CHAPTER FIFTEEN
One Friday at ten o’clock there was a knock at the door and I thought, Well, what do you know, maybe she hasn’t completely forgotten us. I wiped Jack’s nose and tucked my hair behind my ears. My heart raced as I neared the door. Rachel had broken up with her. She had nowhere else to turn. I ran my fingers across my lips to make sure there was no gunk on them. She was probably a full-blown lesbian by now. If she tried to kiss me I would stop her and say Let’s consider this choice, what does it mean? What are we saying about who we are and who we want to be? Maybe she was more verbal now; Rachel might have brought that out in her. I couldn’t wait to talk to another adult, out loud.
It was a skinny, redheaded young man with a Ralphs name tag: DARREN. The bagger boy.
“Is Clee here?”
Jack tried to pull off the name tag.
“She’s not. She doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Really?” He looked past me into the house. I stepped aside so he could see she wasn’t in there.
“Just us.”
He regarded Jack and me, brushing his fingers along the white tops of the many tiny pimples that bearded his chin and pink cheeks. Fourth of July. He was the one who made Jack smile.
“Okay,” he said. “Bye, Jack, bye, Jack’s mom.” He darted off the porch, bounding past the TV on the curb. I watched him run down the street. Jack’s mom. No one had ever called me that before. But from Jack’s point of view no other person was more his mother. I looked at his small hand so confidently wrapped around my upper arm. It was a very ordinary thing to be but I felt suddenly breathless, like I had just made it to the top of something tall. Motherhood. He fussed; I went inside and gave him a plastic spatula. He slapped it on the counter, smack, smack, smack. I stood, holding his warm body, watching his concentrating face. It was too pink, he needed more sunblock. Smack, smack. And more reading—I read to him, but not every night. And we had only spent a few hours a day in the NICU with him. That wasn’t enough. It was enough for us at the time, but now it haunted me. Twenty hours a day he’d lain there alone. There would be other unpardonable crimes, I could feel them coming—things that in retrospect would become my greatest regrets. I’d always be catching up with my love. How terrible. Jack flung the spatula onto the ground and wailed. I picked it up, smack, smack. He laughed, I laughed. Terrible. I kissed him and he kissed me back with a wide-open drooly mouth. Terrible.
“Ah, my boy,” I said. “My boy, my boy. I love you so. This can only end in heartbreak and I’ll never recover.”
“Ba-ba-ba-ba,” he said.
“Yes. Ba-ba-ba-ba.”
TWO DAYS LATER DARREN BOUNCED on the top step of my porch like a runner stretching out his calf muscles.
“I thought I’d leave my number, for the next time you talk to her.”
I asked him to come in while I finished feeding Jack in his high chair.
“Have you tried calling her?”
“It’s okay,” he said too quickly. He had called her many times. I wondered if I should tell him about Rachel.
“Do you need a TV?” I pointed to the curb. “The trash people won’t take it.”
“I have a flat-screen. You should get a flat-screen.”
“I keep meaning to take it to Goodwill.”
He scrunched up his face. “I’ll take it to the Goodwill for you.”
“Really?”
“Of course.” He gestured to Jack in a way that made me feel uncouth, as if Goodwill were a house of ill repute.
He sat in the kitchen with Jack while I gathered a few more things for him to take. “Goo goo goo,” Darren said, making a silly face. “Ga ga ga.”
THE NEXT DAY HE BROUGHT me the receipt from Goodwill in a little envelope.
“For taxes. It was a tax-deductible donation.” He leaned on the door frame, waiting. I invited him in. The truth was, he explained while I did the dishes, he felt bad for me and Jack. “All alone and everything. If you want, I can check in on you. I don’t mind.”
“That’s very generous, Darren. But we’re really doing fine.”
Tuesdays were his usual day; he came after Rick left. He broke down boxes and put them in the recycling, he helped me reach tall things. He said I should see the top of his mom’s refrigerator—it was clean like a plate.
“You could eat off it. In fact, that’s a good idea—I’m gonna eat off it tonight. I’ll just put my spaghetti right on it.”
While he installed my tiny new flat-screen he told a long story about his cousin’s car. He didn’t seem at all worried that the story would bore me; he just went on and on, not even utilizing basic storytelling skills to make it interesting. Sometimes he played with Jack while I went to the bathroom or made food for us. He had to be careful because the baby was fascinated by his pimples. Once his grabbing little hand knocked the top off a ripe whitehead and puss and blood spurted out. Underneath the acne were good bones. Not great bones, but perfectly fine, serviceable bones. Tall too.
I remembered exactly where Ruth-Anne had put the card: the center drawer of the receptionist’s desk. If she was seeing a patient I could possibly slip in and get it without her even knowing. Jack looked at himself in the mirrored ceiling of the elevator, leaning his head back in the carrier. My heart was skipping beats as we made our way down the long familiar hallway. Ruth-Anne, I would say, can we put the past behind us? Better not to phrase it as a question. The past is behind us. That was good. Who could argue with that?
I swung open the door. The front desk was empty. I went straight for the middle drawer; it was an awkward reach with Jack in the carrier and the card wasn’t where I thought it was. And suddenly I realized I wasn’t alone—a young woman was reading a magazine in the corner. She smiled at us and said the receptionist had just stepped out. “I think she went to the bathroom. Dr. Broyard might be running late.” I nodded thank you and chastely sat down as if I hadn’t just tried to rob the place. Dr. Broyard. Had I unconsciously timed my visit to avoid Ruth-Anne? Ruth-Anne would say I had. I stared over Jack’s head at a new painting of a Native American weaver. Maybe it was by Helge Thomasson. The weaver was weaving a rug. Or unweaving it. She might have been taking the rug apart as a nonviolent act of resistance. I wondered if the new receptionist was very pretty. Poor Helge.
The young woman slowly turned the pages of Better Homes and Gardens. She kept glancing up at Jack in a way that reminded me of me—as if they shared a special understanding. It was sort of sickening. She put the magazine down and picked up another one.
It had taken a moment.
But now I recognized her.
She wasn’t wearing the shirt with the Rasta alligator on it, but the fluorescent lights were glinting off her John Lennon–style glasses, and her hair, though longer than in the photo, was blond and stringy. I wondered who she was—a friend’s daughter? His niece?
“Kirsten.” I said it to Jack, just in case it wasn’t even her name.
She whipped her head around. For a moment it seemed miraculous, like a doll or a cartoon come to life.
“We might have a friend in common,” I said. “Phillip?”
She wrinkled her forehead.
“Phil? Phil Bettelheim?”
“Oh. Phil. Yeah.”
Her face slowly tightened and she looked me up and down.
“Are you . . . Cheryl?”
I nodded.
She tilted her face up to the ceiling and took a long, dramatic breath. “I can’t believe I’m really meeting you.”
I smiled politely. “I guess we both learned about this place from Phillip. Phil.”
“I told him about Dr. Broyard,” she said. I rubbed Jack’s back to let her know I didn’t really care. She seemed like a very bitter and unappealing young lady.
“Phil didn’t say you had a baby, but I guess I haven’t seen him in a while. Not since you-know-what, actually.” She grinned a little, like she had a mean secret.
“I don’t think I do know what.”
“Not since you told him to”—she made a tube with her fingers and jammed another finger into it—“me.”
My eyes widened and I glanced around to be sure we were alone.