Give, a novel

by Erica Carpenter Witsell

  CHAPTER 14

  Len

  The next day was Sunday. Len and the girls drove Aunt Margie to the airport in the morning, and in the afternoon Sarah came to the apartment as arranged, so that Len could show her around and give her a key. She would start the next day. She and Len had already agreed on her schedule. Every day, she would pick up the girls from their daycare at two-thirty. That was when the school day ended and the after-care began. The girls could have stayed there until five, if Len paid the extra fee, but it would be such a long day for them, he thought. He preferred to pay Sarah. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, he would be home by five-thirty. But on Tuesdays and Thursdays, he taught a class until nine, so Sarah would have to feed the girls and put them to bed.

  As soon as the doorbell rang that afternoon, Jessie ran to greet Sarah, first hugging her legs and then taking her hand.

  “Want to see our room, Sarah?” she asked, pulling her inside.

  “Of course.”

  Len hung back, Emma on his hip. The easy familiarity between Sarah and Jessie made him feel self-conscious, superfluous. He did not follow them as Jessie gave her tour, but waited in the living room, seeing the drabness of the place anew.

  When the two returned from the bedroom, Sarah was smiling. “I’m impressed. You’ve done a lot with the place.”

  Len shrugged. “My sister was just here. It was mostly her.”

  “Ah,” Sarah said. “A woman’s touch. I wondered, honestly. It’s no small feat to make these places habitable.”

  “Do you . . . ?”

  “Yeah, I have one, too. On the other side of campus, though.”

  Len nodded. “Well, the price is right. Do you live alone?”

  Len watched as something in Sarah’s face hardened. He instantly regretted his question. “I just meant, it helps if you can split the rent . . .” He faltered. “It’s none of my business. Sorry.”

  Sarah reached down and lifted Jessie’s braids. “Did your sister do these, too?” she asked cheerfully, and Len wondered if he had imagined the shift in her expression.

  “Yes. She just went home this morning.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “St. Louis.”

  “Wow. That was nice of her. To come, I mean.”

  “Yes.” He thought of saying more. His good-bye with Margie this morning had felt especially poignant after their conversation the night before. Even now, seeing the little touches she had made around the house, his heart filled with a raw tenderness for her. He felt the urge to speak of it with someone. He could imagine Sarah hearing him out, giving him the same patient attention that he had seen her give his girls. Still, he stopped himself. It was Sunday; already he was taking up too much of her time.

  “Yes, it was very nice of her,” he said. And then, “I can show you where things are now, if you want.”

  She nodded, then looked down at Jessie. “I get to put you to bed this week, Jess.”

  Jessie looked up at her with wide eyes. “Really?”

  “Yes. Can you show me? Where are your pajamas?”

  Len followed them back into the bedroom, Emma wriggling on his hip, his heart strangely full.

  For a week and a half after Margie left, it wasn’t so bad. There was food in the kitchen, and clean clothes still neatly folded in the drawers. Every morning, Len carefully pulled one of the meals she had prepared from the tower of Tupperware in the freezer and set it on the counter. And every evening, he inverted it into a baking dish as she had instructed him and warmed it in the oven.

  But by Tuesday of the following week, the meals were gone and the laundry hamper full.

  “Do you have a cookbook I can borrow?” Len asked one of the secretaries in the mathematics department, and the next day The Joy of Cooking appeared on his desk, with a little note: Good luck!

  He scanned a few of the recipes and made a list. That evening he scrambled eggs for the girls for their dinner and then hurried them out to the car.

  “But Daddy,” Jessie protested. “It’s bath time.”

  “We just need to get a few groceries,” he explained. “Then we’ll do bath time.”

  In the store, he set Emma in the seat in the front of the cart and made Jessie walk.

  “But I’m tired,” she whined. “I wanna ride, too. Emma gets to ride.”

  “Emma can’t walk,” he snapped.

  “Yes, she can.”

  “Not like you. Now stay close.”

  But Jessie did not stay close. The piles of stacked produce were sirens for a three-year-old, their call irresistible. A tomato toppled to the floor.

  “Jessie,” he said sharply. “I told you to stay close.” Quickly, he picked up the bruised tomato and replaced it on the stack. Then he scooped Jessie up by her underarms and swung her into the cart among the groceries.

  “There,” he said. “You wanted to ride. So ride.”

  “But there’s no room,” Jessie said, beginning to cry. Exasperated, he moved a box of cereal and a bag of apples, clearing a little spot for her.

  “There. Now don’t squish anything.”

  “But Emma has a seat,” she wailed. He ignored her.

  Jessie cried down three aisles. By the fourth, he couldn’t take it.

  “Stop your caterwauling,” he told her. “Or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

  He sounded just like Laurel, he thought, and felt an unexpected flash of sympathy for her. Len had always silently reproved Laurel for how quickly she lost patience with the girls, so that the shimmer of empathy he felt for her now was tinged with guilt. His loosened his collar.

  In line, an elderly woman looked at him sympathetically. “Mother out of town?” she guessed.

  He shook his head tersely.

  “How about a lollipop?” she asked, pulling one from the display by the register and handing it to Jessie. “Will that make things better?”

  By the time they got home, Jessie’s hands and face were blue and sticky, the lollipop stick lost somewhere on the floor of the car.

  “Don’t touch anything,” he told her, leaving her in the living room. He set Emma on the floor in front of a pile of toys.

  He raced back to the car for the groceries—just the frozen ones. The others he could unload once the girls were asleep.

  A minute later, he was back. Jessie started when she heard the door, looking up guiltily. She held Go, Dog, Go in her sticky hands.

  “Jessie, I told you . . .”

  “But Emma was gonna rip the pages!” she said. “I’m sorry.” Tears welled up in her eyes.

  Instinctively, Len looked for Emma. She wasn’t there by the toys where he had left her. She had pulled up to standing at the small bookshelf and was pulling the books off, one by one.

  “Oh, Emma.”

  He dropped the bags of groceries to the floor and scooped Emma up.

  “It’s okay, Jessie. Just put the book down. Let’s go take a bath. And try not to touch anything else.”

  He undressed Emma as she stood, holding herself up at the edge of the tub and bouncing on her chubby legs. But when he unpinned her diaper, a large turd rolled out and onto the floor.

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Emma, why didn’t you tell me you’d pooped?”

  “Oh, Daddy,” Jessie said, amused. “She can’t talk.”

  At last the turd was flushed, the floor spot-cleaned, and Emma’s bottom wiped. He lifted her into the tub with her sister and sank down onto the toilet seat, watching them play.

  “Okay, girls,” he said at last. “Let’s get washed.” He hated to rush them, but it was after eight already. He hurried them into their pajamas, brushed their hair and teeth, and read them a few short books.

  “One more book, Daddy. Please,” Jessie began.

  But he could see how tired she was. “Not tonight,” he told her. “It’s late.”

  Only when the girls were in their beds at last did he remember the groceries he had left on the living room floor.

  “Damn
it,” he muttered, picking up the bag and taking it to the kitchen. The meat was soft but still mostly frozen—surely it would be okay. The tub of ice cream squished in his hand when he picked it up, melted ice cream leaking out from under the lid. He swore again under his breath and put it in the freezer, then went quickly to the car for the other groceries.

  When he came back inside, he could hear Emma crying, and under the cries, Jessie’s voice calling to him.

  He put the bags in the kitchen and went to them.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Emma’s crying,” Jessie said. “And it’s too loud. I can’t sleep.”

  “Well, she’ll go to sleep soon,” he said impatiently. He wanted to get back to the kitchen and unload the groceries, and he still had a lecture to prepare for the morning. At the thought, exhaustion rose up in him like a wave. He longed for bed.

  “Try to go to sleep now, Jessie, okay?”

  “Okay,” Jessie said, lying back on her pillow and cupping both ears with her hands. “I’ll try.”

  There was a note of resignation in her voice, a sad weariness to her compliance. It made him pause.

  “When Sarah puts Emma down for a nap, does she cry?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “She holds her. And she sings.” His daughter looked up at him hopefully.

  Len sighed. Emma was standing at the bars of her crib, her face red.

  “You’re tired, too, aren’t you?” he said, picking her up and sitting down with her in the rocker. She leaned her head against his chest; he felt the heat of it through his shirt.

  They were all quiet for a moment. He pushed the rocker with his feet.

  “Are you going to sing too, Daddy?” Jessie asked quietly.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” he began. But why not?

  “Row, row, row your boat . . .” he began.

  Jessie giggled. “Oh, Daddy.”

  But she was quiet after that, and Emma lay motionless against his chest. He finished the song, keeping his voice low. Were they asleep? He heard Jessie stir in the bed, the rustle of her cover. He needed another song. Only one came to mind. It was not a lullaby, but he began it anyway, singing softly.

  “I’ve been working on the railroad, all the live long day. I’ve been working on the railroad, just to pass the time away . . .”

  In the quiet that blanketed the room when the song ended, he could hear the whistle of Jessie’s breath. Emma was heavy against his chest, pinning him down. He leaned his head back against the rocker for a moment and closed his eyes. It would be so nice to fall asleep here, he thought. But there was still so much to do. Reluctantly, he rose, holding Emma against his chest with both arms and then carefully lowering her into her crib. She stirred as her skin touched the cool sheet, and he held his breath. But she didn’t wake. He closed the door gently behind him.

  When the alarm sounded on Friday morning—thirty minutes earlier than usual—Len felt his exhaustion like a weight, pinning him to the bed. He staggered to the kitchen to make coffee, then began to prepare a dinner for that evening. The Joy of Cooking insisted on flopping closed, so he found a box of spaghetti and laid it lengthwise across the pages to prop it open. He followed the recipe carefully, first browning the chicken breasts in a pan and then adding two tablespoons of paprika.

  He was just covering the dish with foil when he heard Jessie calling to him. His heart quickened with the triumph of it, and he smiled to himself as he slid the dish into the fridge. There! He had made dinner. He would write a note to Sarah, asking her to put it in the oven at five, so it would be ready when he arrived. His body buzzed with the accomplishment and the caffeine, but he could feel the edges of his weariness like a hazy frame around his brain. All day it would shrink closer and closer in, so that by early afternoon there would be just that terrible fog, no matter how many times he shook his head to clear it, or how many cups of coffee he drank. But for now it was held at bay, and he was grateful.

  He wiped his hands on the kitchen towel. “I’m coming,” he called to Jessie.

  That evening when Len opened the door the smell of the chicken cooking filled the apartment.

  “Daddy!” Jessie greeted him. “I’m hungry. What’s for dinner?”

  “Chicken Paprika,” Len said triumphantly, hugging her. “Just you wait. It will be delicious.” He looked at Sarah. “Everything go okay?”

  Sarah nodded. “She’s been begging for a snack, but I put it off. Whatever you made smells delicious. I didn’t want her to spoil her appetite.”

  Len beamed. He imagined that he heard a new note of respect in Sarah’s voice.

  “Thank you,” he said, grinning.

  After Sarah left, Len opened the oven. The chicken did look delicious, reddish brown and bubbly. He boiled some frozen peas and together he and Jessie set the table.

  “Is Emma going to eat this, too?” Jessie asked. “She only has five teeth.”

  “Oh, we’ll mash it up for her.” He put some of the peas and a small piece of chicken into a little bowl and mashed at it with a fork. Margie had suggested he buy a blender, but he hadn’t; they had been getting by okay like this.

  Len prepared a plate for Jessie and poured milk into her favorite cup. Then he lifted Emma into her high chair.

  “Incoming,” he said, making the spoon whir through the air like an airplane. As soon as Emma opened her mouth, he pushed the spoon inside. Immediately, Emma began to cry, her face turning pink as tears welled up in her eyes.

  “What?” Len protested, his feelings hurt. “It can’t be that bad. Jessie, go on. Eat.”

  Jessie took a small bite of her chicken and leaped to her feet.

  “Ouch, Daddy! It hurts! It hurts!”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Len said. The chicken looked perfect; he was proud of how perfect it looked. “Don’t be ridiculous. Look.” He grabbed a piece of chicken from Jessie’s plate and popped it in his mouth. Immediately, he spat it into his hand.

  “What the . . . ?” He looked at Jessie, who was guzzling her milk. “You’re right, Jessie. It hurts.”

  In her high chair, Emma was howling and drooling, her slobber streaked with red. Len held her sippy cup to her lips and then went quickly to the cabinet, pulling out the little canister of red spice he had used that morning. In his exhausted fog, he had assumed that it was paprika, but now, even before he read the label, he knew what it would say. Cayenne pepper.

  “Goddamn it,” he said, hurling it into the sink. “I’m just so tired.”

  “Goddamn what?” Jessie said, looking at him over her cup. Her face was full of concern.

  “Nothing. Nothing. And don’t you use that word.” He put his fingers to his temples. “Emma, would you please just shush? I can’t even hear myself think.”

  Emma was howling loudly, her cup thrown to the floor.

  “I know what we’ll do.” Quickly, Len pulled the ice cream from the freezer and opened the top. He could see the crystals around the edges of the carton where it had melted and refrozen the night they’d gone to the store. He grabbed a clean spoon from the drawer and scooped some ice cream onto it. Then he pushed it into Emma’s mouth. Gradually, her sobs ceased. Len breathed deeply.

  “Thank God.”

  “Daddy, I want ice cream, too,” Jessie said.

  “No, Jessie. No ice cream before dinner.”

  “But Emma got ice cream. It’s not fair.” Jessie glared at him with the injustice of it.

  “I needed to get her to stop crying,” Len protested. “The chicken hurt her mouth.”

  “The chicken hurt my mouth, too.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Jessie. Eat your peas while I make some macaroni. And then we’ll have ice cream.”

  “Two scoops?”

  “Okay. Two scoops.”

  “It’s a deal.” She held out her little hand toward him, and he shook it.

  “It’s a deal,” he repeated.

  That night, Len felt d
efeated. Twice, he picked up the phone to call Margie, just to have someone to tell it all to. But he could already hear how whiny he would sound, and the tone of Margie’s response: sympathetic, yes, but oh-so-matter-of-fact.

  “Do you mean to tell me . . .” she would say. He couldn’t bear it.

  In the kitchen, the colander he’d used to drain the macaroni was still in the sink. With a sigh, he dumped the whole pan of chicken into it and turned on the faucet, watching as the stream of water washed the sauce away. Then he pulled off a piece of meat and put it in his mouth. It still tasted overwhelmingly of cayenne, but it was no longer painful. He got out Margie’s Tupperware and lined them up on the counter, then divided the chicken between them. There, he thought wearily. Lunch for a week. But there was none of the morning’s triumph in it. He sealed each container and placed them in the fridge, then quickly cleaned the kitchen, showered, and fell into bed.

  He dreamed that Jessie was in a boat on a river, crying as the current caught hold of it, carrying it away. He stood on the shore, watching her, unable to move. In the dream, panic rose in him, so that it was almost a relief when he woke with a start and realized that the cries were real.

  “Jessie,” he called. “I’m coming.”

  But it was not Jessie after all, but Emma, who stood at the edge of her crib with the end of each little pajama-clad foot poking out between the bars. Len reached for her as his eyes sought out the shape of Jessie in her bed, his heart light with the relief of seeing her sleeping safely there.

  He tried the rocker, as usual, but Emma would not settle. She kept sliding off his chest and wriggling to the floor. At last Len set her down, then got up and closed the door. He stretched out on the orange and brown carpet and pulled Emma against him.

  “I’ve been working on the railroad . . .”

  In the morning, he woke to find Jessie standing over him, a delightedly puzzled look on her face.

  “Daddy! Can I sleep on the floor, too?”

  “Where’s Emma?” he asked, the panic of his dream washing over him again. “Where’s your sister?”

  “Daddy, she’s right there.”

  Len looked where she pointed, and there Emma was, lying half on him like she had fallen there, with her cheek and chest against his belly and her knees tucked up under her on the carpet.