What a funny thing not to know about yourself, Pru thought, tucking her feet under her. A pallet, next to her parents’ bed. It made her sound like a servant child.
“Annali told me she gets ice cream when she has nightmares. Is that true?”
Nadine sighed. “Well . . . sometimes, yes.”
“Come on, that can’t be a good thing. A sundae, every time she says she has a nightmare? What is Patsy thinking?”
“She says it’s to give Annali something happy to think about when she remembers the nightmare. So, tell me about Jacob.”
Whoop jumped up on her lap, bringing with him a cloud of clay litter. Pru began to scratch him in his favorite place, on his belly.
“Well, he certainly seems to love Patsy. And Annali.”
“Patsy says he’s great with her.”
“I guess.” This was followed by a little silence. Where, Pru guessed, she was supposed to rave about Jacob.
“Don’t you like Jacob?” her mother said, now worried.
“I do,” Pru said, slowly. “It just seems that it’s moving awfully fast. You know, she’s so taken by him. She’s even more impulsive than usual. I mean, the whole thing with Jimmy Roy—”
“We don’t know what happened with Jimmy Roy,” her mother interrupted. “He had qualities. You remember how he was, when Annali was born. You saw him.”
“Deer in headlights” was the phrase that came to mind, when she recalled Jimmy Roy at the birth of his daughter. He’d seemed much younger than twenty-five, almost teenagerlike. Patsy’s midwife had let him pull the baby out and cut the umbilical cord. He would hold the baby and stare at her for hours, without saying a word. In Pru’s opinion, he might have been irresponsible, but you couldn’t say he wasn’t affected by the birth of his baby girl.
“Patsy knows what she’s doing,” Nadine said. “She follows her heart.”
“Her heart doesn’t always have the best sense of direction.”
Her mother laughed. “Did you get a new TV?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, you might want to take Annali to the swings, after breakfast. Mornings can be hard.”
She wondered if she should have told her mother that Patsy and Jacob were actually talking about Patsy and Annali moving to the beach house. But she knew it would break her mother’s heart to hear that news. And maybe it was just talk, anyway. You didn’t want to act too quickly on what Patsy said. Patsy said a lot of things.
FOR THE NEXT THREE WEEKENDS, ANNALI STAYED AT Pru’s while Patsy and Jacob worked on the beach house. They bought all new furniture, replaced the thin, leaky windows with weatherized, double-paned ones, and recarpeted in the bedrooms. Patsy never said so, but Jacob had to be paying for everything. Patsy’s small teaching stipend barely allowed her to cover her own rent on a little two-bedroom house down the street from their mother’s and to keep up repairs on her battered old hatchback. Although Pru was worried about the arrangement, she kept her mouth shut. She figured her part in all of this was to keep Annali happy.
Which wasn’t an easy job. For one thing, Pru found the occupation of child watching unbearably dull. She hated, for instance, Annali’s main delight, the swing set at the scruffy little neighborhood playground near her building. This morning, the third Sunday in a row Annali was a visitor to Pru’s apartment, there was a definite chill in the air, announcing the beginning, at last, of D.C.’s brief autumn. Patsy had promised that this would be the last time she’d ask Pru to watch Annali, until almost Thanksgiving. Pru shivered in her sweater. The chains of the swing made a forlorn, creaking sound, threaded through with the sad notes of the little song Annali liked to sing to herself. My heart, she sang, love to my heart . . . The street was empty, except for the occasional homeless person shuffling down the street.
Kill me, Pru thought, giving the swing a sharp push. Somebody, please, kill me now. God, her mother hadn’t been kidding— mornings were deadly. Annali got up dreadfully early, just as Whoop was allowing Pru to let her sleep later. So by seven A.M., she’d exhausted what turned out to be a pretty limited bag of tricks to begin with. She still couldn’t get over how hard it was to take care of a two-year-old. Annali demanded constant attention. She couldn’t stand it if Pru tried to go to the bathroom by herself, or tried to sit down with a cup of tea and a magazine. Pru prayed this was just a phase of Annali’s, a result of her being without her mommy, whose attention was, for the time being, elsewhere.
Because this could not be what mothering is all about. Simply could not be. The female gender would have done itself in long, long ago if this was all there was to child-rearing, this endless need for amusement, attention, and sippy cups. Pru as she knew herself ceased to exist when Annali was there. If she was on the toilet, there was Annali. In bed at night, there was Annali, tossing and turning so that, once again, Pru couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t shower, either, with Annali around, and a whole day could go by that she didn’t run a comb through her hair. No wonder Patsy had looked like a wrung-out sponge for an entire year after Annali was born. It had shocked Pru, at the time. She had known—she had thought—that this would never happen to her.
She scanned the playground, desperate for any kind of adult contact. If one of the homeless people had slowed down to pick a cigarette butt off the street, she would have pounced on him. Finally, after much negotiating, she managed to persuade Annali off the swings and out for breakfast.
They slid into a booth at the Korner and ordered pancakes. Annali looked around, as if to say, You expect me to eat in a place like this? John smiled and waved from behind the counter, where he was organizing the Sunday-morning rush, such as it was. Ludmilla, the new, curvy, silent waitress, brought her a cup of coffee, and Pru felt her shoulders relax back down from her ears. Here were people! Grown-ups! Lovers right out of bed, gay couples meeting for breakfast, a couple of lost-looking tourists. Annali drank from her sippy cup while Pru savored her coffee, both of them watching the scene with hungry interest. She had the urge to run around and ask everyone what they’d done last night. A harmless but odd-looking elderly woman whom Pru recognized as one of the diner’s regulars came over to the table. She wanted to talk to Annali. Her mouth was crooked, with a jutting-out jaw, and she wore a damp, dank wool scarf wrapped around her neck. She stood too close to Annali’s side of the table, overwhelming her with her strange old-lady smell, her loneliness, her need to make Annali smile. Me, after ten more years of being alone, Pru thought. Annali turned away and began to cry. Pru could have done the same thing. She put an arm around Annali and pulled her closer.
Annali wrenched herself away. “I want my mommy!” she cried.
“Mommy will be home soon,” Pru said. “Before lunch!” she added brightly. Annali began to howl.
“Hey,” she said, snapping her fingers, a diversionary tactic that had worked once before. “Hey. I’m going to eat your head!”
The sound of Annali’s wailing filled the café. It seemed to enter Pru physically and burn its way along all the neural pathways in her body. She wondered if she could just walk away, pretend to have nothing to do with this horrible child.
The next thing she knew, John was there with the pancakes. “I wanted waffles,” Annali cried, kicking the table leg and making the cups and saucers rattle.
“I’m sorry,” Pru said to John. “I think we better skip breakfast and go on home.” At this, Annali began to kick her feet rhythmically, in time with her crying.
“How about a pancake on my head?” John said, trying a diversionary tactic of his own. He put one of Annali’s pancakes on his head. “Now, where did that pancake go?” he said, pretending to look around.
Pru laughed, thinking he looked like a Swiss tourist, and so that he wouldn’t feel bad. But Annali’s face crumpled and her legs went rigid. “My pancake!” she wailed.
“I don’t know what to do,” Pru said. Annali was listing to one side now. Pru could see she was heading for the floor, where she could have her tantrum in comfort. P
eople were looking at them. But Pru didn’t want to go home, to her lonely, messy, boring apartment. Please, she pleaded silently. Knock it off.
They watched Annali, still howling, sinking under the table. Pru was beginning to wonder if she had some serious behavioral problems—and worse, how she would get her out from under the table without someone calling child protective services—when John said, “I know. Will you guys go upstairs and feed my fish? I have a Nemo fish.”
Annali stopped crying instantly. She sat up straight and the thumb returned to the mouth. Her eyes were red. She sucked and hiccuped.
“You like Nemo?” John said, clearly pleased with himself. “That’s great. Nemo is probably starving by now. Here, we’ll take your breakfasts. You guys can eat up there.”
He balanced the tray with one hand and led them through the diner.
“What does a two-year-old know about Roman emperors?” Pru whispered.
“That’s Nero,” John said. “This is Disney. It’s a universal language. Like Esperanto for kids.” As they made their way through the kitchen, two men looked up from their work. “This is Juan and Raul. Pru and Annali.” The Hispanic chefs John employed returned Pru’s smile. She noticed them exchanging looks, as the three of them went up the stairs that led to John’s apartment.
“How do you know this?” Pru asked. “The last Disney thing I remember is Fantasia.”
“My sisters have kids. We saw the video fifty-six thousand times, by my count, last Christmas.” He opened a door at the top of the stairs, and in two steps she was inside John Owen’s apartment.
The apartment was large, sunny, and almost completely empty. In the dining room, which alone was as big as Pru’s kitchen/ office/living room, there was a long wooden table and two chairs. The living room, where Annali found the fishtank, was even bigger. It held only a small, old futon, a stereo, and speakers.
“Mi casa,” said John. Pru winced, thinking of the Yoga Babe’s parting words, “Adiós, amigo.” Was this some new verbal twitch he’d gotten from her? “Make yourselves at home. As much as you can, here,” he said, looking around as if he’d only now noticed the spare furnishings.
“Are you sure this is okay?”
“No problem,” he said, unloading the tray of food he’d brought up for them. “Stay as long as you need to.” He showed Annali how to carefully tap food into the top of the fishtank. All the fish came darting over, to her delight.
“Thanks,” said Pru, wishing he would stay. To keep him there another minute she said, “I feel like I’m doing everything wrong with her.”
“I don’t know if you can do anything wrong with kids.”
“Lock them in your apartment and fly to Guadalajara?”
“Well, that would be wrong.” They smiled at each other. Don’t say “I better go,” she pleaded, silently.
But then he said, “I guess I better go.”
When John left them, Annali was perfectly calm and happy, inspecting the fishtank, all thoughts of her mother vanished into thin air. Pru was going to insist she stay home with Grandma next weekend. She knew her mother’s arthritis made it difficult for her to care for Annali, but Pru needed a break. There was a dirty plate on the table, and she found herself wanting to examine it, curious to know what John had eaten for breakfast.
While Annali sat at the table, eating her pancakes, Pru walked around the apartment, snooping. She didn’t see any trace of a female, no clothes or shoes or handbags lying about, nothing that would suggest that a woman had ever lived here. How could someone disappear so completely? Hadn’t she left anything behind? Hadn’t he kept something of hers to remember her by? She didn’t know which would be worse, that he had or that he hadn’t.
John’s apartment had three bedrooms. Two were empty, except for some moving boxes and a few odd pieces of furniture. The smallest had been half-painted a happy shade of yellow. It looked like whoever had done it had stopped in the middle of the job. In the biggest room was the only bed in the place, a simple mattress on the floor. She saw the bedside table he’d talked about, the one where he’d found Lila’s videos.
The covers were thrown off the mattress, revealing the place where he’d been sleeping. She knelt down next to it; then she lay down. She took an exploratory sniff of his pillow. It had only a pleasing, fresh laundry smell. John’s bed, she realized, was situated to face the same direction as her own bed at home. She was musing that they were practically lying next to each other, on opposite ends of the same block and separated by only a series of brick walls, when she heard the front door open. She jumped up and hurried back down the hall.
“I thought I’d see how you’re doing,” John said. “It’s pretty slow down there.” He started collecting the breakfast plates, then put them down. “This place is kind of pathetic, isn’t it? I hadn’t realized it until now.”
“I don’t know,” Pru said, looking around. “It’s a beautiful apartment. But I get the feeling you haven’t spent much time here.”
He was quiet a moment. “No,” he said. “The diner takes up all my time. All my time. It was my wife’s big complaint.” Suddenly he seemed angry. “I need to get out,” he said. “Someplace that’s not this building. Outside of the city. You want to go for a hike somewhere? Like, Shenandoah?”
THAT AFTERNOON, AFTER HANDING ANNALI OVER TO Patsy, Pru and John drove all the way out to Shenandoah National Park, two and a half hours outside the city. John’s van was old and very dirty. The front end of it was perfectly flat. The cars in front were so close that Pru kept grabbing the dashboard. The radio was completely devoid of any kind of bass range, the interior upholstery was ripped up, and John looked utterly relaxed and happy, for the first time she could remember, as they bumped off the beltway and out of the city.
It was a gorgeous day, crisp and bright, and Pru was glad to ride quietly and look out the window at the changing scenery. She was still sad, from saying good-bye to Patsy and Annali. Patsy had come after lunch and they’d left for the airport, all in a hurry, because they were late, as usual. Pru always hated saying good-bye, but these Sundays were the worst. She gave Annali long hugs and kissed her face over and over.
When they drove up to the park ranger’s station, it was past three o’clock in the afternoon. The scenery was spectacular. Sunlight played in the trees, showing to advantage the leaves in the throes of autumn, preening about in golds and pear and sunburn. It was as if, knowing that death was near, the leaves had finally gotten their act together, and burst forth into their full, glorious color.
John sprang into happy action, racing up a trail, circling back to her when she lagged behind, pointing out various things in the forest that had caught his eye. She’d never seen him so lively. Any trace of his former sadness was gone. Here he was in his element. He was like a frisky puppy, jumping everywhere.
She’d changed into the Lucky jeans and Doc Martens lace-up boots before John had picked her up, the only thing close to “rugged” she could find. But the Doc Martens weren’t really meant for hiking, and by the time they stopped to eat, an hour later, her feet were hot and sore. She took off the boots and they ate the food John had brought: boiled eggs, a loaf of French bread, grapes, crackers and cheese, and carrot sticks.
The carrot sticks were what got her. Not baby carrots, but regular carrots peeled and cut into strips. He’d put them in waxed paper bags, just like her mother had used for their school lunches. He said he’d found the bags in the Latino supermarket in Mount Pleasant, where he liked to shop. Pru had been in there once, when she and Rudy were out walking and he’d wanted a bottle of water. Rudy had pinched his nose and said “pee-yoo” as soon as they’d walked out. It was true that the Latino market had a funny smell, but Pru had pretended she hadn’t noticed. Surely it meant something, that John had gone to some trouble with the carrot sticks? Had he been thinking of what might please her?
“Lila called me this morning,” he said, while they were eating. It took Pru a moment to realize he was talking
about his wife. She’d forgotten that such a person existed.
“She’s got a new boyfriend,” he said. “After six weeks, she’s dating again. And I’m still sleeping on one side of the bed.” It was true, Pru knew. She’d seen his bed. Half of it was still made.
“That’s harsh,” Pru said. “I’m really sorry.”
They put the lunch things back in John’s knapsack and continued up the path they’d been hiking. John’s sad looks were back, and he didn’t say anything, so neither did Pru. She was vaguely aware of the time, as she always was, and there was a little anxiety in the back of her mind. The sun had gotten very low in the sky. But surely John knew that. Just when she was about to say something, he seemed to come to his senses. He looked up at the setting sun and said, “We’d better find our way back, huh?” They turned around and started back down the mountain. In a matter of minutes, though, it had gotten visibly darker. They began to hurry through the woods. Suddenly John stopped, at the intersection of two trails.
“Do you remember if this is right?” he said to Pru.
“I’m afraid I don’t,” she said, trying to swallow her nervousness.
He frowned, and they kept going. “I think it’s right,” he said.
There were only traces of the sun’s rays left. In another moment, she realized, they would be plunged into darkness. They were running so fast now that she stumbled. He reached back and grabbed her hand, pulling her along the brambled trail.
That was the next telling moment, after the carrots in the wax paper bag. The hand. As soon as it was holding hers, she had a feeling about it that didn’t fully make sense. It was a nice enough hand, dry, with sensitive fingertips. Through it she could feel his worry, and his wish to reassure her, and his heartbeat. She was glad to have it guiding her along, in the darkness that at last had begun to close in on them. But it gave her an eerie feeling, too, of something familiar, something she had forgotten but now remembered. Like when you looked under your bed and there was your watch, which you hadn’t even noticed was missing.
Nice to Come Home To Page 12
