A Theory of Relativity by Jacquelyn Mitchard
“He’s not her father. He’s barely even her stepfather.”
“I don’t want to dredge all this up now, Mom. I don’t want to drag every turn of events back to the issue of the primary claim on Keefer. Keefer stands to lose somebody else she loves, you know? And that kid who just left her cereal bowl on your table loves her mother as much as Georgia loved you. She loved you even when she treated you like crap, which, if you recall, was only ten years ago.”
“Gordie, I know that. It would be simpler if I didn’t know that.”
“Then give it a rest.”
“But we have to be prepared to act, Gordie, in case the worst happens.”
It would not be the worst for you, he’d thought, examining Lorraine’s fervent, energized face. Even her skin seemed to have tightened, grown supple. She was no longer the bemused, absent woman who’d come to his house that weekend in Madison, who walked as if walking hurt.
It would not be the worst for you, and it would not be the worst for me. He was his mother’s child, direct, blunt, impervious to contradiction, a heedless missile as she sped toward her goal.
For most of his life, her goal had been to love him. He would not have thought of trying to deter her. Now, he got one clear-shot look at the Lorraine people saw when they tried to deter her, to distract or placate her. Her style, her humor, her affectionate, right-brainy air of artsy exuberance, these had distracted him from the essence of his mother, which was the white-hot coal of the fully professed. He saw this Lorraine, and she frightened him. He kissed his mother’s forehead and left.
Craig Cady had a full house. His mother was rocking the swaddled bundle that was Hugh, fresh from the hospital, the one tiny hand visibly dusty from the membrane bath he’d so recently left. An austerely tall man with an edifice of pomaded silver hair, wearing a clerical collar, stepped forward, cupping Keefer’s chin, gripping Gordon’s and Mark’s hands in a crushing, soulful press. Craig Cady said, “This is our pastor, Reverend Whitehead.”
The strangling sound he heard behind him was, Gordon realized, his father laughing.
“We’ll keep you in our prayers,” the pastor said.
“Thanks,” Gordon said.
“Well,” Craig ventured, “well, thanks.”
“No problem,” Gordon replied. “We hope Delia gets better every day. Just call old Keefer and me here when you need me to bring her by.”
“I’m . . . well, Gordie, you don’t have to take her anymore. My mom’s here. I’m sure she’ll want to see the baby.”
“Has Keefer met your mom?”
“Once. But my mom’s great with kids.”
“I think I’ll just keep her with me while all this is going on, Craig. You don’t need a two-year-old bombing around, into everything, when you have a sick wife and a new baby and a scared teenager.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. Keefer’s coming with my dad and me to get my car, and then we’ll be back out at my house in Oregon.”
“Keefer needs to stay here,” Craig said.
“I think, in this situation, what Craig is trying to say is that this family needs to draw strength from one another, Gordon,” the pastor put in. “He wants all his children under one roof.”
“Well, Keefer’s not his child. At least, not yet. She’s . . . his ward. And I am her uncle, and she’s just spent two days beating up and down the highway. She needs a little time focused directly on her.”
“Please, Gordon, let’s not increase the already intense—”
“Craig,” Gordon said, “I want to speak with you privately.”
“I have no secrets from our pastor.”
“But I do have secrets from your pastor, who is not my pastor, and I want to get this over with quickly.”
They sat down together in the bedroom, each perched, at the end of the bed, on opposite corners of the mattress.
“Craig, Keefer is going to be frightened and needy right now.”
“She needs to stay here. Your weekend is up.”
“Craig, my parents and I just busted our asses for you.”
“And I appreciate that. But I know that when Delia wakes up, the first thing she’s going to ask after is her baby, and Alexis, and where Keefer is.”
“Keefer’s third.”
“What do you mean?”
“She comes after your baby and Alexis.”
“Gordie, Delia is . . . she could be . . . I can’t handle your-all politically correct way of saying stuff.”
“You have not said a single thing about your concern about how Keefer feels. When we came in the door, you didn’t pick her up and kiss her, you didn’t try to tell her that you missed her. You introduced us to your fucking shepherd—”
“Don’t get all hot on me, Gordie. I warn you.”
“You didn’t give Alexis a hug and get your mother to let Alex hold the baby. You introduced us to your . . . pastor. And he was the one who said you wanted your family together under one roof. You didn’t say that. You just said you’d find somebody to take care of Keefer.”
“Of course, I missed her,” Craig blustered. “No, Gordon, actually I didn’t miss her. I didn’t miss anyone. I haven’t slept in three days. I just laid eyes on my firstborn son, and my wife, who I love more than my life, is laying up in some hospital bed with a computer reading her brain—”
“That’s my point. Keefer needs someone who can see her, who can get outside his own hurt to give her his love. That’s not you, not right now. I mean that as no insult, Craig, because I know exactly how you feel.”
“Right, Gordie, you’re the big advocate for families. You’re so devoted to your family, all you could do for your whole life was screw every woman you laid eyes on, including coming on to my wife—”
“What?” Gordon was speechless. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“At Ray’s wedding. You were all over her.”
“I was the best man, Craig, and she was the matron of honor. I had to stand next to her. We had to dance. I want to tell you that I will never say anything more true in my life than this: I never made a pass at your wife. I never wanted to make a pass at your wife,” Gordon said, and added, “How long have you been thinking about this shit?”
“Your sister even said as much. Not about Delia. But about everybody else. It was what people thought about you.”
“Don’t bring up my sister. Don’t say a fucking word about my sister. And, what the hell, Craig, all of you couldn’t wait to suck up to Ray. It wasn’t me who played on the Knockers. On a tour sponsored by a restaurant that specializes in ladies’ boobs—”
“You know that joint has nothing to do with the tour.”
“Yeah? Well, that’s what everybody thought.”
“Yeah, well you’re the perfect man, Gordie,” Craig muttered.
“I’m not at all perfect. I’m a fucking ex-science teacher who lives in a rathole—”
“Teaching kids evolution—”
Gordon stood up, sweating. “Teaching kids that man is not the perfect creation, but a frail creature in the process of change. Isn’t that what your church teaches?”
“I don’t want to do this.” Craig covered his face. “I’m sorry. I’m not myself, Gordon. I’m not myself. You don’t know how bad we felt about what we had to do to you guys. Just because you have to do something that’s right doesn’t mean it’s easy. And now, all this. You don’t know what this is like. The woman I love gives birth to this precious gift, this wonderful baby we thought we’d never have—”
“You had a wonderful baby already.”
“But a son. My son. And then, she’s cast down into the shadow, the greatest joy and the greatest grief, right up against one another.”
“I know exactly what that’s like,” Gordon said. “It wasn’t my wife, but it was my only sister. I watched her bravery when she gave birth to Keefer, and her fight to stay alive to raise Keefer and how she died trying, and I couldn’t do a damned thing about i
“Gordon, I’m not questioning your love for Georgia. Or Keefer. Look, let’s get back to the subject,” Craig said, weariness in every slow breath. “We have custody of Keefer. We’re adopting Keefer.”
“But you don’t really want her.”
“Of course I do, Gordie. She’s a great little kid.”
“Do you love her as much as you already love Hugh?”
“I can’t . . . you can’t compare those things.”
“Do you love Alex like you love Hugh?”
“Alex has a father of her own. Alex is Delia’s child. I didn’t even meet Alex until she was in, what, fourth grade—”
“Well, do you love Hugh?”
“I never thought I could love anything on earth so much.”
“That’s how I love Keefer. She is the kin of my kin, Craig. She’s the flesh of the flesh I love. She’s my own.”
“I know that you think of it that way, and I admire you for it.”
“You admire me? You admire me? As if it was a noble act to love the baby I helped deliver, that I helped raise? Do you really think I could feel any more connected to Keefer if I’d planted the seed? That there would be some kind of magic trick if the first cells that divided and divided until they were her came out of me?”
“You haven’t experienced it, Gordie.”
“You think you can know more about loving a kid in four days than I know about loving Keefer for two years?”
“Why didn’t you say all this back then?”
“Because no one gave me a chance to say anything. And I didn’t think I had to. I thought it was obvious.”
“Someday you might have a kid of your own. I pray that you do. Then you tell me.”
“I had a kid of my own, Craig.”
“If that were the truth, you would never have given her up. You were the one who gave her up. But even then, you and I are not the ones who control these things, Gordon, not really. “
“What is really? Is your reality the correct reality or something?”
“I’m a car salesman, Gordie. I can’t do fancy talk about science.”
“Okay, plain talk. You didn’t want her. And you don’t want her now.”
“I wanted to have a child with my wife. Having a child who was blood related to my wife was almost the same thing. I wanted to do what my best buddy Ray wanted and fulfill the wishes of Georgia, his wife.”
“But you didn’t want Keefer, specifically. You said it was almost the same thing, as if Keefer was a reasonable facsimile of a kid.”
“Don’t be an asshole. You know I’m not saying that.”
Gordon relented, “No, I do know that you don’t mean that. You mean, she was as close as could be to the child you might have had together.”
A baby who looked like me, Gordon thought. A baby who was smart, like your father.
“Exactly,” Craig sighed, his massive shoulders slumped.
“But, see, I wanted her, specifically. I wanted this one child, who was already mine.”
Shaking his head side to side with somber slowness, like a bruin scenting a presence he did not recognize, Craig seemed to meditate. “I don’t know how this all got started . . .” He looked beseechingly into Gordon’s face. “I can’t even see how I can live my own life, let alone these kids. I don’t know what Delia is going to need. I don’t know a damned thing.”
Gordon felt a knot open and loose. “You poor bastard,” he said, reaching out stiffly, grasping Craig’s forearm. They pulled apart, and sat with their hands dangling between their knees until Gordon said finally, “Well, what you have to do is a thing I know how to do. You can ask me. I won’t ask for a payoff. I won’t ask for more days with Keefer, it’s not like that.”
“And I haven’t even called Alex’s father. He has to know—”
“Craig,” his mother called from the living room, “it’s the hospital!” Craig lumbered to his feet. Gordon followed him out to the living room, nodding to his father, who stood up, craning his neck to retrieve one of Keefer’s red Converse high-tops from the coffee table, where it peeked from between lavish twin urns of silk lilies.
“What does that mean? A ventilator? Is that temporary?” Craig was asking, as his mother rocked faster, faster, faster.
Mark made a grab for Keefer, bobbled her wriggling rump, and knocked the shoe to the floor.
“What do you think?” Mark asked urgently, looking hard into Gordon’s eyes, a look that was steady, young, ready to dare anything.
“Let’s go,” Gordon told his father, scooping up Keefer with one arm, pressing her face against his shoulder, turning the knob on the door with his free hand. “Leave it. Leave the shoe. It’s not bad luck. It’s not on the table.”
CHAPTER twenty-two
My name is Keefer Kathryn Nye. K. K. N. I live in Madison, Wisconsin. I am almost ten. My birthday will be right before spring vacation. I want to do paintball. My dad is saying no, because it is guns, but it is not guns. He also says that all the other kids would not be able to come, because their parents would think they would get blind in one eye. Hugh got to do paintball, and he is only a kid, but I guess it’s different when you are a boy.
Is that fair?
I am going to write the story of my entire life. I have all night.
My mother died when I was a baby.
It’s Tuesday right now. It’s night. I had to take Monday and Tuesday off for a medical emergency. My dad was out of town. He went to a meeting in Kansas or California or someplace. He never goes to meetings, so why now? He is not a tenor, so they pay him peanuts. But he is going to get out of school pretty soon. He says I am paying for his education, but then he is going to pay for my education. I would rather have a mansion on Lake Mendota than his education. My friend Alaya has a mansion on Lake Mendota with a bowling alley in the basement. Our house is this big dump. It has five bedrooms and a porch all around and seven birch trees. It looks much better on the outside than on the inside. But it is a rotten color. My father says it is shi-you-know-what bristol green. My dad’s car used to be that color. We got it for the neighborhood, but we only have the chairs and couches we got from my grandma and grandpa. At least the bank doesn’t own the chairs. We are going to get another house later. Even my aunt Lindsay says our house is a dump. And she is my best aunt. She is so nice, she would not lie about something like that. I don’t remember my mother, because I was only a baby when she died. She was pretty famous. My grandma McKenna has a big book of pictures and stories about my mother, and one was in People (not Teen People) and there is a tape that was on the old-time show that was like 20/20. I get to keep it when I’m twelve. My cousin Hugh’s mom died when he was a baby, too, so we have gone through the same things. Once Mrs. Mallory said I thought I could get away with a bunch of stuff because I thought people would feel sorry for me because I didn’t have a mother. This was a big, fat, stinking lie.
I have to do two days of journaling because of this medical emergency. It makes up for everything I’m missing in homework, even science and math. I’m learning a lot of science here in the hospital. You bet! I’m the only one to help out. Okay, so first we went to the hospital on Monday, and we just sort of sat around, dum-dum-dum. Nothing happened. My dad called on the phone and said, read something. I said, like what? My dad says that if I don’t learn to read for pleasure, he will have to get me my own shopping cart when I grow up, so I can push it up and down State Street with my little chihuahua sitting on top of the plastic gallon milk jugs. I know what he means by this, and it is not funny.
And so, now it’s Tuesday, and I am out in the hall, because they won’t let me in the room yet. I’m not sterilized. My dad died when I was a little baby, too, but not my dad now. It was Ray. I don’t think I ever met him. We live in Madison because my dad has to always go to more school, more school, more school! It is ridiculous. I would quit school r
Hugh and me got in a pretty good amount of trouble in our lives. Actually, it was mostly my idea, but Hugh goes along with everything I say. He does everything I tell him to, even if I don’t totally mean it.
Is that fair?
I would get sent to the counselor, which is how I met Miss Tyson. Miss Tyson! Ha! Ha! She was a training counselor. She was only in our school for one month, then she was going to move on to another school. She said they gave her the potential criminals. So she could see what she was getting into. Right away, she was calling my dad. Answering machine! What does she think, he’s home? He has to work. But that was a long time ago.
MISS TYSON: So, are you taking away the little kids’ Mothball cards?
K. K. N.: We traded.
MISS TYSON: What did you trade?
K. K. N.: Rubber bands.
MISS TYSON: Rubber bands?
K. K. N.: Big rubber bands. The blue ones. I collect them. You could use them for a slingshot.
MISS TYSON: Do you think that was a fair thing to do?
K. K. N.: It was like the pioneers trading beads with the Indians. For their furs and land.
MISS TYSON: It was EXACTLY like the pioneers trading beads with the Indians, which is what makes it so terrible! The first-grader parents are calling up, and they are mad as hell! They are saying they paid ten dollars for those cards and you ripped those little kids off. You have to give them all back.