You Were Meant For Me (17 page)

“I
t's the next exit,” Miranda said to Evan. “The ramp comes up quickly, so you have to watch for it.” She was sitting beside him in his Kia, on the way to the nursing home in Westchester to see her father. Once in a while she rented a Zipcar and drove up there herself; the rest of the time she took the train from Grand Central Terminal. But when she mentioned to Evan that she'd planned to visit this weekend, he'd volunteered to drive her.

“Got it,” he said, glancing over in her direction. “It's really pretty close.”

“It is,” she agreed, letting her gaze drift out the window at the rush of passing roadside shrubbery. “I should get up to see him more often.”

“Sounds like the visits are depressing.”

“That,” she said, turning back to him, “is an understatement. You'll see for yourself.”

Evan found the ramp and they were off the highway, heading onto the tree-lined streets. The nursing home was in the center of town, flanked by a frozen yogurt shop on one side and a sandwich shop on the other. On his better days, Miranda had taken her father to both, but that had not been for some time. In the last few months, he was reluctant to leave the building, even for a little stroll around the grounds. She didn't know what to expect today, or how her father would react to Evan. There was just no predicting.

Inside the nursing home it was warm and stuffy; although there must have been air-conditioning, most of the residents didn't like the cold. Miranda signed in and led Evan to the elevators, down the hall, and finally to her father's room. Only when she got there, it was empty. Her first response was alarm; had something happened? But they would have notified her. Leaving Evan looking out of the window, she went into the corridor to investigate. “He's in arts and crafts,” said the desk attendant. “It's on the third floor. You can go down and stop in if you want.”

“Thanks, but I'll just wait in his room.” Miranda briefly tried to imagine what her father might be doing. Weaving loops of fabric into a potholder? Gluing tiles down to form a trivet? She decided it didn't matter. Anything that could release him, even temporarily, from the prison of his diseased mind would be a welcome distraction, and she did not want to interfere.

“He's in arts and crafts,” she reported to Evan back in her father's room. Evan, who was holding his camera, nodded; he was photographing something outside in the street. Miranda settled in with a magazine to wait, but she had no concentration, even for the length of an article, and she kept checking her phone.

Earlier that morning she had left a message for Jared Masters, telling him she had changed her mind and asking if he would let her see Celeste. Even thinking of her baby girl (she would always,
always
think of Celeste as hers in some essential way) could bring on a storm of tears, but she remembered what Courtney had said: Celeste was alive, not dead. Mourning was not the operative mode here; negotiation and compromise were. Just because she'd surrendered custody didn't mean there was no place for her in Celeste's life. Maybe she could be a godmother of sorts—not too close to threaten Celeste's father or any woman who might come into his life, but not banished either. So she was keeping the phone close and was ready to pick up in an instant. Only Jared Masters had not called back.

Miranda heard voices in the hall, one fretful and petulant, the other soothing and calm. Aided by his walker, her father shuffled into the room. Eunice was right behind him. “Look who's here, Nate!” Eunice announced. “It's your daughter!”

Miranda saw her father look at her, but there was no recognition—at least none that she sparked. He seemed much more interested in Evan, who'd turned away from the window and was standing with his camera still in his hand.

“Norm!” The elation in his voice was unmistakable. “Norm, you old son of a gun! Where've you been keeping yourself? It's good to see you.” He moved across the room—he was surprisingly quick for a man with a walker—until he reached Evan, whom he squeezed tightly in a bear hug.

Miranda could see Evan looking over the top of her father's head at her. “Norm?”

“His brother, Norman. He's been dead at least twenty years.”

“Do I look like him?”

“Of course not,” Miranda said.

“He's been having a bad day,” said Eunice. “We had to leave arts and crafts early because he dumped all the buttons on the floor and threw glitter in someone's hair. And he used the f-word to the occupational therapist. Twice.”

“Well, he looks happy now,” Miranda said.

Her father had released Evan and stood grinning up at him. “How about a game, Norm? Pinochle? Scrabble? Checkers? You name it; I'm your man.”

“I guess checkers would be okay,” said Evan.

“I can get the checker board from the game room,” Eunice said. “Be back in a jiff.”

Miranda looked at Evan. “You don't mind?”

“Not a bit,” he assured her.

Eunice returned with the game and set it up at a small table. The two men played three rounds; Nate won each time. He was exuberant in his victory, high-fiving Evan and Eunice. Miranda he ignored totally, even when she opened the tin of lime meltaways—made from one of her favorite cookie recipes—and served them with the iced jasmine tea she'd brought in a large thermos.

“Excellent cookies, Norm!” said her father. Crumbs dotted his chin. “Where'd you get them?”

“Miranda baked them for you, Nate,” said Evan. “You know Miranda. She's your daughter.”

“Daughter?” A scowl crossed Nate's face. “No daughters, no girls, and NO BABIES!” Suddenly he was shouting, and he spit the cookie out in apparent disgust.

“Nate, don't get yourself excited.” Eunice was right there, hand pressed to his shoulder, voice gentle but firm. “And please don't spit.”

Miranda just watched. Why had he said anything about
babies? Babies had not been mentioned at all today. Not once. It meant he did remember something, he
did
. If only she could find a way to reach him. “You're right, Dad. No babies. No babies here; no babies anywhere.” Her voice was reedy with sorrow.

“Baby, baby, bye-bye, baby.” Her father turned the words into a song; his anger was gone as quickly as it had come. He took another cookie and offered it to her. “Have this. It's good.”

“Thank you, Daddy,” Miranda said, and ate it slowly, making it last as long as she could. Then she turned to Evan. “Time to go?”

“Time to go.” Evan walked over to hug her father again.

“Don't be a stranger, Norm,” Nate said as he gazed up adoringly. “Next time, we'll play chess. A real intellectual game.”

“We'll do that,” Evan said.

She hugged her father before she left, but he did not react and his eyes remained fixed on Evan.

Miranda was mostly quiet on the drive back to Manhattan. Earlier in the day, Evan had mentioned stopping by a photography gallery on Orchard Street; she wasn't sure she'd be up for it, but when they got there, she decided that she would go in with him after all.

“I think you'll like the pictures.” He locked the car doors. “The show is coming down tomorrow, and after that, the gallery will be closed until September, so this is my last chance to see it.”

Miranda followed him inside. Large color photographs were strategically hung on the white walls. Many of them depicted a thirtyish woman, often with a child or two, though sometimes alone. The woman was very striking, with a mane
of rippling hair, full mouth, and well-defined cheekbones. But there was nothing airbrushed about her looks, and some of the photographs showed her face in close-up, so that her pores or a thin film of sweat were quite visible. In one, she had the beginning of a blemish, red and angry, near her chin. And the pictures of the children, always the same two, were equally unsentimental: here was one of a small boy crying, a thin thread of mucus trailing from his nose, his face wet and smeared.

“Who is she?” Miranda asked as they moved around the gallery.

“Elinor Carucci,” he said. “She's actually the photographer. She uses a tripod with a timer so she can be in the pictures as well as take them. What do you think?”

“I like them.” She stopped in front of a photograph that showed the top part of a child's face and the bottom part of a woman's; the two faces were close together and the child's hand rested on her mother's cheek. “Do you?”

“I really do. Look at what she does here. You get just the girl's eyes, staring right out at you, but not her mouth or nose; the mother's face is also cut off, so you see the nose and mouth but not the eyes. It's like they're two parts of the same whole. And this gesture”—he pointed to the hand—“is so intimate. It's perfect. The child is reaching for her, caressing her, and claiming her, all at the same time.”

“You see so much.” Miranda loved how animated he was, how passionate.

“It's all in there; you just have to look.”

Miranda lapsed into silence again on the drive home; the gallery had been a lovely respite, but being with her father always wore her out. And today was one of the worst visits.
Even though she was glad he'd enjoyed Evan and the checkers, his inability to recognize her was excruciating. She knew it was not his fault; it was the damn disease, turning his brain into Swiss cheese. But still. And Jared Masters had not called back. Maybe he never would.

As they were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, the lights of the city behind them and the vast river rippling out below, she blurted out, “I called Celeste's father.”

“You did? What for?”

“I decided that I do want to meet him. No, that's not exactly right. I want to be able to see her. And if I want that, I have to meet him.”

“I thought you had decided against it.” He kept his eyes straight ahead on the road.

“That was before . . .” she said. “Now that Celeste is with him, it's the only way to have contact. And contact, even once in a while, is better than nothing at all.”

“You're sure about this?”

“No, I'm not. I don't know how it will play out. Maybe he won't want me to see her on a regular basis. Maybe he'll get married and Celeste will have a new mother.”

“What did he say?”

“So far—nothing. He hasn't called me back yet.” Evan was quiet, so Miranda asked, “You don't think it's a good idea, do you?”

He didn't answer right away. “I just don't want you to get hurt. And from where I sit, that seems like a very likely possibility.”

“I'm hurting now,” she said quietly. “I'm dying, actually.”

When Evan pulled up in front of Miranda's house, he offered to take her out to dinner. But she said that after taking
her to Westchester, the very least she could do was to make a meal. It was too late to start shopping now, but she knew she could pull something together quickly, and a short while later, they were sitting down to a frittata made with cheese, red pepper, and zucchini; she had no lettuce but found carrots and red cabbage in her fridge, so she ran them through her food processor—the unexpected color combo was good—and topped them with olive oil, fresh lemon, and coarse crystals of sea salt.

“You can turn anything into a meal,” he said. “You're a magician.”

“Not anything,” she said. “But after all these years at the magazine, I do have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“What are the others? Can you whip up a ball gown? Knit?”

Miranda shook her head. “There are people in crafts that do that kind of thing. I can barely sew on a button, and forget about hems. Though we did all take a knitting pledge.”

“Knitting pledge?”

“The crafts editor had this idea; she made us sit in a circle and taught us to knit. We did it, oh, five or six times, and we were supposed to keep it up. We were all making scarves, and she was going to feature them on the Web site.”

“So how did it go?”

“Not too well. I hated knitting. I'm just not dexterous.”

“With needles, maybe. But in the kitchen it's a different story.”

“I told you how it was all because of my mother. I started with soups; she could keep them down. Then when she had sugar cravings, I started baking; I'd make cookies with crushed pecans or lemon zest. . . . She'd ask for them, even at the end, when she was too sick to eat anymore.”

“So you've been feeding people ever since.” Evan's plate was now clean; he'd eaten every bite.

“Habit,” she said. “It dies hard. And anyway, I've made a career of it.”

After they finished dinner, she washed out the food processor so she could use it to chop up the amaretto biscuits—they were a little stale—which she sprinkled over butter pecan ice cream. All the while, she kept her phone close at hand and visible.

“You're still waiting for that Masters guy to call you back,” he said.

“I don't understand why I haven't heard from him. He seemed pretty eager to meet before. So I am wondering what might have changed.”

“Geneva Bales,” said Evan, using his spoon to scrape up the last of the ice cream.

“What are you talking about?”

“Maybe she said something to him, discouraged him from contacting you.”

“But why?” Miranda said, and then realized how pointless her question was. Why had Geneva written so eloquently and movingly in praise of her adopting Celeste and then done a complete reversal, championing Jared's claim over her own? Was she just a journalist out for a story? Or was there something else going on?

“I don't know,” said Evan. “I'm curious about her.”

Miranda set her spoon down. She had not finished her ice cream, and it had pooled into a taffy-colored puddle at the bottom of her bowl. She glanced again at the silent phone. “So am
I.”