“You’re surprised?”
I guess not.
“Anyway, Jaylyn was so ticked she started telling everyone that Becka dumped that baby off in the field.”
Matthew blinked, and his hand went to his chest, his T-shirt still slightly damp. Or maybe not. He couldn’t tell with the window fan blowing on him. It’s not true.
“Maybe.”
How would Jaylyn know anything?
“She said she saw Becka crying in the girl’s bathroom back in January, right after Christmas vacation. Said Becka told her she was pregnant.”
She could be lying.
“Which one? I wouldn’t put it past either of them.” Skye stretched out her legs, brought the soles of her feet together. She pinched the cotton between her big and second toe, stretching the cumulus cloud into a stratus before pulling the whole ball free. It dangled for a moment from its wispy tail; Skye watched it, bobbing in the fan’s breeze, and then grabbed the remaining cotton from her toes in two handfuls. She squeezed them, threw them on the floor. “I don’t think Becka did it.”
Matthew hoped not. Abbi had told him that if any of Silvia’s relatives were found and they wanted her, that was where she’d end up. The thought of the McClures getting custody of Silvia . . . Well, it made him queasy. He didn’t know them, not really, but once Rebecka had come to school with the skin on her stomach nearly scrubbed away, the wound all oozy and kind of yellowish because the scab hadn’t had time to harden yet. He only saw it because she had lifted her sweater a little to scratch at it.
He wrote her a note asking what happened and tossed it on her desk while they switched their reading books over to their social studies ones—he was new to the school, and sat next to her in the sixth grade—and she looked startled that he’d even noticed.
She wrote back,
I fell,
and ignored him the rest of the year.
When he told Skye what happened, she had laughed at him. “You dummy. Her mom did that to her. She thinks Becka’s got a demon.”
A what?
“You know, a demon. Like in
The Exorcist
. Her mom uses sandpaper to scrub her wickedness away. That’s what Aaron says, at least. He used to go to Becka’s church.”
Matthew never told the teacher, or anyone else, because then, at eleven, he still would have wanted to go back and be with his mother no matter what she did to him, a child’s love for his parents the only love he had no ability to pick or choose. Now he knew better.
But Rebecka’s parents seemed to have given up on her anyway. She no longer wore long skirts, but jeans with phrases like
you rock
and
so hot
scrawled in marker on the seat and legs. She ran with Jaylyn’s crowd, or not, depending on who was fighting with whom over which guy. Still, he could see the McClures deciding to start over again with a grandchild, to fix the mistakes they made the first time around.
Would that mean less sandpaper, or more?
Skye swung her legs off the mattress and, using her freshly painted burgundy toes, raked the cotton under her bed.
They look nice
, Matthew wrote, pointing to her nails.
“You don’t know anything,” she said, but smiled a little, shyly, pulling her feet back up onto the bed and rubbing her thumbs over the shiny color.
I know they look better than when Jaylyn does hers.
“That’s ’cause she has gnome toes.”
???
“Gnome toes. You’ve seen them. They’re all bulby at the ends, and she doesn’t even have pinky toenails. She paints right on the skin.”
Gnome toes.
“That’s what they look like to me.”
And when was the last time you saw gnome toes?
She laughed. “Shut up.”
You should smile more. It’s nice.
Immediately he regretted his words as Skye’s easy grin deflated. “There’s not much to smile about.”
You’re wrong.
“C’mon, Matty, open your eyes. You live here, too.” She curled up on the bed, kicking him away. “I hate it.”
She cried with quiet little gulps, but instead of leaving, he stayed at the end of the mattress, all scrunched into himself so he wouldn’t touch her. Not long after Lacie was born, his aunt had let what’s-his-name—the boyfriend with the Fu Manchu—move in, and the two fought all the time, screaming and throwing things until he would give Heather a smack to shut her up. Sienna and Lacie slept through anything, but the three of them—Matthew and Skye and Jaylyn— would climb into one bed, each taking a turn being on the outside, holding the baseball bat or tennis racket, whatever was in arm’s reach and could work as a weapon. The boyfriend never bothered with them, but they were all there, together, ready to protect one another should something happen.
So different now; they all pretended to sleep through the uncomfortable parts, ignoring the hurt, and each other. He didn’t know how to react to the Skye in front of him now, the one who had tears instead of biting comebacks. So he did nothing until Jaylyn burst through the door, and said, “Get out.”
And he went, because disappearing was something he knew how to do.
Benjamin sensed Abbi wasn’t in the house as soon as he walked through the front door. Emptiness had its own personality; he had felt it inside enough to know it on the outside. When they first married, Abbi would always wake up before him; sometimes she’d go for a run, other times she’d make breakfast and read, standing, her back in the corner, where the countertops met. When he woke, he always knew before he opened his eyes—before he realized he was no longer sleeping—whether she was home or not.
He panicked now for a brief, irrational moment when too many terrible ideas clamored through his mind for him to separate them out into individual thoughts, and he was left with the rush of blood in his ears, an incoherent tangle of
what if
s plopping heavily in his sinuses. He breathed deep and slow, willing the anxiety away, and the tangle unraveled in one long strand he could understand.
What if she’s left me?
Absurd. Her battered Volvo sat in the driveway, and as he looked through the living room, into the kitchen, he saw the sliding glass door was open.
He filled a cup of water at the sink, eyes scanning the yard. In the only shaded corner, a teenaged boy sat cross-legged on a blanket, book in his lap. He leaned on one arm, positioned like a tent pole behind him. His other hand rested on Silvia’s belly.
“Hey,” Benjamin called. “You there.”
The kid didn’t look, didn’t flinch.
Benjamin opened the screen door. “Hey, you. What are you doing?”
Nothing.
He crossed the grass, and the boy finally tilted his head up, flipped closed his book and dropped it, the sharp corner close to Silvia’s cheek. Benjamin recognized him now. Matthew. Matthew Something. He snapped his fingers behind his back, thinking, trying to remember. Everyone in that apartment had a different last name. He’d been called there by neighbors—what?—at least four times in three years for domestic disturbances. Wesley had a couple calls logged, too. And Holbach.
Deputy.
Matthew nodded sharply. A salute. Then he jerked his head sideways toward the ground.
She’s sleeping.
Benjamin crouched down for the baby; she rubbed her face against his shoulder before going limp in his arms. “Where’s my wife?”
Nodding, Matthew first pointed to the shed, then to Silvia, holding out his arms.
“No, I’ll take her.”
Benjamin strode to the shed, tugged the iron latch. Abbi hunched over her wheel, earphones dangling from her head, arms red with clay. She looked up as the outside light passed over her hands, wiped them on her canvas painter coveralls. “You’re home early,” she said, shaking the wires from her ears.
“What’s going on?”
“With what?
Benjamin tossed his head toward the yard.
“Matt?”
“You left him with the baby.”
“I told you I hired him.”
“No, you said you hired
someone
. To dig a hole, to mow the lawn.” Silvia shifted in his arms, and he readjusted his hold on her.
“He is mowing. But he’s also been watching her,” Abbi said, rinsing her arms in a bucket near her feet. “Just a couple days a week, so I can get some work done.”
“You can’t leave her with him.”
She set her jaw, bucking against his words. She always reacted this way, stubborn and indignant, when Benjamin told her not to do something. “I already did.”
“What if something happens?”
“I’m twenty feet away, Ben. You’re acting like I dumped her with him for the month.” Abbi unhooked the radio from her hip, dropped in on the workbench. “I’m just trying to get a little time to throw.”
“Do it when I get home.”
“It’s too dark then.”
“Before it gets dark.”
“That’s when I run.”
“Then don’t.”
“He’s deaf, Ben. He’s not stupid.”
“It’s not that. He’s . . . Look, there’s been some issues at his home, between his aunt and her live-in. Several of her live-ins.”
“I don’t believe you’re doing this.” She stripped off her clay-hardened coveralls and hung them on the hook near the door. “Can I expect a lecture now about proverbial apples falling from trees? But not too far, right?”
“All I’m saying is we don’t know this kid. We don’t know his family.”
“You seem to have some ideas about them.”
“I’m trying to do what’s best for Silvia.”
“Really. By your logic, maybe Silvia shouldn’t be around me. My parents were pretty bad, remember? My mother’s a control freak and my father never spoke to any of us.”
“Don’t be—”
“Or you, for that matter. I mean, you’re . . . Oh, wait—” she stepped around him, into the yard—“I guess I just proved your point.”
Benjamin grabbed the door and, with all his anger, swung it closed. The latch clanged against the frame, and the door bounced open, swinging all the way around and banging against the shed wall.
Silvia woke, crying. He’d forgotten she was there, so accustomed was he to her warm little body against his chest. Abbi talked to Matthew under the tree while she folded the blanket. He nodded and looked at Benjamin. Nodded again.
Benjamin went inside with Silvia, into the spare bedroom, the unused crib piled with clean laundry and baby things, and locked the door. He sat in the rocker and read to her, first
Goodnight Moon
, then
Guess How Much I Love You
. She played with her toes and he joined her. “This little piggy went to the market, this little piggy stayed home,” he said, nibbling each one in succession. Silvia responded with snuffles and coos.
His fingers tingled from the chair’s arm cutting into his skin, and from Silvia’s weight, so he laid her down on the play mat and turned on the plastic star suspended above it. A gift from Holbach and his wife. Silvia watched as the star lit up and played “Twinkle, Twinkle,” cooed to it and kicked her legs. He stretched out next to her, their faces nearly touching, and he blew gently into her ear. She blinked and smiled, the first smile he hadn’t coaxed from her by drawing his fingers over her cheeks and chin. She turned her head toward him, and he puffed into her face. Her eyes screwed closed again. Another smile, but this time she licked at the air.
He was afraid of Abbi. No, not of her, but of what she could do. He hadn’t followed through with his not-quite-a-promise to deal with
things
. He had gone to the clinic that day Abbi took Silvia to the mother’s meeting, not the local one, but four counties north. The doctor wrote him a prescription for Lexapro, but he hadn’t filled it yet, and Abbi hadn’t mentioned it again, either. But her threat nestled there between them, and he wondered how long she’d wait before forcing him to face all those things he’d been avoiding.
Trying to avoid.
Abbi knocked on the door, two gentle taps. “Ben, dinner’s done.”
She was afraid, too. He heard it in her voice. Afraid, maybe, that the next time instead of grabbing her, he’d do worse. Afraid, maybe, she’d find him dead one morning from another attempted overdose. Afraid just of him, perhaps, of who he’d become.
There were two of him now. Benjamin before the war, and Benjamin after. The man she knew, and the man she didn’t want to know.
“I’ll eat later,” he said.
She didn’t answer, but he still saw the shadow of her feet beneath the door. He heard her breathing, closed his eyes and pictured her standing with her head pressed into the crack of the door, her hot breath bouncing against the wood and back into her face. The doorknob trembled, and the feet disappeared down the hall.
He woke on the bedroom floor, head propped on a pile of clean laundry, Silvia asleep on his chest. Sliding his hand beneath her cheek, damp with sweat and drool, he moved her to the small area rug in front of the dresser and covered her with a blanket. Then he twisted right, left, cracking his stiff back.
He’d come out of the room only once last night. Abbi was in the basement; he heard the sewing machine, and she must have heard him walking, floorboards shifting beneath his weight. But she didn’t come up to him, and he grabbed the bottle she’d already prepared for the baby and went back to the crib room.
Despite the hard bed, he had no nightmares. Hadn’t had any since Silvia came, at least not the kind with teeth, the half memory, half horror movies that made him scream and shake and hide in the bathroom, in the dry tub, waiting for Abbi to give up asking to come in. He’d stay there, too, curled up with the towels piled around him, staring at the night-light through the shower curtain, the one Abbi crafted by ironing layers of plastic grocery bags together. He’d always made sure he was back in bed before she woke, and then he started sleeping on the couch, or away from home—in his car, at work—so she wouldn’t hear him reliving things over and over again.
He slept differently with the baby, though, never far enough down for the nightmares to find him. The sleep of a parent, always aware, waiting for a cry, or worse. The sleep of a soldier, with one eye open.