Sleeping Tigers

by Robinson, Holly

  “Told you she’d show!” he shouted to David before waltzing off with the saxophonist, their arms draped about each other’s waists.

  I stood next to David at the piano. “I can’t believe that was really you playing!”

  “It wasn’t. That was my alternate persona. The one who grew up in Chicago instead of a white bread suburb of Milwaukee. Want a drink?”

  “Sure.” Then I remembered. “But I don’t have any money. I was in Berkeley and got mugged and car jacked. And my brother has disappeared! Left the country!”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like a busy night. What about Paris?”

  “Karin took the baby to her house while I went to Berkeley. Then, when things got complicated, we thought it was better to leave her there overnight.”

  David’s grin broadened. “So you’re a free woman.”

  “I guess so. Relatively speaking, anyway.”

  “In this life, everything is relative,” he reminded me.

  I danced until midnight, when the band brought down the house with “Who’s Gonna Be Your Sweet Man When I’m Gone.” After that, so suddenly that I scarcely knew how we’d arrived, David and I sat alone on the summit of Bernal Heights Hill, admiring the city’s necklaces of lights and sharing a bottle of wine.

  David was slightly hoarse after the gig, so he encouraged me to do most of the talking. I recounted the day’s events, then backtracked to tell him about Cameron, Boston, my parents, the break-up with Peter, and teaching. Finally, I asked how he’d become both a musician and a doctor.

  “Most people are lucky to be good at one thing, and here you are, Mr. Talent, pulling off two fabulous careers and putting the rest of us to shame,” I said.

  “That’s Dr. Talent to you,” he said with a laugh, and lay down on the grass beside me.

  I wanted to kiss David, to feel the length of him against me the way I had when we slept together. But did that mean I wanted sex with David, too, or just comfort? And was David only keeping me company because I was a friend of Karin’s?

  David was telling me how he had studied classical piano but learned blues by ear, taking a bus to visit bars on Chicago’s south side whenever he could. “Music lessons were my mother’s idea,” he said, “but Dad wanted me to be a doctor. He used to tell me the names of bones at night instead of reading me stories.”

  “So which do you like better? Music or medicine?”

  “I’m glad I don’t have to choose. Both jobs feed my belly and spirit. I like my volunteer work, too, like what I was doing in Nepal.”

  Nepal again! You’d think that was the only destination on earth. “My brother’s in Nepal now,” I said, “doing God knows what.”

  “He’ll have lots of company. Kathmandu attracts people who go there, then try to figure out why.”

  I plucked nervously at the grass between us. “Let’s not talk about my brother right now. Tell me how, if you’re out late every night playing music, you manage to get up early every morning and work at the clinic.”

  “Easy. I just don’t sleep.” David yawned and stretched his arms over his head.

  We both laughed. “Come on,” I said. “We’d better go home. You live around here, don’t you?”

  “How about if I take you home instead? It’s right around the corner. We can just walk.”

  I swallowed, trying not to show my disappointment. Why didn’t he want me at his place? Was David involved with someone? Not attracted to me? Maybe it was a bad thing that he hadn’t tried to have sex with me the night we slept together.

  We wound our way down the narrow streets of Bernal Heights and crossed Dolores Street to my place. It wasn’t until we had reached my apartment door and I began fishing the keys out of my pocket that I realized they were probably still dangling from the ignition of my stolen car.

  “Oh, God,” I moaned, and told David. Inwardly, I brightened: now David would have to take me to his place. I could see how he lived—and whether he lived alone.

  “No key? No problem!” David fished a complicated tool out of his pocket, a knife with dozens of tiny attachments, and picked the lock in under a minute.

  “Wow,” I said. “You’re a little scary.”

  He looked pleased. “Am I? Why?”

  “You broke into my house just like that, and you’re not even a jewel thief!”

  “There’s really not much difference between musicians, physicians, and jewel thieves,” David pointed out. “We’ve all got good hands.” He gave me a steady look that nearly made my knees buckle. “If I ask you a question, will you say yes?”

  “I don’t know. What’s the question?”

  “Oh, it’s a very long question. Might take me all night to ask it.”

  “And here I thought you’d never ask.”

  David smiled. “I almost didn’t. As a general rule, I don’t take advantage of women who have just had babies dropped on their doorsteps, lost their brothers, gotten car jacked, been mugged, and downed more alcohol than three lumberjacks. Might just be the wrong time to ask a woman anything. Hell, she might do the wise thing and say no.”

  “Or a woman might say yes.” I leaned over to kiss David’s neck, tasting salt, and he wrapped his arms around my waist. We stood there for a long time, swaying in the dark.

  I only had toddler food in my kitchen: bananas, peanut butter, oatmeal, apple juice, and milk. David didn’t seem to mind. He rummaged about in my galley kitchen and slathered a banana with peanut butter for breakfast.

  It was seven o’clock. We had only fallen asleep a couple of hours ago and I wanted David to come back to bed so that we could make love again. This surprised me. With Peter, sex was such a rote activity, a task to be crossed off our lists, that by the end of our relationship we were both relieved when it was over.

  David, though. Oh, David. With David, sex was the best sort of conversation, the kind of exchange that covers all the bases and lets each of you say what’s on your mind. I didn’t want to miss a word.

  Our love making had included actual words, too. Everything from simple questions, like, “Do you like that? Do you want this?” to phrases that would have made me blush if I had read them online. We talked, we moved, we rested, we talked and moved some more, each of us tender and frenzied by turn.

  I hadn’t even flinched when, halfway through, David had stopped to touch my scar, tracing a finger along the curve of my breast and then kissing it. “What happened here?” he asked solemnly. I told him, and he kissed my breast again.

  “You don’t mind it?” I asked. “It doesn’t put you off?”

  “Of course not. It hardly shows.”

  He meant it. Still. I had to be able to tell him this one thing. “I feel flawed,” I ventured. “Like a teacup with a chip in it.”

  He smiled. “They look more like soup bowls to me.”

  I punched him lightly on the arm. “The thing is, I keep wondering if the whole handle will break off next, you know?”

  David looked at me with those dark, kind eyes and then kissed me full on the mouth. “We all get to be new once,” he said. “And then we all have to survive the dishwasher. You’re a beautiful woman, Jordan,” he had added, and I believed that he meant it.

  “You all right?” David asked now, leaning down to kiss me good morning.

  “Sure.” I propped myself up on the pillows, bleary from lack of sleep and cotton-headed with a throbbing hangover. I wished I had a comb and a mirror, or that I could at least brush the sweaters off my teeth before David kissed me goodbye.

  I took his hand and held it to my cheek, hoping to persuade him to stay a little, but then the doorbell rang. It had to be Karin with Paris. Who else would appear at this hour?

  It was as if someone had thrown a switch from forgetting to remembering. Immediately, I was conscious again of Paris, of how much I missed her. Her blanket was still tucked beneath my pillow, where I’d stashed it after David fell asleep, just to have her smell nearby. Now the waiting was over. Hangover momentarily
forgotten, morning lust shoved to the back burner, I sprang out of bed and pulled on my underpants and a faded t-shirt.

  “Need these?” David held up the jeans I’d stripped off last night. “I can hide in the closet if you want.”

  I tugged on my jeans. “No need. I’m sure it’s Karin, and she’ll want full credit for you being here.”

  I stepped outside, wincing at the feel of cold cement on my feet. I was dimly aware of Karin’s presence, and of her car idling at the curb beyond her, but I had eyes only for Paris. I caressed her silky head. “Hey, baby,” I murmured. “I missed you!”

  Paris squealed, clapping her hands.

  “Hey, yourself.” Karin sounded grumpy, so unlike herself that I looked at her more closely. I didn’t like what I saw. Karin looked stunned, as if she were the one who’d been up all night. Maybe she had. Her face was pale, devoid of makeup, and her hair was tangled. Even her clothing, a gray sweatshirt and a pair of matching sweat pants, didn’t look right. I urged her to come inside. “I’ll make you tea.”

  “I really can’t stay.” Karin rolled her eyes and jerked her chin toward the street. “Prepare yourself.”

  Was she having a seizure? Exercising her facial muscles? “Oh, come on. Just for a minute. I’ve got a surprise for you,” I coaxed.

  “Yeah? Well, I’ve got a surprise for you, too,” she said.

  I heard David’s footsteps behind me. Karin peered around my shoulder and groaned at the sight of him. “This is going to be even worse than I thought.”

  “What is? Why are you acting so weird?” I asked, impatient now.

  Behind Karin, my mother burst out of the car like a stripper out of a cake. One minute there was emptiness, and then there was Mom, armed with an umbrella, a shoulder bag and a suitcase on wheels.

  “Mom! What are you doing here?” I clutched the baby to my chest like a shield.

  “Hello, Jordan,” she said through her teeth. “There’s no need to shout.”

  Mom wore her best wrinkle-free pants suit. She’d worn that same knit suit on the two-day drive to Grammy’s funeral, and once on an anniversary car trip to the Cape with my father. The suit was a luminescent orange color that she optimistically called “ripe pumpkin.” If you knotted the legs and arms of that suit, it would make a perfect life raft.

  She had splurged on a new perm. The frayed gray curls stood about my mother’s head like sea anemones on a rock, waving slightly in the morning breeze. “Who’s this?” Mom pointed over my shoulder with the umbrella.

  “Uh, this is Karin’s friend, David Goldstein,” I fumbled. “And David, this is Grace O’Malley, my mother. He’s a doctor,” I remembered to add.

  “A doctor making a house call! Well. And here I was, thinking that our nation’s health coverage was going to hell in a hand basket.” Mom sailed past me, the suitcase wheezing and tottering behind her like an arthritic spaniel on a leash.

  “Meet my mother,” I said to David.

  Karin fluttered her fingers. “Good to see you, glad not to be you!”

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” I grabbed Karin by the elbow. “Stay for coffee, why don’t you?” I hissed.

  “Not a chance.” Karin set her jaw.

  “What am I going to do?”

  “I don’t know, but think fast,” Karin said. “I’ve been with your mom since 11 o’clock last night, when I found her weeping outside the baggage claim at the airport because you didn’t pick up your cell and she was convinced that you’d been mugged in the big bad city. And hey, guess what? I had to tell her she was right!”

  “Oh, no,” I moaned.

  “Oh, yes. I had to drive with that baby of yours screaming in the back seat like a howler monkey all the way to the airport and back. Now your mom knows she’s a granny. Imagine her surprise! I know you must have told her somewhere along the line, but gosh, somehow it must have slipped her mind.”

  “I just couldn’t do it.”

  “I don’t mind being your stand-in,” Karin said, “but it would be a lot easier if I knew my lines beforehand.”

  David draped his arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. “Just tell your mom the truth, Jordan. There’s no point in trying to hold anything back now.”

  “I was trying to do the right thing,” I said. “I wanted to find Cam and get him to do something about Nadine and the baby before I told Mom anything.”

  Karin sighed. “Yeah, but sometimes the right thing isn’t the best thing, is it?” She hugged me. “Good luck. I’ll check in later. I still love you even if you’re a complete idiot.”

  David hugged me, too, and kissed me lightly on the mouth. “Want me to stay?”

  I shook my head. “This is already complicated enough,” I said, glad to have Paris’s hand wrapped in my hair and anchoring me in place. Otherwise I might have fled the scene.

  Then I was alone with Paris and my mother in my studio apartment.

  Mom stood in the middle of the room, her bags on either side of her, the umbrella dangling from her elbow. “So this is it?”

  “Yep. Want the grand tour? I promise it’ll take less than an hour.”

  She didn’t crack a smile. “Well, you never were one for housekeeping.”

  I was suddenly aware of the bed with its tangled sheets floating in the middle of the room like a cruise ship abandoned at the docks. “No,” I agreed. “Cleaning house always seems so futile. The dishes are never all done and there’s always more laundry.”

  My mother must have known I was looking at the bed behind her, but she didn’t turn around. “My God, Jordan! Your bed with Peter isn’t even cold, and yet here you are, frolicking!”

  “Mom, it’s not like I’m a widow,” I reminded her. “Peter’s not dead. There’s no need for a proper mourning period. Look, let’s not talk now. You’re tired. I’m tired, too. Get cleaned up, and then we can have a real conversation. I’ll go for a coffee run.” I was desperate to escape.

  “Where’s your brother?” she demanded. “Just tell me that much. I understand this trouble concerns him more than it does you.” She jutted her chin in the baby’s direction.

  “This ‘trouble’ is your granddaughter. And I’ll tell you everything I know, but only after I get some coffee,” I said, lifting the baby backpack from its hook on the door.

  “What in God’s name is that?” my mother demanded.

  “A backpack for babies.”

  “In my day, we strapped them into strollers.”

  “The backpack’s easier when you’re shopping someplace like that little corner store. The aisles there are so narrow, Paris grabs stuff off the shelves if she’s in the stroller.”

  Mom frowned, watching me open the metal stand on the backpack, set it on the counter, and drop Paris inside the canvas pack like an orange into a Christmas stocking. “In my day, we didn’t let children grab,” she noted, before exclaiming, “Jordan, that baby’s going to fall right out of there and break her neck!”

  “No, she’s perfectly safe. Look, I’ve strapped her in.” I backed into the pack like a horse backing into a carriage, and buckled the belt around my waist to take the weight off my shoulders. “See how easy?”

  Unfortunately, I turned without folding the metal backpack stand down first. The stand caught on the teapot and sent it flying off the counter.

  Mom’s reflexes had always been good; I’d inherited that from her. She dropped her umbrella and caught the teapot before it hit the ground. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Perfectly safe.”

  Paris giggled. For a minute, Mom and I smiled. Then we resumed our standoff. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” I promised.

  Kanchan was besieged this morning by customers buying doughnuts and coffee, but today, as always, she ignored the line of customers to chat up the baby. “How’s life, little one?” she said.

  “Her grandmother’s visiting,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

  Kanchan read the panic in my eyes. She patted my hand and pushed a couple of fancy chocolate bar
s across the counter when I was buying the coffee. “Here! Sugar on the house!”

  In all, Paris and I were gone twenty minutes. My mother was nowhere in sight when I opened the apartment door. I thought she must be in the bathroom until her head popped up over the kitchen counter. She wore rubber gloves and, when I stepped up to the counter, I could see that she’d been on her hands and knees next to a bucket of soapy water, scrubbing my kitchen floor.

  “Mom! Your nice travel outfit!”

  “You know what?” My mother sat back on her knees. “I had my colors done by that Belinda Little at my salon, and she says I’m a winter, not an autumn. How could I have gone so wrong?” She sniffed. “I’m dumping this suit into the free box at the church the very second I get home. Then it’s blues and greens for me.”

  “Please, Mom. Get up! This is embarrassing! What makes you think I haven’t washed the floor?”

  She waved a grimy sponge the size of a toaster. “I know how much time babies take. And you can’t ever have the floor too clean with a baby in the house.”

  “But where’d you find that sponge? And those gloves?”

  “I brought them with me in my carry-on. You just never know.”

  I imagined my mother sponging out the tiny sinks on the plane. There would be no stopping her now. The next time I went out, she’d probably arrange my clothes by color the way she had at home when I was a child, from blacks to brights to pastels, white blouses dangling at the end of the rack like surrendering flags.

  I kept Paris in the backpack while I made the coffee, then stood over my mother, arms folded, until she agreed to sit outside on the deck with me. I’d made cinnamon toast, too; Paris gummed a triangle of toast while stacking metal measuring cups on the wooden deck.

  My mother still refrained from asking questions about the baby. What exactly had Karin told her? I studied Mom as we ate, trying to wrap my mind around the idea that she was now a grandmother. Even if she wasn’t acting like one, she looked the part: the gray curls, the tight mouth, the knit suit, the sensible rubber-soled walking shoes.

  Had distress and fatigue made her look older in just a few days? Or had she always looked this way, and I only now realized it?