Page 20 - WTP Vol.X #8

Nanny State (continued from preceding page) step forward, raises her skinny arms.
She leans down to return the girl’s embrace. The small hands do not touch her back, just encircle her shoulders and remain a few inches away. She steps away quickly to give the girl relief. Their eyes touch, and she sees the girl does not remember her. There is not even the tiniest flicker of recognition.
“You are a wonderful musician,” she tells the girl.
This compliment is sincere. The girl played a passionate, complex piece with ferocious attention and no mistakes. Her forehead creased in concentration, which was the same expression she used to apply to picking raisins out of her oatmeal.
“I was very impressed. You must practice a lot.”
“Not as much as she could.” The mother squeezes the girl’s shoulder again, and then prompts, “What do we say?”
The girl does not glance up as she says in a voice so soft it is practically air, “Thank you.”
“How is your little one?” the mother asks. “Do you have a picture?”
“He’s good,” she answers, her hand sliding into her purse for her phone. When she sent them the baby’s birth announcement, a present arrived in return. A knitted blue romper in a yarn so soft and fine she could not imagine putting an actual baby into it, marring its perfection with all his sticky secretions.
“Growing up too fast.” She brings up a recent snapshot on her phone’s screen. The baby in the bathtub with a crown of bubbles on his head.
“Precious!” the mother exclaims, and tilts the phone so the girl can see. “What a charmer.”
“Aww,” the girl says, the first real emotion breaking through to color her voice with enthusiasm.
As a baby, the girl was sweet, but independent. She did not enjoy extensive cuddling, and liked to do things herself—pull on her own shirt, lift the spoon to her mouth, pour sand out of the bucket.
One night, just before the family moved away, she stayed late, past dinner and bedtime. A new
tooth was bothering the girl, keeping her awake, whimpering and clingy. She held the girl, and they walked. All around the house, up and down stairs,
into and out of every room.
Finally, as the girl began to drift into sleep, she eased down onto the couch with the girl curled on her chest. The lights were low, the television off. She rubbed the girl’s back in gentle circles. The girl opened and closed her eyes, in slow blinks that grew longer and longer.
Just before she fell asleep, the girl raised her head, and leaned forward to kiss her lightly, quickly, on the lips. Then the girl laid her head back down, let out a small sigh, and closed her eyes. For a long time, she remained still, watching the girl sleep.
The mother returns her cell phone. As she slides the phone back into her purse, she tells the girl, “I hope you can meet my son someday. Maybe you can babysit him.”
The girl’s eyes jump to her mother’s face, and the older woman smiles. “That would be lovely,” the mother says. “Someday.”
The girl’s eyes return to the floor.
“Well–” she says, her fingers searching the bottom of her purse until they find her keys. She pauses. There is too much, and absolutely nothing, she wants to say. “Thank you so much for inviting me.”
~
When she unlocks the door of the condo, her husband is on the couch watching a baseball game he recorded earlier in the evening. He has a beer in one hand, the baby monitor in the other.
“Asleep?” she asks.
His response is a grunt, his eyes fixed on the television screen. She sets down her purse, steps out of her sandals. As she passes in front of the television to walk upstairs, he asks, “How was your thing?”
She pauses on the landing of the stairs. If she wanted, she could sit next to him on the couch, and tell him about the girl. About the long ago kiss, and how the girl does not remember her at all. He would stop the game and listen, hold her hand, perhaps run his own up her bare leg, under the skirt of her dress.
“Good,” she tells him. “I’m going up, finish your game.”
He turns back to the television without hesitation.
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