The Book of Baby Names Page 8

  “Enjoy this place while you can,” Chris said to break the ice after they sat at a corner table. “The owner’s fighting with the town council over his liquor license. He’s threatened to move to Birmingham.”

  Mark looked from the menu to the wine list, took in the quiet, candlelit elegance of the dining room. “A lot better than I expected to find in Graysonville.”

  Their eyes met, and Chris felt an extra compliment implied in Mark’s praise of the restaurant.

  Conversation was easy, lacking the awkward pauses typical among new acquaintances. They shared stories about Susan, tried to reconcile Mark’s version of a mischievous younger sister with Chris’s trusted colleague and a respected mentor to impressionable college students. Mark talked about his childhood in this small southern town, shared some of his misgivings about returning as an adult, while Chris recounted his own uneasy transition to Graysonville after living his whole life in New York.

  “Not the best town, obviously, to be—” Chris’s voice dropped to a whisper before the last word “—gay.” The whisper was automatic, fueled by a familiar paranoia that students or unsympathetic coworkers lurked nearby. “When I got hired for this teaching job, my department chair said my personal situation was ‘okay’ but I ‘really shouldn’t mention it to anybody else.’”

  One corner of Mark’s mouth rose in a half smile. “Susan said it wasn’t too tough to figure out.”

  “Exactly! Everybody knew, but I was supposed to put on an act. I was shoved back in the closet.” It was worth a hearty laugh, an easy “gays against the rest of the world” kind of story. But the topic could always turn serious. Chris thought back to his days in graduate school: he was an activist, so involved in politics that his own relationships suffered. After he earned his degree, job opportunities for college teachers were limited, and he settled in a small town that wouldn’t embrace his lifestyle openly. He gave up so many of the ideals he once fought for. And he was alone.

  Chris felt his smile start to fade. He shouldn’t drop the mask, not this soon after meeting someone. But he felt comfortable with Mark, needed to be truthful to him. “It’s been difficult here. Not the job, but on a personal level.”

  “It’s easier if you’re ‘normal’ in Graysonville, I guess.” Mark’s eyes seemed to look past him. “That feeling can follow you, even when you leave.”

  A mistake, Chris thought. He’d opened up too quickly, invited Mark to volunteer somber thoughts of his own. The date was taking a bad turn.

  Mark added some sugar to his coffee, stirred it slowly. Then, he looked directly at Chris. “I was married.”

  And it didn’t bother him; it really didn’t.

  “We all have a past,” Chris volunteered.

  Mark acknowledged the marriage itself was over, said a few unkind words about his ex-wife, then said, “It’s not all in the past. There’s one thing more I haven’t told you.”

  He shared the photograph. It would have been the movie-moment when the swell of violins on the soundtrack screeched into an awkward silence. A child from an earlier marriage, with plans for an upcoming custody battle. In Alabama.

  Chris tried to maintain a neutral expression while he studied the picture. Kindergarten, probably. A posed shot by one of those professional photographers who visits the school, herds kids in a line past a sky-blue backdrop, then shills prints to the parents in “bargain packages” of a dozen wallet-sized, several five-by-sevens, and one eight-by-ten with a matte finish.

  Great. He should kill Susan for not warning him in advance.

  The child in the picture grinned sweetly. His wavy hair was a lighter brown than his father’s, but Chris could see some of Mark in the boy’s eyes and in the gentle roundness of his face.

  Not an ideal situation, by any means. But if he were ever in a position to be choosy, those days were long gone.

  What the hell, Chris thought. He could give it a try.

  “Looks like a nice kid.” He smiled, handed back the picture, and they talked of other things.

  * * *

  It was the beginning of a great relationship, the start of a true family. Within a month, Susan was saying she’d never before seen Chris or her brother look so happy. Mark was wonderful: they cooked gourmet meals for each other, watched videos together, took short day trips out of town with Tommy—to parks, playgrounds, the Atlanta zoo.

  Chris took to fatherhood, quickly grew to love Tommy as if he were his own son. He could look at Tommy and see his own features as well as Mark’s, and the boy picked up mannerisms from each of them. It was easy to believe that both of them were Tommy’s biological parents.

  The custody hearings were a nuisance, definitely more than Chris bargained for. The bright side was that the ordeal helped him and Mark to bond. After a few months supporting each other through legal entanglements, it was as if they’d known each other for years. By the time they’d won full custody and moved into their new family home, everything was perfect.

  Except for the compromises.

  The public cover story was a farce, suggested by the courts and enforced by Mark’s paranoia about a renewed custody suit. Their house included an extra bedroom “for show,” in case unexpected company dropped by. God forbid the electrician or cable television repairman would realize that two men slept in the same bed.

  Things were all right with everyone who mattered. Susan was a good friend. Most of the teachers in his department were supportive, especially those closest to Chris’s own age. The senior professors, at least, weren’t actively hostile—though he could sense them bristle at any reference, however veiled, to his home life.

  Chris longed sometimes for the trips out of town, away from the scrutiny and gossip of Graysonville’s most closed-minded residents.

  * * *

  A date was written after Tommy’s name on the disk: 8/11/12.

  About a year ago. There should be an image they could use.

  Chris took the disk from its clear case and fed it into the computer. The drive spun aimlessly for a moment—these recordable disks were tricky, and sometimes the files wouldn’t operate properly. The movie window opened on his screen as the drive growled and spun, and the audio portion played as random blocky pixels flashed on the monitor.

  He’d seen the video file enough times, and could summon up the pictures in his mind while the computer struggled to catch up. He clicked the progress bar at the bottom of the window, dragging to a likely spot in the file.

  “Come on down, Tommy.” Mark’s voice, in their back yard next to the swing set. Once the compressed images settled, this would be the point where Mark lifts Tommy away from where he’d tried to stand on the swing. Tommy twists out of Mark’s grasp, then points toward Christopher. “That’s right. Go to Chris.” Tommy reaches out as if he wants to take over as cameraman. Chris waves him away. The image shakes with his arm, and he almost loses his grip on the video camera. Mark laughs, then Tommy laughs too.

  The scene faded in his mind, fell away as the pixels flashed bright then settled into a normal, crisp image.

  The back yard, as he remembered. The child points at the screen, just as Tommy did. But there’s no smile of recognition—more like an accusation, as if he’s identified a criminal out of a lineup. Instead of moving toward Chris, arms outstretched, this child’s feet are planted firmly on the ground. He shakes his head back and forth, slowly.

  I’m not yours, he seems to say.

  * * *

  “Oh, thank God.” Chris rushed down the cement steps to meet Mark’s taxi in front of the police station.

  This was not the homecoming he’d imagined. They should have been able to celebrate the extra freelance work Mark had negotiated in San Francisco. Instead Chris got through to him on his cell phone shortly after the plane landed, then broke the awful news to him as gently as he could.

  Mark came straight to the police station from the airport. He would get settled later, he said. They couldn’
t afford to lose any more time.

  While Mark paid the fare, Chris took the largest suitcase from the cab driver. Chris motioned toward their car, pulled the extended handle from the top of the suitcase and tried to wheel it across the parking lot. The more he rushed, the more the case wobbled. The wheels got stuck where weeds had grown up through the blacktop; he gave a hard tug on the handle, which twisted out of his grasp as the case fell over. Furious, he grabbed the case and carried it awkwardly with both arms to the car. Chris wanted to cry about the suitcase—anything to keep himself from breaking down about Tommy.

  And about how Mark looked. Hair uncombed, clothes wrinkled, face flushed with anger and fear. The general disorientation and exhaustion caused by a long flight from the west coast, multiplied exponentially by a horrible uncertainty about their son’s whereabouts.

  Chris had been in charge of the family when Tommy was taken. He hoped Mark didn’t blame him, wanted reassurance or forgiveness, but he couldn’t indulge his own feelings. Not while his partner ached with the fresh news, an open wound.

  What made it worse, now, was that they didn’t feel free to comfort each other in this public space. No hug, no exclamations of anxiety, no honest tears.

  He opened the trunk and dropped the suitcase inside. Mark caught up with him, worked to push his garment bag into the space beside the suitcase. Christopher helped him position the bag, and their hands touched briefly.

  “Oh,” Chris said, as if the thought just occurred to him. “The police want a photo from this year. Do you have one in your wallet?”

  “Just the kindergarten one. You should have checked the shoebox.”

  “I did.”

  Mark shrugged in disbelief—at Christopher’s incompetence, or a stunned incredulity at the whole situation.

  “They’ve got pictures of Linda—had them already in the system.” Chris shut the trunk, then led the way toward the station house. “They want a written description of Tommy for now. Then we can head straight home and find the best picture. Fax or email it to them.”

  They walked quickly, which made it hard to judge Mark’s reaction, but he seemed genuinely surprised Chris hadn’t found any good photos.

  Inside, they sat and faced an officer who entered notes into a computer. Chris edged his chair around to the side of the cluttered desk, so he could review the officer’s entries on the monitor screen.

  “He’s 4 feet 2 inches tall,” Mark began. His voice sounded calm, but Chris noticed his hands were shaking. “He’s got a stocky build.”

  “A little pudgy,” Chris said.

  “No.” Mark reacted, offended. “Stocky,” he repeated.

  “He wore a dark blue jacket to school today,” Chris added. “With white reflector stripes. Blue jeans.”

  Mark nodded. “Curly brown hair.”

  “More like wavy,” Chris corrected him.

  “No. It’s curly.” Mark balled his fists with impatience. The police officer raised his hands above the keyboard and waited for them to settle the point.

  “Let me describe him,” Mark said finally. The idea of “my son” came through loud and clear.

  Then Mark described, not Tommy, but the strange child in the video tape, and in all the loose photos at home.

  * * *

  “What’s wrong with these?” Mark fanned through the photos in the shoebox. “You obviously didn’t look very hard.”

  “They’re not…” Chris paused. He didn’t know what to say. Had the stress and worry confused Mark’s vision? “Not the right kind of image,” he said to stall for time. “They wouldn’t blow up right, or print right.”

  Mark looked through the pictures again, pulled three from the stack and laid them on the end table with the confidence of a bridge player who trumps an opponent’s suit.

  Couldn’t he see it was the wrong child in the photographs? Despite the sheer impossibility that all these images could be so expertly altered, Chris had never doubted his senses, or his memory of Tommy. Mark’s blind confidence was almost enough to weaken Chris’s certainty.

  No. The video would convince Mark. A moving picture would highlight the other child’s odd arrogant motions, a face that absorbed all Tommy’s sweetness and replaced it with a cold, accusing sneer.

  “I thought we’d get a better image from the movie file.”

  The disk was still in the computer from this morning. He leaned over the keypad, maximized the window then clicked on the “play” icon, and the file resumed where he’d left off. They stood together and watched it, Chris alternating his gaze between the screen and Mark’s reaction.

  “Who am I?” Mark says in the video to the child on the swing.

  “Daddy!” The child yells to be pushed higher.

  “And who is that?” Mark halts the swing by the chains and points at Chris, holder of the camera. “Is that Daddy also?”

  In his memory Chris hears the words, a heartbreaking moment of acceptance from his lover’s child: “Daddy!”

  Now, from the computer speakers, a cruel, purposeful whisper: “Faggot.”

  Next to him, Mark gasped.

  Chris sighed in relief. Mark heard it; they both heard it.

  Mark’s gasp shifted into a heaving sob. “God, I hope we find him.”

  He turned away from the screen, hugged Chris and continued to cry.

  Over Mark’s shoulder the video file continued to play. Chris watched the strange child laugh on the swing set.

  * * *

  Susan knocked lightly then used her key to open their front door. Chris met her in the hallway and held a finger to his lips. “Mark’s resting, finally. Or, trying to.”

  She handed him a plastic bag from the local deli. “I brought you guys some sandwiches.” Susan shrugged out of her jacket, but left on a baggy cable-knit sweater. She followed him into the kitchen.

  “I wish you’d let me help out this afternoon.”

  She was typically a calming, rational influence. But someone at the police station would have noticed Susan had the same last name as her brother, might have assumed she was actually his current wife and Tommy’s stepmother. Christopher would have been pushed into the background, right at a time when he and Mark needed to be strong, together.

  Had that been selfish? After everything Susan had done for them—a babysitter and aunt (and, as much as he resented the court’s suggestion, a mother figure); a supportive friend and confidant to him and to her brother—didn’t she deserve to be there, at the moment of crisis?

  He appreciated her support, but something kept her apart. Even the most enlightened, sympathetic friend is still an outsider.

  To some degree their world, his and Mark’s world as gay parents, existed solely with them alone.

  He kept his back to Susan as he placed the bag of sandwiches in the refrigerator. “Mark and I repeated ourselves a thousand times. They’d have asked you the same questions, gotten the same answers.”

  “I’m not talking about paperwork.” Her careful pronunciation betrayed the strain of repressed anger. “I wanted to be there for you guys. And Tommy, well…”

  (“He’s my son too.” Was that how she’d complete the sentence?)

  “Tommy’s my favorite kid.” The ghost of anger fell away from her voice and she moved next to him, hugged him.

  Chris returned the hug, and his arms wrapped easily around her. Susan had a commanding voice, the authority of a seasoned teacher, which made it easy to forget her body was slim and frail underneath the oversized clothes she often wore.

  She pulled back from the hug and rubbed one hand against the top of his left arm. “How’s Mark holding up?”

  “Exhausted and scared. But he doesn’t think Linda would do anything drastic—not like Tommy’s in any danger. Is that right? You’ve met her…”

  Susan nodded in the affirmative. “Yeah, she wouldn’t hurt Tommy.” She picked up the tea kettle from the stove then filled it at the sink. “Not int
entionally, at least. But she had some serious episodes of paranoia towards the end of the marriage. The court gave Mark full custody—they don’t usually do that for fathers without good reason.”

  She turned on the stove under the kettle, got her favorite mug from its usual place in the overhead cabinet, then began to sort through their packets of herbal tea. Chris watched her automatic movements and could tell Susan was as worried about Tommy as they were.

  He leaned against the counter, his arms behind him for support. “After Mark spoke with you on the phone this afternoon he called her parents, then anybody else they were friends with back in Missouri. Nobody knows where Linda is. So we ran out of things to do, except wait.”

  “That’s the worst part. The uncertainty.”

  Yes. And something else. How could he explain that something inexplicable had happened? He didn’t dare mention the altered photos and video—not without suggesting that maybe, just maybe, someone in this house was losing his mind.

  Chris noticed the refrigerator out of the corner of his eye, its cream color barely visible beneath patchwork scraps attached to the door with magnets: restaurant coupons; lined paper for the shopping list; last trimester’s report card; pages torn from a favorite coloring book, improved by Tommy’s artistic touches (a handlebar moustache drawn above a kitten’s lip; an extra eye in the elephant’s forehead); last year’s Christmas card made from construction paper, cotton balls, and glitter.

  And a photograph from a trip to the Atlanta zoo, Mark and Chris on either side of the strange boy.

  If he could get Susan to see it, she could acknowledge the problem herself.

  Chris continued to talk normally, but slid closer to the refrigerator. He mentioned how helpless Mark felt, how anxious. After the phone calls hadn’t panned out, Mark began to imagine worst-case scenarios, practically built himself up into a panic attack.

  Chris moved closer to the refrigerator door, casually edged aside a crayoned drawing to allow an unobstructed view of the photograph.