“Yes,” Jane said. “Vanilla.” She lost her place and ran her finger down the page, trying to find it.
“Mama, I like vanilla cake,” Maisie said. “I know you do,” Jane said. “So do I.”
“I like all kinds of cake,” Maisie said.
An entry caught Jane’s eye:
Before Katya was born, I longed for her arrival the way a child longs for a lovely toy. I couldn’t imagine how she would transform my life any more than a creeping caterpillar can imagine what it is like to be a butterfly—soaring over the emerald fields, but battered and sent tumbling by every breeze.
“Mama!” Maisie said.
“Maisie!” Jane said. “You play with your toys! Mommy’s trying to read.”
“No!” Maisie said. “No, no read!” She shook her head, making her curls fly.
“Yes,” Jane said. “Mommy has to get a little work done. Then we’ll have lunch.”
“I want lunch now!” Maisie said.
“Soon,” Jane said. “It’s almost lunchtime.”
“Now!” Maisie yelled. “I hungry now!”
Jane took a deep breath. She looked at Maisie clutching the plastic bride in her hand. She shut the book with a slam.
“I’m hungwy!” Maisie cried. “I need vanilla cake! Wight now!”
“Maisie!” Jane said sternly.
“You never gimme vanilla cake!” Maisie said, starting to cry. “Only appa-sauce!” Her articulation dissolved along with her self-control. Jane found she could easily picture her at eight or twelve or fifteen, a big girl with a wild bramble bush of hair, wailing inconsolably for attention, or cake, or whatever sweetness her parents were denying her then.
She picked Maisie up and bounced her against her shoulder. There was some candy someone had given her in the top drawer of her desk. “Maisie,” she said, “do you want some chocolate?”
Maisie stopped crying and looked at her mother. She nodded.
Jane set Maisie down in her desk chair and opened the drawer. Out in the hall, she could hear footsteps. Then came the arthritic scratching and rattling of Sigelman trying to get his key in the lock.
“Fucking door,” she heard him mutter. “Goddamn fucking hands!” Then he poked his head into Jane’s office. “Oh-ho,” he said. “Who have we here?” He looked at Maisie sitting in the desk chair. “That’s your daughter, eh, Levitsky? She looks good enough to eat.” Stout and stooped, he made Jane think of Rumpelstiltskin.
“That’s Maisie,” she said, thinking of the miller’s daughter trading her firstborn child for the magic of straw spun into gold.
“Hi, Maisie.” Sigelman waved his thick fingers at her.
Maisie looked at Sigelman. “I got a chocolate bar!” she said.
Sigelman laughed.
“Want some?” Maisie held out the gooey mess.
“That’s all right,” Sigelman said. “You go ahead.”
“Okay,” Maisie said.
“So,” Sigelman said to Jane, “you survived your first semester. Congratulations.”
“Did I survive it?” Jane said. “Maybe I’m just a ghost of myself.”
“Oh, come on—it wasn’t that bad,” he said. “It’s not that hard, really. Teaching.”
“I guess not,” Jane said. “If you don’t care very much.”
He liked that. “You’ve discovered the secret!” he said. “And why should you care? The students don’t. I hope you’re doing some real work over the break.”
“Yum-yum,” Maisie said, trying to make eye contact with Sigelman again. “Yummy chocolate.”
“I was going to go down to the Newberry,” Jane said, “but my babysitter quit.”
“Want some?” Maisie offered again, holding out the bar as far as she could toward Sigelman.
“I was going to ask you,” he said, ignoring both Maisie’s offer and Jane’s mention of Elise, “if you saw that Leighton is giving the keynote at AATSEEL. Who picked him, that’s what I want to know? That chicken kisser was a student here in the seventies, and even then he didn’t know his ass from a groundhog’s hole.”
“She didn’t even give any notice,” Jane said. “And Billy’s working, and you would not believe some of things I’ve seen this week at various centers. The misbehavior chart!”
“He no want,” Maisie told her mother. “No want chocolate.”
“There aren’t any standards anymore,” Sigelman said. “For example, when’s the last time you heard of a paper getting rejected by JSSL?”
“Who sends their kids to those places?” Jane said. “It’s utterly beyond me!”
“Jane,” Sigelman said in a colder tone. “If you insist on talking to me about your child-care problems, I’ll be forced to tell you about my hemorrhoids.”
Jane stopped short. She had heard him use that tone before, but never with her. She looked down at Maisie and saw that she had gotten chocolate all over her face, in her hair, and on the edge of the desk.
“All for me!” Maisie said, bouncing in her chair.
“And I wouldn’t blab it around the department, either,” he went on, turning to go. “It doesn’t present you in the most professional light.” He banged the door shut behind him.
“Too loud,” said Maisie, who was frequently reminded not to slam doors.
…
That night at dinner, Billy said, “I asked around at McKinley. Jenny Lawrence sends her daughter to a family day care she likes, and she says there’s an opening.”
“I don’t know,” Jane said. After a full day of trying to work with Maisie around, she was feeling desperate, but she didn’t like what she’d heard about family day cares. “Do you know what the ratios are in those places? I think it’s eight to one. And there’s no supervision. I mean, if something—goes on—there’s no one there to see.” She imagined hitting, yelling, sexual abuse. You were a fool if you pretended these things didn’t happen.
“There’s no supervision at home, either,” Billy said. “With a babysitter. And Jenny Lawrence says this woman only takes six kids. Besides, what else are we going to do?”
Jane thought of what Sigelman had said: It doesn’t present you in the most professional light. “Fine,” she said at last. “Only you go visit this one.”
Billy went the following day on his lunch hour, reported back by phone from his office that it fit the bill. Clean, breakfast and snack provided. Only five children, as promised—Maisie would make six. The provider, Mrs. Vlajic, was cheerful, friendly, enthusiastic.
Jane agreed, but she found she did not trust Billy’s judgment, though he would have trusted hers as a matter of course.
Chapter Six
MRS. VLAJIC lived in a little one-story house in an old manufacturing neighborhood near the railroad tracks. The front walk was cleared of snow and ice, and the stoop was swept. Around the back of the house, Jane could see a blue toddler slide and a plastic turtle sandbox half buried under snow.
It was only just after eight, but three other children were already there. A boy and a girl, preschoolers, sat on the floor in front of a television watching Barney. An infant dozed in a bouncy seat, its head tilted at an uncomfortable-looking angle. The house was clean and spare, if somewhat dark, with fake wood paneling, small windows, and dull mushroom-colored carpeting that had seen better days. It smelled of peanut butter and disinfectant.
“I’m Jane Levitsky,” Jane said. “This is Maisie. You met my husband, Billy Shaw.”
“Of course!” Mrs. Vlajic was a short, stocky woman in her forties with thin hair pulled back in a ponytail and an apron over her dress. When she smiled, she showed small discolored teeth. “I was just getting breakfast.” Jane followed her back into the kitchen. Aqua-green plastic bowls were ranged on a tray with a box of off-brand sugar-coated flakes, a plate of banana slices, and a carton of milk.
“The kids like to eat this,” Mrs. Vlajic said. “Kids always eat good for Mrs. Vlajic.” She spoke English with a strong accent that was superficially like Russian, but with di
stinctly different vowel sounds. She was a Slav of some sort—possibly Serbian—but Jane had never paid much attention to the southern Slavic languages. Billy had thought the fact that Mrs. Vlajic was Slavic would make Jane disposed to like her, but so far Jane didn’t like her.
Still, you couldn’t judge an entire day care on what was served for breakfast. Jane looked around the kitchen. Beige, aging appliances. Speckled linoleum. Baby locks on the cabinets. Decals of Donald Duck. It was spotless.
“I have two cribs here.” Mrs. Vlajic pointed to a door. “For the babies. Older kids sleep on mats. I wash sheets every day!”
“Sometimes Maisie won’t nap,” Jane said, finding herself choosing small words and speaking slowly. “Sometimes she’s too excited. She wants to play.”
“All my kids nap,” Mrs. Vlajic said. “I tell them they need to rest to grow strong.”
Maisie clung to Jane’s neck, her brown eyes fixed warily on Mrs. Vlajic.
“She’s never been in a day care with other kids. It may take her a while to get used to being here,” Jane said. Surely Maisie could sense Jane’s horror. She put her hand on her daughter’s back and tried to exude confidence.
Mrs. Vlajic poured cereal into the bowls. She clattered spoons onto a tray. “She’ll be okay.” She smiled at Jane. “You don’t have to worry. Baby will be fine with Mrs. Vlajic! I’ve had lots of babies here in this house, happy babies.” She picked up the tray and walked back into the front room, her step lively.
Jane followed. Mrs. Vlajic hadn’t said Maisie’s name yet, and Jane wondered whether she remembered it.
The two preschoolers looked up from the TV as breakfast was delivered. “Yum,” said the girl. “Frosted flakes!”
“I already had breakfast at home,” said the boy, a skinny, dark-haired kid with a worried face.
“You eat again for Mrs. Vlajic,” Mrs. Vlajic told him brightly. “You need food to grow up big and strong!” She set bowls on the floor in front of the children, leaving the TV on.
“Are these all the toys?” Jane asked, looking at the few worn stuffed animals, the jack-in-the-box, the plastic train.
“More in the closet.” Mrs. Vlajic indicated a door in the corner. “We get out later.”
Jane nodded. She knew she was a snob. There were certain things she liked, certain cultures in which she felt at home. Who was to say this wasn’t a fine place? A warm, caring, happy place where children were well taken care of. Billy thought it was. Billy, who was less hampered by academic blinders, who was a more generous person. Who liked people more than she did.
Mrs. Vlajic stirred cereal around in a bowl for Maisie, pulled a bib out of her apron pocket, and came forward to pull it over Maisie’s head. Maisie pushed the bib away.
“Don’t be like that!” Mrs. Vlajic exclaimed. “We have fun here! You come to Mrs. Vlajic.” She held out her arms, but Maisie, who had been told she was going to a new place to play while Mommy and Daddy worked, buried her head in Jane’s neck and held on.
“Mommy has to go,” Jane said. She felt sick.
“Come on, baby,” Mrs. Vlajic said cheerily. “Do you like frosted flakes? Do you like Baby Bop?”
The place was clean, and Mrs. Vlajic was energetic and cheerful. She waited with her arms out. A clock ticked on the wall. Jane had half an hour to get to campus, park her car, hike up to her office, find her notes.
“You’ll be fine, Maisie,” she said, brightly, horribly, hypocritically, into Maisie’s lovely ear. She kissed her and brought her over to Mrs. Vlajic. Maisie screamed. Mrs. Vlajic held Maisie tight while Jane peeled off her daughter’s arms. Maisie grabbed with desperate fingers—Jane’s shoulder, her shirt, her hair. The two preschoolers watched, distracted from the television. The infant startled and woke up, looking around in a dazed way, and began to hiccup. “Mama!” Maisie wailed, drowning out Barney’s kids singing “This Old Man.” “Mamamamaaa!”
Jane scuttled out the door. Behind her she could hear the sitter’s voice: “Baby will have a good time! Don’t worry!” Jane started the car, drove half a mile, and then pulled over to the side of the road and sobbed.
* * *
An hour later, standing at the lectern in the hot classroom under the lights, her eyes puffy, her face pale and strained, Jane’s mind shut down right in the middle of the lecture. In front of her, forty students shifted in their auditorium seats, rattling papers, yawning, sipping take-out coffee. She had a note to talk about issues of translation in Pushkin’s classic novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. She stood silently before them with her mouth open, waiting for the words to come.
The silence stretched itself out. It spun a cocoon around the classroom, thick and cottony. Someone sighed. Jane shifted her weight to the other foot. Could Maisie still be crying? In her mind she saw the paneled room, the carpeting, the television.
In the front row, a student in a green-and-gold Packers jacket cleared his throat loudly, and suddenly Jane was back in the room, talking. She skipped translation and plunged straight into Pushkin’s death in a duel on a January day in 1837. Blood on the snow.
When he died, Pushkin had been thirty-eight years old, not so much older than Jane was now. But oh, how much he had done!
* * *
After lunch Felicia came into Jane’s office and pushed a book across her desk. “It’s an encyclopedia of snakes,” she said. “I thought I’d try to figure out what kind the Snake Woman was carrying.”
Something was wrong with the heat in the building. It never seemed to switch off. Jane was sweating in her wool turtleneck, but Felicia kept her big army surplus jacket on, bell-bottoms and scuffed Doc Martens showing underneath.
“What makes you think they were some particular kind of snake?” Jane asked. She enjoyed the sessions with Felicia, but lately she had begun to suspect that provocative ideas were more interesting to her advisee than the truth. “I would have assumed they were an imaginary amalgam. Ur-snakes. Chudo-Yudo.” Chudo-Yudo was a monster-dragon of Russian folktale, a skin-shedder.
“Possibly,” Felicia said. She wore her hair pulled back in a braid, and you could see her face better than you usually could—long nose, green eyes, hardly any cheekbones to speak of. She wasn’t pretty, it was the hair that fooled you: red-gold curls halfway down her back. “But the descriptions are so particular and detailed.”
“You’re supposed to be focusing on the lady, not the snakes,” Jane said mildly.
“I don’t know that you can separate them,” Felicia countered. “The Snake Woman is a witch figure, a ved’ma, a Baba Yaga. Baba Yaga is associated with snakes.”
“Yes. But again we’re talking about mythological snakes. Dragons, really.”
“Karkov takes the mythological motifs and puts them into naturalistic settings.”
Something strange was happening to Felicia’s coat. The material along her shoulders seemed to shift, bunching itself up, rising and falling in a long undulation. Then a blunt black-and-white head emerged from Felicia’s sleeve.
“Don’t you ever leave that thing at home?” Jane asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
The forked tongue flicked. The mouth seemed to sneer at Jane, its white lips drawn back. The thick body glided out onto Felicia’s knee until about three feet of it was showing, the rest still hidden in the big, bulky olive-green sleeve. The snake stopped with its head raised, posed like pictures Jane had seen of cobras. It looked as though it was watching her.
“What’s it doing?” she asked.
“She’s okay,” Felicia said. “She likes to see where she is sometimes.”
“What’s wrong with just leaving her at home in her cage?” Was Felicia trying to be the Snake Woman?
Felicia smiled. “It’s really quite a trip,” she said. “Walking around, going to class, going to the library, with this big python inside my jacket. And nobody knows!”
“What if it escapes?” Jane could easily imagine it gliding down to the floor and across the room, slipping behind the bookcase or into
the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.
“Actually,” Felicia said, “she did get out last week. Just briefly. She pushed the top off, but I’ve gotten stronger latches now.”
“My god!” Jane stared at the thick, ugly body of the python, the bulging eyes with their vertical slits. “How did you find her?”
“She hadn’t gone far. She’d found the radiator and curled up next to it. It was no big deal.” Felicia shifted and the snake began to retract itself upward, back inside her sleeve. Again the heavy material of the coat bunched across Felicia’s shoulders.
“What about your roommate?” Jane said. “Did you tell her?”
A flicker of uncertainty crossed Felicia’s face. “She was there,” she said. “The radiator was in her room, actually.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t move out!” Jane said.
Felicia shrugged. “The lease is in her name,” she said.
The whole situation was appalling, and Jane didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It seemed inevitable to her that it would happen again, stronger latches or no. How much control could a young woman exercise over a full-grown python? “Do you have any new work to show me?” she said, her voice harsh—not her own voice, but still familiar, somehow.
“Not exactly,” Felicia said.
“Why not? What have you been doing with your time?”
Felicia just looked at her, as though to say that Jane didn’t really want to know.
“Friday,” Jane said, still in the voice that wasn’t hers. But she recognized it now: it was Shombauer’s voice.
…
Billy and Maisie were already home when Jane got there. Maisie was watching television while Billy got dinner ready. She sat in a corner of the couch holding her stuffed duck, her face peaceful in the flickering light, one sock on and the other lying on the floor. Jane dropped her things and picked Maisie up, held her tightly. “I missed you!” Jane said. “How was your day? Did you have a good time?”
Maisie moved her head so she could still see the television. “Ssh, Mommy,” she said, putting a finger gently against Jane’s lips. “I’m watching dis.”
Lady of the Snakes Page 9
