You might think that Darren and Claire were hoping for the best as they had sex over and over again at the height of their young blossoming fertility, or that they were blind to the probable consequence of their incessant coupling. But you would be wrong. They knew Claire would likely get pregnant, and, unreasonably, they had wished for it. They wished for a baby. Because this wish was somehow, in the haze of 1950s’ romance, inseparable from their love. Because the force of it was irresistible.
And they knew there would be no making it right. But being right was not what mattered. What mattered was the thrilling, doomed, happy-miserable, love-drugged dream they were living. What mattered was the way collapsing into each other’s arms blotted out all the pain and worry and daily harassment of their lives.
And you might think that Claire would make this mistake only once. This terrible miscalculation that landed her back in her furious parents’ house, begging to be allowed to keep her baby, promising she would be a good mother if they would just help her. But you would be wrong again. She would make it twice. For Tammy and Trudy were full-blooded sisters, born of the one great love of Claire’s life.
Love of my life, thought Claire, staring out the kitchen window. Words. Words that always seemed corny unless it was you. Unless it was you saying these things to the person you love. The person who made you feel like your heart was being crushed. These embarrassing things they said to each other, Darren and Claire, that they meant with all of their hearts. The things they would say again and again. Like they were under a spell. They were all true.
I love you.
I have never loved anyone like I love you.
I will never love anyone this way again.
Nothing else matters.
Never leave me.
Think of me always.
You are everything to me.
I am nothing without you.
Nothing.
She had not, of course, thought any of it through. She had only been helpless against it. And so after he had gone, she found herself stranded in Preston Mills, even lower on the social food chain than she had been before, facing condemnation everywhere she went, struggling to be something she had no idea how to be: a mother.
Darren, of course, had returned regularly to his wife in New Brunswick for visits and, eventually, for good.
He could see no other way.
The last time he saw his daughters was on Tammy’s second birthday. Trudy had been three. At Claire’s instruction, she called him Uncle Dee.
Kiss your Uncle Dee goodbye, Trudy. He has to go.
Tammy told Claire she didn’t remember Darren. She didn’t remember standing, holding hands with her mother and her sister, watching his truck kick up dust as it pulled away and raced down the road, as it became smaller and smaller, until it disappeared over the horizon. She didn’t remember how long the little girls stood at the end of the driveway, terrified and confused, waiting for their mother to stop crying.
But Trudy remembered. She said so. Back when she used to talk more. When she was less angry about everything.
Trudy said that she remembered the rough scrape of his stubbly cheek against hers. She had never seen a man cry before and there were tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes as he held her little face in both of his hands. She remembered that he smelled like laundry smelled when it came in from the line. He smelled like the blue sky.
Like the thin air he was disappearing into, thought Claire.