One Week

By

Julie Showalter

The American Airlines terminal at DFW isn’t crowded on a Tuesday morning the week before Christmas. Lynn spots the two of them at the ticket counter as soon as she is out of the gate area. The man in cowboy shirt, jeans, and boots, who used to be her husband, the four-year old girl in a velvet-trimmed coat and mary janes who looks too tall to be her daughter. Jack rocks back and forth on his feet, scanning the terminal, his hands jiggling change in his pockets. Abby clutches a doll to her chest, frowns at the floor. Then Jack sees Lynn. He crouches beside Abby, turns her body. She can see his words – “There she is. There’s Mama.”

Abby smiles and begins to run. But as she gets close to Lynn’s open arms, she slows. Five feet away, she puts her head down and stops. Lynn, who knelt to receive her, closes the distance in an awkward crouch, swoops her daughter up, holds her close, puts her nose in Abby’s hair. She is dizzied by the sweet, slightly acrid smell like fermented grass that she’s remembered in dreams, whiffed on other children in moments that made her think it was possible to die of loss. “Hi, Baby,” she says. “Do you remember me?”

“Sure,” Abby smiles. “You used to be my mother.”

One week, Lynn thinks, I have one week to fix this.

The three of them settle in a booth in the airport coffee shop. Abby is given crayons and a place mat to color. She works intently, ignoring the grownups. The waitress assumes they’re a family, making Lynn consider an alternate universe in which the three of them are still together, in which she and Abby have never been separated.

It’s awkward sitting with this man who was her college boyfriend, her husband for four years, whom she’s seen for the last two years only as an adversary. She’s glad he offered to meet her on neutral ground. He could have made her rent a car, drive 50 miles to his parents’ house in Waxahachie. She appreciates this kindness, but she knows it’s easy to be generous when you’ve won. She would have been.

“How are things going for you Lynnie?” he asks.

“Good. Things are good.” What else can she say? She is long past believing that anything she says to Jack will make a difference. Arguing with him has changed nothing, nor has being reasonable, nor has begging. For over a year he wouldn’t even let her talk to Abby on the phone. “She’s tired,” he would say, or “she’s having fun, I don’t want to upset her.” Once Abby interrupted him when Lynn was on the line.

“Daddy, who you talking to?”

“Just someone.”

“Can I go play with the girls?”

“Sure, Ab, don’t bother Daddy on the phone.”

“Not grils?” Lynn could barely choke the words out. “She used to say grils.”

Lynn knows she can’t allow herself these thoughts, cannot think about what’s been lost. She can only go on from here. She takes a deep breath and picks up the conversation.

“Work is going well. I’m getting a reputation as a negotiator. Three-quarters of my cases are settled before they get to court.”

“You always did think you could talk people into anything you wanted.”

Pleasant time is over.

“How are your parents?” Lynn asks. Her coffee is bitter. Without his parents to run to, Jack would never have had the backbone to snatch Abby away from her. Without their money and influence, he couldn’t have waged the long war of legal delays that they won through attrition – the attrition of Abby’s memory. “Do they keep you on curfew?”

“Cut it out, Lynn.” He blows into his coffee and refuses to look at her.

That was the problem with Jack, one of the problems. She could never get a rise out of him, or even get his attention. “That’s nice,” he’d say when she told him she’d made law review or Abby had taken her first steps. “Cut it out,” when she reached for him in the dark.

Abby is intent on the picture she’s drawing, a bed with three heads sticking out of the covers. “What’s that, Sweetie?” Lynn asks.

“That’s when I used to get in the big bed with you and Daddy. That’s me in the middle.”

“Those were happy times, weren’t they Abs?” Jack says.

Abby nods. “I’d climb on the bed and you’d say ‘There’s a lump in our bed,’ and she’d say, ‘A lump? Let’s tickle it.’”

Lynn remembers the game. It was a Sunday morning ritual for about a year. She shuts her mind against this picture of a happy family that she destroyed. Their whole life wasn’t like that. They weren’t happy. She wasn’t happy. At two, Abby was already developing frantic methods to get her father’s attention. “Look at my somersault, Daddy. Look at my picture.” “That’s nice, Abby,” he would say, turning up the television. “Cut it out now.”

The waitress hands Jack the check and he stands to leave, waving off Lynn’s offer to pay. “I know you two girls have a lot of catching up to do,” he says, as if this were a reunion of college roommates. He kneels beside Abby, “Don’t give these folks any trouble.”

Abby’s bottom lip quivers and Jack says, “Be a brave girl. It’s only a week, and Grandma and Granddad and I will call you every day at 5:15.” He leaves and Lynn is alone with a little girl she doesn’t know anymore. She drinks more cold bitter coffee.

On the plane, Abby settles in. Expands so that her arms are on both arm rests. Crosses her feet at the ankle. “Jennifer Martin said they bring peanuts,” she says. “And Coke. They bring you wings too. If you fly alone, the flight attendants bring you special headphones.”

“Who’s Jennifer Martin?”

“She’s in kindergarten. She flies to see her dad in Houston.” Abby examines the buttons on her arm rest, looks up at the air vents. “It’s just like Jennifer said. She says it’s more fun alone.”

“But she’s older than you.”

“I’m old enough.” She counts off the rules, learned from Jennifer Martin, on her fingers. “Four years old. Non-stop flight. Three hours tops. Adult on both ends.”

Lynn wants to weep at this picture of a little girl jetting alone between parents. This isn’t the life she planned for her daughter. Again, she reminds herself of what has become her mantra. I can’t go back. I can only go forward from here.

Lynn doesn’t know how to act around her daughter. When Abby was two, she sang to her, held her, played peekaboo. When she was two, Lynn was even allowed to ignore her for moments at a time. That was when she thought she had all the time in the world to be Abby’s mother. Now she has slightly less than seven days in which to reconnect, to make her daughter understand she still has a mother who loves her. “When we get to Chicago, we’ll take the el into the city. Do you remember riding the el when you were little? You’d jump up and down on the platform when you heard the trains coming, you’d be so excited.”

“Kinda,” Abby says and starts pulling a seemingly endless supply of Barbie paraphernalia from the backpack at her feet.

In college, Lynn had sworn that her children would never play with guns or Barbie dolls. She asks, “What do you like to do? What games are you good at?”

“My talent’s twirling. I brought my portfolio.” Abby pulls a folder from the backpack. Professional photos of her in an organdy dress pouting, in a blue sequined leotard, her pelvis thrust forward, a baton under her arm. In all the pictures she is wearing mascara and lipstick.

“I was first runner-up in the Little Miss Cinderella contest.” Abby blinks twice slowly, tilts her head, and in a voice of practiced cuteness says, “If Little Miss Cinderella for any reason cannot fill her oglibation, I will be the Little Miss Cinderella.”

It’s so posed, so phony, so much not what Lynn wants her daughter to be. “Ob-li-ga-tion,” she says. “The word you’re trying to say is obligation.”

Abby’s eyes narrow. “It’s not my fault I didn’t win. The judges had favorites. Everybody said I was prettiest. They cheated.”

For a moment Lynn actually dislikes this child who is mouthing the creed of Jack’s parents – trust no one, everyone is trying to cheat you.

Half an hour before they are due to land, Abby falls asleep. Lynn raises the arm rest that separates them and leans the floppy little body into hers. She strokes Abby’s hair, and holds her baby for the first time in two years. She forces herself not to clutch, not to hug too hard. She sings softly, the tuneless words she used as she rocked Abby through colic, teething, bad dreams. “Darlin’ girl, Abby girl, Momma’s darlin’ girl.”

Abby stirs, smiles in her sleep, “Momma’s darlin’ gril,” she says. Lynn’s eyes fill with tears. This is still her daughter.

When they open the door to the apartment, the hall is dark and David booms toward them like a bearded giant. “Is it Abby? Is she finally here?” Abby backs up a step, her hand reaches for Lynn. David, who has been bending to hug her, notices her fear and extends his hand instead. “How do you do?” he says. “I’m so glad to meet you.”

She gives him her hand slowly and asks, “Are you the other man?”

David smiles. “Nope. I’m just the man.”

“My mother left us for another man.”

Lynn watches as David leads Abby to the couch and begins the apology of the divorced parent. “Your mother didn’t leave you. She just didn’t want to be married to your daddy any more.” He tells the story they have agreed is best, glossing over questions of morality, guilt, remorse. Making years of pain slide down smooth as ice cream. She has heard him give a different version of the story to his own sons. “I didn’t want to leave you. I didn’t leave you.” Though of course he did.

Lynn had her arguments lined out when she told Jack she was divorcing him. Her demeanor was as she planned – logical and firm, but not combative, not critical. Their lives were going in different directions, she said. They had nothing in common anymore. He’d be happier without a wife and daughter holding him down. It was nobody’s fault. They’d just married too young and it was time to move on. He could see Abby any time.

He reacted as she expected him to. He argued with her for days, saying, in effect, “It’s not so bad.” She was unyielding, “Not so bad? Don’t you want more than not so bad? I want more.” Then he gave in, just as he had given in when she wanted to go to law school, just as he had given in when she wanted to have a baby. There was a two-day period when, both exhausted by the emotional turmoil, they seemed closer than they’d been in years. They even slept together again and had gentle, nostalgic sex. Their meals were relaxed and they played games at the table with Abby as they hadn’t for months. Lynn thought those final days were a kind farewell to the life they had shared.

She misjudged Jack completely.

He picked Abby up for a Saturday visit, three weeks after the separation. He was supposed to bring her back at 3:00, in time for her nap. At 2:55 he called. “You can have your divorce,” he said, “but you don’t get everything.”

Lynn said, “But we worked it all out. What do you want? The television? I’ll give back the television.” Then she realized what he was threatening. “You never wanted Abby.”

Jack said, “I just wanted you to know she was safe,” and hung up.

She called the police. Their first question was, “What does the custody decree say?” A month away from graduating law school, and she had ignored everything she knew about custody law. All she had were unsigned preliminary papers, papers she was sure Jack would sign. Papers she didn’t think were even necessary. “Then it’s not kidnapping, lady. It’s just a dad taking his kid for a drive.”

She spent the rest of the day waiting, watching the street out front with the phone in her lap. She knew Jack, knew he was bluffing. He’d bring Abby back. He had to.

She was surprised when David showed up at seven with a bottle of wine. The connection hit her in the chest. Abby had told Jack a man was coming to dinner. That’s why he took her.

But David wasn’t a boyfriend, not yet. He was just a man she found attractive, one of the attorneys in the firm where she did paralegal work, someone she’d wondered about the way you wonder – if I weren’t married, would something develop?

He held her while she cried. He said, “If there’s one thing I know, it’s that the courts favor the mother. You’ll get her back.” He listened to her scream that she was stupid, stupid, stupid; and he didn’t agree with her.

At ten o’clock, she admitted they wouldn’t be back that day, and she realized that they’d gone to Jack’s parents. She started calling airlines, finding out how soon she could get to Dallas, but David stopped her. “Use your head,” he said. “What would you do when you got there? Wait until Monday. I’ll get names of attorneys in the area. We’ll find out what the Texas laws are. Then, when you fly down there, you’ll accomplish something.”

It made sense. She didn’t even know if she could buy a plane ticket right then. All the joint credit cards had been cancelled, and she had just enough in the bank to last until she could start working full-time after finals. She looked at David. Considering his advice and how little she knew him, she couldn’t ask him for an immediate $500 loan. She would be reasonable, be smarter than she had been so far.

David stayed all night offering certainty when she needed it. Offering tenderness when she hurt most. In the midst of the worst pain of her life, Lynn began to fall in love with this gentle, understanding man.

Jack and his parents managed delay after delay. The got an order limiting her visits with Abby to two hours with a court official present. Strained visits in which Abby seemed frightened and refused to sit in her lap or return her hugs. Lynn’s Texas attorney, a slow-talking good ole’ boy in his sixties, advised patience. “You’ll get your girl,” he said. “They wouldn’t be messing with all these delays and restraining orders if they didn’t know they’re going to lose. You just wait it out.” Her colleagues at work agreed. Everyone agreed. She just had to wait this out. She got her Illinois divorce. She married David. She prepared for each cancelled court date.

At one point, she and David were actually walking out the door to the airport when the lawyer called to tell them of another delay. “That’s it,” Lynn said when she hung up the phone. “I’m going down there, court or no court. I’m going to stand in their yard and howl until they either put me in jail or give me my daughter. I will not live another day like this.”

Again David held her. Again, he calmed her. “You’re thinking like a mother, and you need to think like a lawyer. They’re trying to make you crazy with these delays. Don’t let them do it. Use your head. We’ll wait this out.”

In all, the waiting lasted two years.

Then, a less than a month ago, everything was resolved in a hearing that lasted less than ninety minutes. At the end, too quickly for Lynn to absorb, the judge said, “This little girl doesn’t know you. Her father has sacrificed his independence for her and made a life with his parents. He’s given her a stable home. I’m not going to upset her again.”

She’d done everything she was supposed to do. She’d been rational when she testified, telling the judge how much she loved Abby, describing the stable home waiting for her in Chicago. She’d done everything right, but the impossible had happened. The judge was saying every-other Christmas, saying two months in the summer. She’d been calm and patient and they’d used it against her. She should have listened to her gut. She should not have been comforted.

It was a blur. Her lawyer was talking. “Can the mother take the little girl for a visit today? Everything is ready for her. She’s waited a long time to see her little girl in stress-free surroundings.”

Jack’s lawyer was talking. “The child needs to be prepared. A sudden departure would frighten her.”

Frighten her? Laura thought. Little girls aren’t frightened to go home with their mother.

The judge said, “I’ll give you three weeks to prepare the child. Your client can pick her up December 17. Have her back home Christmas Eve.”

And three weeks later, here she is. Lynn unpacks Abby’s clothes, marveling at how large they are. Even the wisps of blonde in the hairbrush are slightly darker and coarser than she remembers. So much past is lost. She moves forward, the only direction open to her.

In the living room, David is showing Abby his shadow puppets. His loose-jointed hands move smoothly from a turkey to a cowboy to Richard Nixon to an eagle. Abby is fascinated. “Can you do it, Mom?”

Lynn sits beside them. Shows her one puppet, learned in fourth grade – a rabbit. David takes Abby’s hand and forms it into a rabbit shape beside Lynn’s. “Look,” Abby says, “a momma bunny and a baby bunny.”

“Two honey bunnies,” David says, and they all laugh. The bunnies hop across the wall, they wiggle their ears and hop some more.

At bedtime, Abby puts her rabbit hand on David’s cheek. “Bunny kiss,” she says.

Later, in bed, Lynn says, “She really likes you.”

“I like her too, Lynn. She’s a terrific kid.”

“Jack and his folks don’t care how bright she is. They’re raising her to think that all that’s important is that she’s pretty.”

“Well, she is pretty, Lynn.”

“But she’s so much more. She’s bright and funny. And she’s spunky. I want her to be that Abby.”

“Abby will be who Abby is, Sweetheart.” David kisses her neck. “I think you can make real strides with her on this visit.” He pulls her to him and breathes into her hair.

“Maybe it can be more than a visit. Maybe she’ll see how much happier she is here and want to stay. They’d re-open the case if she said she wanted to live here.”

David stiffens. “Lynn,” his words are precise and careful. “You can’t put that kind of pressure on yourself or on her. If you’re thinking like that, we’re never going to get through this and have a normal life.”

“There’s nothing normal about a little girl visiting her mother.” Her voice is a harsh tight whisper. She notices, even in the midst of her fury, that she has not shouted, she has adapted to the fact that Abby is in the next room. She notices that she thinks like a mother. She half expects her breasts to tighten with milk – she is that much a mother. “It’s an aberration for her to visit, an abomination. It’s not normal!”

David holds her tightly, speaks softly in her ear. “I know, honey, I know. You know that I know.” Six months before Lynn and David became involved, his ex-wife got their joint custody agreement set aside when she remarried and moved to California. Every six weeks he flies to Los Angeles and spends a weekend taking his sons to amusement parks and zoos. Every summer they visit David and Lynn for two months.

This summer there will be three temporary children, the children of lawyers who behaved logically, who played by the rules.

The next morning, Abby picks at her cereal. “Is that what you like?” Lynn asks. “I can get what you like.”

“I like Lucky Charms.”

“Oh, honey, that’s just junk,” Lynn says. “This is much more nutritious.”

Abby stirs her corn flakes until they turn into pale yellow soup.

David looks up from his crossword. “I say special rules for the week before Christmas. Abby, if I get you Lucky Charms will you eat a banana or an apple with it?”

She nods.

“I’ll pick some up on my way home.” He kisses Lynn goodbye, pats Abby on the head, says, “You girls have fun today,” and leaves.

Lynn has told her office no calls. Nothing is important enough to interrupt her time with Abby.

The plan for the day is for Lynn and Abby to drive to the country to pick out a Christmas tree. Lynn has never done this before. She and Jack always bought their trees from a corner lot, and she hasn’t decorated for Christmas during the years without Abby. It strikes her as an exhausting project, driving thirty miles to cut down a tree, but she is determined that every day be special, an event, every moment quality time.

“So we’ll get our tree, Abby, just a little one so we can bring it up ourselves. Then we’ll decorate it.” Lynn is determinedly upbeat as they walk the three blocks to where she parked her car two days earlier. “Just the two of us. Won’t that be fun? Do you remember decorating the tree when you were a little girl?”

“Kinda,” Abby says, walking face down beside her.

“It’s not much farther. Look, there’s Mama’s car, the white one.” She opens the passenger door and pulls the seat forward before she sees the ticket fluttering on the windshield. “Shit,” Lynn says.

Abby stares at the car with her mouth open, tears form in her eyes. “Shit,” Lynn says, this time to herself. Surely Abby isn’t this upset by a little profanity. Then she realizes. Abby hasn’t noticed her outburst. She’s looking inside the car.

“I’m not a baby,” she says.

“No, of course not. It’s not a baby seat. It’s a child’s seat. I bought it just for your visit.”

“I’m four and a half. I don’t ride in those.” She stamps her foot and glares at Lynn. “You want me to be a baby.”

Lynn crumples the ticket in her hand and takes deep breaths Gradually she realizes she has made a mistake. She bought this car seat with a two-year old in mind. She thinks of the Play School toys she’s bought Abby for Christmas. Will there be time to return them?

“You’re right, Abby. I was remembering you littler. It’s going to take me a while to get used to you being such a big girl.” Abby starts to climb in the front seat with a smug smile. “Sorry, Abs, back seat.” When Abby glares at her, Lynn points to the dash, “air bags.”

Abby flops into the back seat and sits unsmiling next to the child’s seat. The seat belt where she’s sitting is twisted and stiff. She doesn’t move as Lynn leans over the front seat and struggles to locate the two pieces, fasten them, pull them tight.

The engine is slow to start after two cold nights on the street. Then, because her small car has been hemmed in between two minivans, it takes four times back and forth to get away from the curb. Sweat prickles on Lynn’s head and she pulls her cap off.

Abby speaks. “My daddy lets me ride in front.”

“Well maybe your daddy doesn’t care as much about you as I do.”

Lynn wants to call back the words as soon as she’s said them, no matter how true she believes them to be. Lucky Charms, beauty pageants, riding in the front seat. No one is taking care of her girl the way she should be cared for. No one is giving her a mother’s care.

The day does not improve. Abby refuses to get involved with choosing a tree. Then she refuses to eat the soup and cider provided by the tree farm. Lynn is forced to violate another of her principles and stop at McDonalds. On the way home, Abby asks, “Did you kill the tree?”

Four o’clock and Lynn is ready to start decorating. She shows Abby the foil snowflakes she has made. “You can make some too. And I have some cranberries to string, and some popcorn.” Abby puts her head down on the table. “Oh, Baby, you’re tired. We’ll do this later.”

“You can do it while I take a rest.”

“Don’t you want to help?”

“Grandma said they’d wait to take ours out of the box until I got home. I get to put on all the Hallmarks that say my years.” Lynn adds artificial trees and Hallmark memories to the crimes being perpetrated against her daughter.

Right at 5:15 the phone rings.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Lynn says, “She’s asleep.” She recognizes the echoes of all the times he wouldn’t let her talk to Abby.

“This isn’t funny, Lynn. She quit taking naps a year ago.”

“It’s been a busy two days. I’ll get her back on schedule tomorrow. She really is asleep.

“Look, there’s something important.” This is embarrassing, but she forges ahead because it is important. “When she goes to the bathroom, she wipes the wrong direction.”

She can hear the repulsion in Jack’s “huh?’ almost see the involuntary lip curl he showed when faced with what he called female mess.

“Little girls can get infections. She has to go front-to-back. This is important.”

“Uh, I’ll tell Mom.”

“That’s just it. She says she does it the way Grandma shows her. Jack, this is important.”

“Sure, I’ll tell Mom.”

“It’s important, Jack.”

The phone rings again at 6:30 as they are eating dinner. Abby looks from her mother to David to see who will answer it. David smiles at her and says, “We let people leave messages when we’re busy.”

Abby says, “Is it 5:15? Is it my Daddy?”

The phone starts its second ring.

Lynn says, “He called while you were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you up. He’ll call back after dinner.”

Abby’s tears are sudden and furious. “You didn’t let me talk to my Daddy? I want to talk to my Daddy.”

Lynn starts toward the phone just as the machine picks up. A woman’s voice, “Lynn? Is this Lynn’s number? It’s Grace. I want to talk to Abby.”

“Grandma,” Abby shouts. “Let me talk to Grandma.”

Lynn picks up the phone. “Hello, Grace. Yes, we’re fine thanks. Yes, she’s right here.” Jack’s mother walked a fine line during the past two years. If Lynn called when Jack wasn’t around, Grace told her things Abby was doing. Last Christmas she sent a picture of Abby in Santa’s lap. Once she said, “You were such a happy little family. I wish I could just blink and make all the unhappiness disappear.”

Lynn tries to concentrate on her conversation with David, but she hears Abby’s every word.

“Yeah.” “OK. We bought a Christmas tree.” “He’s OK.” “She’s OK.” “Not too bad. I miss you. How many days?” “Tell Daddy I’m sorry I was asleep.”

When she comes back to the table, Abby says, “Five-fifteen is when my daddy calls. You should of woke me up.”

The next day, they have plans for sightseeing and lunch under the big tree at Fields. Abby is only interested in one thing. “Will it be 5:15 at lunch?” “When will it be 5:15?”

“We’ll be home around 4:00. We’ll work on a puzzle together. It will probably be 5:15 while we’re working on the puzzle.”

Abby is pleasantly frightened by the ride to the top of the Sears Tower; and, once she’s able to elbow her way to the front, is delighted by the animated mice in the Christmas windows at Fields.

It’s only when they join the line to the Walnut room that things go sour.

Lynn watches as Abby scopes out the other little girls in line. She’s seen adolescent girls go through this ritual, certain shallow women, but never a four-year old girl. Abby stands posed, one toe pointed forward, hand on one hip. She doesn’t smile as she lifts an eyebrow, looks each girl over from head to foot and back. She’s gauging the competition, Lynn realizes. Abby seems pleased until her gaze lights on a girl about her size with an elaborate whooshed-up hairdo and a red velvet dress with white fur trim. “I should of worn a dress,” Abby says. “You should of fixed my hair.” Her gaze goes from the little girl to Lynn.

Lynn wills her face to stay neutral as Abby evaluates her no-care haircut, her five-minute makeup job, her bulky sweater, tweed pants, and boots. Abby gives her mother the same frank appraisal she’s given the little girls. “You don’t know much about being pretty, do you?”

Lynn closes her eyes, counts to ten, bites the inside of her cheek. The lesson here is too big to be taught by lecture, must be taught by example, continuing example. Abby needs a mother to show her there are more important things in life than how you look.

After ten minutes the line moves forward to a sign. “An hour from this point,” Lynn reads aloud, and shrugs. “Well, I’ve waited years to bring you here, another hour isn’t going to kill us.”

Abby fidgets. “How long till 5:15?” “Are we going to be late?” “Look at those girls,” she points to a family near the front of the line. “They have their daddy with them. They should let me go first.”

“Abby, that doesn’t make sense. People who get here first get to eat first.”

“But I need to go first.”

“No, Abby, you want to go first. There’s a difference.”

“You don’t care what I want. All you care about is where you want to eat.”

Abby is not the only child in line wailing, but to Lynn’s ears she is the loudest. She squats down and puts her hands on Abby’s shoulders. All this squatting is making her quadriceps sore. So much easier when she could pick up a crying two-year old and hold her in her arms. “Abby, you have to stop this.”

“I want to go. I want to talk to my daddy.”

Lynn’s head pounds. All this turmoil over one missed call. Her grip tightens. “They didn’t let me talk to you for a whole year. They didn’t even tell me when you had chicken pox. How do you think this makes me feel?”

She is louder than she means to be. Abby is frozen – either too frightened or too furious to cry. All around people stare at the bad mother.

“I’m sorry Abby. I’m sorry, honey.” She pulls the rigid body into hers.

“Not sorry,” says Abby. “Not sorry. You don’t want me to talk to Daddy.”

Lynn says goodbye to the fantasy lunch. “There’s a deli around the corner. We can get right in and we’ll be home before two.”

When Jack calls at 5:15, Lynn answers. “When you’re done with Abby, I need to talk to you.” She sends Abby into the kitchen after she’s talked. “You’ve got to do something to take the pressure off her, Jack. All she can think about all day is 5:15. It’s like she’s afraid she’ll lose you if she misses that call. You’ve got to make her more secure. She’s already lost one parent without warning.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, it is your fault Jack. You stole that baby from her mother and now she’s scared to death of missing one call from you.”

“Listen to yourself, Lynn. You’re actually blaming me because Abby is miserable visiting you.” She waits to hear the receiver slammed in her ear, but it doesn’t happen. After a minute, in a calmer voice, Jack says, “You were right about why I took her. I didn’t want to lose you. I thought you’d come to your senses if I convinced you we were a package.”

Lynn can’t breathe. It’s been a mistake. Jack is giving Abby back to her.

Jack continues, “But gradually I started to realize how much I love her. Maybe I took her for the wrong reasons. But that’s not why I’m keeping her. I can’t imagine life without her.”

“But I can’t either.” Her wail surprises her. She never thought she’d be this unguarded with Jack again, show him this much emotion.

His voice is kind. “I’m sorry, Lynn, I really am. But we can’t both have her and I won’t give her up.”

After the phone call, her mind reels. Jack loves Abby, wants her, isn’t just using her as a weapon. That’s good, she thinks, good for Abby. But that idea contradicts too much. If he really loved Abby, he’d want what’s best for her. If he really loved her, he’d see how much she needs a mother, needs her. If he really loved, her he wouldn’t have stolen her away. “I didn’t want to lose you,” he said. Was it possible that Jack had loved her too? Loved them both? She is dizzy.

The next day Lynn abandons her plans for big events. Quiet time together, a sense of a normal life, that’s what she and Abby need. Mid-afternoon, before Abby can start asking about 5:15, Lynn brings out the digital clock. She shows her how it flips over 3 for the first number, goes through 59 numbers before it flips to 4, will go through another 59 numbers before it gets to 5.

Abby puts the clock beside her as she and Lynn cut and paste. Lynn has planned for Christmas projects, but Abby is fascinated by bunnies. Bunny families, bunny hutches, bunny nests. She uses every cotton ball in the apartment. “Tell me about your bunnies,” Lynn asks.

“This is the daddy. His name is Jack. And this is you. Here’s Grandma and Grandpa. And the little one is me.”

“Is there a David bunny?”

“No, it’s a bunny family. A happy bunny family.”

When 5 flips over on the clock, she stops all activity and watches the clock. At 5:14 she moves to sit by the telephone. She waits. After five minutes, Lynn says, “This clock might be a minute or two off.”

“So it’s not 5:15?”

“It’s around 5:15. It’s close.”

“When will it be 5:15?”

At 5:30, Abby grabs the phone the second it starts to ring. “Oh, hi Grandma. Can I talk to Daddy?” Her face switches from hope to despair in a flash. “Will he come tomorrow? I love you, Grandma. I miss you. I wish I was too.” By the time she hangs up the phone, Abby is crying.

Lynn pats her lap. “Want to come talk about it?”

Abby looks at her blankly. “It’s your fault. You made him sad for a long time. Now you made him mad and he won’t come to Grandma’s house when it’s time to call me.”

“Where is your dad, Abby? Why isn’t he at your grandparents’?”

Abby puts on her stubborn face. She looks and sounds amazingly like her grandmother. “It’s only temporary.”

“What is?”

“It’s a secret.” She hesitates a minute and whispers. “Can you keep a secret? He stays at Brenda’s. He eats dinner with us most nights.” Once started, Abby is eager to tell this story. “He can’t call from Brenda’s. I’m prettier than her girls so she doesn’t like me.”

“He’s not living with you? He left you with your grandparents?”

“He’ll get tired of her. She’s got three kids -- Linda and Melinda and a boy who’s just a baby. She’s been married two times.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Grandma says she’s not a nice lady like you. She says she’s an interloper.”

Lynn’s heart jumps. Jack may love Abby as he said yesterday, but he doesn’t want to take care of her. This is proof. “Your ex-husband has sacrificed his independence to give your daughter a stable home,” the judge said. What kind of stable home would he think this was? She closes her eyes and breathes deeply. It’s all been a mistake and now she can fix it. Things will be the way she wants them to be. She and Abby and David will be together.

The minute she hears David’s key in the lock, she rushes him to the bedroom.

“We can keep her. We can keep Abby.”

“What’s happened, Lynn?”

She tells him the story that Abby has told her. “I’m not sending her back. He’s deserted her.”

They are sitting on the edge of the bed. David takes her shoulders in his hands and makes her face him. “Lynn,” he says, “nothing is different. We can’t just keep her. You know the law, the penalties.”

“OK, we’ll reopen the custody battle.”

“On what basis? That her father spends some time with a woman whom Abby doesn’t like? Let’s say the worst is true. Jack is living away from Abby. If you reopened the case, he’d just move back until it’s over.”

Her voice is a growl from deep in her chest. “Don’t you know I can’t live without her?”

He puts his arms around her, strokes her hair. “Honey, you’ve lived without her for two years.”

“But that was temporary; everyone always said it was temporary. I can’t live without the hope that I’ll have her with me.”

“But you have to.” He hugs her tighter. “Lynn, we’ve been together for two years, and for that whole time our life has been on hold waiting for the decision about Abby. Now we have to go on. We have each other, we have our children even if they don’t live with us.”

She leans against him. “What would you have done it you’d known it would end up like this? Would you have divorced Karen if you’d known you’d lose the boys?”

“I can’t answer that. I didn’t know. Playing ‘what if’ at this point would drive me crazy.”

He shuts the door behind him, leaving her alone in the bedroom.

She hears him telling Abby a story about a giant pickle. Can a person live in so much pain? David has healed, or at least scarred over. Can she? Does she want to?

The phone rings. David answers, says, “Sure, just a minute.” Then Abby is on the phone. “Daddy!” she squeals. Lynn lies down and puts a pillow over her head. When she’s sure the conversation is over, she goes out to make dinner.

Abby babbles all through dinner, but not about the plans for her last three days with her mother. “My daddy and my grandma and my granddad will all be at the airport to meet me. Then we’re going out to eat at Luby’s. And then we’ll go home and decorate the tree. Daddy says there’s lots of presents for me. And Grandma says he and Brenda had a fight so he’s back home now.” She smiles brightly at Lynn. “Grandma always says he’ll never love anybody but you and me.”

On the last night Abby is with them, Lynn watches as she lines up her homemade bunnies on her pillow. “Tell me a story about your bunnies, Abs.”

Abby puts a napkin over the bunnies so they look like they’re all in bed, adjusts their positions slightly. “Once upon a time there was a little girl with a happy mommy and a happy daddy and they all lived together in a house with a yellow kitchen. The mommy put the little girl on the cabinet while she cooked dinner and the daddy came in and hugged the mommy and the little girl.”

“Honey, it wasn’t like that. That’s what your daddy and your grandma have told you to remember. It’s not the way it was.”

“They didn’t tell me your smell.”

“You remember the way I smell?” Lynn thinks of her own mother. Even now when she hugs her, Lynn smells safety, comfort, cool washcloths on her fevers. Does Abby have this deeper-than-sensory feel of mother?

“I was sad when I lost the smell.”

Lynn ponders the question she asked David three days ago. “What would you have done if you had known it would turn out like this?” He couldn’t answer, but at this moment, she can. If she had known her daughter would be raised like some artificial china doll; if she’d known she’d have to live ten months a year without Abby; if she’d known Abby would lose the smell of love, of family, of mother, she would have stayed in her not-so-bad marriage with her not-so-passionate husband who loved her not-so-much. She would have made it work.

O’Hare is packed at nine on Christmas Eve morning. David has come to the airport with them. He will take the el back into the city and leave the car for Lynn when she returns at midnight.

Two flight delays have already been announced. When the speaker crackles, everyone in the waiting area listens attentively. “Flight 620 to DFW is overbooked. We will offer $300 in airline scrip to passengers willing to give up their seat today. We will get you on the next flight available or refund your ticket with no penalty.”

“The next flight available,” snorts a man across from them, “the day after Christmas.”

People argue at the podium; a little boy is in tears. After a few minutes the agent makes another announcement. “We will offer $600 in scrip, good anywhere America flies, in exchange for a boarding pass on today’s flight.”

Abby says, “Jennifer Martin flies by herself all the time. You could let that boy sit by me.”

David pulls Lynn out of earshot of others. “It makes sense. We’ll call right now and make certain they’ll be there to meet her. She’ll be perfectly safe. Spend Christmas Eve with me. Don’t spend it alone in airports and on planes.”

It’s compelling, this argument for home, for warmth, for this man who loves her, whom she loves. But she won’t give in a second time to comfort and love. She is a mother. Above all things, she is a mother.

Once they are airborne, Lynn calls the American reservations number. As she suspects, her flight back is also overbooked and they are delighted to change her to a flight on the 26th. She calls their apartment, leaves a message for David telling him she’s been bumped

Then she makes the hardest call, praying they haven’t left yet. Jack answers on the third ring. “I’m staying over in Dallas,” Lynn says. “I want to spend Christmas with you and Abby. I want us to have a family Christmas.”

She holds her breath, hoping she can go backward after all. Jack says, “Abby and I would like that.”