Crown of Stars

by Sophie Jaff

  They should have called it a day, but they had to go to Cuddles. The names of all the mother-and-baby stores are a killer. Eggs. Giggles. Booboo.

  Cuddles is overwhelming. No wonder Niamh feels light-headed. Five floors, nearly four thousand square feet. Enough giraffes named Sophie to start a menagerie. An entire area dedicated to wipes, aloe versus muslin.

  “Our Sleep section is huge. Not that they ever do sleep,” laughs a saleslady, who must think she’s being funny.

  Niamh had been fine at first, until she wasn’t. “Just light-headed,” she tells Katherine, but her face is pale.

  Katherine can see beads of sweat on her forehead. “Maybe we should call it a day?”

  “Oh.” Niamh clutches the drained water bottle, genuinely disappointed. “Without getting anything?”

  “Yeah, we’ll come back. Cuddles isn’t going anywhere. Unfortunately.”

  Niamh smiles. “Oh, go on, yez big softy. Don’t pretend you don’t love it.”

  “Okay, I just love Cuddles, I love it so damn much! Now let’s go. You okay to walk?”

  “I’m fine, honestly.”

  But Katherine takes it slow, and Niamh is leaning on her more heavily than either of them wants to admit. “Let’s drop you at home and put your feet up. Shopping can take a lot out of you, even when you’re not pregnant. We’ll grab a cab.”

  “But the day is so nice, I wanted to walk!”

  “Just this once, let’s be lazy bitches,” Katherine jokes. She feels more anxious than she’s letting on.

  It’s not a long ride, and soon they’re back in the safe, chic streets of their la-di-da neighborhood, where Katherine still feels like a stranger.

  “I’m not an invalid,” Niamh grumbles when Katherine offers her an arm going up the steps.

  “You’re pregnant and therefore a womanly miracle.”

  Niamh giggles, then admits, “I could do with some tea.”

  “Sit on the couch, and I’ll bring you some water and put the kettle on.” Katherine has accepted that this is the English solution to all problems.

  “Are you me mam?”

  “Yes, I am. This has all been an elaborate plot.”

  “Speaking of, how’s your mam taking it? Is she excited about being a gran?”

  “Yes, she’s thrilled.” But it’s a lie. The truth is that Katherine hasn’t told her. “Yours?”

  “Over the moon, but driving me crazy. She keeps calling and giving advice and asking me how I’m doing every five minutes and boasting to her friends, and telling me what they say and all about their grandchildren. Then again, what’s new?”

  “I know, right?” She disappears into Niamh’s kitchen. The layouts of their houses are similar, but the interiors are nothing alike. She could tell herself that Niamh has just been here longer, but she knows that isn’t really the case.

  There’s a sterility about Sael and Katherine’s place, an aggressive cleanliness that even a five-year-old’s mess can’t dispel. It’s ludicrous to think of a baby crawling over the pristine cream couches or mashing banana on the smooth white countertops of the kitchen surfaces.

  In Niamh’s home there’s a thread of warmth and humor echoed in the large framed art deco posters of women holding perfume bottles, or the shocking-pink orchids found on the wooden tables, or the vibrant woolen throws flung over the couches. Even the bright yellow and blue oversized mugs are cheerful and homey.

  As Katherine fills a glass from the tap and then brings the kettle over, she thinks about her own mother’s gleaming white coldness. Seeking comfort from her would be like having a one-on-one with the automated voice that presents options when you dial a doctor. “You were always your father’s girl,” her mother would say.

  That was true, not that she saw him much after the divorce. Her father had good intentions, but a weakness for drink. A writer who never made it, he had moved to San Francisco to work as a small-time journalist. She would have liked to tell him about the baby, but now she doesn’t know where he is.

  Katherine remembers what her mother said when she had called to break the news that they were moving to London.

  “What will happen to Lucas?”

  “What do you mean, ‘What will happen to Lucas?’ We’re taking him with us.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Mother, I am his legal guardian. For all intents and purposes he is my child.”

  “Well, Sael is a very understanding man.”

  “Yes, he understands that legally and morally it would be wrong to abandon my child. Also, the fact is that I love Lucas and would never leave him behind. He’s already gone through the trauma of losing his mother.”

  “Yes,” her mother had replied. “Of course. You’ll do the right thing.”

  Katherine could almost hear the snap of the switch and the click of the lock as the lights were turned out and the door was shut. Her mother had taken a risk with her first husband, and he had turned out to be a drunken deserter. There would be no more risks.

  Katherine and Niamh are sipping tea and eating cookies—or biscuits, as Niamh calls them—when they hear the front door opening.

  Niamh sits up and says quickly, “Don’t mention what happened in the store, all right?” She’s looking at Katherine with a fierce kind of urgency. “I’ll explain later, but just don’t, okay?”

  “Uh, okay, no problem.”

  “Niamh, are you home?”

  “We’re in here!”

  A large solidly built man is there in two seconds, leaning over her, touching her cheek. He looks to be in his late fifties with thinning silver hair and keen eyes, which stare out from his craggy, attractive face. “How are you feeling? Are you all right?”

  “Fine, love, we just decided to come home a bit early.” There’s an overly bright, brittle quality to Niamh’s words.

  “I was overwhelmed by the strollers,” Katherine volunteers.

  He doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t look away from his wife. “Niamh?”

  “Cathal, relax. I’m fine.”

  “Well.” His shoulders descend. “Well, that’s grand.”

  She sighs operatically. “Jesus, don’t be stupid. Come on, meet Katherine.”

  He glances up, unbends a little. “Katherine! Nice to meet you. Niamh won’t stop talking about you.”

  “Likewise.”

  “I doubt it, I’m only her husband.” He sits down on the couch with them, now ready to talk. “So, how was the shopping?”

  “Well, never let it be said that there aren’t enough sleepers in the world! I don’t really even know what a sleeper is anyway. Everything seems based around them sleeping, and apparently they never do anyway.” Katherine is aware that she’s rambling. She glances from Niamh to Cathal and back again, feeling like an understudy who’s wandered onto the stage halfway through a crucial scene.

  He studies them keenly. He reaches out to cup Niamh’s small hand in his huge one, and Katherine wonders what his deal is. She feels a little nervous for Niamh. He’s so big and she’s so tiny.

  “We’ll have to go back when I’m feeling better,” Katherine offers.

  “Katherine was just feeling a little tired,” Niamh chimes in with a grateful glance at her.

  “I see.” It’s said easily enough, but his eyes remain grave, watchful.

  Katherine nods. “Also, I feel that there’s a finite number of teething and breastfeeding products I’m allowed to look at on any given day. Or ever again.”

  Cathal tries to appear stern, but it’s clear he’s losing the battle. “You girls need to take it easy,” he says.

  “Pregnancy is not for the fainthearted, that’s what they say!” Katherine has just made this up.

  Niamh stands. “And now I have to go to the loo, again. Cath, can you put the kettle on for another pot so Katherine doesn’t have to get up?”

  “I will.” But he sits a moment longer, watching her as she walks away. He turns to Katherine. “Sorry, Niamh’s right, I do get a little tense. It’s jus
t that . . . when you’ve been down this road as many times as we have, well, no doubt she’s told you herself.”

  Katherine nods noncommittally. Niamh hasn’t mentioned anything to her about going down roads, hasn’t been anything other than warm and funny, but he doesn’t seem to be paying attention.

  “All these treatments, all those bloody doctors and specialists, all those injections . . . Still, it will be worth it, right?” He’s staring out at something she can’t see.

  “That’s what I hear.” Katherine hopes her expression and tone are upbeat. Her heart is pounding a little. She never knew it was such a struggle for them, and she doesn’t know how to process this.

  “Do you have brothers and sisters?” Cathal continues. “You come from a big family?”

  “Not really,” Katherine says. “Not at all, in fact. I mean, I have a stepbrother and stepsister, but they’re much older than I am and we’re not really close.”

  “Ah, well, I have a daughter from my first marriage, and both Niamh and I come from large families.” He leers theatrically and raises an eyebrow. “The Catholics like to do a thing properly. There are seven on my side and five on hers.”

  Katherine whistles.

  “Yep, we both wanted a large brood ourselves, but the way things turned out . . .” He shrugs, looks grim for a moment as though he is caught in a bad memory, and then he shakes his head as if to clear it. “Well, we’re here now and we’ll be happy with one, provided it has all ten fingers and toes. We’ve certainly had enough practice.”

  “Totally.”

  “Oh God, Cath.” Niamh has returned. “Are you putting her to sleep?”

  “No.” Katherine laughs. “But I might actually go to have a nap soon.”

  “See what you did?”

  He smiles up at Niamh, with such a radiant tenderness that Katherine’s eyes smart and her heart gives a kind of whack against her chest.

  Niamh turns to her. “Have another cup before you go?”

  They drink more tea and eat more biscuits. Cathal is relaxed, more expansive. Niamh teases him mercilessly, but he clearly loves it. They’ll be good parents. The kind of parents that any kid would be lucky to have. Cathal will be loving but firm, the one who reads all the parenting books, who is anxious enough for both of them. Niamh will be funny, sweet, and she won’t sweat the small stuff. The kind of parents that Katherine wishes she’d had.

  She wonders what sort of parents she and Sael will be. Apart from the obvious dramatic gesture of You and Lucas must come live with me in London, it’s hard to know how he feels. He’ll check in with her, how she’s feeling, any new doctor appointments coming up, that kind of thing, but by and large he’s consumed by work. She envies that. She envies him having something that can absorb him so entirely. Maybe that will be motherhood for her. She hopes so.

  She keeps thinking about this on her way home. When they first arrived in London, she was just trying to settle in. The overwhelming emotion was relief at having escaped New York. Now when she thinks about the baby, a strange blankness fills her. Not joy, not panic, not even ambivalence. Something larger and inexplicable. As if she simply cannot comprehend what is happening to her. Seeing Niamh and Cathal together is motivating. She wants to talk to Sael, really talk with him, like they used to. She wants to ask him how he feels about her, about everything. She opens her front door full of good intentions. She’s ready for warmth, for noise, She’s ready for conversation—or, if necessary, confrontation. She’s ready to “bring it,” as they say, whoever “they” are and whatever “it” is.

  The house is dark and silent. There is a note on the fridge in Sael’s neat slant.

  Went out for a walk and hot chocolate. Be back soon!

  Great, she thinks. Now that she is finally ready to communicate, he’s gone. Oh well, I’m home now and maybe a nap isn’t such a bad idea.

  As she heads upstairs, she sees three of Lucas’s action figures frozen on the carpet by the one comfortable squashy living room chair. He must have forgotten to put them away. With a little difficulty she squats down to pick them up and studies them. One appears to be part fly—at least his eyes are fly’s eyes. Or maybe they’re like a World War I aviator’s goggles. He has an extra set of arms, closer to an orangutan’s than a spider’s, though, and he wears a chic leather vest and black shorts. She thinks he must be a bad guy, and she names him Maurice. Maurice’s companion is green and has lucked out with some interesting animal parts. A foxy snout, a monkey tail, and bat wings, although his face is more human. He’s definitely an Oliver. The third, clearly a Lenny, is bright orange and has a gorilla-type aspect to him. One hand, or paw, appears to be an anvil.

  “Hey, guys,” she says aloud. “Fancy a ride back?” She scoops them up, along with a puzzle box and a hooded jacket that was flung over the chair, and continues up the stairs. She sighs, but feels a little virtuous. Mrs. B keeps the place so clean there’s hardly anything for her to do.

  When she gets to Lucas’s bedroom, she puts the jacket and the puzzle box down on his bed and leans across it carefully to place Maurice and Lenny and Oliver back on their shelf. Then she notices another figurine, a woman, way back in the recess of the shelf, as if deliberately hidden.

  Katherine reaches for her. She is considerably smaller than the others, so she’d be easy to miss. And unlike them, she’s not made of plastic, but rather of a kind of ceramic. Her white toga dress hangs in perfect pleats, cinched with a gold rope belt, all the way down to her bare feet, which rest on a frozen mass of white clouds daubed with a few golden stars. Her eyes are downcast, heavy on the eyeliner and mascara. They sit above a creamy dab of a nose, a pale rosebud mouth in a deeper shade of pink. She looks pretty but weary, like a teenage babysitter at the end of a long evening.

  Katherine sits down heavily on the bed, wondering why the Virgin Mary ended up tucked away on the shelf in Lucas’s bedroom. The puzzle box slides onto the floor, its lid gaping, and the pieces spill out in a glorious puddle of color.

  “Shit!”

  She puts the Virgin down on the bed and kneels beside the box to put the pieces back. One or two have slid farther under the bed. It’s not as easy as it once was for her to bend, but she manages to fumble around until her hand touches something hard. It feels like a book. With a groan, she pulls it out and sees the dark brown faux-leather cover, stamped with gilt letters: holy bible.

  There are several places where pages have been marked with little ribbons.

  She sits with it on her lap for a long time, nap forgotten. She sits as the room grows dim as her banking fury smolders and smokes, growing first orange, then yellow, then finally white hot with rage.

  Sael is curious. “What were the passages she marked?”

  It’s around ten p.m. Lucas has long since been in bed. Sael and Katherine are sitting at the dining room table, having a discussion. Wordlessly, she hands it over.

  “Wow, she’s big into Psalms. Well, at least they’re the poetic bits.”

  “That’s hardly the point.”

  “I guess not.” He sighs. “So, what do you want to do?”

  “I want her gone.” Katherine has never felt so certain in her life. The very thought of Mrs. B spending another moment in their flat, changing their sheets, wiping down the counters, mashing potatoes for a cottage pie, makes her stomach heave and her toes curl.

  “Really?”

  “Sael, look at this!” Katherine gestures to what lies out on the table in front of them. Four crucifixes, three rosaries, the Virgin Mary figurine, and five cards with saints on them.

  “Yeah, it’s not great.” He concedes.

  “It’s the way they were hidden, so sneaky. I don’t even know if I’ve found everything yet.”

  He sighs again. “I get it. It’s creepy.”

  “It’s psychotic!”

  “I don’t know if it’s psychotic, but it’s certainly not”—he grins—“for want of a better word, kosher.”

  He’s not taking this seriou
sly, but Katherine feels ill. It had been a horrible hour of searching; she had torn his room up in a rage. Each time she found a crucifix under the bed, a card of a saint tucked among his socks, a rosary at the back of his cupboard, she experienced a simultaneous rush of triumph and nausea, like the world’s worst treasure hunt ever.

  Sael sighs again. “The thing is, Katherine, that apart from this—”

  “Apart from this?!”

  “Let me just finish—”

  “You mean, apart from this bizarre religious mania, the woman’s a total find?”

  “Let me finish!” The exasperation on his face gets through to her, and she pauses, hands on hips.

  “Okay, what?”

  “She’s an amazing cook. The house is spotless, and now probably sacred. And she loves Lucas. She loves spending time with him, and he loves her.”

  “That’s exactly my point. Who knows what the hell she’s been telling him, what kind of stories she’s been filling his head with?”

  “We’ll have to ask him, but he seems to be doing fine, better than fine. Has he ever mentioned anything to you?”

  “No, and I think that freaks me out too. What if she is like, ‘It’s our little secret?’ I don’t want him keeping secrets from me.”

  “Look, obviously we need to speak with her. Tell her that while we appreciate her religious beliefs”—Sael ignores Katherine’s snort of disgust—“while she is entitled to believe in what she wants, it’s inappropriate to bring these objects into our home, and that we also would prefer she not discuss or talk about religion with Lucas at all. If she’s amenable to it, I think she deserves one more chance.”

  “You’re exceptionally calm and easy-going about this. I thought you were an atheist?”

  “Well, I am, but it’s nice to have some insurance, just to have some coverage.” She opens her mouth, and he laughs. “Katherine, I’m kidding. Look, to be honest with you, all I know is that at the moment we have someone looking after our home and Lucas who clearly cares about him and would never harm him. It’s probably her way of expressing love.” He stares at her thoughtfully. “What bugs you so much about it?”