“Ponder this,” Jason said, flipping off the pair with both middle fingers.
Valerie smiled, but couldn’t bear to tell Jason the real bitch of the breakup. She had taken a pregnancy test the day before, and was pregnant with Lion’s baby. She wasn’t sure why she was hiding it from her brother, whether from shame, grief, or the hope that it wasn’t true—that she had the first false positive pregnancy test in the history of pregnancy tests. Days later, after the blood test at the doctor’s office confirmed the fetus growing inside her, she wept in her room and prayed for a miscarriage—or the strength to go to the clinic on Commonwealth Avenue that several of her friends had visited in college. But deep down, she knew she couldn’t do it. Maybe it was her Catholic upbringing, but more likely it was that she really wanted the baby. Lion’s baby. She vehemently denied that it had anything to do with wanting him back, but she still called him, repeatedly, imagining a change of heart, a transformation of character.
He never answered the phone, forcing her to leave vague, needy messages he would never return, even when she informed him that she had something “really important” to tell him.
“He doesn’t deserve to know,” Jason said, declaring Lion the first person he ever hated.
“But doesn’t this baby deserve to have a father?” Valerie asked.
“If the choice is binary—Lion or nothing—the kid is better off with nothing.”
Valerie could see Jason’s point, recognizing that there is more heartbreak in continuous disappointment than a void, but she also felt that it was wrong to keep it from him in the same way ending her pregnancy felt wrong. So one lonesome evening late in her third trimester, she decided to call him one last time, give him one final try. But when she dialed his number, a stranger with a Middle Eastern accent informed her that Lion had moved to California with no forwarding information. She wasn’t sure whether to believe this person, or whether he was a co-conspirator, but either way she officially gave up, just as she had given up with Laurel and her friends back home. There was nothing more she could do, she decided—and she took surprising comfort in that feeling of futility, reminding herself of this during every difficult moment that followed: when she went into labor, when she brought Charlie home from the hospital, when he kept her up late at night with colic, when he had ear infections and high fevers and bad falls. She reminded herself of this when Charlie was finally old enough to ask about his father, a heartbreaking moment that Valerie had dreaded every day of her son’s life. She had cold him the modified truth, one that she had scripted for years—that his daddy was a talented artist, that he had to go away before Charlie was born, and that she wasn’t sure where he was now. She had brought out the only painting she had of Lion’s, a small abstract covered with circles, all in hues of green, and ceremoniously hung it over Charlie’s bed. Then she showed him the only photo she had of his father, a blurry snapshot she kept in an old hatbox in her closet. She asked Charlie if he wanted it, offering to frame it for him, but he shook his head, returning it to the hatbox.
“He never met you,” Valerie said, fighting back tears. “If he did, he would love you as much as I do.”
“Is he ever coming back?” Charlie asked, his eyes round and sad, but dry.
Valerie shook her head and said, “No, honey. He’s not coming back.”
Charlie had accepted this, nodding bravely, as Valerie told herself again that there was nothing more she could do—other than be a good mother, the very best mother she could be.
But now, years later, staring up at the hospital ceiling, she finds herself doubting this, doubting herself. She finds herself wishing she had tried harder to track Lion down. Wishing that her son had a father. Wishing they weren’t so alone.
5
Tessa