Daughters for a Time

by Handford, Jennifer

  That was when I realized that a miracle had occurred. What I had assumed to be more bad luck on my part—coming home with Sam the same month that Claire was diagnosed with cancer—hadn’t been bad luck at all. It had been a blessing. A miracle. Maura needed Sam at this exact moment in her life, and undoubtedly, Sam had needed Maura for the entirety of hers. The realization hit me hard in my chest, and for a moment, I struggled to find the breath to fill my lungs. I was covered in a blanket of sorrow, but now I could see that there were threads of goodness and divinity woven through it.

  But the divinity wasn’t always so clear.

  This morning, Maura stirred, wiped the sleep from her eyes, and propped herself up on her elbows.

  “Hi, Aunt Helen,” she said, yawning and stretching.

  “Hi, sweetheart.” I kissed her forehead.

  “I love you,” she said in a perky voice.

  “I love you, too.”

  She looked at me intently and furrowed her brow. “Why am I in your…oh, yeah.” Her cheerful expression slid away as easy as the sand in her Etch A Sketch did. Her mouth turned downward and her eyes drooped.

  “Oh, pumpkin,” I said and hugged her tightly.

  “I want my mommy!” she cried.

  “I know you do,” I said, pulling her into me and stroking her hair, because other than my set of hugging arms, I had nothing else to offer.

  On Sunday night, a week after Claire’s death, Tim cooked prime rib. Ross’s brothers had already gone home, but Martha, Davis, Delia, Larry, and Ross were still hanging around, helping with the girls and household chores. After dinner, we all lingered at the table, nursing our glasses of wine. Delia took Sam and Maura into the family room to play.

  Ross looked up as if he were about to say something. His face had aged in the last few months. Gray hairs now edged his hairline; thin lines were embroidered at the corners of his sad eyes. He shifted in his seat, took a swig of wine. “Here’s the thing”—another sip of wine—”I don’t want to go back home.” He was staring right at me. “This past week. In that house. Without Claire. I hate it. I just don’t want to.”

  “You can stay with us,” I said, and looked to Tim, who was nodding in agreement.

  “I’m glad to hear you say that,” Ross said. “And thank you both for letting us congregate at your house all week. I’ve decided to put our house on the market, and if it’s okay with you, I’d like to make an offer on the blue house across the street from here, from you guys. We’d be neighbors, if that’s okay.” He looked at me and then at Tim.

  “Yes, Ross!” I said. “I think that’s a great idea. That way I could help out with Maura, and she and Sam could continue on as they’ve been.” Ross needed time to heal; he needed time to mourn. He simply wasn’t ready to be a single dad to Maura yet.

  “I can’t do this without you, Helen.” His voice cracked. He looked down, covered his eyes. His shoulders convulsed with the rhythm of his crying. He wiped his eyes. “I love Maura more than anything, but I can’t do this alone.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A week later, we said good-bye to Davis and Delia, who were returning to North Carolina, and to Martha, who was heading back to Charlottesville, but only temporarily. She planned to move up to live with Ross, to help with Maura. Tim returned to the restaurant, and Ross went back to his office. Daily activity had resumed for them, but Sam, Maura, and I hadn’t yet found a good reason to leave our cozy nest of flannel pajamas, blankets and pillows, and bread products. We had what we needed. Each night, Tim brought home leftovers from the restaurant, a hearty supply of protein and vegetables to counteract the obscene amount of dough we were producing each day. With Sam strapped into her high chair and Maura perched on a bar stool, we baked dozens of cookies and loaves of bread, which we would slice hot and slather with butter and jam. When we ran out of all-purpose flour, we opened a fresh bag of silky cake flour and started in on a variety of muffins. This morning’s batch we named “triple berry.”

  There was a knock at the door. I looked down at my pajamas, reached for my greasy ponytail, ran my tongue over my fuzzy teeth. I padded my way to the door with a blanket draped around my shoulders, and saw Larry standing outside. I opened the door.

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “How are you?” he asked as he followed me into the living room.

  “I don’t know,” I said, closing my eyes, trying to find the words to explain what this was like—two girls to care for without the safety net of my sister.

  “How are our baby birds?”

  “The baby birds that appeared out of thin air,” I said. “You’ll have to tell me someday how you managed that.”

  Larry shrugged, smiled.

  “They flew the coop,” I said. “This morning. Just like that. No note.”

  Larry nodded. “It was about time for them to leave.”

  “You want to take off your coat?”

  “Let me just grab something from outside. Are the girls here?”

  “Yeah, they’re in the family room.”

  Larry went back outside and returned with a box in his arms, then followed me into the family room.

  “Girls, Grandpa Larry’s here.” At some point in Claire’s sickness, we had started to refer to him as Grandpa Larry.

  The girls were sprawled across the floor with a variety of pillows. Larry squatted down beside them. He placed the box on the floor in front of them and opened it. Inside was a pudgy brown puppy.

  Maura clamored to touch it. “He’s so cute!” she squealed. “May I hold him?” Her hand was already stroking the soft fur.

  “Sit Indian style,” Larry said.

  “It’s now called ‘crisscross applesauce,’” I said. “Political correctness.”

  “Okay, then. Sit crisscross applesauce and make a cup out of your hands.”

  Maura did as she was told and Sam imitated her cousin. They sat close enough for their legs to rest against each other’s.

  Larry placed the puppy in Maura’s lap, where he went to work licking her hands. Then she put her cheek to him, and he kissed her face. I knelt down next to her and inhaled the sweet puppy breath. The puppy dashed back and forth between Maura and Sam, licking and snuffling and digging into their cupped hands.

  “I love him,” Maura cooed. “He’s the cutest dog I’ve ever seen. Is he your new dog? What’s his name? What kind is he?”

  “This here is a chocolate Labrador, because he’s as brown as chocolate and almost as sweet. And yes, he’s my new dog.”

  The girls were enchanted. For all the bonehead moves Larry had made as a father, this was a brilliant move on his part as a grandfather. I swallowed hard to quell the emotion that was rising in my throat. It was pure joy to see Maura happy again, to see that broad smile covering her face. And Sam was beaming, too.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” I asked.

  “Hold on to him,” Larry told the girls as he followed me into the kitchen.

  I filled the coffee pot with water and measured the beans.

  “He’s for Maura,” Larry said. “If you say it’s okay. If not, I’m happy to keep him and bring him over to visit. I just thought that she might like a puppy to cheer her up.”

  I looked into the family room, where both girls were belly laughing as the little puppy nibbled on their fingers. “I think you thought right. I’ll have to check with Ross, of course. At some point, he’ll be coming around to claim his daughter,” I said. “But if not at their house, I’m sure Tim wouldn’t mind if we kept him here. Looks like Sam loves him, too.”

  When the coffee pot beeped, we brought our mugs into the family room.

  “What’s his name?” Maura asked.

  “He doesn’t have one,” Larry said. “I was hoping that you’d help me name him.”

  Maura twisted her mouth to the side. “Hershey! Like Hershey’s Chocolate.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  “No, how about Kisses
? Like Hershey’s Kisses?” Maura cheered.

  “Another good one.” I looked at Sam, who was crawling around on all fours, imitating the puppy.

  “Maybe Brownie!” Maura clapped her hands. “My favorite!”

  “Those are all good names,” I said, petting the puppy’s velvety coat. “I can see him with any of those names.”

  Sam smiled and gurgled and tried to make a barking sound, which came out sounding like, “Chip, chip!”

  “Did Sam say Chip?” Maura asked.

  “It sounded like it,” I said.

  “Because that’s a real name, but it’s also like chocolate chip.”

  “Do you want to name him Chip?” I asked Maura.

  “Yes!” Maura squealed. “Is that okay, Grandpa Larry? Could your dog be named Chip?”

  “That’s a great name,” Larry agreed. “But here’s the thing…I’m kind of busy at home and I was wondering whether you and Sam would mind taking care of Chip for me. Do you think I could leave him here?”

  Maura jumped into Larry’s arms, giving him the biggest hug she could manage, and then into mine. Then she sat down again—crisscross applesauce—and stroked Chip’s ears as the puppy nestled in Sam’s lap. Both girls beamed the widest smiles—a shared sentiment. They almost looked alike.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Summer came and went like the blur of heat on black asphalt—a mirage of refracted heat and coolness that confused the eye, fuzzed my head with an uncertain thought of wait, the sense that I needed to slow down and let the truth settle. Most days, it was Sam who kept me grounded. Her warm and moist breath would knock me from those moments when I felt hazy and unsure that this all was truly happening.

  But time marched on in its efficient manner—birthdays, holidays, and special occasions. More fanfare to confuse and distract: Look at the cake, the presents, the balloons! We tried. We being me, Tim and Ross, and the grandparents who were now dedicated to the raising of these girls—Martha, Larry, Davis, and Delia. In our combined and individual attempts, we tried to give Maura normalcy, to be everything that Sam deserved after being newly adopted. But none of us knew what normal was in a time of crisis, so we overcompensated, overstimulated, over-everything’d. We treated them too often with cookies, candy, and ice cream, occupied their every waking minute with field trips and activities, and always, always, had smiles on our faces. Keep them busy, our thought process seemed to say. Keep them smiling, we rationalized, so that Sam thrives and Maura forgets that there is a pit of sadness in her stomach.

  At the end of each frenzied day, a calm would soothe us like a cool breeze. After Chip had been fed and walked, after the girls were bathed and dressed in pajamas, we’d go downstairs and let Chip out of his crate and he’d race around the house while the girls squealed with pleasure. Then Sam and Maura would find their spots on the floor with pillows and Chip would circle and flop into their laps. I’d read to the girls while they petted their puppy’s velvety ears, took turns with him in their laps. Eventually, Sam would rub at her eyes, tug at her ears, and inch her way into my lap. Her choosing me, the rightness of the fit, choked me nearly every night. My little orphan from China, who I feared would leave, was growing roots. As Sam fell asleep in my arms, her koala-bear hands gripping my nightgown, I’d switch to a slightly older book for Maura, who was just getting interested in short chapter books. She’d lie back on the floor with Chip and listen rather than look. Her face would soften, the furrow between her brows would unknit, her fists would unfurl, and a gladness would pour over me, bringing such satisfaction, such gratitude, because I knew that, for at least a moment, she wasn’t thinking about her mother.

  As planned, Ross had bought the blue house with yellow shutters across the street and Martha had moved in with them. We had made a big deal of decorating Maura’s new room, painting it lime green, plugging nightlights into every socket, and blanketing her bed with stuffed animals. Though Maura still spent most of her days with Sam and me, she gradually began sleeping in her own room, in her own house. Around eight o’clock each night, Martha would come to retrieve her.

  Most nights, Ross was still at work by the time Maura went to sleep. Each day, father and daughter seemed to be pulling farther apart. “It’s like looking at Claire,” Ross had said one day with Maura. Her likeness to her mother was causing him great pain; it was a reminder of what he had just lost. If there were steps to work through, Ross was stuck in anger. Acceptance might have been nearby, but he had no intention of going there—no more than into Claire’s boxed-up clothes and belongings.

  I wanted to tell Ross that he was playing it wrong, that he and Maura needed to grow closer, not farther apart. I wanted to tell him that I knew because I lived it, that I’d needed my dad, but we’d all been hurting too much to help each other. I wanted to tell him to try harder. That he was the adult. That it was his job to step up to the plate and take charge. That he should pry, push, and nudge his way into Maura’s life because she needed him more than he’ll ever know.

  Fall came and Maura tentatively started prekindergarten. Maybe she should have moved on to kindergarten, but after the year she had been through, the adults in her life, in agreement with her teachers, decided that another year of prekindergarten would be a smoother transition, considering—considering how anxious Maura had grown in these past months, how insecurity and a sense of doom had snuck up on her like a vine coiling around her neck, unnoticeably at first, then all at once, so tightly that it threatened to strangle her.

  Maura, a child who had been so carefree and sunny not so long ago, had become shy, skittish, and anxious. She was uncertain of things that she used to take as givens. Her emotions had become erratic, her loyalties switched at a moment’s notice: one moment she was ravenous for comfort, curling her entire body in my lap territorially, and then slithering off to her grandmother; the next moment, refusing to go to anyone. She was a kid who had believed in forever, who’d taken as golden the rule that her mother would never leave. But her mother had left, and now she wondered why she should believe that the sky wouldn’t fall, too.

  And Sam was moving in the opposite direction. Just as I had taken on some of Claire’s attributes (or at least hoped that I had), Sam seemed to be absorbing her cousin’s old, open personality: Sam, the anxious child from China, trapped under the rubble of her shaky beginnings, was loosening, letting go, learning to trust. So different from the daughter I was handed not even a year ago.

  Though Claire had wanted Maura to attend a different school, I—with Ross’s approval—had decided to keep her at St. Mary’s. I had read that grieving children responded best to structured settings and predictable routines, and St. Mary’s seemed to stick to a schedule: circle time, arts and crafts, a Hail Mary at eleven o’clock, and then lunch, followed by music and playground. On Mondays and Thursdays, Maura would be pulled out of class for half an hour to talk to the counselor, Ms. Julia.

  On the first morning of school, Sam and I walked Maura into her classroom, found her chair and cubby, and got her organized. Maura looked upset. The corners of her little mouth were darting downward as if she were ready to crack.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, kneeling down and brushing the hair from her face.

  “My chair is supposed to be green, and this one is blue.” Maura pointed at the chair as if it had done something wrong.

  “Well, honey, a lot of things are going to be different this year. You have a new teacher, a new chair. You like blue, right?” I patted the chair to show her that it was a good one.

  “I can’t find the markers,” Maura added with a scowl.

  “Let’s go look for them.” We stepped away from Sam, who was busy stacking cardboard bricks in the corner of the room, showing the teachers that she was ready to be in school, too.

  “Last year, the markers were in empty oatmeal containers,” Maura said, eyeing this year’s container, a giant plastic bin in which crayons and pencils were mixed. Comingling of writing utensils—a potential pro
blem. Maura flicked at the crayon nubs as if they were riffraff in the wrong part of town.

  “You can do this!” I said, squatting down to make eye contact, summoning the coach in me. “You’re a big girl and you’re in prekindergarten!”

  “I was in prekindergarten last year.”

  “Well, yeah,” I agreed. “But that just means that you’ll know what’s going on. You’ll have to help out some of the other kids, okay?”

  Maura thought about that. “Like be a big sister? Like I am to Sam?”

  “Exactly! You show the new kids what to do.”

  “What does kindergarten mean?”

  “Well,” I said, “I believe kindergarten means ‘children garden.’ It’s like a place where kids can grow. Does that make sense?”

  “That’s silly,” Maura said, her eyes widening, “because kids don’t grow in gardens. But they do grow.”

  “It is silly, isn’t it?” I said, flinging my arms around her, so happy to see her smile. I gave her a final kiss and a squeeze and promised her that Sam and I would be back for her at one o’clock.

  “You promise?” Maura said.

  “Maura, I promise.”

  On our way out, we found Ross standing in the parking lot, pulling at his hair as he looked up to the sky.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.”

  “I thought you had an early-morning meeting.” My tone wasn’t too forgiving. I hadn’t been too subtle in expressing my displeasure when Ross had told me that he wouldn’t be able to drive Maura to school on her first day.