Текст книги "Pretty Baby"

Автор книги: Mary Kubica

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 24 страниц) [доступный отрывок для чтения: 9 страниц]

WILLOW

Joseph was a professor of religion at the community college. He taught about the Bible, but mostly the Old Testament. He taught about a God who wiped out the world with a flood, who rained down fire and brimstone on entire villages, killing everyone there. Women and children, good and bad. Everyone. I didn’t know what brimstone was, but he showed me drawings in those college textbooks of his, pictures of fire pouring down and devouring the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, turning Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt.

“This,” he told me in that somber voice of his, with the solemn, spongy face that never smiled, the reddish-orange beard, thick and disgusting, “is God’s wrath. You know what wrath is, don’t you, Claire?” and when I said I didn’t, we looked it up in some big, heavy dictionary, together. Extreme anger, it said.

“This,” Joseph said, showing me again, the pictures of fire and brimstone, “is what God does when he’s mad.”

Joseph convinced me that thunder was my doing, something or other I had done to upset God. I lived in fear of thunder, lightning and rain. When the sky turned black—as it often did in Omaha in the middle of summer—on one of those hot, humid July days when the threatening black clouds raced in to swallow the calm blue sky, I knew that God was coming for me. When the wind started whirling, the trees stretched down to touch their toes and sometimes snapped clear in two, garbage from the Dumpster on the corner jetting through the air, I would drop to my knees, as Joseph had showed me to do, and pray, over and over and over again, for God’s forgiveness.

What I did wrong, I never quite knew. The explosive lightning and ear piercing thunder immobilized me, and once or twice, and probably even more, I peed my pants as I knelt there, in that bedroom of mine, praying to God. I’d keep watch out the window for the fire and brimstone, falling from the sky. I’d stare for as long as it took, for the storm to settle, to move on to Iowa, and then, Illinois, to punish some other sinner like me.

Joseph told me about hell. The place that sinners go. A place of never-ending punishment and torture, with demons and dragons and the devil himself. Eternal punishment. Lakes of fire. Fiery furnace. Unquenchable fire. Fire, fire, fire. I lived in fear of fire.

I tried to be a good girl. I did. I cleaned up the house when Joseph was teaching and Isaac and Matthew were at school; I made dinner for Joseph and the boys, carried Miriam a tray, though it was rare that she would eat on her own, without some arm-twisting from Joseph.

Miriam spent most of her days in either one of two ways, in a sleep-like daze, wide-awake but totally still, like a statue, or she’d be up and in a panic, throwing herself at Joseph’s feet and begging for his forgiveness. There were days when she was agitated, snapping at Joseph and the boys about reading her mind. She’d tell them to stop it, stop reading my mind. And then get out, get out, get out, and she’d smack at her head with the palm of her hand as if she was pushing them, pushing Joseph, Isaac and Matthew right on out of her brain. On those days Joseph would lock her in her room with a lock and key. He kept that key with him at all times, even when he wasn’t home, so that when it was just Miriam and me, I could hear her screaming from her bedroom all day long about how Joseph was reading her mind, how he was putting thoughts inside her head.

I thought that Miriam was crazy. She scared me. Not like Joseph did, but in her own way.

I did my chores, the laundry and cleaning and such, made dinner for when Joseph and the boys came home. And I hummed loud enough to drown out the sound of Miriam’s screams. But I only hummed when Joseph wasn’t around, because Joseph would swear that whatever I was humming, usually Patsy Cline like the records Momma used to play, wasn’t right by God. Blasphemy, he’d say. Sacrilege.

But Joseph never did lock me in my room. Not back then, at least. Joseph knew I wouldn’t run away ’cause over and over again he told me about Lily. How he’d do things to her if ever I misbehaved. So I didn’t ever misbehave.

But when Miriam was being statue-like, I’d go into her room, and it was as if she didn’t know I was there. Her eyes, they wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t follow me as I helped her move from the bed. They wouldn’t blink. From time to time, I pulled the dirty sheets from that bed and washed them. And then I’d go back inside to help Miriam into the tub, to scrub her body with my bare hands because Joseph told me that it was mine to do.

I did what Joseph asked of me, nearly all the time.

Once and only once did I say no to Joseph as he climbed into bed beside me. Only once did I admit that it hurt, what he did to me. I pulled my legs up as high as I could and wrapped my arms around them so that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t find a way in, and he stood before me, before the bed, and said, “‘An eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures.’ Proverbs 30:17.”

And I imagined that. Being picked apart by ravens and vultures. My carcass being torn apart by their beaks and talons because God was angry with me. Because I was refusing my father what was his duty and obligation.

And then I parted my legs and let him climb up on me and I held real still, like Momma used to say when we’d go to the doctor for a shot. “Hold still and it won’t hurt so much.” And I did, I held real still. But still, it hurt.

It hurt there, in the moment. Hurt long after he’d gone, after he’d told me what a good girl I’d been, how he was pleased with me.

I thought long and hard about that, about me being a good girl. I wondered what it would take, how many times Joseph would have to let himself into my room, before this good girl turned bad.

CHRIS

I finish my breakfast and head in for a shower, making sure to scour the tile first to remove any trace of the vile sores on that girl’s feet. Thirty minutes later, Heidi stands before me, hands on hips, and asks, “Really?” when I appear before her with briefcase in hand and I reply, “Yes, really,” as I say goodbye to Zoe and head for the door.

I drag Heidi by the hand and into the hallway before I go. The scent of Heidi’s breakfast fills the space. A neighbor passes by, presumably headed for the newsstand on the corner.

“I want you to call me,” I say as the elevator chimes in the distance and our neighbor friend descends to the first floor. “Every hour on the hour. If you’re so much as a minute late, I’m calling the police.”

“You’re being unreasonable, Chris,” she says to me.

“Every hour, Heidi,” I repeat. “It’s that simple,” I say, asking rhetorically, “How much can you really know about another person?”

And then I kiss her cheek and leave.

On the train, I eavesdrop on twentysomethings’ conversations about the previous night’s drunken adventures, their lingering headaches, whether or not they puked when they got home.

Later, relishing the quiet solitude of my office, I slide the receipt from my wallet and peer at the name on the back: Willow Greer. I stretch in a leather executive chair on the forty-third floor of a skyscraper in the North Loop, and realize then and there that my offering memorandum—the one hanging over my head, the reason for the commute to work this sunny Sunday morning—is the furthest thing from my mind. I consider that booklet I’m to put together, the one that details the inner workings of some company we’re to sell—financial statements, business description, the works—and then push it from my mind.

I fire up the computer and type in the words Willow Greer.

Enter.

While the computer does its thing, I find myself staring at a blank spot on the wall, thinking that I should’ve stopped on the way in and picked up some coffee. My office is windowless, though I’m supposed to be grateful I have an office at all, and not a ceilingless gray cubical as many of our analysts do. I forage through the desk drawers for two shiny quarters, planning a trip to the vending machine as soon as I solve the mystery of Willow Greer. The phone rings and I snap it up. Heidi’s sarcastic voice is on the other end, announcing, “Eleven o’clock check-in call.” I peer at the numbers in the corner of my computer screen: 10:59. In the background, the baby wails.

“Why’s she crying?” I ask.

“Fever’s back,” says Heidi.

“Did you give her medicine?”

“Just waiting for it to kick in.”

“Try a cool washcloth,” I offer, “or a lukewarm bath,” remembering how sometimes, with Zoe, that worked. But what I really want to say is Serves you right, or Told you so.

“Will do,” says Heidi, and we hang up the phone, but not before I remind her, “One hour. I’ll talk to you in one hour.”

And then I go back to the computer.

The first thing I do is look through the images, expecting to see Willow’s face staring right back at me. But instead I find some redheaded celeb of the same name. A brunette blotting various social media pages, appearing far too immodest—boobs spilling out of a scoop-neck shirt, a paunch overhanging a pair of cutoff jeans—to be our Willow. A town called Willow in Greer County, Oklahoma. Various homes for sale in Greer, South Carolina. According to the virtual phone book, there are six people living in the United States with the name Willow Greer. Not to be confused with Stephen Greer who lives on Willow Ridge Drive in Cincinnati. Only four of six Willow Greers are listed. I yank a sheet of scratch paper from the printer and begin jotting the information down. Willow Greer of Old Saybrook, Connecticut, is in the forty-to forty-four-year-old age range. Too old. Willow Greer of Billingsley, Alabama, is even older at 65+. She could be ninety. I write it down anyway; maybe Ms. Greer of Billingsley, Alabama, is our Willow’s grandma. Or great-grandma. The others don’t list an age range.

I jot down what sparse information I can find, and then it occurs to me: do you have to be eighteen to be listed in the phone book? Or, more importantly, own property?

I quickly type in Zoe Wood in Chicago, Illinois, and come up empty.

Damn.

I twiddle my thumbs for a split second, thinking. Where would I find Zoe online, if not the white pages? I quickly scan the various social media pages I’m familiar with, which are few and far between. Facebook. Myspace. I’d probably get a lot further in my investigation if I let my twelve-year-old help, the same way she navigates my cell phone for me when I’m stuck. I consider calling her, a stealthy call to her cell, but then picture the confiscated phone at home on the counter beside Heidi’s. Crap.

I begin searching for variations of the name Willow Greer. I try Willow G., followed by Willow Grier. I try Willow with one l. I humor myself and drop the second w: Willo. You never know.

And then I come across a Twitter account for a W. Greer, username @LostWithoutU. I know nothing about Twitter, but I find the tweets dark and depressing, made up of all sorts of suicidal innuendos and allegations. Gonna do it. 2nite. But the profile shot of this girl, of this W. Greer, is not the one living in my home. This girl is older, a legitimate eighteen or nineteen years old, showing off lacerations on her wrist, a disturbing smile. The last tweet was posted two weeks ago. I wonder if she did it, if she made the decision to end her life.

And how.

“Hi there, stranger.”

I minimize the screen lightning fast, relax in the chair as if I haven’t just been caught red-handed, doing something wrong. Is stalking a crime? Never mind stalking, I think. This is research.

And yet, I’m certain a declaration of guilt is plastered to my face.

Cassidy Knudsen stands in the doorway. She’s replaced the pencil skirt and three-inch heels with something a little less formal—and a lot more attractive in my opinion: skintight jeans and a roomy ebony sweater that falls from a shoulder, leaving a lacy red bra strap exposed. She tugs on the sweater, as if trying to amend its crookedness, but it falls back out of place. She leaves it alone, crosses one foot over the other—her Converse All Stars are, somehow, hotter than the three-inch heels—and leans against the frame. “Thought you were working from home this weekend.”

“So did I,” I say as I reach for the receipt—the words Willow Greer on the back—and crumple it into a ball. “Offering memorandum,” I add, tossing the wad of paper back and forth between my hands, and then, “Things were a little too chaotic at home.”

“Zoe?” she asks because, of course, who wouldn’t think the twelve-year-old was responsible for the chaos?

“Actually,” I admit, “Heidi,” and Cassidy apologizes sympathetically as if I’ve just alluded to marital problems. This überconcerned look crosses her face: the buttery-blond hair and gray-blue eyes, the fair skin.

“So sorry to hear that, Chris,” she says, welcoming herself into the office and having a seat on one of the armless teal chairs that sit facing my desk. “Anything you want to talk about?” she asks as she crosses her legs and leans in, like only a woman can do. Men catch a whiff of melancholy and go running in the opposite direction; women lean into it, the need to talk it out feeding their soul.

“Just Heidi being Heidi,” I say, instantly sorry for saying anything in the realm of negativity about my marriage. “Which isn’t a bad thing,” I add shamefacedly, and Cassidy offers, “Heidi is a good woman.”

“The best,” I agree, willing thoughts of Cassidy Knudsen in satin slips and ruffled babydolls from my mind.

I married Heidi when I was twenty-five years old. Heidi was twenty-three. I stare at a four-by-six photo of us on our wedding day, thumbtacked to a bulletin board on the wall. Classy, she said the last time she was in my office, running her fingers over the picture, and I shrugged and said, “The frame broke. I knocked it right off the desk in a last-minute rush,” and she nodded knowingly, understanding that the entirety of my career hinged on last-minute rushes.

But there was something telling about that photograph, I thought; our protective glass frame shattered and now here we were, punctured with microscopic holes that might one day tear. Those holes all had names: mortgage, adolescent child, lack of communication, retirement savings, cancer. I watch Cassidy’s manicured fingers—the long clear nails with the white tips—fondle a lamp on my desk, one of those antique banker’s lamps, vintage green; I watch her stroke the chain, watch her wrap it around a slim finger and pull—and think: infidelity?

No. Never. Not Heidi and me.

A soft yellow light fills the room. A nice contrast to the blinding white flourescent lights that line the ceiling.

We had dated for mere months when I asked Heidi to marry me. Being with Heidi was something I knew I needed: like air. Something I knew I wanted: sitting there at the top of my Christmas list to Santa that year. I was used to getting what I wanted. In my formative preteen years I lived with a mouth full of metal and headgear. I used to groan and gripe about those braces, the way they would puncture the gum and tear up the inside of my cheek. You’ll thank me one day, my mother used to say, having suffered her entire life with overlapping teeth she hated. And I did. Thank her, that is. After years of orthodontia, I was left with a smile that could sway most everyone in my direction. It worked wonders at fraternity parties, interviews, client dinners and, of course, with the ladies. Heidi used to tell me that that smile was what first caught her eye the night we met at some charity ball. It was December, I remember that much, and she was wearing red. I’d paid about two hundred bucks to go to the darn thing, at the encouragement of my firm. Giving back was our motto that year. It was supposed to look good that our firm had snagged two tables, sixteen or twenty seats, at two hundred bucks a pop, even though not a single one of us knew what cause we were supporting.

Not until I found myself on the dance floor with Heidi later that night, learning more about illiteracy in Chicago than I ever cared to know.

I was used to getting what I wanted. Before I married Heidi that is.

“So what seems to be the problem, Mr. Wood?” Cassidy asks. She leans back in her chair, runs those well-manicured nails through her hair. “You want to talk about it?”

But I say, “No. Better not,” thinking how the last time Heidi conceded to something I wanted it had to do with slipping on a pair of jeans before tracking that homeless girl down; the time before that, chunky peanut butter versus creamy. Things that were trivial.

When it mattered, I lost. Every time.

“C’est la vie?” Cassidy asks and I repeat, “C’est la vie.”

Such is life.

And then I watch her blue-gray eyes and call to mind the way I knocked an espresso down the front of my houndstooth shirt the first time she walked into our conference room, wearing a red suit with the tight, ankle-length pants that only Cassidy Knudsen could wear, a pair of black shoes with, of course, three-or four-inch heels, my boss—suddenly seeming short and impotent—introducing her as “the new gal in town” and staring at her ass as she found her way to an empty seat beside me. She reached for a stack of take-out napkins left behind from dinner the previous night and began to pat my shirt dry in a way only Cassidy Knudsen would do.

She’s like a femme fatale, isn’t she? Heidi had asked that day at the botanical gardens, the first time Heidi and Cassidy met, last summer at the work picnic, as she watched the other woman drift away, hips swaying back and forth like a tetherball, somehow unattached to the rest of her body.

What’s a femme fatale? Zoe had asked, and Heidi nodded her head to the woman in the strapless cherry dress and said simply, Her.

I reach for the quarters on my desk and announce that I’m making a trip to the vending machine. “Want anything?” I ask, hoping that when I return, I’ll find the office empty. She says no thanks and I take off, down the all but deserted hall for the vending machine in our inadequate office kitchen. I press the button for the highly caffeinated drink I need, and crack the can open while making my way back to my desk.

I’m plotting the next steps in my “find Willow Greer” adventure when I step onto the metallic gold carpeting that separates my office from the ceramic tiles of the main hall. I find Cassidy on her hands and knees on the carpeting, collecting a dozen or so pens that fell. That roomy ebony sweater nearly drags on the ground, exposing the rest of the red bra that I previously couldn’t see: the low cut, the Chantilly lace, the underwire cups, a delicate front bow.

She’s holding my cell phone in her hand. I squint at the clock on the wall, 12:02 p.m., and my heart sinks.

“Heidi,” Cassidy says, holding out the phone to me. She’s smiling. But it’s not a smile that’s nice or polite. “For you. Hope you don’t mind. I answered it.”

HEIDI

“What is that woman doing answering your phone?” I growl into the phone, as Chris’s reluctant voice says hello, the tone of his voice—cautious and yet strangely chipper—saturated with guilt. I drift from the living room where Willow sits on the edge of the sofa, baby pressed to a dish towel on her shoulder, burping her with a steady pat, pat, pat to the back as I showed her to do. And yet I see that the baby’s face is pressed awkwardly to the towel so that I wonder how well she can breathe, her body sloping at an angle that looks anything but secure. Anything but comfortable.

“Hey, Heidi,” Chris says, an unnatural attempt at remaining calm, cool and collected. “Everything okay?”

I imagine that woman sitting in his bland, box-like office, listening to our conversation. I envision Chris, checking his watch, making some sort of blah-blah-blah hand gesture to Cassidy Knudsen, to indicate that my rant—why is she answering your phone; and why didn’t you tell me you were going to the office to work with her; and who else is in today? Tom? Henry?—has gone on for far too long. I feel the blood creeping up my neck, turning my cheeks to crimson. My ears burn. A headache begins to form. I place two fingers to my sinuses and press. Hard.

I click the end button, not quite as fulfilling as slamming a telephone into its base. I stand in the kitchen for a moment, breathing heavily, reminding myself of all the reasons I don’t like Cassidy Knudsen. She’s breathtaking. She’s smart, shrewd. Very chichi, as if she should be in the pages of a fashion magazine, and not staring at Chris’s insipid spreadsheets all the livelong day.

But the biggest reason I don’t like her? It’s quite plain and simple, really. My husband spends more time with her than he does with me. Flying to bustling metropolises around the country, spending the night in pricey, sophisticated hotels where Chris and I only ever dreamed about going, dinners at expensive restaurants that we saved for special occasions: birthdays, anniversaries and such, rendering them ordinary on days which were far from ordinary.

I hear her strident voice reverberating in my mind, the overly animated, “Hey there, Heidi,” as she answered the phone. “Chris just ran down the hall. He’ll be back in a bit. Want me to have him call you?” she’d asked, but I said no, I’d wait. And I did just that, staring at the time on the microwave clock for the four plus minutes it took my husband to return to his phone, all the while listening to Cassidy Knudsen tinker with the items on Chris’s desk, hearing a crash and envisioning her knocking over his pencil cup—the painted pottery one Zoe made years ago—pencils and his ballpoint pens tumbling to the ground.

“Oops.” She giggled, like a scandalous teenager.

I imagine that once Cassidy Knudsen was a cheerleader, one of those girls in the skimpy polyester skirts and the half shirts, dropping her pencil to the floor before the supposedly perverse male science teacher, reaching down from her chair spread eagle to reclaim it and then later claiming foul play.

While I gather myself to return to Willow and Ruby, I hear the squeak of a bedroom door, Zoe drifting from her bedroom hideout and into the living room. There’s silence, and then Zoe’s voice, a bit thorny and stiff.

“Were you ever scared?” she asks. I lurk in the kitchen, wondering what she means. Were you ever scared?

“What?” asks Willow and I picture the girl, still wearing Zoe’s clothing from the previous afternoon, now sticky with syrup and wrinkled with sleep. She’s perched on the edge of the sofa and as Ruby lets out the belch of a male drunkard, the girls snicker.

There’s nothing like a little gas to break the ice.

“Out there, I mean.” And I imagine Zoe’s finger pointing out the bay window, to the commotion of the city outside: the taxis that soar up and down the street, sirens, horns, a homeless man playing the saxophone on the corner of the street.

“Yeah. I guess so,” Willow replies, admitting sheepishly, “I don’t like thunder,” and I’m stricken again by the clear truth that this girl, sitting in my living room with an infant in her arms, a tough mollusk shell protecting all that’s valuable and vulnerable on the inside, is a mere child. A child who devours whipped cream and pancakes, and is afraid of something as innocuous as thunder.

Profiles, vase. Profiles, vase.

I imagine the vigorous city when it finally does fall asleep for the night. When the sun sets somewhere over suburbia, and the lights of the Loop are ablaze. It’s stunning, really. But here, in our neighborhood, a mile or two north of downtown, nighttime means total darkness. Pitch blackness spotted with the occasional streetlight that may or may not work. The time of day when zombies come out to play, loitering in the city’s parks, in the darkened alcoves of closed businesses that line Clark and Fullerton Streets. Living in an upscale neighborhood doesn’t exclude us from crime. The morning news talks frequently of crime waves throughout Lakeview and Lincoln Park, of overnight robberies, about how violent crimes are on the rise. You hear all the time about women being attacked as they walk home from the bus, or as they make their way into their apartment building, grocery bags in hand. The neighborhood at night—strangely dark, fraught with an ear-splitting silence, must be a terrifying place to be. Ghastly.

I make my way into the living room and find the girls eyeballing one another awkwardly. Zoe jumps when I enter and says, “What do you want?” as if I have no business being in my home. She’s embarrassed that I caught her talking to Willow when it wasn’t required, embarrassed that she showed any interest whatsoever in the girl.

“I have something to show you,” I say, “both of you,” and I disappear down the hall.

It took over an hour for Ruby’s Tylenol to kick in, for the fever to subside. During that time she was irritable and moody, inconsolable whether in Willow’s or my hands. We tried feeding her, rocking her, thrusting a pacifier into her wide-open mouth, but all of our efforts were in vain. And then, per Chris’s suggestion, we sunk the baby into a lukewarm bath, which seemed to appease her a bit, and followed it up with layers of emollients to her bottom, a fresh diaper, a change of clothes. Because Chris had only purchased a single pair of blue pants to partner with the white jumpsuit, I lug the bin of baby clothing from Chris’s and my bedroom closet—the one mislabeled Heidi: Work—into the living room where the girls and I can sort through rompers with ruffles and animal print bodysuits, Onesies with tutus, organic fleece pajamas and satin ballet slippers made just for pudgy infant feet.

“Shh,” I say to Zoe as I set the indigo lid aside, “don’t tell your father about this,” I say. Out of the corner of my eye, Willow reaches out and touches fabric, but then withdraws her hand quickly, as if afraid she might break something or make it dirty. I have this sudden vision—a clairvoyant image—where some adult slaps Willow’s timid hand away from something that she desires. She withdraws, her eyes downcast, feelings hurt. “It’s okay,” I say, pulling out the most luxuriant thing I can find and placing it in her hand, watching as she runs her fingers across the vertical ribs as if she’s never felt corduroy before. She lifts it, cautiously, to her face and rubs a cheek to it, a pair of maroon overalls with flowers on the bib.

“What is all this?” Zoe asks, pulling a velvet dress with a taffeta skirt—size 2T—from the bin, her mouth falling open when she spies the obscene number on the price tag. “Ninety-four dollars?” she asks, ogling the thirty-six inches of fabric no one ever wore, the midnight-blue color and elephantine bow and, somewhere in that bin, pricey tights to match.

“And that was ten years ago,” I say, adding, “or more,” remembering those days I sauntered into boutiques in the Loop during my lunch break and purchased a romper here, a bodysuit there—on the sly—telling Chris, if ever he asked, that the outrageous debit on our credit card bill was for an expectant coworker or an old college friend, ready to burst forth with child.

“Were these...mine?” she asks, reaching for a pair of floral bloomers that accompany a summer dress. She holds them up before her and I think, How do I explain? I could say yes and leave it at that. But then of course there are the price tags, evidence that these garments were never used.

“My hobby,” I admit. “Like collecting bottle tops or sports cards,” and the girls look at me as though I just climbed out of a spaceship from Mars. “They’re hard to resist,” I say, “when they’re just so cute,” holding up a pair of furry booties and offering them as proof.

“But...” Zoe begins, having inherited her rationality from Chris, “I never even wore them,” she says. “Who were they for?” she demands to know. I eye Zoe and Willow, their eyes staring at me questioningly. Good cop, bad cop, I think. I find it impossible to stare into Zoe’s big brown eyes—both cynical and demanding all at the same time—and admit that they were for Juliet, that even after the doctor said I could have no more children, I continued to pine for children, to envision an imaginary world where Zoe and Juliet coexisted, playing with Tinkertoy sets or Little People on the living room floor, my belly fat and round with number three. I refuse to admit that the notion of an only child left me feeling bilious and cold, the home—where I always envisioned an overabundance of kids—lonely, even when Zoe was there. Even with Chris. My family, the three of us, felt suddenly insufficient. Not good enough. There was a hole. A hole I stuffed full with Juliet, with ambitions and expectations and a bin full of clothing she would one day wear.

In my heart of hearts, I convinced myself that she would arrive, one day. That day just hadn’t come yet.

But I interrupt Zoe’s rationality and say, “How about we see if we can find something for Ruby to wear,” and the three of us begin pulling at the bin with a renewed purpose, though the sight—and the smell: an uncanny blend of upscale boutiques and optimism—of the clothing reminds me of the gaping hole inside my womb.

Or of that place where my womb used to be.

We settle on the maroon overalls, a white jumpsuit beneath with a scalloped edge. I watch as Willow undresses the baby, then tries to force the jumpsuit over Ruby’s malleable head. Ruby lets out a wail. She protests on the floor, kicking her legs in defiance. Willow moves with hesitation, with apprehensive hands. She stares at the jumpsuit, at the neck hole that appears far too small for Ruby’s round head, and then tries to force it on, forgetting altogether to allow clearance for the nose, to get it over her mouth quickly so the baby can breathe.

“Let me do it,” I say to Willow, the words coming out more abruptly that I intended them to do. I feel Zoe’s eyes on me, though I refuse to make contact. I shift into Willow’s position and, stretching the elastic of the jumpsuit, slide it over Ruby’s head without hesitation. I snap the buttons of the crotch closed, sit her up and snap the buttons up the back. “There now,” I say, as Ruby’s fingers settle upon the gold chain that dangles from my neck, her eyes lighting up like a Christmas tree. “You like that?” I ask, taking the bright eyes and the big, drooling, toothless smile as a yes. I set my father’s gold wedding ring in the palm of her hand, and watch as her pudgy little fingers begin to squeeze. “That was my daddy’s,” I say, and then I focus on the task at hand, sliding the maroon overalls over the jumpsuit, a pair of white lacy socks over her rapidly moving feet. Ruby squeals in delight, and I press my face into her and say, “Coochy, coochy, coo,” the kind of nonsensical gibberish babies adore. I all but forget that Willow and Zoe are still in the room, watching as I blow raspberries on the exposed parts of Ruby’s skin: the insides of her arms, the nape of her neck; I overlook the horrified look on my preteen’s face as I speak fluently in baby talk, the type of skill, like riding a bike, that one never forgets how to do.