Family Tree

by Susan Wiggs

  “I always thought it was a terrible decision.”

  “And I always thought it was Leon’s decision and I had to stick with it, because he was the executive producer. Now I wonder if Martin might have planted the seed.” She thought about the many screen tests they’d created together. She and Martin had rhythm, certainly a strong enough rapport to get a green light for a pilot episode. They were both knowledgeable and quick-witted. Had he worried about competing with her?

  “What did they call you?” Mom asked. “Too ethnic? Too alternative?”

  “Something like that.”

  “They should have kept you in front of the camera. Instead, they picked that bland girl no one can remember. She wasn’t bad, but she wasn’t great.”

  “Martin found Melissa himself. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “What do you mean, he found her?”

  “They met in yoga class. The casting director didn’t want to give her a second look, much less a screen test. She was just another shrill, talking head on a late-night shopping show. But Martin was her advocate.” Annie’s blood suddenly chilled. She had a swift, indelible image of Martin and Melissa, naked in his trailer. This was not an imagined memory. It was as real as the heavy photo albums sitting in front of her.

  “What?” her mother asked, worriedly studying Annie’s face.

  “Martin and Melissa. They were having an affair.”

  “Oh, Annie. No.”

  Annie winced as a black fog filled her mind. Pain shimmered through her, and she felt a sick sense of shock and anger. “It was . . . oh God, Mom. I saw them together.”

  “I didn’t know,” Mom said, casting a worried look at her. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. That must have been horrible.”

  “I walked in on them in Martin’s trailer,” Annie said, the memory unfurling in her mind like a tawdry reel. “Then I walked out. And that’s when the sky fell.”

  “The accident, you mean.”

  “It’s my last memory before my big nap.”

  Mom took the collection of articles from her. “Let’s put this away for now.” Annie sensed something furtive in her manner.

  “What?” she asked. “I think after what I just figured out, I can take it.”

  Mom sighed, pulling out an issue of People and handing it to her. “This was published after the accident. I saved it because you look so gorgeous in the photos, and the journalist was obviously impressed by you. Then the accident happened, and she did a follow-up with Martin, heretofore known as that sneaky bastard.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “He gives his rationale for divorcing you.”

  “Because Martin would surely have a rationale for shipping his comatose wife to Vermont and divorcing her,” Annie said, more incredulous than offended. “Let me see that.”

  Martin had always been a master of spin, and when he worked with a media coach—a wizard named, no kidding, Jim Dandy—the message was honed to a work of fine art. The follow-up to CJ’s piece was headlined In the Aftermath of Tragedy, a Wrenching Farewell. Martin was portrayed as a young husband in the prime of life, cruelly robbed of his wife—and his future—unless he could bring himself to let go and move on. He declared that asking a judge to appoint a guardian ad litem for Annie, then filing for divorce, was the most difficult thing he’d ever done, but he couldn’t exist in the twilight zone of a man whose wife was gone “in every way that mattered,” he explained. “She’s still so beautiful, but she’s not my Annie. I need to let her go and leave her in peace.”

  “Ah, that poor, poor man,” Annie murmured.

  “He’s a rat bastard,” her mother said, “but I’m not sorry he brought you home. The idea of you trapped in L.A. was horrifying to me. If he hadn’t offered, I would have insisted. Lucky for him, he volunteered to bring you home.”

  “Bring me? You mean he came here? To Vermont?”

  Mom nodded. “I hugged him and we cried together. I truly believed he was as devastated as I was.”

  Annie nodded and stood up, holding the back of the sofa to steady herself. The morning she’d spent with CJ came back to her in dagger-sharp images. A physical ache started in her chest, so powerful that she touched her breastbone and wondered if this was what a heart attack felt like.

  “Let’s go check on Knox,” she said, needing a distraction.

  The little boy was fast asleep in front of the TV. There was a PBS art show on, a rerun of the guy with frizzy hair painting happy little trees. She switched it off and pulled an afghan over Knox. His sweet little face was slack and smooth, his moist lips pursed. He stirred, tucking his fist under one cheek. Gazing at him, Annie felt a fresh wave of emotion. He was so beautiful. So innocent.

  “Love this little guy,” her mom said, brushing her fingers over his brow. “I love them all, but he’s something special, I suppose because we spend so much time alone together. Your brother might have some cockeyed ideas, but he makes pretty babies, doesn’t he?”

  Annie nodded. She bent down to pick up the trolls and trinkets strewn around Knox’s dump truck. She came across an old key attached to a Sugar Rush key chain, the one in the shape of a maple leaf. Her hand tightened around the key chain, the edges of the maple leaf biting into her flesh.

  An icy chill took her over, and she stood, staring down at the key chain. She was inundated by jumbled images and sounds. The scent of lilies. Delivery for Annie Rush.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, dropping the key and pressing her hands to her stomach. “Oh my God.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I was pregnant.”

  “What? No.” Her mother stared at her, aghast.

  The entire morning came flooding back—the quarrel about the buffalo. A flower delivery. People magazine. Two pink lines. I’m pregnant.

  Slowly and carefully, she walked away from Knox and sank down on a love seat across the room. Her mother sat next to her, arms circling Annie. She poured the story out in broken phrases. “Did you know?” she asked her mother.

  “No. Oh my gosh, no.” Her mother’s voice shook.

  Annie finally had all the puzzle pieces in place and could see the events of the day rolling through her mind like frames of a film. She relived her elation the moment the pregnancy test turned up positive. As if it had happened only yesterday, she experienced her soaring hopes as she drove to the studio to give Martin the news, already fantasizing about the baby with a sense of joy so big she’d nearly burst with it.

  How quickly that joy had been shattered. The dim trailer, the shocked faces of two people she had trusted. Her hasty, stumbling exit. Martin had come after her, calling her name, looking absurd in his shin-high cowboy boots and boxer shorts. That was the last image in her mind before she heard a metallic clanking sound and felt a whoosh of air. She did not recall feeling fear, only a hangover of shock and horror at what she had seen in the trailer.

  And then there was nothing. Utter blackness. A whole lost year of nothing, until Open your eyes.

  She and her mother sorted through the reports and claim forms that had been filed about the incident. After the collapse, everyone within shouting distance had come running. By the time the ambulance arrived, a swarm of workers, along with Martin, had extracted her from the equipment. She was rushed to a level-one trauma center.

  “It’s here,” Annie said, staring at a densely printed hospital form. “There’s a numerical code, but if you look at the fine print at the bottom . . .” She showed her mother the form. Loss of the products of conception from the uterus before the fetus is viable.

  Annie wondered what had gone through Martin’s mind when he found out she’d been pregnant. Guilt? Sorrow? Relief?

  “It’s horrible.” Her mother held her close. “I’m sorry I didn’t see that before. There was so much to take in. When Martin called and told us to come, the doctors said it was to say good-bye to you.”

  Annie winced, imagining her family’s pain as the organ-harvesting team circled like buzz
ards over a fresh carcass. Then her brain scans offered a glimmer of hope. She defied the prognosis and didn’t die. She didn’t wake up either.

  “It’s so strange,” she said, “when I imagine lying there with life going on all around me, decisions being made, my future being planned, and I was just oblivious.”

  “You’re not oblivious now.”

  “I’m hungry now.” Knox rubbed his eyes and yawned. Then he climbed into Annie’s lap, curling up like a bird in a nest. “Can you fix something?”

  “Aw, buddy,” she whispered into his sweet-smelling hair. “I can fix anything.”

  20

  Annie went into a frenzy of cooking and baking. She made pasta with fresh eggs from the henhouse and created a sublime lasagna with creamy béchamel sauce. She baked bread with snips of rosemary and a salt crust on top. Tarte tatin with a perfectly burned amber crust came out of her broiler. She made salads sprinkled with sweet woodruff flowers and nasturtium, and drinks sweetened with homemade simple syrups flavored with berry extracts. She treated her mother to a strawberry-rhubarb cordial.

  She was almost manic in her pursuit of the perfect scone, or the most velvety hollandaise, or the lightest chiffon cake. If she focused on the art and craft of cuisine, she felt safe and in control. The kitchen was the one place where she felt most like herself.

  With each dish she created, she reclaimed bits and pieces of her identity, her memories and dreams. There were moments when she could almost feel Gran holding her hand, pressing it into the soft dough, and rolling it gently into a smooth, pale loaf. “Don’t let the things you have to do take over the things you love to do,” Gran used to tell her.

  Annie didn’t have to do anything. She was in limbo. But she loved the kitchen. It seemed like the only place that kept her insulated from her nightmares. Now she was left to knead bread or stir a risotto as she tallied up her losses—her marriage and her trust in a man she had loved. Her career and the program she’d created—The Key Ingredient. And, worst of all, the dreamed-of, longed-for possibility of having a child.

  I never got the chance to love you, she silently said to the baby she’d lost.

  To keep herself from collapsing in rage and grief, she filled each day with cooking. Her family gratefully consumed all of her creations, though she could tell they worried. She didn’t blame them. But working in the kitchen was the only way she could remember who she was. While in the middle of making saffron cauliflower, Annie finally grasped the choice she was facing. She could either let this thing destroy her, or she could reclaim herself. There was no middle ground.

  She finished the dish with a sprinkle of parsley, then sent a text message: CAN WE TALK?

  “He’s beautiful.”

  Fletcher turned to the speaker behind him. He’d been expecting Annie since she’d sent him a message—CAN WE TALK?—but he wasn’t prepared for the quick flash of happiness he felt when he saw her.

  Her smile widened as she tracked Teddy’s progress. The kid was swinging hand over hand from the monkey bars in the city park near the courthouse. He hoisted himself up to the timber fort, waved to a couple of kids, and climbed down to join them.

  “Your boy is really beautiful,” Annie said. “I bet you get that a lot.”

  “A fair bit.” His son was yellow-haired and blue-eyed like his mom. People said he looked like his dad, but Fletcher couldn’t really see that. Teddy was lithe and athletic, happy to embrace anything that involved running and climbing.

  Annie looked good. Really good. Her short, curly hair was as shiny as her smile. She was wearing shorts and a sleeveless cotton blouse. Her scuffed canvas sneakers made her appear impossibly young, hardly different from the girl he’d known in high school. She’d filled out a little, and no longer resembled the wan, sickly woman he’d visited at the rehab place. This was the Annie he remembered, whose curves he had once mapped with his hands and lips and body.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” Annie said. “I know you must be busy.”

  “Not too busy for you. I usually try to coordinate a court recess so I can hang out with my kid for a few minutes.”

  “You must also be an awesome lawyer to be appointed to the bench at such a young age.”

  “That’s me,” Fletcher said with a twist of irony. “Awesome. How are you?” he asked.

  “Baking,” she said. “Cooking and baking, that’s how I am.”

  “Okay. So is that a good thing?”

  “It’s a thing. Mom thinks I’m hiding out in the kitchen. Not facing up to my issues.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Hmm. What do I think?” She touched her chin with her index finger. “I think most people can’t tell the difference between fancy ketchup and regular ketchup. I think the NBA three-point line is the work of a genius. I think spending two hours at a hair salon does more for a woman than two hours of psychotherapy.” She patted her shiny hair. “I just came from Sunny’s.”

  “Your hair looks nice.”

  “Thanks.” She set a bakery box on the bench beside him. “Raspberry-almond butterhorns. I thought you and Teddy might like a snack.”

  Fletcher lifted the lid of the box and was hit with the sugary, buttery scent of homemade pastries. He couldn’t resist taking a bite of one. “Teddy and I might want you to move in with us,” he said.

  “I’m divorced,” she said. “I guess you knew that.”

  “So am I.”

  “I didn’t have a choice. I got conked on the head and woke up divorced.” She sighed and walked over to a bench in the shade, motioning for him to join her.

  “That’s not how my divorce went,” he said, taking a seat. “Sometimes it felt like I got conked on the head, though.” Or maybe not, he thought. There had been times when the divorce had been more like ripping the veins out of his arms while conscious. Celia had been a nightmare throughout the entire process. She’d contested him on every point, from Teddy’s visitation schedule to his inheritance of his dad’s estate. She had tried to turn the division of assets into World War III, but she had overestimated Fletcher’s attachment to their stuff. He really didn’t care if she took the furniture, the wedding crystal, and the artwork. He was completely fine with her walking away with Waterford lamps and Persian carpets, designer furniture and two pricey cars, jewelry and all the stuff she’d acquired in a buying frenzy shortly after the wedding.

  All Fletcher had truly wanted was time with Teddy. For the boy’s sake, he stayed focused on avoiding the constant drama that swirled around his troubled and angry wife. He kept reminding himself that she was the mother of his child, and he was stuck with her. At the end of everything, Fletcher had been awarded equal time with Teddy. He’d settled for a house on Henley Street, near the school and courthouse, and ended up with a life that looked nothing like the life he’d once imagined for himself.

  “Well, I’m sorry it happened to you,” Annie said. “I’m sure it was painful. And difficult.”

  “The pain’s gone. It’s more like a low-grade disappointment that we didn’t make it.” It occurred to Fletcher that this was one of the most honest conversations he’d had about his divorce. It was strange, talking to Annie about personal things, the way they used to long ago. “And now it’s over. We’re all better off, Teddy included.”

  She shot him a glance. “What would Teddy say?”

  “That he’s better off. Although sometimes I wonder if he says so because he’s trying to spare my feelings. I feel bad, shuttling him between his mom and me, week in and week out.”

  “I was about Teddy’s age when my folks split up. And I absolutely did not think we were better off. Sorry, but I didn’t. Just talking from the kid’s perspective.”

  “Does that mean he’s going to turn out all twisted?”

  “Like me?”

  “That’s not what I meant. Geez—”

  “I’m giving you a hard time. And now that I look back on the situation, I remember arguments that struck like lightning. I would hide out in
my room, feeling sick to my stomach. But it was my family, and I wanted it to stay intact.” She briefly touched his arm. “This isn’t helpful, is it? I wish I could tell you we all came through unscathed. But I felt . . . scathed. Is that a word? Anyway, we got ourselves sorted out.”

  Teddy and his two buddies were playing some rough-and-tumble chase game now, wielding sticks like broadswords. They were engaged in some kind of fake combat, treating the large climbing gym like enemy territory. Celia tended to gripe about boisterous play, warning Fletcher that it would make their son aggressive. Fletcher disagreed. Teddy knew—and had always known—the difference between playing rough and bullying.

  Annie was studying Teddy and his friends with a soft-eyed thoughtfulness.

  “What’s that smile?” she asked.

  “I’m waiting for you to tell me the boys are getting too rough.”

  “They’ll let you know—loudly—when it stops being fun.” She laughed at their clumsy jousting.

  His smile lingered. It was damn nice, talking to someone who didn’t sit on edge all the time, ready to jump in and start managing Teddy. He was amazed at how comfortable he felt with her. How drawn he was to her. A powerful urge to touch her overtook him. Maybe just take her hand. He didn’t, though. This was new. He didn’t actually know what this was. A feeling. A memory. He only knew it was fragile and tenuous.

  “We’re gonna go shoot some hoops,” Teddy yelled. Without waiting for an answer, he and his friends raced for the basketball court.

  “Now what are you thinking?” he asked her, because suddenly her gaze had drifted far away at something he couldn’t see.

  “I was pregnant,” she said very quietly, staring straight ahead.

  Damn. He’d been expecting some other quirky piece of trivia to come out of her, like how the heart of a shrimp was in its head. “Oh,” he said. What the hell else did a guy say to that?

  “I lost it due to the accident.” She spoke even more softly, still keeping her gaze distant and unwavering.