Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [168]
“No.”
“Boyfriend, or how do they call it now, a significant other?”
“There’ve been a few, one in particular these last couple years who I thought might be the real thing, but that’s over.”
“Tell me about your growing up,” he asked, and she did her best to portray herself, though as her narrative progressed it dawned on her that she’d never truly thrown herself at life emphatic, firm, aflame—whatever right word might measure up to the dense passion she’d felt these last days and weeks—until she set out to search for him.
She told him as much, and when she did, something that had been lurking still, bothering him, came to the fore. Had she looked for him and not found him those few years ago, after he gave his father’s ledger to Brice in Chimayó?
Ariel admitted she hadn’t.
He asked, “Why now, then?” and she finally came up against the very question she’d traveled here to have answered. It was as if the oracle were querying the supplicant rather than the other way around.
“Because I’m going to have a child,” she said, simply.
“You are? That’s wonderful.”
“No husband, no wedlock. Still wonderful?”
“Wonderful no matter what. But Ariel, I’m not making the connection, why you came here now if before—”
She squeezed his hand and said, “Because I needed to see my father in order to know whether I should ever be a mother. You gave me up for the longest time, and you had your reasons. I couldn’t do that. It would have to be all or nothing for me.”
“I’m so sorry about everything, Ariel—”
“Me, too.”
“You deserved a better father than I could have been.”
She thought for a moment, and said, “When I was a little girl, I was the opposite of you and Brice. You two ran up the mountains and down the canyons, and even after you grew up you just kept on flying straight into the teeth of life. So much of my flying’s been done in my head. Nothing wrong with that, but you should know I don’t hold anything you’ve done against you.”
“You’re quite a young woman.”
“I used to love Robert Louis Stevenson. He wrote something I always thought was wise, and maybe I think so even more today. It went something like, To love playthings when you’re a child, to lead an adventurous and honorable youth, then to settle when the time comes into a green and smiling age, is to be a good artist in life and deserve well of yourself and your neighbor. Separately, maybe we haven’t been the best artists of life, but put us together and you’ve got something deserving well of ourselves and each other.”
“Thank you, Ariel. For finding me.”
“I’m just sorry I didn’t—”
He put his finger to her lips.
“Just think,” he said. “A child.”
She sat with him another hour, leaving only when he fell asleep. As she was escorted back to join the others, she realized that almost everybody knew her secret except Jessica and Brice, though no one besides Kip, of course, was aware she had determined to go ahead. She would confess, or rather shout it to the rafters, as soon as the right moments proposed themselves.
Incorrigible, exquisite Granna McCarthy was buried with her Bible and her pipe, laid beside her husband in a simple service. More mourners turned out than her family expected. Middle-aged former students, church friends, even some people no one recognized. Her inspiring nets had been widely cast. While in his eulogy Brice spoke of faith and loyalty, he felt profoundly troubled by his own bad faith and disloyalty in having neglected to follow through on his earlier promise to visit his mother. In the weeks that followed, while seeing Ariel through the trauma of gain and loss as best he could, Brice found himself shuttling between New York and New Mexico on redeye specials, having committed himself to extricating his daughter and the Montoyas from their legal tangle. He stayed in the guest bedroom of Bonnie’s house when he was up north, and in the Tularosa bungalow when downstate. He sometimes visited Pear Street to pass some thoughtful hours there. He knew this was a displaced case of better late than never,