“Do you want me to hold her?”
“Penny?” my mother said. “Oh, no. No, thank you. Now that I think about it, I don’t want you girls touching her at all.”
“Not a problem here,” Rose said.
“Can I ask why not?” I said. “I mean, she’s just a—”
“A doll. I know. Still, it’s a feeling I have.”
“But you’re holding her,” I pointed out.
My mother looked down at that doll cradled so tightly in her arms. I imagined a heart thumping inside Penny’s small body. I imagined warm, milky breath escaping her thin lips. “You’re right. I am. But that’s just so I can get her home.”
“There’s always the trunk,” Rose said. “Or the roof rack. It might even look decent as a hood ornament. A little bit big but what the hell?”
My mother’s expression grew pinched, reminding me of that Halloween night when she slapped my sister for mouthing off to Almaline Gertrude. “Not funny, Rose. Strange as it may seem to you, your father and I know what we’re doing. The way he sees it, a door was opened when we were upstairs at that apartment today. A door that’s yet to be closed. So we need to be careful. Now how far are we from home? I’ve lost track.”
“We’re outside of Harrisburg,” my sister told her. “A hundred miles from the Maryland border.”
I’d been trying to forget the waitress at the sink, but it was impossible once she twisted the faucet and the running water stopped. A silence fell over the restroom. I looked at her more closely. The woman’s skin appeared clayish, a valley of wrinkles beneath her eyes, slivery cracks around her lips. She tugged a paper towel from the dispenser and dried her hands over the trash can. Her gaze trailed my mother, who walked around the dividing wall to the stalls. A brief rustling followed before she emerged a moment later.
“Problem?” Rose asked.
“I can’t lift my dress and hold Penny at the same time.”
Even though I’d offered, a small surge of panic moved through me at the thought that she was about to put the doll in my arms. Thankfully, my mother went to a sink. After wiping down the edges, she propped Penny up and left her there before returning to the stall. That’s when the waitress tossed her paper towel in the trash and spoke to us in a hushed voice at last. “She’s that lady, isn’t she?”
“What lady?” Rose asked.
“The one from TV. I saw the man out in the lot before. They were on Channel Eight and on that talk show I watch some afternoons. Not Donahue, but the local one. Anyway, I don’t remember anybody ever mentioning they had kids. You’re their kids, aren’t you?”
Rose and I were accustomed to getting stared at around Dundalk, but nothing like this had ever happened before. Neither of us said anything.
“Don’t act all spooked by me!” She let out a rattling laugh. “I’m sure you’ve seen scarier things in your day. What are your names? I want to tell my boyfriend I met you.”
I looked at Rose, but even she seemed stumped. My mother, meanwhile, began coughing, deep and unrecognizable, in the stall.
“Come on! I’m Shawna. There, I told you mine. Now tell me yours.”
“I’m Sabrina,” my sister said, glancing my way and making her eyebrows jump. “And that’s my sister . . . Esmeralda.”
Who would have guessed Rose remembered the names I’d given those horses? I thought of them on the shelf above my desk back at home, a place that felt impossibly far away at the moment.
“Such pretty names for such pretty girls,” the waitress was saying. “I wish I had a camera to get a picture with you and your folks. But who knew I’d be hobnobbing with practically celebrities in this dump? I bet you two could tell some stories, huh?”
Inside the stall, my mother’s coughing grew so loud and guttural, she sounded on the verge of vomiting. “Mom,” I called. “Are you okay?”
“Mom,” that waitress repeated as though turning the word over and inspecting it. “Who knew a person like her could be a mother?”
“What do you mean, ‘a person like her’?” Rose asked.
The waitress didn’t answer. She walked to the sink, where Penny slumped against the wall, red-and-white-striped legs like oversized candy canes dangling from the ledge. “What’s her story?” she asked, leaning in for a closer look.
“Been sleeping with her since I was born,” Rose said, keeping her voice low so my mother wouldn’t hear. “Can’t go anywhere without her. That includes the bathroom.”
Things were quiet on the other side of that wall. I peeked around, scanning the floor beneath the stalls until I saw her simple black flats. “Mom?” I said again.
In a meek voice, she answered, “Yes?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Sylvie. Don’t worry. A little car sickness snuck up on me. That’s all. Give me a minute to breathe, and I’ll be good as new.”