The Family
Spring 2014
On a bright spring day in Boston, Carla Pacelli-Blaine and her husband Adam strolled down the shaded parkway dividing Commonwealth Avenue, heading for the Public Gardens.
The two-year-old Liam scrambled ahead, his resolute if somewhat teetering steps propelling him forward until, a little farther each time, he glanced back to verify that his mother and father were still there. “There’s a metaphor in there,” Adam observed to Carla. “Someday he’ll stop looking back.”
Carla smiled. “Not too soon, I hope. From the light in his eyes, you’re supposed to chase him.”
Adam glanced at the baby his wife pushed in the carriage. “Good thing Lily is a girl. All this competition is wearing me out.”
With that, he took out after Liam.
Seeing this, the dark-haired boy emitted a throaty chuckle of pleasure and excitement, commencing a wobbly zigzag through the grass and trees, an evasive action designed to thwart his lumbering and less gifted father. Feigning frustration, Adam snatched at the air with each new change in Liam’s direction, calling out in a voice of a cartoon giant, “I’m going to get you, Liam Blaine.” This produced more triumphant laughter—from experience, Liam knew how hard it was for his father to keep up.
Watching this, Carla grinned—in the small but elastic world of children, anything was possible, including that a two-year-old could thwart a man as fit and athletic as Adam Blaine. At last, the boy stumbled to the ground, out of breath, eyes dancing as the man came forward with a final roar before swooping to toss Liam above his head, catching him at the last moment before he hit the grass. “You’re my prisoner,” Adam informed his son. “I’m never letting you go.”
With this, Liam buried his face against Adam’s neck. For a moment, Adam smiled to himself, caught in his pleasure at being a father entrusted with this boy’s love. Returning to Carla and their daughter, he remarked, “It’s a tough world here on Commonwealth Avenue. Sort of like Afghanistan.”
“Enough of that,” Carla responded, “really was enough.” But she was grateful for Adam’s skills and watchfulness—though she would never like his forays to dangerous places, she was glad his career had taken hold and knew that, for him, caution now came first. He had too much to lose.
As if sharing her thoughts, Adam glanced down at their sleeping daughter, Liam still nuzzled against him. Unlike many infants, Lily had skipped the Winston Churchill stage—at four months, her face was well formed and serene, with fair skin, a delicate mouth, and blond ringlets. “She really is a beauty,” Adam observed.
“She is,” Carla agreed wryly. “Remarkably like your mother.”
It was true. To Carla’s eyes, the Irish and Italian in their daughter had been laundered through so many generations of Boston WASP’s that she mentally referred to Lily as “Clarice’s revenge.” Not that this mattered—Carla adored her, all the more so because of Adam’s delight in having a girl. “One of each,” he had observed matter-of-factly a few moments after Lily’s birth. “Now we can quit. I’m ready for pointless sex.”
“A more sensitive man,” Carla had responded, “Might have waited for a day or two to raise that. And I object to the word ‘pointless.’” But Adam was a very sensitive man—this had been his way of telling her, finally and forever, that Liam was his son. Over the years, they would explain to Liam, as best they could at a given age, the complications of his birth. The consequences worried her—despite their best efforts, Liam might feel deceived or even angry. But though they were keenly aware of the irony, Adam and Carla had resolved to keep only those secrets that must be kept, until Jack and Clarice were gone. At least, this time, the son would be secure in a father’s love.
Watching them together, she thought of Ben. She often did, especially in the quiet hours of early morning, overcome once more by astonishment at her own destiny. So did Adam, she knew, still sorting through the past and what it had brought them both. Both would do this all their lives, for their own sake, and for each other and their children. But they felt no need to talk about this. Between them, it had all been said.
Beside her, Adam smiled at Liam. “Want to take us for a boat ride?” he asked his son. “Lily always likes that.”
Carla sat back in the swan boat, holding Lily while Adam tucked his son between his legs, peddling as Liam helped him steer. The banks were filled with couples and families. As they cruised the pond beneath the overhanging branches of willow trees, Carla thought of an illustration from a sentimental children’s book, a vision cleansed of the frightening and unpredictable. But there was time enough for those.
Her work reminded her of that. Despite a short break for Lily, she was close to finishing her master’s degree at Boston University. Part of that involved seeing patients at the school—a refresher course, if she had needed one, in the varieties of human pain and need. So much came back to childhood and family: why couldn’t they love me, why did I have to be like them, why did we never face what made us all so unhappy, how can I learn to be whole when I’ve been so damaged? For Carla, the familiarity of the questions did not diminish their individuality, or the hurt they caused. Perhaps because of Adam’s life, and her own, she could find for each man or woman some well of empathy and patience. They seemed to trust her—even those who recalled her as an actress knew she had picked herself up from the bottom. There was a value for others, she had leaned, in her own mistakes.
“When are you visiting your mother?” she asked Adam.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Middle of the week, I think. She wants to meet Lily. I told her that the three of us are a package deal—I take both munchkins to the house, or neither, and that she doesn’t get to pick and choose. I assume you don’t mind being left out.”
“Hardly—I don’t want to replicate the ‘meet the parents scene’ from Annie Hall. But Clarice should know her granddaughter, and I won’t use Lily as leverage to extort some grotesque semblance of togetherness. Whatever happens with her, I’ll try to live with it. All I expect is that no child of ours will be treated as a second class citizen.”
“Never,” Adam said emphatically. “The curse really does stop here.”
And for the most part, it had, or so it seemed to Carla. The relationship between Adam and his mother was unresolved, and pieces of it might always be. But now and then Jack would come over from Martha’s Vineyard, visiting their apartment on Commonwealth Avenue or going with Adam to a Red Sox game, a ritual they had started with the expectation that it would soon involve Liam and, eventually, Lily. Sometimes it was better if Carla went out: she could never forget what she knew, or feel at ease with Jack. Yet she was also aware that Jack had made this new life possible, and grasped, perhaps before Adam did, that it was not too late for her husband to have a father. And so, however difficult, Adam and Carla were creating a family of their own.
The least ambiguous part was Teddy. Not long after the judge’s report absolved the Blaines, over his mother’s objections Adam had revealed to Teddy the true circumstances of his birth. Despite his shock, Teddy had resorted to edgy humor. “You’re not his son?” he had repeated. “Why do you have all the luck? So what are you now—my brother, or my cousin?”
“Actually, Ted, it’s like the movie Chinatown. I’m both. So you can take your pick.”
“Brother,” Ted decided. “That’s what you’ve always been, and I’m too lazy to change. Though it’s no wonder I didn’t grow up to paint like Norman Rockwell.”
“That’s the great thing about us,” Adam observed. “No new surprise is worse than any other.”
Ted gave him a sardonic smile. “Actually, it’s kind of liberating when everyone chooses what they get to be. If you’re now Liam’s father, I can declare myself his uncle. The true definition of weird is for a thirty-six-year-old man to have a brother in diapers.”
Together, they had laughed at the sheer absurdity of their circumstances. “Now that I’m an uncle,” Teddy promised, “I’ll knock myself out to be a normal one.”
And so he had, Carla knew. On his trips to Boston, he never seemed to tire of being with Liam, and he had given the infant Lily more presents than a largely insensate being could comprehend. Beneath this, Carla understood that he shared their resolve to see both children grow up whole.
He also changed diapers.
Now, Carla watched Adam turn the paddles of a swan boat, helping their son to steer. Smiling to herself, she kissed the top of Lily’s head, her heart overflowing with love. “A dad and a brother,” she murmured to her sleeping daughter. “Seems like enough for any woman, don’t you think?”