by Mary Kubica
Not until I found myself on the dance floor with Heidi later that night, learning more about illiteracy in Chicago than I ever cared to know.
I was used to getting what I wanted. Before I married Heidi that is.
“So what seems to be the problem, Mr. Wood?” Cassidy asks. She leans back in her chair, runs those well-manicured nails through her hair. “You want to talk about it?”
But I say, “No. Better not,” thinking how the last time Heidi conceded to something I wanted it had to do with slipping on a pair of jeans before tracking that homeless girl down; the time before that, chunky peanut butter versus creamy. Things that were trivial.
When it mattered, I lost. Every time.
“C’est la vie?” Cassidy asks and I repeat, “C’est la vie.”
Such is life.
And then I watch her blue-gray eyes and call to mind the way I knocked an espresso down the front of my houndstooth shirt the first time she walked into our conference room, wearing a red suit with the tight, ankle-length pants that only Cassidy Knudsen could wear, a pair of black shoes with, of course, three-or four-inch heels, my boss—suddenly seeming short and impotent—introducing her as “the new gal in town” and staring at her ass as she found her way to an empty seat beside me. She reached for a stack of take-out napkins left behind from dinner the previous night and began to pat my shirt dry in a way only Cassidy Knudsen would do.
She’s like a femme fatale, isn’t she? Heidi had asked that day at the botanical gardens, the first time Heidi and Cassidy met, last summer at the work picnic, as she watched the other woman drift away, hips swaying back and forth like a tetherball, somehow unattached to the rest of her body.
What’s a femme fatale? Zoe had asked, and Heidi nodded her head to the woman in the strapless cherry dress and said simply, Her.
I reach for the quarters on my desk and announce that I’m making a trip to the vending machine. “Want anything?” I ask, hoping that when I return, I’ll find the office empty. She says no thanks and I take off, down the all but deserted hall for the vending machine in our inadequate office kitchen. I press the button for the highly caffeinated drink I need, and crack the can open while making my way back to my desk.
I’m plotting the next steps in my “find Willow Greer” adventure when I step onto the metallic gold carpeting that separates my office from the ceramic tiles of the main hall. I find Cassidy on her hands and knees on the carpeting, collecting a dozen or so pens that fell. That roomy ebony sweater nearly drags on the ground, exposing the rest of the red bra that I previously couldn’t see: the low cut, the Chantilly lace, the underwire cups, a delicate front bow.
She’s holding my cell phone in her hand. I squint at the clock on the wall, 12:02 p.m., and my heart sinks.
“Heidi,” Cassidy says, holding out the phone to me. She’s smiling. But it’s not a smile that’s nice or polite. “For you. Hope you don’t mind. I answered it.”
HEIDI
“What is that woman doing answering your phone?” I growl into the phone, as Chris’s reluctant voice says hello, the tone of his voice—cautious and yet strangely chipper—saturated with guilt. I drift from the living room where Willow sits on the edge of the sofa, baby pressed to a dish towel on her shoulder, burping her with a steady pat, pat, pat to the back as I showed her to do. And yet I see that the baby’s face is pressed awkwardly to the towel so that I wonder how well she can breathe, her body sloping at an angle that looks anything but secure. Anything but comfortable.
“Hey, Heidi,” Chris says, an unnatural attempt at remaining calm, cool and collected. “Everything okay?”
I imagine that woman sitting in his bland, box-like office, listening to our conversation. I envision Chris, checking his watch, making some sort of blah-blah-blah hand gesture to Cassidy Knudsen, to indicate that my rant—why is she answering your phone; and why didn’t you tell me you were going to the office to work with her; and who else is in today? Tom? Henry?—has gone on for far too long. I feel the blood creeping up my neck, turning my cheeks to crimson. My ears burn. A headache begins to form. I place two fingers to my sinuses and press. Hard.
I click the end button, not quite as fulfilling as slamming a telephone into its base. I stand in the kitchen for a moment, breathing heavily, reminding myself of all the reasons I don’t like Cassidy Knudsen. She’s breathtaking. She’s smart, shrewd. Very chichi, as if she should be in the pages of a fashion magazine, and not staring at Chris’s insipid spreadsheets all the livelong day.
But the biggest reason I don’t like her? It’s quite plain and simple, really. My husband spends more time with her than he does with me. Flying to bustling metropolises around the country, spending the night in pricey, sophisticated hotels where Chris and I only ever dreamed about going, dinners at expensive restaurants that we saved for special occasions: birthdays, anniversaries and such, rendering them ordinary on days which were far from ordinary.
I hear her strident voice reverberating in my mind, the overly animated, “Hey there, Heidi,” as she answered the phone. “Chris just ran down the hall. He’ll be back in a bit. Want me to have him call you?” she’d asked, but I said no, I’d wait. And I did just that, staring at the time on the microwave clock for the four plus minutes it took my husband to return to his phone, all the while listening to Cassidy Knudsen tinker with the items on Chris’s desk, hearing a crash and envisioning her knocking over his pencil cup—the painted pottery one Zoe made years ago—pencils and his ballpoint pens tumbling to the ground.
“Oops.” She giggled, like a scandalous teenager.
I imagine that once Cassidy Knudsen was a cheerleader, one of those girls in the skimpy polyester skirts and the half shirts, dropping her pencil to the floor before the supposedly perverse male science teacher, reaching down from her chair spread eagle to reclaim it and then later claiming foul play.
While I gather myself to return to Willow and Ruby, I hear the squeak of a bedroom door, Zoe drifting from her bedroom hideout and into the living room. There’s silence, and then Zoe’s voice, a bit thorny and stiff.
“Were you ever scared?” she asks. I lurk in the kitchen, wondering what she means. Were you ever scared?
“What?” asks Willow and I picture the girl, still wearing Zoe’s clothing from the previous afternoon, now sticky with syrup and wrinkled with sleep. She’s perched on the edge of the sofa and as Ruby lets out the belch of a male drunkard, the girls snicker.
There’s nothing like a little gas to break the ice.
“Out there, I mean.” And I imagine Zoe’s finger pointing out the bay window, to the commotion of the city outside: the taxis that soar up and down the street, sirens, horns, a homeless man playing the saxophone on the corner of the street.
“Yeah. I guess so,” Willow replies, admitting sheepishly, “I don’t like thunder,” and I’m stricken again by the clear truth that this girl, sitting in my living room with an infant in her arms, a tough mollusk shell protecting all that’s valuable and vulnerable on the inside, is a mere child. A child who devours whipped cream and pancakes, and is afraid of something as innocuous as thunder.
Profiles, vase. Profiles, vase.
I imagine the vigorous city when it finally does fall asleep for the night. When the sun sets somewhere over suburbia, and the lights of the Loop are ablaze. It’s stunning, really. But here, in our neighborhood, a mile or two north of downtown, nighttime means total darkness. Pitch blackness spotted with the occasional streetlight that may or may not work. The time of day when zombies come out to play, loitering in the city’s parks, in the darkened alcoves of closed businesses that line Clark and Fullerton Streets. Living in an upscale neighborhood doesn’t exclude us from crime. The morning news talks frequently of crime waves throughout Lakeview and Lincoln Park, of overnight robberies, about how violent crimes are on the rise. You hear all the time about women being attacked as they walk home from the bus, or as they make their way into their apartment building, grocery bags in han
d. The neighborhood at night—strangely dark, fraught with an ear-splitting silence, must be a terrifying place to be. Ghastly.
I make my way into the living room and find the girls eyeballing one another awkwardly. Zoe jumps when I enter and says, “What do you want?” as if I have no business being in my home. She’s embarrassed that I caught her talking to Willow when it wasn’t required, embarrassed that she showed any interest whatsoever in the girl.
“I have something to show you,” I say, “both of you,” and I disappear down the hall.
It took over an hour for Ruby’s Tylenol to kick in, for the fever to subside. During that time she was irritable and moody, inconsolable whether in Willow’s or my hands. We tried feeding her, rocking her, thrusting a pacifier into her wide-open mouth, but all of our efforts were in vain. And then, per Chris’s suggestion, we sunk the baby into a lukewarm bath, which seemed to appease her a bit, and followed it up with layers of emollients to her bottom, a fresh diaper, a change of clothes. Because Chris had only purchased a single pair of blue pants to partner with the white jumpsuit, I lug the bin of baby clothing from Chris’s and my bedroom closet—the one mislabeled Heidi: Work—into the living room where the girls and I can sort through rompers with ruffles and animal print bodysuits, Onesies with tutus, organic fleece pajamas and satin ballet slippers made just for pudgy infant feet.
“Shh,” I say to Zoe as I set the indigo lid aside, “don’t tell your father about this,” I say. Out of the corner of my eye, Willow reaches out and touches fabric, but then withdraws her hand quickly, as if afraid she might break something or make it dirty. I have this sudden vision—a clairvoyant image—where some adult slaps Willow’s timid hand away from something that she desires. She withdraws, her eyes downcast, feelings hurt. “It’s okay,” I say, pulling out the most luxuriant thing I can find and placing it in her hand, watching as she runs her fingers across the vertical ribs as if she’s never felt corduroy before. She lifts it, cautiously, to her face and rubs a cheek to it, a pair of maroon overalls with flowers on the bib.
“What is all this?” Zoe asks, pulling a velvet dress with a taffeta skirt—size 2T—from the bin, her mouth falling open when she spies the obscene number on the price tag. “Ninety-four dollars?” she asks, ogling the thirty-six inches of fabric no one ever wore, the midnight-blue color and elephantine bow and, somewhere in that bin, pricey tights to match.
“And that was ten years ago,” I say, adding, “or more,” remembering those days I sauntered into boutiques in the Loop during my lunch break and purchased a romper here, a bodysuit there—on the sly—telling Chris, if ever he asked, that the outrageous debit on our credit card bill was for an expectant coworker or an old college friend, ready to burst forth with child.
“Were these...mine?” she asks, reaching for a pair of floral bloomers that accompany a summer dress. She holds them up before her and I think, How do I explain? I could say yes and leave it at that. But then of course there are the price tags, evidence that these garments were never used.
“My hobby,” I admit. “Like collecting bottle tops or sports cards,” and the girls look at me as though I just climbed out of a spaceship from Mars. “They’re hard to resist,” I say, “when they’re just so cute,” holding up a pair of furry booties and offering them as proof.
“But...” Zoe begins, having inherited her rationality from Chris, “I never even wore them,” she says. “Who were they for?” she demands to know. I eye Zoe and Willow, their eyes staring at me questioningly. Good cop, bad cop, I think. I find it impossible to stare into Zoe’s big brown eyes—both cynical and demanding all at the same time—and admit that they were for Juliet, that even after the doctor said I could have no more children, I continued to pine for children, to envision an imaginary world where Zoe and Juliet coexisted, playing with Tinkertoy sets or Little People on the living room floor, my belly fat and round with number three. I refuse to admit that the notion of an only child left me feeling bilious and cold, the home—where I always envisioned an overabundance of kids—lonely, even when Zoe was there. Even with Chris. My family, the three of us, felt suddenly insufficient. Not good enough. There was a hole. A hole I stuffed full with Juliet, with ambitions and expectations and a bin full of clothing she would one day wear.
In my heart of hearts, I convinced myself that she would arrive, one day. That day just hadn’t come yet.
But I interrupt Zoe’s rationality and say, “How about we see if we can find something for Ruby to wear,” and the three of us begin pulling at the bin with a renewed purpose, though the sight—and the smell: an uncanny blend of upscale boutiques and optimism—of the clothing reminds me of the gaping hole inside my womb.
Or of that place where my womb used to be.
We settle on the maroon overalls, a white jumpsuit beneath with a scalloped edge. I watch as Willow undresses the baby, then tries to force the jumpsuit over Ruby’s malleable head. Ruby lets out a wail. She protests on the floor, kicking her legs in defiance. Willow moves with hesitation, with apprehensive hands. She stares at the jumpsuit, at the neck hole that appears far too small for Ruby’s round head, and then tries to force it on, forgetting altogether to allow clearance for the nose, to get it over her mouth quickly so the baby can breathe.
“Let me do it,” I say to Willow, the words coming out more abruptly that I intended them to do. I feel Zoe’s eyes on me, though I refuse to make contact. I shift into Willow’s position and, stretching the elastic of the jumpsuit, slide it over Ruby’s head without hesitation. I snap the buttons of the crotch closed, sit her up and snap the buttons up the back. “There now,” I say, as Ruby’s fingers settle upon the gold chain that dangles from my neck, her eyes lighting up like a Christmas tree. “You like that?” I ask, taking the bright eyes and the big, drooling, toothless smile as a yes. I set my father’s gold wedding ring in the palm of her hand, and watch as her pudgy little fingers begin to squeeze. “That was my daddy’s,” I say, and then I focus on the task at hand, sliding the maroon overalls over the jumpsuit, a pair of white lacy socks over her rapidly moving feet. Ruby squeals in delight, and I press my face into her and say, “Coochy, coochy, coo,” the kind of nonsensical gibberish babies adore. I all but forget that Willow and Zoe are still in the room, watching as I blow raspberries on the exposed parts of Ruby’s skin: the insides of her arms, the nape of her neck; I overlook the horrified look on my preteen’s face as I speak fluently in baby talk, the type of skill, like riding a bike, that one never forgets how to do.
“Coochy, coochy, coo,” I say, and it’s then that Zoe rises to her feet, unexpectedly, and says, “God! Enough with the baby talk already,” in that high frequency, falsetto voice only an adolescent girl can attain, before waltzing down the hall and slamming the door to her room.
WILLOW
“What was Miriam’s medical condition? Was she schizophrenic?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
Outside the single, barred window, the one placed too high on the cinderblock wall, the sky is turning colors: red and orange quickly displacing the blue. The sentry in the corner yawns, a long, drawn out, exaggerated yawn, and Louise Flores looks at him sharply and asks, “Are we boring you?” and he stands suddenly at attention: chin up, chest out, shoulders back, stomach in.
“No, ma’am,” he replies and the jagged woman eyes him until even I begin to blush.
What was wrong with Miriam, I didn’t know, but whatever it was, I was pretty sure it was Joseph’s doing.
“You said that Miriam would take medicine on occasion?” Ms. Flores asks and I nod my head, yes. “What kind of medicine?”
“Little white pills,” I say. “Sometimes another one, too.” I tell her that the pills made Miriam look better, made her feel better and get out of bed for a while, but if she got to taking them too much, they just put her back in bed again.
But Miriam was always tired. Whether or not she was taking the pills.
“Did Joseph ever have her
to a doctor?”
“No, ma’am. Miriam didn’t leave.”
“She didn’t leave the house?”
“No, ma’am. Never.”
“Why wasn’t Miriam medicated all the time?”
“Joseph said if God wanted her well, he would make her well.”
“But sometimes Joseph gave her the medicine?”
“Yes, ma’am. When Ms. Amber Adler came.”
“The caseworker?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where did Joseph get the pills? If he didn’t take her to the doctor?”
“In the medicine cabinet. In the bathroom.”
“Yes, Claire, but how did the pills get there, if there was no doctor? You likely need a prescription for such medication. A pharmacy.”
I say that I don’t know. Joseph would tell me to fetch them, the little plastic baggies—she stops me there: “Plastic baggies?” she asks, and I say yes, and she scribbles something down on that notebook of hers beside the word z-e-a-l-o-t which I’ve been reading upside down for half an hour now, and still have no idea what it means. He’d pull some pills out and force Miriam to take them. Sometimes he had to pry her mouth open while I popped in the pills and then we’d wait, for as long as it took, for her to swallow. Miriam didn’t like the pills.
But once or twice a year, Joseph would get her to take the pills for a while, and she’d come out from the room and bathe herself, and we’d open up all the windows and it would be my job to get that god-awful Miriam smell out of the home before Ms. Amber Adler, in her junker car with the too-big Nike bag, arrived. He’d get out his toolbox and start fixing things around the house, paint over stains that had cropped up here and there around the home. Only when Amber Adler came to call did the dead lightbulbs get replaced, and squeaky hinges get oiled.