Little Earthquakes (36 page)

Of course, the day had been a disaster. Her father had poked at his sashimi with the tip of one chopstick, lifting the slices of eel and fluke as if they were evidence at a crime scene. Her sisters had giggled and whispered to each other over bowls of teriyaki chicken, then slipped outside to sneak cigarettes by the Dumpster, and her brother Charlie had gotten drunk on the sake Kelly had ordered for the table and hadn’t quite made it to the bathroom before he threw up. Steven’s parents looked at them like they were a pack of rats, while Kelly sat at the head of the table wearing the pearls Steve had bought her as a graduation gift, smiling and nodding until she felt like a bobble-head doll.
And what do you do?
Kenneth Day had asked her father, and Kelly held her breath until her father recited what she’d advised him to say.
I work for the government.

“He delivers the mail,” Kelly said, as she drove toward the turn-pike.

“What?”

“My father,” she said. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. She hadn’t told Steve much about her family, and she’d certainly never taken him to the house where she’d grown up, but if they were going to go on as husband and wife, he had to understand. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“Kelly? Where are we going?”

“Home,” she said, her foot pressing down hard on the gas pedal. “We’re going home.”

An hour and fifteen minutes later, they pulled up to the dingy Cape Cod house at the end of a cul-de-sac. She let Steve take it in through the car window: the patchy lawn, the peeling paint, the half-assembled pickup truck in the driveway, and the fading black-and-gold stickers that spelled out
O’HARA
on the green mailbox.

She looked straight ahead with her hands on the steering wheel. “I was never a Girl Scout,” she said. “You know why? Because you needed a uniform to be a Girl Scout, and my parents didn’t have enough money to buy one, and they didn’t want to take charity.”

“Oh.” His voice was quiet in their too-big car.

“Whenever we got invited to other kids’ birthday parties, we’d bring something from the dollar store wrapped in the comics from the Sunday paper, so eventually we’d make excuses about why we couldn’t go. And every Christmas…” Her voice caught in her throat. “The ladies from the church would bring a basket with a turkey in it and whatever toys we’d asked for. Anything we wanted, they’d bring us, and they’d wrap it, too. And the cards would say ‘From Santa,’ but we figured out who they were really from, and we stopped asking because we all knew that taking charity was even worse than being poor.”

Her voice was flat. Her hands looked horrible; the nails ragged and bitten, the cuticles cracked and bleeding. “I hated this house. I hated everything about it. I hated wearing my sister’s hand-me-downs. I hated how everything smelled like cigarette smoke and how there was never anything nice or new and how…” She wiped her eyes. “When we got married, I promised myself that if I had a baby, I was going to be able to buy him everything he needed. He’d always feel safe. He’d never have to feel like he was growing up in a house like a leaky boat where the bottom could just fall out.” She turned and looked at her husband in the eyes. “That was why I wanted you to go get a job. That was why it mattered so much. It made me crazy to think that we were going to go through our savings because…” She lifted her hands in the air. “Then what?” She looked past him, through the window, toward the house. “This?”

“Kelly.” He reached for her hands. “I never had any idea. If you’d told me…”

“But I couldn’t.” She bit back a sob. “I didn’t want you to know, I didn’t want you to see…” She wiped her eyes and looked at him again. “I thought you wouldn’t love me anymore.”

“Hey.” He reached for her, pulling her head to his shoulder. “I will love you forever. I’ll take care of you. And Oliver. I just…” He exhaled. “I figured, we had the money, there wasn’t any rush, I could stay home and be with the baby.” He shook his head ruefully. “I couldn’t figure out why you were so frantic.” He rubbed one hand up and down his cheek. “Now I think I get it. And in spite of what you were thinking, it was never my intention to lie around on the couch forever.”

“But that’s what you were doing.”

“For six months, yeah,” Steve said. He started jiggling his leg. “I didn’t take the whole layoff thing very well. It really threw me. And I just figured I’d take a break, take some time, spend time with the baby, get back on my feet.” He paused, looking out the window. “My father was never around,” Steve said. “I wanted to be a different kind of dad.” He gave her a crooked smile. “If I’d known that—if you’d told me—I would have started working again. Even if it meant I wasn’t seeing Oliver.” His voice dropped. “If that’s what it took to keep you.”

She rested her cheek against him. She could hear the ticks of the engine cooling and, somewhere, not far off, a mother calling her child inside. “I thought I told you. I know I tried. I…” But even as she spoke, a part of her wondered. What had she said, exactly? What had she said out loud, and what had she only thought?

He wrapped his arm around her. “We made mistakes,” he said. “Both of us did. But we’ve got a little boy now, Kelly. We have to work things out.”

She sniffled. “I wish I’d known,” she said. “I wish I’d known how it was going to turn out. I wish I’d known what was going to happen…”

“Hey,” he said. “We didn’t register for a crystal ball. But I know this. I’m not Scott Schiff, and I’m not your father.” He gestured at himself, grinning his crooked grin. She remembered looking up at him, half drunk in a pile of leaves. He’d brought her french fries. He’d told her she was beautiful. And she’d believed him.

“See?” he asked, pointing. “No mailbag. Fly zipped…” He paused to check. “Most of the time. Whether I wind up teaching, or whatever, I will always take care of you and Oliver.”

“Do you promise?” she asked. Her voice wobbled. He bent his head close, brushing her cheek with his lips.

“Will you believe me if I do?”

She nodded. “I want things to be different,” she whispered, half to herself.

“Things can be however you want them,” Steve said. She leaned into his body with her eyes closed, letting him support her weight, letting him stroke her hair, letting herself be held.

I sat in the park with my mother’s blue suitcase and the lunch Sarah had packed at my feet. My friends were gathered around me—Kelly, who’d pulled Oliver over in a new red wagon; Becky, with Ava in a backpack; and Ayinde, tall and stern and beautiful, as if she’d been sculpted, her face a clay mask finished in the heat of a kiln, holding Julian in her arms. The sky was slate gray, the temperature in the forties, but the wind had a hint of softness to it, and I could see the buds on the dogwood and cherry trees, tight little knots of red and pink, the sign of spring to come. Sam had flown back to California two weeks ago to start furnishing the house he’d picked out, and I’d stayed behind in Philadelphia to pack, to close up the apartment, and to say my good-byes. Sam was returning in the afternoon to take me home.

“You do realize that you’re breaking Dash the dishwasher’s heart?” Becky asked.

“He’ll get over it,” I said.

“We’ll miss you,” Kelly said, sounding small and forlorn. “Do you really have to go live there?”

“It’s where Sam is,” I said. “And work, if I ever work again. And…” I wasn’t sure I’d be able to trust my voice. “It’s where Caleb is buried. I think I’d always like to live close enough so that I could go visit.”

All three of them nodded. Becky cleared her throat. “I have news.”

“Good news?” Kelly asked.

“I think so. I hope so.” She lifted Ava, in a pink fleece coat and pink sweatpants, in her arms and stood up straight. “I’m. Um. A little bit pregnant.”

“Oh my God, are you serious?” Kelly shrieked. “You had sex, didn’t you?”

“Can’t get anything by you,” Becky said with a smile.

“You had sex, and now you’re pregnant!”

“What are you, my eighth-grade health teacher?” Becky grumbled, but she was smiling. Glowing, actually. “It’s a little overwhelming, but we’re happy about it. Most of the time.” She looked at Ava, who wrinkled her nose and giggled. “I don’t know how this one’s going to feel.”

“What did Mimi say?” Kelly asked.

Becky rolled her eyes. “We haven’t told her yet. And the truce is still holding, although at this point I’ve had to bite my tongue so many times I’m surprised it’s still attached.” She shrugged. “I’ve got to do it, though, if I want my marriage to work.”

All three of us turned unconsciously toward Kelly, and, just as fast, all three of us turned away. She’d noticed, though. “I think,” she said, in a small voice, with her head bent over the wagon. “I think we’re going to be okay.” She sat on the bench, pushing Oliver back and forth in his little red wagon. “I think Steve and I both had a picture in our heads when we got married, a picture of how it was going to be.”

“Didn’t we all,” Ayinde said softly.

“So it’s going to be different now. We’re moving into a smaller place,” she said and smiled. “With actual furniture. Steve’s going to start substitute teaching and interviewing for full-time jobs for the fall, and…” She cleared her throat. “I’m going back to school for interior design at Drexel. They’ve got a great program.” She looked at us shyly. “You guys liked Oliver’s nursery, right?”

“Oh, it’s so cute,” Becky said. “That’s going to be perfect for you!”

Kelly scooped Oliver into her arms and planted a kiss on the top of his head. “I don’t care about perfect anymore. I just want good enough.”

“Oh, Kelly.” I said. I put my hand on her arm and squeezed, and then, unable to help myself, I reached out and grabbed one of Oliver’s thighs. “Hey, Oliver.” There were the rolls I’d gotten used to—for the time I’d known him, Oliver had legs like squished loaves of Wonder Bread—but it felt as if one or two of them might have gone missing. I inspected the baby carefully. He’d gotten taller, and his face had gotten leaner. He’d grown more hair, too. And suddenly I realized: He was growing out of his babyness, turning into a little boy.

I blinked to keep the tears back. They’d all changed so much. Ava had six teeth and, much to Mimi’s relief, some hair at last. At ten months, Julian was tall and watchful, with a serious look about him, like a banker evaluating a mortgage application. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about Caleb and how I wouldn’t get to see this, the growing up, filling out, the changing, the progression from bottles to baby food to real food, from rolling to crawling to walking to running.

“Check him out,” said Kelly, her tone a mixture of pride and regret. “He’s getting thinner.”

“He’s growing up.”

“It’s so unbelievable,” said Kelly. “I guess that when it was really bad—you know, when Steve was home all day and I was just scrambling—I thought it would always be that way. That he’d always be a little guy. Well, a big little guy. But he’s changing,” she said, holding the baby against her chest. “And I am, too.”

“We all did,” said Becky. “The miracle of motherhood.” She rolled her eyes.

Kelly looked at me. “You’ll come back in July, won’t you? For Oliver’s and Ava’s birthdays?”

“And then you’ll have to come back again in the fall,” said Becky. “For my birth day.”

“Sure I will,” I said.

Ayinde cleared her throat. “Lia,” she said. “I think your mother has arrived.”

I saw Sam and my mother, walking toward me from Walnut Street, arm in arm.
Wonders never do cease,
I thought, as I got to my feet. “I’m really bad at good-byes,” I began.

“Oh, bullshit,” said Becky, wrapping her arms around me. “We’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too,” I said, and now I wasn’t even bothering to pretend I wasn’t crying. “You guys…you don’t even know, but you saved my life.”

“I think we all saved each other,” Becky said.

I held all of them in my arms for a moment—Becky and Kelly and Ayinde, Oliver and Julian and Ava. “Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye, mommies,” I sang.

“Cut it out with that goddamn song,” said Becky, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

“Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye, babies,” I said.

Ava stared. Oliver chewed solemnly on his thumb. “Bye!” said Julian, opening and closing his fist. “Bye bye bye bye bye.”

“Oh my God,” said Kelly, her eyes widening, “did you all hear that?”

“His first word!” said Becky. “Quick, Ayinde, did you bring your
Baby Success! Success Stories
book to write it down?”

“No, it’s at home, I…oh, never mind.”

“Ladies,” said Sam, greeting my friends. “And gentlemen, of course,” he said to Oliver and Julian.

“Bye bye bye bye bye,” Julian babbled and waved his fist in the air.

“Come on,” I said, “before I lose it.” And I took my husband’s arm.

“Lia?”

“Mmm,” I said. Sam had given me the window seat, and I was snuggled beside him, with a blanket pulled up to my waist and my cheek resting against the cool glass. We were somewhere over the middle of America. The sky was dark with clouds, and I was half asleep.

“Do you want something to drink?”

I shook my head, closed my eyes, and fell, almost instantly, into the old dream, the one I’d been having since I’d come home to Philadelphia. I was standing in the nursery that had been my son’s, white carpet and cream-colored walls and a sheer curtain blowing in front of an open window. My feet were bare as I walked across the floor, and I could feel the wind blowing the curtain against my cheek—warm and soft, like the promise of something wonderful, the kind of wind you only got at night in California.

Only this time, the dream was different. This time, there was noise coming from the crib. Not crying, which would have been true to life, but soft cooing, nonsense syllables that were almost words,
La la la
and
Ba ba ba.
Noises I’d heard Ava and Oliver and Julian making as I’d watched them.

“Shh, baby,” I said, walking faster. “Shh, I’m here.”
Now I’ll look down and the crib will be empty,
I thought, as I bent over the railings the way I had a hundred times in a hundred dreams. Now I’ll look down and he’ll be gone.

But the crib wasn’t empty. I leaned and looked, and there was Caleb, wearing his blue pajamas with a duck on the front, Caleb as he would have been at this age, his eyes bright, his skin pink and flushed, cheeks and legs and arms plump and sturdy, reddish-brown hair on his head, no longer looking like an angry, malnourished old man but like a baby. My baby.

“Caleb,” I whispered, lifting him into my arms, where he fit like a key in an oiled lock. He felt familiar, like Ava, like Oliver, like Julian, but not like any of them. Like his own thing. My own thing. My baby. My boy.

At that moment, I was both inside of the dream and outside of it; in the nursery and on the airplane, and I could see everything, could feel everything—my husband beside me, his hand warm on my knee, the window against my cheek cool from the air rushing against it, beaded with raindrops, the weight of the baby in my arms.

“Caleb,” I said. The country spread itself beneath me like a lady’s skirt, patches of brown and green stitched together with forgiveness, with hope, with love. I heard the wind blow through the open nursery window. Beside me, I felt my husband turning his body toward me, his breath gentle against my cheek, his hand warm over mine. In my dream, in my arms, my baby opened his eyes and smiled.