by Tish Cohen
She sinks to her knees and rests her cheek on the floor. The adoption approval had made Eleanor feel solid in her marriage for the first time. She doesn’t know what about this evening is worse. The irony or the tragedy.
Chapter 4
Eleanor pushes the covers off her face and struggles to sit up. A slice of light made of dust motes travels drowsily across the bed, over Angus’s bony legs, and along the bathroom floor. Nearly eleven, the digital clock says. If all had gone according to plan, she and Jonathan would now be nervously pacing in a motel room in El Centro, moments away from having Sylvie in their arms.
For the fourth, maybe fifth time since he left, Eleanor rushes into the bathroom and leans over the toilet, her stomach knotted from dry heaves. Like he did the other times, Angus clamors to his feet, gallops over, and watches, the tip of his tail twitching with concern. She drinks from the faucet and returns to bed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She needs to call Nancy, her caseworker at Back Bay, but not before she comes up with a better excuse than the possible—probable—dissolution of her marriage. A marital separation at this moment is certain to stop the adoption process dead.
Sylvie’s face haunted her all night long. Worse than Jonathan backing out, far worse, is the scene she can’t get out of her mind.
Her foster mother, Cathy Siebert, the forty-something former factory worker Eleanor and Jonathan have never met, bouncing the child on her hip, telling Sylvie her mother and father are coming to get her. Their caseworker from the California agency, a young Hispanic man named Luiz, telling Sylvie she has a family now. A home. That she’ll be getting on a big airplane and flying somewhere far away. That she is lucky. That she is loved.
Sylvie cannot possibly grasp the magnitude of what is surely going on, but she must feel the atmosphere crackle with excitement. At ten months of age, she must be able to understand that someone is coming for her. That this day belongs to her.
The anticipation builds. Any second now the happy couple will walk in to claim their most precious of prizes. But as the wait creeps into twenty minutes, Cathy and Luiz start to wonder. Luiz calls the agency. Asks if they’ve heard anything.
Thirty minutes stretches into an hour. Sylvie is placed back in her playpen or crib while Luiz and Cathy huddle over a desk or coffeepot and wonder aloud what kind of about-to-be parents simply don’t bother to show up.
But it’s the image of Sylvie sitting in the middle of her mattress, not knowing how badly she’s wanted, that renders Eleanor unable to breathe.
Now, she punches Nancy’s number into the phone and waits, her heart hammering in her ears.
“Nancy here.”
“Hey. It’s Eleanor Sweet.” Her mind races for an explanation big enough to excuse missing the flight. Death in the family is too traceable. Illness, perhaps. Something swift and sure. But quickly curable, should Jonathan change his mind. Nothing comes to mind. She coughs into her hand.
“What’s happening? I just got off the phone with Luiz,” Nancy says, confused. “You guys didn’t show?”
“I’m so sorry. Of all the timing—I’m sick. Haven’t gotten out of bed except to throw up.” At least that part was true. “The doctor said it’s a sinus infection.”
“Oh dear.”
“Fever of a hundred and two. Everything hurts, even my fingernails.” What if Nancy expects Jonathan to have gone without her? She quickly adds, “Jonathan got it first, then me.”
“Huh. I didn’t think you could catch a sinus infection.” A pause. “Wait. You mean you’re still in Boston?”
“We couldn’t make it to the airport.”
“Okay. You two focus on getting better. I’ll sort things out on the other end.”
“I’m devastated, Nancy …”
“With life comes puke. It can’t be helped. I’ll call you back in a few hours to rearrange things. Don’t worry.”
Eleanor hears a click and lets the phone drop into her lap. Don’t worry. If only it were possible.
The cold morning air hits her like a slap. Eleanor stumbles out onto the foggy sidewalk and stands perfectly still, wrapped in a vintage cape she plans not to remove. Ever. The wool-blend tweed may be only thing holding her upright.
Part of her wishes she’d tried harder to make it to the airport. Maybe if she’d arrived in California as planned, maybe if the people there met her, if they saw Eleanor and Sylvie together, they wouldn’t care about Jonathan’s sudden withdrawal. They’d know, as Eleanor does, that this adoption was simply meant to be.
Jonathan’s exodus sits like a knife in her left shoulder, of all places. There’s something weak and needy about her frame. It absorbs emotional pain and funnels it straight into her trapezius. She wraps herself tighter in the cape.
The agency will nullify the adoption. Even if they allow singles to adopt, would they give an already vulnerable infant to a woman whose marriage combusted during the process? Where’s the stability in that?
Another pain pierces her shoulder.
A group of teenagers peer through the window of the place next door, vacant since her beloved neighbor Birdie Gross died, bringing the close of the tea shop she ran for twenty-seven years. Eleanor looks up. Now, replacing the flowery Birdie’s Tearoom sign is a black backlit sign reading, in knife-slash font, death by vinyl punk, funk, and junk. The logo is a d stylized into a skull, and inside the store, two mohawked males graffiti a wall with spray paint.
Birdie would die a second death.
Music thumps from the new store. As Eleanor unlocks her own door, she finds the music even louder inside Pretty Baby. “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. Loud enough to hear Freddie Mercury’s murderous confession to his mother. She flicks on the lights and sinks onto the stool behind the cash. It was wrong to come in. She should have stayed home to come up with a plan. What to tell Nancy. How to save the adoption.
Outside, Ginny fumbles with her keys, her eyes practically closed, a steaming coffee in her hand. That the door wasn’t locked escapes her notice. She walks in to drop her coat on the floor beside the diaper pails. Eleanor at the counter doesn’t register at all. It’s the light switch that does it. She looks up, confused that the lights are already on. Finally, she sees Eleanor and her mouth drops open.
“You won’t believe it …” Eleanor begins.
But Ginny wanders over and touches Eleanor’s clothes. “A cape? Are you freaking kidding me? And what’s with this wool skirt over pants? And a scarf?” Ginny says. “It’s like you’re trying to sneak a new wardrobe, several new wardrobes, past Customs.”
Eleanor is willing to admit she overdresses. But only to herself. “Runway models dress exactly like this, for your information.” She pulls her cape closed. “Anyway …”
“Careful, I see a bit of skin here,” Ginny mumbles as she tugs Eleanor’s sweater sleeves down over her hands. “And here.” She pulls Eleanor’s scarf higher up her neck as Eleanor swats her away. “Wait a sec. Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere warm?”
“He bolted.”
“Who bolted?”
Eleanor shoves her hands into her pockets and feels around for bits of thread, paper. Anything to busy her fingers with. “Jonathan.”
“What, he left?”
“He …” Her voice cracks. Somehow relaying the story to Ginny is making anger bubble up her esophagus. “I’m going to kill him.”
It was almost morning when she heard the front door open—after four o’clock. Jonathan had come back. Eleanor lifted her face off the pillow in the dark, her neck tight and sore from sleeping on her stomach—though she wasn’t really sure she had slept more than a few minutes at a time.
Instead of calling out to him, she laid her head down again and closed her eyes. Waited. Prayed.
Silence, then he was in the room. He must have tiptoed across the squeaky floorboards in the hall. She felt his gaze travel over her bare shoulders, the tangled mass of hair still damp from the scalding shower she calmed herself with before bed.
> The pain of his silence was exquisite.
Say something. “It was all a mistake. I’m in. Let’s go.”
The clock flicked to 4:12. If he spoke, she decided, she would refuse to say anything back. Nothing short of “Let’s get on the next flight” would draw a word from her. He’ll realize, she thought. He’ll see just how badly he’s damaged things.
The sound of him scratching himself. She forced herself not to look.
Say something! She wanted to scream it. He moved away in the dark.
Hangers clinked softly in the closet. She opened her eyes. Watched the blurred shadow of him pull out a clean shirt. Dress pants. He disappeared into the bathroom. Came back with what sounded like his shaving kit.
If he wouldn’t speak to her, she certainly wasn’t going to speak to him. “Jonathan. Talk to me.”
“Not right now.” And he padded out of the bedroom and down the hallway—no tiptoeing this time—and left the apartment they’d shared since college.
Ginny stares at her as she scrubs at an ink smear on the wooden counter. “Seriously, what happened?”
“He doesn’t want the adoption. Basically said it’s Sylvie or him.” Actually, that wasn’t true. He said he didn’t know about anything. Including Eleanor.
A rat-a-tat-tat of increasingly violent no’s from “Bohemian Rhapsody” next door, loud enough that Ginny covers her ears. “Holy … is that guy deaf?”
The bell tinkles to announce two women who can only be sisters with their red-brown hair, soft jawlines, and heavy eyebrows. Second only to their husbands or partners, the people Pretty Baby customers bring in most often are family members—sisters, mothers, mothers-in-law. Some familial similarities are obvious to everyone: similar coloring or a tendency toward heaviness or leanness. It’s the more subtle likenesses that escape most observers, and every family has them. A squareness at the tip of the nose, a certain boxiness to the chin or marionette lines flanking the mouth. A narrowing at the tips of the fingers, most often with papery, oval-shaped nails. An upward tilt to the head when walking. A slight hesitation before speaking. These are the habits Eleanor has learned to look for.
In the way a person who has always been overweight might watch the naturally thin, or someone who has never been married might have a fascination with weddings, Eleanor cannot help but stare. She knows of no blood family at all. If there’s a person on earth who shares her features, she has yet to set eyes on them.
The sisters wander toward the display of wicker bassinets next to the cribs—all of which are marked twenty percent off. The pregnant one, who looks like Ali McGraw, has a hand on her belly, a massive diamond glittering from one finger. Her shoes are black velvet slippers; the kissing Gs of Gucci gleam from the toes.
“Are the bassinets on sale too?” she calls out to Eleanor from where she examines an oversized round bassinet designed more for style than function in a nursery.
Eleanor switches to automatic pilot. With a forced smile, she points out the safety features of the cradles and explains that they are not, in fact, discounted, but bassinets are a convenience the customer will appreciate at three in the morning, when baby wakes up for the third time. But when Ali McGraw makes a face, Eleanor adds quickly, “Of course, an infant can feel just as secure in a full-size crib if properly swaddled and that’s a great way to keep nursery costs to a minimum.”
Ali grins a toothy smile and reaches for her sister’s hand, places it over her stomach. The sister—far less pampered-looking in batik skirt, lined forehead, and worn suede boots—nods. She looks familiar, but Eleanor cannot think where she’s seen her before. “Yup,” she says. “He wants to meet his Auntie Faith. Come for a sleepover.” Faith yawns into her hand. “If Auntie Faith gets a full night’s sleep ever again.”
“Still?” Ali asks.
As Freddie Mercury screams an increasingly louder series of no’s, Auntie Faith looks at Eleanor. “I live right above that store.”
“Seriously?” says Eleanor. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you.”
“I work nights. Cashier at a twenty-four/seven. It’s all very fancy. Anyway, the guy kept me up all day today.”
Ginny grunts. “I bet he’s ancient. And deaf.”
“The place is called Death by Vinyl,” says Eleanor. “I doubt the owner is ancient.”
“If he keeps up with this, I don’t know what I’ll do,” Faith says.
“I think I’m getting a migraine.” Ginny rubs her temples so hard she stretches her eyelids. “Frenetic sound is dangerous to my system. It mimics my children.”
“We could call the cops,” Faith says.
“I could bring my kids one afternoon,” says Ginny. “Set them loose in his place. No one can survive them for three straight hours. Not even me.”
“Oh, we’ll give him noise,” Faith says. “He’ll regret the day, believe you me.”
“You can’t get even with a deaf guy by making noise,” says Ginny. “We have to go drastic.”
“No one’s going drastic,” says Eleanor. “I’ll talk to him. I’m sure he’s reasonable.”
“And if he isn’t?” asks Faith.
Ginny grins. “That’s when we go drastic!”
Faith glances through the front window. “Speak of the devil.”
They crowd the window display to gape at a tall man in his late thirties, hair like a teddy bear that’s been through the wash a few times, dressed in requisite music-store attire of ripped jeans, Band of Horses tee, and motorcycle boots. With a rag in hand, he walks across the sidewalk toward the road.
“Definitely not elderly,” Ginny says, her brows raised.
Ali leans over a change table for a better view. “No indeedy.”
He wipes the night’s rain from the hood of a black Audi. The trouble is, the sky has started dripping again. No sooner has he wiped down the roof than the hood is wet again. And once the hood is gleaming, the trunk is splotchy.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” says Eleanor. “Catching every raindrop before it hits the car.”
Ginny turns to her in mock disgust. “I can’t believe you just made fun of a deaf man.”
“He was out here last night, doing the same thing,” Faith says. “Walked round and round before it started raining to wipe off the aerospheric detritus.”
“He’s darling,” Ali McGraw says. “In a slept-in-the-backseat kind of way.”
As the rain grows heavier, the new store owner gives up and lopes back to his store for shelter. The women quickly feign interest in the change table they’ve been leaning over, lest he realize they’ve been staring. Only Ginny doesn’t budge. She sucks in her stomach and waggles her fingers in coquettish greeting. He glances over them, completely disinterested, and disappears into his shop.
By noon, the rain has cleared. Nancy from the adoption agency has called three times. Eleanor has hidden from every call. Nancy’s going to want to talk rescheduling and Eleanor doesn’t trust herself to not burst into tears. She’d hoped Jonathan would have realized by now that this was simply a poorly timed case of cold feet; according to what Nancy said during their earlier visits, it happens all the time. Particularly to husbands. But with every hour that passes, this explanation seems less and less likely.
Jonathan hasn’t called once.
She busies herself with inspecting diaper creams and baby lotions from an exclusive French supplier named La Jeune, pulling out several blue boxes wrapped in a rubber band. The tag identifies them as free samples. Oui ou Non, they’re called. French pregnancy tests.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” continues to obliterate her cello music. Ginny’s been complaining all morning about her headache. Faith from upstairs has passed by the window several times miming aural agony by cupping hands over ears and making a face. So when Eleanor sees the new store owner out front again, she puts away the samples and heads next door to find him kneeled on his own threshold, taping a Buzzcocks concert poster onto the door to cover Birdie’s hand-painted cupcake. Not that
his store appears to be one note. Below the Buzzcocks are an Andrea Bocelli poster, a notice for the upcoming Classic Christmas on Frog Pond, and a gigantic sticker of a black crow.
Eleanor arranges herself behind his Sex Pistols T-shirt. The Buzzcocks poster is crooked. Before she can open her mouth, Ginny booms from behind her, “I’M GINNY, THIS IS ELEANOR. WE’RE PRETTY BABY.”
“Noel Bannon.”
His face is actually quite pleasing with its Labrador brown eyes and library-book softness. It catches Eleanor by surprise and she struggles to regain her former anger. “We’re just having a bit of trouble with your music. The volume.”
“The volume’s not high.”
“I LIKE YOUR SHIRT. SO COOL.” Ginny points to her own top. Then, in case he missed it, even louder, “COOL.”
Two giggling preteen girls in puffy jackets and UGGs stop on the sidewalk and squeal. One claps her hands over her mouth and the other calls out, “Are you open yet?”
“No!” says Noel.
Disappointed, they walk away.
Eleanor turns back to Noel. “We can hear your music from inside our store.”
He tapes down the corners of his crooked poster and Ginny thumps Eleanor in the shoulder. “YOU HAVE TO TALK LOUDER SO HE CAN HEAR YOU.”
“I’m not deaf, Ginny!”
“IT’S HEARING IMPAIRED.”
“He isn’t hearing impaired. He already introduced himself.”
“Why do you think he keeps his hair so long. To cover his hearing aids.” To Noel she motions toward her ears. “YOU SHOULDN’T BE EMBARRASSED.”
Mortified, Eleanor continues as if Ginny isn’t there. “Could you turn it down a bit more? Ginny’s getting migraines—she spent the entire morning lying in the staff room with the lights off.”
Ginny reddens, smiles at him. “NOT THE ENTIRE MORNING.”
“My customers are complaining—there’s a woman who lives above you who works nights …”
He has the sweet, dusty-cotton smell of a house closed up for the winter. “I’m setting up my speaker system.”
