The Stepman by David Margolis

Author:David Margolis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504023382
Publisher: The Permanent Press (ORD)

PART TWO

Journey and Return

CHAPTER 12

Summertime.

I have hugged them goodbye indoors and then again, lingeringly, on the sidewalk. Now I wave to them waving goodbye to me: a family tableau. Lora carries Hannah in her arms. Hannah is also waving goodbye. Ella’s face seems sullen, but that is the adolescent look—who knows what she is thinking? Eli stands gawky, tottling in a small circle on stiff legs like a pelican; the poet’s eye catches him ill at ease, not knowing how to be cool or even if being cool is the cool thing to do in this circumstance. Biological father left long ago, and now another father may be slipping away.

The underplate of the station wagon scrapes on the driveway, and I redirect my attention to wheeling backward into the street. I recognize this as the true first moment of my new life, as I remove my attention from my family and begin to concentrate on myself.

We have talked about this. O boy, have we talked about it. Lora and I talked about it all the time. Lora and I and Mrs. K. talked about it an hour a week for the last two months. Lora and Eli and Ella and I all talked about it together. I talked about it separately with Eli and with Ella, taking walks with them to explain and to reassure them that none of what was happening between their Mom and me was their fault or responsibility.

Ella cried. Then she talked about the time we had almost collided with a deer on a dark road and barely missed, as we skidded across lanes onto the shoulder, both the deer as it leapt away and a telephone pole. “I didn’t tell you why I cried then,” she said.

“You said you were scared.”

“I was afraid I was going to die without you and me ever being friends again,” she confessed. Her eyes brimmed over.

“We are friends,” I assured her, not sure if it was any longer the truth. I felt moved but distant. Ah, Minsky, connossieur of emotional scenes!

Eli, as much my son as his father’s, was even more straight-forward. “I’m doing pretty great in my life,” he told me with a confident grin. We were standing in front of our house, preparing to go in after our final walk-and-talk. “I mean, I know I owe you a lot for making me who I am. I mean—I just wanted to thank you for being my stepfather and raising me and everything.” It was a nice speech, impressive for the difficulty of a boy his age to say such things. I hugged him, knowing that behind his gawky bravado were worries he could not confess: What next? Does step-parental love continue after divorce, if it came to that? Would we be friends again? I was moved by him, too, I cared for him—but I did not forget that he too, like Ella, also had sensible private motives for reminding me of our joint history.

And so, refusing to become entangled again in history, I promised Eli, as I had promised Ella, nothing.

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