Girls in Trouble (15 page)

Now, he checked his watch. He’d never get out of here in time.

“Doctor.”

He finished the root canal and gave the abscess patient novocaine. “Be right back,” he said, trying to sound cheerful. The patient glared at him. “I promise,” he said.

He passed the waiting room. Six patients, leafing through magazines, shifting position. They looked up at him expectantly. One put down her magazine and leaned forward. “Soon, Mrs. Lido,” he lied. Soon, baloney. He went into Cora’s little office. He picked up the phone and called Eva and as soon as he heard her voice, bright and lustrous as a piece of silver, he felt soothed.

“I can’t come home for lunch today,” he apologized. “But I’ll get out of here early.”

“Well, okay,” she said. “Anyway, Sara’s here.”

He glanced at the clock. “Really? Again? I thought you and Anne were going to go out to see your friend Christine later—”

“Sara came by.”

“Shouldn’t she be home? Or with her friends?”

“Doctor,” someone called.

“Look, I’ve got to go. Love you. Love our baby. See you at dinner,” he said.

At four, he was finished, an hour earlier than he had hoped. His last patient had been another emergency, a woman who had come in with her bridge still attached to a bright red taffy apple she hadn’t been able to
resist biting. She left with a temporary and a list of foods she shouldn’t eat. He’d have to place an ad for another hygienist. He wished he could place an ad for a clone. Most dentists worked solo, and he had never wanted to be in a partnership, but maybe it might help things. He wouldn’t have to work so hard, such long hours. But of course the question was, who would be the partner? You had to be careful with things like that. The only person he could think of was his old friend Tom from dental school, who lived in Florida and was always trying to get him to move down there. “Blue skies, sandy beaches,” Tom urged, but George hadn’t really wanted to move.

George shut the office. He drove home, stopping to pick up fresh flowers from the Korean greengrocer, a box of chocolates he knew Eva would love. All he wanted was to eat dinner and lie in bed with Eva, the baby between them, a blissful oasis of family.

He didn’t know what he had thought would happen, but with Sara there, the whole dynamic had changed. Yesterday, when he had come home, Sara had been there cooking in the kitchen with Eva. He hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise, but Eva had looked so happy that he had let it go. He had gone in to see Anne, lifting her up out of her crib. He had wanted a moment with her, quiet time, just the two of them in the rocker. The baby smelled so delicious, like powder and vanilla, and he held her tiny hand, admiring the little nails, the peachy skin. “Let Daddy tell you about his day,” he started to say and then the door opened and Sara burst in with a bottle and the mood was spoiled.

“I’ll feed her,” he said, and took the bottle, warm in his hand. Sara sat on the bed and he felt a flicker of annoyance. He liked Sara, but really, couldn’t she just leave him alone with his own baby for a minute? “We’ll be fine,” he told her, and Sara hesitantly stood up. “See you in a while,” he told her. “Oh, could you just shut the door?”

“The door?” She blinked at him. He nodded and she shut it.

But he could still hear her, right outside, laughing and talking about something, Eva’s voice a counterpoint. Even with the door closed, he still felt her presence, and it suddenly felt too near to him, like clothing that was a size too small. And even after she had left, two hours after dinner, she was still there, too.

* * *

He opened the door. The house smelled spicy with garlic and he was suddenly ravenous. There was music, something soft and bluesy. He felt giddy with happiness. The bad day swept away from him. Eva had always been able to do that for him, from the first day he had met her, when she had been the last of his patients after a particularly bad day. Her eyes were big and sparkling as mica, and while every patient that day had sat glumly or complained that he was hurting them, Eva was bubbling. Every time he took an instrument from her mouth, she talked to him, as if she remembered something more she had to say, and he found himself talking back, unable to stop, and six months later, they were married.

“Anybody home?” he called. He looked for a space to put the paper down. He smelled his wife’s vanilla perfume, and then, like an undertone, he caught a whiff of something else. The damned smoky-smelling scent Sara wore. It clung to everything. He headed for the kitchen, tripping over something. He leaned down and picked it up. Sara’s hairbrush. Right there on the floor. Last week he had found her sweater in the bathroom, pulled over a rod as if it were a towel. She was everywhere, all over the house, and he suddenly began to feel a little cramped.

He started taking off his coat, pushing the hangers to the side to make himself room. “Hey, you.”

There was Eva, in a pale blue dress. “Hey, you, yourself,” he said. Her feet were bare, her hair tumbled down her back. She looked so beautiful, so luminous, he forgot he had ever been annoyed today. He reached for her.

“Anne’s sleeping,” she said, and he bent to kiss her neck. He started unbuttoning her dress, to kiss her throat, her shoulders. “Hey,” she said, wait—

“Let the dinner burn,” he said, in his best Barry White voice, and then he heard something. He looked up, his mouth on Eva’s skin, and there was Sara, in an apron, in oven mitts, smiling. “I made dinner for all of us,” Sara said.

* * *

Sara got her coat after dinner. She was almost at the door, ready to leave, when he remembered. “Wait,” he said, and she turned. “Don’t forget your other things.” He walked around the living room. He felt suddenly grumpy, he felt crowded in, as if there were too many people in an elevator. He hadn’t minded Sara’s being over every day when she was pregnant—no, that, in fact, had made him feel better, as if the fact of her being over so often might bond her to them more, and it had made Eva happier, too. He hadn’t thought he would mind Sara being here after the baby was born, but now—her presence made him a little anxious. He wouldn’t even mind if Sara came a few days a week, or called all the time, but being here, a presence, every day? He plucked up Sara’s sweater, her comb, her tube of mascara, and handed them to her. “Wait. There’s a book in the kitchen. Let me just go fetch it,” he said.

“I can get it tomorrow,” Sara said, but he waved a hand. “No, no, it’s easy enough to do it now,” George said.

He put everything in a brown paper bag for her. “That’s everything, right?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Sara said.

When Sara left, George watched her from the window, and he didn’t know why, but it bothered him the way she stopped at the end of the block, the way she turned and looked back at the house. He heard Eva in the kitchen, the whistle of the kettle.

He walked into the kitchen. Eva was wiping the counter with a damp sponge. “She’s here too much,” George said.

Eva shrugged. She wouldn’t look him in the eye. “We said she could be here whenever she wanted.”

“I know, but did you think she’d be here every day? Didn’t you think it would taper off, the way the agency said?”

Eva started wiping the table.

“Look, she’s a nice girl, but doesn’t it bother you, the way she’s here all the time?” George asked. “Wouldn’t you like time alone with the baby?”

Eva stopped wiping the table.

“Is something wrong?”

She looked away from him, and then Anne started to cry and she went into the baby’s room and he followed her. Bending, she lifted Anne up; she
moved in an awkward dance and Anne wailed louder. He touched her shoulder and she whipped around. Anne’s face was tight with rage.

Eva?

Tense, she handed the baby to him.

“There you go,” he said. He rocked Anne, he did his own sort of awkward dance until the baby quieted a little. “Look at this face,” he said, holding the baby up for Eva to see, and then he leaned toward her and kissed her. “And look at this one,” he said.

Eva burst into tears.

He looked up at her, stunned. He held Anne, gently rubbing her back.

“Eva, what is it? What’s going on?”

She hesitated. She rubbed her nose. “It’s just sometimes being a mother is overwhelming, that’s all. Sara helps out.”

“Is that all it is?” he said, relieved. “We’ll hire you help. Or we can get Anne into one of those fancy day cares. Just a few hours a day, so you can have a little space.”

Eva was still. Her breathing calmed a little. George glanced around the room, at the big Disney calendar they had bought for the baby, and suddenly perked up. “School’s starting soon. Sara won’t even be able to be here as much. You’ll see. You’ll be alone here with Anne, and you’ll have some time for yourself, too, and Sara and you will work it out together.”

“You think?” said Eva, and then George kissed her. “I know,” he said. “Trust me.”

S
ara stood in front of the school. Jefferson High. Three floors of red brick, ringed by woods. A big American flag waving at her like a crazy hand out front. She glanced at her watch, the third time in five minutes. Quarter to nine. Last year, she made a point to get to school by eight at the latest, sometimes even by seven. She was always rushing, eyes glued to her watch, worried she’d fall behind. Jack had even offered to drive her this morning, but she had walked instead, dragging her steps, stopping and starting like a rusty car, just to draw the time out. She couldn’t go slowly enough.

The buses were long gone. The parking lot, filled with cars, was eerily quiet. Even the kids who usually hung around until the last possible minute, flirting, smoking in their cars, were inside. Sara was alone, in a new short black jersey dress and black tights, her book bag slung over her shoulder. Her parents had been so happy she was going back to school that Abby had given Sara her Filene’s charge card. “Buy out the store,” Abby said.

They had made such a fuss about her that morning. Abby prepared a special waffle breakfast and they all sat down together, though Sara was so anxious she barely could manage a sip of juice. Jack beamed at Sara. “Senior year!” he said. “You’ll see all your friends. There’ll be all those activities.
You’ll feel so much better!” he said, but Sara knew what he meant was he hoped she wouldn’t have time to go over to Eva and George’s.

She had brushed her hair that morning until her hand ached. It was less curly now, the color dulled, which surprised her, and when she gathered it into a pony tail, she noticed, to her shock, it had thinned. “That happens with pregnancy, sometimes,” Abby told her, and it made Sara a little sad, as if she had lost an important piece of herself. She had applied makeup and then washed it off and applied it again. A line of black rimming her eyes. A wash of pink on her cheeks. She felt so old, why didn’t she look it?

She heard the warning bell from inside and her bones seemed to soften and turn liquid. Attendance was already taken. In a few more minutes, another bell would ring, and kids would be swarming from home room toward their first class.

Sara forced herself to climb the cement steps. She pushed open the big red door. As soon as she stepped inside, she felt ill. There was the same scuffed black linoleum, the cork bulletin boards fluttering with notices no one ever paid attention to, the blue lockers lining the walls. There was that school smell, her old life, the one she had loved.

This was nothing like being sixteen again. This was not where she had left off.

She walked past her locker and touched it, the metal cool against the heat of her fingers, but it didn’t feel familiar, and unnerved, she touched it again, as if for luck. Sara breathed hard. And then the bell rang, making her jump, and kids poured out into the hall and she didn’t have to think at all. All she had to do was get to her next class.

She bolted ahead, wishing she could be invisible. “Sara—” she thought she heard, her name, snaking toward her. There was a group of kids standing by the elevator and when she passed by, one girl, someone Sara had never seen before, pointed right at her. “That’s
her,”
the girl said, and the others huddled around. Sara walked faster, her head down.
They know,
Sara thought. Robin must have told.

All that day no one really talked to her. She felt people watching her; every once in a while she’d see a familiar face—Robin, Judy, kids she knew from her honors classes, but they met her eyes and then, embarrassed,
they looked away again, and she was too anxious to push a connection. No one ever stopped. Instead, she heard snatches of talk.
“Knocked up. How clueless can you get?”
Every word hurt her, and after a while, she stopped smiling, she stopped trying to find a friendly face or be friendly herself. She pretended she didn’t care, that it was fine to walk the halls all by herself, it was terrific to have all this quiet about her, because look how well she could study now.

She was getting a book out of her locker when a hand reached out and slammed her door shut. She turned, and there was a boy she didn’t know, with rough-cut blond hair and icy green eyes, his arm still stretched out on the locker, keeping her pinned where she was. Behind him, she saw another group of boys, watching, nudging one another, giving her knowing grins. “You and me, hooking up Friday night,” the boy said, his voice low. “All night.”