by Dianne Dixon
Livvi’s voice has trailed away. She’s struggling to comprehend the news of Andrew being a father. Yet it’s as if she has already absorbed the blow. Accepted it with a kind of blank resignation. On some level, from her earliest days, Livvi has been shown that being truly loved was something meant for other people, not for her.
“We didn’t drive for long, we were here already,” Grace is explaining. “Bree’s mommy lives in a town…I don’t know the name…but it’s close to here. We were at her house, visiting. She has bunnies. She lets me play with them.” Grace is now at the other end of the room, putting the stuffed pig onto the floor and tugging at the sliding doors that lead to the rear yard.
Livvi is still lost in thought, blinded with pain, as she asks Grace: “Where are you going?”
“To the pool,” Grace explains. “Sometimes when my daddy isn’t inside, that’s where he is.”
For a fraction of a second the look on Grace’s face is utterly solemn, then she gives Livvi a smile that’s radiant and hopeful. Absolutely enchanting. So tentative and vulnerable—it’s almost heart-rending.
It creates a shock of recognition in Livvi—and instantly she’s determined not to bring any hurt, any disappointment, to this strangely endearing little girl.
Livvi gently takes Grace’s hand and leads her back toward the center of the room. “Your…your daddy…isn’t here right now, he’s at work.”
“Will you let me stay till he comes?” Grace asks. “I really want to show him my surprise. It’s special.”
And again there is that solemn, earnest look followed, after a brief hesitation, by the bright smile. It’s as if Grace has learned to be guarded, a little cautious, before fully revealing herself.
Seeing that small wound in Grace, and knowing that Andrew may have had a hand in putting it there, is tearing Livvi apart. It’s a wound that has been in Livvi for as long as she can remember.
She’s barely able to speak. She has to clear her throat several times before she can say: “Grace, I have to leave now. So…I’m going to go outside, and ask your nanny to come in and take care of you until your daddy gets home.”
Livvi has picked up her purse. And walked to the door. But as she’s opening it, she’s seeing that the driveway is empty. The BMW is gone—along with Bree, the blond nanny.
Livvi is alone with Andrew’s child. And she has no way to deal with her. Livvi doesn’t even have a car. When Livvi came here, David had dropped her off, after the meeting in Culver City. An hour ago.
During that hour it’s as if her world has been ripped off its axis and sent hurtling into space—Livvi is utterly and completely at a loss. All she can think about is getting out of this house.
“What’s Bree’s number?” she’s asking. “We need to call your nanny and tell her to come back.” Livvi has managed to pull her phone from her pocket, but her grip is shaky; the icons on the screen are jittering and floating.
There’s something strangely sympathetic in Grace’s expression as she reaches up and takes the phone from Livvi. With a small frown of concentration, she begins to enter a number. Then she stops and hands the phone back to Livvi. “The light went out.”
Livvi presses the phone’s power button. Nothing. The screen stays dark. The battery has died. Livvi glances up, scanning the room.
“What are you looking for?” Grace asks.
“A land line. The kind of phone that plugs into a wall.”
“Oh. Daddy doesn’t have a phone like that—just his cell phone.”
A mild panic is rippling through Livvi. Time is slipping by—the nanny, Bree, is getting farther and farther away. Livvi doesn’t want to be here when Andrew arrives. She doesn’t want an awkward confrontation. Not in front of Grace.
“Do you work for my daddy?” Grace is asking.
It takes Livvi a beat or two before she can think clearly. “No, honey, I don’t work for your daddy. I’m…I’m a friend of his. We’re friends.”
Grace seems nervous. “Are you special friends?”
While Livvi is trying to decide on the appropriate thing to say, Grace tells her: “Mommy doesn’t like it when Daddy has special friends who are ladies.”
Grace has delivered this news with a sense of apprehension, and a hint of concern, as if, in spite of whatever her own worries might be, she wants to keep Livvi away from harm.
The word Mommy has hit Livvi with brutal force.
Does Andrew have a wife? Getting the answer to that would be as easy as saying to Grace, Are your mommy and daddy married to each other?
Livvi’s not sure she wants to ask, not certain she wants to hear the answer. The only thing she is sure of is that she doesn’t want to hurt Grace in any way. So instead of asking questions, Livvi is sliding her phone back into her pocket and suggesting: “Let’s go to the neighbors’ house and use their phone to call Bree.”
Grace’s distress is instantaneous. “I don’t want to. I don’t like the old man next door. He’s mean. He scares me.”
Livvi can see that Grace is genuinely afraid, and wants to take the fear away. “What if we don’t go to the old man’s house? What if we go to one of the other houses?”
Grace shakes her head no. She’s clutching her little stuffed pig, and pleading: “I don’t want to go anywhere. I only want to wait for my daddy.”
Livvi glances across the living room to the clock on the steel desk. It’s just before noon. Andrew should be arriving any minute now.
Without intending to, Livvi has already put her purse down at the end of the sofa. She’s realizing that, as much as she wants to leave and avoid dealing with Andrew, she wants, even more, to stay and comfort Grace. She wants to soothe whatever it is in this little girl that’s making her so anxious. “It’s okay,” she’s telling Grace. “You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to. We’ll stay right here, together, and wait for your dad.”
Grace is reluctant, guarded. “You promise…?”
Livvi nods.
“Pinky promise?”
Livvi nods again.
After a long pause—Grace smiles.
A radiant smile that goes straight to Livvi’s heart.
***
What Livvi assumed would be a wait lasting only a few minutes has spanned more than four hours. It’s now shortly before five o’clock. And there’s still no sign of Andrew. Yet Livvi hasn’t made any effort to find a way out of Andrew’s house.
Every time she has checked her watch or looked toward the door, thinking she should go to one of the neighbors and ask to use the phone, she has deliberately postponed doing it.
Livvi is staying marooned in Andrew’s house because she doesn’t want to end her connection with Grace.
There has been an innate warmth—an instinctive trust—between Livvi and Grace.
It has stirred an emotion in Livvi that she can’t quite name. One that is incredibly gentle and fiercely determined. Something that feels precious and powerful. A critically important piece of knowledge she once had and has now forgotten. And she’s determined not to leave until she can remember exactly what it is.
Livvi is on the sofa, paging through a magazine—Grace is nearby, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table. There is an open, jumbo-size box of crayons on the tabletop, along with a large sheet of paper.
Grace, deep in thought, is concentrating on the picture she’s drawing. Her back is resting lightly against Livvi’s leg.
Livvi isn’t moving a muscle. She doesn’t want to lose the feathery weight, the gentle warmth, of Grace’s body against her skin. This is an intimacy she has never experienced before—this wordless closeness with a child.
“What are you drawing?” Livvi asks.
“Just something,” Grace murmurs.
Earlier, Livvi and Grace listened to, and sang along with, every children’s album in Andrew’s music collection, and Livvi is asking: “Is it something from one of your songs?”
Grace shakes her head no.
&nb
sp; “Is it a picture of your pig?” (After the sing-along, they played hide-and-seek—Grace’s pink pig was the hidden object Livvi was assigned to find.)
Grace gives another negative shake of her head and this time Livvi asks: “Is it a picture from one of your stories?” (After hide-and-seek, Grace brought Livvi a stack of storybooks from a cabinet in the hall and settled herself in Livvi’s lap; and Livvi read each book aloud from beginning to end until there were no more books to read.)
It was following the story session that Grace took the crayons and the paper from a drawer in Andrew’s steel desk, and with her back resting against Livvi’s leg, began work on the drawing that she has now completed.
Grace is scooting forward, sliding the crayoned paper across the coffee table.
Livvi’s first shock is the sudden coolness on her skin where Grace’s warmth has been. The second shock is the bizarre parade of images that Grace has created.
On one side of the paper is a childish rendering of a house. Erupting from the house, exploding through its roof like a wild-eyed Godzilla, is the stick-figure of a woman with billowing silvery hair, emerald eyes, and a grim, harsh-looking mouth. The woman and the house are surrounded by a blizzard of jagged scribbles—a torrent of black lightning.
At the center of the drawing is the stick-figure of a man. His eyes are round and dark, and the line of his mouth is vague. A smile? A grimace? It’s hard to tell. One of his arms is reaching toward the house, the other toward a thicket of huge, rainbow-colored flowers. The arm nearest the house is being splintered by the black lightning. In each of the man’s hands is a gift box. The box in the hand directed toward the house is significantly larger than the box directed toward the flowers.
Hiding in the midst of the flowers is the stick figure of a little girl wearing a ruffled skirt the color of a ripe summer lemon. Her eyes, like the male stick figure’s, are round and dark. But where her mouth should be—nothing—a blank.
As Livvi is looking up from the drawing, her eyes are meeting Grace’s. Livvi knows that Grace has told her a secret. An awful secret. A secret that neither she, nor Grace, knows how to discuss. They are suspended in a puzzling limbo, neither of them knowing what to do.
Grace, eventually, takes the picture from Livvi and puts it into a bottom drawer in Andrew’s desk. Then she asks: “Want to see my surprise for Daddy?”
“Yes,” Livvi says.
Grace positions herself beside one of the low, silk-covered chairs near the sofa—putting her hand on top of the chair back, bringing her legs close together. She rotates her toes outward, with her heels touching. And does a perfectly executed ballerina’s plié.
Livvi sits forward, ready to applaud.
“Not yet,” Grace tells her. “That wasn’t the surprise.”
Grace lifts her hand from the chair back, ever so slightly. Leaving a tiny space between her palm and the top of the chair. She focuses her gaze in mid-distance, and with unblinking determination does a second, flawless plié. She then shifts her gaze to Livvi. After a momentary pause, she smiles and says: “I can do it without holding on. That’s my surprise for Daddy.”
Daddy. Andrew.
How did he keep his daughter such a perfect secret? And why? Livvi is thinking. What kind of person could deny his own child? And what does it say about me that I fell in love with him?
“You look sad, Livvi.” Grace is whispering this into Livvi’s ear, as if she doesn’t want to startle her. After she has said it, Grace sits on the sofa, a slight distance away from Livvi. Her ankles crossed. Her hands neatly folded in her lap.
And Livvi wonders, Is there only you? Or do you have brothers and sisters? And who is your mother? Is that where you’ve been hiding? With her? In Palos Verdes? How could you have been less than fifty miles down the road, all this time, without me having any clue that you existed?
Livvi’s instinct is to somehow apologize to Grace. But Livvi knows it wouldn’t make any sense. All she can manage to say is: “You’re being really, really quiet. Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” Grace tells her. “Except…”
“Except what?”
The reply is very small. Very faint. “I’m hungry.”
***
The only things Livvi finds in Andrew’s refrigerator are a pack of batteries, two bottles of champagne, and a square of eye-wateringly pungent Bleu cheese. (The freezer contained nothing but ice cubes and a large bottle of vodka.)
Grace is watching Livvi with an air of trusting curiosity. The ribbon that has been holding Grace’s hair to one side of her head, in a ponytail, has come loose, and her hair is hanging free. She looks tired—and very, very hungry.
Livvi has no idea how she is going feed her. “Are you still sure you don’t want us to walk to one of the neighbors and use the phone? We could call your father. Then we could order a pizza.”
“I don’t want pizza. I want to stay here. With you. And wait for Daddy.”
Livvi is searching every cabinet in the immaculately empty kitchen, keenly aware of how much Grace is in need of food, and concerned she’ll have to stay that way.
As if sensing Livvi’s anxiety, Grace tells her: “Don’t worry. I know you’ll make something nice.”
In turning to look at Grace, Livvi is noticing the dish of strawberries that she’d seen earlier, when she first arrived at the house. And she’s discovering that behind the strawberries, farther back on the counter, is something she hadn’t noticed. A bakery box. Inside the box, Livvi finds a banana muffin. And at the other end of the counter, there’s an unopened bottle of water.
While Livvi is inventing this makeshift meal, arranging the strawberries and the muffin on a plate, Grace has gone to sit at the table, and Livvi is explaining: “We don’t have any milk. Only water.”
“I like water,” Grace says. “I like it the best.” It’s clear she wants to put Livvi at ease.
Grace’s generosity and her intrinsic goodness are touching Livvi’s heart, stirring, again, the emotion that she can’t quite name.
“Are you okay?” Grace asks.
Livvi nods and puts the plate with the strawberries and the muffin onto the table—along with a napkin and the bottle of water.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Grace says. “Because I think you’re nice.”
Livvi is slipping into a chair, across the table from Grace.
And just as Livvi sits down, Grace gets up.
She goes to the kitchen counter and begins bringing things to the table. A napkin. A second plate. And an empty glass. After she arranges them, with great care, on a placemat in front of Livvi, she says: “If Daddy doesn’t come, can we go before it gets dark? I don’t like it here when it’s night.”
Grace seems to be deciding whether or not to reveal something more, something very personal. Then with her head slightly bowed she tells Livvi: “When it’s night, this house is scary. You can see the trees through the walls because they’re glass. The trees make scary shadows and I have bad dreams.” She raises her head, searching out Livvi’s gaze, asking in a voice full of curiosity: “Did you ever have bad dreams?”
Livvi’s thoughts go to the haunting image of the woman in the pearl-button shoes and she tells Grace: “Sometimes I still do.”
After considering this, Grace gives a pensive nod. “I like it,” she says. “That you have bad dreams.”
Livvi is surprised. “Why?”
With a shy smile, Grace tells her: “Because it makes us the same.” And without segue or another word on the subject of bad dreams, Grace returns to her chair, bows her head, folds her hands, and whispers: “Bless us, O Lord, for these thy gifts we are about to receive. Amen.”
Then Grace, with her stomach grumbling loudly, pushes the plate containing the muffin and the strawberries into the center of the table, along with the bottle of water.
“If you’re hungry too,” she murmurs to Livvi, “we can share.”
Livvi reaches across the table and runs her fingers through the
silk of Grace’s hair.
There’s nothing more to say. There are no words.
It is the beginning of a love affair.
***
In the early evening Livvi and Grace are being driven away from Andrew’s house in a gleaming, gray Audi R8. A sports car so refined that its interior contains only a driver’s seat, a passenger’s seat, and behind them, a boxlike space designed to hold nothing much larger than a medium-size suitcase.
Grace has just popped up from the interior of the boxlike space.
And Sierra, who is at the wheel of the car, is saying: “Get back down! The last thing I need is a ticket for hauling a kid around without a seat belt.”
“Or a seat,” Livvi chuckles.
“Beggars can’t be choosers, honey, and this car’s full of nothing but beggars. Your ride has a weather vane through its roof and my Jag’s still in the damn shop. We’re lucky I could get hold of this platinum-plated joy ride. It wasn’t easy. The rightful owner and I were halfway out the door heading for an X-rated sleepover in Malibu when you called.” Sierra pauses. “Wait a minute. You said your phone’s dead, how the hell were you able to call me?”
“A FedEx guy rang the doorbell—making a delivery. He let me use his phone,” Livvi says.
“And in your hour of need, your landlady was the first person you tapped to get you off the desert island? Interesting. I didn’t know you and I were that close.”
Sierra has said this jokingly. But Livvi knows Sierra is aware that Livvi must have tried to contact other people and is asking for details. Livvi’s reluctant to give them, worried about the impact they might have on Grace. Livvi wants to protect Grace—the calls to both her nanny and her father went unanswered, directly to voice mail. Livvi doesn’t want Grace to hear that Sierra, a stranger, was the first person available to come to her rescue.
So Livvi tells Sierra: “I promise I’ll fill you in later. But right now I have another favor to ask. Grace hasn’t had very much to eat today. We need to stop and pick up some dinner.”
Grace, who is still peeking over the back of Livvi’s seat, whispers: “Can we have McDonald’s?”
