Girls in Trouble: A Novel

by Caroline Leavitt

  It was ten at night. George was driving, Eva in the seat beside him, Anne asleep in back. Eva was feeling woozy from the wine. They had spent a whole lovely evening with Christine and Christine’s new boyfriend, Mark, a math professor at Tufts. Mark was funny and handsome and he couldn’t take his eyes off Christine—or Anne. Fie insisted on taking the baby from George and settling her on his lap, and when Anne fell asleep, he couldn’t stop marveling. “Give me this baby to raise,” he said, making them all laugh.

  “She’s getting so big,” Christine marveled.

  “Five months. And next month, we go to court,” Eva said. She didn’t tell Christine how even though it was just a formality, a sort of official stamp to the adoption, she felt scared.

  “Piece of cake,” said George, putting one arm on Eva’s leg. “No wornes.

  “I want to come back to work soon,” Eva said, “maybe the afternoon session.”

  “Sara’s working out, then?” Christine said.

  “Day care,” Eva said, feeling a twinge of guilt. When Sara was pregnant, Eva hadn’t been able to get enough of the girl, had wanted her over there every day, but now that the baby was here, everything was different. Every time she turned a corner in the house, there was Sara. Every time the phone rang, it was Sara. She began to think that maybe an open adoption could be too open, that maybe it was time to establish some limits. Especially the way things were going, how Sara was getting needier and needier. And then, of course, there was the bath incident.

  “Well, good for you!” Christine said.

  Mark teased a finger along her shoulder and Christine rested her head against him. The look he gave her was so charged, Eva suddenly felt like a voyeur. “We should get going,” she said, nudging George, just as Christine’s hand found Mark’s knee.

  Anne fell asleep again as soon as they got her in the car seat. “Well, that was quite an evening,” George said, turning down onto their street. “We’ll put the bunny rabbit to bed and hang out.” He tapped a finger along her nose. “We didn’t even get to the dessert.”

  “I want you for dessert,” she said.

  George laughed, pulling the car into the driveway.

  “It was great to see Christine,” Eva said. “Her new man’s pretty nice, too, isn’t he?”

  “Yup. And I hate to say it, but it’s been nice not having Sara around today.” George looked encouragingly at her. “Don’t you think? You were so great with the baby tonight. And you seem much more relaxed.”

  “It’s the wine.” Eva got out of the car and stretched, the night clear and cool around her. “And the day care,” she admitted. Three hours three times a week. Just enough so Eva could get everything done, so she could read, or start thinking up new lesson plans for when she went back to work. The day care center was big and bright and sunny, with two young teachers, and as soon as she had set Anne down on the floor, Anne had reached happily for one of the colored blocks. It made all the difference. It had made Eva feel competent, like she had done something right with Anne. Like she could be a great mother.

  Eva bent and got the baby. Anne stirred in her arms and then fell back asleep again.

  She opened the door. The house smelled of something.

  “What’s that funny smell?” George said, stepping into the house.

  Eva took two steps into the room and then stopped. She tilted her face up and breathed deeply, trying to figure out what was so familiar. Then she turned and locked eyes with George.

  “Patchouli,” she said. “It’s what Sara wears.”

  “Sara? I thought she wasn’t here today.”

  Eva shook her head. “She wasn’t.”

  George was quiet for a moment. “How’d she get in?”

  He looked at Eva again, and then Eva handed the baby to him and went to the front door, running her hand along the lock, frowning.

  “What?” George said, but Eva was going down the stairs, crouching by the flowers. She picked up the rubber rock and lifted it.

  She shook the rock, but nothing jangled inside of it. There was no sound, and Eva felt something snapping off and on inside of her like a light. She felt Sara behind her, just out of sight, so close, she stood up abruptly. She looked back at George. “We told her our house is your house,” Eva said.

  “But it isn’t,” George said. “It never really was.”

  “I’ll talk to her,” Eva said. “I’ll get the key back.” And then she put the rubber rock in her pocket, and her fingers curled around it tight.

  chapter

  six

  Eva thought it’d be easier to talk to Sara on neutral ground, away from the house, so she made reservations for Saturday at La Vita Spaghetti, in Cambridge. “Let’s have lunch,” Eva said.

  “Good. I need to talk to you, too,” Sara said, and Eva felt a flicker of unease.

  When Eva told George about the lunch, George had asked if she wanted him to be there, too. “I can be bad cop and you can be good cop,” he offered. She shook her head. It was all her fault. She had let this happen by encouraging Sara to be so close, to be so much a part of the family, and now she’d have to straighten it out.

  “Should Abby and Jack be there?” George asked.

  Eva hadn’t wanted to call them, but she didn’t really want to have this lunch, either.

  “Just call,” George told her. “Maybe they’ll want to be at the lunch.”

  “I wish.” Eva called Abby at work, trying not to sound as if any of this might be Abby’s or Jack’s fault. “She broke in,” Eva said. “I thought we should talk about it.”

  “She broke in?” Abby was hushed for a moment. “But I thought she wasn’t coming over that much anymore. She’s been so busy with school and studying and—”

  “She’s over every day. And she was over when we weren’t. You didn’t know?”

  “I don’t understand—are you saying she stole something?”

  “No, but she can’t come in when we aren’t there. I’m calling because she’s your daughter.”

  “She’s my daughter when she’s done something wrong?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.” Abbv cleared her throat. “It’s easy to be the hero to someone else’s kid, isn’t it?” Abby said quietly. “You don’t have to grab her arm and stop her from running in front of a car and then stand there feeling horrible because she accuses you of hurting her. You don’t have to yell at her to make her bed and study and then think up proper punishments for when she doesn’t do those things. She probably doesn’t break your heart the way she does ours, sometimes.”

  “Abby—she does break our hearts—”

  “No,” Abby interrupted. “You think we like being the bad guys here? Well, now it’s your turn. No, she hasn’t told us. We never thought she should be over there so much, so often. You did. And now she did something wrong to you, something you don’t like? We’ll deal with it. But you deal with it, too.” Abby hung up.

  Eva was breathing so hard that she had to brace her arms against the counter.

  La Vita Spaghetti was sunny and filled with potted green plants and red checked tablecloths. Sara was already seated, dressed up in a soft blue dress, her curls spilling over her shoulders. She looked so very young, and as soon as Eva saw her, all she felt was weary. “Sorry I’m late,” Eva said, setting Anne down in the carrier beside the chair. Anne sneezed noisily. “Her eyes are crusty,” Sara said, alarmed, but Eva waved a hand.

  “She picked it up at day care. All the babies have it. The doctor said it was nothing.”

  “All the babies,” Sara said, amazed. Instantly, a waiter appeared, setting down menus. Eva settled Anne onto her lap, giving her a pair of spoons to bang. “Could I get a high chair, please?” she asked the waiter, who nodded. “It’s just three mornings a week to start,” Eva said, turning back to Sara. “And day care is good for babies. They learn more quickly. They get socialized faster. They’ve done studies showing it.”

  “Studies say
whatever you want them to. I took statistics. I know how it works.”

  “She’s just fine,” Eva insisted. “I’ll have the ravioli,” she told the waiter. “Iced tea.”

  “Oh, me, too,” Sara said. “Why do you need to put her in day care? Anything you need to get done, you can do when I’m there.”

  “I’m going back to work,” Eva said evenly.

  “Already?”

  “I love my job. And it’ll only be half a day to start.”

  Sara’s face brightened. “Can you work afternoons? I can take over then with Anne.”

  Eva dug into the baby bag for the jar of strained beets. She tried to compose herself a little better, so this wouldn’t be so difficult. Dunking the spoon into the beets, she pointed the spoon to Anne’s mouth, but Anne twisted and the beet smeared her cheek. Sara leaned over immediately, daubing beet from the baby’s face with her napkin.

  “I want to tell you something—” Eva started.

  “Oh, me, too,” Sara said, putting the dirty napkin back on her lap. “I’ve been thinking, I’m going to go to college right in Boston. I could watch Anne when you needed me.”

  Anne yelped and Eva turned to her. “Bah,” Anne said, banging her hands on the table. The waiter appeared, setting down their plates, their iced teas.

  “What do you think? Isn’t that a good idea?” Sara said.

  “Sara,” Eva blurted. “Were you at the house the other day?”

  Sara sipped at her iced tea, averting her eyes. “They put real peppermint in here.”

  “We smelled your patchouli oil. And the key was gone.”

  Sara bowed her head lower. She kept sipping her iced tea.

  Eva held out her hand. “I want my key back.”

  Sara put the glass down. She looked up at Eva, her face innocent.

  “I know you have it, Sara.”

  Sara stayed very still. “I was worried. I kept calling and there was no answer.”

  “Sara.” Eva made her voice a warning. “I thought we didn’t lie to each other.”

  Slowly, Sara reached for her purse and opened it. She put the key on the table. “I just thought it would be a help. That if something happened—”

  “Listen. Maybe we should talk about what’s going on here. Rethink it a little.”

  “Rethink what?”

  “Sara, we always wanted this to be open. We always wanted you to have as much contact with Anne as you wanted. But, I guess—we were too idealistic. We thought the contact would lessen, that you’d go on and have your own life, and we’d have ours.”

  “But how can we do that—”

  Eva floundered. “It feels sometimes like you’re living at the house with us.”

  “No, no, I’m not living there.”

  Eva sighed, exasperated. “Yes you are! You come over as soon as school is out! You stay until we kick you out! We never have a moment to ourselves!”

  “I spend a lot of time with you, but I’m not living there.”

  “But you’d like to.”

  “I like to spend time with you and time with my baby.”

  Eva put her fork down. She felt light-headed. Anne twisted in the high chair and dropped a spoon onto the floor with a loud clang. “My baby,” Eva said. “It’s my baby.”

  Sara blinked at her. “It’s—it’s an open adoption. It’s—it’s our baby.”

  “Bah, ba, bah!” Anne shrieked and then, when Eva and Sara turned to her, Anne laughed out loud. Eva tickled the baby’s cheek and then looked back at Sara.

  “Sara, no. We adopted Anne. We didn’t adopt you.” Eva saw Sara flinch and she hesitated. “Not that you aren’t a wonderful young girl—” she said. “Honey. The end of the month is the court date. Maybe—I think we can draft a new agreement and present it. If you want. Get things in writing. Maybe we should sit down with the adoption agency, get a little help here in making things as clear as we can get them.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying to me. What new agreement?”

  “I’m saying that you should have your own life, not ours. Don’t you want to get ready for college? Don’t you want to date?”

  Anne clattered her spoon on the high chair and Eva, eyes still on Sara, held her hand over Anne’s to soften the blows.

  “I am going to go to college,” Sara said. “No one said I wasn’t. And date who? The boys who make sucking noises when I walk past them?”

  “Sara, honey, spending all this time with us isn’t good for anyone, not even you, but you’re too young to see that now. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “No, no, it’s good for Anne. It’s good for me.”

  “Look, what if—what if you start coming over less often, oh, say, once a week?”

  “Once a week!”

  “Well, let’s just try it,” Eva repeated. “Call first, so you don’t get there to find we’re gone. I don’t want you coming all the way out there for nothing.”

  “For nothing? It’s not for nothing—” Sara whispered.

  Eva tried to brighten her tone. “We’ll all go out then. What do you think?”

  Sara looked down at her food, picking at it. Eva felt drained. The only one having a good time at all was the baby, who was busy grinning at every diner who looked her way.

  The waiter swept over to the table. “Anything else, ladies?” he said. He nodded at the baby. “I’m in love with this one here,” he said. He looked at Sara and then back at the baby. “You know, your sister looks like you!”

  “Oh, she’s not my—” Sara said.

  “Check, please,” Eva said and reached for her purse. Sara grew more and more still, and Anne grew more boisterous, and when Eva took the spoon away from her, Anne banged her hands on the high-chair tray.

  “She’s usually so quiet—” Eva said, pulling on her coat, pulling Anne up and putting her into the carrier. The baby babbled and Eva half-smiled.

  “She’s excited to see me,” Sara said, and Eva stopped, looking from the baby to Sara and back again, at the way Anne couldn’t take her eyes off Sara. Eva tickled Anne’s chin, and the baby’s eyes flew delightedly toward her. “There’s my big girl!” Eva said.

  Eva drove Sara home. “Tomorrow?” Sara said hopefully.

  “I’ll call you,” Eva said.

  Sara stood on the sidewalk, wavering. “I don’t want Anne in day care.”

  Eva pushed back her hair. “I’ll call you,” she said, “I will,” and then she drove off, and Sara got smaller and smaller in her mirror until she wasn’t there at all.

  Back at home after the lunch, the house was so quiet that Eva missed all the noise Sara brought with her. She brushed the thought away, and then by afternoon, the baby was out of sorts and noisy enough for a whole army. Anne fussed when Eva changed her diaper. She refused her oatmeal, turning her face away, and when Eva put her in her carrier, she batted irritatedly at her toys and then began to cry. “What is it?” Eva said. She tried dancing with the baby to music, but that only made Anne stiffen. She tried taking a drive, but Anne screamed in the car, she screamed when Eva tried to stop at a park and set her on the grass, and finally, overwhelmed, Eva brought her home. Anne kept fussing, kept flailing her arms. Eva was nearly at her wit’s end, in the kitchen, Anne screaming, when the phone rang. She let it. The machine kicked on and there was Sara’s voice. “Hi, I was just checking—” and the baby quieted suddenly and Eva couldn’t help it, she was in no mood. She snapped the answering machine off.

  One day, Eva took Anne to the zoo. The next day, to the children’s museum. Then to day care. And one lovely afternoon, the two of them spread out on Eva and George’s bed and napped, sleeping until the phone jolted Eva awake. “Can I come over, just for a moment?” Sara said. “I miss Anne. I miss you.”

  “Not today.” Eva stayed firm. She hung up the phone, then she turned to the baby. “It’s just you and me, kid.” The baby yawned.

  All that afternoon, Eva was in heaven. She felt as if she had shed a heavy winter coat and now
the cool spring was gently blowing on her skin. She even felt more charitable toward Sara. They had had good times after all, but still, she didn’t feel any impulse to call her the way she used to. Instead, she bathed Anne, and fed her, and then took her outside in her stroller, walking from the neighborhood to the park. “What a cute baby,” someone said, peering into the carriage.

  “My daughter’s going to be a heartbreaker,” Eva said. She couldn’t stop saying it. She deliberately went into stores where she didn’t need a thing just to say it again, to have people admire her baby. “Will you look at this baby!” a woman said. “Wendy, come here!” The two women crowded around, and then Eva came home and put Anne in her crib. “What a time we had,” she said

  She was doing the wash downstairs when she heard a noise. A window opening. A door. She ran upstairs, but the door was locked. The window sealed. She was putting Anne to bed and she saw something slip by her line of sight. A flash of blue cloth. “Sara,” she warned and she walked out into the living room, the kitchen. The house clicked around her, silent and empty. She was grocery-shopping, Anne strapped to her chest, when she turned into the frozen foods section and there was a girl with hair red like a brush fire and she stopped. How did you get here —she started to say, and then the girl turned, and Eva saw she had bad skin and wasn’t Sara at all. “Silly,” Eva told herself.

  It was afternoon and Sara was gliding on her bike. She was going crazy. She had been almost used to missing Danny, the consistent dull ache was familiar in its dimensions, but now that she missed Eva and Anne and George, too, one loss fed the other and missing Danny had grown in proportion, too. God, but she had to see Eva. Had to see the baby. And she knew she couldn’t.

  Sara pedaled faster, rounding the curves, trying to think of nothing but the ground she was covering. She hadn’t talked to Eva and George in days, she barely said two words to her parents, who barely said two words back. She glided around a corner, and when she looked up, she found herself on Stanton Street. Danny’s block.