I’m no forget-me-not, no drip-dry girl to be left hanging from the shower-curtain rail, but this is how I feel, waiting for the doctors to examine me. Time is flippy-floppy. I’m feverish, and every time I open my eyes, it’s like ages have passed since I last stared out at the water-stained acoustic-tile ceiling above my hospital bed. My parents sit beside me making stilted conversation, none of us knowing what to make of each other after this long absence in each other’s lives. Every inch of my body is sore, inflamed, perspiring. Milk leaks out of my engorged breasts and slicks warm and oozy over my chest. Even my earlobes hurt.
“What’s keeping them so long from bringing Zerena here?” Belinda asks. She stares into a compact mirror and touches up the kohl around her eyes. She never used to wear much makeup, and it’s good to see she’s making an effort to look good. “You’d think they’d be quicker getting your baby for us.”
“Relax. They’ve got gazillions of babies in the nursery, and they’re making sure they bring the right one.” Tully gets up from the recliner. Like a caged wolf trying to outpace the confinement of a zoo cage, he paces the length of the room, back and forth and back again, grinding his teeth.
“Can you sit down?” Belinda asks. “You’re making me nervous.”
“I’ve got things on my mind, okay?”
“You did it, didn’t you?”
“Did what?”
“You know. You gave our money away.”
Tully tilts his head to one side, gathers his graying hair in one hand, and with a rubber band, bunches it into the kind of high stylish ponytail you see on badass thugs in music videos and old Miami Vice episodes. “I didn’t give it away. I invested it.”
“It’s his new look,” Belinda says of my father’s ponytail. Ten years ago, he would’ve questioned the manhood of any guy who wore a ponytail. “It’s still hard for me to get used to him looking this way. What do you think?”
Although I can barely keep my eyes open, I raise my head off the pillow to give Tully a better look. He holds his head high, beaming with a boyish pride. I, too, can’t get over his new look. Unable to muster the energy to shampoo my hair these last few days, I wish I had half his vigor for hair care.
“So what do you think, Laurel?” Tully asks.
“You look nice. So what is it you’re investing in, Daddy?”
“Do you think I can trust that man of yours?”
“Jimmy? Sure, you can trust him. He’s as solid as they come.”
“How’d you meet him?”
“One night, he brought in a couple of his clients for dinner at the Italian restaurant where I was waitressing, and straightaway, we hit it right off,” I say, telling my parents an edited version of our courtship. Jimmy had been upfront with me, telling me he was married. At first, all he wanted to do was talk and take long walks. He was slow to ask to hold my hand, but as soon as I met him, I knew I had spotted the man I was destined to spend the rest of my life with. While I’d been in juvenile detention, I’d been made to feel that, even after I was released, I’d always be viewed as an inmate, a reprobate, a criminal, in most people’s eyes. Embarking on a new life with him would mean I could forever close that previous incarcerated chapter of my life. “The night after that and every night for the next week, Jimmy showed up at the restaurant alone, grabbed a seat at a corner table, ordered a plate of calamari fritti, and nursed glasses of grappa. One night, after I got off for the evening, he sauntered up to me and said—and this, I’ll never forget—‘Let me be your Mr. Wonderful.’”
“Yeah? So what happened?” Tully asks.
“So I let him, silly.”
I think back to those first encounters with Jimmy. Washington is best experienced on mild spring evenings when the temperature is neither cold nor warm. Most nights, we hailed evening cabs to the Jefferson Memorial and strolled around the Tidal Basin, hand in hand, the glow of the city lights on the water, the lingering scent of the cherry blossoms in the air, the sound of the breeze rippling the water, and the excitations of love filling me with longing. I leaned my head on his shoulder when we sat on park benches, called his name just to hear the sound of it coming from my lips. Nothing I did or said irked Jimmy. He had dark-chestnut hair and crushed-velvet-brown eyes, and he was the handsomest man I’d ever met. He said things he knew would make me laugh. He complimented me for my quirky sense of humor, whispered how beautiful I was.
I knew it was wrong to be spending time with a married man, but I needed to take the one chance I’d so far been offered to snatch a semblance of a respectable life for myself. I invited him into my apartment. Having spent my teenage years in juvenile detention, I missed out on the normal first crushes and nervous pecks on the cheek a regular high school boyfriend might have provided. Before I met Jimmy, I feared that having lost out on that necessary introduction to healthy romantic relationships, I would forever be unsuitable for an adult relationship. Jimmy put me at ease, made me feel like a decent person. Taking him back to my apartment hastened the connection between us. I began to see him as more than a man who needed a child and more than just a means for me to break out of my slumdum waitressing life. I began to see him as a humorous, caring man. A nice man. A man who needed me in his life.
“Jimmy serenaded with me old songs when we walked, dropping down to his knees and making me feel as if I were in a movie. Sinatra songs. Big band songs. Songs that were popular before any of us were born. That’s how far back Jimmy’s mind works.”
“So that’s why I should trust him? Because he sings Sinatra?” Tully says, saying “Sinatra” in a snooty voice. Music, for him, scarcely exists beyond the bourbon-voiced confines of what used to be called “southern-fried rock.” Lynyrd Skynyrd. ZZ Top. That kind of lazy-boy unimaginative junk. He crosses his arms and drums the fingers of one hand over his elbow. I hadn’t remembered him being so antsy, but he paces the room as if looking for something to wallop.
“Dad. You can trust him. One night, we were walking in Georgetown. You know that old bank at the corner of Wisconsin and M Street? The one with the gold dome that was built centuries ago?”
“The old Riggs Bank building?”
“That’s the one. One night we passed a homeless bum sitting cross-legged against the marble columns with his palm out, begging for cash. Jimmy pulled out his wallet and gave the bum a crisp fifty-dollar bill. Fifty dollars! I asked Jimmy if he worried the bum would waste the money on booze, and do you know what Jimmy said? Jimmy said, ‘What makes you think I won’t waste the money on booze if I kept the money for myself?’”
“That’s why I’m supposed to trust him? Because he wastes money on bums?”
“Dad. Jimmy didn’t care about the money because, to him, it was nothing. He told me his family used to own that bank. They used to own the whole Riggs banking chain!”
“Holy shit! You’ve hooked yourself a Riggs man?”
“Uh-huh!”
Tully whistles. “See, Belinda? I knew I could trust him. I was right giving him your tooth money.”
My mother turns to me, her expression that of resignation. “I need root canals and serious work on my molars. Tully’s been making some money on the side so I can get dental surgery to repair my teeth.”
“That’s great, Mom!”
“Maybe. We’ll see. Your father gave all that money to Jimmy tonight to invest for us.”
Tully throws up his arms. “It’s going to be all right. Jimmy’s A-okay. You heard our little girl tell you that. A guy like that—a Riggs guy—ain’t ever going to screw you out of your teeth. Isn’t that right, Laurel?”
Someone knocks on the door, and when I look up, I see Lois Belcher with two men dressed in gray suits. Thirty minutes have passed since she left to fetch Zerena, and the uneasy concern on her face raises my anxiety. None of the bunch has my baby. It strikes me that this is the first time anyone—nurses, doctors, orderlies, or even the boy who sweeps the floor each morning—has seen fit to knock before entering my room.
“Miss Bloom?” Lois Belcher says, stepping forward. “We’ve been looking for Anne Elise in the nursery. Do you recall when she was taken there? Or who carried her there?”