Page 136 of Just One Look
“What time is it?”
He checked his watch. “Nearly five.”
“Great,” she said, and laid her head against his shoulder for a second. “Two hours to regain my shattered self-esteem.”
“Yeh,” he said. “Heaps of time.”
She laughed, though it was still shaky, and said, “You’re right. Besides—no choice.” And got off his lap and walked into the house to clean up. Still standing tall, because she was anything but a mouse. She was a warrior.
* * *
She hada cold washcloth pressed to her face. She’d had it there for five minutes, and her face was still a mess. She also felt awful.
Crying was so overrated.
She needed to get back to Luka’s so she could get ready for dinner. She was still so shaky inside, though, it was like she was made of Jell-O. She could brush Webster, maybe, and take him for a walk to practice his skills. Thirty minutes. That would help. Grounding. She’d get her equilibrium back, and …
She took the washcloth away and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Puffy, bloodshot eyes. Mama’s eyes, the bright, deep blue that was the thing she remembered best about her mother, other than her voice that had sounded like daisies looked, and her scent. She’d always smelled like a garden of flowers.
That perfume had been called Beautiful, and Mama had sometimes taken off the crystal stopper and squirted a little bit on her wrist so she could smell like flowers, too. “Look at us, Birdie,” she’d say, scooping Elizabeth up to sit in her lap at her dressing table that was covered in pretty things. “We’re two beautiful ladies, and we smell divine.”
She still smelled divine, and tonight, she was going to be beautiful. She hung the washcloth neatly on the rack, picked up her phone, and hit the button.
* * *
Luka heldthe door for Elle, then followed her into the modern space. She said, “There he is,” and walked the length of the room to the windows overlooking the yacht harbor. The Sofitel on the Viaduct, exactly where you’d imagine an American neurosurgeon to turn up.
Her father was standing there watching her approach. Not taking a step, because he’d never take a step.
When she got there, she said, “I lied on the phone. I didn’t reconsider. I just thought of something else I need to tell you.” Still in her shorts and T-shirt and gray cardigan, her face still blotchy, her hair still messy, her face still bare of makeup, her voice shaking a little.
And here anyway.
Baxter said, “I think you’ve said enough.”
“No,” she said. “I haven’t. What you said hurt me, and I need to tell you so. It was heartless, and it was cruel. You like to talk about me making you proud. About me disappointing you, or not disappointing you. Does it ever occur to you that it’s supposed to go both ways? That you have an obligation tome?”
His face wasn’t flushing. He was too controlled a man for that. He said, “I fulfilled my obligation to you. I raised you, I guided you, and I didn’t stint on anything. I paid for college, and I paid for medical school. I made you a surgeon.”
“First,” she said,“Imade me a surgeon. You pushed me. You helped me. You paid for me. I appreciated it then, and I still do, but I’d have done it without you.Idid the work.Ilost the sleep.Imade the sacrifices. And second,” she went on, when he would have spoken, “a childhood isn’t supposed to be an apprenticeship program. What about telling me that I was strong? That I was brave? That I waslovable?What kind of father lets his daughter grow up believing she’s not lovable? That she’s not evenlikable?”
“If I didn’t tell you that,” Baxter said, “it’s because I’m honest, and you need honesty. You weren’t strong, and you weren’t brave. You were exactly the reverse. And what does ‘love’ mean, anyway? It doesn’t mean coddling. It means helping. It means supporting, which is what I did. I toughened you up so you weren’t timid and shy anymore. I did that so you could succeed, and it worked. You did.”
“No, Dad.” Her voice was quiet now. “It means accepting. Loving somebody is accepting them for the person they are, and you never accepted me. I was timid and shy because I was sensitive, maybe. Sensitive enough,smartenough never to trust that you’d still love me if I made a mistake, which meant I never trusted thatanybodywould love me if I made a mistake. That’s why I’ve gone through my life apologizing for being the person I am. I’m more than your reflection, though. I’m more than the next chapter in the Baxter Wolcott story.”
He tried to answer, but she talked right over him, drowning him out the same way she’d have done in the operating theater, her voice louder now, gaining assurance. “And you’re wrong, too, that I wasn’t strong and brave. I went to college when I was sixteen, and it was hard. I became a doctor, and it was harder. I became a surgeon, and I’m on my way to becoming a great one, and that’s been the hardest of all. I’m not strong and brave because those things were easy. I’m strong and brave because they were hard, and I did them anyway. Because I doubted myself, and I did them anyway. Because I was scared and lonely and so fragile sometimes, out there in the world alone with nothing to back me up except my fear of yourdisappointment,and I did them anyway. I grew my strength and my courage like growing new bone after a break. And do you know the one thing that helped me do it?”
“I’m going to assume that’s not me,” he said. He was so impatient now, his eyebrows were practically bristling.
“What helped me,” she said, “was knowing that Mamadidlove me. That Memaw loved me, too. When I was with them, I wasn’t just acceptable. I waslovable.You couldn’t tear that out of me after all, because they embedded it too deep. I haven’t quite believed it, but I think I’m going to someday, because I’m starting to think that I deserve more than this. And now I’m here, in New Zealand. I’m here, because there’s more to life than checking off the boxes of all the things you’re supposed to be. Life is about risk, too. It’s about reaching for your possibilities. I’ve watched too many people die with regrets, and I don’t want to die knowing that I’m that same sad, scared little person inside that I was when I was in that house, desperate for your approval. One au pair after another, year after year, kind or unkind or indifferent, and always, always leaving me again, so I had to start over, trying to be enough for them, so they’d love me, and maybe somebody would stay. Trying to be enough for you. I’m not going to stay wounded, though, so I’m growing that bone some more. I’m staying here, and I’m dating a rugby player and training a dog and letting myself start to be the person I actually am. Not just a surgeon. The funny person I actually am. The caring person I actually am. Thesexualperson I actually am. Everything.”
Baxter said, “I don’t need to know that. Why would you tell me that?”
Luka said, “Because it matters.” His first conversational foray here. It was Elle’s time, but he was going to tell her this. “She doesn’t settle in surgery, and she shouldn’t settle outside it, either.”
“So she’ll date a rugby player who probably never made it past high school,” Baxter said. “And somehow that’s not settling. That’s not some kind of immature fantasy.”
“No,” Luka said. “It’s letting herself have what she wants, and that’s me. She’s offering you a road back, but she’s not going to run after you anymore. She’s going to expect you to turn around and meet her halfway.”
“And you know this how?” Baxter asked. “With your doctorate in psychology, maybe?”
“No,” Luka said. “With my doctorate in life. Because I was raised exactly the same, and I know how it hurts. The paua doesn’t hang about to see if that grain of sand will stop irritating it. It covers it up and keeps doing it, and after a while? That grain of sand is buried so deeply, nobody’s ever going to find it. That’s what you’re going to be. Her grain of sand that she can’t even feel anymore, because she’s grown a pearl around it. There’s not going to be a way back then, because you won’t matter anymore. And when that happens, you’ll have lost your daughter.”
