The Better Mother (29 page)

“You’re the Siamese Kitten,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

She began to walk briskly down the alley. “My stage name,” she muttered.

“I’m Carl.” His long legs easily kept pace with her. She considered that it might be useful to own a pair of flat-soled shoes. “I really liked your act.”

Val stopped and turned to face him, although she kept her gaze on his nose and not his eyes. “How old are you, Carl? Shouldn’t you be going home to your mother?”

He stopped and stared, his tall body quivering. After a few seconds, he began to laugh, throwing his head back; his blond hair fell away from his forehead. “Is that what you say to all the guys?”

In the darkness of the alley, he stepped closer to her and put his hand between her shoulder blades. Val felt his body looming like a shadow. Everything about him dwarfed her—the vastness of his shoulders, the long trail of his veins down his arms.
I could sink right in
, she thought.
He could carry me off. How easy that would be
. She didn’t pull away, staring at his beautiful, smooth face, the crooked asymmetry of his long, thin mouth. He kissed her, and she sucked in the feel of his tongue—the wetness, how quickly he needed to discover what she tasted like.

He drove her home in a rusty car. “It used to be my father’s,” he said, grinding gears as they accelerated up the street. “You should see the Lincoln he drives now. The colour of champagne, he always says.”

Val nodded, not really listening to the words, but allowing his voice to swim around her, each syllable ringing and echoing. She closed her eyes and wondered if he would sound this young forever, or if that adolescent hitch in his voice would disappear when he married, when he was driving home on a foggy Tuesday night to a family house forty minutes
outside of the city. But when she opened her eyes to look at him again, she forgot the boy in his voice and thought of the man underneath those clothes.

One day he would have a pretty wife. Would she ever understand this moment?

When they arrived at her apartment building’s front door, Carl said, “I’ve known about you for a long time. I remember when I saw your movie.”

“You might be the only one who did,” she said as she pulled out her keys. “The past. That’s all it is.” She smiled and cocked her head to one side. “I only worry about tonight.”

He filled her bedroom with his tall, thick body. She ran her fingers down his chest, each short hair pricking at her goosebumped skin. Waves pulsed through her when he grasped her right hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. Naked, he was as she imagined: skin transparent but burning to the touch, the line of his arms and legs clearly defined against the dim of the room. His tallness was like a command, a physical manifestation of the fucking he wanted and was going to get.

As she lowered herself onto the length of his body, her red lipstick appeared on his nipples, the insides of his thighs, the side of his neck. Without this one bit of makeup, she was, for the first time in years, not the Siamese Kitten, even in this small way. Only Val.

He stayed with her for the next two days and nights, hardly moving when she toasted bread and brewed tea. He lay there, the sheets twisted around his legs, his pale skin gleaming in all lights: in the greyness of morning, the thick sunshine of afternoon, even the crisp darkness of midnight, when the
streets were so quiet they could hear the skitter of a dry leaf on the sidewalk. She forgot about shaving her legs or finding her diaphragm and worried instead about how much longer she might have with him, or how quickly she could respond to his lips on her ear. When she went to the bathroom in the morning, her hip was red with his handprint, and the spot was still warm from his night-long grip. She called the Shanghai Junk to tell them she was sick, and Carl laughed as she stood naked by the side table and croaked into the phone.

On their last afternoon together, they drank cheap red wine. Val put the palm of her hand against Carl’s flushed cheek and felt the heat coming off him in waves. She could see the blond stubble when a stray beam of sun struck his chin at a precise angle. The lines of his jaw glittered hard, like diamonds.

“I’ll have to go back to my dorm soon,” he said.

Val nodded. “Of course.”

He rubbed her earlobe between his thumb and index finger. “I could come back next week, take you out for dinner. I know a nice place downtown with the best steaks you’ll ever eat.”

As she stroked his bottom lip, Val saw herself in the house Carl would eventually own: a big house, square and white, with black shutters and petunias lining the driveway. Her face reflected in the long mirror on the wall in the dining room, scooping out mounds of mashed potatoes to three fair-haired children. And Carl—late because of traffic and a last-minute memo at the office—would rush in, kiss her on the cheek and remark, “This dinner smells so good, I drove home following my nose.”

But she looked again at his face, his round cheeks masking the man he might one day be. Perhaps he meant what he said, and he really did want to see her again. Maybe he wanted to engage in that courtship dance that he understood with the cheerleader, or the girl with the glasses who sat at the same table in the school library every morning. Val knew that while the lines of her face were sharp against her jaw and pulled tight against her cheekbones, her body was the opposite, growing softer every year past the age of thirty, her breasts blurring into her belly, which blurred sideways across her hips. Today, she noticed; five years from now, everyone would.

She wanted him to stay and never go back to school, where he would soon see she could never attend a fraternity party or neck with him in the back seat of his car. If he stayed, she could curl into him every night and feel his weight when he threw his leg over the curve of her hip. She could teach him to dance, and his bulk would be hers.

Stupid
, she thought.
Why would I think anything so stupid?

Val took both of Carl’s hands in hers. “Just remember me,” she said.

And by the fall of his eyes, she knew he understood what she meant.

She danced, and the audience applauded and seemed satisfied, but at the end of every night, she sat in front of the dressing-room mirror and let her mind wander. It hadn’t occurred to her in a long time that she might want something besides the shimmy and lights and costumes. Could she be a secretary or cook or nanny? She didn’t know, and this was what frustrated
her. There wasn’t anything else she was good at.

One afternoon, before her first dance of the evening, she stood in the alley behind the Shanghai Junk and smoked a cigarette, blowing rings toward the blue sky, which was hot and liquid with the summertime sun. She stared at the grime on the buildings and ground around her, the scars on the door to the club that meant someone had tried to break in. She kicked at the gravel and watched the stones skitter and bounce, stopping to rest beside a pile of rotting onions left behind by the produce merchant next door.

When she looked up again, she saw a little boy standing in a patch of sunshine, staring at her. Her stomach lurched. His bones had grown longer but were just as sharp, his eyes still too large for his face. If she touched him and ran her finger down his cheek, he would know it was her and recognize her smell; he might even smile as she held his thin body to hers. She thought she might cry.

The sharp sound of squealing brakes at the end of the alley caused her to close her eyes against the whine. When she opened them again, she could see that he was a small Chinese boy with a grubby face and a stubborn cowlick at the back of his head. It was the eyes, she realized. The eyes had tricked her. Again.

“Are those Sweet Caps?” he asked, inching toward her, his body tense with apprehension.

She smiled and pulled out a full pack. By the time he ran off, she had given him the green silk sash off her robe. It was the way he held it in his hand, as if there was nothing more magical than this slip of fabric, coloured like grass but smooth. He was just as she remembered.

—

When she realized she was pregnant, she wept. In that white room with those bright lights and plastic blinds, Val sat hunched over in a bucket chair, the doctor’s hand on her shoulder, and cried—shaking, coughing, tears and snot in her mouth, a rippling sensation through her lungs like she was drowning. She had never cried like this, not when her parents died, not when she had let go of Joan’s baby so their father could bury him.

The doctor smiled and said, “A surprise, is it?”

Val wiped the tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I always wanted this baby.”

In her apartment, she moved her dresser to the opposite wall, stared at the empty space below the window and imagined the sunlight lingering across the face of her sleeping infant. Their life together would be quiet, punctuated by the smell of baking bread, neat piles of clean laundry, Val’s smile reflected in the face of her baby. She knew what kind of mother she would be: wise, patient, understanding. The mother everyone wished they had. This baby would right everything that had gone wrong. She felt full at the thought.

She went to her agent and told him to stop booking shows. “That’s it, I’m done,” she announced in his smoky office. “Nobody wants my style of act anymore, and besides, there are other things I should be doing with my life.”

He sat up straight and spat his cigarette into the ashtray on his desk. “What things? What’s more important than the Siamese Kitten, eh?”

“I’m pregnant, all right? So I’d better quit, unless you think there’s a small group of weirdos out there who get off on that sort of thing.”

Her agent said nothing then lit another cigarette, his eyebrows knotted together. “Well, that’s a kick in the nuts. Are you happy?”

“You don’t even know how much.”

He swiped a hand over his eyes. “Then good luck to you, Valerie Nealy. And if there’s ever a time when you want to come back, you know how to get a hold of me. There’ll always be a place for you, even if the circuit keeps changing.” Gently, he patted her arm. “It’ll be great, sweetheart, I know it.”

When she returned home, she gathered up her costumes and props and packed them in boxes. She left her most special things for last, packing her first full costume—wig, fishnets, green satin robe—into a small suitcase and setting it on the pile. Outside, she could see the honey bees flying in and out of her neighbour’s flowers; she wondered how long it would take to plant a container garden on her balcony.

In the taxi on the way to Joan’s house, Val thought about names, about the woman she wanted her daughter to become. She knew she was having a daughter; she pictured a tiny, floating baby, with skin like paper and blue, blue eyes ringed with pale gold eyelashes. Donna. Bree. Lisa. Michelle. She looked out the window at the tall trees bordering the highway, the tops that seemed to touch the flat grey clouds, the lower branches that swayed, dropping needles on the unpaved shoulder.

Joan stepped into the front yard, wearing a baby-blue shirtdress tightly belted at the waist. She seemed no older, only pointier. Val saw that she was well-preserved, a woman who stared in the mirror every morning, coming up with ways to hide the barely perceptible lines feathering outward from
her lips. Silently, Joan watched the driver struggle with the boxes up the walk and carry them into the foyer.

“What’s all this, Val? Surely you’re not moving in.” Joan spoke crisply, waiting for this visit to be over.

Val laughed and put her arms around Joan’s shoulders. Joan stiffened, but relaxed enough to collapse a little into Val’s embrace. “No, honey, nothing so horrible as that. I’ve given up dancing and need you to store my old costumes and things for me. My place is too small.”

Joan looked eager, and she clapped her hands. “Really? Well, it’s about time! Come on in, and we’ll have a drink to celebrate.”

“I really shouldn’t. I’m pregnant, Joanie.”

Already on her way through the hall to the kitchen, Joan turned to look at Val. “Pregnant? Val, how did this happen?”

The kitchen table was smooth and shiny. In the window, a small box was filled with fresh herbs. But still, with all this—the red-and-white checked placemats, the potted fern hanging from the ceiling—the house smelled of Joan and Joan alone. Her orange-scented shampoo, the lavender water ironed into her dress.

“It just did. He’s a young man, too young, maybe. He doesn’t know about this, and that’s all right.”

“Who is he?” Joan asked, rinsing out a tall glass.

“His name isn’t important.”

“Don’t tell me that you don’t even know his name,” she half whispered, half hissed.

“I’m having a baby, Joanie. That’s all.”

“Yes, but whose baby?”

“It doesn’t matter. I need a change, a big one.” Val paused
and leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “I need this baby, do you see?”

Joan sipped at a gin and tonic, her face still. She said, “I know. I understand. I really do.”

Together, they had survived shattered dreams and the unexpected. Joan looked at Val, both hands tightly wrapped around her glass.

“What will you do for money if you’re not dancing?”

“I have some money put away. It should last me a year, maybe two, if I’m careful.”

“Peter and I will help out. I don’t want you skimping on food or anything like that, not now.”

Surprised, Val sat back in her chair. “It’s not necessary, Joanie. I can get by.”

“Well, we can help you in other ways too, you know. You can use the extra car so you don’t have to take the trolleys everywhere. You should come over for dinner, you know, so I can fill you up.”

“Honey, thanks a lot, but I’m not a charity case. I made good money.”

Joan stood and walked to the glass-paned liquor cabinet. Her voice was strange, like a violin string on the verge of snapping. “Of course, I know that. Charity isn’t the point. I want to make sure my niece or nephew gets the very best, that’s all.”

That night, Val stayed for dinner, leaving in Joan’s second car before Peter arrived home from work. As she drove away from the house, she could see Joan’s thin silhouette in the doorway, her long arm raised in a wave, the light of the hall pushing itself into the night through her legs, around her sides and over her head.