by Tish Cohen
“Entire forests?” said Marion. “One tiny vine?”
He made a sucking sound with his teeth. “Well documented. Look it up, if you like. Some states have made it illegal.”
“Illegal. Honestly, Thomas.” She nobly rearranged her purse on the floor beside her feet and sat back again. “On the house, then. Up the south wall—it’s so plain on that side.”
“Worse.” Thomas stopped playing with the radio and shot her a look. “Those little tendrils crack the mortar and then you’ve got moisture and bugs coming in.”
They were driving back from visiting her sister in Sandwich, Massachusetts. Anna’s husband had just left her for her best friend and she had wanted support while he picked up his things. Marion sat with Anna in the kitchen, while Thomas sat on the sofa, aggrieved, and clicked from channel to channel in search of a football game that didn’t exist. It was mid-morning on a Tuesday. Football wouldn’t be out of bed until the weekend.
In the car, Marion folded her hands in her lap and stared out the window. After studying a barn so splintered it had sunken in on one side, she grunted. “They don’t make the cracks.”
“Ivy vines? They most certainly do!”
“They wiggle their way into cracks that are already there. I did do some research.”
“You should grow tomatoes if you want to keep busy. Can’t go wrong with tomatoes.”
This she didn’t answer.
Thomas slowed the wood-paneled Jeep Cherokee as they approached a dark red minivan at the side of the road. He muttered something about the van being too close to the passing traffic. “See? This is how terrible accidents happen. People don’t use common sense.”
Marion hadn’t noticed. She was busy watching a young mother slide out the side of the van, a boy in her arms, his grasshopper legs wound around her waist. The mother hurried toward the copse of brush to find privacy for her son to relieve himself, his hands bumping against her neck as they went. The Cherokee sped past and Marion turned around. Mother and son were no longer visible. She settled back in her seat and stared down at the thinning skin on the back of her hands.
It was never going to happen for her. The window had closed.
Chapter 7
FDC Manufacturing Inc. She has no memory of an order from such a company. It’s happened before—that a manufacturer sends unordered product with an accompanying invoice in the hopes that the harried store owner will assume she’s ordered the pacifiers or diaper covers or pillowcases and simply pay the bill. Eleanor has made a point of avoiding such trickery, in no small part because the mystery product tends to be inferior.
As has become usual, Queen thumps through the wall from Noel’s place.
She punctures the packing tape with a pop and drags the knife along the length of the box. If the contents prove to be unasked for, she decides, she won’t waste the money to return them. Maybe—this might teach the sender a lesson—she’ll just place the merchandise on her shelves and sell it. Play stupid, as if she assumed it was a free sample.
Inside the box is one pair of gorgeous, hand-knitted booties. Pale yellow with a satin ribbon woven through at the ankle. Eleanor stares at them and smiles. It doesn’t matter that Sylvie is too old for booties. Eleanor will keep them. They’re the same yellow as her room.
It’s a sign.
Everything is in place. She called Back Bay the moment it opened this morning. Made an appointment with Nancy for two o’clock. Jonathan swore he wouldn’t be late.
Eleanor heads to the back of the store with her empty Mass General mug—a stocking stuffer from Jonathan a few years ago—and starts when she sees Ginny lying in a nursing chair, face blanketed with a French crib quilt.
“Don’t tell me,” Eleanor says. “The sentimentality of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ knocked you off your feet?”
“Grab me one of those nursing pillows, would you?” says Ginny, pointing to a pile of cushions and toys. “My head is going to explode.”
Eleanor hands her a faded denim croissant-shaped cushion.
“No. Hold it above me.”
Eleanor hooks her empty mug in one finger and holds up the pillow. “Like this?”
“Just press it over my face and hold it down until I stop writhing.”
“That’s it. I’ll threaten him this time.”
Ginny struggles to her feet. “Don’t say it’s because of me!”
Eleanor marches into the break room and sets about making a fresh pot of coffee. “Honestly, Ginny. What do you care what he thinks?”
“Did you see the guy? He’s gorgeous. Even his name is gorgeous. Noel. Who’s named Noel these days?” Ginny drops into a chair at the table.
“Well. Simmer down. You’re married. With children.”
“The headaches aren’t my usual. These don’t start out like typical migraines—no blurry vision or anything. This pain just slams me out of nowhere.”
“You don’t think …”
“What? It’s a tumor? That’s a nice suggestion.”
“No. I just wonder.” Eleanor waves toward Ginny’s midsection as she pours two cups of coffee. “You know. Whether you’re all … babied up again.”
“There is no way I’m pregnant.”
As Ginny reaches for the mug, Eleanor says, “Maybe you shouldn’t drink that until you know for sure.”
Ginny cradles the mug to her chest. Her eyes search the wallpaper for confirmation, but the suggestions of fertility and pastoral bliss do nothing to help. “It isn’t even possible. We never even had time to look at each other, let alone—” Ginny stops, closes her eyes. “Oh no.”
“What?”
“Shit.”
“What?”
“One night. There was one night, we had time. Mother of God, it cannot be happening again. It cannot. It cannot. It cannot.”
It would be the worst timing of all Ginny’s pregnancies. Eleanor’s assistant does not suffer pregnancies well. She grows as big as a delivery van and the nausea lasts clear into the third trimester. Sylvie is coming and Eleanor will be alone. She’ll need Ginny more than ever.
Without a word, Eleanor grabs a Oui ou Non pregnancy kit from the table Ginny recently labeled Oops, I did it again. Testing is a waste of time. Ginny is pregnant again, Eleanor can feel it in her left shoulder. In a few weeks, she’ll be complaining about the fizzy feeling in her abdomen; no woman seems to be able to feel her baby’s squirming as early as Ginny Hardwell. Feels like drinking too much 7UP and having the bubbles trickle up through your core, she’ll say.
Eleanor drops the pregnancy stick into Ginny’s lap. “I’m going next door. What’d you bring in your lunch? Anything sweet? Dessert-like?”
“A pecan-raisin butter tart, that’s your threat?”
“I’m going to kill the guy with kindness.” Eleanor shrugs as she opens the door to go. “If that doesn’t work, I’ll use my teeth.”
“Tell him I say hi!” Ginny calls, ripping open the package and heading for the bathroom.
In the Death by Vinyl entryway, Eleanor stands face to face with a dusty brown ten-foot Sasquatch figure with a hockey mask for a face. A sign hangs crookedly from a chain around his hairy neck: go away. Nice. Good for business. In one of the creature’s lifeless hands, being held by a foot, is a baby doll in a nautical playsuit. Behind Bigfoot are panels of chain-link fencing that separate the cash area from any customer foolish enough to believe the owner is remotely interested in trading merchandise for something as banal as cold hard cash.
In her hand is Ginny’s dessert, wrapped in a pretty blue napkin. Not that she’ll come right out and say the tart is homemade, but she did go to the effort of removing the Auntie Jane’s Bakery packaging with its line drawing of a country cottage. Mass-produced baked goods—even those depicting curls of smoke coming from Auntie Jane’s stone chimney—don’t invoke a feeling of homey comfort. If Noel happens to think she went to the trouble of baking for him, well she’ll simply correct him. It isn’t as if she’s planning to lie.
The music, no surprise, is “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
She catches sight of a framed photo on the cash desk and stops, leans closer. The grinning woman is classically beautiful with deep-set eyes, curly black hair, and an unself-conscious smile. She sits in front of a birthday cake ablaze with candles.
“I’m not open yet.” Noel doesn’t look down from the top of a ladder. Over his head, a stoplight changes from yellow to red. “Try again next week. Or the week after.”
“It’s me. Eleanor.” She holds up the tart. “I just came by to offer you a pastry. And to insist you turn down the music.”
He glances now. “I’m kind of in the middle of something here.” He motions with his screwdriver toward the closest speaker. “If you don’t mind.”
“It’s customary, among the humans, to be appreciative when someone brings you a treat.”
“I’m not into sweets.”
“But I baked it myself. From scratch.”
No reaction from him.
Her exit is blocked by a stooped man who has wandered in, his hat in his hands as he slows to examine the Sasquatch. “Do you carry John Coltrane?” he asks Noel. “I’m looking for the album Black Pearls.”
Eleanor is standing beside the Jazz section and allows her eyes to travel the names. She walks her fingers through the Cs to Coltrane and pulls out the album. “Here it is. It’s marked twenty-nine dollars.”
“That seems a bit high,” the man says.
“I agree. I mean, the jacket is all dinged up.” Eleanor pulls out the disk. “The record itself looks pretty good …”
“I’m not open for business yet!” says Noel.
“Would you pay nine ninety-nine?” Eleanor asks the man with the hat.
He digs through his pockets and hands her a ten.
“I don’t have a penny,” she says, putting the album in his hands. “Noel will owe you a penny.”
“Is nobody listening? I’m not open yet!”
“It’s fine,” Eleanor says, shooing the customer out.
The man nods, unsure of what just transpired. With an accusatory glance at Noel and the album pressed tight to his chest, he scurries out of the store.
“Come again!” she calls after him. Once the door is shut, she says, “Well, there’s a customer who’ll never be back.”
“Hey. Sign on the door says ‘Closed.’ Technically, the guy’s trespassing.” Noel leans into the screwdriver and gives it a few mighty twists. In a low voice he adds, “As is anyone who walks in here uninvited.”
“Excuse me?”
“Thank you for the cupcake—”
“It’s a butter tart!”
“Thank you for the butter tart, but I don’t eat dessert.” He nods toward the door. “So if you don’t mind …”
Her chest heaves with as much indignation as if she’d been up all night rolling dough. She takes the tart between two fingers, holds it up so he can see it, drops it to the floor, and mashes it with her heel. On her way out, she calls, “Turn down your music!”
“Sound is what I sell. I can’t not display it!”
The relative calm of Pretty Baby is a relief after the surreal interior of Death by Vinyl. At least here, things make sense. The items on the shelves are for sale. Customers walking in are encouraged to buy them. The entire place is Sasquatch-free. Eleanor grabs a stack of baby books and arranges them on a shelf, fuming. “What kind of person refuses a tart? Even if you don’t want it, you accept it! You don’t stare down from your stupid ladder—which was not even positioned very well, I might add—and pretend the person who just walked in with a tart she may have spent an entire evening baking for all you know … you don’t just pretend she walked in empty-handed. I mean tarts—they’re not like cookies. You have to roll the crust, cut it, bake it, and then, once you add the filling, cook it again. I swear to God, I’m not talking to that guy again. From now on you’ll do the communicating.” When Ginny doesn’t respond, Eleanor looks around. “Gin?”
The door to the restroom is still open. The test! Eleanor rushes to the back of the store to find Ginny hunched on the toilet, pants around her ankles, staring at the pregnancy stick. She lifts her tear-stained face and shakes her head.
“Don’t tell me.”
“I swear, all it takes is the sound of his belt buckle and there I am. Pregnant again.” Ginny looks up, unbrushed hair curtaining a face already puffy with maternity bloat.
A fourth baby for a woman who’d been determined to have none.
The pain is spreading to Eleanor’s neck. She reaches up to rub her shoulder.
Chapter 8
Jonathan is late. Eleanor watches the other people in the agency waiting room and tries to stop her hands from shaking. Couples, all except the one who just walked in. There, in the corner, behind a crisp copy of House Beautiful, this single woman seats herself, a graceful, olive-skinned creature with bare ankles. With light brown hair pulled off her face and a long neck, she could be a ballet dancer on her day off. There’s something self-conscious in the way she keeps checking her watch, swiping nonexistent lint from her lap.
Eleanor picks up Parenting magazine and tries to focus on an article about teething, but her attention keeps drifting back to the dancer. Surely there have been other people here in the agency alone, but not until now has Eleanor paid any attention. Why is the ballerina by herself? Could this one have been dumped recently as well? Or is she going it alone? She’s delicate, this girl. Unsure of herself. No earth-mother aura to her whatsoever. It gives Eleanor a thrill. If this one can raise a child on her own, so can she.
The cherub-faced man at reception—Miles, Eleanor has heard him called—wearing a modern shrunken suit that exposes leopard-spotted socks, stands up and calls out “the Needhams?” A petite couple, pink-cheeked with excitement, follow him down the back hall to one of the caseworkers’ offices. Moments later, Miles is back to set a fresh pot of coffee by the plants on the windowsill. A stack of Styrofoam cups needs straightening and he takes care of it. He nods at Eleanor. “Nancy will be right with you?” She remembers him from her other visits. Phrases every statement as a question in a way that suggests a good-natured lack of confidence. It made her like him right away.
She pulls out her phone and stares at it, willing a text to appear from Jonathan telling her he’s looking for a parking spot.
It was over a year ago that Eleanor and Jonathan came in to try to convince Nancy Stachniuk they were worthy. Eleanor nearly buckled under the scrutiny, terrified the agency would come across some minor infraction from the annals of her life, something as benign as an unpaid parking ticket, and use it to prove that nature was, in fact, all-knowing, and that Eleanor was not qualified to become someone’s mother.
A twenty-something couple sits across from her with clasped hands. Eleanor recognizes the nervous giggles, the toes pointed inward in submission. The woman, a reddish-blonde with only a hint of a chin, appears more nervous than the man, who is prim and controlled in his fitted polo sweater and polished brogues. He has one arm around her shoulder, squeezing it rhythmically.
The blonde’s purse lies on its side between her feet, its contents oozing out onto the navy carpet. Eleanor leans forward and smiles. “Your wallet’s on the floor.” She motions to the purse. “I just don’t want you to lose it.”
“I’m a mess when I’m nervous.” The woman
leans down to pick it up.
Her partner grins affably. “This application process is rigorous, don’t you think?”
Eleanor nods. “I was so desperate to appear good I was afraid to put my hands in my pockets in case they thought I’d just stolen a pen.”
The door flies open and a tall bearded man in square glasses and turtleneck walks in, catches the eye of the dancer, and hurries to her full of apologies. They kiss and whisper excitedly.
Ballerina Girl isn’t alone.
The blonde woman asks, “How far along are you in the process?”
“Approved. We’re just sort of … working on the date.”
“Oh, how wonderful,” she says. “To be at your stage—I can only hope we get there.” She looks at her partner. “Can you imagine, honey?”
“Dream come true,” he says. “Total dream come true.”
Eleanor’s phone pings. She looks down to see Jonathan has texted: Sorry, El. Thought about it some more. Not comfortable doing this.
She sits back, wills herself not to vomit.
Miles calls out, “Jonathan and Eleanor Sweet? Nancy will see you now?”
Eleanor stares at her phone. Texts a response to Jonathan. I’ll do it without you, then.
“Mrs. Sweet?”
She stands, drops the magazine to the floor, and fumbles to pick it up.
“Are we waiting for Dr. S to arrive?” Miles asks as she approaches.
“Just me today.”
The young couple nearly bounce out of their seats with good-luck waves. Eleanor nods her thanks and waves back, nauseated.
She follows Miles’s spotted socks along the hall, trying to formulate a new plan. The truth. That’s all she has left.
“You remember where Nancy is, love? Second door on the left?”
The entire wall behind Nancy’s desk is plastered with photographs of happy clients with their adopted children. These freshly formed families pose atop bicycles, in front of the Eiffel Tower, at the kitchen counter, and lying on their backs making snow angels. Some have faces slathered in chocolate birthday cake, others in spaghetti sauce. But all are grinning.
