Nothing compares to takeoff, Roz thought, staring out the window of the plane. She had always loved seeing the world tilt crazily and drop away. Looking to the seat next to her, she saw that her daughter seemed to love it, too. It was Elizabeth's first time on a plane, as they always took the train to see Roz's parents in New Jersey.
But this trip was farther, all the way to California. The distance wxplained why she hadn't seen him in the seven years since she'd stormed out of his apartment, pregnant. Not that he'd known.
They'd finished their dinner celebrating graduation from university, his degree in electrical engineering, hers in art history. Roz was nervous, thinking that tonight was when she'd have to tell him about her pregnancy. Parker was slowly angling the conversation towards marriage again. He wanted to marry her, seeing it as fulfilling their love for each other.
Roz didn't want to marry him. Her parents' marriage was awful, he having married her because she was pregnant and neither believing in divorce. They hated each other.
Living together seemed a better option to Roz, leaving both parties with a way out . But Parker believed in marriage, and would insist if he knew she was carrying a child. He was saying something, but she was barely paying attention. Oh, no, he'd asked a question.
"I'm sorry, what?" Roz raised brown eyes from the flickering candle flame.
Parker's own brown eyes shone amusement back at her. "I feel so insulted that a piece of wax is more interesting than me. I asked where you wanted to move this summer. I was thinking maybe California."
Rosalind Travers came to a decision. A quick one, but an important one, one that would tear away half her soul. She couldn't stay with him. She took a deep breath and adopted a casual tone. "I think you'd like California. I'm going to New York."
Roz's eyes grew dark at the memory of the fight that had followed. The anger had been dark and poisonous, neither party backing down. She looked over at Elizabeth, now happily watching the in-flight movie. Thank God she hadn't inherited her mother's temper. Liz rarely had tantrums. Both Roz and Parker had formiddable tempers that had caused them to rage at each other more than once, though their fights had usually been loud and boisterous, with equally boisterous making up. The worst fight they'd had before that night had been during Spring Break of their senior year.
"I hate you, you ((expletives deleted))!" Roz had screamed on the was out the door. She ran down the stairs to the parking lot crying. Pounding on the steering wheel of her old Dodge hadn't made the hysteria back off, so she'd grabbed the birthday present she'd bought for Parker from her purse and thrown it out the open window at the dumpster in the corner of the lot.
She'd driven in a blind rage, not realizing she was heading towards Pieter's place. Pieter was a blond, blue-eyed, motorcycle-riding bouncer who lived over the bar where he worked to put himself through law school. He was also Parker's cousin and a friend to both.
Parking in the alley behind the bar, she ran up the stairs, not doubting that he would be home, even though he usually was working at that time of night. Roz didn't knock but burst in, tears streaming down her face. She found Pieter slumped on the couch with a decanter in front of him. At her arrival, he half-turned.
"Mary," he asked, slightly slurred. When he saw Roz, his face fell. "
What are you doing here?"
Starting to sob uncontrollably, she had gone to him and cried on his shoulder.
Elizabeth's cry of "Mommy, mommy" pulled Roz out of her reverie.
"What is it, sweetie?" Her voice was tinted with concern as she quickly scanned her daughter's face for distress. There was nothing but excited curiosity on her cherubic face or in her bright blue eyes.
"What's a platpush? 'Cause there's one at the zoo in the movie, but I don't know what it is."
"Uh, a platypus is an animal from Australia. It's got a duck bill." I think. How am I supposed to know? Aren't they not supposed to ask hard questions until they're teenagers? The question panicked Roz a bit, but with it safely out of the way, she looked at her daughter and felt an overwhelming posessiveness. If she could go back and change the past, she wouldn't, because what had happened had given her a beautiful daughter with roses in her cheeks and hair like black silk.
In the morning, they had realized what a horrible thing they had done. She had been angry, looking for a way to hurt Parker. He had been depressed and drunk because his girlfriend had dumped him for a 30-year-old dentist. They both loved Parker -Roz with a passion that consumed her soul- so they agreed never to speak of it again. The issue of never repeating it didn't come up; they didn't even consider it. Roz belonged to Parker, through and through.
She had been devastated when she found out she was pregnant. It could only be Pieter's: she and Parker were careful. No matter how much they loved each other, she couldn't ask him to raise another man's child. Roz stared blindly out the window at clouds like whipped cream and remembered the night a month ago when Parker had stepped back into her life.
The art gallery was small, exclusive. The clientele was equally exclusive. Roz had turned Spackles into one of the best galleries of modern art in Manhattan. The gathering that night showed her hard work, and she hoped it would pay off for both her and the artist whose work was featured in the new show.
Roz had been circulating when he walked in, escorting a young Broadway director, Mimi, who was a friend of hers. She had frozen, recognizing him from the side of the room, contemplated making an escape. Then it was too late; Mimi had spotted her and was making a beeline towards her. "Roz," she called. "Such a wonderful show. Of course, you always have wonderful shows here. This is my escort, Parker Hammond. Parker, this is Rosalind Travers, the owner of the gallery."
"Roz and I are aquainted" he had said in a low, tight voice.
She surfaced again from the swamp of memory as the plane touched down. It taxied in to the terminal, and after what seemed an interminable wait, she and Elizabeth got off. The airport was crowded, as they tend to be, and the luggage took a long time to arrive on the carousel. Elizabeth was remarkably well-behaved during all of it, even when they started out on their last leg of the journey, the taxi ride out to his house. Parker's house. Roz's nerves started to fray. Realizing that you still loved somone after you had spurned them, not once, but twice was not condusive to steady nerves.
Parker had been polite but distant the entire time at the gallery. Roz was feeling a combination of relief and irritation as she went home because of it. He could at least have said something, as close as they had been, although it was good he hadn't caused a large scene. She got back to her apartment and paid the babysitter, making sure that Elizabeth had gotten to sleep okay. She was just on the way to check the doors one last time for the night when there was a furious pounding on them. Looking out the peephole, she had seen Parker. Opening the door she had hissed "What are you doing here?"
He had grabbed her shoulders. "How could you? Mimi told me you have a daughter. A six-year-old. You were pregnant with our child when you left me. Why? Why didn't you tell me?"
"Lower your voice, Parker," she said unsteadily, batting at his hands. "You'll wake my daughter. Not yours. She's not yours."
He had stilled. "That's why you didn't tell me? Whose is it? No, I don't want to know." He cut it off before she had a chance to say anything and began to pace. "You thought I wouldn't accept your child just because it wasn't mine? I loved you, goddamit, I still love you. I didn't care. How could you do that to me? You ripped out my heart when you left. Ripped it out and stomped on it. The last seven years have been hell."
His restlessness had calmed Roz, a glassy calm that felt like it would break under any pressure. "I want you to go now."
"What?" He looked stunned. "But-"
"Go!"
He had calmed; no, he had frozen over as he dropped a business card on the table by the door. "Fine. But contact me. I don't want you to disappear from my life again."
"Don't count on it."
The taxi let them out in front of a medium-sized brick house in a nice neighborhood. Roz paid the driver and waited for him to unload the suitcases, not allowing herself the cowardice of asking him to wait until they'd gone to the door. She steeled herself, and, taking Elizabeth's hand, rang the doorbell, taking off on a new path in her life. Parker answered after the first ring. He and Roz stared at each other.
"Hi."
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