Hot Springs (25 page)

“I’d like to know where they are,” she said.

He tore a yellow sheet of paper off a small pad and wrote something on it. “Here’s the address. I’m selling the house. That’s what I say, anyway. I haven’t contacted a broker. You get attached to things, you know? But it’s my retirement, so I’ll probably have to cash in soon enough. I said she could stay there for a while, just until she gets herself sorted out. I suppose you’ve got papers, or whatever, on the child?”

“We don’t want to have to go through with all of that. Or I don’t, anyway. I’m just hoping she’ll listen to reason.”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “That sounds like Bernice.”

After she used his phone to call again, and there was still no answer, he called her a cab. This driver was foreign looking, dark, and didn’t talk at all. His radio was tuned to a station in what she guessed was some African language. On the ride north, she passed handsome old stone row homes, a lively area of bars and restaurants, a man playing the ukulele at a bus stop. There was a grand train station, and then the neighborhood grew quickly more dilapidated, some of the buildings still massive, but clearly no longer in use. She saw signs for fried chicken and something called lake trout, and there were other signs in what she thought might be Korean. They passed houses with boards in their windows and concrete where the doors had been, an ancient pharmacy advertising patent medicines, the Anointed Hands of Perfection Beauty Parlor, and a vertical yellow sign that read, simply, “Afro-American.” Then they were in a more residential section again, with three-story houses and porches. The driver made a turn and then another. Finally, they pulled up in front of the address and she found some money in her purse.

Excited to be so close, in spite of her exhaustion, she waved to the driver that she was fine, and the cab pulled back out into traffic and disappeared up the block. She mounted the steps to the front porch, noting the peeling paint and sagging wood. As she stood staring at the door, trying to get up the nerve to press the bell, she heard voices behind her.

They all froze for a moment, a tableau of uncertainty: Bernice a bright-eyed, hard-bodied, punk-looking girl in jeans and a green top that left a suggestive few inches of stomach exposed; Landis, earnest and bearlike in jeans and a work shirt; Emily a tiny exclamation mark
of attention, her thin legs emerging from oversized blue shorts, her T-shirt decorated with the cartoon image of a one-eyed man with an enormous moustache. Emily came rushing toward her, arms outstretched, and Bernice turned and ran away up the street.

“Hey!” Landis shouted after her.

“Sweetheart,” said Tessa, hugging Emily. She held her out to look at her, then hugged her again. Her face was dirty and her nose needed a wipe, but otherwise, she seemed just fine. “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

“We had chocolate ice cream,” said Emily.

“Go after her,” said Tessa to Landis, wrapping the child even tighter in her arms, happy at the familiar way Emily’s head locked into the space between her head and shoulder. “It’s all right.”

Landis was still standing at the gate. “I should probably stay here.”

“I won’t do anything,” said Tessa. “You go on. Where do you think she went?”

“I don’t know.” He kicked at the sidewalk. “How do I know you don’t have a cab coming?”

“The cab left. It’s just me. Emily and I will stay here, I promise. Can you let us in?”

He shook his head. “Bernice has the key. Unless she’s got one. Emily?”

“Bernice has the key,” Emily said, pulling away.

“OK, then,” said Landis, uneasily. “I’ll be right back.” He took off jogging in the direction that Bernice had gone.

“We can sit on the steps,” said Emily, the proud owner of all of this, ready to show it off. Tessa sat down next to her, taking her hand.

“I’ve been so worried. Are you sure you’re all right?” She found a Kleenex in her pocket and wiped at the chocolate on Emily’s cheek. Then she held it to her nose for her to blow, which she did.

“I had an inspection in my ear. But I took drops.”

“Let me see?” She peered in. “Nope. No inspection that I can make out.”

“It’s gone, now. It wasn’t a demon.”

“I hope not.” Tessa hugged her again, her eyes filling with tears. She kissed her neck, her ears. Finally, she let her go. “You’re coming home with me. Back home.” She sniffed and peered up the block, but there was still no sign of Bernice and Landis. She could, of course, grab Emily and find another cab, just make a run for it right now, in spite of her promise, and whether or not Emily wanted to come. They’d had battles of will before. Last spring, Emily had gone through a period with her
Veggie Tales
videos when she simply wouldn’t stop watching, and David had finally had to lift her and carry her into her bedroom, screaming. For a while, she’d wanted a dog—one of the neighbors had recently purchased a puppy—and when they told her no, she’d refused to eat for an entire day. “You want to, right? You want to come home with me?”

“Of course,” she said.

“I promise that sometimes in the future you can come and visit Bernice. OK?”

Before she could answer, they were rejoined by Landis, who was out of breath and sweating.

“She’s heading to the coffee shop. She says she won’t come back until you’re gone.” Tessa was pretty sure this was the same person she’d seen back in the Springs. There was something off kilter about his face, as if the two sides hadn’t been aligned quite right. He looked strong. “Just you, I mean.” He nodded at Emily. “She’s supposed to stay.”

“Supposed to?”

He looked somewhat embarrassed. “Yeah.”

“I need to talk to her,” Tessa said. “Where’s this coffee shop?”

“Around the corner.” He dug the key out his pocket. “At least I
can let us in now. We’ll call you a cab.”

“I can find it myself if you won’t tell me.”

“You’ll see it. I don’t know what it’s called—Lucky’s, Louie’s, Lovers. Something.”

Tessa kissed Emily on the forehead. “Do you want to come?”

“Yes,” said Emily.

It was Lucille’s. She found Bernice seated at a table in the very back, staring at a brownie. “Hello,” she said. She helped Emily into a seat.

“Hello, yourself,” said Bernice, clearly sulking. “She likes me more.”

“This isn’t a contest. And anyway, that’s not true.”

“Is. Ask her. I’m teaching her devil worship. We read
Harry Potter
together, and next week we’re getting matching tattoos that say Darwin, with little feet.”

Tessa looked around at the few other customers, most of them reading at their tables, apparently not paying attention to this scene. “Why are you being like this?”

“Because I can. Because I don’t care anymore. I mean, I’m past caring.”

“How will you support her?”

“I’ll manage. I’m sure as a single mother, I’m qualified for all kinds of special programs. If not, I’ll move to France. They have free health care, I hear.”

“She’s starting school next week.”

“School? Or Bible boot camp? I know what you people are up to with her. She’ll start school all right, but it will be someplace normal.”

“You’ve looked into that, have you?”

Bernice’s eyes were lit blue, like match heads. “It’s on my list.”

Tessa took a deep breath. She had been both dreading and longing for this moment. Emily had removed all the sugar packets from their holder and was arranging them in patterns on the table. A waitress came to take Tessa’s order, but she waved her off. “You must see that, between the two of us, I’m the one with more to offer,” she said, quietly.

“No,” said Bernice. “I must not. I used to think that. The whole time I was living with you, and for the next couple of years, that’s what I kept telling myself. I bought it—the whole package. Nice house, fresh air, squeaky-clean white people who owned mountain bikes and who would make sure she didn’t smoke and didn’t screw or do drugs. I almost believed it myself—almost. Then one day I realized it wasn’t true.”

“What wasn’t true?”

She didn’t answer.

“What?”

“That you were better than me.”

“I never said that.”

“You did just now. ‘I have more to offer.’”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Sure, you did. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s practically leaking out your pores.”

“I thought it was the opposite, that you felt you were better than
us
.”

Bernice drank some of her coffee, spilling a few drops down the front of her shirt in the process. She dabbed ineffectively at them with a napkin, then tossed it to the table. “I didn’t finish college,” she said.

“What does that have to do with anything? Finish now. No one’s stopping you.”

“I’m sorry,” said Bernice. “Sorry, sorry. All right? I said it. Now, couldn’t you just go home to your husband and forget about us?”

Neither one of them said anything for almost a minute. Tessa did think about David, but for some reason, what she imagined was his running socks, laundered, lying neatly in little white balls in the top drawer of his dresser where she’d placed them. “He’s cheating on me,” she said, quietly. Emily continued arranging the sugar packets.

“I heard him tell you once that God must have been watching out for him because he’d found a place to gas up for three cents less a gallon than usual. Do you think God cares how much it costs for that creep to fill his tank? It’s so . . .” searching for the word, she held her hands out, fingers apart, as if she’d just released an invisible bird.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I heard. That’s what guys do. They cheat, and they lie. Are you really surprised?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Well, I can’t help you there.”

“Two weeks ago, everything was one way, now it’s another, and I don’t see how it can go back. The only thing I’m really certain of is that I have a daughter.”

“So do I. Right? Just go ahead and hate me.”

“My mother always said to hate the deed, not the person.”

“That’s nice. My mother always said, ‘Fat over lean.’”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s a painting thing. For oils, you want to make sure that your outer layer doesn’t dry before your inner layer does, or else you’ll end up with a cracked surface.”

“I still have all of the artwork you did at our house,” said Tessa. She didn’t mention that David had insisted it be kept in the closet. “There’s the still life with the lemons, and the one of the backyard, with Pikes Peak in the distance.”

If this made any impression on Bernice, it didn’t show. It was a gift to be able to see something and then make an image of it, Tessa thought, and she was envious of Bernice’s ability, just as she was envious of the biological ordinariness of Bernice’s body, where reproduction had simply happened. Bernice drank more coffee. “This stuff isn’t even hot.” She pushed the cup away from her. “You look tired. Where are you staying?”

“A hotel,” said Tessa.

“Why don’t you go back there, get some rest.”

“I won’t go without her.”

“It’s OK, Mommy,” Emily said. “You can go.”

“Maybe tomorrow, we’ll go to the aquarium and see the sharks,” said Bernice, swiveling in her chair. “What about that? You’re a shark fan, aren’t you?”

“I’d like to,” said Emily.

Bernice touched the girl’s hair briefly, then turned back. In the years since Tessa had last seen her, Bernice’s features had taken on a new definition, an adultness that Tessa found almost surprising.

“I’m going to think about this, OK?” said Bernice. “Give me tonight. You can do that. I know there’s no reason for you to trust me, really, and you shouldn’t—you shouldn’t trust me. But it will mean something to me if you try. You have to give me status here. I’ve had one miracle in my life, and that was the day my daughter recognized me. That’s
my
religion, and you have to respect it. Without ever seeing me, she knew. Right, honey?”