But again, nothing. She had prayed, taken her temperature, monitored her ovulation cycle, prayed more. Then she went to the clinic for exploratory surgery and the removal of several fibroid tumors, which left her miserable for weeks. The doctor explained her extreme endometriosis to her as a simple matter of tissue growth outside the womb, but she couldn’t help seeing it as something worse—a dark matter inhabiting her that she was responsible for. Somehow, unwittingly, she had invited this unhappiness in, this inversion, made room for it, allowed it to grow. Then there was the matter of the womb itself, which was bicornuate, shaped, ironically, not like a pear, but like a heart. It was she who had taken out the ads in various papers around the country, after reading an article about this in the Gazette. “Why do you want to raise a stranger’s child?” David had asked her, and she’d told him it wouldn’t be that way, it would be their child. Eventually, he’d come around on the subject, or had seemed to. They’d joked about it, made up funny names. Alphonse. Zirconia. But he’d stopped looking at her the same way, had retreated into himself, his work, his musical weekends with the band, and she knew that she’d failed him in the one thing he had counted on her for, and that there was no way to change this, ever.
Bernice had arrived carrying just a small wheeled bag, wearing a faded blue-jeans jacket. They’d met her at the airport, and the first thing Tessa noticed was the smell of alcohol—she’d clearly had a beer on the plane. She had a new pimple on her forehead, and Tessa felt bad for her about it. Pleased to meet you, she’d said, extending her hand in a businesslike way. She wasn’t showing yet, and she was flirting with them. Tessa hadn’t seen that then, but she did now.
The ancient air conditioner under the window cycled on again, and Tessa closed her eyes, telling herself she must sleep, though she couldn’t imagine how.
The phone rang at 6:00 AM, and she jumped out of bed to answer it, but it was only the wake-up call she’d requested. She turned off the television, then went into the bathroom and stepped into the cramped tub and fooled around with the faucet for a while before finally figuring out how to get the water to come out of the shower-head. She closed her eyes and felt the roar and the steam.
After toweling dry, she got dressed, drank water from the bathroom sink, and since it was still ridiculously early, decided to take a walk to the inner harbor. She brought her phone. The elevator that took her to the lobby shook and shuddered; everything about this building was decrepit. David made a living providing false smiles. The world was full of decay and rot, and what did people do to address that? They stuck a fancy new lobby on the front so you couldn’t tell. This one—the shuddering stopped and the doors heaved open—was all marble and glass, with a couple of potted palms framing the desk and a huge American flag in the front window. What was it Bernice had said? Fat over lean. Otherwise, you could end up with a cracked surface. That was what had happened to Tessa. She’d gotten her layers mixed up, let the outer one dry before the inner one had a chance to.
Traffic was light, and she made her way across the wide streets toward the water. At one intersection, an alarming noise sounded in synchrony with the walk sign, which she figured must be for blind people, though the idea of a blind person navigating this particular stretch of streets seemed dangerous. She wasn’t blind, and this thought caused her to consider briefly all the other things she wasn’t: deaf, poor, stupid, limbless, crippled, or stricken with some terrible disease. Childless—she wasn’t even that. Not exactly.
To her left, an enormous industrial building with smokestacks wore a neon guitar like a joke bow tie. Other modern buildings poked and sprawled along the waterfront, sparkling gold off their windows. A tall ship was moored ahead of her, and as she approached she could read the lettering on its side: Cuauhtémoc. It was flying a Mexican flag.
She approached the foot of a huge hill, an oddly fake-looking rise of green that rose abruptly from the southwest corner of the harbor, its top so flat it looked as if someone had sliced it off with a knife. At the bottom of the steep stairway, Tessa noticed what she thought was only a pile of abandoned clothes, but then she saw a woman’s grimy face, eyes tight shut, skin sunburnt and cracked, a whiteness of dried spittle at the corners of her mouth.
We’re all doing God’s work, in our own way, David liked to say. Even sometimes when we don’t know it.
She had to step over the woman to start up the stairs, and she did so, taking a deep breath first, because she was afraid there would be a smell. After the third step, she exhaled and inhaled again, hurrying upward, imagining she was climbing a pyramid, which was what it looked like, or perhaps some kind of Aztec ruin.
At the top, out of breath, she looked out on the disorderly spread of the city, the stadiums and the water and the boats and rotting warehouses and more distantly the geometric lines of row houses and even, over to the east, the gold ice-cream-cone spires of an Eastern Orthodox church.
He answered on the third ring, his voice thick with sleep. “What time is it?”
“Why don’t you look at the clock?”
There was the sound of some muffled movements, and she imagined him turning on the light on his night table, getting up out of the bed. He paced when he spoke on the phone, as if communication somehow made him nervous.
“Where are you?”
“On a hill,” she said. “I’ve seen her.”
“Is she with you?”
“No, she’s not with me. But she’s all right.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Where are you?” he asked again. “I hear birds.”
“Gulls,” she said. “I’m in Baltimore.”
“Gulls? Baltimore? You should have said something. You should have discussed this with me.”
“You and I don’t talk. Do we? Do we talk? I can’t remember it. Not recently, anyway.” A small dog ran up and sniffed at her leg, then wandered away to investigate the base of one of the cannons that pointed out over the harbor, toward the city.
“Of course we talk. Don’t be an idiot.”
“Then let’s talk now. Why didn’t you insist on calling the police as soon as you knew it was her?”
“I did. Waiting was your idea. You said to wait.”
“I know, I know. But you didn’t even argue. I’ve been thinking about it, and it doesn’t make sense to me. You called the police that time the neighbor kids had a party until three in the morning. You called them when that guy backed into you at King Soopers.”
“I was respecting your feelings. You said they’d bring her back. That’s what you said. But you’re naïve. Admit it—don’t you feel stupid now?”
She had said this, though only because she had needed some hope to hold on to. She repositioned the phone and listened, unable to tell static from breathing. “Don’t you love our child?”
“Oh, stop it. I’ll fly out there and we’ll talk to Bernice. I’m sure we can talk some sense into her. We can give her more money. That’s what this is about. I can—we can get hold of more money.”
“You didn’t answer my question. You don’t like Bernice. You never liked her. You said she was cheap and easy. Remember? Why would you care what I want to do? You’ve got the papers, right? We could get her arrested, have her charged. I don’t get it.”
“Tell me the hotel,” he said. “I’ll come there. You shouldn’t be doing this alone.”
“You don’t, do you? You don’t have the papers. Something is going on. I don’t know what. It’s a lie. Everything has been a lie. I’ve been dreaming. All this time I’ve been dreaming.”
“You’re not dreaming, Tessa,” he said. “Don’t say that. You love me, I love you and Emily, and everything is legal. It was all drawn up by a lawyer. Bernice might be able to challenge it, but I don’t think she’d win. Tessa? We’re walking together. There’s nothing to worry about.”
But there was something he wasn’t telling her. She felt it like
a stone she’d swallowed. “Our house?” she said. “Do we own that? Or do we rent? Are our cars leased? What is going on, David?”
“Of course it’s our house. There’s the mortgage and a couple of loans, but it’s ours. I’ve got a pencil now. I’ve got a pencil and a pad of paper. Give me the information and I’ll write it down. Don’t be hysterical. I’m going to take care of everything.”
“Here’s what I’ve figured out. I don’t think you love your daughter,” she said. “Not really. Not the way you should. And I don’t think you love me, either.”
“Don’t say that. That’s just a bunch of shit.”
“It isn’t. You think there’s something wrong with us—with both of us. I don’t know what, exactly, or why, but I see it now. You judge us.”
His voice turned hard. “You are way out of line here.”
The scent of coffee roasting someplace came to her on a soft breeze. “You go now,” she said. “Just go. I’m letting you off the hook.”
“Tessa,” he said. “Everything I do, I do for you. And for us.”
“I think maybe I’ve been asleep,” she said. “All this time. And now I’m just waking up.”
There was a pause. “What did she tell you?”
“What do you mean? What could she have told me?”
“That girl was crazy. We both knew it. Not trustworthy. A liar.”
“Are you listening to yourself? Who’s a liar?” She was suddenly tired of hearing him, of feeling connected to something she didn’t understand or believe in.
He was quiet again for a moment. “I think we should talk about this in person.”
“What?”
“What I’m saying is, whatever she told you, it’s not true.”
“I’m leaving you, David,” she said. “We’re going to be divorced. It’s over. Over.” She hung up before he could try to talk her out of it, and when the phone rang a few moments later, she took a deep breath and turned it off.
TWENTY-FIVE
At 7:00 AM, Bernice, finding herself in her childhood bedroom, momentarily doubted that she was awake at all. She remembered this feeling, the way she had sometimes drifted around the house in a half sleep, seeing but not seeing, inhabiting a parallel universe. But she quickly became aware of her adult self, of the fact that she was still fully dressed, of her need to urinate, of her dry mouth. The last thing she remembered was watching Emily sleep. At some point, apparently, she had gotten onto the bed.
Moving as quietly as she could, she slipped out to the hall and into the cramped bathroom. She used to smoke in here, and there were still burn marks on the windowsill. But then her father had figured out what she was up to and started checking on her, so instead she’d taken to going out her bedroom window and sitting on the tiny ledge outside, the fall from which would most certainly have killed her. It seemed funny to her now that no one had ever reported this to her father, or even the police, because she had to have been visible to the houses across the street, even at night, a skinny, girlish figure poised fifty feet in the air like a gargoyle.
Back in the bedroom, she crouched by the other bed. “Get up, honey,” she whispered. “We’re going out.”
Emily stirred, then opened her eyes. Her breath was like sour milk. “To the sharks?” she said.
“Yes,” Bernice said. “If we get there early, we’ll be first in line.”
She helped her up and into some clothes, then into the bathroom for a quick brush and wash. Emily seemed uncertain about any of this, but it was early, and she’d had a long night. Bernice kept seeing her in the bath, with Tessa confidently working a washcloth over her body, the two of them interacting so easily. Because, of course, they’d been doing this for years. Bernice’s job had come after the shampoo, filling a pint beer glass with warm water and pouring it over the back of Emily’s upturned head, the child’s eyes closed, her chin tipped toward the ceiling.
“Your hair looks cool,” she said. “You should always go to sleep with it wet.”
After stuffing some clothes and other things into her knapsack, Bernice took Emily’s hand and led her to the top of the stairs. “You want me to carry you?”
She shook her head.
“OK. But hold on to the railing.”
Bernice went down first, so that if Emily took a tumble, she’d be able to catch her, but there was nothing to worry about. She was cautious, taking each step with great attention. Bernice filled with love for her, felt the warmth inside her like a shot of whiskey.
Landis was snoring loudly in the parlor. She wished he’d just returned to his own place, so that she didn’t have to be reminded he existed this one last time. She held up a finger to her lips. “We don’t want to wake him,” she said.
“Why not?”
“He needs his sleep.”
“Doesn’t he want to come, too?”
“He’s seen the sharks.” She moved them through the dining room and into the kitchen. The light outside was violet, moist with the promise of another hot day. An early-rising neighbor’s car idled on its parking pad across the alley. Some garbage cans had been placed out for collection, and they overflowed with plastic bags balanced two and three high over the top like ice-cream cones.
The kitchen was a mess. Well, she’d never claimed to be a homemaker. Her own mother had gone back and forth between periods of cleaning zealotry, where she Windexed every inch of glass and washed the floors on her hands and knees, and long stretches of absolute indifference, where she seemed not even to notice her surroundings, leaving items of clothing draped over chairs for weeks at a time, letting dust build up on surfaces until you could write your name in it. She remembered her father shouting about this, his face contorted with anger. When Bernice was in high school, he’d hired a cleaning lady to come once a week.
“I want a Pop-Tart,” said Emily.
“Shh,” said Bernice. “All right.” She fumbled in the closet, ignoring the mouse turds everywhere. She removed the box and took out the one remaining silvery-foil-wrapped packet, then noticed that its bottom had been nibbled through. “Goddamnit,” she said.
“Don’t say that,” Emily warned.
“Right, sorry.” She took out the pastries and examined them briefly. “You want to get something on the way?” she asked. “Like, maybe a croissant? I’ll bet we could find a nice croissant, or even a bagel someplace.”
“I want a Pop-Tart.”
“Right. Of course you do.” One corner of each Pop-Tart had been rounded off. How bad could that be? She slid them into the toaster. Heat killed bacteria anyway—by toasting them, she was being responsible. Serving them raw would be something else.
They sat at the kitchen table across from each other. Emily’s eyes were still puffy from sleep.
“Did you have dreams?” Bernice asked.
Emily nodded. “I think so.”
“Want to tell me?”
She shook her head.
“Were they bad dreams?”
“Not so bad. I don’t think I want to talk about them.”
“All right,” said Bernice. “That’s fine.”
After a while, the toaster popped and Bernice got up to retrieve their breakfast. She brought them orange juice, too, hers in a coffee mug, Emily’s in a plastic cup with flowers on it that she remembered had just turned up one day years ago, but which she now suddenly thought had probably had something to do with CC. Perhaps her mother had left his place with it back when she was cheating, or—even worse—he’d been here, had brought it with him. She even wondered if her mother had viewed it as some kind of a test, had waited to see what her father would say, had only had her feelings about him confirmed when he failed to notice at all.
“What happened to it?” Emily asked, inspecting the Pop-Tart.
“What do you mean, what happened? It went in the toaster. Now it’s out. Come on, we don’t want to miss the sharks getting fed. I think they throw them live fish and stuff.”
“It’s all chewed up.”
>
“No it isn’t. Let me see.” She took the paper towel on which she’d served the Pop-Tart and scrutinized the pastry with a professional eye. “That’s just a little crust damage. Probably happened in shipping.”
“Shipping?”
“Not actually shipping. Shipping means trucks. They probably ought to call it trucking, except that would sound strange. ‘Contents may have shifted during trucking.’ See what I mean? In the olden times, everything went everyplace by ships.” She watched the girl watching her, felt suddenly guilty for not knowing what she was saying or why, for filling Emily’s head with useless stuff. What were the important things? Learn who the liars are, she wanted to say. Everything else is just getting along. But how to explain this? “Your ancestors came over here on ships,” she said. “Their corners may have gotten a little damaged along the way, too.”
“It looks like a mouse ate it,” said Emily, continuing to inspect the pastry. “It looks like teeth marks.”
“Well, hell,” said Bernice, taking it from her and heading for the trash. “You have to admit, though, the mouse didn’t eat much of it.” She dropped the pastry in the bin. “OK, now, let’s go. We’ll get breakfast later.”
She was unlocking the back door when the front doorbell rang. “Mommy!” said Emily.
“Let’s go, now.” Bernice took her hand and hustled her out onto the back stair, letting the storm door close behind them. She didn’t want to head up the breezeway between the houses, so instead she directed Emily toward the alley. Once there, they made a right and headed north. She figured they could make a right at the next cross street, then come back down toward the house, approaching the car that way. They walked quickly, but not too quickly, veering to avoid a recently squashed rat, its gray body broken open and bright with gore.
Hot Springs Page 25
