“Oh, groan.”
“I’m waiting. Dot, dot, dot . . .”
“Okay, this one’s easy.”
“Not like kumquat.”
“Do you want to hear it?”
“Sorry, sorry. Go right ahead.”
So she told him how, when Lauren first mentioned him, she told Abbi he was Indian, “With a dot, not a feather. And really nice.”
“If he’s so nice, why aren’t you dating him?” Abbi had said.
“I might be, if I hadn’t met Stephen first.”
“He’s in the Guard?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not really into soldiers. Give me a nice beat poet any day.”
Lauren snorted. “Oh, you’ve had lots of luck with the beat poets.”
“What did you tell him about me?”
“That you’re a hippie wannabe and a pacifist. And you don’t shave.”
“Hey. I shave sometimes.”
And then Abbi told Benjamin how she met him and tried not to love him from their first date, when he took her to that vegetarian restaurant thirty minutes out of their way, and choked down a seitan and mushroom stir-fry. She had tried not to love him, had reminded herself of his ripple-edged ears, and his buttoned-down shirts and leather belt. “But it was too late,” she said. “You’d infected me.”
“Really?” He grinned, cheeks puffed with pleasure.
“Really, really.”
“It must have been the cooties,” Benjamin said.
“You’re impossible. Do you want a word, or not?”
“Of course.”
She saw Silvia’s rattle on the floor. “Baby.”
He didn’t hesitate. “The day I found her, I called you. After I brought her to the hospital. I wanted to hear your voice. You weren’t here. I just listened to the answering machine and hung up.” He traced her collarbone, one finger on either side. “We wouldn’t be here without her.”
“I know.”
“I want more.”
“Than what?” she asked, though she understood him perfectly.
“No. More babies. More children.”
“Ben, everything’s so up in the air with Silvia as it is. I couldn’t even—”
“I don’t mean right now. Just, sometime. Do you think you might be open to considering it sometime?”
“Yes,” she said. And she meant it. Not because she thought Benjamin would leave her if she said no, or because of her guilt or a desire to appease him. But because she wanted to. She enjoyed being a mother, after all.
He waited on the stoop until he saw Abbi’s green bumper-stickered car kicking up dust as she turned the corner and pulled in front of the apartment. Matthew sprang to his feet and yanked the passenger-door handle. Abbi turned off the car, stepped out. “I know, I’m running late. Silvia had a really awful diaper right as I was walking out the door. I had to bathe her.”
He made quick circles with his hands, pulled on the door handle again.
“No, don’t worry. It’s not that kind of thing. We have time.” She lifted the baby from the back seat. “Your aunt’s inside?”
She knows I’m going with you. You don’t need to see her.
“Matt, I’m not leaving without saying hello. Which one?”
He pointed to the middle door, wiped his palms on his pants.
Abbi knocked, and Lacie answered. “Who are you?”
“Is your mom here?”
“I guess,” Lacie said and, leaving the door wide open, spun into the apartment.
A moment later, Heather stepped outside. “You taking him now?”
Abbi nodded. “We shouldn’t be later than dinner. But I’ll call if we will be. And I promise I won’t bring him home hungry.”
“Fine by me.” Heather lit a cigarette, took a drag and held it up near her shoulder. “That her? The one from the field?”
“Yes, this is Silvia,” Abbi said, turning the baby around so Heather could see her. Matthew stopped breathing, realized it only when waves of tightness pulsed in his chest, down his arms. Any moment his aunt’s memory would click in, and she’d run inside and grab Skye’s photo album, flip through the pages to find the picture, the carbon copy of Silvia. But it wouldn’t be there, because he had it in the pocket of his good pants, folded at the bottom of his clothing tote.
He stepped backward, dizzy, as Heather dropped her cigarette on the stoop and stepped on it, took Silvia’s feet in her hands, knocking her tiny heels together. “How are you, pretty girl? I had babies like you. Yes, I did. Yes, I did, sweet feet.”
Silvia broke into a gummy smile and drooled, bringing her fists to her mouth.
The blinds rippled in the front window, fingers separating two of the thick vertical strips. Fingers too large to be either of the littler girls, and Jaylyn wasn’t home. He and Abbi needed to leave before— What? Would Skye come out? He couldn’t give her that chance.
Matthew nudged Abbi with his toe. When she looked at him, he tapped the back of his bare wrist.
“Oh, right. We’re going. Thanks for letting me borrow him,”
Abbi said.
“He’s all yours,” Heather said, and shut the door.
They drove to Ellie’s house, and Abbi went inside to talk to her mother, too, asking Matthew to watch the baby for a sec. When they came out, he gave up the front seat to Ellie. “I don’t mind the back,”
she said, but with a crinkle of his lips and a jerk of the shoulder he climbed in back next to Silvia.
Ellie and Abbi talked as they drove, and laughed. He had no idea what they were saying. Every so often a weird feeling crawled over him, and he looked up to see Abbi’s face smiling at him in the rearview mirror. Otherwise he kept his eyes on Silvia; he couldn’t stop seeing Skye in her. And he thought of his cousin, not a friend really, but a cohort. They had grown closer these past five years.
When he’d first come to live with them, the girls had been inseparable—both a bit chubby, both brunettes, Jaylyn’s hair more cocoa, Skye’s a deep mahogany. And both miserable toward him. Hiding his shoes before the bus came, forcing him to wear too-small girl’s sneakers to school. Dropping his hearing aids into the toilet for him to fish out. Sprinkling cayenne pepper in his peanut butter sandwiches.
But Skye stayed small and round and awkward, as Jaylyn grew up and thinned out and only had use for her sister when she needed to borrow a couple of bucks for nail polish, or wanted someone to lie to Heather for her. And as they grew apart, Skye didn’t seek out Matthew as much as she fell in with him, both of them alone together at the apartment in the evenings, or stuck watching the little girls. They shared small frustrations, an occasional secret, and Matthew dragged her to church a time or two.
He didn’t know her, though. So much of what happened around him was lost in the silences, intentionally or not. But he saw her disappearing. He never dared approach her about it. They weren’t that close, and he spent so much energy surviving that when he finally had a moment to consider Skye, he didn’t want to deal with another problem.
He wouldn’t blame himself for Silvia, for the circumstances that put her here, in the back of Abbi’s Volvo. And, no, maybe it wasn’t his responsibility to save Skye from herself, or Jaylyn, or his aunt, or the slurry of low expectations. But he should have done something. If he had, he might not be in this predicament—deciding if two families will be torn apart, wondering if secrets like this ever lose their teeth.
He leaned toward not telling. He thought he could keep it to himself, a sin of omission, a lie for the greater good—like Rahab, who’d been counted righteous for her deception, or the midwives in Egypt.
How could he think Skye would be better off if everyone knew what she’d done? And what would happen to Silvia? Would the Patils be allowed to keep her, or would she end up in some other foster home? As her grandmother, would his aunt get custody of her?
God forbid.
They crossed the bridge into Pierre and turned toward the park on the river, right past his mother’s apartment. He saw her window, a grinning paper jack-o’-lantern taped in it, two black bat cutouts on either side. He stared up at it until Abbi opened his door.
“Unbuckle Silvia, will you?”
He did, and she wiggled the baby into the sling she wore. Ellie took his hand as they followed Abbi to a woman with green hair and rings in her cheek and eyebrows. He wouldn’t call what she had in her ears piercings; they looked more like something in
National Geographic
— round, quarter-sized discs in the center of each earlobe.
“Genelise,” Abbi said, “This is Matthew, and Ellie.”
“Glad you could come,” the woman said, offering her tattooed hand to them. “Feel free to mingle, or whatever.”
“Where’s Neal?”
“Uh . . .” Genelise spun around. “There. With Greg.”
“Come on. I want you to meet someone,” Abbi said. She tapped the shoulder of a man in loose jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, his hair clipped short. “Neal, this is the guy I was telling you about. Matthew, my sanity-keeper.”
“The pleasure’s mine,” Neal said. And signed. He wore bright sapphire hearing aids behind his ears.
It’s nice to meet you
, Matthew signed back. Then, remembering Ellie at his side, he pulled out his pad and translated.
“You don’t have to do that,” Ellie said. She tugged on his belt loop. “I’m going to go over there and . . . find something to do.”
“I’ll go, too,” Abbi said, and they wandered away together, to a picnic table under a wood pavilion where people sat, eating.
Abbi said you don’t get a chance to sign too often
. Neal’s mouth moved with his fingers. Matthew had no idea if sounds were coming out, too.
Is it that obvious?
Matthew signed back.
No. You’re fine. Come meet my wife, but don’t laugh. She’s an awful
signer. She’s not deaf. She just loves me
.
So Neal introduced him to Constance, an almost-bursting pregnant woman about Abbi’s age, with sleek black bangs and almond eyes. She made a few clumsy attempts to sign to him before Neal took pity and told her that Matthew read lips. “I blame it all on these fingers, Matt,” she said. “How could anyone move swollen, preggo fingers like this?”
When are you due?
“Yesterday,” she said.
He and Neal talked some more about nothing in particular, but the conversation was soothing in the motions and the understanding that went along with them. Not only the literal meaning of the signs but beneath that—a common struggle, a kinship. Matthew didn’t know this man’s story, didn’t need to. They shared something, and for those thirty minutes he was unfettered. No pen and paper. Only his words, straight from his head to his hands.
People left the park, some with a few cans of vegetables in their arms, others with a grocery sack of clothing. Matthew helped clean up the food and loaded the extras into the back of Genelise’s Prius. The woman hugged Abbi and said, “I’ll call you,” and then gave both Matthew and Ellie a quick squeeze.
“So,” Abbi said, “is there anything you want to do while we’re here? Shopping? I can tolerate the mall, but please don’t say Wal-Mart.”
Kmart?
“Don’t be smart,” Abbi said, giving him an elbow in the ribs.
“He doesn’t know how to be anything else,” Ellie said.
Matthew looked across the street, at the bluish-grayish apartments. The two saddest colors, together in one place. He didn’t quite know what he would get out of a visit. Maybe he wanted his mother to know he was all right without her—despite her. Wanted her to see it with her own eyes. Maybe he wanted to rub it in. He didn’t let himself think about it too long.
“So, the mall?” Abbi asked.
“Sounds good to me,” Ellie said.
I’d like to see my mother. If that’s okay.
They looked at him, at each other, and Abbi finally said, “Yeah, sure. Of course. Does she live far from here?”
Over there,
he wrote, pointing.
“In those buildings?” Abbi asked.
He nodded, and walked across the street. Ellie suddenly came up next to him and slipped her hand into his. He stopped, looking up at the jack-o’-lantern’s black triangle eyes.
Can you guys wait here? I want to see if she’s even around.
Ellie squished his hand.
Matthew jogged to the back of the apartment complex and jammed his thumb against each of the eight white plastic buzzers beside the entrance, pulling on the door until it opened. He climbed the steps and paused in front of his mother’s apartment, his knuckles against the cool metal.
And he knocked.
Melissa opened the door in stretchy jeans and a tight, black T-shirt dotted with lint. “What are you doing here?”
I was in town.
“Yeah, right.”
I was. With friends. I thought I’d stop in.
“And say hey? Have a nice little tea party? What?”
He shrugged.
“Where are they? These friends of yours.”
Matthew squeezed past his mother, his back scraping against the molding, and twisted the thin stick hanging next to the vertical blinds. He spread the metal slats, leaving fingerprints in the thick dust, and pointed.
That’s Abbi Patil. I babysit for her, and mow her lawn.
She raked her hand through her hair, an orangey blond on the bottom, dark brown at the roots, and flapped the loose strands off her fingers. “Who’s the other one?”
Ellie. My girlfriend.
“She pregnant? Is that why you’re here?”
No.
“I was pregnant with you at your age.”
I know.
“You think you’re smarter than that, don’t you?”
He shrugged again. So did she. “Bring them up.”
Matthew banged on the window. Abbi and Ellie looked up, and he motioned for them to come, met them at the downstairs door. When they got back to his mother’s apartment, Melissa had changed into a different black shirt, this one tighter with a deep V-neck, and pointy black shoes. She’d had boots with toes like that when he lived with her—her witch’s shoes, he called them. She called them her going-out boots. Out, without him. They could be the same pair.
“I got Coke. And diet root beer,” Melissa said. “Root beer used to be Matt’s favorite. He’d eat it on his Cocoa Krispies. Bet he didn’t tell you that.”