The Ones We Choose

by Julie Clark

  It’s a side I wish Miles would acknowledge. I give Liam a gentle squeeze and pull away, watching Miles in front of a display of lanterns designed like old-fashioned oil lamps.

  “I thought I had him with my riff on big-ticket items,” Liam whispers. “But I’m running low on material. By the end of the trip, I’ll only have got your nose left.”

  Liam’s words carry an edge of defeat. This trip is doomed to fail. There will never be room for Liam, because apparently Miles is saving himself for someone else.

  “Hey, Miles.” We turn to see a boy walking toward us, his father following behind. I don’t recognize them, but it’s still early in the year. I wonder if this is who Miles mentioned earlier, but the boy’s smug expression tells me it’s not.

  He points at Liam. “Is that your dad?”

  It’s an innocent question, but his voice carries a hint of menace beneath the surface, as if he already knows the answer.

  Miles stares straight ahead. “No.”

  Before I can say anything, Liam steps in. He reaches out to the father and shakes his hand. “Hey there. I’m Liam. You guys going on the campout too?”

  The boy turns to Miles. “You have to go with a dad. It’s a dads’ campout.”

  Outraged, I turn on the boy’s father, waiting for him to discipline his child. But he only gives an uncomfortable chuckle and says, “No need to be so literal, Ethan.”

  I step in front of Miles, as if to shield him. “Not all families are alike.”

  Liam reaches a hand out to steady me, but Miles is already pushing past us, his small face twisted in anger and humiliation. “You see? People do care. You’re the only one who doesn’t get it.” He tosses the flashlight he was holding into our cart and runs down the aisle, disappearing around the corner.

  Ethan’s dad shifts from one foot to the other, his eyes darting around the store, looking for an escape. “Sorry about that,” he says.

  “It’s a little late for sorry.” I turn away from them and go after my son.

  —

  I find Miles waiting by the car. He’s not crying, but wet tracks line his cheeks. My sister, Rose, always says, There’s no way to raise a child without a few broken pieces.

  “I’m not going on the trip,” he says.

  “Okay.” I watch him, waiting to see what he’ll say next.

  “Can we go home now?” he asks.

  “Sure.”

  I think of Liam, still somewhere inside the store, carrying with him the weight of Miles’s words, along with hundreds of dollars’ worth of camping gear they’ll never use. We’re supposed to go to dinner, but the thought of dragging Miles through that charade seems pointless. I dig my phone out of my purse and dial Liam’s number.

  He answers on the first ring. “Is he okay?”

  I glance at Miles, who stares out across the parking lot. “I think we’re going to take a rain check on dinner.”

  “Come on, Paige. Seriously? What about all this camping gear?”

  “I know. I’m sorry,” I say, feeling terrible. “But I don’t think either of us would be very good company.”

  Liam sighs. “No, I get it. It’s fine. Should I call you later?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  After I hang up, I stare at the phone in my hand, the pressure of always having to choose sitting on my chest like a pile of bricks. There is no right decision. One of them will always lose.

  —

  Liam calls as I’m getting into bed. I love when he calls late at night, when his voice can be the last I hear before I drift off to sleep. We don’t get too many nights together, instead having to find stolen moments during the week when Miles is at school or at Rose’s. But these late-night calls bridge the gap and connect us even when we can’t be in the same room together.

  “Sorry about bailing on dinner,” I apologize again.

  “How’s Miles?”

  I think about our silent drive home, the way he’d stared out the window, lost somewhere inside his head where I couldn’t reach him. “Quiet,” I say. “Sorry about the trip.”

  Liam sighs, and I can feel his frustration through the phone. “I don’t know how to get through to him. No matter what I try, it doesn’t work.”

  “It was wrong of me to push it.” But that’s not the whole truth. It was wrong of me to force Liam into a space Miles wants to hold for someone else.

  “Don’t blame yourself. It was a good idea,” he says. “Hey, on my way home tonight, I passed a Mazda Protégé broken down on the side of the road. So of course, I thought of you.”

  I laugh. Two years ago, before we were together, I was at a wedding downtown for one of my colleagues, and at the end of the night, my car wouldn’t start. I was exhausted and didn’t want to deal with a tow truck, so I’d called Rose and Henry to come get me. Liam had been over and was getting ready to leave for the night, so he volunteered to pick me up.

  “That was the best detour I ever made,” Liam says.

  I close my eyes, thinking back to a time when I was satisfied with all parts of my life—leading an important study on a national stage, raising a smart and engaged son—I thought I could do it all.

  “When I drove up and saw you standing out front in that green dress looking so beautiful and so pissed off . . . I still owe Mazda a thank-you note for making such shitty cars.”

  I remember my panic and then the relief when Liam pulled up, giving me a smile that lodged itself inside my heart, where it slowly grew into something more.

  “I still want to be the one you count on,” he says.

  “You are.”

  His voice is like velvet, and all I want to do is let it carry me to sleep.

  “I love you, P,” he whispers. I roll over on my side, the door to my room open so I have a clear view down the hall and into Miles’s room. He’s nothing more than a shapeless lump under the covers.

  “I love you too.”

  OXYTOCIN AND FATHERS

  * * *

  Oxytocin, “the bonding hormone,” is well documented in mothers, helping them through labor and in forming an attachment to their babies. A recent study has found that oxytocin levels in new fathers are nearly identical to those in mothers—even several weeks postpartum—proving that fathers are as biologically programmed to care for their offspring as mothers.

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  As I walk up the hill to my office Monday morning, I take a moment to enjoy the silent campus. Behind me, Malibu is buried under a thick layer of fog, but Annesley College is situated in the Santa Monica Mountains, and the sky is clear above me. A small, private university hidden in the shadows of UCLA and USC, the ivy-covered brick buildings are reminiscent of an upper-crust East Coast school and remind me of my undergraduate days at Princeton, without the frigid winter temperatures. I pass beneath an arbor that’s just beginning to turn orange and into the main quad. It’s deserted at this early hour, students still sleeping after a long weekend of partying.

  As a researcher, I live on the fringes of campus life, but I’m required to teach one section of freshman biology every semester. I pretend to be annoyed, but secretly, I love it. Researchers tend to lock themselves away in their labs and lose touch with the real world, but it’s there that I find inspiration for the puzzles that consume me.

  I’m leading a study on paternal bonding, which is nearing the end of its first phase, and I’m readying myself for the onslaught of attention our discovery will generate. It’s never been easy, being a woman in a male-dominated field. I didn’t get here by questioning myself or falling into self-doubt. I’ve had to work harder, push harder, and fake confidence I didn’t always have. That Miles gets to see his mom accomplish something this important makes me feel as if I’m doing something right.

  As I move deeper into campus, I leave behind the turmoil of the weekend—Miles’s revelation, the canceled camping trip—one piece at a time. I pick up the pace and see a light burning through the second-floor leaded-glass win
dows of my office, and I know that Bruno, my research partner, is already there, checking email and entering data.

  “What’s the day look like?” I ask as I enter. Our office is tiny, just two desks face-to-face and edged up against the windows overlooking the quad.

  Bruno doesn’t look up. “Typical.”

  We met in grad school. It quickly became clear he wasn’t cut out for peer review when he lit his critiqued thesis on fire in front of our stunned adviser. I was the only one who laughed, and our friendship was sealed. I went on to get my PhD, and he moved to Boston, where he made a name for himself working as a lab assistant at one of the top genetics labs in the country. When I landed at Annesley, Bruno was the only one I wanted by my side. Even though it’s my name on the papers, it’s Bruno’s work as much as mine, and I never forget it.

  I toss my bag in a corner, slump into my chair, boot up my computer, and lean back, waiting.

  Bruno glances at me, then at my bag on the floor, and back at me without speaking. I sigh and pick it up, placing it in my bottom desk drawer, making my motions exaggerated and slow. Bruno is responsible for the organized state of our office and lab, which is ironic because he dresses as if he’s rolled out of a dirty laundry basket—mismatched socks and wrinkled madras shorts in obscene color combinations. Luckily for him, we don’t have a department dress code. Today he looks like an Easter egg on ecstasy: pink pants paired with a pale yellow T-shirt that reads RAD.

  I slam the drawer closed and notice he’s still looking at me.

  “What?” I glance around for something I missed.

  “You look like shit.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Did you see the email from Jorgensen?”

  “I did.” I swivel back to my computer, now awake, and open the message.

  Dr. Jorgensen is the dean supervising our study. He’s been making noise about our shrinking numbers, and Bruno and I have been scrambling to reassure him that our data set is still substantial and will show significant results.

  Our study focuses on oxytocin production in fathers. The recent discovery of it in men has led us to look more closely at its correlation to paternal engagement. My team has discovered an inhibitor gene in 63 percent of the men in our study that prevents the release of oxytocin. In other words, we’ve found a genetic reason to explain why some men aren’t good fathers.

  The next phase—the clinical trial phase—is critical. We hope to test a synthetic version of oxytocin, but none of that matters if Dr. Jorgensen doesn’t approve it.

  I scroll through my in-box and locate the email, titled Meeting ASAP.

  “What do you think?” I ask, scanning Dr. Jorgensen’s short note.

  Bruno shrugs. “Could be nothing. Could be the beginning of the end. We need to finish this next round of tests so we can compile the data before we meet.”

  I rub my forehead. “Okay. Can you get the new lab reports on my desk by the time I get back from teaching?”

  Before he can answer, my cell phone buzzes with a call from Liam. I silence it, wanting to slip into the science, like a warm bath, and let the real world fall away for the next eight hours.

  Bruno notices the missed call and says, “How’d the shopping trip go? Are Liam and Miles ready for campfires, s’mores, and ‘Kumbaya’?”

  When I hesitate, Bruno says, “Uh-oh. Tell me.”

  I fill him in on what happened, and he pushes himself away from his desk to look at me, raising an eyebrow. “So you ditch him in a camping store on Friday and now you’re ignoring his calls. Excellent strategy. Guys love that.”

  “Shut up,” I say. “It’s fine. I’ll handle it.”

  Bruno smirks, as if he expected me to say that. “How?”

  I sigh and lean back in my chair. “Honestly? No clue.” Bruno is one of very few people I will admit that to. I rearrange pencils and some Post-its on my desk, wishing we could drop it.

  “You should tell Liam that it’s not him. Put the man out of his misery.”

  “I will.”

  “When?” he presses.

  “Jesus, Bruno. Let me take a breath first.” I pick up a paper clip and trace its edges with my finger.

  “Of course,” he says. “You’ll want it all figured out before you talk to him, lest he see that you might not always have one hundred percent control of a situation.”

  I look up. “That’s not true.”

  “Let’s review,” he says, and I groan. He leans back in his chair and starts firing off names. “Simon Matthews. Greg What’s-his-name. Guy-you-met-at-the-Dodgers-game. What do all these men have in common?” I don’t bother answering his question. It’s best to let Bruno burn himself out. “None of them could get past the brilliant Dr. Robson facade,” he continues. “You never let any of them do anything for you.”

  “Like what?” I say, tossing the paper clip onto my desk. “Take care of me? I’ve managed just fine on my own.”

  Bruno’s expression softens. “Not all men are like your father, Paige. They’re not all out to disappoint you.”

  I look out the window, avoiding his stare. My father was a serial leaver, abandoning us for the first time when I was seven. Over the years, he’d return for brief periods of time, filling my sister, Rose, and me with high tension and even higher hopes. We worked so hard to hang on to him, filtering every conversation and measuring every interaction so as not to do anything that would make him bolt. I know now there wasn’t anything we could have done or said that would have kept him with us, but I never stopped trying.

  I gesture to the neat stacks of lab reports and anecdotal data surrounding us that prove there are plenty of men like my father. “Forgive me if I disagree.”

  He leans his elbows on his desk and says, “Honestly, I thought with Liam, we were past this. Finally, someone who’s as smart—if not smarter—than you. Someone who won’t put up with your bullshit.”

  I look out the window again and see students leaving their dorms, on their way to class. I have to leave too, if I want to make it to my lecture on time. “Your point?”

  Bruno’s eyes lock on to mine, and I force myself to hold his gaze. “If you keep treating him like an acquaintance, pretty soon that’s all he’ll be.” His expression softens. “Don’t try to fix this problem on your own. Let Liam help you. It’s not a weakness to tell him you don’t know what to do. You don’t always have to be Dr. Robson-with-all-the-answers.”

  I’m not the kind of person who can make adjustments easily. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what Miles wants, and to do that I need more time to think about it. Analyze the possible solutions. I’m not ready to admit there isn’t one.

  “I need to get to class. Can you get me the lab reports by the time I get back?”

  “Sure.”

  As I’m passing through the door, he calls, “And stop being an asshole, Paige. Take the damn call.”

  —

  When I get back from class an hour later, I settle in to read the reports. The data looks good, and I’m spinning it into a compelling argument for Dr. Jorgensen when my office phone rings. I’m surprised to hear Scott Sullivan, one of our subjects, on the other end.

  “Hey, Dr. Robson.” His voice is rough, as if he’s got a sore throat.

  I first met Scott and his wife, Mara, at the beginning of our study five years ago. Mara was propped up in a hospital bed begging Scott to hold a screaming newborn so she could go to the bathroom.

  I’d been a mom for a few years by then and recognized the exhausted desperation of a mother on her own. But Mara had a husband, a careless man who ignored their daughter, Sophie, as if she were no more than a shadow, reminding me of the many years I had tried to love a father who didn’t love me back.

  “Hi, Scott. How are you?” I quickly check my visit log to see if we missed a meeting with the Sullivans, but there’s nothing.

  “I have some bad—” Scott starts but then chokes up. He clears his throat and tries again. “I have some bad news. A few weeks ago
, Mara passed away suddenly.”

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” I gesture to Bruno, trying to pull his attention from his computer. “Scott, can I put you on speaker? Bruno’s here too.”

  “Sure.” Scott’s voice rasps into our office. Bruno leans forward, and we exchange a silent look of worry.

  “What happened?” I picture Sophie’s face and try to hold myself steady. “How is Sophie?”

  “She’s okay,” he says, his voice cracking over the words. “The doctors think Mara had an aneurism, but we won’t know for sure for several more weeks. She fell asleep on the couch watching TV one night—she did that when she had trouble sleeping. Sophie found her the next morning and tried to wake her up and—” He takes a ragged breath and blows it out into the silence of our office, unable or unwilling to finish his sentence.

  In the background, I hear soft crying that soon grows to a louder sob, and five-year-old Sophie’s voice says, “Daddy, please stop talking about it. Please stop telling it.”

  Bruno and I exchange concerned glances, and I lean forward in my seat, as if to see what’s happening on the other end. “Scott,” I say, fighting to keep my voice steady. “Is Sophie in the room with you?”

  “She won’t leave my side,” he says, not bothering to hide his impatience.

  I think again of my early appointments with Scott and Mara. Whenever Sophie cried or fussed, Scott bolted from the room. He would take calls, find work on his computer, or ignore the sobbing baby, forcing Mara to deal with her. Biologically, Scott should have been producing massive amounts of oxytocin directly following the birth of his child. But faced with his crying daughter, Scott exhibited a flight response.