyn—and we’re cleaning it because Tessa and Fritzie are going to be staying here for a few weeks. And then Tessa will go on to her tryst in Italy, and we’ll have Fritzie for an even longer, longer time. Through the school year.

  There had been some talk about how ten months was perhaps too long for a child to be away from her mother—but I found myself making the argument that if Fritzie is going to be left with us, at least she should be allowed to complete the third grade in one place. When I said that, Patrick went into a coughing fit and almost had to be revived.

  “Tell me just so I can explain it to the part of my brain that is still not understanding,” he says. “Why, again, are we doing this to our lives?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do,” I answer him cheerfully. Then, rather crudely, I point to the general direction of his penis. “Mostly because of that guy.”

  He comes loping over and leans against the counter, thrusting his hip out, with his hand against the cabinet above my head. He’s grinning down at me. The provocative sexiness of this pose is not lost on either of us. “That guy, huh?” he says.

  “Well. Yes. And it is the right thing to do,” I say, looking up at him. “You dog, you.”

  “Yep. That’s me, the guy leaving a trail of unintentional babies. How’s our own little situation going, by the way?” He reaches over and touches my abdomen. “Any news from that front?”

  “Won’t know for another week,” I say. “Although, just as a heads-up, the consensus around Best Buds is that my hair looks particularly lustrous lately, which is a sign of pregnancy hormones. So brace yourself. Just saying.”

  He groans and buries his head in my neck. “How is it that in the space of one week, I’ve possibly become the father of two? Tell me that.”

  “Um, because you’re just ridiculously lucky? As well as devastatingly handsome and virile? And women can’t resist you?”

  “Marnie,” he says, and his voice has turned serious. “You know, don’t you, that I never had any interest in Tessa? It was just an idiotic mistake, my hooking up with her. So . . . you’re not insisting we keep Fritzie because you’re trying to show how magnanimous and forgiving you can be, are you?”

  “Are you kidding me? Patrick! I know you didn’t love her. I’m insisting we keep Fritzie because she’s your child, and she needs a home. And she needs you. And also her mother is involved in some kind of epic love story—”

  He’s shaking his head. “Aha, that’s it! You’ve sniffed out what is possibly the Greatest Matchmaking Project of All Time.”

  “Patrick, that is not—”

  “Oh, yes, it is. Don’t forget I’ve seen you run across restaurants and leap through dog parks to make sure two people get together. So I can see where an intercontinental love story would be just your thing.”

  “No. No! I’m doing this for Fritzie. If anybody ever needed a family, it’s her. It’s heartbreaking what’s happening to her. And she’s like a little adult, trying to manage her feelings. It just kills me, how she’s trying to be so brave when her mom is going off and leaving her.”

  “What I want to know is why can’t this Poetic Giant Among Men get a larger pensione in Italy if he wants to take up with a woman who has a child? You’d think that would set off some alarm bells for Tessa. She should say no.”

  “Patrick, she can’t say no. She wants what we all want in life—for somebody to hold us in bed and say they can’t live without us. And she hasn’t ever, ever had that. So maybe now that she’s found Richard, this is what’s going to make her a better person. Love might save them both.”

  He rolls his eyes so hard that he falls to the floor pretending he’s dying. That’s when I know I really have him.

  So I sit on him. “And maybe, you old cynic, she’ll have more love to give to Fritzie and end up being a better mother. Isn’t that what love does for all of us if we let it in? Maybe this was meant
to be. Set up by the universe . . .”

  At the mention of the universe, he closes his eyes and folds his hands on his chest, corpse-like.

  “Yes, Patrick. Yes! Deal with it. Set up by the universe. Lots of things are going to be set in motion that we can’t see the end of. That’s the way the whole system works.” I put my face up against his and kiss him five hundred times across his cheeks and nose and forehead.

  “So fine,” he says. “But how did my life get tangled up in this? I don’t even like her.”

  I laugh and poke him in the arm. “Oh, really? The evidence would indicate that you must have been quite fond of her for at least two happy evenings of your life.”

  “Oh God, Marnie. She wasn’t interested in me, and I was a jerk. Just showing off.”

  “And, if I may ask, oh careful one, was this another condom breakage situation?”

  “No. This was all stupidity. I figured she was forty years old, so she must have the birth control situation all figured out. I think I was probably embarrassed to bring it up.”

  “And see there? You got a great kid out of it. Proof once again that the universe works in mysterious ways.”

  He makes a face and I roll off his chest onto the floor next to him. “I like the kid,” he says in a voice that means just the opposite. “No, I do. I like anybody who’s not above criticizing the Little Mermaid’s wimpiness and who’s bold enough to throw a dinner roll at a man’s face at dinner. But if you ask me if she feels like mine, if I feel any connection to her, I’d have to say no. I just don’t. You and Tessa say she looks just like me, and I suppose she might have some resemblance. Maybe. And Tessa says there was no one else. So—she’s mine. But it’s not ringing any bells for me, to tell you the truth.”