Quickly, he produced a pen and a little scrap of paper from his shirt pocket. He’d been planning this, she realized, feeling both flattered and predictable.
She put the paper up against the wall and scribbled her number. But when he held out his hand for it, she held it out of his reach.
“But only on weekdays,” she said. “And only in the afternoons. And never after five.”
He kissed her deeply then, switching off the light. “Got it.”
The weeks dragged on. Emma was ten months old now, already pulling herself up to stand at the coffee table, where she would bounce on her chubby knees, beaming with pride.
“Momma, look! Look what Emma can do!” Jessie would say. And when the baby dropped back to all fours to cruise around, Jessie would drop down, too.
“Look, Momma! Two babies!”
At times like those, Laurel’s heart felt so full of love for them that her throat clenched with guilt. Why weren’t they enough for her? They could be enough, surely. Couldn’t they? She would resolve to tell Kent when he called: it was over.
But those moments did not last, nor did the memory of them sustain her. By the middle of the afternoon, when Jessie had begun to whine and Emma had made one mess after another, pulling dirt by the handfuls out of their one houseplant or dumping all of Jessie’s tinker toys onto the floor, Laurel knew. She would not give Kent up. While she fished Jessie’s favorite stuffed animal out of the toilet or pushed the books back onto the bookshelf, she was listening for his call.
The call, when it finally came, was not so very different from their encounters in the broom closet.
“What are you wearing?” he would ask, and even if she was in a stained T-shirt and her worst underwear, she would make up something sexy. She had never had phone sex before. It was thrilling, to stand at the kitchen sink with the phone clenched under her ear and her hand pushed between her legs, while Bert and Ernie argued on the television set in the living room.
Sometimes, though, Laurel would feel so buried with the frustrations of her day that she would try to describe them to him first, just to blow off steam. He would listen to her rave, but the things he said afterwards—“Sounds like hell” or “Jesus, I couldn’t stand it”—only made it worse. Surely, he meant to sound compassionate, she thought. But she didn’t feel comforted; she felt even more alone, as if she were the sole inhabitant of some horrible planet on which he wouldn’t dream of setting foot.
And then, one Tuesday morning, after Len had left for work but before Sarah came, the phone rang, and it was him.
“I know you told me only to call in the afternoons,” he said, no hello or anything. “But I’m back.”
Her heart flip-flopped in her chest. She began to count on her fingers. “Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Jesus, four days.”
“I don’t want to wait that long,” he said. “What are you wearing?”
“I can’t right now, Kent. The sitter’s coming.”
He laughed. “Not now. But later? And not the phone again.”
She giggled nervously. “What do you mean? A motel or something? I wouldn’t know what to tell Len . . .”
“What about—” he hesitated. “Could I come there?”
“But the girls.”
“Couldn’t the sitter take them out for a while?”
“She only comes in the morning, when I go to work. She has classes in the afternoon.”
“Oh.” There was a pause. When he spoke again, his voice had changed, hardened. “Well, I’ll see you, I guess.”
Laurel caught his tone and felt rebuffed. An inexplicable panic rose in her. How could she stand it all, without him? But—it was absurd, wasn’t it, to let him come here? Unless . . .
“Wait, Kent. Maybe . . . Maybe it could work. The girls nap. We’d have to be quick.”
“Well, we’re good at quick, aren’t we?” Kent said, the warmth back in his voice.
CHAPTER 10
Sarah
When Sarah pulled into the Walters’ driveway behind Laurel’s hatchback, Jessie was sitting on the stoop with an elderly woman in floral print, a mason jar of daffodils between them. The little girl ran to Sarah, throwing her arms around Sarah’s legs.
“Well, you’re clearly not a stranger,” the woman said, rising.
“Did you find her mom?” Sarah asked, patting Jessie on the head.
Fifteen minutes ago, Sarah’s phone had rung as she sat at her kitchen table, studying for a statistics test she had the next day. The woman on the line had said she’d seen a little girl on her own, dangerously close to the road, picking daffodils at the curb. She had rung the doorbell at Jessie’s house, but no one had answered.
“But how did you get my number?” Sarah had asked, confused.
Apparently, Jessie had said her mother might be in the kitchen. The woman had followed the little girl inside, but they hadn’t found Laurel. Instead, the woman had seen Sarah’s number taped to the wall by the kitchen phone.
“Thank you so much for coming,” she said now, wringing her hands as she stepped off the stoop. “I’m very sorry to have bothered you, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Did you check the bedroom?” Sarah asked. “That’s her car, so she must be here somewhere.”
“Oh, no,” the woman said. “I didn’t want to intrude. Like I said, I saw your number. You don’t mind taking over from here, do you? I mean, I would stay, but . . .”
“Of course not. I’m sure everything’s fine.”
The woman patted Jessie on the head once, and then hurried to her car. Sarah turned to Jessie.
“Where’s your mom, Dessie?” she asked, as cheerfully as she could.
Jessie shrugged and pointed to the daffodils.
“Flowers for Mommy!” She hoisted up her skirt and tugged at the diaper underneath. “Sarah take it off?”
“Jessie, were you supposed to be sleeping?” Sarah asked. She had thought Jessie was done with diapers now, but maybe Laurel still used them at naptime.
Jessie nodded solemnly. “I waked up.”
Sarah knelt and unpinned the diaper, while Jessie watched her carefully.
“No pee,” she said.
“You’re right. Good job. Do you need to use the potty?”
Jessie shook her head.
“Well, you can’t run around with no underwear on, so let’s go get you some.” She stood up and took Jessie’s hand. “Where’s Emma?” she said suddenly.
“Sleeping. Shhh!” Jessie put her finger to her lips.
Hand in hand, they went through the front door, then tiptoed down the hallway to the girls’ bedroom. Inside, Emma was awake, standing up in her crib. When she saw Sarah, she began to bounce happily. Quickly, Sarah found Jessie some underwear in the chest of drawers and helped her put them on. Then she picked up the baby.
“Now, let’s go find your mom.”
Sarah had just stepped out into the hallway, Emma on her hip, when the door to Laurel’s bedroom opened.
“See,” she was about to say, “she was just napping.” But then the door swung all the way open and a man appeared, naked except for his boxers.
For a split second, Sarah thought it might be Dr. Walters; she had not seen the girls’ father for some time, and her memory of him was hazy. But then she registered the look of shock on his face, and the way Jessie had suddenly moved behind her legs, as she did whenever they met strangers. Her stomach plunged and she took a step backwards, almost knocking Jessie down.
Who intrudes in his underwear? He was smiling at her now, his teeth yellow and uneven between chapped lips. She collected herself immediately.
“If you’re looking for Laurel, she’s in there,” he said, gesturing with his head. “She’s asleep.”
Sarah could feel him looking her over. She moved the baby against her chest, to shield herself.
“Well,” she said coolly. “I think she needs to wake up now. Jessie was out on the street.”
The man glanced do
wn at Jessie, but Sarah had the sickening feeling he was looking not at the child, but at her own bare legs. Finally, his eyes returned to hers.
“Laurel,” he called, not moving. “Laurel, wake up. We’ve got a situation here.”
For an instant, there was silence, and then Sarah heard movement inside the bedroom.
“What is it?” Laurel called suddenly, her voice panicked. “Is it Len?” In seconds she was at the doorway, pulling a robe around her.
“Oh, Sarah! Thank God it’s just you.” She sank against the door frame. “I thought maybe Len had come b—”
“Mommy!” Jessie called, stepping out from behind Sarah. She ran toward her mother and threw her arms around Laurel’s legs, just as she had done with Sarah a few minutes before. But Laurel’s robe was not secure, and Sarah saw a flash of pale flesh underneath.
“Jessie, be careful,” Laurel said sharply, tying the robe more tightly around her waist. Then she met Sarah’s eyes, looking guilty and defiant all at once.
“Sarah,” she began, “it’s not how it looks . . .” Suddenly her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here?”
Sarah shifted Emma to her hip. “A woman called me. She was driving by and saw Jessie near the street.”
“Jessie! You know you’re not supposed to go—”
“Mommy, flowers! Flowers in a jar.”
Laurel arched her eyebrows at Sarah. “What?”
“Jessie was picking you daffodils beside the road. The woman who stopped . . . I think she got her a jar to put them in.”
“She was inside our house?” Laurel looked at Sarah accusingly.
“She was looking for you.” Sarah said, disgusted. “Jessie thought you might be on the phone.”
At that, the man gave a little guffaw, and Laurel cut her eyes at him, coloring.
“But why did she call you?”
“She said she saw my number by the phone.”
In the silence that followed, Sarah was struck by how absurd it all was: all five of them crammed in the narrow hallway, she with this baby who wasn’t even hers, while the baby’s mother stood there, half-naked, and this creep of a man leered on. What was wrong with Laurel? Why didn’t she tell him to go put on some clothes? Why didn’t she reach out for her daughter? Why wasn’t she falling over herself with Oh-my-Gods and apologies?
Oh, it was none of Sarah’s business! She was just the babysitter. She almost stepped forward, then, to hold out Emma for Laurel to take, but something stopped her. She didn’t trust this man. She didn’t trust Laurel, either, she realized suddenly, and as soon as the thought caught hold, she knew instantly that she never had. A foul taste formed in her mouth, and she had to fight the urge to spit.
“Look,” she said, shifting Emma in her arms again. “I’m going to go change Emma’s diaper. And then I’m going to take the girls to the park for a while, so you can—” She hesitated. “Put yourselves together.”
Relief flooded Laurel’s face. “Oh, would you? Thank you! I can pay you . . .”
Sarah shook her head, then held her hand out for Jessie. “Come on, Dessie,” she said. “Let’s go use the potty and then we’ll go to the park.”
“Come on, Dessie. You can make it. Your house is right up there,” Sarah said. Emma had fallen asleep in the stroller as they walked home from the park, and Jessie was rapidly losing steam. Sarah was pushing the stroller with one hand and pulling the little girl along with the other, when one of the stroller’s wheels veered off the sidewalk. Sarah let go of Jessie’s hand for a moment to straighten it.
Out of the corner of eye, she saw Jessie begin to dash away; instinctively, her hand shot out and clutched at the back of the little girl’s shirt.
“Sarah, let go,” Jessie protested, trying to twist out of her grasp. “I see Daddy!”
Sarah looked up. The late afternoon sun was in her eyes, but she made out the silhouette of a man hurrying toward them.
“Jessie!” he called. “Emma!”
Sarah let go of Jessie’s shirt, and Jessie catapulted into her father’s arms. “Daddy!”
Her father’s long arms engulfed her, and he kissed the top of her head. Then he looked up at Sarah.
“You don’t usually watch them in the afternoons, do you?” His voice was puzzled but even, and Sarah knew instantly that Laurel had told him nothing. She looked away quickly.
“No, not usually.”
Dr. Walters scooped Jessie up and settled her onto his shoulders. She gave a little shriek, half fear, half delight, and grabbed wildly at his head. Gently, he reached up and repositioned her hands.
“You can’t cover my eyes, silly girl,” he said. Then he looked back at Sarah quizzically. “Did something happen today?”
What had Laurel said? Clearly she had told him where they were; he had been coming to meet them. But what else? What kind of excuse had she possibly made? Sarah hesitated. She felt an urge to tell the girls’ father everything. He deserved to know, didn’t he? Sarah had fumed all afternoon about Laurel’s reaction when she had learned that her three-year-old daughter had left the house and wandered down the street, all while she was in bed with her . . . her what? Her lover? Sarah had always loathed that word; it sounded so lewd, somehow. She thought of the man in the hallway, with his self-satisfied eyes and gaudy tattoos, his soft, pale belly and sunburnt nose. She regretted now how polite she’d been. She wanted to go back and scream at Laurel: “You’re a mother. You don’t get to do this.”
Surely, if Dr. Walters knew, he would be disgusted—outraged. And how she longed to see it—to see her own revulsion, her own fury, mirrored in someone else, so she would not feel so alone with it. All afternoon at the park she had pretended with the girls that everything was normal, when she had been dying to rave to someone—to anyone—about how awful it had been. There had been another family at the park, a young woman with a little girl about Jessie’s age and a baby dangling from a baby carrier against her chest. The mother had smiled at Sarah and asked about her kids.
“Oh, they’re not mine,” Sarah had said, as she always did. “I’m just the nanny.”
Something shifted in the woman’s expression.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I just assumed they were yours.”
“It happens all the time.”
“Do you bring them here often? I haven’t seen you.” Probably she had been looking for a playmate for the little girl, Sarah thought, or another mom to talk to. Maybe she was wondering if Sarah might do, after all.
“Not in the afternoon, usually. But today—” For a moment, Sarah had imagined telling this woman everything. She could almost picture her face as she listened, the aghast expression that would mask a salacious interest, the boredom of the playground for once held at bay.
“Today,” Sarah began again. “Today is actually my last day.” She had lowered her voice, so that Jessie would not overhear.
What a relief it had been to say it out loud, so that she could stop turning it over and over in her mind. Because what was there to decide after all? She couldn’t work for Laurel anymore.
Now, Sarah looked up at Dr. Walters, weighing her words. He was watching her closely; she had been silent too long.
“What happened today?” he asked again, and there was an urgency in his words that made her heart go out to him.
She took a deep breath. She would tell him only what it was her place to tell. So she told him about the lady’s phone call, and what she had said. She told him that after they had found Laurel, she had offered to take the kids to the park, and Laurel had agreed.
“And we had fun, didn’t we, Dessie?” she said finally, reaching up to where the little girl perched on her father’s shoulders and giving her foot an affectionate jiggle. Sarah’s heart ached to think that these were the last moments she would spend with the girls. Tomorrow Jessie would ask for her, and Laurel or Dr. Walters would explain that Sarah wouldn’t be taking care of her anymore. And just like that, Sarah would disappear, first from the child’s life, and
then, inevitably, from her memories, until the time they had spent together would shrink into an unremembered interval of her childhood.
“But where was Laurel?” Dr. Walter’s insisted, his voice strained. “Why didn’t she know that Jessie was outside, for God’s sake? Was she dr—” He cut himself off.
Sarah said nothing. She pushed the stroller with both hands now, following Dr. Walters down the sidewalk, back to their house. Sarah did not want to go inside. She didn’t want to see Laurel, didn’t want to hear her shrill voice or be a party to whatever deception she was playing out.
“Dr. Walters,” she began.
“Please, it’s Len.”
“Please tell Laurel . . . I won’t be able to take care of the girls anymore.”
“What?” Len stopped abruptly and turned to face her. “What happened?”
“Please. I just can’t. I’m sorry it’s so sudden.”
“But why? What happened? It’s because of today, isn’t it? Something happened. Surely there’s an explanation. Just let me talk to Laurel—”
Sarah shook her head. “No, Dr. Walters. I just can’t.”
“But—” Sarah watched how carefully he reached up for Jessie and swung her to the ground. She bent down and gave the girl a hug.
“I won’t see you for a while, okay?” she said. “Be good. And when your little sister wakes up, will you tell her I said good-bye, too?”
She watched Dr. Walters’ expression change; he didn’t say anything else to persuade her. Instead he reached his hand behind him and pulled his wallet from his pocket.
“How much do we owe you, then?” His words were not cold, but distracted. His eyes darted toward the front door of their house, and Sarah felt how desperate he must be to get inside, to get to the bottom of things.
“You don’t owe me anything. Laurel paid me this morning.”
“But for this afternoon? Surely she didn’t—”
“Nothing, seriously. I wanted to.”
He sighed so wearily then that, again, her heart went out to him. But it wasn’t her business, now less than ever. She tousled Jessie’s hair one last time, got in her car, and drove away.
Give, a novel Page 8
