6. Zelda
ZELDA
The wrapping paper under my desk has tiny houses on it. Last year Suri and I used a roll like it for the neighborhood collection and spent an hour inventing terrible lives for the people in each window.
I had been looking forward to Saturday.
Her message arrives while I’m carrying a box of new books into the back room. Would I rather come an hour after Candace arrives?
I put the box down on the wrong cart and read it again.
An hour later. After she’s had the tea and the first jokes, after everyone has settled in together.
After everybody has had time to ask whether I’m coming. To whisper about why.
I start to write that I don’t mind. Delete it. Then type, You don’t have to arrange the room around us.
Suri calls.
“I wanted to ask you first,” she says. “Candace said she might come. I don’t know what she’s expecting.”
“I’m not going to fight with her over presents.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“I know.” I push the box farther onto the cart. A corner scrapes my wrist. “Sorry.”
“I can tell her to come another day.”
I nearly say yes. The relief is immediate and shameful. I want Suri to choose me without being made to choose. I want to arrive and find my chair waiting beside hers, the way it always did.
“You need your gift wrappers on Saturday,” I say. “I can take another shift.”
“Zelda, you’re welcome at mine.”
“I know. It’s easier.”
After the call I crouch under my desk to pull out the paper. I’ve put my name on it so nobody will use it before I take it to Suri’s.
I peel the note off slowly. The top layer tears with it.
I’m angry with myself for refusing the first thing I’ve wanted to go to all week. Angry with Suri for asking kindly enough that I can’t be angry with her. I leave the roll there. If I carry it to her door now, I’ll have to smile and explain that I was passing.
At lunch I call Jeremiah from the bench behind the library.
“She offered to ask Candace not to come,” he says. “Then go.”
“It’s more than the wrapping.”
“Nobody’s keeping you away.”
“I know.”
He waits. I can hear another voice in his office, somebody he is holding off for me. I try to find the quick way to explain it, the version he can hear before he needs to go.
“I’ll walk in and they’ll remember that video.”
“Nobody thinks you’re dangerous.”
“I said I slapped her.”
“You chose those words.”
I shut my eyes. The bench is cold through my coat. I want to throw the phone into the empty yard.
“You promised to listen to me afterward.”
“We have talked about that.”
“Then say you believe me. Actually listen to me.”
He doesn’t answer. Somebody at his end asks a question. He covers the phone, but I can still hear the low, efficient way he answers them.
“I wasn’t there to see what happened,” he says when he returns.
I stand up. I can’t keep sitting in the cold while he tells me that.
“But you decided you knew enough to make me apologize.”
“What do you want me to do about a gift-wrapping afternoon?”
“It isn’t—” My voice is loud in the yard. I lower it at once. “Come home early tonight. Hear me without starting from what I said for Dax’s camera, when I was being pressured by a room full of people who I thought were my friends.”
“We’re going out Thursday.”
I look at the open loading door. I have been thinking about Thursday every time I wanted to stop trying. A whole evening. The market we used to go to. Perhaps, away from the house, he’ll remember how to talk to me.
“I still want that,” I say.
“So do I. Let’s have a good night. We can settle the rest when we’re both calm.”
I bite back the answer. If I say it now, it will be the angry thing he remembers from the call.
“I have to go in.”
I end it before he can tell me what time he’ll be home.
That afternoon the badger boy’s father brings a bundle of paper footprints. His son painted one heel himself. It’s smudged at the edge, an enormous heel for such a small animal.
“He said this one has to go first,” his father tells me.
“Of course it does.”
We crouch by the entrance with tape. For ten minutes I forget that I’m the woman on the video on Dax’s phone. We disagree about whether the badger would turn left by the picture books, and I laugh when the boy puts his head on one side and tells us we don’t know enough about badgers.
When I get back to my desk, the roll of wrapping paper touches my shoe.
I push it farther underneath.
At closing, Suri offers Saturday again. I thank her and choose the following week. I wish she had insisted. I would have hated it if she had.
Jeremiah’s message arrives while I’m putting on my coat. He’s found the arcade we used to go to, still open after the market.
I bet the racing machine by the door is there. Unless they’ve retired it in shame.
I laugh before I can stop myself.
On our second date he lost twice and accused the machine of liking me. On the third race he beat me by half a second, then bought me dinner so he could spend an hour pretending to be gracious about it. I went home that night wanting him to call before I even got my shoes off.
I read the message again. I can almost see his grin.
I finish at six Thursday, I send.
Then I put the phone in my pocket before I can add how much I want him to be there.