Hush Little Baby (8 page)

“Sayonara, Sister,” my dad says.

“Adios, Amigo,” I answer. It’s been our signoff for thirty years.

I click the garage door closed behind me, but stay in the car, the conversation with my dad radiating hope, allowing me to believe somehow I’ll find a way to make things right.

My phone buzzes. I’ve been texted. “I have an idea how to solve our problem. Dinner on Thursday and I’ll explain. Xoxo, Jeffrey.”

My heart pounds, and I stare at the letters until they blur. When the panel goes blank, I step from the car, and with a deep breath, walk into my house.

The kitchen is empty, but the backyard is full. Through the sliding glass doors, there’s a party.

Four bathing-suit-clad adorable princesses, three moms, and Gordon. The girls run through a helicopter sprinkler, squealing and screeching with delight. The moms lounge on our patio furniture, sipping refreshing-looking pink concoctions, and Gordon leans against the barbeque regaling them with an apparently hilarious anecdote.

Addie takes a running slide through the mud, her bottoms not skidding as fast as the rest of her to reveal her white heinie, and my heart smiles at the sight of my girl who I haven’t seen in twelve hours.

I never realize how much I miss my kids until I see them.

I set down my briefcase and walk out to meet our guests. Gordon introduces me to the women, but the names immediately blur together—Jen, Jan, June, Jackie, Janet, Greta, or Fred—or maybe, the truth is, I just don’t care.

As I walk back through the sliding door, I feel the judgment in their stares and imagine what they’re thinking.

Bitch.

Doesn’t keep herself up very well.

Can’t believe that’s Gordon’s wife.

She didn’t even say hello to her daughter.

I turn heel and step back through the doors.

“Hi, Addie,” I say through the swirling water.

Addie either doesn’t hear me or ignores me.

The women’s eyes and Gordon’s watch.

“Hi, sweetie,” I try louder.

Addie has her friend, a gangly dark-haired girl, by the hands, and they’re jumping over the stream of water.

“…eleven, twelve, thirteen…” they chant in unison.

“Addie.” I step closer but still out of the water’s reach.

She glances at me, and her lapse in concentration disrupts the rhythm, and the water sprays against her shins.

“You lose,” a heavy girl standing beside the hose yells.

Addie, still standing in the spray, glares at me.

I glare back.

“Addie, come say hello,” I say.

“Go away,” she answers, the spray still whipping around her.

“Come here now.”

Her nose wrinkles.

She only wants to have fun with her friends.

See how Addie doesn’t listen to her?

She has no control over her daughter.

It’s no wonder; she never spends any time with her.

I walk through the fracas, no longer concerned about the damage the water will do to my Joan & David pumps or my Anne Klein blouse or my Tahari skirt, and my irritation rises with the destruction and the wetness.

I take Addie by the arm to pull her from the whirling stream, and she pulls back.

“Leave me alone,” she yelps.

She’s slippery and impossible to hold, so I change tactics and wrap my arms around her in a bear hug, half dragging, half carrying her from the sprinkler.

“Let me go,” she screams, her legs and arms flailing.

I slip and fall to my butt in the mud as I continue to hold my tantruming daughter.

“Addie, stop it. Say hello and say you’re sorry for not saying hello, and I’ll let you go.” I’m painfully aware of our audience and the humiliation this is causing both of us, but I refuse to let go. She just needs to say hello.

Two hands, large and strong, reach in and divide us, then lift the despairing four-year-old from my grip. Addie grabs on to Gordon’s neck and cries into his shoulder. He pats her back and carries her back to her friends.

I push my wrecked self from the ground and stumble past the mothers, who no longer look at me as I pretend not to be humiliated, returning to the shelter of my house and away from my display of maternal failing, completely wrecked, wishing I could undo the last ten minutes, wanting to apologize to Addie, knowing I can’t.

A moment later, the phone rings. Drew’s after-school club ended an hour ago. He’s been waiting outside the school with the director for me to come and get him.

I forgot about my son.

18

I
curl on the couch staring at the silent, blinking television as it shows four amateur cooks trying to create an appetizer from a basket of random ingredients—marshmallow spread, cinnamon candy, and artichoke hearts.

I turn at the sound of Gordon’s feet descending the steps. He raises his clasped hands over his head in triumph—both kids are asleep—a miraculous feat of parenting worthy of celebration. I smile, both understanding his sense of accomplishment and in gratitude that he took on the colossal task tonight.

He sits beside me, lifts my feet onto his lap, then begins to rub them the way I like them to be rubbed. If I were a cat, I would begin to purr.

“Artichoke cinnamon s’mores, yum-yum, what a delectable combination,” Gordon jokes, and I laugh. “The one on the left’s going home; never trust a skinny chef.”

I look with him at the pencil-thin man who at the moment is freaking out because his spatula is glued to the skillet by his melted cinnamon candy caramel. The spatula breaks away, and the pan goes flying, nearly taking out the chef beside him.

“That’s one way to eliminate the competition,” I say.

“Speaking of which, how’s the Compton project?”

“Still struggling. We might lose it. They really want us to build it without windows.” I tell him about the meeting and Kelly’s melodramatic exit.

“You won’t lose it,” he says. “You’re the best architect in the state.”

“Yeah, right. More like the finest bullshitter. I haven’t picked up a pencil in years.”

“I still tell everyone you’re the best.”

The thin man sobs on the screen; he’s been chopped.

Gordon continues my foot massage. He loves that I’m an architect, and I love that he loves that I’m an architect.

We watch as another contestant is eliminated, my eyes getting heavy, and as I drift away, it occurs to me all the small things I’ll be giving up if I leave—nine years of shared memories, habits, routines, a shared vocabulary of life and experiences. Never again will I lie on the couch with Gordon rubbing my feet and asking about my day.

*  *  *

I must have fallen asleep because Gordon’s carrying me up the stairs. I wrap my arms around his neck and curl into his familiar smell, safe and warm, the way I used to feel in the beginning.

He tucks me beneath the down comforter we chose together on a road trip we took up north, a year after Drew was born. In those early days, our life included weekend adventures on Gordon’s motorcycle—the wine country, architecture, treasure hunting—discovering the coast and each other. As the years went on, the trips became less frequent.

I try to remember the last one we took. It was years ago, before Addie.

I’m certain I didn’t realize it was the last one. At the time, the trips were so precious that it would have never occurred to me we wouldn’t be taking another. I would have thought we’re just stopping for now, for a little while. As soon as things settle down, we’ll start again.

Then I must have stopped thinking about it. And now, as I snuggle into the comforter we chose together on one of those amazing weekends, I can barely remember.

“Good night,” Gordon whispers, and he leaves me to sleep, which I do, deeply and peacefully, warm and protected in my bed, in my home, with my family.

19

I
’m finishing my hair when Gordon walks in from his shift, the sun rising through the window.

He still wears his uniform—navy with a silver badge over his heart and five ribbons of color above it, commendation for meritorious acts. A shadow of beard lines his jaw, and the crow’s feet etched at his temples squint with fatigue, but his eyes sparkle, the scintilla twinkling between glass and sky, the stench of sweat and death surrounding him.

He reaches over my shoulders, wraps his hands together over my breasts, and brushes my cheek with a kiss. I will myself not to stiffen at his touch and twist around to kiss him the way he likes to be kissed. His breath tastes like beer, but this morning, there’s no perfume.

“How was your shift?” I ask.

His eyes blaze as he stares at my reflection. “Rough night,” he says, his gaze leveled on mine in the mirror. “Shotgun deaths are brutal.”

I don’t want to react and didn’t think I did until I realize the brush is frozen in my hand, suspended mid-stroke. His eyes dance as I pull it through the rest of the way.

He kisses my neck. The odor of putridity is overwhelming. The scene must have been awful.

“I still need to give you the rest of your birthday present,” he says.

I nod. It’s all I can do.

He turns me to face him, peels my robe from my shoulders, and it slithers to the ground.

I want to turn off the lights or drape a towel around my waist. My hips are beginning to resemble my mom’s, my thighs bulging like jodhpur riding pants. But his eyes aren’t on my swollen quarters; instead, they’re intensely focused on my face.

With one hand, he cradles my chin so he can kiss me, with the other, he closes the door. I kiss him back knowing this is what he expects.

Shotgun deaths are brutal.

His lips didn’t move. It was only my imagination that he said it again.

20

O
n the way home from work, I stop at the drugstore. My heart pounds as I irrationally scan the parking lot for Gordon.

He expects me to get pregnant, and if I don’t, he is going to become suspicious, and when he discovers the truth, which he will, he always does…a shiver shudders down my spine…a second defiance this large will send him over the edge.

I swallow. He’s going to find out. If not today, then in a month or in a couple of months. He’s going to find out.

I can’t have another baby. I can’t.

My eyes fill with tears.

My petrifaction makes me think about the stories I’ve read of victims of genocide marching to their deaths. I’ve always wondered why they didn’t make a run for it. They were going to die anyway. Why not at least try? But I understand. It’s because fear paralyzes. It replaces logical thought with a numbing inability to alter your destiny.

With a deep breath, I walk into the store, buy a dose of Next Choice, a thirty-five-dollar solution to an otherwise lifelong mistake, and swallow it in the bathroom, a lifetime of regret averted…for the moment.

When I pull into the garage ten minutes later, Gordon’s Cayenne is gone.

At the door, I pause, take a deep breath, then with a smile pasted on my face, step into my home.

The kitchen is empty. I dump the smile and my pumps in the shoe basket next to the door and slide the briefcase into the small cabinet designed for just such a purpose.

“Hello,” I call.

No answer.

Through the sliding door, the yard is empty. The yellow swings on the cedar play set that rarely get used sway slightly in the breeze, and in the distance, the last light of day rides the golden hills in the canyon.

I move to the notepad beside the phone where we leave our messages.

J., Bank called. I took the kids, G.

I stare, unsure how to interpret the words.
Bank called
—does this mean he knows I called about our accounts?
I took the kids
—to the market, to the park, to another country?

I brace myself against the counter.

A second later, the front door flies open.

“Mommy, Mommy, I made something else for youwr bewrthday.”

I catch the sweet bundle hurling toward me, squeeze her tight, and bury my nose into her little-girl smell—strawberries and the slightest remnant of baby.

Addie squirms from my arms, darts to the refrigerator, and yanks open the door.

A second later, she reappears balancing a plate loaded with brown disks in her outstretched hands.

“Happy bewrthday again,” she says.

I grab one of the strange-shaped, almost brown, almost black morsels and bravely take a giant bite. The taste is something akin to cardboard baked hard with cinnamon on top. “Mmmm, mmmm, delicious.”

Behind Addie, Gordon and Drew enter the kitchen. Drew’s in his practice uniform and his brow is damp, and guilt wraps my gut like a tourniquet. Drew’s cherub face is even more sullen than usual. He’s probably been “practicing” since he got home from school. I was forty-five minutes late; that means forty-five more minutes of practice.

Gordon has a new baseball training ritual that borders on child torture—Drew needs to make a hundred throws and catches in succession or they need to start over. A week ago, Drew threw for three hours and never achieved the goal. Finally when the light gave up, so did Gordon.

Together, Gordon and I go upstairs to get changed for our dinner out with my parents.

As I zip the back of my boots, I say, “You can’t keep riding Drew the way you do.”

Gordon smooths his hair into place in front of the full-length mirror. “He’s fine.”

“He’s not.” I don’t tell him about Drew’s bout with toad-sadism at Gina’s or the difficulties he’s having in school, too afraid of what his reaction might be.

“He’s fine,” Gordon repeats, the tone leaving no room for debate.

“Gordon, please? He’s only eight. You can’t expect him to catch and throw a ball a hundred times without dropping one.”

“Don’t question how I raise my son.”

Our son.
“I’m not questioning your intentions, just your technique.”

I’m being reckless and stupid, and perhaps this is deliberate. Suddenly I’m impatient for things to change, for things to either get better or worse, no longer willing to allow them to stay the same. Completely contrary to what I told myself I was going to do—be rational and deliberate, take control—I do the opposite, and like a car careening toward a cliff, instead of slamming on the brake or veering out of the way, I drive straight toward the abyss and stomp on the accelerator. “You need to back off.”