One Week In December

by Holly Chamberlin

  And suddenly Becca knew, deep down, knew without a doubt, that it would be a crime to shatter the bond she was witnessing.

  It would be a crime against every one of the Rowans.

  Time marched on. At the age of sixteen, Becca herself had given birth. Now Rain, at sixteen, was capable of bringing new life into the world. The reality was that time passed; no matter who was Rain’s acknowledged mother, Rain would move away from her. Even if she were to come to understand and accept that Becca, not Naomi, was her birth mother, she would still be off on her own path before long. It was inevitable that everyone moved forward and that all ties loosened even as they endured. Love, it could be said, was elastic.

  And it had a cost. Sometimes it seemed a cost too high to meet. But you just had to pay it, because a life without love was simply not worth living.

  Suddenly, Naomi turned her head and saw Becca at the door. She smiled, her expression questioning but not unkind or suspicious.

  “I’m sorry,” Becca whispered, already beginning to tiptoe away.

  Once back in the den, Becca, suddenly exhausted, stretched out on the lumpy couch and pulled a heavy blanket up to her chin.

  She used to think that the stupidest thing she had ever done was getting pregnant at sixteen, and the smartest, the best thing she had ever done was going through with the pregnancy. Well, she still thought that giving birth to Rain was the best and most beautiful thing she had accomplished. But now she was beginning to think that the stupidest—the most selfish—thing she had ever done was threaten to destroy her family—each and every one of them—with the truth.

  The truth. What was the truth in this situation? The truth was that Becca loved her daughter. That was the biggest and the best truth. Becca loved Rain. That should be enough.

  And Becca now knew something she hadn’t really known only days earlier. She knew that even if Rain were to be told the truth about her parentage, that truth would never erase the fact of the relationship that had existed between Rain and Naomi for sixteen years. Today’s truth didn’t invalidate yesterday’s reality. It might taint it, but it could never erase it entirely.

  No. To attempt to consume her daughter, to attempt to assume her daughter in the way she had been planning to would be, as Olivia would say, a form of madness. To attempt to force her into becoming a best friend would be wrong.

  And really, Becca thought now, hadn’t she been one of the lucky ones? She’d read stories and seen movies about women who had given up a baby for adoption at birth, women who’d never seen or who had only glimpsed their children before they became the children of other mothers. She’d read how years later, so many of those women were filled with regret and longing, how many of them were desperate for contact with those babies, for assurance that they had grown and thrived. She’d read how so many women were never, ever to know the fate of their children.

  But Becca had had the opportunity not only to observe the baby she had given up at birth but also to interact with her, to love her face-to-face. If that was sometimes painful because it was done in the guise of an aunt and not a mother, so be it. In the end it was a hell of a lot better situation than it might have been. What if David and Naomi hadn’t offered to raise Rain as their own? What then? Becca might never have had the privilege of watching her little girl grow into a young woman.

  Becca threw off the blanket and sat up. She had a sudden, burning need to see Alex, and she wasn’t at all sure why. She had never been to his house or studio, though he’d given her directions of a sort the morning she’d run into him after breakfast. Was it really only days ago that Becca had sworn she’d never have an intention to pay her parents’ neighbor a visit?

  Now the thought of just showing up on his doorstep scared her a bit. She wondered what sort of reception she would receive. She considered calling ahead but didn’t want to ask her mother for his phone number. God knows what sort of ideas her mother might get, matchmaker that she was. Besides, she hadn’t seen her mother for a while; she might be off running an errand or stalking through the snowy woods with Hank.

  Becca wanted to act now. She bundled up in her sweaters and coat. In the hall she pulled on the heavy boots that now seemed like the smartest investment she’d made in some time. And once again she ventured out into the Kently winter.

  43

  Olivia watched from the window of the room she shared with James as Becca, dressed in so many layers of clothing she looked almost unrecognizable as a human, trudged off in the direction of the neighbor’s house and studio. Vaguely she wondered why her sister was visiting Alex—if that’s what she was doing—but the thought vanished as quickly as it had come.

  Olivia turned away from the window. Nothing but her own sorrowful predicament concerned her right then. She had been taken entirely by surprise earlier that day. Never in a million years would she have expected James to confront her the way he had. Never. And yet . . . why hadn’t she seen this coming?

  The cup of tea her sister Lily had made her sat untouched on the dresser. Olivia felt sick. She felt overwhelmed. She felt confused.

  For too long now she had been fighting against the feelings of darkness and despair, burying herself in work and in an obsession with family history, frantically moving, afraid that if she stopped for one moment, she would be consumed by the sadness that was welling deep inside her, just waiting for one moment of inattention on her part to spring forward and drown her.

  When had it all begun? Olivia knew when. The sadness had come when she had finally been forced to let go of the hope for a biological child of her own.

  Olivia began to pace the small room. She felt that no one understood the depth or the nature of her loss, not even James, though he did try to be empathetic. In spite of her despair, she couldn’t deny that James had tried to be of help.

  And there was no one else to whom Olivia could turn. Who else could empathize? Her mother’s experience was too alien to permit real understanding. She had given birth to four children of her own; she had three grandchildren and quite possibly could be given more. Besides, Olivia thought, somewhat bitterly, her mother was the type to resort to a clichéd pep talk rather than engage with anyone on a meaningful level. Maybe that was an unfair judgment, but that was the way Olivia saw it.

  And her grandmother . . . Olivia shook her head though no one was there to witness the dismissive gesture. She had never been particularly close to her grandmother. Lily was the favorite there. And that was fine. Really. If her grandmother wanted to play favorites with Lily, like her mother had done with David . . .

  Olivia paced more quickly. She knew that some might argue that she had missed an opportunity for understanding and friendship with one or more of the women she had met during the exhausting years spent visiting fertility clinics. But for Olivia, that hadn’t been an option. When it was all over, when the final negative verdict had been delivered, she had wanted nothing to do with any of the women she’d met. When it was all over, she’d given up on finding emotional health and friendship at support groups where other women struggling to get pregnant or to sustain their pregnancies shared their trials and tribulations.

  And sometimes, their triumphs. The hard-won triumphs had been the most difficult for Olivia to bear. She knew that she should derive some hope for her own situation from the fact of another’s success. She knew that as a decent person she should feel glad for another’s achievement of happiness. But all she had ever felt was bitter and angry and jealous.

  Olivia was facing the dresser. On top of it sat one of the notebooks she used for recording the contents of her grandmother’s attic. The blue notebook was for clothing and other linens, like tablecloths or draperies. The red notebook was for furniture and appliances, of which there were disappointingly few. The green notebook was for toys—like the doll Becca had almost broken the other day!—and other, miscellaneous items.

  Olivia abruptly stopped pacing and stared at the notebook. Why was the accumulation of past things, the accum
ulation of facts, and names, and dates so awfully important to her? How had they become so important?

  It had started with a simple curiosity. What had her ancestors looked like? Did she inherit her great-grandmother’s hair color or her great-uncle’s interest in business? And then, imperceptibly, her interest had grown. She bought books on ancestor research. She contacted the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Utah for access to their vast stores of genealogical information. She joined chat rooms and spent hours each evening communicating online with other people who shared her interest in the past. She began to catalogue each and every bit of her family’s possessions in order to create her own detailed archive.

  She hadn’t seen a movie in over a year. She hadn’t been out with any of her friends for a lunch or a dinner in months.

  Olivia sank onto the edge of the bed. If she could be totally honest with herself—and right at that moment it seemed as if she could be—she was tired of the control the search for things past had over her. For some time she had been feeling as if she was operating under a compulsion, something she simply could not command. What had once been a pleasurable pasttime was now—an addiction.

  Olivia was startled by the thought. Could it be? Was this what it was like to be addicted to something, to need it and yet at the same time to be repulsed by it—rather, repulsed by the need for it?

  James. The memory of James’s face as he’d left their room earlier came to Olivia now and it saddened her deeply. He had looked so—miserable.

  The awful fact was that she had been spending so much time avoiding a confrontation with her own deep unhappiness, largely by redirecting her energies into her research, that she’d become blind to the obvious unhappiness of her husband, the person who had vowed to stay by her side for better or worse, through sickness and in health. . . .

  The person who now wanted to break that vow. Or, at least, to put that vow on hold. She couldn’t even be mad at him. She had been, briefly, when he’d talked about a separation. . . but now . . . No. How could she be mad at someone for trying to help her—and for trying to save himself?

  She knew there was no other woman in James’s life. She also knew that he could hardly be blamed for finding love elsewhere if their marriage continued on in the cold and strained way it was going, if it continued on in the alienating way she’d been directing it.

  Oh, what was wrong with her!

  Olivia felt tears come to her eyes. She hadn’t cried in what seemed like years. Now the tears came freely and though Olivia had never felt so desolate, she was aware on some deep level that the tears were those of relief as well as of pain.

  She knew that she needed help. And she knew, finally, that she very much needed James, in whatever way she could have him—in whatever way he would have her.

  Olivia looked around the room for her bag. It was on the floor by her side of the bed. She dug around in it until she found the small notebook she kept there. The thin, lined paper was nothing like the thick, beautiful paper on which James had written his Christmas letter to her, but it would have to do. On a clean page, Olivia wrote three simple words to her husband. She felt that her message was complete. And she hoped he thought so, too.

  44

  Alex had been right. His house was not as large or as pretty—at least on the outside—as her parents’ house. There were similarities, of course, the houses having been built around the same time and, quite possibly, by some of the same people. Like the Rowans’ house, Alex’s had two stories, an attic, and four-over-four windows. From what Becca could tell, no additions had been added over time. A quick peek in a window allowed her to see that the ceilings were lower than those in her parents’ home. Beyond that detail she couldn’t tell much else. Sections of the exterior paint were peeling, and the small front porch, which might not have been original to the house, looked slightly lopsided. Still, Becca smiled to see a simple but elegant pine wreath on the house’s front door. Maybe Alex was just very busy and not negligent about home repair.

  Becca went around the house to the old barn. This, too, was smaller than her parents’ barn, and the exterior was not as well kept. Becca knocked loudly on the weathered wooden door.

  “Come in!” a voice boomed.

  She pushed open the door just a bit—it was heavier than she had imagined it would be—and peered inside. “Are you busy?” she asked.

  Alex was bent over a long wooden trestle table, but he looked up at her briefly. “I am busy but I can talk. Or listen. If you don’t mind my working while I do it.”

  “No, of course not,” she said. “Work is important.”

  Becca came all the way into the barn and closed the door behind her.

  “Yes, it is,” Alex was saying. “And so are deadlines. I’m afraid I’ve been dragging my feet with this commission. But I need the money and, more importantly, I made a promise so—here I am.”

  It was cold in Alex’s studio. Colder than it should be, Becca thought, given the working woodstove and the fiberglass “batts” stapled to the walls. (She had learned a lot during the construction of her condo and the other condos in the building.) She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.

  “Sorry about the cold,” he said, noting her discomfort. “I try to keep my heating costs as low as possible. Of course, I can’t go without heat out here entirely. I’d never be able to hold a gouge, even with work gloves.”

  Alex held up one work-gloved hand, in which he held the gouge, as if to prove his point. Hs jeans were splattered with paint and messily tucked into partially laced work boots. A long red scarf was wound several times around his neck, the ends tucked into his heavy corduroy jacket to keep them out of the way of his work.

  “I like your wreath,” Becca said, suddenly unsure of what she had come here to say—if anything. “The one on the front door.”

  “Thanks. Free materials all around, you know. And yes, I know the house needs repainting. It’s happening next spring.”

  Becca smiled. “And a new porch?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s been rotting away since I bought the place three years ago. At least the plumbing is intact. Otherwise I’d have to call a plumber, and they can be pretty expensive.”

  “You’re no good with a plunger?”

  Alex just grinned.

  Becca pointed to the trestle table on which sat a piece of wood (Becca didn’t know which kind), which was screwed to the table, and a variety of tools (few of which she recognized). “What is it?” she asked. “I mean, what are you making?”

  “It’s going to be a bird. Rather, a representation of a bird, for a private client. It’s a pay-the-bills kind of job, not something I’m particularly enjoying but . . .”

  Yes, thought Becca. I know all about pay-the-bills kinds of jobs. And about the clients—some bearable, others not so bearable—who made them possible.

  “Make yourself at home,” Alex said. “I’ll be able to be a better host once I finish this step. It’s still early in the process. . . .”

  Arms folded across her chest against the cold and damp of the studio, Becca strolled around the old barn. Against one wall stood a large wooden cabinet of no particular style; Becca thought it looked as if it had been cobbled together long ago, maybe by the former owner of the house. On its open shelves were several books—mostly spy novels, Becca noted; a stack of art-related magazines from years earlier; a can of paintbrushes of various sizes; a vase of pussy willows in fuzzy water that should have been changed some time ago; and an old transistor radio of the sort Becca remembered her father having kept from his childhood.

  Becca moved on, interested in her finds. In one corner of the studio, laid out on the floor, Becca counted five copper weather vanes, including one, fairly traditional in style, that depicted a running horse, and another more quirky one that depicted a Halloween-style witch, complete with beaked nose and high, pointy hat, soaring on her broom. It made Becca smile to think about who might choose such a weather vane as
a year-round decoration, and as a symbol of her home.

  An oil painting—at least, Becca thought the painting was done in oil—depicting what looked like the rocky Maine shore during a summer storm was propped on a wooden easel near the collection of weather vanes. Becca didn’t know a lot about painting, but she thought that this one was rather good. She felt almost as if she were right there on the blasted shore, awed by the storm-tossed sea, her skin prickled with drops of salt water.

  A wheelbarrow held a pile of what looked like giant wooden spools. Becca made a mental note to ask Alex what exactly they were or had been used for. On another table were displayed several chunks of wood of various types and sizes. From the roof hung a collection of old tools used in farming; Becca recognized the tools as such but had no idea what exactly they were used for. A collection of cast-iron horses and buggies stood in a row on a shelf close to the door through which she’d entered the old barn-turned-artist’s-workspace.

  Alex’s studio was a hodgepodge of items, random but not without coherence—if that made any sense. And Becca couldn’t help but note the vast difference between Alex’s personal space—his studio, yes, and not his living quarters; she wondered what they would be like—and her own. Alex’s studio was so . . . personal. It was quirky and, she guessed, informative about his personality, his likes and tastes and preferences. While her home . . . Well, her home was not. She’d furnished her new, high-end condo on Washington Avenue entirely from a Pottery Barn catalogue. Everything, from the furniture to the framed art on the walls, was preselected by the Pottery Barn buyers. It could be said that yes, Becca had chosen particular pieces from their inventory, but still . . . There were no tokens of travel on an end table, no knickknacks spotted at a flea market, no collections of seashells or ceramic frogs or glass figurines. The only items that betrayed Becca Rowan’s presence in the apartment and not the presence of some other woman were several photographs of Rain. And, out of a sense of family duty, a few photographs of the twins, school pictures that Naomi had sent, thinking that Becca would actually want them.