A Theory of Relativity by Jacquelyn Mitchard
He recognized his Georgia, his child.
He had forgotten an enormous fact of primate biology. The nature versus nurture debate was specious, but not for the reasons he had supposed. Georgia was who she was, and he who he was. But it was his nature to nurture her. Had anyone suspected how bewitched he had been, how unable to think of anything except seeing her, laying his finger against her skin?
Lorraine’s joy over the baby verged on madness. It poured from her like scent. She had walked home from the library the day of the call from the adoption agency, her arms loaded down with a stack of child-care books, and forgotten for two days that she had left her car in the parking lot. She assumed it had been stolen and didn’t care. With quarts of washable latex, she’d painted the walls of Georgia’s room in huge splashes of raspberry and gold and metallic blue, so much color that her sister, Daphne, whose husband was a neurologist, worried that the baby might get overstimulated.
Lorraine hadn’t even cared whether Mark took to the baby. She chose her name. When he balked, asking, “Don’t you think the name is a little much?” Lorraine became short with him.
“Your mechanic named his baby Juniper,” she’d said, pouting. She had planned since she was sixteen to name her baby after Georgia O’Keeffe—and by God, she was going to name her baby after Georgia O’Keeffe.
And it had been the most perfect name. Mark could not imagine another girl so unique and impossible to diminish as his child. Two years later, his son was born, on the day man first walked on the moon. They had not even known of Gordie’s existence on the summer night that they, like all their friends, woke to the alarm and watched the grainy telecast, a drowsy Georgia sprawled across their laps. But six weeks later, even though Gordon Cooper hadn’t been part of that particular mission, Mark had borrowed a leaf from Lorraine’s book and named his son for someone famous and accomplished, and to commemorate the scientific historicity of his birthday. It was fanciful instead of practical.
How their names suited his children. Soft and hard variations of the same letter, they were like handmade shirts, instantly and perfectly fitting.
He had traveled for work until Gordie was almost a year old. Longer than Mark would have liked. It had taken him time to reposition himself at Medi-Sun so that he would do more R and D. But wherever he was, whatever client dinner or other obligation lay before him, he would set aside everything to call home at six, just after Lorraine would have cleared the dishes. If it was a Thursday or a Sunday, he’d wait just a few minutes longer, to catch them after dinner and before Bewitched or The Munsters came on. There were times his wife hadn’t had much to say. Two under three was quite a feat, and women didn’t hold down full-time jobs and full-time families back then. Lorraine’s job was always demanding, and she simply would not do things halfway. Even having Mary Dwors happy to care for the children in those early years and someone to help with the cleaning and ironing didn’t make up for another parent. Mark was never unaware of how much sleep Lorraine surrendered to keep it all rolling when he was away. By the time Georgia was four, he’d come in off the road for good. Years later, they would look back and marvel at how they’d ever managed.
Mark felt the calls had helped. They were an anchor. When Georgia first began talking, he would ask for her, and she would grow wistful, no matter what her mood had been like in the moments before he called—“She was throwing her foam blocks at the baby and he was pretending to fall over just now,” Lorraine would tell him, exasperated. “She was fine, Mark. This is Sarah Bernhardt over here. Tell Dad how much fun you were having, Georgia.”
Mark would coax her, “Georgia? Georgia on my mind?”
“Daddy.”
“My Georgia.”
“My Daddia.”
“Are you happy, Georgia?”
“No, I am sad.”
“Why are you sad?”
“Because you are not with me.”
“Soon, I will be with you.”
“You aren’t with me.”
“Soon.”
“Why aren’t you here?”
And he would carefully explain, in language she could understand, how Daddy’s job was getting vitamins to people so they could stay strong and healthy and not get colds that were too bad, even in winter. And still, she would say, “Daddy, I am sad.” He did not once disbelieve her. He thought it was entirely possible that a happy life could contain enormous sadness, and he didn’t think children’s emotions were any less noteworthy than adults’. For a small child, the walls of the room were the boundaries of the universe. He would sit, in Phoenix or Milwaukee or Trenton, and imagine him and Georgia, each immured in the restrictive enclosure of their separateness, the wall of distance between them.
He had accepted, when Georgia became ill, that however long his life lasted, ten years longer, or twenty, he would be a man living on the other side of the wall from his own heart. The spunk and resolve Lorraine brought to their struggle over his granddaughter made him want to stand up and applaud his wife’s courage. But he had no taste for it. He hoped that his distance was not felt. He hoped he could do his part.
The Nyes were wrong. He knew that much.
He knew very little else.
He was certain that no intelligence survived death.
So he did not at least have to live imagining Georgia’s grief because he could not be with her. His chest filled with tiny, insistent pulses and he gasped. He wondered with vague curiosity whether he was having a heart attack. But no, he was only, finally, crying, tears hot along his cheeks, down into his ears.
“Mark?” Lorraine stirred, not quite waking. “Are you okay?”
“I miss my baby girl,” he managed to say, holding himself still, trying not to alarm her.
“Monday,” Lorraine sighed. “She’ll be home on Monday. Go to sleep.”
CHAPTER eleven
Go to sleep, Gordon urged her. Gotosleepgotosleepgotosleep. He dared not cough or breathe or even shift the pillow to a more comfortable place between his knees because he believed . . . no, he knew, that Keefer could hear his thoughts.
Why was there so little research on this phenomenon? If he thought of nothing except sleep, then Keefer would slip over the edge into sleep. If he let his mind drift, if he began to think about skiing, or tomorrow’s lesson, or an itch in his groin, or the pucker around Alicia’s navel when she dived for the set on her volleyball team (he’d joined, insisting they treat each other as friends only, and she’d trumped him, asking him, with genuine bafflement, what he was talking about), or about how much he wanted a ginger ale with ice, then Keefer would stir.
It would begin with a single whimper, like a puppy on its first night home. Then would come silence, during which Gordon would plead with the universe, and one in every five times—he had counted it up—Keefer would sigh, insert her thumb upside down high in the back left corner where her grueling molars were sprouting, and collapse like a deflated wind sock back down onto her dog bed. Gordon had tried, for Lindsay, to describe the joy he felt when she fell back to sleep. The security of knowing that when the sun came up, he would not be desperate, wild, his eyes so dry they literally clicked open and closed. It was holy, a gift from above, one more night when he would not have to have watched the middle forty-five minutes of Fast Times at Ridgemont High or Batman and Robin, while he stroked Keefer’s restless little feet with one thumb.
For a time, at first, she had slept overnight so well that Gordon felt as though he were on steroids. He could do fatherhood! Totally! Let Faith Bogert come. Let ’em all come. What was all this whining about never a moment to yourself? Why did the single parents at school always look like hell? “She’s down at eight,” he would comment, trying to stifle the sniff of pride he felt coming on, “and she’s out for the night.”
But then the molars peeked through, and Keefer woke up at night with a wail like steel on steel.
The first time, terrified, Gordon had called his mother, who asked him to hold the telephone close t
But Keefer wailed on, and Gordon finally wrapped her in his Brewers warm-up jacket, tying the sleeves in front in a way that kept Keefer both warm and immobile, and drove to Trempeauleau County Methodist. The resident who carefully thumped, eyed, and palpated Keefer was Asian, a young woman.
“You are her father?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m her uncle,” Gordon answered.
“She’s your daughter?” the young woman asked again, and Gordon thought, shut up, shut up, you spoiled overcerebrated brat, and he also thought that this was exactly the sort of woman who once would have, by now, been providing him accidental occasions to brush her breast against his arm. Single parenthood, he had discovered to his disgust, was not the chick magnet he’d believed it would be. When Keefer dimpled and kept her barrettes in, he had to beat the bruistas at the Perk Place off him with a stick. But when she whined, or threw herself facedown on the floor, kicking both her Weebocked feet until she puked, women were grateful to find him invisible.
“I’m her uncle. I’m adopting her,” Gordon explained. “She lives with me, so de facto, yes, I’m her father. My sister, her mother, died last spring.”
“I’m sorry. But I have a good reason for asking.”
“Health insurance? She’s on my parents’. I have a copy of their card, and a letter.”
“I’m not a bookkeeper.”
“Oh, right. Well, then, shoot.”
“I want to know how much you know about the teething patterns of toddlers.”
“A fair amount. I’m a biology teacher.”
“I’m talking children, not dogfish sharks.”
“Fine.”
“So, you know why she’s in pain. Pain equals crying. Restless sleep.”
Bitch, thought Gordon.
“I’d be glad for restless sleep, Doctor. We’re talking no sleep. I know she’s getting a back tooth, but I didn’t know it would affect her like this. . . .”
“What happened when she cut her front teeth? Was she bothered?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t live with her then. Her parents, my sister, was alive then. I think she was pretty little when she got her first ones.”
“Well, this is considerably harder for her. Molars are bigger. And she’s bigger. More sentient. Aren’t you, honey?”
“Tell me about it. I mean, she never sleeps. She . . . never. . . . sleeps.”
“Most parents of young children get far more sleep than they actually think they’re getting. It’s more of a misperception, because the sleep is so broken. I know it seems impossible, but everyone goes through this.”
“Do you have kids?”
“Nooooo,” the young woman, whose name tag read Michelle Yu, answered. “If she were truly sleep deprived, she’d have some physical . . . she’d show it.”
Thank you, Yu, he’d thought, as she dismissed him with some sample packets of Tylenol syrup and he headed home for the dawn patrol.
* * *
Day after day, he caught himself nodding in class. The kids noticed. One of the endless procession of Reillys—this one named Dennis—woke him by turning the volume to the max on the CD player he kept in the lab. The opening riff of “Layla” blasted him literally off his stool.
“Tempus fugg-it, Mr. McKenna,” the kid said.
Gordon forced down his desire to slug the kid and joked, “Reilly, I’m an old man.”
“No, my brother’s your age.”
“Ahhh, yes, Sir Ryan Reilly. We survived fifth grade together.”
“He says you were the big ladies’ man.”
“In fifth grade? I didn’t know which end was which. I’m a Catholic, too, you know.” Laughter. Relief. Perhaps they’d forget he’d nodded off.
“No, here. Right here at good ol’ Wildwood. Says you plucked more roses than—”
“Whoa there, big fella. We won’t be doing the mating dance in here until Thanksgiving.” More giggles. Good. From the syllabus, they knew “the mating dance” was a genetics exercise. “And as for me, I’m in the army now. The parent army.”
“Did you get married, Mr. McKenna?” said Kathleen Zurich, little vixen in the pom squad who sat right next to Kelly Rafferty.
Rafferty.
God.
“No, I didn’t get married,” he finally answered.
“Accident?” Laughter. “Lady got you in trouble?”
“No, I’m adopting my baby niece. My sister and her husband died.”
“Oooooh. I know about that. It was on TV.”
“That’s right, and now I’m raising a baby. The most fabulous baby in the world, except she’s nocturnal. I can’t believe how much stamina your parents must have. How many of you guys are there now? Ten? Eleven? How do they do it?”
“Every which way, I guess. . . .” Reilly shrugged. More raucous laughter.
“What I mean is, I’m asleep on my feet with one kid. How do they manage?”
“They drink,” the kid howled.
Gordon didn’t drink. He quit softball with only three games left on their schedule. When Lindsay came over, he begged her at the door to take Keefer out so he could sleep for an hour. When she came back—Lindsay swore she’d been gone two hours—he’d drooled all over the couch. On Saturday nights, when Keefer was with his folks or the Cadys and Nyes, he had no strength for anything but takeout and a movie, through which he slept. In his mirror, he was sure he saw licks of gray at his temples. His patience with the ordinary guy’s stuff of life was slim.
He’d almost got in a fight with a guy at the Wild Rose one night. There were two of them, business twits probably invited here by Medi-Sun, sucking up expense-account cocktails in their seafoam green muscle-man sport coats and Clark Kent specs.
Twit One started with a loud, meant-to-be-overheard account of some office skirmish, “Look. Heywood is over. He will never recover. I understand his need. But he’s posturing. It isn’t going to fool anyone . . .”
“You speak the truth,” said Twit Two.
Behind the bar, Katie Savage, the bartender, rolled her eyes and made a “down, down, boy” motion with her palm. Did Gordon look as disgusted as he felt?
“I’m struggling with the same things in my setting,” Church began, affecting an English accent. “Ernie Blodgett can kid himself, but he’ll never paint hydrants again. He’s a broom man. That’s the reality. When he tried painting hydrants, he was simply out of his depth . . .”
One of the twits next started on his boss’s daughter. Gordon couldn’t believe his ears. “And now she’s let it be known to old man Vanderwood that she wants a real princess wedding, no expense spared—”
“And she’s a dwarf?” guffawed his corporate twin.
“And so is the guy she’s marrying! We’re all expected to attend this very solemn occasion.”
“Well, at least they can save on clothes. Get them at the Baby Gap. Get a Barbie’s Dream House and they’re all—”
Gordon lost it. “Do you know what dwarfism is?” He snarled in the guy’s face. “Do you know that people who have congenital dwarfism sometimes don’t live past forty? Do you know the courage it must have taken for those parents to raise their girl to believe she could live her life as a normal woman?” Twit Two made a dismissive motion, as if stroking an invisible violin. “You fat bastard,” Gordon hissed, “are you a father? Are you?”
“Come on, Squirrel,” Twit Two muttered. “Let’s leave Bob and Doug here to their cribbage—”
“Squirrel?” Church crowed happily. “Squirrel? Jesus Christ, Gordie, don’t mess with a guy named Squirrel! And who are you? Bullwinkle? I’m Boris. Moose and Squirrel must die!”
Then Kate was between them, holding on to Gordon and the bigger of the assholes, by the fronts of their shirts. “Next beer’s on me, buds. If you just get back to your . . . cribbage here. Come on, G
Gordon got so hammered he had a gauzy recollection of burying at least part of his face in Kate’s bosom. He hoped he had not done wrong. Kate had been his friend since sixth grade, when she brought her father’s Playboys to him and Kip Sweeney in their tree fort.
But Gordon could gain no ground against his weariness. Up at five, he felt like Santa Claus heading out the door: book bag, diaper bag, briefcase, elf in stocking cap. All the way out Q to his aunt’s, and thank God for that. At the beginning of the year, he’d asked Lorraine what they were going to do about Keefer’s daytime care.
“Well,” Lorraine asked him, shrugging, “what do you want to do?” He’d been sure she was putting him on. Didn’t she already have a plan? How was he supposed to intuit what kind of childcare situation would be best for an eighteen-month-old who also happened to be the subject of a custody battle everyone in the goddamned town seemed to know about? He was righteously pissed.
“I don’t think she should go to a day-care center,” Gordon had said.
“I also don’t think she should go to a day-care center,” said his mother.
“She’s had enough change in the past few months.”
“I agree.”
“And plus, the only day-care center is that born-again place, the Rainbow Club. It always sounded like a topless bar to me. How come Catholics don’t have day care?”
“Catholics have grandmothers.”
“Are you going to quit, then?”
“Quit my job, Gordie?”