Chapter 26

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Alex

We all go back to our simple small rooms, which are in a tidy row off the corridor on the hotel’s sixth floor. I lie down on my bed. I’d forgotten how nice a real bed can feel, and this one is soft and so warm. I turn on the news and doze restlessly, waking with a start every so often.

Two hours later my cell phone rings. It’s Colleen.

“Did I wake you up?” she asks.

“Not really. What time is it?” I say, sitting up, rubbing my eyes.

“Quarter after six,” she says. “I’m here with Dad. Did you check your email?”

“Not yet,” I say. “I’ll be right there.”

I get up, grab my phone, throw on shoes, and head over to Dad’s hotel room. Colleen and Dad stare at me as I walk through the door.

“Well, did you get it?” Colleen asks.

“Hold on,” I say.

I type in the password to open my phone. I press the button for my email. My thumb misses the target though, and a map opens, and I can’t make it go until it loads all the way. Finally, my email opens. I scroll through but I don’t see the one I’m looking for. I go back to the top, and this time I see it. An email from Davidson, Liz, with attachments. Suddenly, my face feels hot.

“Here it is,” I say. I click the email to open it. The message is simple.

Please see attached photos. Contact me tomorrow if you have any questions.

Best regards, Liz

I click one of the photos with my thumb, and the little animated wheel spins.

The first picture loads, and a little boy’s face comes into focus. “Look,” is all I say.

The boy stands in front of a playground tree on a day that looks sunny, but the temperature must be cool because he’s wearing a hoodie, his shoulders hunched against the cold. His hair is brown and shaggy and a little windblown. His eyes are light brown and squinting a little; probably shrinking from the sun and wind. His mouth is shaped in an almost smile, but a reserved one with lips pressed together, an expression that seems slightly worried. Maybe he doesn’t want to sit still for a photo. Maybe he just wants to play.

“He looks like her,” Dad says.

Dad’s right, he does look like Riley. The shapes of his face and eyes are so familiar. I feel like I’m looking at someone I’ve known for a long time.

We are all quiet as we look at the phone, silently holding our breath. You can’t know someone’s personality from a photo, I think, but there is a warmth to this child; he looks thoughtful. Then, I think of Riley. I see her figure in my living room, tall and slender, silhouetted against the candlelight. I hear her footsteps against the hard wood of my floor, and I remember her words: You were my heart. Alex, you and Colleen. When I left, I had no heart. Or maybe it was my soul that I lost; I don’t know. Maybe if I had had a mom, or at least remembered her, I might have gotten something right.

You got him right, Riley. Wherever you are now, please know: you got him right.

I look at his picture, his eyes, his face. What are we doing? Looking at this picture of a child . . . Why? He’s our family, and we know this; we don’t need to look at a photograph to tell us what we need to do. Caleb needs to come and be with us. I look at Colleen; she stares intently at the screen in the dim light of this clean white hotel room. Is she considering bringing him home to live with her? I can’t tell. A thought occurs to me. I can’t figure out if it’s crazy, so I imagine speaking the words out loud: Caleb will come and live with me. I will raise him in my house in Newbury, near the line with Rowley, overlooking the Great Marsh.

Is that crazy? It sounds crazy. A single mom living in a haunted house.

But that was the original plan, wasn’t it? Have a baby and raise it by myself. It’s the same plan. Plus, the house isn’t really haunted. I’m the one who is, or maybe was. Maybe I’m ready not to be.

Dad looks at the phone through the bottom of his reading glasses, frowning in concentration. With his hands in the pockets of his dungarees, he shakes his head and shrugs. “Why didn’t she tell us about him?” he asks. “We would have helped her. We would have done anything.”

“That’s the big question, Dad,” Colleen says. “Why didn’t our own sister tell us that she had a son?”

“That we had a nephew,” I say. “That you had a grandson. There was so much that she never revealed to us. I don’t think we’ll ever know why she kept this secret.”

I look at my phone and scroll to another photo. The child in these pictures has been through things we can’t understand. He lost his mother and probably believed he was all alone in the world. I look at his face, and a surge of tears rises in my throat; I wish I could scoop him up in my arms and hold him and care for him the way I wish Riley had been cared for, the way I wish we all had.

In this photo, the little boy holds his animal up to the camera. The critter looks worn and beloved. One eye looks like it might be about to fall off. The animal is front and center, and the boy’s face is only slightly visible behind it, but his eyes are squinting with a smile.

“Oh, look,” Colleen says. “It’s a turtle.”

A bit later, when the sun has gone down behind clouds and the New York lights are glowing bold and bright, we leave the hotel for dinner, just to a place around the corner that serves burgers and beer, nothing fancy. Colleen and Dad look deflated; I probably do too, but I feel relieved. Today we found Caleb. We order our food, and then we are quiet. Nobody knows how to begin this conversation.

“I still wish I knew why she didn’t tell us about him,” Dad says. He takes a piece of bread from a basket on the table but puts it on his plate and does not eat it. “Why did she keep so many secrets?”

“It breaks my heart that she didn’t take better care of him,” Colleen says. “How could you leave a child on his own like that? Anything could have happened . . .”

“It doesn’t matter now,” I say. “She’s gone.”

“She could have done better.” Colleen looks at us, at our faces. “Actually, you know what? I’m mad at her. She should have asked for help. There’s nothing we wouldn’t have done to help her.” She glares at me. “Tell me I’m not right.”

I don’t know how to answer that, and neither does Dad. Colleen looks at us defiantly, like she’s daring us to respond. And we don’t; it seems better to let the live wire fizzle on the floor.

“This is just like when she was five years old,” Colleen continues, “and she decided to paint her shoes with nail polish and the nail polish spilled on the carpet. Do you remember that Alex?”

Yes, I nod.

“We always clean up after her. Just like with Mom, we get stuck with the mess of life. It’s like . . .” She catches her breath, a choke of tears, her voice low. “It’s like, if we don’t have the courage to just end it all outright, then we get left behind to manage everything for all the people who do.” She starts crying and pulls a tissue from her purse. “And I hate it. We already did this, remember? And now here we are again. And it’s not fair.”

My gaze goes down to the table. I don’t know what to tell her. I am depleted.

“She should be here.” Colleen grits her teeth, her voice louder now. She pounds the table with her fist. “Riley should be here.”

Dad drinks his beer, and a moment later the waiter puts our plates in front of us. Colleen pushes the lettuce and croutons of her Caesar salad around on her plate for a few moments but doesn’t eat anything. “I’m sorry,” she finally says. “I need to go for a run. I’ll see you both for breakfast.”

And she leaves. I don’t have much appetite either, but I take a few bites of my burger, mostly to keep Dad company.

“It was nice to see pictures of Caleb today,” Dad says. “I feel a little like I met him.”

I smile. “Yes.”

“I wonder how we will do this,” Dad says. “We’re the only family he has, and we’re so far away.”

I nod slightly.

“And the way we live is so different from what he’s used to. City people, they like their crowded streets, their smelly subway stations, all the noise and hustle bustle. Is it like that in India? It must be.”

I laugh slightly. “A little.”

“You still thinking about going back?”

“I’m not sure.” I chew my bite of burger, then take a sip of water. “Dad, I have a new idea. I think I want to adopt Caleb.” This is the first time I’ve spoken it out loud.

His head bobs as he thinks about it; I’m grateful to him for not laughing. “Colleen will think I’m crazy. Or . . . assume that she needs to take him in since she knows how to raise kids.”

“Well, even when things get back to normal for your sister, her life is never going to be like it was before.”

“I can’t . . . figure out, though, if this is a big mistake,” I say.

Dad reaches for my arm. “Alexis,” he says wearily, “there’s nothing you can’t do if you make up your mind. So there you go; just make up your mind.”

I can barely speak. I reach over and hug my father. “Thanks, Daddy,” I say, wiping tears away with my sleeve. “I already have.”

And then a picture pops into my mind like a postcard: a little house in Newbury, down a quiet street, overlooking the marsh. When I return there, I will need to buy furniture, toys, books, clothes. I will need to get a full-time job and find out about schools. I will need to transform Marjorie’s cottage from a house that I inherited and hoped to sell, into a home for a little boy. This little boy. My nephew.