Читать книгу Pretty Baby - Mary Kubica - Страница 10

HEIDI

When I wake in the morning, Chris is gone. Beside me, on the distressed wooden nightstand, is a mug of coffee, tepid and likely filled to the gills with hazelnut creamer, but still: coffee. I sit up in bed and reach for the mug and the remote control and, flipping on the lifeless TV, stumble upon the day’s forecast. Rain.

When I finally wobble down the hall to the kitchen, bypassing Zoe’s school portraits from kindergarten through seventh grade, I find her standing in the kitchen, pouring milk and cereal into a bowl.

“Good morning,” I say, and she jumps. “Did you sleep okay?” I ask, and kiss her gingerly on the forehead. She congeals, uncomfortable with the mushy stuff these days. And yet, as her mother, I feel the need to show my affection; a high-five—or secret handshake as Chris and Zoe share—simply won’t do, so I kiss her and feel her pull away, knowing I’ve planted my love for the day.

Zoe’s dressed already in her school uniform: the pleated plaid jumper and navy cardigan, the suede Mary Janes that she hates.

“Yeah,” she says and takes her bowl to the kitchen table to eat.

“How ’bout some juice?”

“I’m not thirsty.” Though I see her eye the coffeemaker nonetheless, a door that she previously opened and I firmly closed. No twelve-year-old needs a stimulant to get going in the morning. Yet I fill my mug to the brim and douse it with creamer, sit beside Zoe with a heaping bowl of Raisin Bran and attempt to make small talk about the anticipated day. I’m inundated with yeses, noes, and I don’t knows, and then she scampers away to brush her teeth, and I’m left with the silence of the kitchen, the steady percussion of raindrops on the bay window.

We head out into the soggy day, bypassing a neighbor in the hall. Graham. He’s pressing at buttons on a snazzy watch, the gadget letting out various beeps and bleeps. He smiles to himself, clearly pleased.

“Fancy meeting you here, ladies,” he warbles with the most decadent smile I’ve ever seen. Graham’s longish blond hair flops against a glossy forehead, strands that will soon be fully erect thanks to a generous supply of gel. He’s wet, though from rain or perspiration, I honestly can’t say.

Graham is heading home from a morning run along the lakefront in his head-to-toe Nike attire, an overpriced watch that tracks mileage and splits. His clothing matches entirely too well, a lime-green stripe in his jacket to match the lime-green stripe in his shoe.

He’s what one would call metrosexual, though Chris feels certain there’s more to it than that.

“Morning, Graham,” I say. “How was the run?”

Leaning against the wheat colored walls with their white wainscoting, he squirts a swig of water into his mouth and says, “Incredible.” There’s a look of euphoria on his face that makes Zoe blush. She glances down at her shoes, kicks invisible dirt from one shoe with the toe of another.

Graham is a thirtysomething orphan, living in this building because the unit next door to theirs was left to him in his mother’s will when she died years and years ago, and Graham, consequently, made out like a bandit, acquiring not only his mother’s inheritance, but hundreds of thousands of dollars in a hospital settlement, as well, money that he’s slowly squandered away on fancy watches, expensive wines and lavish home decor.

Graham planned to put the home on the market after his mother died, but instead he moved in. Moving vans replaced all of her eclectic furniture and belongings with Graham’s modern ones, so sleek and stylish it was as if he’d climbed from the pages of a Design Within Reach catalog: the crisp lines and sharp angles, the neutral colors. He was a minimalist, the condo sparse but for sheets and sheets of computer paper that littered the floor.

“Gay,” Chris assured me after we’d stepped foot in Graham’s new condo for the first time. “He’s gay.” It wasn’t only the home decor that caught Chris’s eye, but the closets full of clothes—more clothes than even I owned—that he left purposefully open so we would see. “Mark my words. You’ll see.”

And yet women came to call quite regularly, stunning women that left even me speechless. Women with bleach-blond hair and unnaturally blue eyes, with bodies like Barbie dolls.

Graham had arrived when Zoe was still a toddler. She took to him like fruit flies to a bowl of browning bananas. As a freelance writer, Graham was often home, staring blankly at a computer screen and overdosing himself on caffeine and self-doubt. He came to our rescue more than once when Zoe was ill and neither Chris nor I could miss work. Graham welcomed her onto his tufted sofa where together they watched cartoons. He is a go-to when in need of a cup of butter, a dryer sheet or someone to hold the door. He’s also top-notch at expository writing, helping Zoe with English homework when neither Chris nor I could. He’s an expert at dressing a turkey, something I learned that I couldn’t do three-quarters of the way through cooking Thanksgiving dinner for in-laws.

In short, Graham is a good friend.

“You two should join me sometime,” Graham says about the run. I see the multitude of water bottles harnessed to his waist and think we best not.

“You’d be sorry if I did,” I say, watching as Graham tousles Zoe’s hair and again she blushes, this time the rosy tint having nothing to do with his sexual innuendos.

“What about you?” he says to Zoe, and she shrugs. Being twelve has its advantages, the fact that a shrug and a shy smile can get her off the spot. “Think about it,” he says, flashing that decadent smile, the teeth lined in a row like well-behaved school children, impeccably white. The insinuation of facial hair where he has yet to shave, the downturned eyes, which Zoe avoids like the plague. Not because she doesn’t like him. But because she does.

We say our goodbyes and head out, into the rain.

* * *

I walk Zoe to school before continuing on to work. Zoe attends the Catholic school in our neighborhood, nestled beside a cumbersome Byzantine church, with its gray brick exterior, its heavy wooden doors, its heavenly dome that reaches to the sky. The church is entirely ornate, from the golden murals that run wall to wall, to the stained-glass windows and marble altar. The school sits behind the church, tucked away, a regular brick school building with a playground and a mass of children in matching plaid uniforms hidden beneath multicolored raincoats, their backpacks too obese for their tiny bodies. Zoe slips away from me with barely a goodbye and I watch, from the curb, as she unites with other seventh graders and hurries from the waterlogged street into the dry building, staying away from the little ones—those clinging to parents’ legs and vowing that they don’t want to go—as if they have some communicable disease.

I watch, until she is in the building, and then continue on my way to the Fullerton Station. At some point along the way, the rain, with all of its urgency, turns to hail, and I find myself running, gracelessly, down the street, my feet stomping through puddles, splashing dirty rainwater upon my legs.

The girl and her baby come to mind and I wonder if they, too, are somewhere out there, being pelted by rain.

When I arrive at the station, I use my fare card to unlock the turnstile, then dash up the slippery steps, wondering if I will see them: the girl and her baby, but they are not there. Of course I’m grateful that the baby and her mother are not on the platform in this atrocious weather, but my mind begins to wander: where are they and, more important, are they safe? Are they dry? Are they warm? It’s the definition of bittersweet. I wait impatiently for the train and, when it arrives, I get on, my eyes anchored to the window, half expecting to see the two appear at any second: the army-green coat and lace-up boots, the vintage leather suitcase and sodden pink fleece blanket, the baby’s exposed creamy head, with faint, delicate plumage, the baby’s toothless smile.

At work, a third-grade field trip arrives at our literacy center. With a handful of volunteers, we read poetry to the students, and then the students try their hand at writing and illustrating some poetry of their own, which the more adventurous of the bunch share with the group. The students coming to the center are mostly from lower class, urban neighborhoods, mostly African-American or Latino. Many are from low-income homes, and a smattering speak something other than English—Spanish, Polish, Chinese—in the home.

Many of these children come from families where both parents work, if both parents are still around. Many are from single-parent homes. Many are latchkey kids who spend their afternoons and evenings alone. They are overlooked for more pressing matters: food and housing, to be exact. A morning at our facility is about more than literacy and developing a love of sonnets and haiku. It’s about the doubt that overtakes the children when they walk in our doors (quietly grumbling about the task at hand), and the fortitude with which they leave after a few hours of hard work and the undivided attention of our staff.

But once they’re gone, thoughts of the girl and her baby return.

The rain has quieted to a needless drizzle when lunchtime comes. I fasten my raincoat and head outside, careening down State Street while feasting on some healthy granola bar in lieu of lunch, heading to the library to pick up a book I have on interlibrary loan. I absolute love the library, with its sunlit atrium (though not sunlit today) and grotesque granite gargoyles and millions and millions of books. I love the quietness of the library, the gateway to knowledge, to the French language and medieval history and hydraulic engineering and fairy tales, learning in a very primitive form: books, something that’s quickly giving way to modern technology.

I pause beside a homeless woman leaning against the redbrick building, and set dollar bills in her outstretched hand. When she smiles at me, I see that many of her teeth are missing, her head covered in a thin black hat that’s supposed to keep her warm. She mumbles a thanks, inarticulate and hard to understand, what teeth she has blackened from what I take to be methamphetamine use.

I find my book on the holds shelf and then take a series of escalators up to the seventh floor, bypassing security guards and elementary school field trips, wandering vagrant men, and women with other women, talking too loudly for the library. The library is warm and calm, and entirely welcoming as I make my way to the literature aisles in search of something enjoyable to read, the latest New York Times bestseller.

And it’s there that I see her, the girl with her baby, sitting cross-legged on the ground in the midst of the literature aisles, the baby laid across her lap, its head elevated by a knee. The suitcase sits on the ground beside her. The girl, it appears, is grateful to be free of its weight for the time being. The girl pulls a bottle from the pocket of the army-green coat, sets it into the obliging baby’s mouth. She reaches for a book from the bottom shelf and—as I sneak into the nearest aisle, yanking some sci-fi thriller from the shelf and flipping to page forty-seven—I hear her voice softly reading aloud from Anne of Green Gables while stroking the underside of the baby’s toes.

The baby is utterly calm. I spy through the metal shelves as the baby consumes the bottle, down to the residual bubbles at the bottom, and as she does her eyes become too heavy to keep open, and they slowly, slowly drift closed, her body gravitating to dormancy, perfectly still with the exception of involuntary twitches here and there. Her mother continues to read, continues caressing the tiny toes with a thumb and forefinger and suddenly I’m eavesdropping on a very personal moment between mother and child.

A librarian appears. “Can I help you find something?” she asks, and I jump, clutching the sci-fi thriller in my hand. I feel guilty, flustered, my coat still dripping with rain. The librarian smiles, her features soft and kind.

“No,” I say quickly, quietly; I don’t want to wake the baby. I whisper, “No. I just found it,” and I hurry to the escalators and downstairs to check out my new book.

* * *

I stop on the way home from work at the video store and rent a movie, a chick flick for Zoe and me, and a box of microwave popcorn, fat-free. Chris has always been a road warrior. As a young girl, Zoe was adversely affected by her “here one-minute, gone the next” father. When he traveled, we would invent fun things to do when we couldn’t be with daddy: movie nights and sleepovers in the big bed, pancakes for dinner, inventing stories in which Chris was a time traveler (much more entertaining) instead of a traveling investment banker (boring).

I take the elevator up to the fifth floor of our vintage building and as I walk inside I find it eerily quiet, strangely dark. Generally it’s the blaring sound of Zoe’s stereo that greets me. But tonight it’s silent. I flip on a lamp in the living room, call out her name. At her bedroom door, I knock. I can see the light leaking out under the door, but there’s no response. I let myself inside.

Zoe, still in her plaid uniform—which is a rarity, these days—is sprawled across the creamy shag rug that lines the hardwood floors. Her uniform is usually discarded for something graphic, something with sequins or rhinestone studs the minute she walks in the door. I can tell she is breathing—asleep—and so I don’t panic. But I watch her, hugging that yellow notebook in her arms, lying aimlessly on the floor as if her body suddenly became too heavy to hold. She’s wrapped in a plush blanket, her head propped on a throw pillow that reads Hugs & Kisses. Her space heater, which Chris bought after Zoe’s many complaints that her bedroom was too cold, is set to seventy-nine degrees. Her bedroom is a furnace, an oven, and Zoe, lying two feet away, is being cooked. Her cheeks are flushed; it’s a wonder the blanket didn’t catch fire. I hit the power button and turn the thing off, but it will take hours for the room to cool.

My eyes deviate around the room, something Zoe would bark at if she were not asleep: the exposed brick walls that appear at random throughout the condo, the reason, Chris deduced, that Zoe’s room was so cold; the unmade canopy bed with the patchwork quilt; the posters of teen celebs and tropical paradises mounted to the walls with putty. Her backpack is on the floor, spilled open, the granola bar I thrust into her hand before school for an after-school snack lying untouched. Balled up notes from classmates are scattered upon the floor. The cats lie beside Zoe, embezzling the feverish heat for themselves.

I run my hands through her long hair and quietly call her name once, and then twice. When she comes to, she sits up at once, her eyes wide, as if she’s been caught doing something wrong. Something bad. She jumps to her feet, the cats falling to theirs, and tosses the blanket to her bed.

“I was tired,” she reasons, and her eyes dart around the room wondering what, if any, transgressions I found. None. It’s nearly seven o’clock, and outside, somewhere behind the dark, plump clouds, the sun is beginning to set. Chris, in San Francisco, is likely sitting down to an outrageous dinner at some extravagant restaurant, studying Cassidy Knudsen across the table. I push the thought from my mind.

“Then I’m glad you took a nap,” I say, eyeing the creases across her cheek, her exhausted brown eyes. “How was your day?”

“Fine,” she says, snatching the yellow notebook from the floor. She clings to it like a baby lemur clinging to its mother’s fur.

“Was Mrs. Peters there?”

“No.”

“She must really be sick,” I say. The flu, it appears, is peaking late this year. “Same sub? The nag?”

Zoe nods. Yes. The nag.

“I’ll start dinner,” I tell Zoe but to my surprise she says, “I already ate.”

“Oh?”

“I was hungry. After school. I didn’t know what time you’d be home.”

“That’s fine,” I tell her. “What’d you have?”

“Grilled cheese,” she says and then, for good measure, “and an apple.”

“Okay.”

I realize I still have on my raincoat, my rubber boots, and my bag is still draped across my body. I thrust my hand excitedly into the bag and produce the movie and popcorn.

“You up for a movie night?” I ask. “Just you and me?”

She’s quiet, her face flat, no animated smile like the silly one on my own. I sense the no long before it appears.

“It’s just...” she starts. “I have a test tomorrow. Mean, median and mode.”

I drop the movie into my bag. So much for that idea. “Then I can help you study,” I suggest.

“That’s okay. I made flash cards.” And she shows them as proof.

I try not to be overly sensitive because I know there was a time that I was twelve—or sixteen or seventeen—and would have rather had dental work than hang out with my mom.

I nod. “Okay,” I say and slip from the room. And, as quiet as a mouse, she closes and locks the door behind me.