Kiss Her Goodbye

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  That she found herself asking him to give her away did, too.

  But in the end, she supposes, it all comes down to the fact that he is her only parent—the one who raised her. She loved him, loves him still, despite all of his mistakes. And deep down inside, she knows that he loves her despite her own.

  So he walked her down the aisle, and she caught him wiping tears away as she and Matt exchanged vows. Later, she caught him holding his granddaughter’s hand as she toddled around the reception.

  He never did apologize for throwing Kathleen out when she told him she was pregnant; she isn’t even certain that he is sorry. Nor is she certain that she forgives him for it.

  But she does understand that he’s a throwback to another era, to a deeply religious generation, at least in her family. Right or wrong, he did the only thing he was capable of doing under the circumstances.

  If anybody understands that, it’s Kathleen.

  With an inner shudder, she forces her thoughts back to the present.

  “What is that nurse’s name, Dad?”

  He looks around. “What nurse?”

  “The one who was here a few minutes ago. She’s always so nice, and I . . . I can’t ever remember her name.”

  “Do you think I can? I’m lucky if I know what day it is, remember?”

  She laughs, pretending it’s a joke, knowing that it isn’t.

  “I went to mass this morning for All Saints Day,” she announces, knowing that it’s ridiculous to need her father’s moral approval after all these years, but unable to help herself.

  “That’s good.”

  “I’m sure the priest will be by later to bring you communion.”

  “Father Joseph?”

  “Father Edward, Dad.”

  Kathleen watches her father reach into the bag of candy again, selecting a package of candy corn. He opens it and pops a few pieces into his mouth.

  She tries to think of something else to say. These visits can be excruciating. It’s easier when one of the kids or Matt come with her, but they rarely want to, and she doesn’t blame them.

  “Father Joseph was here earlier.”

  “Dad, that was Father Edward,” she repeats patiently. “Father Joseph retired years ago.”

  He frowns, looking confused. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive.” That’s what she heard, anyway, on one of her visits back to Buffalo. She hasn’t been in touch with the priest in years. Fourteen, to be exact. She couldn’t bear to face him, not after all that happened.

  “Well, I don’t know about that, but he’s been here a lot lately,” her father says. “He comes in to check on me.”

  Kathleen holds back a weary sigh. It isn’t easy to watch her father make the long, slow decline into senility. Most of the time he’s utterly lucid, but other times he’s hopelessly confused. That’s why it’s so scary that he manages to run away from the home as frequently as he does.

  One day last week when she woke him from a nap, he called her Mollie. And he still claims somebody is stealing his socks and underwear.

  Dad takes another handful of candy corn, munching it.

  “I’ll bring you some of Jen’s birthday cake next time I come, Dad,” Kathleen promises, glancing at her watch, wondering if she’s done her duty yet.

  “Whose cake?”

  “Jen’s,” she repeats. “Her birthday is tomorrow, remember?”

  “I knew that!” His expression is reproachful. “You just have to stop mumbling. I can’t hear you.”

  “Sorry,” she practically shouts.

  “That’s better.”

  Lord, this room is overheated. She could take off her coat, but then she’d feel obligated to stay even longer. The smell of institutional food wafts unappetizingly in the steam-heated air. Down the hall, she can hear somebody moaning in pain in one room, a blasting television laugh track in another.

  Kathleen glances longingly out the rain-splattered window, and then again at her father. How does he get through the dreary days in this place? How can he stand it?

  “Dad, Matt and I are coming to get you tomorrow,” she hears herself saying.

  As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she wants to take them back. What the hell is she doing? Why is she further complicating her life right now? Jen’s birthday is always a difficult time for her, and this year it will be even harder, given the circumstances. The last thing she needs is to throw her cranky, confused father into the tense mix at home.

  Maybe he didn’t hear me, she thinks hopefully.

  But he’s looking up from his bag of candy with enthusiastic interest, asking, “Why are you coming to get me tomorrow? Are you taking me home?”

  “To our home, yes. For Jen’s birthday party,” she says as gaily as she can manage. “You can come over for dinner and cake, and then we’ll bring you back.”

  “I can’t go anywhere without a wheelchair.”

  “Really? You seem to do just fine every time you make a jailbreak.”

  “I’m not supposed to go anywhere without a wheelchair,” he repeats, looking stubborn.

  He’s given her an out, but for some reason, she won’t let herself take it. Instead, she shrugs and says, “The home will let us use one for a few hours. I’ll ask the nurse.”

  He considers it.

  Then, to her surprise—and, truth be told, her dismay—he shrugs and says, “Okay.”

  Kathleen forces herself to feign enthusiasm, to say “Great!” and then forces herself to spend a few more minutes making idle conversation with him.

  Then, when she can no longer stand it, she says, “I have to get going now, Dad. I have a lot to do before the kids get home this afternoon.”

  A lie. She has nothing to do. Nothing but brood.

  “All right.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Okay.” He nods as she kisses the top of his head.

  “Betty,” he calls when she’s halfway to the door.

  She pauses. Sighs. Turns to say gently, “I’m Kathleen, Daddy. Katie.”

  “No, the nurse. You asked me what her name was. I just remembered. It’s Betty. She was named after Betty Crocker because her mother loved to bake.”

  As she makes her way down the corridor, past the painted mustard-yellow cinder-block walls and withered residents visible through open doorways, Kathleen can’t help smiling, telling herself that Dad might not be as feeble—or as far gone—as she thought.

  “You’re going pretty fast,” Jen tells Robby as he steers around a corner, the tires squealing slightly.

  “Yeah. It’s no fun if you go the speed limit.” He straightens the wheel, eyes focused on the windshield as the wipers bob rhythmically across the glass.

  Jen wants to tell him to slow down, but doesn’t dare.

  He’ll think she’s wimping out, and she isn’t about to do that. No, she’s in this for the duration.

  She stares out her window at the closely set, nondescript two-story houses, noticing how different this neighborhood is from her own. Here, the trees tower high above rooftops, fences are made of chain link, and driveways are occupied by cars and old pickups, not SUVs and Volvo Country wagons. Most of them even have rust spots around the fenders and tailgates.

  She can’t imagine what they’re doing in this part of Buffalo, a good twenty minutes from Woodsbridge. She was expecting him to take her to the mall, or maybe out to eat, or . . .

  Okay, a motel room did cross her mind once or twice, but she’s pretty sure that isn’t what he’s got planned. In fact, if anything, he’s been less amorous lately than he was when they first hooked up a few weeks ago. Maybe he’s turned off by the fact that she’s a virgin. Or maybe he’s seeing somebody else behind her back. Somebody more experienced.

  Somebody like Erin.

  She winces at the mere thought of her best friend—former best friend, that is. Erin hasn’t been speaking to her since Robby decided he liked her. Jen has been trying to convince herself that she cou
ldn’t care less—that Erin is shallow and disloyal. But now she wonders reluctantly whether she’s the one who is both of those things.

  Erin was her only true friend in Woodsbridge. Now, alienated from her parents and siblings as well, Jen has nobody.

  Nobody but Robby.

  “Where are we going?” she asks him yet again, noticing that he seems to be checking the street signs as they fly by. “Do you even know? Or are we totally lost?”

  “We’re not lost,” is his terse reply. “And you’ll see when we get there. It’s a surprise.”

  She smiles. A surprise. For her birthday, no doubt. How he found out that it’s tomorrow, she has no clue. She certainly didn’t bring it up to him.

  She tells herself that she should be exhilarated, not fearful. This, after all, is an adventure.

  They take another sharp turn, this time on two wheels. She bites her lower lip to keep from crying out as he swerves to miss scraping a utility pole on her side. He’s driving like a maniac, and she’s starting to think he’s trying to get them killed or something.

  His hands are clenching the wheel so tightly that his knuckles are jutting white knobs, bringing to mind a skeleton’s bones and sending another ripple of worry down her spine.

  “Robby? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  But he isn’t. His voice is laced with tension and an odd undercurrent of something else. Anger, maybe? But that doesn’t make sense. Why would he be angry with her?

  Jen sinks lower in her seat, her fingers reaching toward her left hip to make sure her seat belt is fastened.

  What are you doing, Jen? Why are you doing this? This isn’t fun.

  She closes her eyes. Her mother’s face flits into her mind’s eye, and then her father’s. Erin’s, too.

  You have to tell him to stop. Turn around, take you back to school.

  Yes, and if she does that, she’ll lose him. That’s for sure.

  How much does she care?

  He’s all you have. He’s the only one who cares about you.

  All right, she admits in a moment of clarity, Curran and Riley care, too. Her brothers have been watching her with worried expressions these last few weeks, trying unsuccessfully to lure her from her self-imposed exile.

  Truth be told, Mom and Dad probably care, too. Despite their lies, despite their hypocrisy, despite the fact that she doesn’t even have Dad’s blood flowing through her veins, he must care about her. Mom, too. She hasn’t missed the anguish in their faces or the hurt in their voices whenever she turns a cold shoulder on their attempts to win her back.

  If they knew where she was now, they’d be upset. Upset, and furious.

  Until this moment, she wouldn’t have cared. Now, for whatever reason, all at once, she does.

  This is wrong. All of it. Not just cutting class, but Robby, and—

  A blast of sound shatters Jen’s thoughts.

  A siren.

  Robby curses, jerking his gaze to the rearview mirror as Jen turns her head to see a police car emerging from a shrub-sheltered speed trap.

  In moments, it’s bearing down on them, red light spinning.

  For a fleeting second, Jen wonders whether Robby is going to try to outrun the cops.

  Then, abruptly, he brakes and pulls to the side of the road.

  “You’re going to get a ticket,” Jen tells him, her heart pounding. “And we’re going to get into trouble for being out of school.”

  “Yeah.” He shoots a glance in her direction. “I know that.”

  Gone is the devil-may-care swagger. To her surprise, he looks almost . . . relieved?

  Relieved to be nailed by the cops?

  It doesn’t make sense.

  Jen frowns, realizing that she doesn’t know him nearly as well as she thought.

  She only knows that when the stern-faced uniformed police officer appears at the driver’s-side window, she, too, is relieved. Their adventure is over.

  At least, for the time being.

  NINE

  The baby!

  Kathleen sits bolt upright in bed.

  The baby is crying.

  Heavy eyelids fluttering closed again, Kathleen automatically swings her legs out from beneath the warm covers, over the edge of the mattress into the inky darkness.

  The moment her feet hit the chilly bedroom floor, she’s jarred into consciousness.

  I don’t have a baby.

  But. . .

  She listens.

  The night is still.

  Beside her in the bed, Matt is snoring softly, his breathing deep and even. The only other sound she can hear is a water faucet dripping somewhere down the hall, and a faint breeze stirring the leaves outside their bedroom window.

  She must have been dreaming again. Dreaming of the long ago nights when the boys and Jen were infants, waking her to nurse at all hours. Funny how the routine comes right back; how maternal instinct is so innate that you will rise to start the familiar sleep walk to the cradle, even when the cradle has been empty for years.

  Kathleen settles her exhausted body back beneath the warm blankets.

  Just as she is drifting into slumber, another faint cry pierces the night.

  Her blood runs cold as she listens to the unmistakable wail of an infant. For a moment, she’s paralyzed by fright. Then she clutches the arm of her sleeping husband and whispers frantically, “Matt! Wake up!”

  His even breathing disrupted, he is jarred to alertness with a sputtering snore. “What? What is it?”

  “Shhh! Listen!”

  Silence.

  “What?” he asks again.

  “I heard something.”

  “Probably the wind,” he mutters, rolling over again.

  “No!” Kathleen pulls at his T-shirt. “Matt, I’m scared. Please.”

  “What did you think you heard?”

  “I didn’t think I heard it, I know I heard it. It was a baby.”

  “You were probably dreaming, Kath. Go back to sleep.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  She breaks off at the sound of another distant cry. The sound is muffled, but it’s there.

  Matt sits up, his body poised as he listens.

  “You heard it, didn’t you.” Kathleen clings to his arm.

  “I heard it. It’s probably one of the neighbors’ kids.”

  “The windows are closed, Matt. It’s November.”

  “Kathleen, do you remember how loudly Curran used to scream? Somebody could have been a mile away and—”

  “There it is again! Matt!”

  “Okay, okay.” He rubs his eyes, swings his legs over the side of the mattress.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To check on the kids. Maybe one of them is watching TV downstairs or something.”

  She nods, shivering beneath the covers, wanting desperately to believe that the sound came from the television. The explanation makes more sense than anything else her brain can conjure.

  As she hears his footsteps treading down the stairs, she wonders if it’s Jen who’s up in the family room. She wouldn’t be surprised if her daughter were having trouble sleeping after what happened yesterday.

  The vice principal reached Kathleen at home just as she walked in the door after visiting her father. Fifteen minutes later, she was sitting opposite his desk, beside her silent daughter. Jen’s eyes looked swollen and red, as though she’d been crying, but by the time Kathleen arrived her face was a sullen mask.

  Robby, who had been caught cutting class one too many times, had been suspended. That the vice principal let Jen off with a week’s worth of detention seemed generous to Matt when Kathleen broke the news to him over the phone while he was still at work.

  “Maybe she needs to be suspended,” was his grim reply. “Maybe that would snap some sense into her.”

  When he arrived home, he informed Jen that she would be grounded for an additional four weeks. She would have to give up the babysitting job, and soccer, too, was out of t
he question now.

  Jen’s response was a shrug, as though she couldn’t care less about soccer, or about anything.

  “We’re losing her, Matt,” Kathleen told her husband tearfully right before they fell asleep a few hours ago. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Neither do I,” he admitted, and again brought up family therapy.

  This time, Kathleen agreed to at least consider it, well aware that nothing matters now more than rescuing Jen from the frightening downward spiral.

  Kathleen hears Matt’s footsteps coming back up the stairs again.

  In the hallway three bedroom doors creak open one by one and then close quietly again before Matt reappears beside the bed.

  “The kids are all sound asleep in their rooms, and the TV is off downstairs,” he informs Kathleen as he walks to the window, lifts the shade, and looks out. “I bet it was an animal.”

  “What kind of animal?” she asks incredulously, huddled beneath the comforter, unable to stop her body from trembling.

  “I don’t know . . . maybe a cat or something.”

  A fuzzy memory flits into her mind, a memory that makes her heart ache with longing for more innocent days. She sees Jen snuggled on her lap as a little girl; Kathleen reading aloud to her from the Little House on the Prairie books she herself had loved as a child. She recalls Jen’s big brown eyes growing rounder than ever at the author’s vivid description of a panther crying out in the night, a blood-curdling sound that was almost human.

  But this isn’t the prairie. There are no panthers in suburban Buffalo. She tells Matt as much when he slips back into bed beside her.

  “I know a baby’s cries when I hear them,” Kathleen informs him, her voice wavering on the verge of high-pitched hysteria. “And this isn’t the first time, Matt. I heard it last night, too. But I thought it was just a dream. And—”

  “And what?” he asks when she falls silent, suddenly reluctant to tell him about the phone call a few weeks ago.

  “Nothing.” She takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. “Never mind.”

  “Go back to sleep, Kathleen. Whatever it was, it’s gone now.”

  Moments later, he’s snoring once again.

  Kathleen lies awake, her body tense, hands clenched at her sides.