Читать книгу The Family Tree - Barbara Delinsky - Страница 5

2

Hugh hoped he was being facetious. He and Dana were white. Their baby couldn’t be black.

Still, standing there in the delivery room, scrutinizing the infant in Dana’s arms, he felt a tremor of fear. Lizzie’s skin was a whole lot darker than any other Clarke baby he had ever seen, and he had seen plenty of those. Clarkes took pride in their offspring, as evidenced by the flood of holiday pictures from relatives each year. His brother had four children, all of the pale white Anglo-Saxon type, their first cousins had upward of sixteen. Not a single one was dark.

Hugh was a lawyer. He spent his days arguing facts, and, in this case, there were none to suggest that his baby should be anything but Caucasian. He had to be imagining it – had to be blowing things out of proportion. And who could blame him? He was tired. He had been late coming to bed after watching the Sox play Oakland, then awake an hour later and keyed up ever since. But boy, he wouldn’t have missed a minute of that delivery. Watching the baby come out – cutting the cord – it didn’t get much better than that. Talk about emotional highs!

Now, though, he felt oddly deflated. This was his child – his family, his genes. She was supposed to look familiar.

He had read about what babies went through getting out of the womb, and had been prepared to see a pointy head, blotchy skin, or even bruises. This baby’s head was round and her skin perfect.

But she didn’t have the fine, straight hair or widow’s peak that marked the Clarke babies, or Dana’s blond coloring and blue eyes.

She looked like a stranger.

Maybe this was a natural letdown after months of buildup. Maybe it was what the books meant about not always loving your baby on sight. She was an individual. She would grow to have her own likes and dislikes, her own strengths, her own temperament, all of which might be totally different from Dana’s and his.

He did love her. She was his child. She just didn’t look it.

That said, she was his responsibility. So he followed the nurse when she took the baby to the nursery, and he watched through the window while the staff put drops in her eyes and gave her a real sponge bath.

Her skin still seemed coppery. If anything, juxtaposed with a pale pink blanket and hat, it was more marked than before.

The nurses seemed oblivious to the skin tone. Biracial marriages were common. These women didn’t know that Hugh’s wife was white. Moreover, there were far darker infants in the nursery. By comparison to some, Elizabeth Ames Clarke was light-skinned.

Clinging to that thought, he returned to Dana’s room and began making calls. She was right about his parents’ wanting a boy – having had two boys themselves, they were partial to children who passed on the name – but they were excited by his news, as was his brother, and by the time he called Dana’s grandmother, he was feeling better.

Eleanor Joseph was a remarkable woman. After losing her daughter and her husband in tragic accidents four years apart, she had raised her granddaughter alone, and through it all she built a thriving business. Its official name was The Stitchery, though no one ever called it anything but Ellie Jo’s.

Prior to meeting Dana, Hugh knew next to nothing about yarn, much less the people who used it. He still couldn’t even remember what SKP was, though Dana had explained it to him more than once. But he could appreciate the warmth of his favorite alpaca scarf, which she had hand-knit and which was more handsome than anything he had seen in a store – and he could feel the appeal of the yarn shop. During these final weeks of Dana’s pregnancy, as she cut back on her own work, she spent more time there. He dropped in often, ostensibly to check on his pregnant wife, but also to enjoy the calm atmosphere. When a client was lying to him, or an associate botched a brief, or a judge ruled against him, he found that the yarn store offered a respite.

Maybe it was the locale. What could be better than overlooking an apple orchard? More likely, though, Hugh sensed, it was the people. Dana didn’t need her husband checking up on her when she was at the shop. The place was a haven for women who cared. Many of those women had been through childbirth themselves. And they showed their feelings. He had walked in on conversations having to do with sex, and it struck him that knitting was an excuse. These women gave each other something that was missing from their lives.

And Ellie Jo led the way. Genuine to the extreme, she was delighted when he told her they had a girl, and began to cry when he told her the name. Tara Saxe, Dana’s best friend, did the same.

He called his two law partners – the Calli and Kohn of Calli, Kohn, and Clarke – and called his secretary, who promised to pass the news on to the associates. He called David, their neighbor. He called a handful of other friends, called his brother and the two Clarke cousins with whom he was closest.

Then Dana was wheeled back to the room, wanting to know what the baby was doing and when she could have her back. She wanted to talk herself with her grandmother and Tara, though both were already on their way.

Hugh’s parents arrived first. Though it was barely nine in the morning, they were impeccably dressed, his father in a navy blazer and rep tie, his mother in Chanel. Hugh had never seen either of them looking disheveled.

They brought a large vase filled with hydrangea. ‘From the yard,’ his mother said unnecessarily, since hydrangea was her gift for any occasion that occurred from midsummer to first frost. Chattering on about the good fortune that this year’s batch contained more whites than blues, for a girl, she passed Hugh the vase and offered her cheek for a kiss, then did the same to Dana. Hugh’s father gave them both surprisingly vigorous hugs before looking expectantly around.

With his mother still marveling about the speed of the delivery and the many advances in obstetric care from when her children were born, Hugh led them down the hall to the nursery. His father immediately spotted the name on a crib at the window, and said, ‘There she is.’

At that point, Hugh hoped for excited exclamations on the sweetness and beauty of his daughter. He wanted his parents to tell him that she looked like his mother’s favorite great-aunt or his father’s second cousin or, simply, that she was strikingly unique.

But his parents stood silent until his father said gravely, ‘This can’t be her.’

His mother was frowning, trying to read names on other cribs. ‘It’s the only Clarke.’

‘This baby can’t be Hugh’s.’

‘Eaton, it says Baby Girl Clarke.’

‘Then it’s mismarked,’ Eaton reasoned. A historian by occupation, both teacher and author, he was as reliant on fact as Hugh was.

‘She has an ID band,’ Dorothy noted, ‘but you never know about those. Oprah had a pair of parents on whose babies were mislabeled. Go ask, Hugh. This doesn’t look like your child.’

‘It’s her,’ Hugh said, trying to sound surprised by their doubt.

Dorothy was confused. ‘But she doesn’t look anything like you.’

‘Do I look like you?’ he asked. ‘No. I look like Dad. Well, this baby is half Dana, too.’

‘But she doesn’t look like Dana, either.’

Another couple came down the hall and pressed their faces to the window.

Eaton lowered his voice. ‘I’d check this out, Hugh. Mix-ups happen.’

Dorothy added, ‘The newspaper just ran a story about a woman who gave birth to twins from someone else’s vial, and you can almost understand it – how can they possibly keep all those microscopic things apart?’

‘Dorothy, that was in vitro.’

‘Maybe. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t mix-ups. Besides, how one becomes pregnant isn’t something sons would necessarily share with their mothers.’ She shot Hugh a sheepish look.

‘No, Mom,’ Hugh said. ‘This wasn’t in vitro. Forget mix-ups. I was in the delivery room. This was the child I saw born. I cut the cord.’

Eaton remained doubtful. ‘And you’re sure it was this child?’

‘Positive.’

‘Well,’ Dorothy said quietly, ‘what we see here doesn’t resemble you or anyone else in our family. This baby has to look like Dana’s family. Her grandmother rarely talks about relatives – what, were there three Josephs all told at the wedding, counting the bride? – but the grandmother must have family, and then there’s Dana’s father, who is a bigger mystery. Does Dana even know his name?’

‘She knows his name,’ Hugh said and met his father’s eyes. He knew what Eaton was thinking. His parents were nothing if not consistent. Pedigree mattered.

‘We discussed this three years ago, Hugh,’ the older man reminded him, low but edgy. ‘I told you to have him investigated.’

‘And I said I wouldn’t. There was no point.’

‘You would have known what you were marrying.’

‘I didn’t marry a “what”.’ Hugh argued, ‘I married a “who”. I thought we beat this issue to death back then. I married Dana. I didn’t marry her father.’

‘You can’t always separate the two,’ Eaton countered. ‘I’d say this is a case in point.’

Hugh was saved a reply by the nurse, who waved at him and wheeled the crib toward the door.

This baby was his child. He had helped conceive her, had helped bring her into the world. He had cut the cord tying her to her mother. There was symbolism in that. Dana wasn’t her sole caretaker anymore. He had a part to play now and for years to come. It was an awesome thought under even the most ordinary of circumstances, and these didn’t feel ordinary in the least.

‘Are either of you pleased?’ he asked. ‘At the very least, happy for me? This is my baby.’

‘Is it?’ Eaton asked.

Hugh was a minute following – initially thinking that it was simply a stupid remark – then he was furious. But the nurse was wheeling the crib toward him. He held out his wrist for her to match the baby’s band with his. ‘Are these the grandparents?’ she asked with a smile.

‘Sure are,’ Hugh said.

‘Congratulations, then. She’s precious.’ She turned to him. ‘Is your wife planning to breast-feed?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll send someone down to help her start.’ The door to the nursery closed, ending Hugh’s show of brightness.

He turned on his father. ‘Are you saying Dana had an affair?’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ said his mother.

‘Not to me,’ Hugh declared. When she shot him a warning look, he lowered his voice. ‘And not to my marriage. Why do you think I waited so long? Why do you think I refused to marry those girls you two loved? Because then there would have been affairs, and on my side. They were boring women with boring lifestyles. Dana is different.’

‘Obviously,’ remarked one of his parents. It didn’t matter which. Both faces bore the accusation.

‘Does that mean you won’t be calling all Clarkes to tell them about my baby?’

‘Hugh,’ said Eaton.

‘What about the country club?’ Hugh asked. ‘Think she’ll be welcomed there? Will you take her from table to table on Grill Night to show her off to your friends, like you do with Robert’s kids?’

‘If I were you,’ Eaton advised, ‘I wouldn’t worry about the country club. I’d worry about the town where you live, and the schools she’ll attend, and her future.’

Hugh held up a hand. ‘Hey, you’re talking to someone whose law partners are Cuban and Jewish, whose clients are largely minorities, and whose neighbor is African American.’

‘Like your child,’ Eaton said.

Hugh took a tempering breath, to no avail. ‘I don’t see any black skin in this nursery. I see brown, white, yellow, and everything in between. So my baby’s skin is tawny. She also happens to be beautiful. Until you can say that to me – until you can say it to Dana – please—’ He didn’t finish, simply stared at them for a minute before wheeling the crib down the hall.

‘Please what?’ Eaton called, catching up in a pair of strides. He had Hugh’s long legs. Or, more correctly, Hugh had Eaton’s.

Please go home. Please keep your ugly thoughts to yourselves and leave me and my wife and our child alone.

Hugh said none of those things. But his parents heard. By the time he reached Dana’s door, he and the baby were alone.