Chapter 7 #2
“Oh my God.” I hadn’t paid for the turnovers. I thanked the baby for the taffies and sprinted back to the bakery, elbowing through the disgruntled line. The hard edge of the table slammed into my belly. A lone coffee sat next to the tip jar.
“Sorry,” I said, brandishing my phone. “I need to pay for these turnovers. I ordered them earlier and forgot.”
The girl at the counter sighed. “We’re cash only.”
“What?”
She repeated herself, pointing to a small label that said CASH ONLY, decorated with an exquisite drawing of dancing coins.
“But that doesn’t make sense,” I said. James always talked about how all the places in gentrified areas only accepted card or digital pay, and how bad it was for homeless people or senior citizens. “Isn’t this town supposed to be, like, for rich people?”
“We’ve always been cash only,” she said coolly. “There’s an ATM by the bank.”
My stomach turned. All the customers’ polite and emotionless faces suddenly seemed to resemble Mrs. Hartley with her pursed lips and piercing eyes.
I pictured them all asking me what I did, what I was doing.
I don’t know, I wanted to confess, I have no idea what I’m doing here.
I dug through my purse, only to discover that I’d forgotten my wallet.
Behind me, feet tapped. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I don’t have my debit card. But I can pay for these, really. Can I Venmo you? Or if you know how to do a wire transfer, like a direct debit, I can also do that. I can even buy more things.”
“Listen, don’t worry about it. It’s on us.”
“No,” I said. “I really can pay you. I can go home right now and come back with the money.”
“Please don’t worry about it,” she repeated. I’d lost her attention completely. Her eyebrows furrowed as she focused on nullifying my order on her machine. “It’s on us,” she said, her eyes still fixed on the screen, because I had not moved. “Please enjoy.”
—
The drizzle became a downpour on my walk back. I slid the pastries under my shirt for safekeeping. Fifteen minutes passed before I registered that I’d gone down the wrong street. I retraced my steps and tried again.
Two renavigations later, I arrived, wet and shaking, at James’s front door. The hollyhocks with their oversized faces and wobbly stems drooped under the force of the rain. I avoided their miserable gazes.
Silver’s meow sounded before I opened the door. She darted around my ankles, rubbing her head against my wet legs. “Hi, sweet girl,” I said. I felt much better already.
“Katie?” James’s voice sounded from the kitchen. “I was just about to come out and look for you.”
I dumped the pastries onto the table, the paper sleeves translucent with rain. With a feeling of deflation, I knew they were ruined.
“You got them.” James’s voice was artificially bright.
“Why aren’t you in bed?”
“It’s almost noon. You were gone for ages.”
“I really wish you stayed in bed. That was the whole point of me going out, to do something nice for you.”
“Silver was freaking out,” he said. “She was clawing at the door after you left, meowing bloody murder.”
“She was?” I lifted Silver into my arms. She began to purr. I was overcome with the same enormous pride I felt when I returned the beanie to the baby. I recalled the way the baby’s eyes bore into mine, trusting and rapt. Needing me, it seemed in that moment, as much as it needed anybody.
“She missed you,” James said.
“You missed me?” I bounced Silver up and down on my hip.
“I’m sorry I ever left you, I am.” Her purring became immediately stronger, sending waves of ticklish pleasure through my chest. Motherhood was easy, I thought, feeling only somewhat ridiculous.
Maybe I would get Silver a beanie. She would look cute in a beanie.
“I’m sorry, I am.” And, in my head, in a serious voice: I would do anything for you.
The coffee was cold, but James still drank it without putting it into the microwave.
This wasn’t like him; probably he didn’t want to draw attention to how long I’d been gone.
My pleasure faded. I had the urge to yank his cup and put it into the microwave myself, tell him he didn’t have to fuss over me so much.
“Thanks for doing this,” he said. “How much do I owe you?”
“You don’t,” I said. “I wanted to treat you.”
“You have, just with the thought.”
“But it’s not about the thought.” Even while speaking, I knew that if I’d actually paid for the pastries, I wouldn’t be putting up a fight.
“Didn’t you say you only had fifty in your bank account?” James kept his tone light.
“Fine.” I didn’t reciprocate. “Why don’t we count this as your mother’s gift?”
“That’s for something else. Something special.”
“How much did she give you?”
“Just a little.” He waved his hand.
“How much?”
“I don’t know, around a hundred.”
“Okay, so.” I hoped my quick response adequately hid my shock.
“So why can’t we use some of that for this?
It’s not like I even want to go somewhere special.
I don’t care about special, I don’t care about the gift.
Actually, I don’t even want to be here.” Silver whined.
I realized I had been clenching her very tightly.
“Katie,” James said. “I’m sorry. Look, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Silver wrestled out of my grip, jumped onto the table, and released a burp. Then she began to shake.
James stood. “What’s wrong with her? What did you do, did you feed her anything?”
“What? No, I didn’t do anything.” I looked down at my palms, the angry crescent-shaped imprints from my nails.
Silver’s eyes shrunk into black slits. She trembled as she wheezed.
“Is it a hairball?” I asked.
“It looks more serious than that.”
I met James’s eyes and saw they were scared. “I’m going to call the vet,” he said. It sounded like he was asking for my permission, so blankly I said, “Okay,” and then he sprang to retrieve his phone from the charging cube.
“Wait,” I called. “Wait, she’s not moving anymore.”
James ran back, the phone line still buzzing. Silver looked straight at me. Her eyes seemed to grow in their sockets.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
Silver gave one final cough, and something dark and small launched out of her mouth, bounced off the table, and plunked onto the floor. I ran to retrieve it: a penny.
“Oh my God.” James clutched Silver to his chest and sprinkled her with kisses. Still crouched on the floor, I wiped the penny on my shirt, where it left a small damp circle. It was shiny, new. “You shouldn’t keep loose change around,” I said to James. “It’s a choking hazard.”
“It’s not mine,” said James. “I don’t keep change.”
“It’s not mine, either. I left my wallet at yours.”
“Maybe it was just under the bed from the last visitors?”
Maybe. I looked up at Silver. She looked pleased and dignified gazing down at me. I understood that she wanted the coin to be mine, a gift. Great, I thought. Now I had fifty dollars and one cent.
—
James was convinced I’d catch a cold if I didn’t wash off the rain.
He directed me to the guest bathroom, which apparently had the best bathtub of the house.
It was settled that we would not spend James’s mother’s money on dinner and would instead use it to cover groceries and everyday expenses.
“We can just take a picture outside the restaurant for her,” he said.
That James would rather set up a fake dinner than tell his mother how we really used her money made me feel both embarrassed and a little sad for him.
But it was easier to show I thought it was embarrassing than let him know I would’ve done the same thing.
The guest bathtub with its brass claw feet and sloping sides was as magnificent as James said it would be.
It was my first time inside a bathtub that wasn’t built into the floor.
If I stretched out fully inside it, I wouldn’t be able to see past the tub walls.
I wondered if anybody ever drowned in a creation like this one.
In the water, my skin itched. I shook my limbs, watching my flesh jiggle in the water, imagining tiny shards of glass rattling between the bones.
My legs thrummed with the desire to be hammered quickly and brutally into the ground.
Next to the tub was a window. The image of my body jumping out of it flashed in my mind before I blinked it away.
I wondered if I should call for James, but the thought of James only intensified the bad feeling.
I was grateful that Silver had cut our conversation short, but there was no denying that something awkward had been introduced into our relationship and would remain unless we confronted it again.
I had no interest in doing so, mostly because it seemed like James didn’t, either.
Each time I brought up money, he became weird, almost nervous, like we were discussing someone else’s sex life.
This suited me just fine. It affirmed what my mother used to say: the only thing people found more embarrassing than having no money was having a lot of it.
It seemed she was right about that. She was right, also, in her devotion to cash, which showed exactly how much you had; you didn’t have to suffer the indignity of opening yet another credit card.
I thought about Silver going through all that to offer a penny, like she had any clue what money was worth.
And then I couldn’t help it—I grabbed my phone and, my heart beating hard and fast, dialed my mother’s number.
She was the only person who would understand how I felt.
She missed my birthday, but I’d missed hers first. We were even.
The line beeped. I waited.
My mother did not pick up.
Maybe I misremembered her number. I tried again, this time scrolling through my contacts list and pressing Mom to be sure.
The line rang. Held between the beeps, my breathing slowed. My fingers stilled. Was all this still necessary?
“Katie?”
I froze.
“Hello?”