Undone

by John Colapinto

  He pulled into the driveway, the wheels crunching on the gravel. He parked and cut the engine. Into the sudden aural vacuum flooded the muffled sound of crickets. He looked at Chloe, who was staring at him with a look now of frank, and unfeigned, terror.

  When the plan had been nothing more than theoretical, a series of actions outlined by Dez in their trailer in the woods, Chloe had scarcely bothered to imagine what it would be like to arrive, for the first time, at Ulrickson’s house, and to meet his family. She had not wanted to imagine it. But now that this was about to happen, she found herself seized with a fear so acute it almost made her cry out to Ulrickson and confess the ruse. But, of course, she could not do that. Instead, she smiled at him with trembling lips, trying to mask her fear. With that strange ability he seemed to have to sense her anxiety and apprehensions—just as she imagined a real father might do—he smiled back at her, with warm reassurance, and said, “Don’t worry, everyone’s going to love you.” Yet for all the steadiness in Jasper’s tone, he too was in a state of high anxiety. For the last hour at least, he had felt a steadily rising stress at the prospect of Chloe’s impending meeting with Pauline.

  He got out of the car, went around to the trunk and popped it open. He pulled out the carry-on, lowered it onto the driveway and closed the trunk. Chloe had gotten out of the car and was standing on the driveway waiting for him. She was lit by the iridescent glow of a half-moon, and she was—he saw with a shock that made his guts jump—breathtaking, her hair, which she had tried to tuck up into the bun, falling around her face, her hands folded over the front of her abbreviated skirt as if she was afraid a stray breeze might lift it, one knee turned in slightly. This vision obscurely troubled him, in a manner he could not identify.

  He approached her, rolling the bag bumpily over the gravel. She took a half step forward to meet him. He stopped and she stood close, and he felt, in the early August chill, the warmth of her body.

  “I’m scared,” she said, placing her hands on his chest and looking up at him.

  “Scared?”

  “To meet your family.” She dropped her eyes and added: “Your wife.”

  “Just be yourself,” he said. “She’ll love you.”

  She leaned against him, in genuine search of physical comfort. He put his arms around her. The cicadas creaked deafeningly, like rhythmically laboring bedsprings. He could smell the salt and seaweed aroma of the nearby Sound mingled with her scent. When he tried to release her, she clutched at him and breathed, “Hold me!” He would not have been able to say how long they stood there, bodies pressed together as if for warmth, when suddenly he heard the crunch of the front-door lock. He stepped away from her almost guiltily and looked toward the house.

  The door swung slowly on its hinges, a fan of light opening across the dark porch stone. There was a pregnant pause, then, in a moment of absurd anticlimax, a small barefoot figure in an ankle-length cotton nightgown with a high white collar stepped out from behind the door onto the stoop.

  “Maddy!” Jasper said.

  “We’re waiting for you!” the little girl cried. “Why arnch’ya coming?”

  “We are coming,” he said.

  Jasper led Chloe up the walk, his hand on the small of her incurved back. She moved with short, uncertain steps, hindered in part by the height of her unfamiliar heels but also by her fear at approaching the house, which loomed before her like a haunted mansion in a horror movie.

  Maddy’s eyes grew ever wider at Chloe’s approach. Jasper read in the little girl’s expression her surprise (so similar to his own, this morning, in the anteroom at the courthouse) that the promised sister was no child after all, but a statuesque, almost fully grown young woman. Chloe, smiling, stopped in front of Maddy, who stared up at her, round-eyed.

  “Maddy,” Jasper said, “this is Chloe. Chloe, meet Maddy.”

  “But—but—” Maddy spluttered in a voice that rang with a sense of betrayal, her eyes going back and forth between the two of them. “She’s all grown-up!”

  Chloe, feeling some of her fear disperse in the presence of this unexpectedly adorable child, squatted on her haunches, bringing her face to the same level as Maddy’s. “I’m not really so old,” she whispered. “I’m still a kid. Like you. I’m just dressed up right now. And I have some makeup on.” And indeed, in her apprehension about entering the house, and seeing Ulrickson’s wife, and executing the plan, she really did not feel any different from a defenseless, inexperienced child, a child no older than Maddy.

  Craving the comfort of the child’s touch, Chloe now opened her arms and said, “Hug?” Maddy stepped into the older girl’s embrace. Chloe held Maddy to her and felt the security of sheltering her small body.

  After a moment, Maddy pulled away and said excitedly to Jasper, “She’s warm and smells like cake!” She turned and ran into the house, yelling, “Chloe’s here! Chloe’s here!”

  Chloe rose to her full height. Jasper noticed that she seemed to be avoiding his gaze, keeping her face down and turned away, as if something in her exchange with Maddy had unsettled her.

  And indeed, that encounter had, for the first time, brought to Chloe’s awareness how the successful execution of Dez’s plan was going to tear this family apart, changing the little girl’s life forever. Dez had sketchily addressed this, telling Chloe that the girl would suffer no deprivations worse than what Chloe herself had faced growing up—and, when it came to that, a good deal less harsh, given Ulrickson’s indecent wealth, which would help to cushion the child’s passage through life, a cushion denied to Chloe, especially after her mother’s death, which was (in Dez’s telling) directly traceable to Ulrickson’s unconscionable abandonment. “No, no,” Dez had said with finality, “I wouldn’t lose a lot of sleep over Ulrickson’s pampered little brat.” This had seemed to make sense to Chloe at the time. Now, having actually seen the child, she was not so sure.

  “Are you okay?” Jasper asked, breaking into her thoughts.

  She started and looked at him. “She’s so cute,” Chloe said in an uncertain, wondering voice. “You didn’t tell me how cute she was.”

  “Oh, she’s cute, all right,” he said cheerfully. “She can also be a handful. But come.” He again touched her back, and escorted her into the foyer. The plan was in motion again, and she was powerless to stop it. Besides, she told herself, Dez was probably right about Maddy. He must be right. In any case, it was far too late, now, to second-guess him, or the plan.

  He closed the door behind them and they were enveloped in the darkness of the unlit foyer. She turned to him. He put his arms around her and said in a steady voice, “Everything is going to be fine.” Although Jasper, recalling Pauline’s dark, baleful gaze at his departure yesterday, was not at all sure that this was true.

  5

  He abandoned the carry-on by the front door, then led her toward the light at the end of the short entry hall, to the wide door that looked onto the living room. There, they stopped. On their right were the sliding glass doors that, in daytime, gave a view onto the patio, lawn and Sound. But it was now night, and the windows were black mirrors that doubled the width of the room and twinned everything within it, including Maddy, who had taken up position behind the wheelchair where Pauline sat, facing them, halfway down the room.

  “I’ll bring her!” Maddy cried as she began trying to wrestle the unwieldy chair into motion.

  “Just leave Mom,” Jasper said. “We’ll come over.”

  As they approached, Jasper saw Pauline’s eyes boring into Chloe, her gaze cold, hostile. He had allowed himself to believe that Pauline might disguise her displeasure, soften it—if only to minimize social embarrassment. But apparently the threat she felt from Holly’s ghost was so acute, she could do nothing to mask it. He suddenly understood the unnamed discomfort that had assailed him, on the driveway, at the sight of Chloe’s beauty. He had been, unconsciously, anticipating Pauline’s reaction to this vision of youthful loveliness, which could only exacerbate whatever mi
series of jealousy and threat Pauline felt over the encroachment of dead Holly’s ghost.

  They halted a few paces in front of her and stood side by side, at attention, like soldiers on parade inspection. Jasper cleared his throat, licked his lips and pulled his facial muscles into a smile.

  “Pauline,” he said, “this is Chloe. Chloe, this is Pauline—your stepmother.”

  “She can hear everything you say!” Maddy shouted.

  “She knows that,” said Jasper. “And there’s no need to yell.”

  Chloe made a tentative bow. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said in a voice barely audible.

  She stood, in a state of agonized self-consciousness, as Pauline’s eyes picked their way down her body, lingering on the short skirt and the long expanse of bare legs. How she longed, now, to be wearing a floor-length skirt—or sensible dress pants! Finally, Pauline’s gaze moved back up to Chloe’s face. Jasper, looking on breathlessly, noted how Pauline’s eyes drilled into the girl, like lasers, and she did not blink in acknowledgment of Chloe’s shy pleasantry. This was worse than he had feared. He only hoped that Chloe did not realize it.

  That hope was dashed when the girl turned to him, a look of wild panic on her face. Jasper pretended not to see it and—determined to fill the expanding silence—spoke up. “We had a good drive,” he said, looking back and forth between the two women. “The traffic wasn’t too bad.”

  Pauline made no reaction: no blink, no twinkle of curiosity in her eyes. Chloe, frozen in fear, remained silent.

  “And the hearing itself,” Jasper continued, “went without any problems—although the judge was quite pompous and eccentric, wasn’t he, Chloe?” He turned to her, trying to draw her out. Chloe, however, declined to accept the conversation ball tossed to her, pressing her lips together and dropping her eyes.

  Maddy spoke up. “What’s a hearing?”

  “Please, Maddy,” he said. “The grown-ups are talking.”

  “Chloe isn’t,” Maddy observed. “Asides, she told me she’s not a grown-up.”

  “Maddy—” he began, but just then Deepti emerged from the kitchen. She was wearing a black-and-white striped cooking apron and holding a stirring spoon.

  “Hello! Hello!” she cried out. “I was in the basement, getting something from the freezer, when you came in!”

  “I was about to bring Chloe to meet you,” Jasper said. “Chloe, this is Deepti—I’ve told you about her.”

  Chloe turned and saw a short, middle-aged woman with dark, lovely skin and a warm smile beaming at her. She felt an absurd urge to throw herself into the woman’s arms and start crying.

  “It is a pleasure,” said Deepti, shaking Chloe’s hand. She looked at Jasper. “My goodness—so beautiful! No one told me! Like a model!”

  “Deepti is a wonderful cook,” he said, quickly changing the topic. “Wait until you taste her food.”

  “Do you like paella?” Deepti asked the girl.

  Chloe looked at Jasper, her face registering terror. “I’ve never had it,” she whispered.

  “It’s wonderful,” he said. “I think you’ll love it.”

  Once again, Chloe felt a gust of gratitude for the kindly way that Ulrickson spoke to her in that comforting tone, so attentive of her insecurity. He seemed able to read her thoughts and emotions, just as she used to dream that a real father might.

  “Well,” Deepti said, “it is ready now, if you are hungry.”

  Ordinarily, the family ate in the kitchen, informally, around the Saarinen tulip table. But for the special occasion of Chloe’s arrival, Deepti had set the long mahogany table in the dining area at the far end of the large living space. Pauline’s wheelchair was drawn up to a corner beside Jasper, who sat at the head of the table. Chloe was to his left, and Maddy beside her. Maddy ignored her own food in the interest of watching Chloe raise each bite of the paella to her mouth. She kept up a running commentary on the girl’s actions: “Chloe isn’t eating any of the shrimp!” “Chloe doesn’t eat very much.” “She eats so slow.” “How come Chloe doesn’t get any wine?” (Jasper had poured himself a glass of pinot grigio.)

  “Please leave your sister to eat in peace,” Jasper said. “She can’t drink wine until she’s twenty-one, and that’s still a long way off.”

  “Daddy is going to be forty-two soon,” Maddy stated.

  Chloe, who had been keeping her face close to her plate, looked up at Jasper.

  “Next month,” he told her. “The tenth. Some of us are more excited at the prospect than others.”

  Chloe did not smile and only lowered her eyes back to her plate. But a few seconds later, she ventured a glance at Pauline and saw that she was staring at her with that same freezing hatred. It was uncanny, as if the poor woman had somehow divined the plan. But that, of course, was not possible.

  With Maddy’s commentary stanched, the table and room fell into a silence punctuated only by the sound of forks clinking against brittle china, a sound that accentuated the pall that had fallen. Jasper racked his exhausted brain for a topic of conversation that might draw Chloe out a little, and demonstrate to Pauline that she was a sweet child, not deserving of anyone’s enmity.

  “Maybe you’d like to tell Pauline—your stepmom—a little about today,” Jasper said. “The courthouse was unexpectedly interesting, I thought. Architecturally.”

  Chloe glanced up at Pauline, then over at Jasper. “I guess so,” she said timidly. “I never was in one before.”

  “No, of course not,” Jasper said. They fell to eating again in silence.

  Deepti came to collect the dinner plates. Chloe jumped up and began to help clear the table. Deepti said that she did not have to do that, but Chloe insisted. Anything to get away from the table.

  “Isn’t that great of her?” Jasper whispered eagerly to Pauline when Chloe was in the kitchen putting a stack of plates on the counter. “I think she’s going to be a big help around here.”

  Pauline answered with a look of such murderous hostility that he immediately fell silent.

  Chloe came back into the room. She had taken her shoes off and was padding around in her bare feet. “Did we get everything?” she said, scanning the table.

  “Yes, that’s fine,” Jasper said. “Let’s move to the living room.”

  He steered Pauline over to one end of the sofa, parked her there and took a seat beside her. Chloe made one last trip from dining area to kitchen, carrying the salt and pepper shakers and two glasses, then came into the living room. Her eyes darted back and forth over the grouping of chairs and sofas around the glass coffee table, and after a moment she stepped over and carefully lowered herself onto the sofa beside Jasper—a spot she chose because it put him as a physical barrier between her and the terrifying Pauline.

  Maddy, who had been sent to the bathroom to brush her teeth before bed, charged into the living room crying out, “I wanna sit beside Chloe!” She leapt onto the sofa, clambered onto the cushion between Jasper and Chloe, and then settled herself, legs outstretched.

  “So,” he said, smiling stiffly and rubbing his hands together as if to warm them, “what do you think of Connecticut so far, Chloe?” He was determined to get her talking.

  Chloe, too, was determined to overcome her nervousness. She cleared her throat and said, “It’s very nice,” addressing herself to Pauline. “But I haven’t seen very much of it yet,” she added with a shy smile. “Like, just the highway—and now this room. And they’re—they’re very nice.” Chloe was mortified at the vapidity of this halting utterance but was surprised to see that the effort seemed to have brought a slight softening in Pauline’s gaze. Jasper, thrilled, noticed it too.

  “Will you play the alphabet game with me?” Maddy asked, tugging at Chloe’s arm.

  “Maddy,” Jasper said, “Chloe just got here after a long, long drive. She’s relaxing now. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “What’s the alphabet game?” Chloe asked.

  “Trust me,” Jasper said, “you’ll be hearing all
about it from Maddy. Speaking of whom …” he added, throwing Maddy a loaded glance.

  “I don’t want to go to bed yet!” Maddy cried. “I wanna stay and talk!”

  “You’ve got preschool tomorrow,” he said, “besides which, you’re already up a half hour past your bedtime. So it’s off to slumber land now, my darling.”

  “I’ll only go if you carry me,” she announced flatly.

  Sensing an opportunity, he quickly acceded. “Okay,” he said, rising from the sofa. “But no story tonight. I’m going to put you in bed, tuck you in, and that’s it.”

  She hopped up into a standing position on the sofa cushion and then jumped into Jasper’s waiting arms. Chloe threw him a panicked look, clearly terrified at the prospect of being left alone with Pauline. Seeing that look of desperate entreaty, he almost took pity on Chloe and sent Maddy down the hall on her own, but he had resolved that Chloe and Pauline would have to get to know each other sooner or later, and it might as well be sooner. But to give her something to do during his absence, he pointed out the stack of family photo albums on the shelf under the table at the end of the sofa. “You might want to take a look while I tuck Maddy in,” he said. Chloe fairly dived at the albums.

  He carried Maddy down the hall to her bedroom. She obediently scrambled under the covers.

  “So, what do you think?” he asked, standing beside her bed. “Is Chloe nice?”

  “Yes!” Maddy said. “Are you going to marry her?”

  “Marry her?” he almost shouted. He dropped his voice to a hissing whisper. “Don’t be silly. I explained to you: she’s my daughter. Daddies don’t marry their daughters! You know that.”

  “Yeah,” Maddy said. “But Chloe is so pretty.”