The apartment’s large main area was dormant, just his desk lamp and screen light providing illumination. Printing out his list of emergency info from a gray laptop, Oliver taped a copy to the inside of the computer desk’s top right drawer, so it would be easily available to him, but out of Alice’s purview — yet another thing she didn’t need to know about. When he finished he reclined in his rolling chair, staring out into nothing. It felt to him as if he were a little boy rising onto his tiptoes, reaching toward a shelf, his fingertips barely touching something, feeling smooth curves. That unseen object remained too large for him to fully comprehend.
It was fear. That their daughter would grow up without ever knowing her mother, that this void would dominate her life; that she wouldn’t have a choice but to idealize her absent mother, and would blame her mother for her absence, and would curse her, as well as every woman her dad brought home (family friends who carved time in their schedules to try to assuage how sorry they felt; well-meaning girlfriends wanting to do good; all other sorts of potential stepmothers); she would curse her father; curse the world and, most of all, herself, herself, herself; that lonely teen years would be spent holed up in a corner with Mom’s journals, reconstructing her own version of who this woman was — these were the broad strokes. And there were specifics as well. Even if he could not fully grasp them all, the imagining was endless.
—
The four-year-old ambles out of her prekindergarten classroom and into the hallway, where she sees all those different women, every one of them expectant, joyous, opening her arms. Every day she does this, ambles out of her class, into that hallway. Every day she watches mommies hug all the other children. Caribbean nannies are gathering kids, too, but his little girl sees those mommies, with their packages of fresh fruit, their baggies of newly steamed broccoli, their applesauce pouches and yogurt containers and Goldfish crackers. Her daddy is late again, out of breath, trying to figure out which of his coat pockets has that paltry-ass cheese stick.
He is up in the small hours, practicing on her Barbie, refining his technique for French twist braids. His thumbnails are slathered with pink sparkle polish, the result of an hour before bedtime when he needed to keep her occupied. His hands fumble, his manual dexterity light-years away from that of women who’ve been braiding hair since they were six. The next morning: he is woozy, but concentrating, making sure to follow each comb stroke so his daughter’s hair falls according to the swirling part along the top, pulling and struggling to separate clumped ends, tangled strands. Fumbling with hairpins, Oliver gets surly, ordering: Sit still already. On cue, the girl pulls away, cries. Yet another school photo where stray thin hairs form around her head a backlit halo.
To honor his dead wife’s wishes he won’t let television raise his child, meaning that unless Oliver’s paying for a sitter, cooking dinner’s not a real option, at least not until Doe’s like six or seven. The real-world translation: half-opened take-out containers, a fridge that wafts with strange smells, a kitchen sink piling with used dishes.
Relying on one or two distressingly attractive, semicompetent young women fresh out of art school who earn extra spending money through sitter work. Learning to have more sitters. To have a list of backups. To juggle their schedules. The girls are always looking for a real job, counting down the days to some internship, nurturing a relationship with his daughter but, as the job continues, showing up later and later. Doe wide-eyed, listening as Oliver explains still another departure; Doe’s eyes not as wide, the child becoming accustomed to this whole attachment-abandonment cycle: you trust people, you believe in them, they leave, you have no control.
Another tantrum; constantly determined to show that her will is greater than his; overturning her chocolate milk. From the other booths around him come the stares, men who’ve brought their young children to this diner at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning — hoping to kill some clock this long weekend day. Faces entering the first pangs of middle age. As they watch Doe’s meltdown, each man shows a certain sympathy, but also betrays something else. Coming from a place deeper than sympathy: a terror that is pure, whole.
But a learning curve can also work for adults, and Oliver moves from the overmatched griever, lashing back at the other diners with a look of vehemence (What do you want? I had this thrust upon me. That’s a different animal from your divorce). He ferments into the panicky uptight dad who jerks across the table and lifts his daughter too hard, scaring her, What did you do now? Look at this. Jesus, Doe. He becomes the beaten man with his face in his hands, listening to his girl cry and wishing so hard that he could disappear. And then he survives, evolves: lifting his daughter out of the path of the pool of milk so her clothes don’t get more muddied; pulling more napkins from the holder, telling her it is fine, and wiping away the mess.
And that name, yet again, always that name. The child falls and cries and says it. She doesn’t get the desired amount of sprinkles on her donut and blubbers, I want Mama. She doesn’t want to clean up her toys, Mama. Wants to stay in the playground longer, I want Mama. Wants to play yet another imaginative game with her classmates where they are the brothers and sisters, and who is she? Mommy Mommy.
And then he’s survived until that sweet soft-ice-cream-pleasant and best time of the night, when they are in bed together and she is comfy under the comforter and flirty and loving toward him, gazing at him with what seems unabated love, paying attention to stories and pulling on his ear with affection. He’s read two full stories and she’s rubbing at her eyes with her little hands and it is time for lights-out, that part of the evening where he knows it will start.
I want Mama, she says.
The hope has been that each time Alice tells her daughter Mommy is in your heart. You are in Mommy’s heart, Doe absorbs these words, they are lodged in her, somewhere.
Oliver tells his daughter to take a deep breath. He tells her to feel the warm syrup of Mommy’s love spreading through her. He tells Doe to take another breath and start with the top of her head, now down into her forehead, the syrup of Mommy’s love spreading behind her eyes.
The girl tries. Her lids open now. The whites of her eyes are large and liquid. Wide hazel irises focus on him. “Why can’t I go to Mommy?
“I know Mommy is in the sky,” she says.
Her voice is light, underdeveloped, committed. “We can take a plane.”
He allows himself the time to blink, composing himself.
“The sky is so very big,” he answers.
She is undeterred, promising: “I would search every cloud.”
An immediate horizon
BUT THE DAILY grit of responsibilities took back over, their self-contained, hermetic little bubble resealing. Alice made sure she was on the phone first thing to schedule or confirm her follow-ups with Eisenstatt (Friday, the following Tuesday). She called nurses with questions about medicines, pharmacies to ask about dosages. She eventually got off the phone and into her day, usually with simple arm rotations and stretches, a basic tai chi routine if she was up to it. Then vitamin supplements, including one of Sparrow’s warmed liquid packages of special Eastern herbs and blends. (It was supposed to fill Alice with vitality, but tasted like hot barf.) She might attempt a cursory bite of breakfast. She did her best to feed Doe spoonfuls of apple mush, made sure to clean her face with a warm wet cloth, even unhooked the baby from the high chair and brought her to the floor and let Doe use her pajamaed legs — along with the wooden sewing table leg — as leverage, the child still not yet walking, but happily in that place where she was trying to stand and move around. Alice still moved fairly well herself, although she had to be shrewd about just how much back-and-forth she could handle. Hot flashes intruded, six or seven a day, the most ridiculous side effect. She was freezing all the time and then — out of nowhere — felt her body flushing with fire? Alice compensated as best she could, with layers of ice compresses, occupying her mind, typing notes to herself on the cute new gray PowerBook Oliver had bought her, sometimes just running her hand over the trackball, enjoying its smoothness, the arrow cursor corresponding with zips and zags across the screen. She called friends, though conversations had to stay short. And Oliver helped on this front, not so much eavesdropping as checking in, he claimed, sussing out who she was talking with and how things were going. Alice could be overly generous, once even having some kind of counseling session with this weird guy she’d met in the hospital hallway, so Oliver had to keep the reins tight, especially considering how many friends wanted to be in touch with her. If the phone seemed slack to her ear, and Alice wasn’t answering so much, and didn’t seem engaged, Oliver would lean into the cordless and apologize as best he could. He’d explain she needed a break.