And again.
I’m filthy, and the diamonds in my wedding ring are caked with earthenware, but eventually I manage to manipulate the clay into a cylinder. With enough water and patience, I pinch the sides of the cylinder so that they thin out and grow taller as they do. I press it back down and try something else, this time molding it into a bulbous shape.
Still lopsided, still ugly. But it’s a creation nonetheless.
“You will not defeat me,” I say to the machine.
I’ll let this whatever-it-is dry, and maybe I’ll fire it in the kiln.
I attempt to remove it from the wheel, but it won’t budge. If I squeeze it any harder, it’ll squish into nothing. If I let it harden on the wheel, I’ll never get it off.
The ugly thing stares at me, silently proclaiming victory.
I scan the shelves for some sort of spatula. Then my gaze lands on the weird wire-and-button tool, hanging on the hook.
Worth a try.
I retrieve it, hook it around the clay creation, and with a button in each hand, I scrape the wire along the wheel. Miraculously, the vase-slash-cup-slash-flowerpot liberates itself from the crust of wet clay still stuck to the wheel.
Carefully, I carry it to the shelves and set it there to dry.
Chapter 30
November 25
“Baby?” I’m halving grapes and slicing strawberries and placing them on a paper plate for Elizabella. “Come eat some fruit.”
Today, we took a walk to a market, where I bought some essentials for lunch and dinner. Living here is similar to living in the city. Nothing is very far away, and for oftentimes unprepared moms like me, life is actually easier when grabbing things on the go. Along the way home, I stopped for a few cheap sundresses and a pair of flip-flop sandals for each of us, as well as an umbrella stroller. We’re set for a few days at least.
“Are you hungry, Bella?”
It was a struggle to pull her away from the dollhouse, but she’s coloring now in the family room. “Nini, too?”
“Nini, too.” I already have the second plate ready, and I’m wondering if I ought to prepare a third for Connor.
“In a minute,” she says.
Back at the Shadowlands, I probably would have had to insist she eat right now because we likely would have had somewhere to be—the Westlake School, Mini Musicality, Dr. Russo’s office, or the IVF center—but there are no deadlines here. The only thing we have to do here is wait.
Wait to see what other leads come in. Wait to see if someone happens across Micah’s body.
Guidry says that if my husband considered an overdose of benzodiazepines as a way to off himself, chances are his body would turn up in a bathtub somewhere.
I shudder at the similarities to the situation with my mother, remembering the day she stepped into a tub with water running . . .
My knees buckle every time I think of it.
First Mama, then Micah, drifting off to nothingness in a filled tub.
Why? Because he lied to me? Because life got too big for him?
The man who cha-cha-chad me around the kitchen in the last hours of our life together wouldn’t have committed suicide.
But what if he’d snapped?
It wouldn’t be unheard of, would it?
There were things I saw my mother do in frantic states, only to listen to her deny the actions later, when she seemed more reasonable, calmer. And she wasn’t lying. She really didn’t know she’d done or said the things I’d witnessed.
She was crazy. Unless I was mistaken.
Dr. Russo told me there wasn’t enough evidence to suggest schizophrenia. And even the doctors she saw while I was growing up disagreed. Not all of them were convinced that she had trouble determining what was real and what wasn’t. Besides, she knew enough not to talk about the voices she heard, so in effect, those doctors could have been right.
She said the voices told her to kill me . . . maybe that’s why she killed herself.
But is it possible that the delusions were mine? That I was the crazy one? That I only imagined her episodes?
The day revisits me now, finding her that way . . . in the bathtub.
Is there any way I could’ve killed her?
Is there any way I could’ve killed Micah?
Do I just not remember?
For a few seconds, I stare at the two small plates I’m preparing . . . for one child and one imaginary friend.
I’m doing the right thing. Dr. Russo said I should play along.
“Time to eat.” I set the plates atop the table. Bella will come when she comes. And if she doesn’t come, she doesn’t eat until lunch. She’ll learn. “Window closes in ten minutes.”
She looks up at me, her crayon stilled on the page. “What window?”
“If you don’t come to eat in ten minutes, I’ll clean it up, and you’ll have to wait a long time for another snack.”
“Okay.” With crayons and paper in her hands, she get ups and approaches the table. “See?” She lays the paper next to Nini’s plate. “Here’s Connor and Brendan.”
I glance at the paper. She’s drawn two figures who appear to be boys.
“Are they twins?” I ask.
“Uh-huh.”
“How old are they?”
“They’re little.”
“Little like you? Or littler?”
“Yes, Mommy.” She gives me a slow blink, as if she’s irritated that I asked, and picks up her fork, with which she stabs at a strawberry.
Little boys.
Twins.
Could it be she’s drawing the boys in the photographs? The boys who used to live in this house?
“Does Nini know Connor and Brendan?”
“She knowed them once.”
“Did they live here, Bella? In this house?”
“They lived in your tummy.”
I nod. “Okay.” So she’s talking about her brothers that were never born. But why now? After all this time?
“Mommy? Is Daddy with my brothers now?”
I brush hair from her forehead before it collides with her fruit. “I don’t know where your daddy is.”
“He’s at God Land.”
“Bella, we’re at God Land. Daddy isn’t here.”
She takes another mouthful. “He’ll come.”
Her declaration stops me, midbreath.
The cat’s collar jingles as he rubs up against my legs. I push away Papa Hemingway and concentrate on my daughter’s matter-of-fact expression. She’s talking as if what she’s saying is as commonplace as hello or goodbye.
“He’ll come?”
“He said he’d come see me.”
“Bella, when did he say that?”
“When he kissed me bye-bye.”
I narrow my gaze at her. “Bella? Did Daddy plan to leave? Did he tell you he was leaving and that he’d come back for you?”
She talks through a mouthful of berries: “Nini says he leaves and comes back.”
“Okay, but what did Daddy tell you?”
“He told me bye-bye. And see you soon.”
Should I buy into the theory that my daughter foresaw her father’s demise? That she’s talking about her unborn baby brothers because she’s communicating with their souls?
Do I trust that my husband was simply saying goodbye to our daughter before he left for a few days?
The smoking man on the fairway . . .
The moment Bella looked out the window, back at the Shadowlands, she told me she was going to be with her father. Had she seen the smoking man and assumed he’d come to get her?
The brown sedan following me . . . had the driver come to take my daughter to meet Micah?
The cat nudges me again.
I surrender and pick him up. “What do you need, Hemingway?” I look into the cat’s green-gold eyes. He squints at me, as if I’m an idiot, as if I can’t see what’s directly in front of me.
There are few gnarls in the cat’s fur. I haven’t come across a cat brush in this place, but I’ll put it on the list of things to buy the next time I hit a store.
“I like this cat,” I say.
“Me too. But he makes Nini go achoo.”
“Should we keep him?”
“Cats make Daddy achoo, too.” She imitates a sneeze.
“Really?” If it’s true, it seems odd that he’d allow one in the house. Come to think of it, I sort of remember him thwarting conversations about getting any pets. “Is that right, Papa Hemingway? Do you make Daddy sneeze?”
I turn over the tag on his collar, where his name is lettered. JAMES BROLIN.