Girls in Trouble (25 page)

The first patients, coming in, looked a little confused. Where was Tom’s braided rug? Where was Elaine, the office manager they knew and loved? And he could tell by their expressions that even though Tom had promised to prep his patients about George, they were thinking: who was he and what would he do to their teeth and would it hurt?

“Well, hello and welcome,” George said warmly, holding out his hand, opening up his smile. He knew he had to court Tom’s patients, he had to make them so comfortable, so happy, that not only would they keep coming to him, they’d bring him referrals.

“Stella Merton,” said the woman doubtfully. “Boy, everything’s so changed.” She squinted at George. “You use laughing gas like Tom?”

“Novocaine,” he said, and she frowned. “You won’t feel a thing. I promise.”

She made a sound in her throat. “I certainly hope not.” She stared at one of the antique ads. George hesitated, watching her, and then she burst out laughing. She sat in the cloth chair and patted the armrest. “Comfortable,” she decided.

Before he even started on her, he talked with her, asking her about her family, her job, even if she had any pets, and the whole time she was talking to him, she gave him sidelong glances. “Okay,” he said finally, “let’s have a look at your pearly whites.”

Stella Merton’s teeth were a mess. The gums were starting to recede, there were multiple cavities and a nasty-looking abscess forming under a molar. George sighed. This woman was forty years old and told George she had just gotten married and her husband insisted she go to the dentist more often. “Who am I to refuse him anything?” she said happily. She glanced at the picture of Eva and Anne and him. “You’re married. You know what I mean,” she said knowingly, and George thought of Eva, how tense she still was, how he’d do anything to make her more relaxed.

“I certainly do,” he said, and Stella Merton smiled.

He was so gentle with her that he didn’t even see her wince, and when he was finished, she was smiling. “Painless!” she said.

George took the bib off. “Your husband must be very special,” he said, but what he was thinking was he must be love-drunk or anesthetized to be
able to kiss a mouth like Stella’s. What kind of a dentist had Tom been not to have taken care of this sooner? He handed Stella a new bright green toothbrush. “Let’s book three more appointments to get your teeth in shape,” George said. “We’ll see how it goes from there.”

The next time Mrs. Merton came in, for a follow-up, he handed her a CD of the White Album. “You said you liked the Beatles,” he reminded her.

“Oh!” she said, startled and pleased.

He remembered one patient was a vet and so he put out
Cat Fancy
on his table of magazines. He had a knitting magazine for a woman who made sweaters. And as soon as he found out one patient, Frank Corcoran, was a chef at Chamingo’s, a local restaurant, he and Eva made reservations. The chicken was a little overdone, the beans mushy, but they cleaned their plates, and he had the waitress send their compliments after the meal. Frank himself came out, in a white chef’s hat. “You know,” he said, pleased, “in all the years I saw Tom, he never once came to the restaurant. Always said he was too busy.”

Two weeks later, George had his first referral.

A year after they had moved, they finally found a home, a two-story with a wraparound porch, the yard lined with orange trees, and after they moved in, they had made a few friends. The Scots, a couple across the street who were both accountants. “Do your taxes for you!” Ellen Scot said, laughing. The Mermans, an older, retired couple who lived next door and were always gardening. “Fresh strawberries,” Paul Merman, the husband, said, coming over with a batch.

You couldn’t always be looking over your shoulder, couldn’t always tense up the way Eva had last week in the diner when she had felt a woman staring so intently at Anne that it made her uneasy. She had nearly bolted up out of her seat, grabbing Anne, when the woman smiled pleasantly. “I just had to tell you how gorgeous your daughter is!” the woman said. “I’ve never seen red spirally curls like that! And those grey eyes!”

Eva had smiled weakly, but when she took Anne home, she brushed
her daughter’s red curls until they flattened a little. She pulled them back with a ducky barrette. Instantly, the curls sprang up. Against the white of the barrette, Anne’s hair looked even redder.

Anne turned two. And then there were newer, more immediate things to worry about. Anne was quiet as a box of tissues, which made Eva wonder if something was wrong. Even as a baby, she hadn’t cried much when her diapers were wet. Now, she could sit for hours with crayons or blocks or simply dreaming. “She should be making sounds at least,” Eva said. She and George began to talk more to Anne, just as if she were a little adult, hoping to kick-start Anne’s speech. They left the radio on all day to talk shows, they blared the TV, so a constant patter of speech surrounded Anne like a soothing blanket, but Anne ignored all of it, concentrating instead on her colored blocks. Her hands kneaded the soft heads of her stuffed animals, and she stayed happily mute. In the park, surrounded by other babbling children, Anne did little more than smile and laugh, making Eva more worried than ever. “Ah, it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for,” other mothers in the park told her, and Eva tried not to stiffen.

Worried, Eva approached the pediatrician, but he waved his hand. “Kids develop at different rates,” he said. “I had one patient who didn’t say anything until he was three!” He snapped his fingers with a flourish. “Stop worrying. She’ll talk when she’s ready and then she’ll probably talk so much you’ll yearn for this quiet.”

She drove home, Anne in the backseat, and every time Eva looked in the rearview mirror to check on her, Anne was staring dreamily out the window. Eva felt unsettled. She turned the radio on and began singing loudly. “Come on, honey, make some noise with Mommy!” she urged. She turned around to look at Anne, just for a moment. Was that possible, that her daughter’s slate eyes were now bottle green, or was it just the light? She knew eye color, hair color could change. Maybe all that red would darken into a nice brown, transforming Anne, making her look like a whole different girl. Eva squinted, and then another car bumped into
them, jolting her. Anne’s mouth was a startled O and Eva hurriedly unhooked her seat belt and stretched over the seat, checking Anne’s arms, her chubby legs, all the time murmuring, “You’re all right, honey.”

The car bumped again. “Damn!” Eva cursed, turning back around. She’d have to stop now, exchange licenses.

“Hang on, honey,” Eva said, digging into her purse.

“Mommy!”

Eva turned around, stunned. Anne blinked at her. “What did you say—” Eva whispered. Eva saw the woman from the other car coming around to talk to her, but she wouldn’t take her eyes off her daughter. “Say it again,” she begged.

“Mommy!” Anne said and squealed with laughter, and then Eva laughed, too, which made Anne jump in her car seat. Eva laughed even harder, so that when the other woman bent to her window, she must have thought Eva was crazy.

One word, though, didn’t open any floodgates. Slowly, gradually, Anne began to speak, always in individual words, like chips of chocolate on ice cream, sweet, perking your appetite, and frustrating you, too, because what you really wanted was the ice cream. Mommy, daddy, ball, book, crayons, I love you. “She’s not fluent yet,” Eva said to George. She ruffled word flash cards in one hand and held one up. A big red circle. “Ball,” she said, and George lowered her hand.

“Come on, everything doesn’t have to be a lesson.” He tickled Anne who laughed and wrapped herself about his legs.

“I’m not making it a lesson! I’m trying to help.”

“If all she ever said was
Daddy,
I’d be in seventh heaven forever,” George said.

He held out his arms and Anne squealed and let go of his legs, leaping up toward George with a ferocity Eva couldn’t help but yearn over. “She likes you better,” she said.

“I’m here less, that’s all it is,” George said. “I’m the Great God Daddy.”

Anne’s whole body seemed lit up. George roughhoused with her,
swinging her and tickling her, and Anne didn’t grow quiet until George set her back down again.

When Anne turned three, they started her in the Happy Life Day Care. Eva found work herself as a kindergarten teacher at Northeast Elementary School. Immediately her days were filled with lesson plans and projects, with kids and parents and school meetings. She made friends with Miriam, the other kindergarten teacher, and the two of them sometimes stopped off for coffee before they each went home to their families. Anne seemed happy, George loved his job, and she was back teaching again, with fifteen noisy little voices clamoring around her, and she could never get enough of it.

The first time Eva brought Anne to day care, half of the other babies were crying, straining for their mothers, but Anne plunked herself down in front of some blocks and began to play. “No separation anxiety there,” said the teacher.

“I’m the one with the anxiety,” Eva said, trying to smile.

“Oh, now, she’s going to be just fine,” the teacher soothed.

And she was fine. When Eva came to pick her up that evening, Anne did cry, but it was because Eva wanted her to come home. “She’s tired,” Eva said out loud and tried to hold her daughter close, even as Anne scrambled to reach the block area. “Mommy!” she cried. “Down! Down!” Eva smiled and held her tighter.

Eva felt her life was split in two. She went to her class and her kids clamored around her. They climbed in her lap, they reached for her hand, when they drew pictures, they drew Eva’s face, they filled the paper with Eva’s blond hair. “This is you!” they cried, pointing. “You’re on my paper!” She knew exactly how to draw a child out. She’d crouch to their eye level so she wouldn’t seem overpowering. She’d modulate her voice so it was softer, more gentle. She put books into the hands of shy children and drew them out. She gave active kids jump ropes to play with that channeled their energy. “I love you, Miss Eva!” Every day, she heard it. And then she came
home to her quiet little girl, and when she crouched down to Anne’s level, Anne took a step back. When Eva handed Anne books or crayons, Anne would sometimes look overwhelmed. Anne could sit in her room for hours coloring, playing with her dolls, and as soon as Eva stepped into the room, Anne would look flustered and Eva couldn’t figure out why.

“How’d you luck out with such a quiet girl?” Miriam asked her.

“I wish she’d be more outgoing.”

“Because you are?” Miriam asked. “Who says your kids are like you? My daughter Brigette’s so different from me I sometimes thought the hospital had switched babies on us. She loves sports, loves roughhousing, and all I want to do is play dolls with her or shop. What are you going to do? They’re their own people right from the start. All you can do is nurture who they already are.”

Or nurture what you’d like for them to be,
Eva thought.

When Anne turned five, the same age as Eva’s students, Eva decided to bring her to her kindergarten class. “I want to show her off,” Eva said, but the truth was, she wanted to show herself off to her daughter. She dressed up in a rainbow-striped skirt and long beaded earrings. Then she put Anne in a new dress, green as her eyes, and she tidied Anne’s red hair into pigtails, tied with a ribbon. “What color?” she asked, and when Anne said yellow, Eva grinned. “Ah, my favorite color!” Eva said, pleased.

“Wish I could be there,” George said.

“Just us girls,” Eva told him.

The whole ride to the school, Eva kept telling Anne all the wonders that she’d find in Eva’s classroom: music and instruments and art supplies! A cooking center where they could make butter! A dress-up center where they could play theater! “Guess what I have planned today!” Eva told Anne excitedly. “A nature walk!”

“A nature walk!” Anne’s eyes shone.

As soon as Eva walked into the room, the children rushed toward her, clamoring. “Miss Eva! Miss Eva!” Fifteen voices were all talking at once.

Anne hesitated and then shyly leaned along the wall, lowering her eyes. Billy grabbed at Eva’s hands and Anne sprinted forward, tugging them away so roughly Billy cried.

“Anne!” Eva said, surprised. “That’s not nice!”

Anne’s hands darted back to her sides. Her lower lip trembled. “Why’re you crying?” Eva asked, crouching down. “Billy’s the one who was startled.” Anne shook her head.

“Come meet everyone.” Eva sprang up again, like a rubber band. “This is my daughter, Anne!” Eva said. She tugged at Anne’s hand, but Anne hid behind her.

The kids were excited, restless, churning like a tide, but Eva knew what to do. She clapped her hands, one, two, three, her signal for them to gather round. And then, outside, it began to pour. “The nature walk!” Anne cried.

Eva stared at the gloomy day. Great, she thought, and then an idea prickled into her mind. “Well, maybe we can have fun anyway,” Eva said.

“How can we do that?”

“You’ll see,” Eva said.

“What are you going to do?” Anne asked, her eyes bright.

“You wait and see,” Eva whispered. “Your mommy can make magic.”

While the children played at the activity centers, Eva got out the blanket and spread it on the floor with the picnic basket. She went next door and borrowed the microwave they used for cooking. There was a package of hot dogs in the fridge and they could nuke them. She got all kinds of summertime songs for the boom box to play for the kids. “We’re having a summer picnic!” Eva announced.

“But it’s raining,” Billy said.

“Not inside it isn’t,” Eva said. “Come on, now, everyone line up behind me, hands on the person in front of you.”

The kids scrambled into a line. Anne lagged in the corner. “Anne, honey, come on!” Eva urged, but Anne shook her head. “Well, join in anytime,” Eva said.

They all sang “Day-O,” marching around the room, making so much noise, the next-door teacher came by, leaning in the doorway, laughing. “You are one teacher!” she said, but Eva, looking at her Anne sitting alone, couldn’t help feeling that she had failed.

All afternoon, Eva tried to engage her daughter. When Eva handed out blue and green and yellow streamers for the kids to swirl in the air, pretending they were waves at the beach, Anne waved hers around limply.
“Come on, honey!” Eva urged, and Anne waved her streamer harder and when it snagged on something and ripped, she looked stunned. “Never mind!” Eva said, but Anne sat on the floor.