Читать книгу The Changeling - Victor LaValle - Страница 35

APOLLO AND BRIAN returned home in the late afternoon but found the apartment as dark as nighttime. The curtains had been pulled shut in the living room. When he went to pull them open, he found a safety pin holding the two panels together. The same in their bedroom. The blinds in the kitchen were pulled down. Apollo found Emma in Brian’s bedroom, up on a short ladder, with a drill in one hand. The room’s curtains were in a small pile on the floor.

She remained so immersed in her task that she hadn’t even heard them come in. Apollo watched her quietly from the doorway. Brian didn’t even struggle in his carrier, as if he too were taking in the strange sight. Emma raised the drill to the top of the window frame and pulled the trigger, then sank the spinning drill bit into the wood until it disappeared. When she pulled it back out, dust fell across her and to the floor.

“What are you doing?” Apollo asked.

Emma turned so fast, she nearly fell off the ladder. She brought the drill out like a pistol, pointed straight at him.

“How was work?” he said.

“Blackout curtains,” Emma said, then turned back to the window frame and drilled a second hole. The noise finally made Brian stir. He hadn’t been sleeping, but at least he’d been calm.

“I thought we weren’t going to start sleep training yet,” Apollo said.

Emma came down the ladder and set the drill on the floor. She took something out of a box that had been hidden under the piled curtains. She climbed back up the ladder, pulled a screwdriver from her pocket, and installed the blackout curtain’s frame.

“We’re not starting that yet,” she said as she worked.

“Then why are you putting those up?” he asked. “And why are all the windows covered up?”

“I found a good message board for moms,” she said. “They told me these were best blackout curtains around.”

“How much did they cost?”

Emma didn’t answer him. She finished and came back down the ladder.

“Why did you lay Brian down in that driveway?”

Apollo practically clutched his pearls. “I was packing up the car. I tried to do it while I was wearing him, but I had to lean over too far. He cried. So I put him down. But it was just for a few minutes. Anyway, how did you know?”

“You sent me a damn picture,” Emma said.

Apollo stepped back. “I did?”

Emma held out one hand. “Let me see your phone.”

She scrolled through a few screens, then shut off Apollo’s phone with a grunt. Together they went into the kitchen. Apollo asked to see her phone now. She held hers up and said the picture was gone.

“Well, why did you erase it?” he asked as he handed Brian to her.

“Did I say I erased it?” she asked. “Why would I erase it?”

She sat at the kitchen table with Brian, pulled up her top, and snapped open her nursing bra. Brian attached without error.

Apollo opened the fridge and took out ingredients for a quick dinner. “Sometimes you think you’ve sent me a message, but it’s just sitting in drafts,” he said. “It’s possible you still have it. Let me look.”

Emma almost leaped up from the chair but caught herself. If she hadn’t been feeding the baby, she might’ve pounced right on Apollo’s back.

“I’m trying to tell you I got a disturbing photo, and all you can do is accuse me of making a mistake.”

Apollo brought a frying pan to the stove, poured a capful of olive oil, set the fire, and quickly chopped an onion and garlic clove. He paid inordinate attention to the process in an effort to keep his mouth closed. Behind him Emma cooed at Brian, whispering sweetly, in a way that suggested she too was trying her best to change the mood.

By the time they were eating dinner, they’d calmed enough to talk about the photo again. Emma explained what she’d seen and when it arrived, and now Apollo scrolled through his phone with the thoroughness of a detective. Brian had been set on the kitchen floor in a baby bouncer. As Apollo checked Emma’s phone, she used one foot to move Brian in a gentle up-and-down motion. The boy stared at the ceiling light, but his eyelids quivered. With the potential of his sleep so near, Apollo and Emma began to whisper. Then they were nearly drowned out by the steam pipe right behind Apollo’s chair. At night the radiators would rattle to life, but hopefully Brian would be deep asleep by then.