The bailiff stepped to the front of the room. “All rise,” he said. They stood.
Judge Gerald Howard, a large man with white hair brushed back from a leonine face, emerged from behind a curtain-like wooden panel. He lowered himself into his chair. “Be seated,” he rumbled. They sat.
The judge fussed with some papers, then looked up and scanned the faces before him.
“Welcome,” he said in a fruity baritone. “We’re gathered here on an occasion happier than many that take place in these halls, where we sentence many a juvenile delinquent, finalize many a divorce, hear many an argument in custody battles. Right now, though, we’re transferring guardianship of a young girl, currently a ward of the state of Vermont and living in foster care, to her biological father, who has only recently learned of her existence.” Howard paused and looked at the people before him. “To be sure,” he went on, “there is sadness in that the girl in question, Chloe Vanessa Dwight, recently lost her mother, but it is a graceful thing that in her time of mourning she displayed the courage to speak up and seek out the man she understood to be her biological father, and to begin proceedings to find out if that man, Mr. Jasper Ulrickson, could truly claim that honor and privilege.” He held up a piece of paper. “I have before me the written findings of a DNA paternity test conducted on both individuals, and despite the presence of legal counsel in the room, I gather that neither party is here to contest these results?”
“Correct,” said the lawyers.
“Well, then, we’re really here to do the formalities,” Howard said. “Let me read into the record that the samples, which were donated under conditions adhering to the criteria that govern admissibility of DNA evidence in all courts of the United States, and which were analyzed at one of the leading facilities in the country, reveal, to a 99.9 percent degree of certainty, that Miss Dwight is the biological offspring of Mr. Ulrickson. Is that the understanding, as well, of both lawyers present?”
“It is, your Honor,” they said.
“And of your respective clients?”
“Correct, your Honor,” said Pollock.
“Yes,” said Farkiss.
“Let’s hear them say it,” Howard intoned.
Jasper and Chloe said, simultaneously, “Yes, your Honor.”
“Excellent,” said the judge. “Now,” he went on, looking over the tops of his glasses, “allow me to take just a moment to say why these recent events in the lives of Chloe and Jasper are of such import. Having a father is a vital element in everyone’s life, not only because it promotes a child’s emotional well-being but also because it protects her rights. It allows her access to legal benefits she would not otherwise enjoy. It helps establish an accurate medical history. God forbid Mr. Ulrickson discovers, tomorrow, that he suffers from a genetic anomaly that he might have passed down to his daughter; she would wish to have that checked out. On a happier note, Chloe automatically has the right to financial support from Jasper and she automatically possesses, along with his younger daughter—her half-sister, Madeline—inheritance rights to her father’s fortune, which, I understand, is considerable.” He peered owlishly at Jasper. “I saw you, sir, on the Tovah show. Condolences regarding your wife, but you have turned lemons into lemonade by sharing her story, and as I think we’re all aware, Tovah sells books!”
The lawyers politely chuckled, as did Jasper, who was beginning to wonder what was going on. This extraordinary performance from the judge must have been what Farkiss had been about to warn them of.
Still holding Jasper in his gaze, the judge went on. “Now, you obviously understand that Chloe is your actual flesh and blood, and though you have only just recently learned that fact, you will treat her as such, behave toward her as if you had raised her from birth, with as much love and care and affection and attention as I’m sure you lavish upon your younger daughter, providing education, food and shelter, travel, wisdom, religious instruction if you’re a believer. In short, it is your duty, Jasper, to provide to your issue whatever it is within your means to provide, in order to make of her a productive, happy, healthy member of our society. How’s that sound?”
“Very good, your Honor,” Jasper said.
“You never changed her nappies,” the judge went on. “You never gave her a bath, or tucked her up in bed; you never comforted her when she had a temperature or accepted her under your covers when she woke you in the wee hours with a nightmare, never kissed away the pain from a boo-boo. In short, you missed all those ineffable moments between father and child that secure the mystical bond of parent and issue, moments that can never be recaptured. But you can make up for that now, in other ways, can’t you?”
Jasper, thinking that this was a purely rhetorical question in the judge’s astounding peroration, sat silently listening, waiting for him to continue.
“Can’t you?” Judge Howard repeated.
“Yes!” Jasper almost shouted.
“You, in turn,” he said, looking at Chloe, “will honor and obey your father. You’re a teenager, and we all know what that means. But being a teen is not license for unreasonable rebellion. Don’t sneak out and use the car without his permission. Don’t smuggle boyfriends into the house when they come a-calling—and, if I may venture to say so, the evidence presented in this courtroom today would lead any judge and jury to the verdict that the boys will be a-calling.” He cocked a comical glance at Jasper. “Do you keep your shotgun loaded?”
Polite, awkward chuckles from the lawyers and their clients.
Howard again leveled his gaze at Chloe, furrowing his brow. “Don’t hold drinking parties in the house,” he continued. “Don’t raid your dad’s home bar when he goes on an overnight business trip. Do your homework when he tells you to, and, please, clean your room. All that comes as an order of the court.”
More lawyerly chuckles. Chloe nodded. “Yes, your Honor,” she said.
“And remember,” Howard went on, “even though your daddy, when you were small, never did change your nappies or tuck you up, or hold you on his knee, or take you into his bed, that doesn’t mean he’s any less your daddy, does it?”
“No, sir,” she said.
“All right, then,” Judge Howard said. “I think we can do this thing. Let the record show that custody of Chloe Vanessa Dwight is hereby relinquished by the state of Vermont and is transferred to that of Jasper Oivind Ulrickson of Clay Cross, Connecticut. Miss Dwight’s birth certificate will be duly altered to reflect that Mr. Ulrickson is her biological father; and we’ve got some papers to sign, people!”
The bailiff brought down from the bench two stacks of documents, which he placed in front of the lawyers and their clients. Pens were uncapped, and Jasper and Chloe affixed their signatures to the requisite places. The pages were borne off by the bailiff.
The judge hit his gavel against the table and said: “We are adjourned!” He gathered up his papers, stood and moved with a stately pace behind the curtain.
Jasper, dazed, got to his feet. Chloe threw herself on his neck. He almost drew back but recalled himself and accepted her flood of affection, and indeed returned it, holding her to him and kissing her cheek. The lawyers stood and shook hands like captains of industry upon closing a successful merger. Doreen Edwards rushed forward crying, “Congratulations! Congratulations!”
3
Having emerged into the sunlight in front of the building, Jasper and the others stood for a moment at the top of the stairs that led down to the sidewalk. Edwards, still gushing, apologized and announced that she was due at a meeting at Child Services but assured Chloe and Jasper that she would soon be sending someone to check on their progress in Connecticut. She hastened down to the sidewalk, then hurried off in the direction of the Department of Children and Families building. Pollock, too, had to go—to catch a flight back to Hartford. He followed Edwards down the steps, then disappeared into the airport limousine idling at the curb. “I’m afraid that I’m also due elsewhere,” Farkiss said. “Divorce hearing.” He c
ongratulated them, said something about how they no doubt wished to be alone, then turned and stepped back inside the courthouse.
Jasper was instantly seized by that same strange feeling of restraint in her presence, that diffidence which had hindered his movements earlier. He felt the need to make a momentous utterance to mark the occasion of their being united, but invention failed him and he was able to offer only the hackneyed: “Well, today is the first day of the rest of our lives.”
Chloe smiled, raised herself on tiptoe, kissed his cheek and said, “I feel like people should be throwing rice!”
Arms around each other’s waist, they descended to the sidewalk, then set off on foot to fetch his car. Conscious that he had never walked down a street in the company of a female quite as arresting as Chloe, Jasper quickly became aware of the attention that she drew from people. Pedestrians, passing in the opposite direction or overtaking them in the same direction, turned to stare quite frankly at her; drivers and their passengers craned around to look. Several people cast sourly disapproving glances, which puzzled Jasper at first—until it burst upon him that they must be mistaking him and Chloe for a May–December romance—the increasingly grizzled forty-something male with the petal-fresh teenaged girl! No wonder they scowled! Fortunately, Chloe, looking down at the uneven sidewalk to avoid tripping in her heels, seemed oblivious of this embarrassing misapprehension. (In reality, she was anything but oblivious, but she thought it best to feign innocent unawareness.)
When they reached the bed-and-breakfast, Jasper went in to settle his bill. The crone from last night had been replaced by a tall youth with mousy, center-parted hair and pustules around his mouth. He glanced up from his computer and did a double take at Chloe, who had followed Jasper inside. His eyes glinted with conspiratorial admiration when he asked, “Room for two?”
Jasper was at first mystified by the note of insinuation in his voice. Then he realized what lay behind it. “No, no,” he said, mortified. “I’m checking out—with my daughter,” he added, with irritated emphasis.
The clerk, blushing, kept his attention glued to his computer as he prepared Jasper’s bill. But as the receipt was printing, his eyes slid over helplessly to a corner of the lobby. Jasper followed his gaze. With her back to them, Chloe was bending at the waist, her legs straight, to inspect the lower tier of a rack of tourist brochures. The clerk smiled, shrugged and handed Jasper his receipt.
“You okay, Dad?” Chloe asked when they were outside.
“I’m fine,” he said as he led her around to the back of the building. “It’s just that boy at the desk. He was very rude.”
“Was he?” she said. “I didn’t notice.”
He popped the trunk and placed Chloe’s carry-on inside. She stood, like a date, waiting by the passenger door. He stepped over and opened it for her. She settled herself inside, primly pulling down on the hem of her skirt and throwing Jasper a shy smile as she did so. She saw him snatch his eyes away but could not tell if this was because he was resisting the impulse to stare or if he had truly been unmoved by the kind of leg show that ordinarily stopped men in their tracks. He slammed the door, walked around to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel. With a grunt, Chloe pulled off her pumps. “Those kill,” she said, tossing the shoes into the backseat and wiggling her toes. She stretched her feet into the space under the dash, glancing sidelong to see if he was taking note. Alas, he seemed quite oblivious as he put the car in gear, executed a three-point turn and drove out of the lot.
He piloted the car along Main Street. When they came to a red light, he looked over at her. Her head lay sideways on the headrest. She was gazing at him dreamily. Her half-veiled irises, unnameable in color between gray and green, with tiny flecks of graphite and glints of copper, held him.
She said on a sigh, “I can’t believe I found you.”
“Yes,” he said, with a sensation of dry mouth that made it oddly difficult to form words. “It does seem surreal.”
The light turned green, he pressed the accelerator, and they drove off in search of the exit for the highway. He found it, and guided the car onto the curving on-ramp. They joined the stream of cars flowing south.
4
Traffic was still fairly thick near the city. Jasper readjusted his body, settling in for the long haul. He ransacked his mind for something to talk about. There were any number of topics they had not yet touched on in their phone conversations, but when he spoke, he was surprised to discover himself asking her about something the school’s guidance counselor had mentioned, in passing, in their phone call of a few days ago, a detail from Chloe’s life that, until he actually saw her, he might never have thought about again but which now loomed curiously large in his mind. He asked about the teacher who had kissed her. “What exactly happened?” he said. “Did this teacher actually …”—he paused in search of the word—”interfere with you?”
Chloe looked out the side window. Stunned by this unexpected, unimagined allusion to Dez—her heart had jumped into her throat and her head seemed to be expanding with heat—she nevertheless managed to speak calmly when she said, “Oh—it was nothing.” She meant to leave it at that, but could not resist adding, “How did you hear about that?”
He explained about her guidance counselor.
“Oh,” she said. “Yeah, well, that was all a big mix-up. He was just trying to comfort me—it was right after Mom died. It was taken the wrong way. Schools are super strict now: teachers aren’t even allowed to touch students. He was fired right away.”
She glanced over. He seemed to be buying this. But Jasper was confused. He thought the guidance counselor had said that this incident occurred in mid-March—some weeks before Holly’s death. Hadn’t she said something about Holly declining to press charges? He must have gotten that wrong. “And the teacher’s name?” he asked, puzzled at his own determination to get to the bottom of the incident.
Chloe pretended not to understand. “Miss Simmons,” she said, naming the teacher who had reported Dez’s infraction. “She’s sort of crazy.”
“No, sorry,” Jasper said. “The male teacher. The one who, um, who …” For some reason, he found it impossible to say the words kissed you. “The one who was fired.”
“Oh!” she said. “Mr….” She paused. There was no way she was going to utter Dez’s real name. “It was this teacher—Mr. Butler.”
Jasper could see by her hesitations that she did not feel comfortable discussing the incident. Nor did he, particularly. He let it drop.
They drove for a time in silence—a perfectly comfortable silence, he thought, punctuated by frequent glances at one another and smiles. An easy accord seemed to be growing between them, Jasper decided—a harmony that lay beyond words. He attributed this, in part, to the illusion caused by her resemblance to Holly, but also perhaps to some silent signal, an emanation of pheromones, perhaps; some part of a biological fail-safe warning system that was bound to exist in humans, a subsensory alert that informed people when they were in the presence of their own kin. Wouldn’t such an adaptation have evolved in the species if for no other reason than to minimize the risk of accidental inbreeding in parents and children long separated? Did such a thing exist? He must google this. And if it did exist, was he feeling something like that right now?
He turned and looked at Chloe. Her face was directed away from him as she watched the farmers’ fields and the distant mountains stream by out her passenger window. He lightly inhaled through his nostrils, trying to detect that theoretical silent signal, or early warning system, of paternity. Instead, all he could discern was the aroma of ginger and vanilla that wafted from her—a fragrance so evocative of Holly, that scent which made the years disappear, carrying him back to that grove of willows at the edge of the club beach where he had held Holly in his arms. He remembered now how she had seized his hand from where he had been tentatively touching her breast, and guided it down her flank, over her hip and under the hem of her flimsy party dress, onto the inde
scribably smooth skin of her inner thigh, and finally up to the hollow between her legs where she pressed his cupping palm against the cotton-covered mound, moaning into his open mouth as he kissed her.
His gaze, driven by memory, unconsciously strayed up Chloe’s legs to an area on the inside of her thigh. A slant of sunlight through the windshield brought out a gleam on the mirror-smooth, matte brown skin.
He raised his eyes and was startled to discover that she was looking at him. He felt his face scalded by a blush of embarrassment and confusion, but was surprised to see no corresponding discomfort in her; indeed, she simply smiled demurely and drooped her eyelashes. Aghast, he whipped his head around to look out the windshield. In his peripheral vision, he could see that she continued to gaze at him with that strange serenity. He furthermore could see that she did not shift position. He expected that she would, as an act of reflexive modesty, close her legs a little or pull down on that infernal skirt. But she continued, with an apparent lack of any self-consciousness, or awareness, to offer to his gaze the smooth expanse of inner thigh while looking with sober innocence and seeming unknowingness at the side of his face.
In fact, she was overjoyed finally to have caught him in what seemed an act of ogling her, but she was confused by how he had looked away and was now so easily keeping his eyes off her; had she misconstrued his reaction? Had he actually been looking at her quite innocently, with nothing more than a warm, paternal regard?
“I thought you might be asleep,” he said, his eyes aimed strictly forward at the highway. His face was on fire.
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