My stomach is in knots when I climb onto the tube. I take the Piccadilly line to Heathrow and mistakenly get off at the wrong terminal. I have to double back and by the time I find the correct gate, my mother has texted that the plane has landed. What if she doesn't remember me? Or if she decides not to like me and cries the entire trip. God. I am an absolute mess. I see my mother first, her blonde hair in a perfect chignon even after the nine-hour flight. When I look down, I see a chubby hand attached to my mother's slender one. I follow the length of the arm and see messy, red curls bouncing excitedly around a face that looks exactly like Leah's. I smile so hard my face hurts. I don't think I've smiled since I moved to London. Estella is wearing a pink tutu and a cupcake shirt. When I see that she's smeared lipstick all over her face, my heart does the most peculiar thing: it beats faster and aches at the same time. I watch my mother stop and point toward me. Estella's eyes search me out. When she sees me, she pulls free of her grandmother's hand and … runs. I drop to my knees to catch her. She hits me with force - too much force for such a little person. She's strong. I squeeze her squishy little body and feel the ducts in my eyes burn as they try to summon tears. I just want to hold her like this for a few minutes, but she pulls back, smacks both hands on either side of my face, and starts talking a mile a minute. I wink at my mother in greeting and direct my gaze back to Estella, who is recounting a detail-by-detail version of her flight while clutching the llama underneath her arm. She has a forceful little voice, slightly raspy like her mother's.
"And then I ate my butter and Doll said it was gonna make me sick … " Doll is what she calls my mother. My mother thinks it's the greatest thing in the world. I think she's just relieved to have escaped the normal "Granny" or "Grandma" monikers that would make her feel old.
"You're a genius," I say while she's taking a breath. "What three-year-old speaks like this?"
My mother smiles ruefully. "One who never stops speaking. She gets unfathomable amounts of practice."
Estella repeats the word "unfathomable" all the way to baggage claim. She gets the giggles when I start chanting it with her, and by the time I pull their luggage from the belt, my mother's head looks ready to explode.
"You used to do that when you were little," she says. "Say the same thing over and over until I wanted to scream."
I kiss my daughter's forehead. "Who needs a paternity test?" I joke. Which is the absolute wrong thing to say, because my small person starts chanting paternity test all the way through the airport … until we climb into the cab outside and I distract her with a pink bus that's driving by.
During the cab ride home, Estella wants to know what her bedroom looks like, what color blankets I got for her bed, if I have any toys, if she can have sushi for dinner.
"Sushi?" I repeat. "What about spaghetti or chicken fingers?"
She pulls a face that only Leah could have taught her, and says, "I don't eat kid food."
My mother raises her eyebrows. "You'd never need a maternity test," she says out of the corner of her mouth. I have to stifle my laughter.
After taking them to my flat to drop off their things, we head out to a sushi restaurant where my three-year-old consumes a spicy tuna roll on her own, and then eats two pieces of my lunch. I watch in amazement as she mixes soy and wasabi together and picks up her chopsticks. The waiter brought her a fixed pair, one with the rolled up paper and the rubber band to keep the sticks together, but she politely refused them and then dazzled us with her chubby fingered dexterity. She drinks hot tea out of a porcelain cup, and everyone in the restaurant stops to comment on her hair and ladylike behavior. Leah's done a good job teaching her manners. She thanks everyone who passes her a compliment with such sincerity; one elderly lady gets teary eyed. She passes out on my shoulder in the cab on the way home. I wanted to take her on the tube, but my mother will have nothing to do with dirty underground trains, so we hail a cab.
"I want to ride the twain, Daddy." Her face is pressed into my neck and her voice is sleepy.
"Tomorrow," I tell her. "We'll send Doll off to visit friends, and we'll do lots of gross things."
"All wight," she sighs, "but Mommy doesn't like me to do … " and then her voice drops off and she's asleep. My heart beats and aches and beats and aches.
I spend the next week alone with my daughter. My mother visits friends and relatives, giving us plenty of time to bond and do our own thing. I take her to the zoo and the park and the museum, and upon her request, we eat sushi every day for lunch. I talk her into spaghetti one night for dinner, and she has a meltdown when she drops the noodles on her clothes. She wails, her face turning as red as her hair, until I put her in a bath and feed her the rest of her dinner sitting on the edge of the tub. I don't know whether to be amused or mortified. When I get her out of the bath, she rubs her eyes, yawns and falls asleep right as I get pajamas on. I'm convinced she's half angel. The half that isn't Leah, of course.
We stop by my father's house one evening. He lives in Cambridge in an impressive farmhouse with stables out back. He carries Estella from stall to stall where he introduces her to the horses. She repeats their names: Sugarcup, Nerphelia, Adonis, Stokey. I watch him charm my daughter and feel grateful that she's a continent away from him. This is what he does. He gets right down on your level - whoever you are - and shines his attention on you. If you like to travel, he'll ask where you've been, he'll listen with his eyes narrowed and laugh at all your jokes. If you're interested in model cars, he will ask your opinion on building them and make plans to have you teach him. He makes you feel like you're the only person worth having a conversation with, and then he goes a year without having a conversation with you. The disappointment is vast. He will never build that model car with you, he will cancel dinner plans and birthday plans and vacation plans. He will choose work and someone else over you. He will break your charmed, hopeful heart time and time again. But, I'll let my daughter have today, and I'll protect her the best I can in the tomorrow. Broken people give broken love. And we are all a little broken. You just have to forgive and sew up the wounds love delivers, and move on.
We go from the stables to the kitchen where he makes a show of making us huge ice cream sundaes, and then squirts whipped cream into Estella's mouth right from the can. She announces that she can't wait to tell Mommy about this new treat, and I'm fairly certain my ex-wife will be shooting me nasty emails in the coming weeks. She loves him. Like I did. It's heartbreaking to watch what kind of dad he could have been had he tried. The last two days of her visit, I feel sick to my stomach. I don't want her to go. I want to be able to see her every day. In a year she will start pre-K. Then kindergarten and first grade. How will we wing weeklong visits to the UK then? It'll all work itself out, I tell myself. Even if I have to bribe Leah to move to London.
Estella cries when we part at the airport. She's clutching the llama to her chest, her tears dripping into its fur, begging me to let her stay in "Wondon." I grind my teeth together and hate every decision I've ever made. God. What am I even letting her go back to? Leah is a vicious, conniving bitch. She left her at a daycare to get drunk when she was a week old for God's sake. She kept her away from her father just to hurt me. Her love is conditional and so is her kindness, and I don't want her anger to touch my daughter.
"Mum," I say. I look into my mother's eyes, and she gets it. She grabs my hand and squeezes.
"I pick her up from school twice a week, and I have her on weekends. I'll make sure she's okay until you have her back with you."
I nod, unable to say anything else. Estella sobs into my neck, and the pain I feel is too complex to put into words.
"I'm going to pack up and come home," I say to my mother over my daughter's shoulder. "I can't do this. It's too hard."
She laughs. "Being a daddy suits you. You have to finish out your contract with them. Until then, I'll keep bringing her to see you."
My mother has to pick her up and carry her through security. I want to jump past the barriers and snatch her back.
I'm so fucking depressed on the tube ride home; I sit with my head in my hands for most of it. I drink myself into a stupor that night and write an email to Olivia that I never send. Then I pass out and dream that Leah takes Estella to Asia and says she's never coming back.
Since the court appointed all my custody dates with Estella, I get to have her with me every other Christmas - which makes it this Christmas. It'll be my first Christmas with my daughter. Leah called me seething when our court-appointed mediator gave her the news.
"Christmas is important to me," she said. "This is wrong. A child should never be away from her mother on Christmas."
"A child should never be away from her father on Christmas either," I shot back. "But you made sure that happened for two years."
"This is your fault for moving away. I shouldn't have to pay for your asinine decisions."
She was right to a degree. I didn't have anything for her, so I told her I had to go and hung up.