“That’s because you haven’t had the right photographer. The lighting in that photo was all wrong; it created shadows just where you don’t want them.”
“Maybe I should have hired you,” she quipped.
“Or maybe not. If too many other guys had seen how attractive you are, I might not have gotten a chance.”
For the next few minutes, they embarked on the obligatory fact-checking requisite to first dates: Evan was an only child, raised in East Meadow, Long Island. He’d been obsessed with cameras and taking pictures since childhood, and he’d gone to Pratt Institute, where he’d studied photography in a more serious way; now he was a professional who did mostly catalog and commercial work. “Mostly it’s work to pay the bills, not to feed the soul, but I do some work of my own too.” He held up a camera whose leather strap was on his shoulder. “Small format, black-and-white.”
“Sounds intriguing.” The camera looked unfamiliar to her; she guessed it was not digital, but something older. “What do you photograph?”
“Whatever looks interesting. I can’t predict exactly what it will be; that’s why I keep the camera with me. I want to be ready in case the muse taps my shoulder.”
Miranda had heard plenty about “the muse” from Luke, and the word set off warning bells; was he going to be another self-absorbed, entitled user of a guy? But she was getting ahead of herself.
“What about you?” he asked. “Your profile said you’re a food editor. Did you go to cooking school? Train in Europe or something like that?”
“No. I grew up on the Upper West Side, but before my freshman year in high school, we moved to Larchmont. Then, in college, I did the usual liberal-arts kind of thing—heavy on the humanities, light on the math and science. No cooking, though.”
“So what got you into food?”
“My mother.”
“She was a good cook?”
Miranda laughed. “God, no! She hated to cook. Her motto was, Why waste time making what you can buy or thaw? Once, when I was in summer camp, I begged her to send me brownies. Not from a bakery, not from a store, but real, honest-to-God homemade brownies. The mother of one of my bunkmates used to send her care packages, and they always included brownies. I was so jealous.”
“Did she do it?”
“Yes. I was so excited when I got the package. When I opened it, I found a box full of what were basically crumbs. She’d made the brownies from a mix, and they were so dry they crumbled in transit. I just threw them out. And never asked again.”
“So you learned to cook to compensate?” He really did seem interested.
“Not exactly. She got sick when I was a freshman in college. Cancer. The chemo took away her appetite, and she totally lost interest in food. When I came home for the summer, I started playing around in the kitchen. I wanted to tempt her to eat. To live, I guess.”
“Did it work?”
Miranda looked down into her coffee cup. “Sort of. I did get her to eat—for a while. But she died anyway.”
“You were young to lose your mother,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to know her better. That we weren’t closer.” She looked down at her coffee mug. What was she doing, going on about this now?
“How about you? Do you like to cook?” She was on a first date; she wanted to veer off the topic of her mother’s death—now.
“Are you kidding? I eat out three times a week and order in the rest of the time.”
Miranda was frankly disappointed by a guy who couldn’t cook; Luke had often joined her in the kitchen, and preparing a meal was just one of the things they did well together. But Evan was already on to the next question. “So what’s happening with that baby you found?”
She had only to hear the question before she took off nonstop for the next fifteen minutes, recounting the visit from Joy Watkins in considerable detail. When she finally came up for air, she realized that she might have blown this date entirely. Not so. Evan didn’t seem in the least bit put off by her recitation. If anything, he seemed to be very engaged. “Do you have any pictures of her?” he wanted to know.
“Well, since you asked . . .” She pulled out her phone. There was the baby in the rosebud dress, as well as in the various sweaters and other garments Miranda had bought. He looked through them all before handing her back the phone. “What’s her name?” he then asked.
“She doesn’t have one yet. At the hospital they’re calling her Baby Doe, which is kind of cute since she does have big, dark doe eyes.”
“But you. What do you call her?”
“I haven’t named her yet.”
“Even in your own mind?”
Miranda shook her head. “I won’t let myself until she’s at home with me. I just don’t want to be—”
“Disappointed. I get it.”
The conversation hovered at a crossroads. Miranda knew she could have gone deeper and said more about how much she wanted this child and how crushed she would be if she did not get her. Instead, she opted for something less soul-baring and more neutral about a photography exhibition reviewed in the New York Times; had he seen it? It was all perfectly pleasant if not memorable; had she not been thinking so obsessively about the baby, she might have made more of an effort to connect.
When the check came, Evan insisted on paying. Then he lifted the flowers from their vase and gave them, dripping slightly, to Miranda. As she took them, he caught her hand and brought it to his lips for a kiss. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I wanted to kiss you, but we’re in a public place and all.”
“I don’t mind at all,” she said. No one had ever used that move on her before; it was both goofy and charming. Luke never, ever would have done such a thing. It was too bad that she didn’t feel more of a physical spark; Evan really was a nice guy.
They stood in front of the coffee bar saying good-bye—Evan was headed to the subway and Miranda, to take care of a few errands—when suddenly Evan bolted toward the curb. Miranda was too surprised to be offended; where was he going? When he darted into the street, the reason for his erratic behavior became clear. There was a little girl—a toddler really—alone in the crosswalk, and the driver in the oncoming car could not have seen her over the windshield. But Evan had, and he yanked her out of the way to safety. Then he frantically gestured for the driver to stop.
Miranda remained frozen in place while the rest of the scene erupted around her. The child had tumbled and rolled to the curb, where a woman, presumably her mother, fell over her, crying, “Haley, Haley, are you all right?” The driver honked furiously and then got out of the car; his face whitened when he saw what might have happened. Other cars stopped too; the honking and blaring intensified. Cell phones were whipped out; someone called 911.
Miranda’s gaze remained fixed on the little girl. Her eyes were closed, and there was a vivid swipe of blood on her pale face. Then she opened her eyes, saw her mother, and began to wail. “Haley!” said the mother, who was weeping hysterically now. “Baby, you came back to me! You came back!” Someone comforted the mother, offering her something to drink, a coat to put over the child.
After a few minutes, an ambulance pulled up, and two EMTs hopped out. “Was she hit?” asked one. He had a crew cut and a pockmarked face.
“Not by the car,” Evan said. He was still panting, and he wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. “But I had to shove her pretty hard to get her out of the way.”
The EMT looked over at the girl, whose sobs had subsided. She was now whimpering in the circle of her mother’s embrace. “She looks okay, but we’ll take her to Methodist to have her checked out.” He and his partner walked over. The mother got up from the pavement and allowed the EMTs to carry Haley to the ambulance. She was just about to climb in when she abruptly turned and ran up to Evan. “I can’t even begin to thank you,” she said, her voice
cracking. “She would have been hit; you risked your life for her.”
“He wasn’t going that fast,” Evan said. “I knew he’d stop.”
“How could you know that?” she said. “How?” She hugged him fiercely before sprinting back to the waiting ambulance.
A small crowd had gathered. People were recounting what had happened to those who had not seen it. A couple of them pointed to Evan. “You were great, man,” someone said.
“Yeah. You saved her.”
“I think she’ll be fine,” Evan said. Miranda, who had by this time walked over to him, noticed how he deflected the attention from himself. “How about you?” he asked her. “You seem pretty shaken.”
“I am,” she said. “But you’re not.”
“I’m just glad it turned out the way it did.” He bent over to pick up the flowers, which Miranda had somehow let drop. “We’ll talk soon, then?”
“Soon,” she echoed, and cradling the miraculously intact daffodils, turned and headed back to her apartment. Whatever errands she had planned could wait; right now, she had an urgent need to get home. Meeting Evan had confused her. He was brave, modest, and heroic in a crisis. And before that, he’d been a lively and an interesting enough coffee date. He was gallant; that’s what he was. But none of this added up to the mysterious alchemy of desire. He’d be a great friend, Miranda decided. Someone to talk to, to rely on. Maybe that’s the way this could play out.
Once back at her brownstone, she saw that the mail was neatly gathered and left on the table in the front hall; Mrs. Castiglione did this without fail every day. Miranda sifted through the small pile: bill, Victoria’s Secret catalog, and a credit card offer. There, at the very bottom, was what she had been alternately waiting for and dreading: the letter from the Administration for Children’s Services.
All thoughts of Evan and his rightness/not rightness were immediately driven out by the faint roaring in her ears. Was she hearing the rush of her own blood? For the second time, the daffodils slipped from her grasp. They fell to the floor, and the rubber band holding them together snapped, strewing a cascade of bright yellow flowers all over the carpet. But Miranda barely registered their presence; she was focused entirely on the letter, whose envelope she tore in her haste to open it. We are very pleased to tell you that you have been approved. . . . She didn’t read any more. She didn’t need to. The sound in her ears had turned to a jubilant cheer. The baby—her baby—was coming home.
Still, when Evan called two days later, Miranda agreed to go out with him again. They met at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; there was a Charlie Chaplin festival in progress and they were going to see City Lights. Miranda was glad he’d suggested it. Charlie Chaplin was a favorite of hers, and apparently of his too. They sat very quietly in the theater, not touching or looking at each other—a good sign in Miranda’s view. She could not abide people who talked or made any noise during a film—she was happy to spend an hour dissecting it later, but while she was watching, she wanted to lose herself completely.
Afterward, Evan insisted on escorting her home, and they walked along Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue, which had become an interesting mix of shops, bars, and restaurants in recent years. When they reached a café called the Chocolate Room, he turned to her. “Want to stop?”
“For chocolate? Always.”
Sitting at the round, marble-topped table over chocolate fondue, she told him about the baby who would soon be coming to live with her. He seemed really excited for her. Nice. A lot of men would have gone running for the hills at this point. Not Evan. “I want to meet her,” he said.
“I’d like that,” said Miranda. But because she didn’t want to monopolize the conversation, she switched gears. “When did you discover Chaplin?”
“In high school. The Gold Rush was the first silent film I’d ever seen.” He dipped a piece of pound cake into the dark, molten chocolate and then popped it in his mouth. “How about you?”
“I was ten. My father loved old movies, and we used to go to see them together.”
“Did your mom go too?”
Miranda shook her head. “We did a lot of things without her. She always seemed kind of unhappy with my dad, especially after we left the city.”
“Did he treat her badly or something?”
“Not from what I could tell.” Miranda speared a hunk of pineapple with her fork and held it above the chocolate. “But it was always about his job—he was a lawyer—and it was a point of pride with him that his wife didn’t have to work, which was sort of ironic because my mother really would have preferred working.”
“They sound kind of mismatched in that way.”
“I suppose. There were some good times too. But I think he turned to me more, and then she resented that. . . .” She helped herself to another hunk of pineapple. “How about your parents?”
“They squabbled a lot but stuck together. Now they’re out in Arizona. My mom doesn’t much like it there, but it was my father’s dream.”
“Kind of like my mom in Larchmont. My father loved everything about it—his own house, a lawn, a backyard, eventually a pool. And my mom wanted none of it. She just saw it as oppressive; she never stopped talking about the apartment on West End Avenue where we used to live and how she wished we hadn’t left. Suburbia was exile for her. Punishment even.”
“Do you think boomer parents were happier or unhappier than their own parents?”
“That’s hard to say. Maybe they expected more and so they were less satisfied with what they ended up with. My grandmother told me that she didn’t love my grandfather when she married him but that she learned to love him. And she really did; they were very content.”
“And how about you? Do you believe in love at first sight?”
Miranda thought about her first meeting with Luke, at a party, and yes, she’d been immediately and powerfully drawn to him. She remembered their first kiss, shared that same night on the terrace where he’d stepped out to smoke, and then realized Evan was still waiting for an answer. “I’d like to. But that kind of fireworks? They don’t always last. Maybe the incremental approach is better.”
Evan seemed to like that, because he smiled and impaled the last piece of fruit—a strawberry—on the plate, dipped it in the chocolate, and held out the fork so she could eat it. She leaned in and took a bite. But the strawberry was big and dropped off the fork, onto her mint green sweater—where it left a dark smear of chocolate—and landed on her plate. Miranda would have felt like a fool if Evan hadn’t neatly speared it again and offered it to her. “Can’t have you losing your berries,” he said.
“Definitely not.” She dabbed at her sweater with a wet napkin. She liked talking to Evan. Their conversation had an appealing reciprocity and elasticity; it was not exclusively about him.
When the check came, he insisted on paying it. And when his arm went casually around her shoulder on the walk back to her house, she welcomed its presence.
“That was fun,” she said in front of the stoop. “Let’s do it again soon.”
“I’d really like that.” He leaned down to cup her face in his two hands, and she stood on tiptoe for the kiss—very light, very sweet—that felt like the most natural move.
FIVE
“Do you have enough diapers? Formula? Baby wipes?” Bea asked.
“I’m set on supplies,” said Miranda. She patted the brand-new, quilted diaper bag that sat on her lap. “I’ve got two bottles in here—formula and sterilized water—and diapers, wipes, ointment, and a changing pad.”
“It sounds like you’ve thought of everything,” Bea said. They were on their way to pick up the baby; Bea, who owned a car, had offered to drive Miranda to the foster home where she had been placed until Miranda had been approved.
“Everything except what it’s going to feel like when we’re alone together for the first time. When it’s just the two of us and
she’s really mine. I kept trying to imagine it, but I can’t.” She had just started her vacation, so at least she would have a chance to bond with the baby before she turned her over to the nanny.
“You’ll be great,” Bea said. “I know you will.” She rested her hands on the wheel. Traffic on Eastern Parkway was stalled, and they weren’t going anywhere for a while.
“Thanks for driving me,” Miranda said; she’d said it before, but she thought it was worth repeating.
“You know I’m happy to do it.”
They were quiet. Miranda wondered what, if anything, Bea had told Courtney and Lauren about this expedition. She was not speaking to either of them at the moment; in their last conversation, Courtney had said she was “too busy planning her wedding” to deal with Miranda’s Sturm und Drang. But that was okay—Miranda did not want to deal with the bridezilla that seemed to have swallowed Courtney whole, so she supposed that made them even. Lauren was much more apologetic, but she too confessed that she had serious doubts about what Miranda was doing; Miranda resented her for siding with Courtney behind her back instead of being honest at the outset. It was all so junior high school, but Miranda couldn’t help herself—she was just that vulnerable. This left her with Bea, who was staring at the back of the large truck in front of them as if the force of her gaze could make it move.
When the light finally changed and the truck veered off in a different direction, they continued on until they reached the address in Crown Heights. Bea waited in the car rather than try to find a parking space, and since Miranda had already filled out the paperwork the day before, all she had to do was go up to the apartment—402, she had it memorized—to fetch the baby.
“She’s had breakfast and is just waking up from her nap,” said Mrs. Johnson, ushering her into the small but immaculate apartment. “I’ll just go get her for you.” Miranda nodded and looked around. The walls and all the surfaces were covered or crammed with framed photos of children at every stage of development: toddlers holding balloons and teddy bears nestled against grinning teens holding basketballs and diplomas. Surely all these children couldn’t belong to Mrs. Johnson.
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