by Gin Phillips
She’d nearly finished unloading the top rack of the dishwasher when someone knocked on the kitchen door. She flinched hard enough that she banged her hand against the edge of the counter.
“Damn it,” she hissed, hopping and flapping, and, in general, acting like a loon in the middle of her own kitchen.
Another knock, softer this time.
Evan was having dinner tonight with a new heart specialist at the hospital, but Lucia was not alone: Moxie came galloping down the hallway, taking the corner so fast she spun out and smacked her flank against the sofa. She hurled herself toward the door.
Lucia stared at her hand. She thought it might swell. It had been two weeks since the car incident, and still every little noise. She kept jumping at the sound of a drawer closing. She caught herself looking left, right, and then left again as she stepped into hallways, like some child who’d barely learned to cross the street. At night, she’d jolt awake when the wind shook the windowpanes. She hated the fear, always ready to break the surface. Break the skin. Bleed out of her.
This was not who she was.
She would not feel this.
A third knock at the door, so whoever it was had not been scared away by the dog. Moxie was on her hind legs, slavering, and if you didn’t know her, she would seem threatening. From her angle in the kitchen, Lucia could see nothing through the glass. Whoever it was had stepped out of view. It was still light outside.
Lucia glanced at the knife block. She pressed her face to one of the windowpanes in the door and glanced into the carport.
She caught a swathe of red hair and a bare arm with multicolored bracelets. Shoving Moxie back with one knee, she unlocked the door, and the moment she pushed it open the girl came forward, beaming at her.
“Rachel?” Lucia said.
“Hi,” said the girl, with a wave of her fingers. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I wasn’t positive it was you, and I just thought I’d see. But if it’s a bad time . . .”
“How in the world—?”
A satisfied look. A swish of ponytail.
“You said you lived near Bankhead,” the girl said. “So I was at my aunt’s after school, and I looked you up in the phone book. It turned out there aren’t too many Gilberts. There was no Bartholomew and no Evan, but then I saw the E. B., and I figured that must be him. So I walked.”
“You walked here? Did you tell someone you were coming?”
“Nah,” Rachel said. “Aunt Molly’s gone to Hancock’s for thread. We won’t eat supper until later. I had some time.”
Lucia realized she was staring over the girl’s shoulder, past the flat stretch of lawn, half expecting a car to come screeching into the driveway. Surely a girl this young could not just wander off without someone coming to look for her?
“You’re at a stranger’s house,” she said. “Won’t your mother or your aunt be worried that—?”
“You’re not a stranger,” said Rachel.
Lucia could not think of how to approach the potential impropriety of this. It seemed possible that the girl’s paper-doll mother—who had never followed up on their office meeting—might think that Lucia had invited Rachel, and that would seem extremely unprofessional. She should have thought about this possibility before she hinted at her address.
No—she should not have thought of it. There had been no reason to believe this girl would show up on her doorstep. And yet here Rachel was, one foot propped on the literal doorstep. Her hair was sweaty at her temples, and the damp patches made Lucia remember slicking back her own ponytail, the tree bark hot against her fingers as she climbed.
The girl rocked from one foot to another.
“Would you like to come in?” Lucia asked at last.
Rachel grinned. “Thank you,” she said, stepping carefully—almost daintily—inside as Lucia took a step backward.
“Have a seat,” Lucia said, motioning toward the sofa, which was half covered by the newspaper and her suit jacket. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lucia paused. What was there to drink?
“I have Tab,” she said. “And ginger ale and sweet tea.”
“I’ve never had a ginger ale. Can I try that?”
Lucia stepped to the refrigerator, and when she turned back with the soft drink, Rachel was still standing, one hand hovering over the piece of driftwood that ran the length of the bookshelf. She reached for the milk-glass chicken, tweaking its red comb, then yanking her hand away when the glass jangled.
“You’re fine,” Lucia said, holding out the ginger ale. “My mother carried that across the country during World War Two. It’s not that delicate.”
Rachel moved to the watercolor of the lighthouse, the great pale tower of it against a blue-black sky, and Lucia could still see Evan standing in the art gallery in Nantucket, saying, Do you ever fantasize about living in a lighthouse?
Rachel finally reached for the glass. Lucia waved a hand toward the sofa again. The girl sat—again, carefully—against the sofa arm, leaving the wide expanse of two other sofa cushions completely untouched. It was almost mathematical, the way she kept her leg from straying over the edge of her own cushion. Her feet were flat on the floor, knees properly together.
“This is really good,” Rachel said, sipping. “Thank you.”
Lucia sat down, occupying two couch cushions. She tucked her bare feet under her. “Do you go to your aunt’s every afternoon?”
“Most of them. She picks me up from school.”
“Your mom’s sister?”
“Yeah. This afternoon she was working on Easter stuff. She sews these little felt eggs, and she puts a quarter inside each one. She brings them to the church egg hunt. They’re cute.”
Rachel glanced at the end table and then rested the glass of ginger ale on her thigh.
“There are coasters,” Lucia said. “On the other side of the lamp.”
“Oh,” said Rachel. She lifted the glass, leaving a wet circle on her bare legs. She found the coasters. “I like your hair like that.”
“Thank you.”
“What do you call it?”
“A twist, I suppose,” Lucia said, rejecting the word “chignon,” which sounded pretentious in the best of circumstances.
“I might get mine done next week,” Rachel said. “For the prom.”
“How old are you?”
“I turn fourteen in May.”
“Junior high has a prom?”
“Ours does.”
“You have a boyfriend?”
“No. Just a guy, Reggie, who thinks—” She waved off Reggie, whatever he thought. “But Mom said that maybe the lady who does her hair could fix mine, but we’re not sure how expensive it would be, and maybe she has too many clients already, Mom says, or no room in her schedule. So Mom’s friend Helen can also braid, and I could just have Helen do a French braid. But I’d like it to be up, you know? Something more unusual than a braid.”
“The prom is next week?”
“Friday.”
“Where does your mother get her hair done?”
“Gayfers,” said Rachel. “Why?”
“What’s her hairdresser’s name?”
“Mildred?”
“Why don’t we check?”
Lucia got up and dug the phone book out of the kitchen drawer. Gayfers department store was easy enough to find: she ran a finger down the list of departments until she hit “salon,” and she called the number and asked the relevant questions.
“She’ll do any kind of updo,” Lucia said, hanging up. “Whatever you like. It’s twenty dollars. They said usually late afternoons aren’t too busy.”
The girl was staring. Lucia wondered if she’d crossed some line.
“Thank you,” Rachel said, unmoving.
“I could mak
e you an appointment,” Lucia said slowly, “but I imagine you’ll need to schedule it for when your mother is free to drive you.”
Rachel picked up her ginger ale. The coaster stuck to the bottom of the glass before it clattered to the table. She slapped her hand over it, quieting it. “On Aunt Molly’s last birthday, Mom bought her coasters with monkeys on them. And a monkey-shaped candle and a monkey apron. And monkey socks.”
Lucia sat down again. She detested monkeys viscerally. She had never been able to make it through Planet of the Apes.
“So your aunt likes monkeys?” she asked.
“No. But Mom decided that Aunt Molly needed a hobby. She thought, like, hey, collecting monkeys would be good. So she bought up all the monkey stuff she could find, which is more than you’d think.”
“Does your mother collect things?”
“She likes knickknacks. Dad calls them that. Like Fenton glass and china figurines. Hummel, maybe? Little, pretty, breakable things. She likes finding them. It’s more like hunting than collecting.”
Lucia laughed. She was funny, this girl, now that she’d gotten comfortable. Although was it comfort? There was a certain stagecraft to her patter, not that Lucia begrudged a little acting. It was the next best thing to confidence. Practically the same thing.
“Is your father still—?” she started.
“He has an apartment right now,” Rachel said. “I go over there on weekends. Sometimes he gets me for supper on a school night. So where does your husband work?”
Lucia mentioned Baptist Hospital, and as she started explaining the role of the marketing department, it occurred to her that she should omit the specifics. If she dropped enough clues, Rachel might show up at Evan’s door. It would involve crossing the Southern Bypass, granted, but Lucia wasn’t sure the girl would be deterred by six lanes of traffic.
V.
Two weeks later, Lucia came home and found a blue-and-green egg made of felt on her doorstep. It had a quarter inside.
Two weeks after that, she found a flamingo pen—the bird bobbing on a spring—propped against the door. It matched her key chain. It was three months, though, before Rachel arrived again in person. When Lucia opened the door, her hand tight around Moxie’s collar, the girl held out a set of bacon-shaped stickers that said I bring home the bacon.
Lucia laughed. “You don’t need to bring me anything. I appreciated the flamingo, too, but you don’t have to get me gifts.”
“It’s just something silly,” Rachel said.
She wasn’t looking at Lucia, though—she was staring over Lucia’s left shoulder, and Lucia didn’t have to look behind her to know why.
“Come in,” she said. “You can meet my husband. Evan, this is Rachel.”
There was a moment when they stood there looking at each other—Evan by the countertop with a pair of scissors in one hand and a package of 9-volt batteries in the other, Rachel in the shadows of the carport. Lucia watched Rachel watching Evan. She assumed her husband would see the girl much as she did—pretty in the way of teenage girls, slightly unwieldy, shorts too short—but she wondered how Rachel saw her husband. How did he rank by thirteen-year-old—by now, probably fourteen-year-old—standards? Was he what the girl had expected? Would the glasses count against him?
“I’ve heard all about you, Rachel,” Evan said.
He set down the scissors and held out a hand. Rachel nearly lunged for it across the doorstep. “I’ve been wanting to meet you,” she said, giving a solid shake. “May I call you Bard?”
He smiled. “You may. Are you coming inside?”
Of course she was. She cheerfully accepted the offer of a ginger ale, and she once again took the circuitous route to the sofa. She stopped at the driftwood, then peered around the edge of the bookshelves.
“It’s a mandolin,” Evan said, nodding at the instrument that hung on the wall. He eased into his armchair, still struggling to open the batteries.
“The guitar?” said Rachel.
“It’s not a guitar,” he said. “It’s a mandolin.”
“I gave it to him for his birthday a few years ago,” said Lucia, handing over a cold can of ginger ale.
Rachel laughed and asked Evan, “Do you play the mandolin?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
“You could,” said Lucia.
“I never gave you any reason to believe that I would like to play the mandolin.”
“I don’t know why you wouldn’t,” she said to him, aware that they were hamming it up a bit. She sat down, her armchair facing Evan’s, the sofa to her right.
“A mandolin,” he said.
“So,” said Rachel, dropping onto the sofa. Her head turned back and forth between them. “Was that the weirdest gift that Lucia ever gave you?”
She was clearly chumming the water.
“She gave me a mushroom garden,” Evan said. “You were supposed to plant them all in a box and harvest them under the moon.”
Rachel laughed again. Or maybe she had never quite stopped laughing. Her fingertips dented the metal of her soda can. An off-key percussion.
“It was whimsical,” said Lucia.
“I don’t care for mushrooms,” said Evan.
“You didn’t have to eat them.”
“I don’t like to envision them.”
“Envision,” echoed Rachel softly. “I got a car hammer last Christmas.”
“Is there such a thing?” Lucia wondered.
Rachel nodded. She glanced at Moxie, who was licking her butt next to Evan’s chair. “Aunt Molly gave one to me and one to my mom. It’s a little hammer that fits in your glove compartment so if your car goes off a bridge, you can break the windows.”
“Why do you need your own hammer?” Evan asked. “You can’t drive.”
“So Mom and me can break the windows at the same time,” Rachel said. “Once you break the glass, the water would flood in right away, so you’d need to get out fast.”
“Jesus,” Evan said.
“She also gave me this necklace that has, like, a vial hanging on it, and she thought I could fill it up with Campho-Phenique in case of an accident. I think she got nervous after I went to the lake with Tina—she’s my best friend—and some guy let me drive his four-wheeler, only I’d never driven one before and I fell off and banged my head and talked crazy for a few hours, and Mom was furious and said if I had permanent damage she would sue that guy.”
Lucia did not want to interrupt by pointing out that a vial full of antiseptic would not help a concussion. Or that unless a child’s father was dead, imprisoned, or shut away in an insane asylum, a mother in Alabama had no legal right to sue over her child’s injuries.
“I could put perfume in the vial, too,” Rachel added. “Aunt Molly said that would be smart since I’m at the age when body odor starts. So that’s good to know.”
Lucia glanced at Evan, who had let his head fall into his hands. His shoulders shook. Outside, the wind chimes played their tune.
When Rachel left, the two of them stood under the carport and watched her cross the street, hopping over the curb with more clearance than necessary.
“I see what you mean,” Evan said.
“I knew you would.”
“Does she make you a little more ready to have kids?” he asked.
Lucia leaned against him, her fingers finding the rough edges of his unbuttoned sleeve. She liked this shirt, with its stripes the color of coffee and toast. She thought of childhood declarations of “best friends.” It was the same thing that drove marriage, she supposed. The beauty of pairs. Of fitting flush together, gapless.
“Maybe,” she said.
VI.
It was still a shock how early night fell in November. Winding through the familiar streets, Lucia passed the elementary school playground, where two boys were scaling the b
ars of a metal dome. She felt a flash of disapproval that they were wandering around alone after dark, but then she saw a woman—their mother, she assumed—standing by the fence, and she remembered that it was barely after 5:00 p.m.
She glanced back at the boys in the rearview mirror as one of them made it to the top of the dome, lifting his arms like Rocky.
Evan had liked the idea of living so close to a school.
As she turned onto her street, she recognized the light blue Chevy parked by the curb in front of her house. Rachel’s mother had started chauffeuring her daughter once she’d realized she was sneaking over. The woman’s friendliness had surprised Lucia. Months after her original appointment, Margaret had called the office to say she would like to start the divorce process. She’d asked for a meeting and Lucia had agreed to it, and then Margaret had called back within a week, wavering, and asked to cancel. When she called again weeks later, Lucia told her gently that she deserved a lawyer more suited to her particular preferences. She’d found one easily enough, Rachel had reported.
Now as Lucia pulled into the driveway, Rachel opened the passenger door, waving, her hand a fan-shaped blur in the streetlamp glow. Lucia waved back, more enthusiastically than she might have expected from herself. She would not have minded a half hour to watch the news or nap on the couch.
And yet. To get that smile, merely for pulling into her own driveway.
By the time Lucia got out of the car, Margaret was standing, one elbow on her car door. She’d not only lacked resentment, she’d been effusive. Every time they met, the woman acted as if they were the sort of friends forged by slumber parties and mai tais. Her smile was as wide as her daughter’s.
It was baffling.
“She begged me to stop and see if you were home,” Margaret said, her voice low and conspiring. “We were headed to Molly’s, but I could drop her off for a little while. As rude as it is for her to impose on you like this.”
“Mom,” hissed Rachel, empty-handed for once.