Give, a novel

by Erica Carpenter Witsell

  CHAPTER 11

  Len

  That night, as Len read the girls their good-night books, he was still seething with irritation. How could Laurel have allowed it? Surely most mothers would not have slept through all of that. Her daughter leaving the house, and then some stranger bringing her back again? What if she had crossed the street? What if someone had taken her? How could Laurel have taken a nap with two kids in the house and the front door left open? What if there had been an intruder?

  “I’m sorry,” Laurel had said, again and again. “I was just so tired. I can’t believe I didn’t wake up either.”

  But Len would not, could not believe it. “You were drinking, weren’t you? You were passed out.”

  “No.”

  “Laurel, you were shit-faced when I got home this evening.”

  “I’d had one drink. You’d want one, too, after all that. It was awful.”

  “Oh, sure. It was awful. But then you send them to the park with the babysitter? Come on, Laurel.”

  “I was shaken. I didn’t trust myself. And I didn’t send them—Sarah offered.”

  It had gone on and on like that, Len irate, Laurel in tears, until at last he could stand no more of it and had gone into the living room to watch the end of Sesame Street with the girls. Afterwards, they had ordered pizza, and Len had tried to act as if nothing were the matter, for his daughters’ sakes. He gave them their baths and found their pajamas, then sat on the edge of Jessie’s bed with Emma on his lap and Jessie beside him.

  “Daddy,” Jessie said accusingly when they were halfway through the second book. “You read that part already. Emma, stop it.”

  For Emma, as always, was trying to turn the page. Jessie tried to push her sister’s chubby hands away. “Daddy, make her stop. We’re not done.”

  “She doesn’t understand, Jess. She’s just a baby. She likes turning the pages. She thinks, ‘Book, oh goodie, pages to turn.’”

  Jessie giggled a little at that, but she kept her hand on the page, holding it open. “Just finish it, Daddy.”

  He started to read again, but after a moment, Jessie interrupted.

  “Is Sarah coming tomorrow?”

  Len’s stomach fell. What had Jessie overheard? How much had she understood? He shook his head sadly, bracing himself for his daughter’s disappointment.

  “No, sweetheart. She’s not going to be able to come . . . for a while.” It was a lie; he suspected that Jessie would know it was a lie. But he couldn’t help himself. How could he say, No, she’s never coming back?

  Jessie said nothing for several moments, and Len let Emma turn the pages.

  “Don’t worry, Jess,” he said, at last. “We’ll find a new babysitter . . .”

  But Jessie cut him off. “That man was scary.”

  Len’s heart stopped. Had there been an intruder? What else had Laurel slept through?

  “What man?” he asked, trying to keep his voice calm.

  “The scary man.”

  Len’s stomach plummeted. Automatically, he put his arm around Jessie, pulling her against him.

  “What scary man, Jess?” he said. “Who are you talking about?”

  “The scary man in Mommy’s room.”

  “There was a man in Mommy’s room?” As soon as the words were out, they ceased to be a question. There was a man in Mommy’s room.

  Jessie nodded.

  “Did Mommy see the man, too?” he asked needlessly. Laurel had not slept through an intruder. She had invited him. To their house. While Len was at work, and their daughters napped. Heat coursed through him. His skin burned, and the hand that still held the book began to shake.

  Jessie was nodding, answering his question. “Sarah seed him. Mommy seed him. I seed him. Emma seed him.” Jessie, looking down at the book, noticed his trembling hand.

  “Daddy, are you scared?” she asked. “Is that man coming back?”

  Len steadied his hand. “No, I’m not scared, Jessie.” He drew in a deep breath. “And no, that man is not going to come back.”

  There was a brief silence. Then Jessie wriggled out from under his arm and pried the book out of Emma’s hands. One by one, she flipped the pages back to where they’d been and settled against his side.

  “Daddy read the book now?” she said.

  Len read on, not registering a single word. He laid Emma in her crib and kissed both his daughters good night. Only as he reached for the cord to turn off their light did he notice that his hand was trembling again. He had told Jessie that he was not scared, and he had believed it to be true: his hands shook not from fear but from anger. And yet, he was scared. There had been a man in Mommy’s room, his daughter had told him, and in that instant, he had understood. All these months that he had breathed easier, thinking Laurel was happy. Oh, what a fool he had been! He had been convinced it was the volunteering that had made a differ-ence. Week after week, he had watched Laurel’s spirits rise, and never once had he begrudged her the Saturday mornings she spent away from home.

  To every problem, there is a solution: this had always been his mantra. But not now. Not here. He had tried to fix this before, and look where it had brought him. His future had become a vast, blank void, and it terrified him.

  And that man . . . Oh God. Len’s stomach turned to think of him, for he would come back, wouldn’t he? For a moment, the world seemed to spin wildly outside of his control. Laurel would do what she wanted; she always had. And at that thought, the heat of his fury rose in him. It propelled him out of his daughters’ room, the door clicking closed quietly behind him, down the hall, and into the kitchen, where Laurel sat at the kitchen table, a book open before her, a glass of wine in hand.

  “This is over,” Len said, his heart pounding.

  “Oh!” Laurel said. She looked up at him and clutched at her glass, as if that was what he meant. Her drink, her drinking: over. The gesture disgusted him. But for his daughters in the other room, on the precipice of sleep, he would have taken the glass out of her hand and hurled it at the floor. Instead, he said again, “This is over,” and at “this,” he traced a little arc with his chin, a gesture that took in the whole of their dingy kitchen but meant all of it: the house, their family, their lives together.

  “Oh, Len,” Laurel began, understanding dawning. “I promise you . . . it won’t happen again.”

  Len made a low growl of disgust in the back of his throat.

  “Jessie told me about ‘the man,’ Laurel. ‘The scary man in Mommy’s room’ is what she said.”

  Laurel’s eyes widened. “Oh,” she said again. And then she started to cry.

  “For God’s sake, Laurel. Spare me.” Len gave a little shudder, and then he left the kitchen and stormed out the front door.

  As soon as Len reached the sidewalk, he began to run. His heart still pounded in his chest, but as he ran the awful pressure of it eased. Sweat rose on his skin and cooled immediately in the brisk air. The furious heat that had coursed through him prickled in his pores, then dissipated into the April night. Len ran down three empty blocks and passed the park, its rusted structures standing like lonely skeletons in the pale moonlight. Only when he had run out of his neighborhood did his steps slow to a walk. And as he walked, an unexpected exhilaration filled the space inside him that his rage and his fear had made. It was over. He would never have to deal with Laurel again, not with her drinking, nor her selfishness. Not with her incorrigible laziness nor her saccharine tears. It was over, at last. He was free.

  As he walked, Len’s feet tapped out the steady rhythm of the words on the sidewalk: It’s over. It’s over. It’s over. Len emptied his mind of everything but those words, but by the time he had walked two blocks to their persistent refrain, he had begun to understand that, like everything else he had said that evening, they were not true. He had told Jessie he was not scared, when he was terrified. He had assured her that the scary man would not come back, when Len knew that he would. And he could walk clear across town to the beat of It�
�s over, each step an echo of his proclamation, but they would never, could never be true. The sky, which had seemed so immense above him as he ran away from his house, now pressed down on him. Len let out his breath, turned on his heel, and walked slowly home.

  Except for the soft creak of the door as he eased it opened, the house was silent when he slipped inside. He did not pause as he strode down the narrow hallway. In his daughters’ room, he swept one arm over the rug, clearing away the clutter of stuffed animals and toys. Then he lay down on his back in the space he had made on the floor. When he reached out his arms, one hand touched the base of Jessie’s bed, the other found a leg of Emma’s crib. He curled his fingers around it. Len lay like that for a long time, arms outstretched, and at last he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 12

  Len

  “Hello?”

  “Margie. It’s me—” Len began at once, forgetting that she would not hear him.

  “You have a collect call from Len Walters,” the operator interrupted him. “Will you accept the charges?”

  “What? Yes. Of course.”

  “Please hold the line.” There was a click as the operator hung up.

  “Lenny? Are you there? What’s happened?”

  “Hello, Margie.”

  “Lenny, what is it? Is it one of the girls?”

  “No. No,” he said quickly, to reassure her. “They’re both fine.”

  “Then why are you calling collect? I mean, I don’t mind but . . .”

  Len understood her agitation; he had called her collect only twice before, each time from the same hospital pay phone after the birth of Jessie, then Emma. Margie lived in St. Louis with her husband. She and Len had not seen each other since soon after Jessie was born, when she had insisted on flying out to California to help with the newborn. But Margie and Laurel had not gotten along, and neither had suggested that Margie come again after Emma’s birth.

  “I’m not at home, Margie. I’m at work. But I’ll pay you back. I just needed to talk to someone. I . . . I needed to talk to you.”

  “Lenny, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  Quickly, Len told his sister about Laurel’s affair and the chain of events that had brought it to light.

  Margie was silent for a long moment. Then she let out a sigh. “So—now what?”

  Len exhaled deeply. He had counted on that—on his sister’s boundless practicality. She would know what to do.

  “Margie, what can I do? I feel so paralyzed.” The sky outside his tiny office window was a deep, distant blue, radiant with the possibilities of spring. But how false it was! Soon enough the blue sky would be shrouded in summer’s fog. And then there would be months and months of gray.

  Len slumped in his chair, the receiver tight against his ear. He couldn’t shake the caged feeling that he had had since the night he ran from home, when the dark sky had seemed too close, pushing him back into the sickening sphere of his life.

  “Lenny, do you hear yourself?” his sister said, exasperated. “There is only one thing to do. You leave. Oh, that woman.”

  Len laughed despite himself. “You’ve never liked her.”

  “No, I haven’t. But I was happy to put my feelings aside if she was a good wife to you and a good mother to those girls. But she’s been neither.”

  “But, Margie,” Len said. “How can I leave? I can’t leave Jessie and Emma. Not with her, not by themselves. I can’t.”

  “No, you certainly can’t.” She paused. “Or rather, you could, of course. But you shouldn’t. And you won’t.”

  “See?” Len said. “So what do I do? She says she’ll end her . . . her affair. That it won’t happen again. I believed her once. I can’t now.”

  “This isn’t the first time.” It was not a question, but Len answered it anyway.

  “No. It was different last time, but . . . no.”

  “Lenny, there’s only one thing to do.”

  “I have to stay, don’t I?” Len sighed. “For the girls.”

  “No. You most certainly do not have to stay. Leave, by all means. Divorce that wretched excuse of a woman. But take the girls with you.”

  “Margie, how could I? I can’t raise those girls by myself.”

  “You’re raising them now.”

  “But not like that. Not alone.”

  “Do you honestly think that Laurel would do a better job?”

  Len gave a little grunt of disgust. “No.”

  It was what had kept him there these last three days, sleeping on the rug in his daughters’ room, sneaking out in the morning before they woke but returning each evening to feed and bathe them and put them to bed. He couldn’t trust them to Laurel’s care, certainly not in the evening, when Laurel was sure to be drinking.

  “No, I don’t think she would,” he said. “That’s why . . . That’s why I haven’t left.”

  “So, raise them yourself, Lenny. You’d do a good job. You know you would.”

  The tenderness in Margie’s voice brought tears to his eyes, and it was a moment before his throat unclenched enough that he could speak.

  “But,” he said. “I’m not a mother.” His voice sounded strangled; he almost put the phone down for a minute, so that he could cry, just to release the terrible tightness in his throat.

  “Neither was I.” The words were spoken in her usual matter-of-fact tone, but the weight of them! Len couldn’t speak. He nodded, unseen. Margie had been only thirteen when their mother died of ovarian cancer. Old enough, their father had thought, to be the woman of the house. She had been the one to raise Len, the one who had checked his homework every night and taught him to mind his manners, while their father sat in his customary silence, hunched over the food that Margie had prepared, or studying the newspaper grimly, his glasses perched on the end of his nose.

  “Do you mean to tell me,” Margie said now, “that if Laurel was killed in an accident, you wouldn’t keep the girls because you couldn’t raise them alone?” His sister’s voice was stern, indignant. How many times had she begun her lectures this way? “Do you mean to tell me that you can solve the algebra problems in my textbook, but you can’t write a decent paragraph?” “Do you mean to tell me that you had time to spend all afternoon at the lake, but didn’t manage to take out the garbage?”

  “Oh, Margie,” he managed at last. “That’s ridiculous. Of course I would.”

  “Well. There you go.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “Is it not?”

  “No.”

  “So, you could raise the girls alone if Laurel somehow ceased to exist, but not now. You’d rather chain yourself to a hideous wife—there, I said it—or give up your daughters, rather than raise them on your own.”

  Len was silent for a moment. He looked out at the bright sky, and for the first time in days, his spirits rose a little. He had been trapped, but Margie had cracked the door. She had found a way out. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, hesitating, not trusting it.

  “I am right,” Margie said, and the smug certainty of her tone made Len laugh aloud. Oh, how he had hated those words, that tone, when he was young.

  “It’s not like you’d have to do it alone, you know,” Margie pointed out. “Don’t you have a babysitter who helps with the girls?”

  “She quit. But yes, we did. Laurel’s cousin is helping out this week, until we can—”

  “Oh, well. She’s not the only babysitter in the world. And I could come and help for a while, if you needed me to. Until you worked out the kinks.”

  “Oh, Margie. Thank you.” Len stood up abruptly from his desk. For a moment, his heart soared. Margie was right. He could do it.

  But a second later the impossibility of it rose up like a gale, slamming the door of his cage shut again. He sank back onto the seat.

  “Oh, Margie.” Len said again, but this time in despair. “How could it work—really? She’ll fight me for them; I know she will. And what judge is going to give a father custody? I can hear it now
: ‘Children need to be with their mother.’ To set my mind on it, and then lose? I couldn’t bear it.”

  “But what about everything you’ve told me? The drinking? The affair . . . While the children were there, for goodness sake. Poor little Jessie wandering outside all alone. Surely a judge wouldn’t—”

  “Oh, you don’t know Laurel, Margie. She’ll put on a good show. ‘Oh, poor me. Please, Your Honor, don’t let him take my children.’”

  Margie was silent for a minute. She knows I’m right, Len thought miserably.

  “But what about Jessie leaving the house?” Margie insisted. “And Laurel not even knowing. Surely—”

  “I doubt it. It happens, doesn’t it? Parents lose track of their children. Don’t you remember how I slipped out and went to try to buy ice cream by myself that time? I couldn’t have been much older than Jessie is now.”

  “But I knew you were gone! I was sick with worry.”

  “I know. Margie, I’m not accusing you. You were a great—you did a great job taking care of me, and you know it. I’m just saying it happens, doesn’t it? It wouldn’t necessarily make a judge think she’s unfit. And Emma is so little. She’s still nursing. Laurel will use that, you can put money on it.”

  “She’s thirteen months old, Len. She still nurses?”

  “Not often. Sometimes.”

  “Well, I’d say it’s high time to wean her then.”

  They were both silent for a moment, and Len’s heart fell.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “This must be costing you a fortune.”

  Margie ignored him. “There has to be a way.”

  “But how?”

  “What if . . . ? Okay, so maybe you’re right. Maybe if you fought her for it, you would lose. I can’t fathom it, but I suppose it’s possible. But what if it isn’t a fight? What if you just asked Laurel for custody?”

  “Ha,” Len said dryly. “Even if she didn’t want the girls, she’d keep them just to spite me.”

  “Are you sure? She’s never . . . Well, she never really warmed much to motherhood, did she? How much does she really want to raise those girls on her own?”