Mating for Life

by Marissa Stapley

  Romy rolled over. Skating? she mouthed.

  “Skating,” the man repeated, the man who was her father. “Well, I didn’t bring my skates . . .”

  “You can rent them at the rink. Unless you don’t skate. In which case I suppose we could—” But she suddenly wanted to skate. It seemed like the perfect option. Skating with my father.

  “No, I skate. My sons and I—” He stopped for a second and she found herself wincing. “We skate quite often. They like to play hockey.”

  My sons and I. “I, ah . . .” This was it. This was the problem. This was why she hadn’t been able to walk into the coffee shop and why she now was telling him that he needed to meet her at the ice rink in front of city hall the next day, where they would skate together, the three of them, and she wouldn’t have to sit and stare at him from across a table. Because he had a whole other life, and she wasn’t a part of it. There were sons, half brothers who really weren’t and never would be her family. “You poor little thing,” her mother’s friends had said. “Now you’ll have no one.” Or she wouldn’t, and perhaps the knowing would be more painful.

  • • •

  Samira still remembered the moment in life when she realized she was supposed to have a father, that it wasn’t quite normal that she and Marta were alone. She was in kindergarten, and it was her second day, and she and a group of girls were playing “family.” “You have to be the papa, Samira,” said a little girl named Pia, the leader of the small group of girls. “The papa?” Samira repeated. And it wasn’t that she didn’t know what a papa was. But at that moment she didn’t know who a papa was, had no idea how a papa would behave, and she stood staring at Pia and wishing she could go home to her mother and ask her.

  At the end of the day, she did. “Do I have a papa?” were the first words out of her mouth when Marta picked her up in the schoolyard. Marta frowned and looked around. “Did someone say something to you?” she asked. Samira shook her head. Marta took her hand and led her down the street. She was silent, and Samira waited, and several moments later Marta said, “You don’t have a papa, Samira. You just have me, but it’s all right. I’m your mama and your papa.”

  Then, when Samira was eleven, she said to Marta, “You told me once I had no father, but how can that be true?” She’d learned about it in school by now. And she didn’t say papa anymore. She wasn’t a baby. “Everyone has a father. It’s not possible that I don’t have one.”

  “You’re right,” Marta said. “You do have a father. But he lives far away and you’ll probably never meet him.” Perhaps an outsider would think Marta was being callous, but she was simply a frank and practical woman. Much later, when Samira was a teenager, she said to her, “I had never planned to hide it from you. But I suppose I never found a proper way to explain it, did I?”

  “Who was he?” Samira had asked. She was fourteen and a half now. She remembered that her heart was pounding and her hands were sweating but she was trying hard to act like it was nothing.

  “He was a young man I met when I was working at your aunt’s hostel for the summer.”

  “You used to work there, too?”

  Marta nodded. “Yes. I worked at the front desk, and I cleaned the kitchen twice a day. One afternoon, I went into the kitchen and he was there with a friend and they had some horrible chunk of beef they’d gotten from a butcher who should have given it to them for free, and they were trying to make tafelspitz.” She smiled at the memory and Samira’s palms felt less sweaty. “I took pity on them and helped them, mostly because I had never seen any young men like that trying to make anything other than cheese sandwiches or pasta or maybe hamburgers. And they invited me to join them for dinner and I finished my shift and we sat on the back terrace and drank wine and . . .” She tucked her dark blond hair behind her ears. “And he stayed for a while. For that whole summer. His friend continued traveling, went to Hungary, I think, but Tim stayed.”

  “Tim?” She had said it the same way Romy had, drawing it out, making it significant.

  Marta nodded.

  “And then what?”

  “And then he ran out of money, and he had to go home.”

  “Oh.” Samira truly didn’t know what to say. Finally: “Did he know you were pregnant?”

  “I didn’t even know at the time. Listen, he was nice. I really, really liked him. But I knew two things: When I did find out I was pregnant, I knew I wanted you. And I also knew I didn’t want to be with him just because I was pregnant. So I let him be, and I never regretted it.”

  After that, there was really nothing else Samira could say. She pushed the idea of a father from her mind, and, most of the time, found it easy to do so. I’m your mama and your papa. It was true. Marta was.

  Then finally, one day, when she was nearly sixteen and had had her heart broken for the first time, Samira asked Marta, as her mother gave her tea and rubbed her back, if she had loved her father. Marta looked mildly surprised. Then she said, “I never really got the chance to find out. One thing: I’ll always be grateful to him. That I can tell you. I see some good things in you that don’t come from me, like how driven you are, how ambitious and dependable, and I’m grateful to him for those things—and for you.”

  “What about when he left? When he ran out of money and had to go back. Were you sad?”

  “Of course I was. I cried at the train station. I can still remember his face in the window.”

  For some reason, this made Samira feel exponentially better. She had wiped away her tears and finished her tea.

  You did love him, in your way.

  She had never asked any more questions about this Tim person.

  • • •

  Now Samira and Tim made arrangements and she gave him her cell phone number so there would be no backing out of her plan, then hung up the phone.

  “Skating? In front of city hall? Really? And you thought Café Central was touristy?” Romy said.

  “I know. I know. But can you come? Please?”

  “Of course I can come.” She shook her head. “But I warn you, Sam. This kind of stuff makes me nervous. I bet I’m going to start to babble. I’m going to be worse than you.”

  “It’s fine, we’ll be skating, how much can you possibly babble while we’re skating?”

  “A lot. How about this? If things seem to be going well, I’ll pretend my skates don’t fit or I’m hurt and I’ll go sit on the sidelines?”

  “Let’s just wait and see what happens. Thank you for doing this with me. You’re a good friend.” And Samira stretched out on her single bed and soon fell asleep.

  • • •

  They skated in wide circles. Because she was beside him and because she had to watch where she was going, she couldn’t look at him and study his face. Romy did indeed pretend to hurt her ankle, then sat on a bench and played with her phone, although Samira suspected she was trying to listen to what they were saying every time she and Tim skated past. They weren’t saying much, though. Samira had dozens of questions—about what her mother was like when she was young, about what New York City was like, and about those boys he had mentioned, her half brothers—if they were any good at hockey, for example. She wanted to picture them. But how could she say any of this? She was too nervous. They both were. It felt strangely like a first date. When he had arrived at the rink, he had handed her a small wrapped gift. “Because Christmas is next week,” he had said. She had wondered if she was supposed to open it. She didn’t. She put it in her backpack.

  Her toes started to get numb. Her skates were too small. They had belonged to her mother. “Your feet are bigger than mine,” Marta would say. “That means you’re going to be taller.” But Samira had ended up about the same height and size, which meant that they had often traded clothes. Still, Samira had given most of her mother’s clothes away to charity, even the ones she had coveted while her mother was still alive. Sh
e often regretted this. Once, she had seen a woman in a dark green peacoat similar to one her mother had owned and had imagined it really was her mother’s jacket.

  “How do you like Vienna?” she asked Tim, in an attempt to make conversation.

  “Oh, it’s gorgeous. Especially in winter. I’ve never seen it in winter.”

  “That’s right, when you were here it was . . .”

  “Summer,” he said. “When I was here and I met your mother, it was summer.” That was the closest they had come to talking about any of it. They skated around the rink one more time. She noticed that the spot on the bench where Romy had been sitting was empty, and she felt a little bit grateful and a little bit nervous. She opened her mouth, but Tim spoke first.

  “I’m not going to lie to you and say that your mother was the great love of my life, Samira, but I did care for her. I have always had fond memories of her. She was a beautiful young woman, and you look just like her. She was beautiful on the inside, too. Smart. Kind. Practical. I want you to know that I have no excuse for the fact that I never sought you out. I wasn’t sure what to do—it’s not an excuse, and you probably know this: Marta was very strong and forthright and just . . . if I’d had any doubt that she’d be able to take care of you on her own . . .”

  “She took great care of me,” Samira said firmly. “We never needed anyone else.”

  “But still,” said Tim. “I’m still sorry I wasn’t around. I hope that maybe one day you can forgive me.”

  They skated twice more around the rink before Samira spoke again. “I’m not mad at you,” she said. “I never was.”

  They both slowed until they were standing on the ice beside each other.

  “I think I’ve had enough skating,” Samira said.

  He seemed not to want their outing to be over. “How about you go and open that present I brought you?” They went back to the bench and she reached into her backpack and unearthed the small parcel. Under the paper, she found a photograph of her mother in a small silver frame that felt heavy and expensive. The photo was sepia and her mother was young, looking away from the camera at someone else, her mouth open, talking or laughing, her hand up, moving through the air, a blur. She had always used her hands when she talked. Samira ran her cold finger over the glass. Then she put the framed photo in her bag and started to cry.

  Tim hesitated. Then he reached across what seemed like a very large divide but was in fact only about a foot or so of space, and her face landed on his shoulder.

  At one point he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to her and she thought, My father is the sort of man who has handkerchiefs on his person at all times. At another point, she said to him, “I don’t cry very often,” and hoped that this provided some sort of explanation for why she had been crying into his shoulder for so long. Eventually she lifted her head and looked down at the shoulder of his jacket and saw the marks of her tears there and forced herself to stop. He looked down at the tear marks, too, and then at her. This is your father, she thought as she stared up at him. She realized she had hoped that if she found him, if he came, it might help to fill the hole her mother’s death had left. I’m your mama and your papa, Marta had said.

  But simply finding that long-lost papa didn’t make the loss of Marta feel any smaller.

  “I really miss her,” she said to him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “But you know that I would, right? If there was anything you needed, you know that I would do it, or at least try?”

  And suddenly there it was. A very slight parting of the waves of her grief. But you know that I would, right?

  “Thank you, Tim,” she said.

  12

  Red-Tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)

  The red-tailed hawk is generally a monogamous bird, often pairing for life or at least for many years. During courtship, the male and female fly in wide circles while uttering shrill cries. The male will dive steeply, then climb again, then repeat, showing off for his potential mate. He will sometimes also grasp her talons briefly with his own, as though trying to hold her hands.

  Liane was lying on the couch in the living room of Laurence’s town house, looking up at the ceiling and around at the bookshelves, the colors—taupes and navies; the style was manly, and yet also there was a slight feminine touch: he had once lived here with his wife and daughters and she was okay with that, not being the jealous type. At least she hoped.

  The stereo was on. The music, much like his reading taste, was mostly from the sixties and seventies: Arlo Guthrie, Neil Young, Bob Dylan. He had asked her what she liked and she had said, “I like listening to the music that makes you happy.” She closed her eyes for a moment and then he was there, holding two glasses of wine. “What are you smiling about?” he said.

  “I was smiling?”

  “You were. You were lying there with your eyes closed, smiling.”

  “Then I must have been smiling about you,” she said.

  He smiled. “I’m smiling about you, too,” he said.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you, too.”

  The song changed to “Sundown” by Gordon Lightfoot and he said, as she knew he would, “I love this song.” She was growing to know the songs he would say he loved, growing to appreciate how important music was to him, growing to love the way he would always, always tell her why he liked a song. Mostly it was because of a line, a certain lyric that appealed to the writer in him. “This part, this part,” he was saying now. “‘Sometimes I think it’s a shame, when I get feeling better, when I’m feeling no pain.’ That’s the line. It always used to make me think about how maybe you can’t create something beautiful unless you’re suffering.” Now he put down the wineglasses, and ran his hand along the side of her body and up to her face. “I’ll probably never write anything good ever again, because I’m so happy. And I’m fine with that.”

  “Have I destroyed your literary career?”

  “Can you be happy being married to a librarian?”

  Being married to. They hadn’t actually talked about getting married—they’d only been together for five months—but sometimes it came up, casually, in moments like these. And Liane would thrill silently but try not to analyze it too much. Really, the only thing she cared about was being with him, and she was with him, right that very second, and she would be with him, for as long as they—

  They were kissing, but the slamming of the front door, hard, twice, caused them to jump apart, and Laurence spilled one of the glasses of wine. “Shit.”

  Now, in all the commotion, they could hear Beatrice upstairs crying. “Shit,” he said again. And then Isabel was in the kitchen, lifting the lid of the pasta sauce, sticking her finger in. “Ouch! That’s hot.”

  “Iz, you’ve woken your sister,” Laurence said. Liane was now sitting, then standing, not sure what to do with herself. Laurence returned to the living room with a bunch of paper towels, and Isabel followed him, approaching him and kissing him on the cheek. “Hi, Daddy,” she said. “Sorry. I just didn’t want to walk in on anything, so I decided to be as loud as possible.” And she gave Liane a look. Or maybe she didn’t. Be nice, be nice.

  “Hi,” Liane said, feeling awkward. Beatrice was now howling, “Moooommmmmy.” It made Liane feel awful, out of place. Events like this were the chief reason she didn’t truly like to come over during weeks that Laurence had the girls—but of course she never lasted in her resolve. Neither of them could stand to be apart for more than a day or two, so a week was unthinkable.

  Laurence’s hands were full of sopping paper towels. “Coming, Bea!” he shouted. “Daddy’s here, coming!”

  “I’ll finish dinner,” Liane said, wanting to feel useful.

  “It’s okay, it’s done, we’ll eat when I come
back down. Just let me finish cleaning this up.”

  “I’ll finish, you go.”

  “Really, I can do it.”

  “It smells good, Daddy,” Isabel said.

  Liane excused herself and went to the first-floor powder room, where she splashed cold water on her face because it had turned red.

  Back in the living room, she found Isabel sitting on the couch. She’d turned off Gordon Lightfoot and was flicking aimlessly through the television channels. She was wearing a tight Decemberists T-shirt and low-slung jeans and she still had her shoes on and her feet were on the fabric.

  “Hey,” Liane said.

  “Hey,” Isabel replied, still staring at the television. It was an infomercial for a Shammy. “That would have cleaned up that wine my dad spilled pretty good. Look, they’re even doing a demo with wine.”

  Liane nodded. “Yeah, for sure,” she said, thinking that it was strange that whenever she tried to talk to Isabel she was reduced from being a PhD graduate to sounding like a monosyllabic teenager. “So, uh, what did you get up to tonight?” Isabel’s eyebrows shot up and she looked at Liane sideways.

  “I told my dad where I was,” she said. “I was with Mykayla. We went to Starbucks. And now I’m here.”

  “Yeah, great, cool,” Liane said, trying to indicate that she wasn’t trying to grill her but knowing she just sounded dumb. She had the sudden urge to go home, make tea and toast, get into bed, and read magazines.

  But then Laurence was at the bottom of the stairs and she looked over at him and experienced that shock of recognition that happened almost every time he entered a room. You. There you are. The One.

  “There,” he said. “She’s back to sleep. Iz, maybe next time you come in the house, even if you’re afraid you might interrupt something, you can be a little more quiet?”