Coming Back to Me

by Caroline Leavitt

  “The car?” Her mood brightened. She could get away, drive places. She could plunk the baby in the stroller and maybe he’d snooze while she window-shopped.

  “You just tell me when you want to go see her.”

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “Or the day after.”

  He was quiet for a minute. “I really appreciate this. I know you and Molly haven’t been exactly close these past years.”

  Whose fault was that? she thought, but she didn’t say it. She could just imagine what Molly had told Gary about her. That she was selfish and a terrible person. That she had broken Angela’s heart and taken all of Molly’s money. But did Molly tell Gary about the last time Suzanne had called, desperate, pleading, weeping for another loan, and Molly had flat-out refused? Did Gary know that Molly had never even once called Suzanne back after that to see if Suzanne was managing, to ask whether or not Suzanne might need something other than money?

  Suzanne bet Molly didn’t tell him how she had practically raised Molly all by herself. How by the time she was twelve, she was babysitter, maid, cook, and laundry lady, doing just about everything because Angela was either working long, crazy hours or trying to land a husband, because Angela had put her in charge and Molly was no help. Suzanne had had to say no to more parties than most people were ever invited to in their whole life. That was the way her life had been, right up until she had met Ivan, and then all that stopped. She shook her head again. It had been five years already. When did you stop loving someone, when could you hear their name and not feel so sick inside you wanted to die?

  “Suzanne?”

  She looked up at Gary, waiting.

  “The baby’s crying.”

  “He is?” Suzanne didn’t hear anything. Gary was still looking at her, like he expected her to take care of things, even when he was home.

  Gary started walking, then he looked back at her, waiting. “We’ll get a bottle.” He went into the kitchen and took a bottle from the refrigerator, running it under the tap for a while. “There. That ought to be warm enough, now. Come on.”

  Suzanne reluctantly trailed after Gary. The baby’s room was in the back of the house.

  Gary put his hand on the door, bright yellow with blue stars, and Suzanne sipped in a breath. Here we go, she thought. Molly’s kid was on the other side. He opened the door. It was a kid’s room all right—white furniture, puffy clouds on the ceiling. A small braided rug. She could hear the baby, baaing like a lamb.

  “Come here.” Gary motioned her forward. Reluctantly she came closer. She looked into the crib. The baby’s face was scrunched up. His hands were tiny fists. Oh, yeah. He was crying all right.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Suzanne asked.

  “He’s hungry.” Gary bent and picked him up. “Right?” he asked the baby. The baby’s pajamas had a big damp spot down the front. “Sit,” he said to her. “I’ll give you a feeding lesson.”

  She looked around. She stared hard. There was only one chair in the room. The white rocker from Angela’s bedroom.

  The rocker was like new. A friend of Angela’s had bought it for Angela when Suzanne was born, but Angela had never used it for anything but decoration. “It’s a Whistler’s Mother kind of rocker,” Angela always pointed out. “And I’m hardly the Whistler’s Mother type.” Suzanne’s throat knotted. Leave it to Molly to take this thing. Suzanne wouldn’t have taken anything from Angela’s. She would have burned the whole stupid house down and everything in it.

  He placed the baby on her, upright, so his head lolled against her. The baby felt like a bag of soggy fruit. Gary lowered him on her a bit, and then she saw the soft spot on the top of the head, moving, like it was breathing. Like it was alive.

  Gary handed her the bottle. “You can breathe, you know.” Suzanne didn’t even realize she had stopped. She sucked in air. She tried to look at anything but that terrible breathing spot on the baby’s head. The baby worked greedily at the bottle, his mouth tugging like a leech, his eyes squinched shut. His whole body felt like it was pulsing against hers. All she wanted to do was get this over with and get the baby off her.

  Gary watched her for a moment. He frowned and looked confused and then he held up one finger. “Was that the door? Be right back.”

  “Wait—” she said. “I didn’t hear anything—” but he was gone. Great. Just dandy. He didn’t seem to her like he really knew what he was doing, either. At least the baby did, busily stuffing himself on the formula. But she couldn’t get comfortable and her nose began running like there was no tomorrow. She had a tissue in her pocket, but getting at it was something else. As soon as she lifted one hand from the baby, he startled, the bottle jumping from his mouth. He slid down her leg. She panicked, grabbing him about the belly, hoisting him up, closer to her than before. Suzanne shoved the bottle back in his mouth. “Jesus. Sit right.” She sniffed and then she couldn’t help it. She sneezed loudly, and the baby suddenly stopped feeding. He looked at her with interest.

  “False alarm. No one there.” Gary came back into the room, watching her. “Getting the hang of it?” He bent and repositioned the baby, perching him up on her shoulder, so that his soggy mouth was right up against her blouse. He drooled and gummed at her neck. She recoiled. It felt as if he were trying to burrow through her.

  “Pat his back,” Gary said.

  Suzanne moved her hands in an awkward circle.

  “Harder.”

  She pressed her hands in. The baby burped, like a popped cork, and suddenly she felt a puddle of something wet and disgusting on her shoulder. She jerked back.

  Gary quickly grabbed something from the changing table, a small white cloth he handed her. “Burp cloth. I should have put one on you before you fed him.”

  She couldn’t take this another moment. She lifted up the baby and Gary, thank the Lord, finally took him from her, holding him as awkwardly as she had. She daubed at her shirt with the cloth.

  “You think you’ll be okay with him?” Gary asked. The baby began to move his head side to side. Suzanne stared. God Almighty. He’s saying no.

  “I’ll take the night shift, mornings and evenings when I get home.” Gary gave her a pleading look.

  “Piece of cake,” she lied. She didn’t really have a clue. And Gary didn’t seem to know all that much either. Well, she’d do what she had to do. What she always did. Fake it. Take her clues, trial and error, from the baby. He, at least, seemed to have a good sense of what he wanted.

  “You look exhausted. Let me show you your room. Try to get as much sleep as you can. You’ll need it.”

  I’ll need a sanitarium, Suzanne thought.

  The room was too pink for Suzanne’s tastes. Like a facial tissue. And it looked unfinished, as if it were waiting to become something. The bed looked too big for the room, as if it had been thrown in as an afterthought, and the dresser looked too small—like a child’s dresser. Even Gary seemed uncomfortable in the room, leaving almost as quickly as he showed her in. Still, it had a door she could shut, and it faced out to a backyard, the one thing Suzanne had never had unless you counted alleys and concrete and brick walls. The silence made her antsy. She was used to car alarms and yowling stray cats and drunks screaming out the names of the people they loved enough to want to kill.

  She was still freezing. She had changed into the warmest thing she owned, her jeans and a sweater, which were about as comfortable to sleep in as an iron lung. She shifted under the comforter. She took away one of the down pillows on the bed and then put it back again. She wanted to shut her eyes, to not have to think about anything. There had been nights like that in California, but then she had squeezed herself into some spandex, sprinkled glitter through her hair, and gone to a club. All the light and noise and male attention had made her forget that she was lonely, that she hadn’t heard anything from Ivan, that she had grown so shamelessly desperate she had even left notes taped to his front door. We have to talk. Or: We can work this out. Or simply: Please.

  She got up
, pacing, feeling caged. If she didn’t have a cigarette, she’d die. She looked out the window and touched the glass, which was ice cold. No way was she going to go outside to smoke. Screw it. She’d do it in here. What Gary didn’t know wouldn’t hurt anyone. Especially her. She smoked two cigarettes, one after the other, waving away the smoke, tapping the ashes into an empty vase. She began to feel calmer. Thank God for cigarettes. You could tell her about cancer all you wanted and it still wouldn’t stop her from smoking.

  She opened the window a crack to toss the butt outside. She threw it far into the bushes, and then she suddenly saw a woman in the next yard, staring up at her. The woman had on a flowery blue bathrobe and her hair was in pink curlers, but she bent and disgustedly picked up the butt and lobbed it into her trash can. Then she straightened and glared accusingly over at Suzanne, who pulled back from the window. Great. Would that old biddy tell Gary?

  Suzanne shut the window and then crawled back into bed. She put a strand of hair in her mouth, something she hadn’t done since she was a kid. When she and Molly had lived in California, they had been friends. They used to romp on the beach, and she could boss Molly around and Molly could make her laugh. They used to work for hours making sand sculptures. A woman with a big belly and big breasts in a bikini. A murderous-looking octopus, scallop shells pushed in for eyes, a growling seaweed mouth. And they always went to the movies.

  At night it was Suzanne who gave Molly supper and washed the dishes. She did some laundry and swept up and then took her shower, and as soon as she stepped out of the bathroom, Molly was at her. “Let me comb your hair,” Molly begged. Suzanne rolled her eyes, but she always let Molly do it. Sometimes she told herself she let Molly because she felt a little sorry for her sister. Molly’s hair was so wild and curly, you couldn’t even get a comb through it. No matter what you did with it—braids, hot combs, curlers—it still ended up a tangled mess.

  Suzanne sat on a kitchen chair, her long wet hair spread out over the chair back. Molly stood on a hassock to reach. Suzanne arched her back, leaned back her head. Molly used her fingers to free some of the tangles. Her touch was so gentle, Suzanne slowly shut her eyes. Molly drew the comb lightly through Suzanne’s hair and Suzanne shivered with pleasure. The moment Molly finished and took her hands and the comb away, Suzanne wanted them back.

  Suzanne chewed on her hair. She thought about Molly and she felt suddenly scared. What would she do when she saw Molly now? What would she say?

  The baby began crying. Suzanne rolled over on her side. Gary didn’t expect her to go to the baby, did he? Not her first night. She waited, but she didn’t hear Gary, and the baby gradually calmed himself down.

  And then she heard Gary’s voice. “Molly Goldman.”

  She opened the door and peeked at him from around the corner. He was on the phone, leaning against the wall, in gray sweatpants and bare feet, in a faded black T-shirt. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Thank you.” Then he hung up the phone, turned, and saw her.

  “Still critical,” he said quietly, and then turned and walked away from her.

  Critical, Suzanne thought. Critical wasn’t like the phone call she had gotten at two in the morning when Lars had called to tell her Angela had died, his voice flat as a pane of glass. Suzanne had barely been living with Ivan for two years when the call came, and as soon as she heard she had started weeping on the phone. “Baby?” Ivan said, lifting up from bed, grabbing her to him. It was the first time she couldn’t feel him touching her. She couldn’t grab hold of his scent. She suddenly couldn’t remember how furiously she had left, how she had vowed to never come back. Instead, she remembered when she was six and had had an earache and Angela had picked her up, big girl that she was, and held her in her arms all night long. She remembered, too, long after she had run away, a day when she had been shopping at Macy’s and she had followed a woman through three different floors just because she looked like her mother, because the woman had turned and smiled at Suzanne for no reason at all.

  Suzanne had cried to Lars so hard she couldn’t speak. “I—” she said. “I always meant to come back.”

  “You don’t need to come,” Lars interrupted. “God. How you hurt her.”

  “How I hurt her?”

  “She was fine without you while she was alive. She’s fine without you now.” He was silent for a moment. “We all are.”

  Two days later, Suzanne and Ivan had had to move to a cheaper apartment. She hadn’t called Lars ever again.

  Suzanne turned from Gary and went back to bed, pulling the covers over her head. Critical was still alive.

  Suzanne dreamed a baby was crying. She bolted awake. The house was quiet. She put her feet on the floor, and popped them back up with a shock. Jesus. Had Gary turned the heat back down again? Well, Gary was going to be at the hospital all day, and as soon as he left, she’d crank up the thermometer until the house felt like Florida.

  Still, she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t more than a little unnerved about Gary not being here. What was it going to be like taking care of a baby? She remembered a client named Liza who had three little kids. “What’s it like?” Suzanne had once asked. Suzanne was just making conversation, trying to make Liza comfortable. She wasn’t even all that interested.

  Liza had laughed at such a question. “Here’s your answer,” she said and then she suddenly grabbed Suzanne’s wrist, her hand a steel trap.

  Suzanne, startled, had tried to pry Liza’s fingers from her, but Liza held on. “Cut it out,” Suzanne said.

  “This is kids,” Liza had said with a smile. “Forget career, forget a life, forget a lover. This is it.”

  Suzanne wrung her hand free, shaking circulation back into it. She waggled her fingers. “How do you not go nuts?”

  Lisa had laughed. “Believe it or not, but when I feel the grip loosening up, that’s when I begin to feel crazy.”

  But Suzanne didn’t get the appeal. She and Ivan had wanted to grow old together, but they had never wanted kids along for the ride.

  “Can you see me as anyone’s father?” Ivan said. “I come home from gigs at three in the morning. I’m not going to want to deal with poop and spit-up. Kids tie you down. They sap the strength right out of you. They want everything. I mean, name one great rocker who has kids.”

  Suzanne could name a bunch, but it was kind of a moot point, because she didn’t want kids, either. She hated it when clients didn’t even ask her, but just brought their kids along, expecting Suzanne to be all surprised and thrilled about it, to think they were the cutest things in the whole wide world. The babies cried and carried on, jangling her nerves, ruining her concentration. The kids grabbed for her expensive Japanese scissors and spilled her homemade shampoos all over her floor.

  Suzanne plucked up her clothes and dressed. She passed Gary’s bedroom. He wasn’t there. The patchwork comforter was thrown back on Gary’s side. A pillow was horizontal on Molly’s side, bunched to form a kind of body.

  Gary was already in the kitchen, wearing the same faded flannel shirt and jeans, listlessly spooning cereal from a bowl. He looked even worse than he had the day before, like he hadn’t bathed yet or even tugged a comb through his hair.

  Gary got up and put his dish in the sink. He handed her keys on a Daisy Duck chain. “House keys and car keys.” He yawned. “Oh, and good morning. I’m so tired I’m forgetting my manners.”

  He dug into his pocket and gave her a handful of bills and a long folded-up piece of paper. “I made you a grocery list.”

  “A list?” Suzanne liked roaming the aisles, throwing in whatever caught her eye, or whatever she thought she could afford. Suzanne hadn’t used a list in years, not since Angela had made her shop, leaving her lists so long they might have been a book. Suzanne had to buy all the groceries, even Angela’s embarrassing personal things like those huge boxes of sanitary pads or the special scented douche that Suzanne had to sometimes ask for. It made Suzanne want to die. She averted her head, hiding her face with h
er hair. She couldn’t make eye contact, and even though no one paid her the least bit of attention she still burned with shame. There were always more items than there was money for them, too, but Angela didn’t care. She’d raise hell if Suzanne so much as forgot a single thing. She’d make her go right back and get them. “I don’t have time for this,” Angela warned her.

  “I’ll call you if there’s any news,” Gary said.

  As soon as Gary left, Suzanne decided to get some news of her own. Good news. The first good news was to crank the heat up. The second was to have a cigarette.

  Then she headed straight for Molly and Gary’s bedroom and began to snoop. She wanted to know what she was in for, and she knew you could tell a lot about a person by their stuff. Everything meant something. Everything told a tale. She had snooped on all her boyfriends, except for Ivan, because she had been fool enough to think she knew everything about him. Maybe if she had snooped, things might have turned out differently.

  She picked up Molly’s hairbrush, a soft bristled brush she could have told Molly was the exact wrong kind for Molly’s hair. Suzanne rummaged through the dresser drawer. She pulled open the top drawer. There wasn’t much interesting. A sewing kit. A baby book she pulled out only because it was open, some of the words highlighted in yellow.

  Congratulations! Your baby’s beautiful, now what about you? To look and feel your post-baby best, start getting back in shape as soon as you can! Flex your feet in the hospital bed. Make circles with your arms. And think about sit-ups as soon as your doctor okays them!

  Oh, Jesus. Suzanne shut the book and looked at the title. Surprise, You’re a mom! Right. Big surprise, Suzanne thought, tucking it back in the drawer.

  She went to the dresser and pulled open the bottom drawer. There was a big blue box and she pulled it out and opened it.

  Her breath stopped. The locket Ivan had given her. A bright silvery heart, as big as the real thing. So heavy it used to bang against her chest when she walked, and when she finally took her clothes off at night, sometimes she’d find a faint blue bruise on her chest where the locket had bumped against her. How had Molly gotten it? Suzanne went crazy when she couldn’t find it. She had hurled clothing out of her drawers and her closets. She had retraced her steps until she was so exhausted she couldn’t walk straight anymore.