16. Zelda
ZELDA
Hedy burns the first batch of pancakes. She serves them anyway, with strawberries arranged around the black edges as if she meant to do it.
“I can make another batch,” she says.
“I know. I’m eating this one.”
We got back from the hospital at five. I slept until ten with a jug of water beside the bed. The midwife said to eat, so I am eating burned pancakes.
We sit at her little kitchen table. She has brought out the chipped red plates we used when I stayed with her after college.
The tree in her window is small enough to fit between the toaster and the sink.
She has hung a pair of paper mittens from the highest branch.
I want my own kitchen so sharply that I stop chewing.
“You’re allowed to miss it,” she says.
“I set the timer on the lights.”
“I know.”
“They’ll have come on last night without me.”
Hedy lets me talk about the tree. She doesn’t tell me Jeremiah will call, or that I’ll find somebody better, or that she warned me about Candace.
After breakfast we open the two gifts she had planned to bring to our house.
Mine is a pair of soft socks with absurdly solemn rabbits on them.
For the baby, she has found a little board book about birds.
We disagree about which bird looks most judgmental and laugh so hard I have to set my mug down.
I turn the book around to show someone across the table.
There is only Hedy’s empty plate. She is still standing beside me, doing the crow’s voice.
I start to cry before she has finished the sentence. She puts the book down and holds me.
“I wanted him here,” I say. “I wanted him to see that book.”
“I know.”
“And I wanted Candace to tell me I was overdoing it with the stockings. She would have made fun of me.”
Hedy holds me tighter.
Candace would have pointed to the stocking and asked whether I meant to put the baby in it. I can hear her, and the laugh that would have come after. I press my face into Hedy’s sleeve. I can’t make the memory of her being cruel arrive quickly enough to stop missing the laugh.
We had only been trying out Otto.
Jeremiah brought the name to the market on a folded scrap of paper, and I copied it into my notebook while he watched. Last night, on the way to the hospital, there hadn’t been any other name to call him.
Hedy picks up the bird book and reads the first page to my belly in a severe voice.
“Otto is going to think his aunt is a crow,” I tell her.
“He can form his own opinions when he’s here.”
Before we leave, I call Suri. She answers on the second ring with children shouting somewhere behind her. She has gone to her fiancé’s family for lunch. I tell her she can call back later, but she takes the phone into a quieter room.
“Hedy said you checked on me,” I say. “Thank you.”
“I wish I’d done more while you were there. After you left, one of the guests asked Jeremiah whether he’d known before dinner. He wouldn’t say when Candace told him.”
“He wouldn’t say?”
“No.”
The place across the table is empty. There must have been a day when he came home knowing. I was there. I must have said hello.
“Don’t spend Christmas trying to get answers for me,” I tell Suri. “You have your own family.”
“I’ll call when you want. I mean that.”
“After your lunch,” I say. “If you have time.”
“I have time.”
I stay on the line for another second after we have said goodbye.
At two Hedy drives me to my house. I have the door code and my keys. I use the key because I don’t want Jeremiah to come and open the door as if I’m a guest. Candace’s coat isn’t in the hall. Jeremiah is waiting by the stairs.
“Merry Christmas,” he says.
“Merry Christmas.”
“Is he all right?” His voice is hoarse. “Are you?”
“We’re both fine. I’m supposed to rest.”
“I was outside. All night.”
“Hedy told me.”
It’s the first time I’ve seen him since he told me I was choosing to leave. I wanted to hate the sight of him.
Instead I notice that he hasn’t shaved and that he looks tired. I know the warmth of his shoulder under the shirt he’s wearing. I walk past him before I can touch it.
Hedy carries the bag up with me. In the bedroom, the hanger that held my anniversary dress is empty. I take everyday clothes, my boots, a few things that fit my changing body, the vitamin bottle from the bathroom, and the folder of pregnancy notes I’ve been keeping.
The green baby hat goes into a side pocket. I leave the rest of the nursery plans where they are. I can get them later if I need them.
I reach for my perfume. Jeremiah bought it after smelling it on my scarf. He said he could find me in a crowded room.
The cap clicks under my thumb. I leave the bottle on the dresser. I don’t want to smell like that in Hedy’s spare bed.
My work shoes fit down the side of the bag. I press them in heel first.
The arcade photograph is beside the perfume. He found a frame for it.
I pick it up. My mouth is open, laughing at something he has just said. I remember wanting another turn, wanting him to watch me win again.
I want to put the photograph in the bag. Hedy looks away while I hold it.
I set it back on the dresser, facing the bed.
Jeremiah comes as far as the open bedroom door. “You can stay for lunch.”
“We ate.”
“I mean, you don’t have to leave as soon as the bag is full.”
I zip it. “What did you want to talk about?”
He looks at Hedy. “Could you give us a minute?”
“I’ll be just outside,” she tells me. She waits until I nod before going downstairs.
Jeremiah doesn’t come into the room. “Candace won’t help with anything here again. I’ll stop having her over if that’s what you want.”
“You should have stopped inviting her into our marriage when I asked.”
“I can do it now.” He rubs a hand over his jaw. “I’m asking you to admit that the dinner got out of hand. You embarrassed me in front of everyone.”
“You asked me to confess to a lie in front of everyone.”
“I was trying to make an awful situation bearable.”
“For whom?”
“For us. You’re acting as though I knew from the beginning.”
“You should have. Because I told you. You didn’t accept the truth until Candace told you. Then you kept watching me ask you to believe me.”
He looks past me, at our unmade bed. “We both did things we regret.”
The zip of the bag is still between my fingers. I let go of it.
“Both,” I say.
“Zelda.”
“Both of us?” My voice climbs and I let it.
“I lied. I told everyone in that room I hit my best friend only because you promised to take me home and listen to me. You called it a confession over breakfast. I asked you after the market when you were kissing me. I asked while you held my hand. Then you knew. You sat at my table and ate the chicken I ordered, and you knew, and you told me to stand up and say it again in front of my sister!”
He has gone white. “Zelda, please. Hedy’s downstairs.”
“I bled last night!” It tears out of me and my throat burns.
“I sat on the edge of a bath with blood on my hand and I asked for you. Do you understand that? They couldn’t find his heartbeat and I asked for you.
My sister had to stand in a doorway to keep you out, because the last thing you wrote to me was that I embarrassed you! ”
The perfume is on the dresser where I put it back. My hand closes on it before I’ve decided anything. I throw it at the wall beside the wardrobe and the bottle bursts. The room fills with the smell he said he could find me by.
Neither of us moves. Glass ticks down behind the laundry basket. I am shaking so hard the bag strap slides off my shoulder.
I look at my empty hand.
I did that. The noise is still in my ears. I take a step back from the broken glass and keep my hands against my sides.
“I’m sorry,” Jeremiah says. He has taken one step into the room. His hands are open at his sides. “Zelda, I’m sorry.”
“For which part?”
He looks at the wet wall, at the bed, at my stomach. I wait. I count the seconds by the pulse in my neck, and I get to nine.
“You can’t even pick one,” I say.
I lift the bag.
“I shouldn’t have thrown that,” I say. My voice sounds far away. I can’t look at the wall again.
He moves aside so I can leave the room. I take the bag down the stairs while he follows, close enough that I know he could stop me if he reached out.
At the tree I pause before I mean to. The blue house hangs by itself on a low branch.
I want to take it. I leave it there because I don’t know where I’d hang it at Hedy’s, and because taking it would feel like a decision about the whole house that I haven’t made.
“Zelda,” he says.
I turn. For the length of a breath I think he’ll tell me when he knew she lied, that he’s sorry he kept quiet, that he will tell the people he let believe it. His face is open enough to make me wait.
“I don’t want you spending Christmas away from home.”
Behind him I can see my stocking. He has left it hanging where I put it.
I nearly ask him if there’s any cake left. I don’t know why. Something we could eat together, something that would keep me here another ten minutes.
“I wanted to spend it here too.”
Hedy is by the front door with her keys.
She reaches for the bag without taking the choice from me.
I go out to her car, where the ridiculous rabbit socks are on the passenger seat and the bird book is waiting between them.
When she starts the engine, I turn toward the house once.
Jeremiah is visible through the window beside the tree. I don’t wave.
“I threw the perfume,” I tell Hedy in the car.
“I heard.”
“At the wall. I didn’t mean to—” I stop. I did mean to throw it. “It frightened me.”
She waits while I rub my palms on my coat.
“I need somewhere to put my things,” I say.
“We can clear another drawer.”
“I know.” My bag is at my feet, a boot digging into my ankle through the fabric. “After Christmas, will you look at rentals with me? Near the library.”
“Yes.”
I pull the rabbit socks into my lap. She doesn’t ask whether that means I am never going home.
Back at Hedy’s, we eat the good batch of pancakes for dinner. I read the bird book aloud, getting the crow’s voice wrong on purpose so she’ll correct me. Hedy snorts into her mug. I laugh too, then turn the page quickly before I can look for Jeremiah again.