Then Came You

When it was over, I leaned over and kissed the narrow bridge of his nose. “That was something,” I said.

“Uh.” He was lying on his side, naked, sweating, adorable. His hair was messy, and his face, without those terrible glasses, looked younger and softer and altogether lovable. My boyfriend, I thought, and it was all I could do not to hold myself, to jump out of the bed and go singing into the streets. Lying beside him, still slightly tipsy, the world felt reordered, and the tasks ahead of me felt manageable. Maybe I could convince Annie to stay long-term. I could even invite her husband and her sons. There was room for them all. I could help her husband find a job. Maybe Jules would find child care so enjoyable that she’d end up being like an aunt to Rory, coming over once or twice a week. We’d be a tribe, a team, a village. . us and our men.

I poked Darren’s freckled shoulder until I was sure I had his attention. “Do you like kids?” I asked.

He opened his eyes and peered at me. “For dinner?”

“Ha.” I rummaged under the covers until I located my panties. I’d need new panties, if someone was going to be seeing them on a regular basis. I’d have to add it to the list. “Get all the jokes out of your system now. Because if you’re going to be a father…”

Now both his eyes were open. “What?”

“Well, a stepfather. A step-boyfriend-father.” The whiskey had made me merry, like one of those laughing girls I’d always watched with my mouth pressed in a disapproving line. Who knew it was this easy, to find a new personality in a bottle?

“Wait. Wait.” He was blinking at me, holding the sheets to his chest. “Slow down for a minute here.”

I perched on the bed in my underpants, legs tucked underneath me and tilted coquettishly to the side.

“Look,” he said, sitting up and holding me by the shoulders. “I like you, Tina. I like you a lot. But. . I mean, the thing is…”

I jumped off the bed before he could say any more, before he could elucidate the reasons he didn’t want me. I scooped up whatever clothes I saw on the floor, feeling dizzy as I bent over, and hurried into the bathroom. Wrong, I thought. I’d been right about India, but I’d been wrong about him.

A second later, he was banging on the door. “Hey, Bettina. Can we talk about this?”

I decided that we couldn’t. . because, really, what was there to say? “I need to go.” I combed my fingers through my hair, washed my hands and face, rinsed my mouth with water, and opened the door, pushing past him to where I’d left my shoes. Darren had pulled on his boxer shorts. His hair stood up in spikes, and his face still had that tender look without his glasses. He touched my cheek, then my hair. “Stay with me.”

Are you my boyfriend? I wanted to ask. . but the words reminded me of a book I’d read when I was little. Are you my mother? The mess of my life came crashing down, leaving me breathless. My father was dead, my mother was gone, and I was responsible for a baby who wasn’t mine. It seemed, in that moment, more than I could bear, more than anyone should have to.

I pressed my lips against his shoulder. “I need to go.” I kissed his cheek, then the corner of his mouth, thinking that he wouldn’t try to keep me, so I was surprised when he took my shoulders and held me motionless in front of him.

“Hey. Listen.” He paused, scratching at the top of his head. “I don’t know if I like babies. I’ve never really thought about it. I wasn’t expecting to have to think about it for a while, you know?”

I nodded. I knew.

“But, the thing is, I like you. I like you a lot.” My heart was rising, rising. I wanted to jump in the air, or into his arms again. “It’s like, if I found out you had, I don’t know, herpes or something.”

My heart stopped rising. My mouth fell open. “Are you actually equating my half sister with a venereal disease?” I asked.

Darren picked up his glasses off the coffee table, put them on, and looked at me defiantly. “You know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“It’s like…” He scratched at his head some more, thinking. “A preexisting condition,” he finally said. “I’ll deal with it. Whatever it is.” He opened his arms. “Now come to papa.”

And, almost in spite of myself, I went.

INDIA

When I was seventeen, my junior year of high school, my grandfather had a stroke that left him paralyzed on his left side.

My yaya tried to find the right kind of facility, a place with round-the-clock nurses and physical therapy, and aides who could help lift my grandfather from his bed to his wheelchair, then from the chair to the toilet or the shower. But insurance only paid for six months at a place like that. When the time was up, my grandfather came home, where he’d fly into rages, face red, spittle in the corners of his lips, glaring at my grandmother in frustration, or in tears. Why can’t, why can’t, was the phrase he’d repeat over and over, as she’d tell him, in Greek and in English, Vassily, calm down! He couldn’t be left alone: unattended, he’d throw things, start fires when he turned on the stove and then forgot about it.

For six weeks we managed. In the mornings, we’d work together to get him to the bathroom, shaved and dressed and into his chair. My grandmother would stay with him while I was at school. I turned down my starring role in the drama club’s fall musical so I could come home as soon as school ended. I’d sit with him, watching television or reading out loud while she ran errands or napped. We’d eat dinner early, perform the bathroom routine again, and then watch TV until it was time to get him in bed. We kept this up until the morning my grandfather fell on top of my grandmother while I was at school. After an hour, she managed to work herself out from underneath him (my grandfather was almost six feet tall and weighed more than two hundred pounds) and inch her way across the kitchen floor to the phone. The ambulance she called took them both to the hospital. She’d cracked three of her ribs and he’d broken a hip.

“I don’t want to do this,” Yaya said, wincing as she spoke and pressing her hand against her taped-up ribs. “But I have no choice.” She put the house up for sale, moved the two of them into an assisted-living complex where no one under fifty-five was allowed, and gave me the last address she had for my mother, on Alden Lane in New London, Connecticut. Sure, Raine had said, when Yaya had called her. Sure, Sammie can come. Absolutely. It’s time we were together. But I’d been listening on the extension, and my mother had not sounded enthusiastic. I could hear noises in the background — kids fighting, a television blaring, a man yelling something I couldn’t make out. She’d gotten married years ago, to a man named Phil, and they had two daughters, ages seven and five. She had never ended up in California — New London was about as far away from there as you could get.

I left Toledo in October with five hundred dollars, a suitcase full of clothes, a pair of boots and a pair of sneakers, and a winter coat that I’d outgrown (I hadn’t wanted to bother Yaya and ask for another one). In spite of all the indications, I was hopeful. I hadn’t seen my mother in years, but I remembered her as young and beautiful, always laughing, with a light in her eyes, so different from my dour, exhausted grandmother.

But the woman who opened the door after my ten-hour bus ride was different. I blinked, thinking maybe I’d gotten the address wrong, looking at the woman’s hard-worn face and faded eyes, her hair dyed a brassy, straw- like blonde, and her body still thin, but soft as overripe fruit.

“Sammie?” Her voice was hoarse. There was a cigarette burning between her fingers, and I could see that her teeth were stained. I wondered if she still had the unicorn tattooed on her hip, if she remembered telling me she’d take me to California, and if she ever felt bad that she hadn’t.

Her husband wasn’t there. Phil was, I learned, a long-distance trucker who made cross-country runs that kept him on the road ten days out of every two weeks. Raine worked, part-time, as a cashier at a supermarket. “This is going to be just fine,” she said, ushering me into the house, which smelled like bacon grease and cigarette smoke, showing me the pullout couch where I’d sleep and the closet where I could keep my things. It probably did seem like a good deal to her: a built-in, live-in babysitter for her daughters from the moment I came home from school. Usually, she’d barely bother to say hello to me as I got off the bus before racing out the door, into her car, and, I eventually learned, off to one of the Indian casinos just a few miles up the highway.

The girls — Emmie and Sophie — were sweet enough, with big brown eyes and curly brown hair. I’d babysat some, back in Toledo, and I liked kids all right. I’d walk them home from their elementary school, help them hang up