Chapter 1 #11
That week was a turning point. Evie and I ate together, wandered together, studied together.
Every now and then she would ask me a question, or I would ask her one.
We peeled strips of information off each other like bark, and when it got too raw, we changed the subject.
Evie had bounced around foster care, and there were parts of her life she did not discuss, so she completely understood when I told her I didn’t have parents anymore and left it at that.
By the time other students returned from Thanksgiving, Evie and I had become inseparable.
She had made it her mission to acclimate me to college life—-not to mention the 1990s.
Evie taught me how to use eyeliner, how to swear, and how to drive—-which we did in empty parking lots in the 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme she’d bought with money she made waitressing.
When she got an invitation from a friend now, she included me, and if that person questioned me tagging along, Evie cut them cleanly and mercilessly from her social circle. “You and me against the world,” she told me.
Sometimes, Evie woke herself up crying. Sometimes, I did. Whenever it happened, Evie would crawl into my twin bed and hug me.
When Evie gets to our apartment, I hand Molly to her and explain what I’m feeling in a rush, a furtive whisper. I say it is too late for me. Satan already has possessed me. That the only way to save my baby from the same outcome is to send her to Jesus before I leave this world.
Evie holds Molly tightly. She cared for the younger foster kids in her house when she was growing up. She knows so much more about parenting than I ever will.
She eyes me warily. “I’m calling 911,” she announces.
“Evie, no—-”
“Then I’m calling Adam.”
“He’s on a plane,” I say.
“He needs to know all this.”
But he already does, I think. He just doesn’t want to admit it, any more than I do.
She juggles the baby in her arms, takes her flip phone out of her back pocket, and dials. The call goes to voicemail, so she tells Adam she is with me and Molly and everything is okay but that he needs to call back as soon as he gets the message.
“You know what you need?” Evie insists. “Fresh air. It’ll clear your head.”
I wonder if she really means this, or if I have spooked her so deeply that she’s afraid to be in an enclosed space with me.
But I nod, because I am too tired to make any decisions of my own.
I watch her buckle Molly into her baby carrier, load up the diaper bag, and hoist it over her shoulder.
She takes my keys from their spot in a bowl just inside the front door like she lives here.
It is as if I am watching myself go through a routine, but now I have Evie’s face instead of my own.
Once we are outside, she pushes the stroller with one arm, linking my elbow with the other. “Isn’t this better?”
“Yes,” I say, and it is. There’s so much noise and sunlight and distraction here that it’s harder to hear the incessant voice in my head.
“The Eloise Ambrose I know would never do anything to hurt her child,” Evie tells me.
Again, I can’t argue with her. The problem is that Eloise Ambrose is already gone.
At some point, when we are walking through Manhattan, Adam calls back. Evie turns away from me, speaking in a fierce hush.
I stare at the stroller, and then at the traffic on the street.
(You know what to do.)
Just then Evie turns and reaches for the stroller. “He wants to talk to you,” she says, shoving her phone at me.
Adam’s voice swims like an eel into my ear. “Ellie? Sweetheart, what’s going on?”
I feel tears prick my eyes. It is hard to catch my breath. “I don’t know,” I admit.
“I can have Evie take you to the hospital—-”
“No hospitals. I don’t want to go back to the ER.” I am crying in earnest now. “I just want you.”
“Then you have to promise me you want to fix this,” Adam answers. “If you won’t go to the hospital, you have to see Dr. Kumon.”
“Okay,” I say, the word small. “Will you come with me?”
“Yes,” Adam promises. “I’m trying to get a flight now. Can you give me back to Evie?”
I swallow and pass the phone to her. “Of course,” I hear her tell Adam.
When she hangs up, she says Adam is calling the psychiatrist. He’s going to explain that it’s an emergency; and then he’s going to come all the way back home, even though he’s only been in California for twenty minutes.
He thinks this episode is due to the change in medication, because of the thyroiditis.
In the meantime, Evie will stay at the apartment to keep me company.
(To keep you from saving your baby.)
I nod, and thank her, and pretend to listen when she starts telling me about an asshole in her office who stole the yogurt with her name on the container. I eat the croissant she buys for me, even when it turns to paste in my mouth.
I pretend this is a day out with a friend, instead of my last day on earth.
Everything feels precious and weighty—-from the color of the leaves on the trees to the bitter taste of coffee to the heat of the sun on the crown of my head. I am like a field mouse, storing moments and memories for an eternal winter.
I follow Evie docilely, knowing that it is just a matter of time.
Adam calls back to say that Dr. Kumon isn’t in her office today but will squeeze me in at 9:00 the next morning.
The only flight available at the last minute will get him into Newark at 7:30 a.m. He tells Evie to bring me downtown, and he will meet us there in time for the appointment.
Evie feeds Molly a bottle, changes her diaper, and puts her into her pajamas. She reads her a board book and swaddles her and carefully positions her the right way in the bassinet so that she doesn’t accidentally suffocate.
But at some point, Evie will fall asleep.
She brings the bassinet out to the living room beside the makeshift bed she’s created on the couch. The door to my bedroom is ajar, I assume so that she can hear me if necessary. When she tiptoes to the door, peeking in, I close my eyes and pretend I am asleep.
I give it an hour. Then I get out of bed and walk around, silently saying goodbye to the home I made with Adam. In the dark, I write down a list of all our passwords—-for banking, for AOL—-which he never can remember. I slip these into the drawer of his nightstand.
I pad into the bathroom, illuminated with the soft glow of a night--light.
The maw of the shower draws me, the mosaic that I pieced together on facing walls. The disembodied tree limbs look like poisoned veins. The middle section, still unfinished, mocks.
(You couldn’t even finish this.)
In my mind’s eye, I see what I might have created, if I hadn’t run out of time. A phoenix, wings stretched out like a shield, to keep her baby safe.
I hope Adam realizes that this art says what I couldn’t.
My gaze falls to the little plastic tub we store in the base of the dry bath.
Evie had fed and changed and dressed Molly, but she hadn’t bathed her.
I think of the bright smell of Johnson’s baby shampoo, of the slick folds of thigh, of splashing hands.
And then I stop thinking.
When I was about five, a robin built a nest outside my bedroom window. Every day I’d watch the mama bird bring back bits of twine and yarn and other detritus, turning the pieces into a home. One morning, there were three eggs—-the brightest teal, with freckles.
After that, the mama robin sat in the nest. Every time I went to my bedroom, I checked and saw her there, broody.
I waited one week, and then another, and then the eggs hatched.
The birds broke through their shells, pale and prehistoric.
The mama robin chirped, flying around them in a frenzy.
Another bird—-the daddy?—-brought worms and seeds.
The baby birds were always hungry, their open mouths perfectly shaped diamonds. Gradually, their feathers came in, downy and darkening to blend with the nest.
One day, as I watched at my windowsill, the mama bird shoved one of the babies out of the nest. As the bird plummeted, I screamed, and my mother came running.
“No, it’s okay. Just watch.” She pointed to the second baby, which was now on the lip of the nest. The mama robin gave it a nudge and it started to torpedo—-until its wings beat like a second heart, and it rose into the sky.
“They have hollow bones,” Mama explained.
“It’s what makes birds so fragile. But it’s also what makes it possible to fly. ”
Even after the last bird had been evicted and the whole robin family was hopping around on the grass in search of food, Mama stayed in my room.
She stared out the window at the barren nest as I brushed my teeth and dressed.
Then Adie started crying in the nursery, and she startled, leaving my room as if pulled by an invisible string.
Eloise.
Eloise.
Eloise!
With a snap, as if she’s slapped me, I find myself staring at Evie. She holds a naked, squirming, screaming Molly.
“Eloise,” she hisses, her eyes wide, “what are you doing?”
Reality floods me, a tsunami. It roars in my ears and blackens my vision. I look from Evie to the baby to the little plastic bathtub.
“You were trying to drown her,” Evie says, clutching the baby tighter.
I have no memory of it. There’s only a void.
I stare at Molly, who is still crying, her eyes glossy with tears. “I am sorry,” I murmur to her. “I’m so sorry.”
Not because of what I did, but rather, because of what I didn’t do.
It was meant to be my last act as a mother: saving her soul. And I had failed.
When morning comes, Molly has a fever. I wonder if this is the way Satan will take her. Evie doesn’t seem to know what she should do. She doesn’t want to take Molly downtown if she’s sick. She can’t reach Adam because he’s in flight. She can’t trust me to get to Dr. Kumon’s office by myself.
In the end, she puts me in a cab with express instructions to the driver to drop me at the World Trade Center. Then she looks me in the eye. “Remember, Adam’s going to meet you there.”
“I know.”