The Winters in Bloom (25 page)

“What’s going on?” She heard her voice becoming squeaky, hysterical. “Why was that man in our apartment?”

Of course it wasn’t her apartment anymore, but that was only because she’d given it to Zach and Amy and their baby. Not to Amy and this
stranger
.

“You’re not going to say anything?” Kyra stomped over to the bed and looked down at her. The robe barely tied around her sister’s huge waist. “You’re going to cheat on your husband with some guy you barely know and not even try to justify yourself?”

“He’s not a guy I barely know,” Amy said. She lowered her eyes. “I’ve been in love with Gregory for almost a year.”

A year?
A year?
How on earth was that possible when Kyra had never heard the man’s name before? She thought back to the week of her sophomore finals, when Amy had broken up with Zach and Kyra had gone to his apartment, to comfort him. Had Amy already known this guy then?

Without being questioned, Amy explained that they’d met one night last fall, when the band was playing on the Plaza. So the answer was no: she did not know Gregory when she broke up with Zach. And Gregory was not the father of her child, she emphasized that, though Kyra hadn’t thought to wonder about it yet.

“He’s not happy with his wife,” Amy said.

Kyra rolled her eyes and snickered. “Oh, of course.”

“I don’t care if you believe it. It’s true. His wife is awful to him, but he can’t leave because he has three kids.” She smiled. “I’ve met them. They liked me; I could tell. It’s nothing like Marie.”

Marie was their stepmother. Meaning Amy was already pretending she was some kind of stepmother to this guy’s kids? After meeting them in secret somewhere, what, once or twice?

“You’re delusional,” Kyra snapped. “What is this guy for you? A father figure?”

“So what if he is? It’s not like I ever had a father who loved me.”

“Neither did I, but I’m not—”

“Think what you want about me. I don’t care. When I’m with him, I’m happy. He doesn’t want me to be perfect or special. He likes me as I am, just Amy.”

Just Amy? What did that even mean? The whole situation was so bizarre and overwhelming that Kyra slumped down on the bed, but on the other side, as far as possible from her sister. Amy was lying very still. Her wet hair was soaking the pillowcase. The air conditioner was only a foot or so from her bare legs. Her feet looked puffy and red and cold.

“You have to tell Zach,” Kyra finally said. She was looking at a pile of his T-shirts sitting on top of the dresser. She knew how devastated he would be. Where would he move? How would he and Amy deal with sharing child care?

Amy didn’t respond.

“I’m serious. If you don’t tell him, I will.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little strange,” Amy said, “that you’re the younger sister, but you’re always telling me what to do? It’s like you think you’re my mom.”

Kyra could have said a hundred things to defend herself. Since they’d moved to Kansas City, Amy had done one irresponsible thing after another. What was she supposed to do? Just sit back and watch her sister ruin her life? The truth was that this was hardly the way she’d imagined college would be. She was always being forced to drop whatever she was doing to deal with yet another problem of Amy’s. Her own problems, such that they were, never got any attention. Compared to her sister’s drug use, pregnancy, marriage, and now affair, how could it matter that Kyra was afraid some of the people in her math study group didn’t like her? How could her feeling that life was passing her by possibly be important, when her sister was living like she was speeding down the road, about to crash into a wall?

Amy turned to her side and used her hands to push herself up to a sitting position. She leaned closer and made her voice sound like a child’s. “Mommy, don’t you like me anymore?”

“Cut it out,” hissed Kyra.

Her sister shook her head like a wet dog, and a water droplet from her thick hair hit Kyra in the face. “Have you ever been in love, Mommy?”

Kyra felt her cheeks burning. “Stop it, Amy.”

Amy put her hand on her abdomen. Kyra could tell the baby was kicking. But it didn’t stop her sister. “Of course you haven’t,” Amy said flatly. “You’re too busy looking down on screwups like me to have time to fall in love with anyone.”

Kyra stood up, but before she could leave the room, Amy said, “You know what I told Gregory?”

“I don’t care.” She refused to turn around, but she couldn’t help walking more slowly.

“I told him about the worst day in my life.” Somehow, Amy had gotten to a standing position. Kyra could hear her breathing heavily as she came up behind her. “Want to know what it was?”

“No.”

“Come on, sure you do.”

Kyra was wearing a sundress. Amy’s cold hand on her bare shoulder made her jump. She spun around. “I already know, okay? It’s the day Mom left. You’ve been telling me about this all my life, like I wasn’t even there.”

“No. It’s the day you moved out of this apartment.”

“Oh bull.” She shook off Amy’s hand. “You wanted to live with Zach!”

“No, I didn’t. He wanted me to and you wanted me to, but I just wanted to be with you. Like the Callahan Child Care Company, the two of us, taking care of the baby.”

Kyra remembered Amy saying that she wouldn’t live anywhere without her sister, but she refused to think about that now. It had nothing to do with what was happening with this married man. It changed the focus and turned the whole thing into a guilt trip.

Amy heaved herself over to the couch, and Kyra leaned against the wall and stared at her. They were both silent for a while. At some point, Kyra sat down on the dusty floor and said, “This is why you didn’t want to marry Zach.”

“Yeah.” She paused. “Why did you push that so hard? It can’t be just insurance.”

Amy was right. Though the insurance was a perfectly good reason on its own, it wasn’t her only concern. “It will probably sound dumb to you, but it was Father Tom. Remember him, from church?”

“Sure I remember him.”

Kyra picked at a piece of rubber hanging off the heel of her sandals and thought about when Father Tom had suggested Amy might be an angel. It seemed like a million years ago. She wondered what Father Tom would say if he could see them now and sighed. “I thought about that lecture he gave us on teenage pregnancy and giving birth to a bastard. I just didn’t want your baby to be a bastard.” She sat up straighter. “I’m sorry if that seems stupid.”

“It doesn’t seem stupid.”

“So you do want the baby, at least?”

“Oh for God’s sake. Someday you’ll realize that a pregnant woman this far along wants her baby more than she’s ever wanted anything.” She patted her stomach and her voice grew soft. “I don’t care how bad the timing is. I love this little person more than I’ve ever loved anyone.”

Kyra looked closely at her sister and realized it was true. After months of Amy being strangely disconnected from the life growing inside of her, she’d finally fallen in love with the baby.

Maybe that was why, before Zach came home that night, Kyra had softened enough to agree not to say anything to him about Gregory. Amy had to promise not to see the man again; Kyra insisted on that first. Amy had to promise that she would try to give her innocent baby a normal life.

A few weeks later, on September 14 at 11:17
AM
, the baby was born. She was gorgeous, with a tiny tuft of blond hair and light blond, almost invisible eyebrows, pink cheeks and startling blue eyes, and a plump little mouth and perfectly shaped little head. Not one mark on her, as Amy said, laughing that she’d finally done something right by pushing out her baby so efficiently. Both Kyra and Zach fell in love with the little girl the first time they held her, in the delivery room. Naturally, Kyra was in the delivery room, too. Her sister had said she needed her there, and that was all Kyra had needed to hear.

The fact that Amy got a huge bouquet of roses in the hospital, without a card, should have alerted Kyra to the fact that Amy had broken her promise, but they were all too happy about the baby. Amy named her Hannah, which she said meant “grace” or “favored one.”

“You are my favorite,” Kyra whispered in Hannah’s little ear, so intricate it looked funny sprouting from the side of such a tiny head. She put her finger in the baby’s hand and Hannah grasped it tightly. It was only a reflex, but it felt like Hannah was holding on to her for support or even protection. Zach noticed it, too. He said to Amy, “Our baby likes your sister.”

“Of course she does,” Amy said. She was still in the hospital bed, waiting for the doctor to say they could go home. She looked tired, but she was smiling. “Hannah’s going to be smart. She knows her auntie will be her best friend.”

Part Three

TWENTY-TWO

M
ichael had
been sitting on the side of the road for a long time. He’d watched as the shadow from the sun had moved across the empty parking lot of the restaurant and past the Out of Business sign and onto the brown field. At one point, he’d unhooked his seat belt to lock the doors, though he knew it wouldn’t help that much, since the windows were unrolled. The rest of the time he’d spent arranging the toy cars in rows along the seat next to him, practicing his six times tables, and most of all, wishing that April would stop being sick.

When she finally said she was going to call for help, he felt like he could breathe better, like a breeze had blown into the car, though the air was just as still as before. “My mommy and daddy will help,” he said.

“I’m sure they would,” April said. She was lying down on the front seat. All he could see was her skinny hand, thrown against the passenger headrest. “But I’m going to call somebody else.”

He wanted to tell her that his parents would help better than anybody, but she was already sitting up, stumbling out of the car, and walking in the ditch next to the road. He could hear her voice rising and falling, but not the words. When she got back in the car, she turned on the engine. She didn’t speak at all as she made a U-turn and headed back down the road they’d come from.

“I don’t want to go back on the boat,” Michael said.

“We’re not,” April said. “We’re going to a motel.”

“I want to go home.”

“I know, buddy,” she said, but she kept driving in the same direction. “I’m really sorry, but I promised I would do this.”

She said she was sorry again when she came out of the motel office holding a big black plastic key. “We got stuck with room 13,” she said. “It’s the only one they had.”

“Thirteen isn’t really unlucky,” Michael said. His parents had taught him the word s
uperstition
, but he couldn’t remember it right then.

April took his hand and they walked on the crumbly black pavement toward the room. “I bet you don’t even believe in Santa Claus, do you?”

He didn’t, but he wasn’t about to say so. After this boy named Drew started crying at his second kindergarten, he’d decided not to tell anyone else that Santa Claus was only a story.

April opened the door with the plastic key and told him to go to the bathroom. When he came out, she said she had to go. He looked around the room while he was waiting for her. There were two beds with green and gold bedspreads, a dresser, and a big TV bolted to the wall. He didn’t want to be in bed while it was light outside, so he sat down on the only chair, over by the window. The cushion felt sticky against his bare legs. The heavy curtains smelled bad when he pulled them back to look at all the big trucks in the parking lot.

He watched a truck pull out and another one pull in, and April was still in the bathroom. When she came out, she looked really pale again, but when he asked her if she was feeling sick, she told him not to worry.

“It’s going to be okay.” She pushed her lips into a smile. “We’ll get something to eat, and then wait here, like I promised.”

There was a hamburger place right across the parking lot, so they just walked there. April told the clerk they wanted their food to go. “This way we can watch TV while we eat,” she said, looking down at Michael. “Does that sound fun?”

He nodded, though it didn’t really sound fun. He liked to eat dinner at the big table at home. Sometimes Mommy turned off the overhead light and used the little lamp instead. She called this “intimate dining.” He kept forgetting what
intimate
meant, but he liked the word.

April asked him what he wanted. When he couldn’t decide, she ordered a cheeseburger, a chicken sandwich, two orders of fries, and two chocolate milkshakes. They went back to the room, and she told him he should pick what to watch on TV. He picked a show about antiques, because he knew it wouldn’t be violent and give him nightmares.

“Do you watch this with your parents?” April said. She’d finished her milkshake so fast that Michael was surprised she didn’t have an ice-cream headache. Her face was a lot less pale though. Now she was lying on her stomach, holding herself up on her elbows, chewing one French fry really slowly.

“No,” Michael said. He’d washed his hands and he was sitting on the sticky chair, eating the cheeseburger. He didn’t like it very much, but he was hungry and it was the only thing that wasn’t fried. “I saw it with Grandma.”