Cherries In The Snow (14 page)

Apprised of the situation, she threatens that if I do not immediately hang up and ring the bell, she will call Marley at home and tell him I am sitting on his doorstep like a spastic. I ring the bell and close my eyes. It seems like I am there forever.

‘Hello?'

There is a mouse scurrying around the dishes of my subconscious.

‘Hello?' the mouse squeaks again. I open my eyes and I am blinded by blond.

‘Montana?'

She has Marley's face and it makes me want to faint, seeing this face I have sat on … on a little girl. Marley in photo negative: she is pale, blue-eyed, long flaxen hair cut with stylish and very adult jaw-length bangs. I tug gingerly at my duck clips. She's awfully tall for her age.

‘Are you Sadie?'

‘That's me.'

‘Are you my papa's friend?'

‘I am your papa's friend.'

‘Please come in.'

I see Marley hovering behind her, grinning broadly. I want to kiss him, hug him, lick him. ‘Hello,' I say soberly, and reach out to shake his hand just as he reaches out to guyishly slap me on the back. Montana goes in and out of the kitchen bringing dishes of hors d'oeuvres.

‘Thank you, Montana,' I say as I dip a carrot in some hummus, ‘how lovely.' She sits down beside me and peers at me real close as I try not to choke on the carrot.

‘You like it?'

‘Yes, thank you.' I swallow and turn my eyes to Marley for help.

‘Montana picked it out herself,' he says.

Big whoop. The kid picked out hummus. Get the medal ready.

‘How clever of you. I love hummus.' I sound altogether too excited about hummus and I sense that she has already labeled me dull. She goes over and sits in Marley's lap and I am about to drag her off him by the hair when I remember that he is her father. He tickles her and she laughs and laughs, much too loud, and I think, Hmm, that girl's gonna fake orgasms, but I feel very very jealous, so I try to join in the tickle fight. I have blocked out much of the rest.

My defense, later that night when Montana is in bed, is that I was nervous and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to treat her like an adult or act like a child. Play by play: I wrestled her to the floor and she stuck her finger up my nose. We lay on the floor and giggled and I patted myself on the back for bonding so fast. Then, during dinner, veggie burgers with tahini, I saw her picking her nose, digging away. I remembered my dad saying ‘You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, you can pick your friend's nose.' Kids love my dad. I went over to her and stuck my finger up the other nostril, grabbed a bogie, and popped it in my mouth. I wanted to seem affectionate and close to her, and you can't get much closer than inside someone's nose.

She went bright red, her finger frozen in her nostril. Marley stopped breathing.

She looked absolutely stunned. ‘Did you put my booger in
your mouth?'

‘Yep,' I said cheerfully. She didn't cry. She didn't move.

I opened my mouth and revealed the little green slime on my tongue. ‘Do you want it back?'

‘Yes.'

I carefully picked it off and handed it back. She hid it from me in her tightly clasped hand as though it were jewelry, all her worldly goods. Then she went into the bathroom and closed the door.

Lying in bed with Marley that night postlovemaking, as far away as he can be and still be on the same mattress, he says, ‘Bad move, Sadie. Bad move.'

‘What?' My face crumples.

He is really angry, shaking his head. ‘You do not invade a child's space like that, take from her without asking. We're adults.'

I want to say ‘Well, how would I know that, I don't have a kid.' But instead I just turn away from him and cry. I want to take my orgasm back. All of them. How could he let me do that and then say that, holding it in him as he made me let it all out? Criticism should never come within the vicinity of lovemaking.

‘We are supposed to set boundaries for her, she's a kid.'

‘I'm a kid too.'

‘A kid? That's some real Michael Jackson defense right there.'

I am devastated. I seriously think about jumping out the window. I see myself falling. I am naked. I don't want to jump out of a window naked. I don't mind people seeing me splat, but I don't want them to see that I already have stubble where I have shaved off all my pubic hair. ‘I'm going home,' I huff. And I do. And he lets me.

I am entirely convinced the next day at work that it is over. Holly and Ivy comfort me and even Vicki is nice as she can be.

‘It's weird to wear that little kid's bracelet,' Vicki snipes, bedecked in pom-poms.

‘It's the damn duck hair clips. They started it. If I hadn't have worn them, I might have felt like a grown-up and acted like one too.'

‘Sorry,' says Vicki, and goes back to her desk, where she makes calls for the rest of the morning.

We have an afternoon conference with a potential Milan buyer. I can see that he likes me, but all I can do is stare at Marley's mural, feeling it closing in, closing in, the water rising up around my heart. I drop a cookie in my coffee and my heart copies it, submerging completely so that I can't breathe. I fish desperately for the cookie and pull it out in lumps, coffee spilling all over the table, all over Vicki's faux white wedding dress.

‘Hey!' she yelps.

‘Sorry,' I say halfheartedly.

‘Say it like you mean it,' says Holly, who loaned her the dress, which was loaned to her by Alexander McQueen.

‘Shove it up your ass,' says Ivy to Holly, and we all look at her, stunned, including the buyer.

‘Excuse me,' says Ivy, and leaves the room.

When I get home, I climb into the bath and stay there for hours, refilling the hot water every time it gets tepid. Sidney Katz sits next to me on the toilet and comforts me with his round green eyes, his white fur ruffling with the breeze from the bathroom window. I hold my breath and duck under the water. I must have been in there a good one and a half minutes when the buzzer drags me to the surface. Wrapping myself in a towel, I hit talk on the speakerphone, but I can't hear who needs me. Assuming it is Holly, I put on my father's kimono and unlock my bolt.

It is Marley at the door and he has Montana with him, her skin absolutely white, with pink dots on her cheeks. She is wearing a velvet princess coat and white tights with mary janes. She has exactly the look Vicki is going for. Vicki would have demanded to know where she'd gotten her coat.

I ask them in for a cup of tea as though they are a pair of visiting vicars. He says yes and that Montana would like to use my bathroom. Montana doesn't say anything. She has a cupcake in her hand. It is vanilla with pink frosting. It has to be from the vegan bakery on Sixth Avenue. I know the sugar is made with fruit juice. I can't help naming it in my head: Butter Rose.

Marley leads Montana to the bathroom, and when they come back, she is still holding the untouched cupcake in her hand.

‘Are you going to eat that?' I ask pleasantly.

‘In the fullness of time,' she answers. That freaks me out so much, I have to go and hide in the kitchen, pretending to make tea. Montana sits delicately on my sofa, eyes glued to the television. She has the remote in her little white hand and is watching
The Powerpuff Girls
, which I had been half-eyeing from the bathtub.

‘I like Bubbles the best,' I say brightly, poking my head around the door.

She doesn't answer. She breathes quietly and calmly, as though she were conserving energy. Her long hair is backlit by the blue of the television.

‘Is there anything I can get you?'

She doesn't turn around as she declares, ‘I would like a plum.'

I scramble back toward the kitchen to see if I might have a plum when I know full well that I do not.

‘Wait,' she says, lifting her index finger, still facing the television. ‘I would like it sliced.' Although Marley insists that I really needn't, I pull on my jeans and sweater and dash to the bodega to find her a plum even though it is winter and they are out of season. When I come back, they are cuddling on the sofa, laughing together. I go to the kitchen and wash the fruit, which is something I never bother to do for myself, then I dry it and start slicing. In my anxiety to get the plum sliced and in front of her, I cut my thumb. I cut it pretty deep. I scream and Marley rushes in to see what is going on, with Montana trailing behind him. She sees the blood and starts crying, and Marley picks her up and hugs her and shushes her as I stand there, blood dripping down my wrist.

I am in the bathroom, trying to clean myself up, Montana still weeping in the next room, when I hear Marley yell, ‘I'm going to take Montana home. I'll call you later.'

Marley comes back that evening after he has dropped Montana at her mother's hotel. He apologizes for rushing out. ‘Montana is very sensitive,' he says. ‘She frightens quite easily.'

So do I, I think. I sit quietly on the sofa where she had been. Finally I ask, ‘Why is it okay to name children after some American states but not others? Why Montana and not Missouri? Why can you name a child Atlanta but not Ohio?'

‘Atlanta is a city.' I eye him closer. ‘Why did you name your daughter after a state renowned for housing militiamen and right-to-lifers?' I am challenging him and I don't know why.

He leaves sadly and I cry myself to sleep. He calls me every day that week, but I don't call him back. I can barely work. I have the makeup-naming skills of Vicki.

‘Pink.' I jot it down miserably on a tube of cream blusher. By the end of the day I have managed to come up with Bright Pink. I go home and flick through vintage
Vogues
, looking for the color, for the name, the color and the name. I know that if I can find it then I can find myself. I fall asleep propped up on my bed, my notepad in my hand. I wake to hear Sidney Katz chewing on it.

Finally I ring Marley on Saturday and Montana answers the phone.

‘Hi, Montana. Can I speak to your dad?'

‘To Steven?'

‘Are you allowed to call him by his name? Aren't you supposed to call him Daddy?'

‘No,' she says softly. ‘I'll pass your message along.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Wait.'

‘Yes?'

‘I have to get a pencil. And some paper.'

‘Can't you just remember the message? ‘Sadie called.' That's it. It's pretty easy.'

‘I'm writing it down. “Sadie called”.' She spelled it out ‘s-a-d-i-e c-a-l-l-e-d.'

By 10 P.M. he hasn't called me back, so I storm out of my pajamas, pull on a T-shirt, jeans, and a silk scarf, and go over to ring his doorbell.

‘You can't just go around ringing people's doorbells, you know, unannounced,' he says, laughing, as I stand there like a caroler.

He kisses me in the doorway and we fall into his bed. I say ‘fall', but I suppose, in fact, we inch our way under the covers, as though wriggling on our asses down a steep hill, since Montana is asleep in the next room. Once we are in bed and he is in me, it is delicious, really delicious, like a hot fudge sundae when the fudge is actually hot. It is the kind of sex that allows you to leave yourself, zone out as you do over the perfect sundae, a ripe nectarine, the definitive tuna melt. I have noticed that the people who lose themselves in food – gulping, chomping, chewing ecstatically – are also able to lose themselves in sex, or rather are only able to lose themselves in these two acts. They make their grim way around art galleries, sullen and unimpressed as children. They storm out early from operas. They are unable to commit to much of anything that lasts longer than an MTV clip. But eating and sex are for them – for us – transcendent states of sublime concentration.

When I come out of the trance, refreshed but a little sore, the name for the new blusher seems quite clear. Postcoital Pink, I say in my head.

‘I'm so sorry about earlier, Marley. I just freaked out.'

‘You know it's okay. I do understand. It's a big package I come with.'

In my head I snicker, Hee hee, ‘big package.' But I don't say it out loud and I wonder again if this might be maturity. What I do say is: ‘Marley, is it okay for me to be here?'

‘Probably not. Not really. But I want you to be. I need you to be. Please stay forever.'

‘For
ever
ever?'

I wake up in the middle of the night, needing to pee. I have fallen asleep naked and, dazed, I try to retrieve the clothes that have been peeled and tossed aside like the prickly skin of a sweet fruit. As I grope around in the dark, all I can find is my scarf, but I put it on anyway. When I go downstairs, I notice a piece of paper and a box of Crayolas by the phone. I wrap the scarf more snugly around my neck and go to read the message Montana had taken. I want to see if she has spelled my name right. She hasn't. It says, in scrawly crayon: ‘Pig buTT caLLed.'