Chapter 29 ~ In For A Penny
July 20, 2010
The doorbell rang. It took a moment for me to surface from my stupor; CNN ticker, a hypnotist’s watch.
The kid was sitting on the floor, playing with some cards I’d found in a draw. She dropped them, picked them up, dropped them, picked them up. No particular rhyme or reason, no method or rule-set.
She looked as bored as I was.
The doorbell rang again. Twice.
I walked down the hallway, looking over my shoulder to check the kid hadn’t followed me, and then looked through the spyhole.
And saw Ivvy on the other side.
I recoiled from the door, heartbeat racing, until my back slammed against the far wall.
How had she got up here? Why hadn’t the doorman call up?
I fought my breath into control.
She rang the doorbell.
Knew I was in the apartment.
She used her badge, paranoia flashed a neon thought, she knows what you’ve done and she used her badge to get past the doorman.
And if she’d used her badge, then she was here as a cop, not as a friend. And that meant I couldn’t let her in. No way.
She rang the doorbell again and I heard her voice this time.
“Ken?”
Muffled by the security door.
I slid down the wall until I was sitting.
“Ken?”
* * *
A couple of seconds later, my cellphone trilled into life.
I answered it on autopilot.
“Ken,” she said, “open the door.”
“Ken?”
“Ivvy.”
“Open the door.”
“Ivvy, why are you here?”
“Just open the goddamned door!”
I stood and unbolted the door, letting it loose in the frame. It came towards me slowly as she pushed it open.
Here she was, revealed, crossing the hall towards me and I was powerless to do anything but watch, knowing that the game was up, that she was going to find the kid and that would be that for me.
But she was walking up to me, opening her arms, pulling me into a hug and resting her head on my shoulder. I felt her breath on my neck. And a wetness; tears.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled into my shoulder.
Now she pulled back.
“I’m sorry, all right? I didn’t…”
Now she looked at me.
“What?”
“Ivvy,” I said, confused, “why are you here?”
She breathed. Stared at me.
“Ivvy?”
She looked behind her, saw the open door, closed it. We were alone in the hallway; sound of CNN drifting through from the living room.
Ivvy stared at me. Hard.
“Last night we…”
There was no welast night, I thought, there was just me, kidnapping a child by accident.
“We shouldn’t have left it like that. You were… And then the call this morning. You were so conf… Are you all right?”
No, Ivvy, I’m not.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just got a bit freaked out by that book, you know?”
She shook her head and there was a metallic glint to her eyes.
“Don’t start that bullshit again. It wasn’t just the book. I heard you this morning. I heard you.”
She was staring at me and I knew that this wasn’t one of Ivvy’s typical interrogations. This time it was for real.
I was tired. Too tired for the game.
Which was about to be officially up.
“Come on,” I said and turned towards the living room.
I heard her sling her purse down on the bench just inside the doorway, kicking off her shoes, and then the soft padding of her footfalls behind mine.
As we entered the room, the kid looked up.
“Ivvy,” I said, “I’m a daddy.”
* * *
For a second we stood, the two of us, framed in the doorway, staring at the kid. I was conscious of the television in the background; the sun glancing off windows a couple of blocks away. Ivvy tried to compute what I’d just said and what was sitting on the floor playing with the cards. I could feel my breath rasping in my throat, the ache in my arms from carrying the kid across Manhattan, a headache beginning to form behind my eyes.
And the kid played on with its cards, only glancing up for a moment to see who had stepped into the room.
A moment, captured in reflected sunlight.
* * *
I expected questions. I expected lots of questions.
But what I got was Ivvy turning on her heel and walking into the kitchen.
I followed her.
But stopped just as I was about to step out of the living room. I turned, walked back to the kid and crouched down. The kid looked up at me. Smiled a little.
“What’s your name?” I whispered.
The kid didn’t answer.
“What is your name?”
There was a glint in its eyes; sensing a game?
“No,” I said, “no games. Tell me your name.”
My fingers touched my chest and I nodded.
“I’m Ken,” I said.
I reached out to touch the kid’s chest, making it squirm. Nothing in response.
I touched my chest again.
“Ken,” I said, growing more conscious that Ivvy was still out in the kitchen.
I touched the kid again.
“Bella,” she said quietly.
“Bella?”
“Uh-huh.”
I almost felt like shaking her hand with a formal good morning or something. But the name was good enough for now.
Good enough for what I’d got planned.
I stood and walked through to the kitchen.
* * *
The kettle was roaring.
Ivvy ground some coffee beans for the French press that sat on the counter next to the cups.
She didn’t speak.
I leant against the counter, thoughts whirring.
I didn’t speak.
* * *
As she handed me a mug of coffee, I broke the silence.
“Jamie,” I said.
She just stared at me.
I knew no more of what was coming next than she did; the path begun, I had no choice but to follow.
“A couple of years back, I had a… I was with a girl called Jamie. Didn’t last long. “
Ivvy frowned a little.
“It was just as you and I were getting to know each other,” I said, trying to ease that frown, “and it was over so quickly that I never thought to mention it. Didn’t really mean anything. She was a student, only in the city for one semester. To tell the truth, I’d all but forgotten her.”
Ivvy stared at me, her gaze diving into my eyes on a mission to uncover a lie.
“What?” I asked, conscious that I was out on a precipice, precarious above the chasm.
“What does she look like?” Ivvy asked, and it wasn’t mere interest driving her question; her day job, I couldn’t forget her day job.
Fortunately, I had a template from which to answer her question. So I wasn’t forced on the defensive, not then.
“Huh? What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I just wanted to know, that’s all.”
She eased back a little.
“Why? Are you jealous?”
“Fuck you.”
“Sorry,” I said, “this morning has been a bit weird, all right?”
She nodded.
“Jamie looks just like Bella, okay?”
“Just like Bella.”
* * *
I might as well have been staring into a camera.
Reading a script.
Living an invented life.
I could play this role.
* * *
“So, she just turns up here this morning, buzzes me from downstairs, asks me to come down to the lobby.”
“When I get down there, she’s nowhere to be seen, though. And Bella was just standing there with the doorman. He tells me that Jamie wants me to look after Bella for a moment, that she’ll be right back.”
“So I bring Bella up here, get her settled and everything and then wait for Jamie. But she doesn’t come back. A couple of minutes later, she calls me. Must’ve been watching to check I’d picked up Bella and brought her upstairs.”
This was now what had happened. I could play this role.
I shook my head a little, recalling an imagined conversation.
“And she just lays it out there and then. That she’d got pregnant while we were together, hadn’t told me at the time, kept the baby but now she needed some time and that I’d have to look after Bella while she got her shit together.”
“Congratulations, Dad. That’s what she said and then she put the phone down. Just like that.”
I shook my head again.
* * *
Ivvy stared at me for a long time.
* * *
We stood saying nothing, thinking everything, Bella began to cry a little through in the living room. Ivvy and I stared at each other, each willing the other to do something about it. But then I remembered, I was the Dad in this scene.
I walked through to Bella and crouched down. She was staring at the cards, crying softly.
“Bella,” I said, hearing my voice soften, “what’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer.
“Bella.”
My hand reached out slowly, on autopilot, and I watched it as it reached beneath Bella’s chin, turning her head to look at me. Tears were beginning to mark her cheeks.
“What’s wrong?”
I wracked my brain to try and work it out. Whatever it was, Bella wasn’t telling.
On my back, Ivvy’s gaze was heavy. I still felt like I was being judged, my every move a potential pitfall.
Bella had brown eyes.
Mine are blue.
“C’mon Bella, what’s wrong?”
“Bekphust,” she said in a small voice, slurred by tears.
“Huh?”
“She wants some breakfast, stupid!” Ivvy said, chuckling a little, “strike one, Daddy!”
And with that, Ivvy abandoned the inquisition, turning on her heel to walk back through to the kitchen.
“Are you hungry?” I asked Bella.
She nodded solemnly.
“Want some breakfast?”
Again a nod.
“C’mon then,” I said and offered my hand to pull her up. She jumped into my arms, just as she had the previous night, when I’d opened the car door on Riverside Drive. She clung to my neck.
My autopilot hand stroked her back, calming her down as I stood.
When I looked toward the kitchen, Ivvy was standing in the doorway, watching me, wearing a smile that I’d never seen before. It softened her face.
“What?” I asked.
“You… Oh nothing,” she waved a dismissive hand and turned back into the kitchen.
I carried Bella out of the living room.
I was the role I had cast for myself: Man who learns he’s a father.
I was Kramer vs Kramer.
I was Three Men and a Baby.
I was in deep shit but had no other way out than the one I’d chosen.
I could play this role.
I was carrying my daughter.
I was moving forward.
