November 2018
Jude, deliriously happy, woke up next to his wife, Angie. He couldn’t believe how beautiful she was, how lucky she made him feel. They had been together for only a year, but he still couldn’t get enough of watching her in the morning: the golden silk of her hair across the pillow, the tilt of her nose, her mouth so red it made him want to never stop kissing her.
“Mmm,” she mumbled in her sleep, and he kissed her gently on the shoulder.
After the pain of losing Ella, he had never expected to be partnered up again at twenty-two. Never thought he would wind up in Philadelphia, either, but after the mess in Manhattan, his father had decided a fresh start was needed. His father had become the dean of Penn Carey Law School, a job as prestigious as his judgeship. He had arranged for Jude to change his last name from Stein to Miller, though he said his own name carried too much weight to change. Jude had been too stunned, too paralyzed by what had happened, to do anything but let his father take control.
“Things are going to change,” his father had said, and in some ways they had. His father hadn’t hurt him physically since they left New York, though sometimes Jude noticed his father’s mouth tightening into a line, his hands becoming fists, and Jude thought he might still want to beat him. Instead, his father had started attending AA meetings. Every week, and whenever he got a chip, he stuck it in a pocket and later made sure that Jude could see it, like a promise he wouldn’t break. Mostly, he kept a respectful distance from his only child.
But to Jude, his father’s silence had been its own kind of abuse. His father never mentioned what had happened. It was as if his father had shoved the past into boxes and sealed them with super glue.
“Everything I do, I do for you,” his father had insisted. He had pulled strings to get Jude into a fancy private high school, had tugged more strings to get him into Penn’s early admission program. But Jude hadn’t ever wanted to be a lawyer, despite how much his father pushed. He hadn’t even studied botany, because after everything that had happened, Jude hadn’t felt he deserved to. When he finally had to pick a major, he chose computer science—something with cause and effect, like lines you knew not to color outside of. As soon as he had finished college—a year early because he had taken a double course load—he landed a job at Take Tech. It paid well enough that when a one-bedroom had opened up in East Falls, he had signed the lease, painted the rooms blue and green, and found some cheap furniture that looked adult enough. Work had filled his hours and his days, and he hadn’t expected, or even wanted, anything more.
And then, almost a year ago, in a happy accident, he had met Angie, a massage therapist he went to see after he had wrenched his back. She hadn’t been anything like what he expected. She was willowy and pale and younger than he was and so slight that he couldn’t imagine her being able to get out the knots in his muscles. Her long hair splashed down to her waist, and she smelled like lavender. She had asked him plenty of questions, but she never pried if he didn’t answer. She just moved on to another task. He had signed on for six sessions, but he found that he liked being around her. The more he saw her, the more time he wanted to give her.
He would never have told her that her he was falling in love, because that idea terrified him. Love was dangerous, especially when it was so quick like this. Look how it had turned out with Ella. With Ella, being together, falling in love, had been stormy and dramatic and intense. Having sex with Ella had been like a thunderclap. You’re the air I breathe, they used to tell each other, as if at any moment they’d suffocate. Without you I’d drown. But the first night with Angie, after dinner and wine, when they finally fell into bed, making love had been more like floating in a lake where you could see clearly down to the soft sand on the bottom. After, he kissed her shoulder, so intoxicated that he had never wanted her to leave.
And to his joy, she hadn’t. She’d moved in with him as seamlessly as she had arrived.
Now, Angie shifted in bed and her beautiful eyes opened. “I have something to tell you,” she said cheerfully, and then she sat up.
He guessed that she had a new client, or had seen a new restaurant she wanted to try, but instead her smile grew. “I think we should take in a boarder,” she said.
“What? Are you kidding? Why would we do that? I don’t want anyone else here—” They had moved to a larger apartment, so they had more room now, but a boarder was out of the question.
“They’ll be no real trouble,” she said, her smile widening. She put her hand on top of his and led it to her belly. “Though I bet this one will be a real crybaby.”
He stared at her.
“Get it?” she said, studying him. “Crybaby? How come you don’t look happy?”
“We’re too young—” he said, immediately hating that he was parroting his father’s words.
“We’re not too young,” she told him. “We both make enough money, and we love each other. We have space. We can do this.”
How could he tell her they couldn’t? A baby was permanent. There’d be so much more to lose.
“Don’t you want to have kids?” she asked. “Didn’t you ever think about it?”
He had, but with Ella, lying on the grass in Central Park, staring at the sky and concocting their futures.
“A little one with your face!” he had said to Ella, although he had actually hoped they might have two, maybe three—their own little circus. The fantasy had buoyed him so much that he had believed they could do it.
Oh, Ella.
He rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t be a father. He and Angie had talked about everything in their life—a home by the ocean one day, trips to Paris—but never about kids. He realized he had avoided that topic with her. How could she be pregnant?
“You were so careful about taking the pill—”
“Jude,” Angie said. “Nothing’s one hundred percent. And I’m pregnant. It’s sort of a done deal.” Her face was full of doubt now.
“How pregnant?” he said carefully.
“Just three weeks,” she said.
“But that’s hardly anything. Are you sure?”
“I tried three different tests. All positive. Doctor confirmed it, too.”
“So fast? Just like that?” He looked at her, astonished.
“Is this really not something you want?” she said. “I know we never talked about it, but I thought it was just because we were so busy—”
He touched her lovely face. He didn’t know how he felt except that his life felt upside down. If he had a child with Angie, did that mean Ella was really and truly gone?
“What do you say, bucko,” Angie said quietly.
“We’re going to be parents,” he said, and then she smiled and rested her head on his shoulder.
Angie nudged him. “Gus if it’s a boy. Giselle if it’s a girl.”
THAT NIGHT, AFTER Angie went to bed, Jude sat down with a sheet of paper and made up a list of all the things his father had done that were right and good, things he could easily repeat for his own child:
He taught me how to ride a bike.
He took me miniature golfing.
He read to me.
Then he wrote down all the things that his father had done that were wrong:
Drinking
Hitting
Not listening
Blaming
Judging
Controlling
Not forgiving
He loved my mother more than he ever loved me
Jude stared at the list. He certainly would never hit his child. He always listened, and he didn’t talk much. He would never blame or judge anyone, least of all a child, and he knew all too well that he couldn’t control anything because he had tried and look where that had gotten him.
But that had been a long time ago.
And he wasn’t that Jude anymore.
And he wasn’t his father.
He crumpled the list. He could redo. Redeem. He could be the best, most loving father and husband, a man so good people would look at his family and think, What a lucky wife. What a lucky child. What a lucky life. He would never leave his son alone with his dad, either. He would make sure that his father knew he was an adult and could make his own decisions, no matter what anyone else thought. He was the father now.
He went into bed and curved his body around Angie’s. He placed his hand on her stomach, on their child to be, growing inside her.
HE CALLED HIS father the next morning to tell him he was going to be a grandfather, not expecting much. When he first introduced Angie to his dad—a special dinner at a fancy restaurant where Jude never quite felt at ease—his father had been polite, even charming. But as Jude told him the news of their unborn child, he felt a charge through the line.
“You’re too young to be a father,” Judge Stein said. “You have no idea how to raise a child.”
“And you do?” Jude said.
Then Jude shut down. He refused to let his father hurt him anymore. His dad was either going to be happy for them, welcome their child, or be totally shut out of their lives. I’m going to be a dad, Jude thought, and then he felt his despair about his dad’s hostility vanish, replaced with a new sense of wonder.
JUDE’S EUPHORIA QUICKLY gave way to a claustrophobic unease, thick and sticky as honey. He dreamed that he was back in the kitchen of his father’s Manhattan townhouse, so bright and gleaming he was wearing sunglasses. One of the white cabinets was open to a row of clear glass teacups. He felt a cup in his hands, carefully lowered it onto the matching glass saucer, and turned to see Ella right beside him, her smile a beam of light that lit up the room. He startled awake.
Shake it off, he told himself. He jumped into the shower, and then pulled on clothes for work, a Ramones T-shirt and his favorite jeans. As an IT consultant, every day was casual Friday, and the people he worked with didn’t care what he wore. They were just grateful that he could fix whatever they couldn’t. He was confident and collected, because when it came to computers, he had all the answers. And he stayed calm when others panicked.
In these spirals of despair, Jude couldn’t escape the feeling that he was doing everything wrong. He was clearly a mess, and no matter what he did or how hard he tried, he couldn’t forget that night, or fix it. He couldn’t unlock any sort of atonement. Instead, he had just tried to protect others from himself by never getting too close. Even with Angie, he had fought that desire for closeness. Maybe he didn’t deserve forgiveness, love, or even luck. Because even though Ella had done the crime, he knew that he had been the impetus. I would do anything for you. That’s what she had said. That’s what she meant. And when he said it back, he thought that he meant it, too. And look how wrong he’d been.
He had ruined Ella somehow, turned her into a person who would be sent to prison at fifteen. He had ruined his own mother, who had loved and doted on him and who had paid for it. And he constantly worried that, without meaning to, he would ruin Angie, too.
He could remember his father loving him when he was little. They had played catch in the park. Judge Stein had taught him how to ride a bike, running beside him, assuring his son, “I’ve got you! I’ve got you!” until the boy had safely soared down the street.
JUDE MADE COFFEE and sat at the kitchen table, remembering his mother, a familiar ache rising in his chest. She had taught him to love plants and had challenged him to name the wildflowers they saw.
He was twelve when it happened—celebrating his birthday, the whole family at their house upstate in the town of Woodstock. They had been so happy back then. While his friends’ parents all seemed to be going through divorces, his parents had adored each other more and more. His mom stuck love notes for his dad all over the house. She fussed over him, cooking his favorite meals, buying him special cufflinks to wear in court. Every night they spent upstate, after Jude had gone to bed, his parents would sit out on the porch, laughing, talking, and drinking wine. Sometimes back then, Jude thought he could see a look of surprise on his father when he looked at his son, as if Jude were a gift he never expected.
One weekend Judge Stein had to stay in the city to work on a case. Jude and his mother drove up from the city anyway, conspiring about the fun things they would do without him. That Saturday they had gone out for ice cream and, alone on a country road without another car in sight, Jude pressed his mom to teach him how to drive.
“You goof!” his mother cried, her blond hair ruffling in the air from her open window. “You’re not even old enough to get your permit.”
“It’s deserted here,” Jude said. “You can even put your hands on the wheel by mine.”
She laughed, shaking her head.
“Please,” Jude said. His mother always enjoyed being spontaneous, so unlike his father. “It’ll be an adventure!”
She hesitated and then threw the car into park. She jumped out of the car and traded places with him.
“You little smartass,” she said affectionately. “Just for five minutes, then. And only because no one else is on the road.”
Jude gripped the wheel, then stepped on the gas jerkily, then a little more, and the car began to gain momentum smoothly. It felt as if he were flying.
“Slow it down, buddy,” his mother said. Then, “Okay, time to stop. Lighten up on the gas.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, but he didn’t—the speed felt so intoxicating. He swiveled around to look at her, beaming, lifting his hands, just for a second.
“Jude!” she cried.
What happened next was a blur. Jude looked down to find the brake as a blue car came out of nowhere, racing toward them. Then there was a terrible slash of sound, followed by darkness.
From that moment on, everything had been his fault.
IN HIS KITCHEN, Jude lifted his head from his hands. Breathe, Angie was always telling him, her voice soft, a gentle lasso.
He breathed. He was going to have a new family now. The one from before, with Ella and Helen, no longer existed. Maybe it never really had.