Chapter 7
My lack of a generous instinct had always troubled me. My mother said I was born with clenched fists, as if I took something from her.
Other children could sense it in me, this absence of goodwill.
Every day after school, they’d gather on the top of the building steps, trading objects, while I sat at the bottom and waited for my mother.
I couldn’t understand how casually they parted from their things, some of them truly glorious: a scented gel pen, a key chain from another state.
I’d count my fingers until the scratched nose of my mother’s gray Mazda pulled up in front of me.
Each time I saw her behind the window, I had to press my lips together to keep from smiling.
Back then, my mother was often the only person I talked to. I didn’t like talking to anyone else.
I cherished these car rides home. My mother let me sit in the passenger seat and hang my arm out the window.
Her hands seemed to touch everything but the wheel, tousling her hair and pinching my cheek and beating the air to the rhythm of her speech.
Those were the good moods in which she’d swear to quit the lab, or get us painting lessons, or buy me that nice dress she liked because I was special, I was a very nice girl, and never mind what the other kids thought because I wasn’t meant to be understood by everybody, she understood me, never mind the fact they didn’t look like me, she looked like me, didn’t she, and if I moved to turn the music down she’d only crank it up louder.
In bad moods, she was quiet and belittling.
She’d clasp her hand over mine and ask if they were wrinkled, to which I’d say no, the other mothers’ hands are like paper bags compared to yours.
She’d fiddle with the rearview mirror, angling it to reflect her forehead, craning to squint at her cheek, its invisible new moles.
Sometimes she’d turn it to me, say, look at yourself, you’re so little, aren’t you, look at your skin, we don’t have the same nose at all, don’t we, you’re lucky, you’re lucky to be so young, she said, because it won’t be that way forever.
Even though it was said in passing, being young again, I understood, was my mother’s most honest desire.
The idea of it happening began to disturb me.
I worried that nobody would pick me up from school again.
I worried that the lab would close. And I worried that if we went to school together, she would not talk to me.
Later, I realized how crucial these car rides were for our relationship.
By the time I got my driver’s license, she’d stopped painting, stopped eating.
The devoted hush of the library became more welcoming than the stagnant silence of home, and eventually we went days without speaking, my school day and her lab schedule tacitly arranged around the other.
My guidance counselor told me my mother’s neuroses had nothing to do with me, but I knew we’d be closer if only she could pick me up from school again.
“She was happy once,” I said. “And now she’s not.
” To which my counselor said, “You can’t prioritize her happiness over your own.
” I didn’t know how to explain that they were the same, or they would be eventually.
My mother bore her unhappiness with the resigned seriousness of a messenger delivering a warning: this is what happens when you grow up.
“Put it this way,” my counselor said. “If you had a child, would you blame it for becoming a teenager?” I said no, knowing it was the right answer.
But she’d made things worse by voicing my fear: even if it didn’t make sense, I was to blame.
I took something from my mother by being born, both her youth and her future, and every day it became harder to give it back.
—
Silver lay on my chest with her limbs splayed out like a fur rug.
James was still asleep. I tried to pace my breathing to match Silver’s, but I quickly ran out of breath.
At the stutter of my inhale, her eyes blinked open.
She yawned, her sharp teeth flashing in the dark of the room, and I let go of a sneeze I’d been holding in.
James’s hand reached toward me. I let it find Silver instead, let him tousle her fur as if it were my hair.
“Good morning!” I felt abnormally awake. I didn’t remember falling asleep last night, but it must’ve happened when Silver and I were soothing each other. The Mamma Mia! incident felt like a distant dream, experienced by an outdated, more selfish version of me.
“Oh my God, Katie, your eye,” James said.
“Is it worse?”
“It’s totally healed.” He switched on the bedside lamp. The light was harsh. “That’s incredible. A miracle.”
I caught my reflection in Silver’s pupil: my eye was perfectly white. She blinked. I felt a small rush. So it was true, spit was the only antibiotic you needed.
“And it’s a Wednesday,” said James. “Apple turnover day.” Apple turnovers were James’s favorite pastry.
On our second date, he spent ten minutes dissecting the perfect ratio of flake to filling.
The best ones, he’d said, were from the local pastry shop in his childhood home, which only sold them on Wednesdays.
“What if I go and buy you the turnovers for breakfast, while you stay in bed?” I was impressed by the stroke of generosity that appeared in my head, like it had been dispatched by a considerate God.
“You sure?” James looked hesitant. “You have enough—you know where to go?”
“Just off Main Street, right? That little green shop? You’ve been so good to me all week. I feel like I’ve been leeching off you.”
“Don’t say that, you’re not a leech.”
“Lou says it’s one of my core personality traits.” She was three lychee martinis in and claimed it was a joke, but still.
“What does Lou know?” James’s voice was light but firm. “You don’t owe me anything, you know.”
“I just want to do something nice,” I said. “I’ve never done anything nice for you.”
“I’m really happy to get them myself.”
“No, I want to.”
“I can go with you.”
“Shut up, James, just let me buy you the turnovers.” I sat up. Silver tumbled off my chest with a squeal. I cleared my throat. “I’m going,” I said, then kissed Silver’s head, in case she was upset with me. Go already, she said, before you change your mind.
“Hey,” James said as I climbed out of bed. He pointed to his forehead and smiled. I planted a kiss where his finger was.
“Thank you,” he said. “Better than turnovers.”
—
A long line wrapped around the bakery. I took my place behind a baby wearing an orange beanie. Its chin was propped over its mother’s shoulder so it looked straight at me. Poor baby, I thought, you must be so bored in this enormous line. The baby grinned and nodded, like: Yes, yes, I am!
I felt an unexpected desire to hold the baby, to speak to it seriously, knowing that it understood me.
The baby’s eyes widened. Its breath smelled creamy, like the velvet skin beneath Silver’s fur, which both surprised and comforted me, and then I realized I had gotten far too close to the baby—our noses were almost touching—and jerked away.
It began to wail. “I’m sorry,” I said. The mother shot me a disapproving look and widened the gap between us.
I stepped forward, hating the baby for blowing my cover, then feeling ashamed for begrudging a baby.
It’s just a baby, I repeated to myself, even though I already knew that, that was the whole problem.
I thought of the baby for so long the word baby stopped being a word, just a sound like a babble in my ears.
Would James and I ever have a baby? The idea was perverse, like wearing shoes on opposite feet.
The shop was crowded. A vibrant assortment of pastries sat behind pristine glass panels.
Somebody had taken the time to label each pastry in cursive, along with detailed drawings of chocolates, hazelnuts, and raspberries.
I wondered whether drawing food was a real job or just something a baker did in their free time.
Probably it was the latter. Art, my mother said, was not the kind of skill you could just turn into work.
You had to be rich or well-connected or at least have another job.
I parroted this once to Lou. “Or maybe that’s just something you tell yourself to not try,” she said.
I might’ve taken this idea more seriously if she hadn’t just gotten a job with her uncle.
The pastry person waved to get my attention. The turnovers glistened with caramel that leaked onto the pan, exactly as James had described. I ordered four, along with a coffee.
“Is that all?”
A bowl of saltwater taffies sat on the edge of the counter, half obscured behind a box of napkins. When I saw them hiding, I decided I wanted them, too.
“These are for show.”
“What?” I wanted them even more now. “Why?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask the manager.”
“Where can I get them?”
She pointed out the window. The door to the candy store opened. My heart leapt when I saw who emerged: the baby! A pack of taffies swung from its balled fist. As the mother strode down the street, the beanie slipped off the baby’s head. Its mouth dropped, as if in slow motion, into a perfect O.
I rushed outside. It was drizzling. The beanie shivered on the ground, fuzzed with rain. “Excuse me,” I shouted. “Your beanie.”
The mother paused to let me approach. Up close, she looked old, much older than I expected a mother of a baby to look.
Concealer caked in the wrinkles of her eyes.
Slung over the arm that wasn’t holding the baby was a giant brown tote bag.
Upon seeing me, the baby’s eyes lit, and it began to clap, dropping the taffies at my feet.
Thrilled, I couldn’t help but clap and smile back. I felt like Princess Diana.
“Thanks. Keep the taffies, why don’t you?” said the mother. She nodded at the brown paper bag in my hand. “Those smell nice. Turnovers, right? Enjoy.”