“All good.”
“Kates?”
I find his lips again, and trace them by way of acknowledgement. They’re lulling me to sleep, and words seem harder at this time anyway.
“I think that teddy is the sexiest bear on paper.”
Shocked, I shoot upright, back splayed to the headboard. My voice sounds very awake when I say, “What are you talking about, sleepy head? I think you’re confusing my high school drawings. I’ve been looking at them lately. They’re everywhere.”
I don’t know why I was so quick to lie. I guess I feel stupid. Any time I want to start drawing again, Mom is this gigantic voice in my head pointing out every wrong marking, or odd line and I feel too embarrassed to pretend I could be a real designer anyway.
“No, you just drew this one.”
“You must have been looking at one of the ones from my folio. I loved to sketch teddy designs. Made a whole folio for them.”
“No.” Paul sits up too. Looks like we’re both wide awake now. Though it’s dark, I feel that he leans down on me. His lips meet the skin between my shoulder and chest and he flicks away the material that’s obviously getting in his way before he kisses again. “You never drew one with a checkered bow around his neck and a footprint on his head.”
My jaw drops, and I do—I have every intention of lying again, but his perception throws me. It’s seconds later when I think of saying that he must be wrong, but it sounds stupid, because as much as Paul works hard and long hours, he still pays attention to what I do.
“And I think it would look cute for Ella as a real bear.”
I mumble something incoherent that even I don’t understand, but I’m too slow because Paul kisses the bare skin between my shoulder and chest again, pulls up the material and collapses into sleep within seconds.
I have dreams about kissing Paul behind the science building and making out at summer parties, and playing Scrabble on Friday nights with Brent and Liam.
When I wake up, I forget these dreams.
The only one I remember is Paul’s forearms tensed next to my head, him pressing hard on my body, and a moment before he sucks on my lip, my cell phone rings.
Her name pops up on the screen.
Yesterday night comes back to me. Thoughts about how it felt like a different life. Liam and I playing Scrabble as kids. The teddy that won’t get out of my head until I finish drawing him.
I wonder if Mom sees her granddaughter in a similar way.
That my presence isn’t so horrible anymore because she can pretend I don’t exist. That Ella is her second time around to make her life how she always wanted it to turn out.
Too bad, mother dear. I will make sure my daughter knows who I really am.
Chapter Six
The doorbell rings a few minutes before Paul and I are heading out for our Stroll Saturday.
Our Stroll Saturdays began at noon with cute salad sandwiches at the park and Ella breastfeeding from me, to now setting our alarms to shock us out of a sleep-in and run to the park, Ella needing to be strapped down extra tight so she won’t fling out of the stroller over bumps in the pavement.
So at seven thirty a.m.? Yeah, I jolt in shock hearing the doorbell. The dishcloth plops down onto my socks, soaking my feet with murky water.
Throwing open the front door, puffed, I say, “Mom,” flatly. I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m not.
She walks in without an invite holding her handbag over one arm and a breast pump in the other.
“You’d never believe how cheap they had these at Costco! It’s electric, double pump.”
“Hey, I’ve been meaning to show you something I made. Well, so far it’s only the sketch but—”
“Kates, I’m bringing you a gift. Aren’t you grateful?”
I plaster a smile on my face before the scowl itching at my lips wins over. I’m trying. Lord knows I’m trying. “I’m really excited about it. I’m thinking about hiring someone to create it so I can give it to Ella on her first bir—”
“Who the bloody hell is here at fart o’clock in the morning?” Paul calls from the bedroom. He emerges shaking out his water-darkened blonde curls and a towel tucked around his waist. And nothing else.
He nods at Mom and turns back the way he came. I look to Mom, who’s grinning between the breast pump machine and me.
“You show me that thing later. It can’t be as good as this!” she says, sounding so wound up by the last bit that I can practically hear the forced excitement in her tone.
We sit on the couch in the rare quiet time while Paul is changing and before Ella wakes. I guess the teddy can wait. Paul’s seen the final sketch, but I want to show it off to someone else. I don’t think any present will top what I’m going to have done for Ella when she turns one in a month and a half.
“You do it like this.” Mom takes out the parts, flicks through the instructions for all of ten seconds before she fiddles with the pieces in her own way.
I’m not sure why, but sitting on the couch with most of the neighbors sleeping at this hour of their Saturday mornings and no one but Mom and I, I decide to clamp my hands under my thighs and watch her put together the breast pump from the corner of my eye. And only through my dangling hair.
By the escalating clicking sound, the pipe and clip are sure to snap off in pieces but I don’t say a word. Mom is close enough to blow up. Her face pools with red, as if a tomato has been slashed just under her skin. That red face leaning within an inch of mine and telling me “The world would be better without a child who kills her brother and still can’t make her bed” is the type of thing I can’t shake.
So I wait.
Mom snaps the pipe and clip apart, and an involuntary squeal rips through my clenched lips.
“Let me,” I say, taking the pieces.
“You little …” Mom looks at me.
The first word I think looking at that expression is ‘rage’. It’s in the bulging vein in her forehead in an instant, in the growl hissing between her lips and the stone eyes pinning me to the spot.
“Mom?”
She clamps onto the pieces of the breast pump in my hand and yanks. But she doesn’t take them from me. No. She yanks them until they’re in her grip, a sign that the pieces in my lap are not mine, but hers.
“What do you think you’re doing? You think you can put this together? I almost had it and …” She does one, slow blink, one that says I drain her energy. She rolls her eyes next. “This breast pump is to save that child of yours. Do you want to make her dumb like you? You need to breast feed her until eighteen months.”
As quickly as she unleashed, she’s silent, boring an expectant look into me.
“So?”
I bite my lip and look to my lap. I don’t know why yet I feel it. Something—something will come and by the rocks churning in my gut it won’t be good. I mumble, “What?”
“Do you want Ella to be dumb like you?”
I shake my head. Only a little. It wasn’t a confident “no” because I hate saying how dumb I am, but I know now isn’t the right time to start a fight. Paul will be out in a minute or two and I’d rather spend my day doing something—anything—together than spend one of the two days we get together mad and distant. Beside Ella, I can’t stand him mad at me. I’d rather give up part of me than lose the time we can spend together.
“Well then, you let me show you how to put that together, Katie.” This time she does snatch it from me. She keeps my eyes, daring me to look away and see what happens. “I’m doing this to guide my granddaughter, because look at the filth my daughter is and can’t manage. You take my babies’ lives and think you can make up for it with Ella? You will forever have their lives on your conscience. Now,” and Mom turns away, beginning on her task because I’m no longer worth her attention, “let me show you.”
I want to scream I am normal.
I want to define that Ella is made from Paul and me, not her, and we love her with all our mind, soul and body.
But isn’t it true? Mom had one miscarriage before me and years of trying for a child. It was after I was born that she had half a dozen miscarriages and stillborn babies. I would be an idiot to ignore that fact. Mom is the only one who reminds me, though, of the evil I’ve caused Dad and her. It’s not like I don’t walk around with a burden dragging my heart and buckling my knees to crumble me.
I know this without her reminders.
“I didn’t hear you, Katherine Burnell,” she says.
That’s not my name anymore. I’m an Anselin, not a Burnell.
“I did not hear you,” she repeats, standing up. I stand up too, because the thought of having nowhere left to back up on the sofa is the first thing I imagine. I can’t be stuck there. Where would I go?
Mom finds the sketch on the table. The one I had out, gawking at before she came, doing the final tweaks.
“You’re doodling again. I can’t believe you aren’t back to your real job because of these stupid pictures.”
My voice doesn’t work when I start saying, But I thought it was cute. It doesn’t work because my vocal chords are balled up in a knot in my throat. How could I be so silly as to do a crap design to make a bear for Ella? It probably is stupid and Mom is the only one who will tell me so.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
Mom advances, striding up to me. “That’s what I thought.”
“Stop, please. What’s—what’s going on? Wait. Stop.” I have nowhere left to go. I’m all but backed up in the corner of my living room.
It’s the faintest of sounds, but Ella’s cries can wake me from the deepest sleep. She’s up. I hear the sounds, so faint I might think I was imagining them. Ella’s cries are louder in the hold they have around my chest than they do ringing in my ears.
And right now I’m stuck. I can’t run to my baby girl. Paul will get to her and hold her, but that still makes me uneasy because I need to soothe her. She needs to know her mommy will always run to her when she’s hurting.
My mom says something again, but I’m lost to all her words. I duck down, but she shoots out her palm to my shoulder, simultaneously lifting and backing me up.
“Say that you need me to show you what to do,” Mom says in a level voice that’s too calm.
“Get off!” I scream. I want to push her but I can’t. I’ve thought about why I haven’t slapped or kicked her. I can’t. I could never touch her.
Mom’s hands come up. Her teeth are shining with spit and her head is tilted. “Say it.” Her hands draw up still, forming cupping shapes and closing in to my neck.
My neck? Omg.
“Rochelle?”
Paul walks into the living room and he reacts with bulging eyes first. He gets Mom by the scruff of her neck and throws her off. He bundles me in his arms. My back faces Mom, Ella’s cries are louder now, probably perceivable to both of them, but I know she can last another minute because I crumple into Paul. I don’t care that I can’t see Mom because when I’m protected by Paul, nothing has ever gone wrong and I know nothing ever will.
With Paul, I’ll always have my safeguard.
“Out,” Paul demands. “No,” he says quickly, perhaps cutting Mom off before she gets a word in. “I’d take a bullet before anyone or any type of monster lays a finger on my wife or daughter.”
Paul turns, transferring me behind his back. “How dare you, Rochelle. You’ve done enough.”
“Paul.” I tap his shoulder, and he lets me step forward. “Please leave, Mom. Thanks for bringing the pump, but—another time.”
Mom’s jaw drops, but the look is different from what I’m used to when we’re alone. This look is frozen, shocked, surprised. If she’s angry, she keeps it hidden. See, only I deserve the full fury of her rage. I’m sure that if Dad had witnessed our encounters, things would have been a lot different. But Mom is a controlled person.
“So, Katie?” Mom asks. “Say it. You need me.”
In her eyes, I see that she’s not concealing anger. She’s infuriated that she’s not controlling me or anything around us. That Paul has taken that from her. I don’t know how my legs do it, because I have not walked up to her but I’m there, at her side.
“I needed someone to care about me. I need a mother. You are neither. And I think I’ll be fine with that one day.”
I smile at Paul when I turn to run up the stairs and he offers the smallest of smiles back. I dash to Ella’s room and scoop her up.
Patting her back, her chest pressed against my chest, her heartbeat thuds into me. I am not thinking of seeing her, but have proof of her life blended with mine. Finally, this is enough.
I cry. The tears come fast; however, my hands are taken up holding her. I can’t take my hand from her back, not because I’m paralyzed but because in this moment, I don’t want to pull her away from me. I back up to the wall and when I feel it there I slide down and cradle Ella in my arms, my tears slipping off my chin and darkening spots on her jumpsuit.
I blink, but that doesn’t stop the tears. My chest begins to heave, my breaths roughen and Ella’s cries become louder, longer, like an escalating fire alarm. I think I need a teddy of my own now. I think I’ll still have that teddy created because maybe my mom really has lost it.
I don’t know. It’s too much to decide right now.
Two rough thumbs take my tears. They come back and I close my eyes, sighing. Those two thumbs rub the wetness down my cheeks and at my eyes.
“Kates.”
Without looking up, I bury our daughter into his crouching figure. His arms come around us.
Chapter Seven
For Ella’s first birthday party, Paul and I have invited family and friends. Mom invited the ones we haven’t seen in years because she thinks it’s rude not to.
Some guy I found through an old friend used my design to make Ella’s teddy. He is as I imagined: with paw marks on the pads of his hands and feet and one on the side of his forehead, and a checkered bow around his neck. He’s like that because I wanted him to be. His fur is soft like running my fingers over silk, his button eyes reflect the room he’s in and he has a recording in him of Paul and me telling Ella that we love her.
Though it took everything in me not to give Ella the teddy today, I have vowed to myself I’ll wait until tomorrow, Sunday, when it’s Ella’s real birthday just like proper adults are meant to wait.
In a moment of giddiness, I dress Ella in her pink and purple polka dot dress and wear my purple sheer blouse and pink pencil skirt. I throw on my heels, too, which I haven’t worn in at least six months.
Staring at us in the mirror, everything looks perfect. I hesitate, redo her butterfly hair clip, holding her baby-hair to the side. I smile at us again. She wants to walk so I hold her hand as she lugs one foot down each step of the staircase, balances herself and does so all the way to the bottom.
The plates are served, ranging from pumpkin soup and cream to mushy vegetables for the toddlers, dips and whatnot left over from the entrée, pizza, hand-made sushi and more.
It’s as I notice the dips, imagining Paul aligning the carrot sticks and celery into a smiley face, that I notice it. He isn’t here. I hold my stomach and screw my face up, telling those around me I’m going to go the bathroom to freshen up. Ella remains in her highchair next to her second cousin, Ryder, both of them fed by my cousin.
In the guest bathroom, Paul isn’t there. He’s not in the master bath either. Around the bedroom, there are signs of Ella and me: a dirty baby shirt and three pairs of my jeans, skirts and blouses creating a new level of flooring. No Paul, again. I walk around to the backyard, hide behind the brick walls and duck under windowsills. Whatever I thought he’d be doing, he’s not.
Paul is sitting on the laundry room’s windowsill where there’s about an arm’s span between the fence and our house.
“Hey you,” I say, waltzing up.
Smoke suffocates the air until it burns my throat
when I reach him. He has the cigarette somewhere I can’t see. He relaxes against the glass behind him. He looks loose. Paul and I both have only tried smoking but we wouldn’t duck out of Ella’s birthday to smoke alone.
I sit on the edge, and clamp my hands on the brick sill, nudging him. “You freaking scared me. I thought you’d left on me.”
“Would it matter?”
Okay, wow. I blink several times, processing these words. He said that, right? Asked if it mattered if he left me?
“Pauly!” I slap his arm and cross my hands into each other.
He accepts this. Doesn’t pick me up and threaten to throw me to the floor, or punch me back in the arm. Or fake a witty remark. He stares at his feet, dangling, not even looking at me, but focused on the repetitive movement. Then he pulls out the cigarette that he’d been hiding on his other side—as if I couldn’t smell that smoke—and takes a drag.
“Look at me,” I say, pulling his chin to face me.
Slowly, he lifts heavy eyelids and takes my gaze, appreciating the moment. I’ll never get sick of those emerald green eyes, or his curly blonde hair. Lighten those eyes to blue and he’s Ella as a man. That’s what I love about him. That God chose the right genes and created Ella as a mini-Paul so now I really do have a part of him as a part of me.
“Do you love me still?” he says while I’m daydreaming.
Me? Of course I do! Stroking his stubble, I smile at his lips, needing to feel them on mine. Why would he ask that?
“Well … I suppose,” I say, with a flirty grin.
“Good,” he says. “Now you better go in. What a bad mother you are for abandoning your daughter on her very first birthday party.”
“She’s up to her elbows in pumpkin,” I say flatly. “Why did you ask?”
“Nah, nothing.”
“Why?”
“With me away working so much, tired the rest of the time. I guess it’s just in my head.”
Paul stubs out the cigarette on the bricks. The smoke blows out in a puff. Suddenly, he takes my elbows and demands every bit of my attention with those emerald eyes. His blonde curls just touch his eyebrows, and I’m tempted to run my fingers through them.
Precise (Pulling Me Under) Page 4
