She looks away. “I guess that’s true. But he did not like him. He thought he was dangerous. Or reckless, I think, was the word he used. And that turned out to be true, you know, but I don’t mean because I became pregnant. Probably I wanted that. Secretly I wanted that. To secure some part of him. And I don’t mean to keep him in a place, or to keep him with me, because that was something I wouldn’t do. Or couldn’t do.”
He watches her thinking about this for a few moments. It is strange that, while her bringing the baby into his home had brought Claire near, he was having a conversation unlike any he’d ever had with his daughter.
“Did you give the baby up for adoption, Joline?”
“Yes.” She turns toward him then, but seems to be looking past him back into the night. “It was a challenge to keep the pregnancy hidden from Kathleen. And Jon.”
“That was something the father wanted, then.”
“No. No, he didn’t want that.”
“Well, then, did he run away?”
“No. It’s funny. As reckless as he probably was, he didn’t know how to do that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he was reckless, but not irresponsible. He took risks, but that was because he was young, and he believed in his—I don’t know what to call them. He believed in his little crusades. When he found out I was pregnant, he was overjoyed. I don’t think he’d once thought of being a father, but when I told him, and even I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep the baby then, it’s like you could see his face fill with the possibility, like he was already pushing a five-year-old boy on his bicycle down the sidewalk, and telling him he was about to let go.”
“So what happened? What do you mean by little crusades?”
She shakes her head, and looks away, back toward the kitchen, and the way the remaining light strikes her face makes her look older.
“I shouldn’t have used the word little. It just seems that way now, now that I’m, you know, living this suburban life with this husband and a newborn baby. It’s like that was something that was inevitable all along.”
“It’s still not inevitable.”
She gives a short laugh. “Now you sound like him.”
“Who?”
“My child’s father.”
“What was his name?” But she shakes her head again.
“That was one of his ‘go-to’ phrases. Nothing’s inevitable. And he meant the way people live as if tracks have been laid in themselves, or through them, is what he said, and so they have no choice but to follow them. But he meant it politically, you know. He was a Marxist. He believed revolution was possible. I think he missed the point.”
Marc looks down at the baby again. Her eyes are open now, but she still seems to be sleeping, since they are the only parts of her moving. She is swaddled tightly.
“So what was the point?” he asks.
“I mean the way he believed tracks are laid in you. They’re not political, or they are only after the fact. I fell in love with him. And I was happy at the time, before I met him, you know, having graduated college, and getting a good job. But after I met him—on the street where he was wearing a dark wool jacket, and directing protesters who were staging a walkout for higher wages. I mean, to tell you the truth, I never thought twice about that. About the rights of workers, the rights of the poor. Just abstractly. And I wasn’t thinking about it when I stopped to watch for a second, and he turned, suddenly, as if he knew I was there, and when he saw me—he had this kind of scruffy beard, and curly hair, and an earnestness or resolve that slowly disappeared into this beautiful, warm smile, and he was only taking me in, you know? He was taking me in, and it wasn’t about me picking up a sign or chanting for a cause. He was seeing me. I thought he was seeing me.”
She glances at the baby, and then pulls herself up in the chair and tucks her legs under her, so she is sitting higher, her back erect.
“I miss that. I still miss that. That sense of being seen. By someone you hadn’t even come to know yet. I know it sounds na?ve.”
“Not really.”
“No? I’m not so sure, Marc. Something primitive led me there. Something that happened before I could find the words to describe it.”
“Why didn’t he want the baby?”
“I told you, he did. It was me that didn’t want him. He was killed. By an angry union worker in a truck. Manslaughter. He wasn’t trying to hit him, just get him to move. And he wouldn’t.”
“I’m so sorry, Joline.”
“It’s not about his death, Marc. It’s not about his death. He doesn’t matter anymore, except in memory. It’s about what became of me. It’s about what became of that little boy, who would be six now. It’s about Laura, who has a brother she may never know.”
She pushes herself up from the chair then, and walks over to him, and he lifts the baby, who has fallen asleep again, toward her arms, but she shakes her head and stands next to the chair, looking down on him, her face obscured again by her hair. He feels a tightness in his chest, like his heart is catching on a rib, as she places the palms of her hands over his eyes.