I actually shuddered.
“Not like that,” he said. “Watching you to see that you’re okay.”
With my back to him, I foraged on the floor for my clothes, trying to hide my nakedness.
“Anna, stay until the morning.”
“I want to go home.”
“What difference can a few hours make?”
“I’m going home.” I couldn’t find my bra.
He got out of bed and I recoiled; I didn’t want him to touch me. “Just going out front,” he said. “Giving you some privacy.”
He left the bedroom. I could look only at his legs, and even then just from the knees down.
When he came back I was dressed. He handed me a cup of coffee and said, “Let me call you a car.”
“Okay.” I still couldn’t look at him. The previous day was coming back to me, in all its horribleness. I remembered tearing off my clothes and shrieking at him, “Fuck me, fuck me. What’s it to you? You’re a man. You don’t have to be emotionally involved. Just fuck me.”
I had lain, naked, on his bed and screeched, “Come on!” I wanted him to drive out my rage, my loss, my despair. I wanted him to drive out my dead husband so I wouldn’t feel the pain anymore.
“Car’s here.”
The sun was coming up and everything was early-morning quiet as I went home. Even though I hadn’t touched a drop the day before, I felt like I had the worst hangover of my life.
I let myself into my silent apartment, snapped on a light, and once again got the envelope out of my bag and looked at the photograph of the little boy who was the image of Aidan but who wasn’t Aidan.
The previous day, as I’d stood on my front step, examining the picture of the toddler in the Red Sox cap, it was the scar through the eyebrow that had given the game away. Aidan had got his the day he was born; a tiny nick in his just-new skin that had never healed. This boy in the picture had two perfect eyebrows, no scar. Then I’d seen the date on the photo. I’d stared at it, my head thinking, This can’t be right, but my gut knowing it was: this little boy had been born only eighteen months ago.
A letter had come with the photo: the flimsy card opened out to become a big sheet of writing paper. But I wasn’t interested in reading what she had to say, all I wanted to know was who she was. I scanned for the name at the end and—surprise, surprise—who was it, but Janie.
The red mist had descended and I felt like I was going crazy. She had had him for all those years. Now she had a son by him. And I had nothing.
Immediately I’d known what I was going to do.
My fingers trembling in the chilly morning, I rang Mitch. But someone who wasn’t Mitch said, “Mitch’s phone.”
“Can I speak to Mitch, please?”
“Not right now.” The person chuckled. “He’s suspended from a twenty-foot ceiling, doing microelectronics.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I was too angry. Well, get him the fuck down!
“Tell him it’s Anna. Tell him it’s urgent. Really, really urgent.”
But the phone answerer wouldn’t even yell up to Mitch. He said to me, “Mitch is way under pressure up there. Minute he’s finished, I’ll get him to call you.”
I cut the call and agitatedly kicked the front step, thinking, Who, who who? It couldn’t be any of the Real Men. The only one who was single was Gaz and he might try to “heal” me by setting me on fire.
Then I got it. It wasn’t meant to be Mitch. It was meant to be Nicholas.
Cute little Nicholas. He’d do.
I called him at work: got his voice mail. I called him on his cell: got his voice mail. That meant he had to be at home. I called him at home and got his voice mail.
I couldn’t believe it. I simply could not believe it. I needed this. Why were all these obstacles being put in my way?
In the middle of the rage I remembered something. Hands shaking, I grabbed my handbag and tipped the contents all over the step, going through the mountains of shite, searching for that little bit of paper. I didn’t really believe I’d find it. Although I had to.
And there it was. A small curling strip of paper. My lifesaver: Angelo’s number. Angelo whom I’d met with Rachel in Jenni’s one morning.
It wasn’t meant to be Nicholas. It was meant to be Angelo.
But I got a no-show on Angelo’s number, too. “I’m not here right now. You know what to do.”
“Angelo, my name is Anna, I’m Rachel’s sister, we met one morning in Jenni’s, then again on West Forty-first Street. Can you call me.”
I left my cell-phone number, hung up, scooped everything back into my bag, and sat down on the step. I couldn’t think of anyone else. There was no one. Maybe I should just go to work.
Then, like salvation, the phone rang. One of them ringing back! Which one? “Hello?”
But it was Kevin, who sounded like a maniac. “Anna, I’m here, at LaGuardia. I’m in the city. We’ve got to talk.”
“It’s okay, Kevin. I know all about it.”
“Shit. I wanted to tell you gently! But don’t worry about it. We’ll fight for custody and we’ll get it! We’ll bring him up, you and me, Anna. Where do you want to meet?”
“Where are you staying?”
“The Benjamin.”
“Go straight to your hotel. I’ll see you there.”
So it wasn’t meant to be Mitch, Nicholas, or Angelo. It was meant to be Kevin. Well, who knew?
I hailed a cab and climbed in. “Benjamin Hotel. East Fiftieth.” Then I got the envelope out again and studied the photo, which had been taken only four days earlier, and tried to figure out the sequence of events. When had I first met Aidan? When did we go exclusive? What age exactly was this child? He looked like he was eighteen months but he could be big for his age, or small. If he was only, say, sixteen months, what implications did that have? Would it be worse if he was nineteen or twenty months? What if he’d been a preemie? But my head was too mental and I couldn’t nail the time line. I’d nearly have it hooked and then it would all slide away again.
When my cell phone rang, I almost didn’t hear it because it was buried deep in my handbag.
“Hi,” a voice said. “This is Angelo. You called me?”
“Angelo! Yes. I’m Anna, Rachel’s sister, we met—”