by Robin Page
A woman, gray haired and stout, leans down to her, tells her not to worry.
“Hormones, child. Just hormones. That wasn’t much of a tumble.”
She remembers being stood up, dusted off, as if she were a winter coat left too long in the closet. The woman aimed her in the right direction. The baby was alive. The baby is alive.
She thinks about the box all the time now, the identity card inside, the birthmark. She is like the box: she has one small life, mysterious and separate, hidden inside.
2
SHE IS HER FATHER’S FAVORITE. HER MOTHER DOES NOT LOVE HER. SHE knows this from the time she is old enough to contemplate these things. She is a smart child, a curious girl, used to being able to work things out to a satisfactory conclusion. Because of this, her mother’s indifference to her seems surmountable. In the beginning, she tries to be the best, because she thinks it will please her. She makes straight As. She behaves. She keeps her room and bed clean and made, but none of it matters. It is as if she and her mother exist on separate planets—no butterfly effect between them. Through their bedroom door, she hears her father trying to talk her mother into loving her. She is a product; he, the market research specialist. Even as a child, Claudette knows that her mother does not love her father either.
Neither of them can move her mother to love. Her neutrality is as sure as death. She sleeps a lot. She does not have friends as other mothers do. When she wakes, she drinks until she sleeps again and stays asleep for many hours. Even as a small child, Claudette makes her own breakfast. Her father washes their clothes. A maid comes in on Wednesdays to try to make the house livable. The maid glares at her mother in her beautiful canopy bed. Claudette does not know why she does it, but she makes up excuses to protect her mother against the maid’s harsh tongue.
Claudette has many memories of her small self standing in her mother’s bedroom. The bed is antique. It is fancy, as the house is. It is meant to show how American they are, as if these things have been passed down for generations, instead of bought on weekends from flea markets and dealers. Her father has hired someone to do this, to make their home beautiful, to make it more American.
Claudette watches as her mother sleeps. Her mother’s breathing is not smooth and restful. She sputters and snores. Spit pools on her pillow and leaves the lingering smell of cherry NyQuil and Listerine. If she dares, Claudette reaches forward and gently touches the soft skin of her mother’s forearm. She doesn’t want to wake her. She just wants to touch her. She stares at her mother sleeping, a beautiful woman with dark skin. Both of her parents are dark. Claudette has the light complexion of her grandmother. At least that is what her father tells her when she asks.
If she wakes her, her mother sits up in a panic and looks around. When she sees that it is just Claudette, she sighs resolutely and rolls away from her onto her side. She tries for many minutes to fall back asleep, and if she can’t, she wakes, never looking at Claudette, and makes her way to her bedroom vanity. She sits at the vanity and stares at herself as if she thinks it is possible that a different woman might emerge from her bed after a bit of sleep. Her back is to Claudette. Claudette looks in the mirror waiting for her mother to look away from her own reflection and look back at her. She heaves the brush up from the table as if it were a very heavy thing. She brushes her thick black hair, leans her elbows on the vanity table, rests. She never looks at Claudette. It is as if Claudette were a ghost, something to look through in order to see something else. Claudette wishes for a hug. She wishes to hold her mother’s hand. She watches for these opportunities, for recognition and then joy.
Now, as an adult woman, she practices the look that she longed for in the mirror for her own baby. She is afraid she will not do it right. She knows how important it is, because she waited so long for it from her own mother. But it never came. Not even once. Claudette knows that a child cannot see itself until it has been seen by its mother.
3
IN HER TEENS, CLAUDETTE CHANGES TACK IN THE SAME WAY THAT SHE and her father change tack sailing the Charles River. She fails calculus and stays too late at parties. She has boyfriends who aren’t appropriate. Her mother does not notice any of it. Her life is in the ice she retrieves, the slide and slick of Ketel One vodka. Her father tells her she will lose her chance at Harvard if she doesn’t get it together. He says this at the kitchen table one night when he finishes in his fields. The kitchen chairs are a fine birch, spindle style. They are early American, as the canopy bed is.
Her father is a large man. When he moves in the chair, it creaks. He talks to her and as he speaks, he looks at his thick, callused hands. Dirt and earth reside in the wrinkled knuckles and life lines of the palms. She wonders if he was born that way.
He laces his hands together. A weaving, she thinks. This is the church. This is the steeple. His hands, her hands. A soft grip, the fingers wrapped about her own, the wiggling people. For her whole life, he has been the one to teach her. Still, she wants her mother. She wants a woman.
There are random memories, which crash and clang like dropped plates, of another woman, a nanny maybe, someone else whose world she was, but these memories fade and dim as the years go by. By the time her parents die, the only thing she can recall is the woman’s scent—oranges. Oiled fingers, and a bright smear of citrus along Claudette’s cheeks.
When asked about the woman, the nanny (What happened to her? Who was she?), her mother stops the conversation. She claims there was never such a woman. Claudette remembers her though, wonders if it was in that other time, the time in Africa, but the memories are uncertain. The nanny could be a dream.
Even when pressed, her mother will not talk about that other time. She cannot dip into the past of Rwanda without falling to pieces. If Claudette asks, she lifts a hand to her, blocks her from speaking, explains that she just can’t. Ask your father, she says, and then goes into her room to sleep.
Claudette supposes the final attempt for recognition from her mother is this pregnancy. Only another woman can understand. Men will never and have never been able to do this. The child in her belly is not the child of her husband, Larry. It is the product of a brief affair. No one knows this except Claudette, not the man she loves or the man who has impregnated her.
“It’s your life,” her mother says when Claudette hands her the image of the sonogram. No blankets knitted. No heirlooms passed along. “Having a child is the hardest thing you’ll ever do. I don’t know why you’d want it.”
She looks through Claudette again as she hands the digital picture back. Claudette takes it, follows her mother’s gaze out the long windows of their second floor. The night is dark and cold as it can be in the Northeast. Her students will be coming back soon. She will have to tell the dean. Her father is bent, harvesting the last bits and pieces of his crop. His is the last working farm in Newton. Soon he will turn, and condition and supplement the soil. Wealthy white people come and help with this. They pay to put their hands in the manure, to work the land. Her father laughs at them, revels in it: “Only white people do this crazy thing.”
Her father’s assessment of white people in general is that they are strange, weird birds. He and they are not the same species. When there is a serial killer, a cannibal like Jeffrey Dahmer, for example, her father looks up from the paper and says to her: A white man. Of course.
As different from them as cows are from horses. As different as Tutsi, from Twa, from Hutu, he explains to her. His accent is still strong, even though he has tried for years to lose it. Africa will not let him go.
Her father does not need to work as hard as he used to. He can watch the white people, red faced and sweating. He can collect their fees and dole out their share of organic food. But Claudette believes he cannot exist without it. He has to stay with the land. It is the womb that he came out of it—the dirt and calluses, a part of his soul. She watches her mother watching her father as he inspects something he has pulled from the ground. What does she see there in his hunched back
? It is as if she is looking to a place that she has left long, long ago. A place to which she wishes to go back. But there was nothing in Kigali. America is the land of opportunity.
Chapter Thirteen
Jocelyn
1
THEY MEET AS TENNIS LADIES DO FOR EXPENSIVE LUNCHES AND DINNERS. This time at Jacob’s Place. Inside, the restaurant is lit like a bar, but it is a restaurant, recommended by the LA Times as the new, hip place to go. Jocelyn feels beautiful, has barely been able to get out of her own condo because of her husband. Conrad almost tackles her when she leaves the bedroom. Plucks her up as she passes him, kisses her, and carries her back to where she came from. He tries to hold her down on the bed.
“This is the fee for babysitting,” he says. “I want this. Not money. How much is your daughter’s safety worth?”
“I have to go,” Jocelyn says, giggling. “She’s your daughter too.” He makes her feel happy. “You’re messing up my hair.”
“I like you all disheveled.”
She thinks briefly about staying with him, but can’t. She has committed. She hopes to see Kate. She hopes to slide into the world of her, sit by her, talk with her, touch her hand beneath the table.
She struts to the elevator, takes it down to the lobby, where the valet has brought her car. Simon is handing off his keys, just as she is receiving hers. He hugs her. They chat.
“Should we play tennis again next week?” he asks her.
“Sure,” she says. “Yes. That would be great.”
They check to make sure they have each other’s numbers.
“I’m running a bit late,” she says. A hug goodbye and she’s off.
At the restaurant, the women arrive one by one, each outdoing the other. The clothes are designer, the jewelry outrageous, the makeup perfect. She looks up when the waiter brings her drink and there is Kate. Jocelyn feels as if she is choking on the sight of her. The blonde hair is, as usual, restrained in a braided bun, but tonight she has subtle makeup on, diamond earrings. Jocelyn cannot speak to her, not even to say hello. She cannot move. She is set, immobile, like some heavy piece of furniture.
They avoid each other’s eyes, although the other women don’t notice. Kate is at the center of all of them—each of the ladies is vying to sit next to her. All are spellbound as she tells her tennis stories and drinks her drink. She recalls her days at UVA, the bitchy girls on tour.
The women ask questions, get silly. It’s the first time Jocelyn has noticed how enthralled they all are—not just her. She feels compelled to call Kate out, but keeps quiet. The conversation circles and returns, always back to Kate. Kate, like a queen, holds court.
As the dinner conversation dies down, and the end of the night is pending, Jocelyn feels her heart beating. Will they speak at all? Has she been thinking about her? They haven’t seen one another intimately since the car. Cash is being passed around, math problems are being worked through. And then they are up, most of them gone, just three of them remaining, finishing up cocktails.
“Bye then,” Jocelyn says to the table, draining her drink.
“I’ll walk out with you,” Kate says.
There is a flicker, a light in her eyes. Jocelyn is aware of her shortened breath.
“I’m going to the restroom,” Theresa says. “Don’t wait. I valeted. I’ll see you guys tomorrow at drill. Practice makes perfect.”
She and Kate walk out together. Jocelyn shivers. It is surprisingly chilly with the wind, which is not uncommon for the Palisades because of the beach, but they are inland, the Valley, where it is almost always warm.
Jocelyn has parked around the corner from the restaurant. She is glad that she is farther away.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” Kate says.
“Okay,” Jocelyn says, feeling shy. She turns to look back at the restaurant. Theresa is nowhere to be seen.
By the time they get to her car, Jocelyn’s hands are ice cold. She puts her hands under her cashmere poncho and leans back against the driver’s side door.
“I’ll see you then,” Kate says. “I’m parked the other way.” She points as if Jocelyn can follow it like a map.
“Okay,” Jocelyn says, but neither of them moves.
“My hands are freezing,” she says, looking at Kate. “Gloves seem silly though, right?”
“Yeah?” Kate says. “Let me feel.”
She holds her hands out, and Kate takes them.
“You’re a wuss,” she says.
“I am not.”
The hands remain where they are. Kate is a step closer. Their bodies are almost touching. Jocelyn looks back again toward the restaurant. She lets the held hands slip down beside her, but Kate doesn’t let go, she just moves a millimeter nearer.
“I’m afraid someone’s going to drive by,” Jocelyn says.
“Not likely,” Kate says. “Even if they do, it’s pretty dark here.”
Jocelyn wants to kiss her but is suddenly nervous. “What are we doing?” she asks, and they both start laughing.
“I don’t know,” Kate says. She seems a bit defeated. She lets go of Jocelyn’s hands.
Jocelyn reaches out, touches the bottom edge of Kate’s blouse. It is silky and light. Too light for the cold weather. It peeks out of the bottom of her leather jacket. Jocelyn pulls the fabric and then reaches under it and places the flat of her cold hands against Kate’s back. Kate draws in breath.
“You’re right,” she says, squirming, but Jocelyn holds her tight. “Your hands are freezing.”
Jocelyn kisses her. It is a kiss like the ones she had in middle school, before she knew what she was doing. Not at all like the one in her car. Their teeth click as they both smile. And then they kiss again, feeling bolder. This time it’s better, more lingering.
When they pull away, Jocelyn says, “I think I better go,” but there’s not a lot of conviction. She gives Kate a few more chaste kisses on her cheeks and neck.
“I don’t want you to go,” Kate says.
“I don’t want to go either.”
She is happy and terrified at the same time.
Jocelyn holds her, until she feels Kate’s cold fingertips, climbing her stomach, her ribs, and then pushing up her bra, circling the tips of her nipples. She presses her mouth more intently against Kate’s, and her body too. And there is the smell of cold air on her skin and Jocelyn pulls her into her body. Kate lifts her hips. Jocelyn thinks of sliding down onto the ground. Letting Kate climb on top of her.
“We should go somewhere,” Kate says. “I was thinking about it.”
“I want to, but . . .” Jocelyn looks at her watch.
Kate reaches in her back pocket, and hands something to her.
“I was thinking about you all day,” Kate says. “Thinking about coming here and seeing you. I wouldn’t have come, but I wanted to see you.”
“Yeah, right,” Jocelyn says. “It wasn’t for all your little groupies swooning all over you? Listening with bated breath?”
Kate smiles, not denying it. “I like that too.”
Jocelyn looks down at the thing Kate has handed her. At first, she thinks it is a note. A Dear John note, maybe. It is difficult to see in the dark night. She retrieves her phone from her purse. Kate stands staring at her, eyes glistening, while Jocelyn does her little investigation. She shines the light of her phone on the rectangular white object. She can see now what it is—a paper sleeve, a hotel key card, a room number, the Channel Road Inn.
The breath in her body leaves her.
“I better not,” she says. “I told Conrad I’d be home soon.”
“It will only take a little bit of time,” Kate says, and the heat in Jocelyn’s body expands.
Their fingers find each other again.
“How long?” Jocelyn says, teasing.
“As long or as short as you like,” Kate says. “I’m not expected back until later.”
Her hands are inside Jocelyn’s shirt again. “We’ll be alone. No one will be able to hear us
. No one can interrupt us.”
A pulsing begins between Jocelyn’s legs.
“Okay,” Jocelyn says. She hears herself exhale. She has not been aware of holding her breath. “Okay. Hurry, before I change my mind.”
IN THE HOTEL ROOM, IT IS LIKE HIGH SCHOOL AGAIN. JOCELYN COMES before she means too, and then she works on Kate, who has an orgasm on Jocelyn’s leg.
“We’re ridiculous,” Jocelyn says. She is happy and lusty still.
“We need to practice,” Kate says. “Practice. Practice. Practice.”
“I’m in for next time,” Jocelyn says. “I wouldn’t want to be the slacker.”
She puts her bra on, the simple black dress. She hasn’t taken off her heels and she slides her panties over them.
They walk out together, but they’ve parked away from each other.
“See ya,” Kate says, as if they are leaving the tennis court. No kiss. No hug. Definitely not a high five.
“Yes,” Jocelyn says, a silly smile on her face.
She watches Kate walk away, the blonde hair like a light in the dark. She had taken it down in bed. The hair is long and thick, with the slightest wave to it. The tendrils run almost to her waist. A pleasure to undo, one braid after another, falling on naked breasts.
She doesn’t look away from Kate until she has gotten into her car, and then she finds her own car and settles into the front seat. She turns the ignition on and sees the taillights of Kate’s Tesla leaving the parking lot. She thinks: Kate is off to her mystery family, and I am off to mine. I am so close to home, just fifteen minutes along the beach, the blue, the bluff. Invisible at this hour.
