“We wrote to him at the address in Helen’s address book, but we never got an answer.”
We. I wasn’t sure whom he meant, but I guessed it was Rachel and Jack or maybe some of the others in the group. I didn’t want to think about Zion and Helen anymore.
“How is Rachel?”
After asking, I took a bite of toast that was rich with melted butter from the dairy that delivered to us every weekday, but it felt oily and unpleasant in my mouth. No food tasted good to me, and I thought it might never again. I returned the toast to the plate and sipped my coffee to wash away the feel of it.
“She’s distressed. Still upset about Helen. And Zion, of course. Why don’t you go and see her? The baby’s weighing her down. She says she can hardly sit for five minutes.”
“I remember feeling like that with Michael.”
“You stood through dinner three nights in a row. I thought we were going to have to build you your own special table that reached up to here.” He held one hand about a foot over the table. “Remember how Eva. . . .” He stopped.
He was about to say that Eva had wanted to stand to eat, too.
She’d been fine in her own chair the first two evenings that I’d had to stand as we ate in the dining room, but on the third evening she began to rock her entire little body as though she would topple the little seat off the chair.
“Mommy! I want to eat with you.”
I was already horribly uncomfortable and self-conscious. The baby—Michael—had dropped several inches inside me, yet had one foot pressing hard against my upper ribcage. It was painful and I felt as though I might burst with the pressure. Olivia had suggested that I might be more comfortable if Terrance brought a tray to my room, and that Press could even join me if I liked. But the truth was that I could barely sit at all. And though I’d persuaded Nonie to leave Richmond, where she was living with her sister, she hadn’t yet arrived. I wanted to stay at the table to look after Eva, and I wondered silently if Olivia thought Terrance could do that as well. (Eva chattered frequently at Terrance, who was always polite in response. But she never made him smile. Nothing made Terrance smile.)
“Stop, Eva.” Resting a hand on one side of the seat, I held on to her with the other. “You need to sit still.” She had gotten food in her hair and all down one side of her face, something she hadn’t done in many months.
“Unnnnnnhhhhh, no!” Arching her back, she lifted her face to the ceiling and gave the seat another jerk so that she almost forced it, as well as the chair it sat on, over backwards. But I caught it as it tipped. When I tried to resettle her in her seat, making sure the strap affixed to it was secure, she hit at me with the flat of her tiny rounded palm.
Reflexively I fell back. Even though she was two and a half, she had never been one to throw tantrums. And she’d never hit anyone. She opened her mouth, yelling, and I glanced over at Press. He shrugged.
At the head of the table, Olivia, who had never once interfered in our raising of Eva, pushed back her chair and got up. Crossing the few feet of Oriental carpet between us, she stood over Eva, not saying a word. Press and I stared. Eva’s cry faltered.
I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it.
Olivia rested a hand on Eva’s now-damp forehead. Eva stared up at the only grandmother she would ever know. She hiccuped.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Olivia pulled back the chair and picked off the stray peas that had fallen into Eva’s lap from her plate. Then she undid the strap I’d just tightened and lifted her granddaughter, not seeming to mind that the rice decorating Eva’s pinafore would surely transfer to her own beige silk blouse and oxblood tweed skirt.
“The poor child has a fever, Charlotte. Look how she’s rubbing her ear. She probably has an infection.”
“No. She can’t. I’m sure she’s getting too old.”
Eva laid her head on Olivia’s shoulder. She put her thumb in her mouth and whimpered discontentedly. I could see now that her eyes were glazed. I was already feeling like I was betraying her by bringing a new baby into our little family, and here I hadn’t even noticed that she was sick.
Now, Press stood up. “Let me take her, Mother.”
“No, I will.” I held open my arms. “I’ll take her upstairs.”
Olivia shook her head. Terrance had appeared silently a few feet behind her, but she seemed to know he was there. (That Olivia had Terrance there in the house at all was a strange and remarkable thing. But I did not know that then, and still wonder how she had tolerated him.)
“Bring some warm, wet cloths to the nursery, Terrance. Also get the medicine dropper and mineral oil from my bathroom. And pour a cognac.” There was a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth, and in her hazel eyes. “That’s for me,” she said. “Finish your dinners.”