When We Were Friends (13 page)

And two months later, he was dead. Of a heart attack. He was thirty-two years old. When I tried to picture him now, all I could see were the photos we had of him, wearing my nose and blue eyes and a crooked grin, frozen in space and time and youth. But sometimes I thought I remembered the scent of him, the sweetness from the pipe he smoked, blowing bubbles with him on the front porch, being pushed on my trike, rubbing our noses in an Eskimo kiss. Things I’d held on to and replayed so many times that now I couldn’t be sure whether I was remembering the actual events or just remembering my memories of them.

Maybe I could go to find his family, ask them for help. I didn’t know much about them, only that he’d had a father and two sisters, that they were devout Baptists who lived somewhere in Mississippi. And that they’d tried to keep him from marrying Star, which of course Star had never forgiven them for.

I’d called my grandfather once, years ago. I was fifteen, it was soon after Star’s sickness had started to progress, and I was already sensing what my life might turn out to be. I needed him, if only because he was a connection to the father I’d never gotten to know. I needed stories of my dad’s childhood, wanted to know how much we’d had in common and how excited he’d been at my birth. And even more than that I’d wanted a sense of family, to know I wasn’t alone with the burden my mother was becoming. With all her weight on me, I’d needed something sturdy to balance against.

My conversation with my grandfather had been terse. I believe he
may have thought I’d called to ask for money. The silence, after I’d told him who I was, had made me so shy and awkward that I’d forgotten all the questions I’d been meaning to ask him, just told him flat out what was behind my call. “You’re my family,” I said. “All I have is my mother, and my Nana Sterling who’s in a home and doesn’t even remember my name. My mom’s been having problems, and I’m all alone.”

Still he’d been silent. Until finally he said, “Your mother put you up to this, didn’t she.”

“What?” I said. “No, of course not. She doesn’t even know I’m calling.”

“Look, I don’t blame you. I know what kind of home you grew up in, and it’s not really your fault. But my son should’ve had a completely different life, and I’ll never forgive your mother for seducing him away from it. You calling here, it only brings back my own failure to protect him. I wish you wouldn’t call again.” And then, he’d hung up.

And so that was it. The beginning and end of our relationship. But maybe if I introduced Molly as his great-granddaughter, he’d change his mind. “Your son taught me ‘Happy Birthday’ on this piano!” I’d say. “And now I’m teaching my daughter. The legacy lives on!”

I ran my palm meditatively over the cloth keys, then in a fit of self-disgust I rolled up the piano and stuffed it into the bottom of my suitcase. No way in hell would I let myself be that desperate. I had Molly now, and for as long as this lasted she’d be the only family I needed. She was, in her own way, big enough to fill every single hole, every piece I’d imagined missing from my life. I could already feel myself falling in love with her, knew she could replace the grandfather who didn’t want me, the father who’d left me, even the husband I might never have. Her complete need for me, and my complete love for her, could be enough.

I heard sounds from downstairs, clanking, a door closing. “It’s almost time for breakfast,” I told Molly. “You hungry?” I packed a bag with changes of clothes and towels, and brought it and Molly to the bathroom, where I was faced with the dilemma of how to bathe Molly
and shower myself. Even simple things took so much thought and effort, the kinds of issues most mothers probably figured out in the first weeks of a baby’s life and then adapted as the baby became more mobile.

In the end, I ran a bath rather than a shower, and sat her in my lap while I soaped us both with baby shampoo. The sores on her back all seemed to have crusted over, well on their way to healing, and I washed them carefully, taking comfort in the fact that I was at least doing something right.

There was something so primal in sitting there with her, both of us naked in the soapy water, skin slipping against skin. As if I’d just birthed her, the water around us like amniotic fluid. Both of us brand-new.

It was a beautiful morning, and Muriel arranged breakfast on the back patio, even bringing a faded plastic high chair for Molly. She set plates on the table: strawberries topped with granola, thick bacon and buttery toast and yes, a hard-boiled Easter egg, dyed pink with flower decals. After pouring my coffee she sat across from me with a hand at her back before saying, “Mind if I sit?”

I watched her warily. Was it safe to talk with her? What if she asked questions I couldn’t answer? I needed her to have only a hazy memory of me after I was gone, but what could I do? “ ’Course not,” I said. I opened a jar of mashed bananas for Molly, and fished in my bag for her spoon. “Listen, would it be okay if I stayed another night? I’m expecting this package, a FedEx, and I hope it’s okay but I told them to send it here.”

“No problem.” She watched my face, maybe waiting for me to explain what would be so important I’d need it FedEx’ed while I was traveling, but when I didn’t continue she just repeated, “No problem. No new reservations till Thursday and I’m glad to have you.” She held her hand toward the baby food. “Here, let me. You eat.”

I smiled and thanked her, handed her the jar and watched her
feed Molly, the expert way she scooped and reinserted the mush that had escaped Molly’s mouth, the way a handyman might spackle a hole. “So you said you have a daughter?” I said.

“A daughter and a son. I keep asking them to settle down and procreate, but so far they’ve both failed me. Ashton called me one day and said she had a new baby she’d named after Peter, and I was about to die of a joyful heart attack when she laughed and told me that baby was a puppy. A dog!”

“Peter—”

“My husband. Coming up on ten years now since he died. It was his idea to open the Bunny House; he saw how the river runners would want someplace to stay, and just when we’re ready to open our doors,
pffft!
” She sliced her hand across her neck. “Car accident. You might’ve noticed the hubcap out front? He loved that car. But now him and the car are gone, leaving me to wash other people’s sheets and toilets. I mean don’t feel bad about dirtying them, I’m happy to do it, but I have to say it wasn’t the way I expected to spend my days.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“About Peter? Nah, don’t be. We had a good life together, despite the fact he left me working on what was essentially his dream.” She smiled faintly and wiped Molly’s bib over her mouth. “If you’ve tasted real happiness,” she said, “even for a short time, then it’s enough.”

After breakfast I drove downtown with Molly, to see what they might have by way of shopping amusement. More diapers, food and formula for Molly, and a six-pack of underwear for myself, and then I stopped off at a used-book store to find a book on parenting. I picked up
What to Expect: the Toddler Years
, and then,
What to Expect in the First Year
, just to see what I’d missed.

It was a relief not to be on the road again, but I felt jumpy. Was this place as much of a safe haven as it felt? Or was I fooling myself? I was only about two hundred miles from home, so if the police tried to
find me, how hard could it be? This felt like a calm before the storm thing, the lull before lightning blasted off my head.

After lunch at a pizzeria, we went to a corner playground where I watched a woman push her son on a baby swing. I lifted Molly to set her into a neighboring swing, pushed her gently and then a bit harder, watching her reaction. I’d thought she might be scared, but apparently she was an adrenaline junkie because her entire face lit up and she started to squeal.

The woman smiled at me. “How old?”

Should I talk to her? Or just pick Molly up and run? I squared my shoulders.
Calm down, calm down
. “She’s twelve months,” I said. “How about your son?”

“Fourteen, and he’s just started running faster than I can. She walking yet?”

“No, but I think she’s trying to. I balance her upright and she lunges one leg forward and then the other, so I guess that means she’s working on it.”

The woman raised her eyebrows. “Well, don’t push it. Once she starts walking it’s a whole different ball game.”

“Oh I know, believe me,” I said, smiling back and thinking,
I can’t wait
.

After the woman left with her son, I sat with Molly in the sandbox, making cars out of rocks, fashioning roads and hills and twig telephone poles. I picked wildflowers and tucked them behind our ears, and as Molly smiled up at me I remembered what Muriel had said that morning, that just a taste of real happiness was enough. If I was arrested that night, taken into custody, it would’ve been worth it just for this one perfect moment, running a rock-car over Molly’s knee and watching her beam up at me, like I’d just done something wondrous.

And then, on my way back to the bed-and-breakfast, I passed by a newspaper rack. I slipped in a quarter, pulled out the paper and opened it, dizzy with panic. Because there, on the front page, was Molly’s face.

I crushed the paper in my fist and stuffed it into a nearby trash can, hyperventilating. Swiveled right, then left. Was anybody watching? Would anyone who’d seen Molly—Muriel, the waitress at the restaurant, the mother at the playground—recognize her as the baby in the picture? They hadn’t included the composite sketch of me, thank God, although maybe it was on TV or in Virginia papers. If my face had been shown side by side with Molly’s, how hard would it be for any of the people who’d seen me to realize who we were?

I went back to the newspaper rack, paid another quarter, pulled out all the remaining papers and stuffed them into the trash as well.

Molly started to whimper, probably sensing I was about to lose
it, so I knelt by her stroller. “We’ll be fine, we’re fine,” I whispered, a chant, a plea, talking to her the way I talked to Star but thinking,
OH NO WE’RE DOOMED!