Henry leans in close, reeking of good old Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey, a throwback to his redneck days, and whispers, “I wasn’t talking about Heidi,” and gives me a wink.
We lose track of time. Tom orders another round on him, some type of pilsner for Tom and me, more Jack Daniel’s for Henry, an Alabama Slammer for Cassidy. She pulls the fruit out—an orange and a maraschino cherry—and eats that first. The bartender announces, “Last call.”
I forget about my phone completely, the one tossed onto the bed, hidden beneath the folds of the white bedspread.
HEIDI
Zoe goes to bed early, riddled with a headache and stuffy nose, the return of spring allergy season, or maybe just a cold. It’s impossible to tell, as is nearly always the case this time of year, when tree pollens are at their height, but cold and flu season has yet to recede from view. So I dole out both pain relievers and antihistamines, and Zoe falls into bed, drifting immediately into a drug-induced sleep, as I kiss her forehead gingerly, leaving the TV on in Chris’s and my bedroom, as the sound of some reality TV show permeates the walls.
Willow and I sit, perched in the living room—she, reading silently from Anne of Green Gables, and me on my laptop, feigning work though it’s the furthest thing from my mind. It’s been three days since I’ve been into the office, three days since anything work related has crossed my mind.
My absence has been felt at work, a happy bouquet of roses and lilies now taking up residence on my kitchen table with a Get Well Soon card. Each morning I prepare my most macabre voice and put in a call to Dana, receptionist extraordinaire, and say that I’m unwell, the flu, I believe, and blame my own foolishness for not getting the vaccine. My temperature hovers somewhere around 102, depending on the day, and my body aches through and through, everything from the hairs on my head to the tips of my toes. I’ve wrapped myself in blankets and layer upon layer of clothes, and yet I’m overwhelmed by chills, never warm, praying that Zoe doesn’t get sick though, being the good mother I am, Zoe, of course, had her vaccine.
But still, I say, before breaking into a coughing fit that sounds really quite sincere, silently giving myself kudos for thespian abilities of which I was unaware I possessed—the compression of air in my lungs, the muculent secretions that erupt from my chest like hot lava from Mauna Loa—you never know.
None of it, of course, is true.
I’m finding myself to be quite skilled in the art of lying.
I gaze eagerly at the baby, sound asleep on the floor, waiting impatiently for the first hint of movement—the fluttering of eyelids, the flicker of a hand—which will eject me from my chair and to her side a split second before Willow, like children in a competitive game of slapjack, both driven to be the first to spot the jack and whack it with their hand.
I type meaningless words into the computer screen, evidence that I am working.
My eyes move from Ruby, to Willow, to the laptop, and back again, a never-ending circuit that makes me giddy, afflicted with the sudden sensation of vertigo.
I listen as, from the adjoining wall, the laughter of Graham and his latest ladylove drift through the drywall to greet me, the tone of her voice—flirty and insincere—indicative of a brief dalliance and nothing more. Graham’s specialty. I watch as Willow’s eyes rise up from the book to listen, to listen to the kittenish laughter and the shrill tone of voice, and as they intersect mine, as those icy blue eyes cut through my own jittery orbs, I find myself looking away quickly, considering the ochre bruise and wondering what it would take for someone like Willow to snap. How much maltreatment and exploitation someone could handle before losing self-control.
I cannot look at her, into those eyes that threaten me. I stare at the white walls, instead, a framed photo collage of Chris and Zoe and me, black-and-white photographs in wooden frames, the cats in theirs, the word family carved from fiberboard, handpainted and hung in the middle of the display.
I pat at the pocket of my purple robe and feel for the Swiss Army knife inside.
A precaution. I heed Chris’s warning: How much can you really know about another person?
And then the baby does start to stir, her eyelids flutter and there’s a flicker of the hand, but it’s Willow—not me—with her lightning-fast reflexes who reaches the baby first and lifts her from the floor in that rickety way that she does, her arms shaky, her grasp insecure so that for a fraction of a second, or more, I’m certain Ruby will fall. I feel myself rise and step forward to catch the plummeting child, but then Willow’s eyes stop me in my tracks, staring at me, smug, taking great delight in my distress. Ha! those eyes mock me, and I beat you, as if she knew all along that I was waiting. Waiting ever so patiently to hold the baby. To hold that beautiful baby in my arms when she awoke from sleep.