Chapter 11
Plans changed, as they tended to do with Harge. The original intent was to have him come and get Rindy on Sunday. But the baby was being fussy, and the nanny was off for the day, He called asking Carol to come to him instead. This meant a long drive, but also that she was in control of when Rindy would leave their company.
An easy trade-off, Carol thought, and she was only half an hour later than she should’ve been getting Rindy out the door.
Of course Carol had to come see the nursery of the newest Aird. Of course she couldn’t simply drop Rindy off and leave. Not when Sascha’s nursery was finally all done, and so pretty.
Rindy was the love of her life, and, occasionally, an alarming reflection of the people in it. She could be pushy and demanding, like Harge, dragging Carol along behind her to whatever it was she wanted, and therefore, what Carol obviously wanted. Yet sometimes her tactics were more in line with Therese’s. She wasn’t forceful or imposing because she knew she didn’t have to be. The right look or tone, and Carol would follow her anywhere, throw herself into anything, damn the sanity of it.
It was a clever combination of both strategies that had Carol in Harge’s house again, with his child. Again. Though it was hard to think of Sascha as Harge’s child in the same way she had a few days earlier.
Harge was there this time, Lilah wasn’t. The new Mrs. Aird was indulging in a bath while Sascha slept. In his admittedly well-appointed nursery, that Carol could (grudgingly) understand Rindy’s attachment to.
The bedroom was very... fluffy, it almost made Carol think of clouds. Plush white carpeting wall to wall that wouldn't last a moment beneath the feet of any active child who wasn't shadowed by a nanny and a housekeeper. She shuddered to think of what Lizzie would do to it. The walls were a light cream color as well, decorated with photos of circus animals up to various hijinks, complete with a roaring lion near the crib. Rindy was proud to have helped pick out the animals, quick to say that the lion was to protect Sacha, not eat him.
Again Carol thought of Lizzie, and how she would’ve made the opposite choice when it came to the lion’s intentions for her brother. Carol thought too of the walls surrounding Rindy as a baby. A soft yellow the decorator insisted was neutral and therefore preferable It’d forever reminded her of lemon meringue pie, leaving her starving every time she left the room, at least for the last weeks of her pregnancy.
She was relieved to know that Harge hadn’t painted the walls himself. He’d hired someone again, thank God. If Harge Aird ever got himself covered in paint (as Steve had when Lizzie was born, Angie still joked about the notebook of rejected mural ideas), it would more than likely push Carol over the edge. Nothing would make sense anymore; the world would become too unpredictable to survive in.
The crib was a light wood, fitted with pale blue sheets and blankets meticulously made up for the baby who'd sleep there eventually. Jake’s crib was iron, which Therese had asked about once. Angie, with no sign of deception, claimed practicality. That tiny Lizzie had once torn a bar off of her original wooden one, in a fit of newborn anger.
“And that sucker came from the Queen,” she’d added. “Think English would be permanently kicked out of the homeland if the other Lizzie ever found out.”
Steve, the picture of seriousness, added that iron kept the Fae away.
Like Rindy's crib, Sascha’s contained lace curtains that gathered to a point at the ceiling above it, able to drape around the baby's crib.
Carol hadn't ever found it useful outside of mosquito netting, a comment which never failed to make Harge laugh when Rindy was young and insistent that the material was climbable. With tiny, dagger like nails only Harge could cut. Carol swore those nails were the reason she still couldn’t stand having deep scratches on her body. Therese was, depending on the night, a different story, and thankfully never questioned Carol’s aversion.
There was no antique rocking chair in this nursery, no tiny bookcase filled with books far advanced for Sascha. Instead there was a plush looking armchair with a burp cloth on it, next to a side table that held only a lamp.
Carol had liked that old rocker, one of the few gifts from Harge’s mother she hadn’t lied about. A family heirloom that had been in Harge’s room, in his father’s. But not this room.
Rindy had trouble keeping her excitement down to a level that wouldn’t wake the baby. Harge told her to go check on Lilah, and Carol ignored the flicker of hurt that came with how eager Rindy was to comply. Things were helped by Rindy extracting a promise from Carol not to leave without saying goodbye. She stopped in the doorway, spent a long moment just looking at them and grinning before rushing off.
How badly had they screwed up, Carol wondered, when seeing her parents together and civil was such a treat, a rarity, that their seven-year-old thought to pause, to savor it?
Quite suddenly, she was alone with Harge, the both of them standing over a baby. Carol was surprised at how strong the memories were, how quickly they came back. She’d stood this way so many times, looking at Rindy. Soft and new and perfect, untouched by any of their mistakes up to then. She’d thought that this new, perfect being they created together might be enough to keep them that way. Even with Harge’s parents, even after what she’d done with Abby.
It was selfish, she realized now. Stupid and selfish to expect a baby to shoulder that much weight. Rindy had been so small, smaller than Carol even remembered until she looked at Sascha. He was bundled up again, on his belly. Curled into himself, the same way Rindy used to sleep. Carol remembered wondering if she’d slept that way in the womb, if she missed the old environment where things were less noisy and complicated.
It felt so familiar and so wrong to be here with Harge, like this. If he shared her unease though, he didn’t show it. His smile was small but proud, contented, and her being there did nothing to dim it.
“Was she good?” he asked in that same talk-whisper he used when it was Rindy in this crib.
“She always is,” Carol said, which wasn’t true at all. But it felt good, always, regardless of Rindy’s behavior. Having her there was always good.
Carol looked at the spot in the room where it seemed that old rocker should be. It’d felt good to hold Rindy in that thing, calming. No signs of the storms ahead. Its absence might be simple, down to the fact that Carol had used it first, but Carol doubted it, given what she knew.
There was no good reason to ask him about it. Carol did anyway.
“It was ugly,” he said, dismissive.
“It wasn’t. That’s why I was so shocked it belonged to your family.”
Harge laughed at that. “They decide who gets the honor of housing the damn thing, and considering their feelings on the situation…” He shrugged, his hands resting loose and comfortable atop Sascha’s crib. “It was ugly.”
So was Harge’s eye. The proof of his father’s feelings was still visible, swollen skin turning a variety of unpleasant colors. It drew Carol’s focus, but not as much as another color in the room. This was the first time she’d seen Sascha without a hat. His hair fully on display. He was, without question, the blondest child she’d ever seen. That hair was so new, but so light that it was almost white.
That boy was not an Aird.
What uncertainties she had fell away. Airds were not blonde. Every one she’d ever met had dark hair, like Harge’s, or hair that had grayed with age, like his father’s. Abby, eloquent as always, once stated that they all had shit-colored hair to go along with the content of their brains. Carol always looked quite a sight in the photos. Yet another way she stuck out like a sore thumb amongst what was meant to be family.
He was not an Aird, and if Harge didn’t see that, he was even more deluded about the baby than he’d been about Carol’s sexuality.
“He’s very blonde,” Carol said, because it felt wrong to not say so, to pretend.
“They come in all shapes, sizes, colors.”
“Colors,” said Carol, her mind drawn to JJ Carter and his dark skin, unmanageable hair. A picture in her mind so different from this baby in front of her. She saw Sascha, but she also Harge. The almost imperceptible tension in his neck and shoulders, the way his hands went from resting on the crib rail to fidgeting there. She wondered if Lilah noticed these things too, if they were reading from the same catalog of Harge Aird tells. “If he’d come out a different color, and with that hair, I’m not sure your parents would’ve survived it.”
Harge made a noise in the back of his throat. “Don’t get any ideas,” he said his tone still relaxed. “Just because he’s blonde, doesn’t mean Spangles can claim another Aird.”
Carol chuckled. So he could joke about it now, could he? That debacle that led to one of their most exhausting blowups in recent memory. “No, I guess he can’t.”
Steve couldn’t claim another Aird because there wasn’t one.
Carol watched a muscle in Harge’s jaw tic. The way it had so many times in the last three years, right before he sneered at her with such contempt, before he looked at Therese as though she were dirt on his newly cleaned shoes.
“Calm down, Carol. He’s blonde, he’s not Mowgli.”
There was an edge this time, mostly hidden, but so familiar to her. He was watching Sascha, but also her. She could feel it, the two of them doing that same subtle dance of the eyes. He would look at her at some function or other without fully looking at her, without making it obvious. Just enough for her to know she’d screwed up, wasn’t representing him well enough..
Mowgli. The Jungle Book. One of the stories that used to be on Rindy’s shelf when she was much too young to understand them. Gifts from his parents. Not here now. They wanted nothing to do with this boy, would give him nothing.
“Not Mowgli,” said Carol. “I’m just wondering if the stork didn’t have a mix-up.”
Rindy used to believe in the stork. Those were simple, beautiful days, before Lizzie told her things about mommies and daddies and wrestling. Rindy made a disgusted face while recounting what she’d learned. She looked like Harge when she did that, pulled that expression of shock and revulsion.
Harge had given Carol that look so many times. Which was not nearly as offensive as how often he’d subjected Therese to it. Therese, who’d done nothing to him, but was forever punished for Carol’s behavior.
He’d made their lives hell. He made Therese afraid to love Rindy, afraid to be around her own home on the nights he was there. He’d left Carol planning for hours before each of his visits. How far could he push her before she pushed back? She’d tried to think of every awful thing he could possibly say or do, the ones she would let slide and the ones she would have to rise to. So much of her time, time that should’ve been Therese’s, but went to Harge. He took from her even when he wasn’t there.
He didn’t deserve this, this easy happiness where he laughed and handed her his child that belonged to neither of them as though it was nothing, as though he hadn’t tried so damn hard to keep her unhappy. To hurt Therese. He didn’t deserve to just decide things were okay, to have everything on his terms, like always.
“He didn’t,” said Harge. “Stork doesn’t make mistakes, remember?”
What they’d told Rindy. A simple explanation, for simpler times. “I was thinking more Clark Kent than Mowgli. He’s much too pale for Mowgli.”
Rindy loved that show, her and Lizzie both. She had some of the comics. They sold them right next to the Captain America books that Steve laughed at.
Harge’s voice was careful, in a way most wouldn’t notice. “You calling my kid a space baby?”
Carol matched him. With humor, but something else too. It was easy. they were well practiced in these conversations, this code of hurt, anger, micro aggressions. Threats. “He doesn’t fit in with the rest of the Airds, that’s all. Looks like he might have a much more interesting…” What was the term, the one she couldn’t help but roll her eyes at? “Origin story. Seems he might have an interesting origin story.”
There was the smallest silence after that. Nothing but Sascha’s soft breathing, and them with a mountain of secrets and hurt and history between them. It’d been that way for so long. Harge had weaponized Carol’s loved ones against her, used them as knives in an attempt to wound her little by little. Over three years of death by a thousand cuts. How many were they up to now? How much blood, how much of this easy happiness he was so proud to display with Lilah, had he robbed her of?
Still gripping the rail, Harge turned his gaze away from the baby for the first time. He was looking at Carol fully now, seeing her fully. That’d become so rare as the years wore on, as their marriage wore them down.
“He’s enough of a Clark Kent, I’ll give you that,” said Harge, each word measured. “Almost too perfect. Interesting, what did you say, origin story? Interesting origin story, and parents who couldn’t care less about it, that love him no matter what.”
They stared at each other, the baby between them. Oblivious to all the pain and secrets that came before him, that would probably come after. He was, as Harge said, almost too perfect, Like Rindy.
“Well,” Carol said after a long moment. “Kent it is then. But watch him, please. Superman gets power from the sun. I’m not sure that sweet boy could survive five minutes in direct light.”
Harge studied her. Then he rolled his eyes. Then he smiled. “Thank you for your concern,” he drawled.
"I'm just saying, you might want to keep him out of the sun without at least two hats and a blanket. Or perhaps some of the thermal protection they put on TV meals."
"Do you actually eat those things? You know they're radioactive."
"Rindy enjoys them."
"Rindy enjoys frosted flakes."
“And which one of us got her hooked on those?”
Harge held up his hands. Surrendering.
In a few minutes, Carol was saying goodbye to Rindy. She missed seeing Lilah, but was assured by Rindy that the new Mrs. Aird had given her a warm greeting, and her best regards.
Harge walked her to her car held the door open, watched as she got settled in behind the wheel. “See you next week,” he said.
“See you. Oh, Harge?”
He looked at her.
“Sascha could never pass for a Rogers. He’s even more blonde than Steve.”
“Look who’s talking,” Harge replied, before slamming Carol’s door shut.