A Watershed Year (12 page)

“DID YOU CHECK OUT the agency?” Rosalee asked over the phone, which had been ringing when Lucy walked into her office back in the Arts and Humanities building. “I’ve been waiting to hear.”

“I did, and it’s all fine,” Lucy said as she unpacked her book bag and cradled the phone with her shoulder. She had, in fact, made sure no complaints had been filed against Yulia’s agency, though she knew her mother would have been appalled to hear how Yulia had lied to her.

“You’re absolutely sure?” her mother said.

“How’re Cokie and Paul?” Lucy asked, willing to go into uncharted territory to avoid talking about the adoption.

“Well, now that you bring it up,” Rosalee said. “I’m very concerned. Paul’s acting strangely, and Cokie won’t even talk to me on the phone anymore. She just covers the mouthpiece and gets Paul.”

Lucy murmured her sympathy, expecting her mother to continue. Instead, she heard a long pause.

“You were there not too long ago,” her mother said. “What’s your take on it?”

“I have no take on it,” she said, finding it surprisingly easy to avoid the truth. “I’m sure they’re just going through a rough patch.”

“Well, I hope that’s all it is.”

“Me, too. Nice talking to you…”

“Lucy,” her mother said. “You’d tell me if you thought something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”

“You mean like you always do for me?”

“I see your point,” Rosalee said. “Good-bye, honey.”

“Bye, Ma.”

IT WAS LUCY’S BELIEF that chocolate-covered peanuts were a gift from a higher power. She might even have to tell Louis to include it
in his presentation as the sixth way to prove the existence of God. Arnold’s, a drugstore just down the street from the campus, had bins of loose candy that could be scooped into little white paper bags for the purpose of spiritual renewal. She hadn’t visited this altar of comfort since Harlan died, but the bruises of the week—and the fact that she had never managed to eat lunch—put her in the mood for the walk. She left her office and strode down the hill toward the small strip of commercial businesses that catered mainly to students and college employees.

Arnold’s was a throwback, probably one of the few drugstores in Baltimore still owned by a family instead of a corporation. Lucy appreciated the meticulously organized shelves rising from pine floorboards worn thin and soft, their grains compressed by eighty years of foot traffic. She passed through the air-freshener and cleaning-fluid section, getting a whiff of Mr. Clean before entering the candy aisle, which smelled of chocolate and salt and sugar, with overtones of Maalox. She stood in front of the chocolate-covered-peanuts bin, which was nearly full, but she scanned the other choices, as always: Gummi Worms, chocolate raisins, Red Hots, M&M’s, Gummi Sharks, chocolate caramel peanut clusters, and the dietetic candy, which no one ever seemed to touch.

She took the metal scoop and filled half of a tiny white bag with chocolate-covered peanuts. Angela came up behind her as she was paying for them.

“Candy is not a substitute for a man,” Angela said, eyeing the bag.

“Thanks for the advice,” Lucy said.

“You think that sugar and fat and salt is just as good?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

Lucy opened the bag, and Angela grabbed a handful of chocolate-covered peanuts with her right hand. She picked out two with her left hand, ate them delicately, then threw the rest into her mouth.

“These are evil,” she said.

“Get your own bag,” Lucy said.

Angela paid for her sugar-free gum and took another handful of peanuts from Lucy as they walked back to campus.

“You know what I hate most about being single?” Angela said. “Kix cereal.”

Lucy said nothing, knowing Angela needed to talk.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, right? But I cannot be bothered to cook an egg for just one person, and Vern won’t touch anything but Kix. So that’s what I eat, too. Kix. These bland little corn balls. And I’m a vegetarian, so I could use the protein.”

“So get over it and make yourself some eggs.”

“The loneliest sight in the world—the whole entire world—is just one egg in the frying pan.”

“So make two.”

“Too much cholesterol.”

They walked the rest of the way up the hill, discussing cholesterol and how you couldn’t eat anymore without wondering if the food would kill you. Lucy briefly thought about Harlan’s cancer, the cause of which would never be known. Memories of Harlan had become less painful, she noticed, since she had started receiving his e-mails. He hovered now, returning to her thoughts sometimes in vivid flashes, but more often just coloring the air, resting on her skin, infiltrating her hair. As Angela explained the philosophy behind her new obsession with protein, Lucy wondered if Harlan perceived being there at the same time, and in the same way, that she sensed it.

She left Angela at the administration building on her way to Arts and Humanities to collect some papers to grade, work she would fit around decorating Mat’s room. In her mind, the room had to represent all she could offer to a small child; it had to convey, the first time he saw it, that he would be cared for, comforted, loved, even spoiled to a degree. Even in its strangeness, it had to communicate that a place had been saved just for him. It had to be a room he couldn’t imagine ever wanting to leave. It had to be perfect.

THE PACKAGE CONTAINING Mat’s wallpaper was on her porch when Lucy got home. She opened it and stretched out several feet of the roll, admiring the glossy, sparkling fish on the deep blue background. She had never tried wallpapering before, but it was a small bathroom, and she had purchased a book at Home Depot promising step-by-step instructions.

The next morning, she had a quick cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal, thinking of Angela’s Kix, and then started in on the bathroom, spreading her supplies across Mat’s bedroom floor: tape measure, yardstick, pencil, paste, brush, wallpaper, X-Acto knife. She saw that she could fit two full sheets of paper from floor to ceiling on the wall opposite the door. Then she would have to piece the rest together around the toilet and the mirror and sink. She scanned the first page of the book and then stretched out her roll, piling books on one end to prevent the paper from curling.

She brushed the back of the first long piece with paste. But when she stood up, she realized that she wasn’t tall enough to reach the top of the wall. She stepped on the edge of the tub and tried to paste it up from a slight angle. The top was more or less straight, but a large bubble appeared in the middle, and she couldn’t seem to smooth it out. She pulled that piece off the wall and wadded it up, tossing it in the corner.

An hour and a half later, she realized that she couldn’t do this by herself. Not only was she apparently incapable of cutting a straight line, but she couldn’t hold both ends of the paper and smooth it at the same time.

“They should have a label on the front of the book: two people required,” Lucy told Angela on the phone. “I ruined so much of the paper, I’m not sure I have enough to finish.”

“Okay if I bring Vern?”

“Sure,” she said. “But won’t he be bored?”

“He’s got a Game Boy. He’s never bored,” Angela said. “I’ll be there in a half hour. Have to find my tools.”

Lucy waited for Angela and Vern at the dining-room table with her feet on another chair. She took in the living room, with its miniature gas fireplace, wondering why she never sat in front of it. Would that change, she wondered, when there were two people living here instead of just one? For a moment, she felt a twinge of panic about how she was barreling along on the path toward this adoption, knowing full well that Yulia wasn’t following the normal protocols. But she had to believe that Yulia knew the system intimately enough to make it work; after all, hadn’t she handpicked Lucy to become her nephew’s new mother? Before Lucy could take the other side in her own argument, Angela came in with her large pink plastic tool kit, and Lucy didn’t see Vern at first, because he was right behind Angela, looking down at his Game Boy as he walked.

“Hey, is that Vern, coming in on little cat’s feet?” Lucy said. She stood up and noticed, suddenly, that Louis was a few feet behind Vern. She admired his resilience, considering her last conversation with him on the quad.

“He actually does have little cat’s feet,” Louis said. “I’ve seen them. Must be hard to find shoes for him, Angela.”

“Yeah, it’s hard, but they’re more like rhinoceros feet. Boy wears double Ds.”

Vern seemed not to hear any of it. He parked himself on the couch, never taking his eyes from the tiny screen.

“What are you doing here?” Lucy asked Louis. He was wearing an old T-shirt and a pair of paint-spackled sweatpants.

“I was picking up some window shades, and I saw Angela at the hardware store. I told her I’d help, if that’s okay,” he said.

“You’re saving me,” she said. “I am a complete failure at home improvement. I’ll show you the damage.”

She led Angela and Louis upstairs and showed them the bathroom, which was sticky from floor to ceiling with wallpaper
glue. Wads of rejected wallpaper lay strewn around the bedroom floor like a Christmas morning gone horribly wrong.

Angela looked at the wallpaper still on the roll and determined that enough remained to complete the job if they didn’t waste any.

“Tell me again how you know about wallpaper?” Lucy asked.

Angela opened her toolbox, which contained every tool Lucy could name and several others she could not.

“My mother was a flipper. Fixed up old houses and sold them for a profit. My sister Paula specialized in the wallpaper, but I used to help her. I never told you how we lived in twelve different houses growing up?”

“Never,” she said, and then, turning to Louis: “What’s your story?”

“I just like to watch the home-and-garden channel.”

“Which explains nothing.”

“Don’t be so sure,” he said, stretching out a roll of wallpaper. “I’m a visual learner.”

Lucy sat on the floor as Angela and Louis measured and cut. They brought in a chair to reach the ceiling and added water to the paste, and when the job was under control, they let Lucy help by holding one end of the wallpaper. At one point, Vern came in to ask for a snack, and Angela draped his arms with wallpaper sections. In two hours, the entire job was done. Angela packed her toolbox and snapped it shut.

“Pizza on me,” Lucy said. “You deserve it.”

“Thanks, hon,” Angela said, “but Vern’s got tai chi at five.”

Louis was picking up bits of scrap wallpaper and stuffing them into a plastic bag. He absentmindedly ran a gluey hand through his long hair.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’d really like to stay but—”

“He has a date,” Angela said.

“More like coffee with a friend,” Louis said, giving Angela a look that made Lucy think they had discussed this before.

“Who?” Lucy asked. She was genuinely curious, slightly jealous, and somewhat annoyed that she had been left out of the loop.

“Ellen Frist,” he said quickly. “Well, that was fun. See you later.”

Louis let himself out as Angela checked the couch cushions for tiny Game Boy cartridges.

“What’s going on with you two?” Angela asked.

“Absolutely nothing’s going on with me,” she said. “I just can’t figure out what’s going on with him. Ellen Frist is old enough to be his very young aunt.”

“She’s your age,” Angela said.

“There you go.”

“Don’t give me that. He likes you, and you know it.”

“No, he doesn’t. It’s just one of those little attractions academic people get when they admire another academic’s work. Happens all the time.”

“Please,” Angela said. “I’m going home.”

“Bye, and thanks again. Bye, Vern,” Lucy said. “I owe you a pizza.”

Vern looked up from his Game Boy.

“When you get your son, can I teach him to play baseball?”

“Of course, Vern. That would be great,” she said. She had assumed that Vern had been dragged to her house and made to sit for hours without even knowing why.

Angela put her arm around her son and kissed the top of his head. “Tai chi,” she whispered, pushing him through the front door.

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