Raising Hope (19 page)
He laughs. “I still can’t find it, and I’ve been living here for a month. Wait.” He touches my arm. “Slow down . . . here it is.”
“Oh, God,” I say. “See, I would have missed it without you here.”
I slow down over the dirt road leading back to his house. The soft light of the late afternoon reflects off the rippling waves of the lake. “It must be lovely living here,” I say. “It’s so peaceful.”
I stop the car to let him out, but he’s not moving. He’s looking at me with those intense blue eyes, and I turn away from him to stare straight ahead. If I don’t look at him, I’ll be fine.
“I had a really good time today,” he says.
I nod vigorously, still without looking at him. “Me too,” I say.
“So when can I see you again?”
My insides stop fluttering, and the dreamy feeling I’ve had all day stops. I wake up, basically, because he can’t see me again. “Look,” I tell him crisply, “it’s not such a good idea that we see each other again. My life is rather . . . complicated.”
“What’s complicated about it?” His voice is low and easy, like I have all the time in the world to explain.
“Well . . . things,” I say, wondering how to wrap this up as efficiently as possible. “I can’t really date.”
“Why not?” he asks, touching his hand to mine. Then he laughs and says lightly, “I know you’re not married—you’re waiting for the right one.”
“The right . . . pardon me?”
“Hope. She says you’d rather be single than be with the wrong guy.”
I reach up to brush my hair from my eyes, letting his hand slide off mine. “Oh, Hope. See, that’s why I can’t date. Hope. My mother. Too many people watching me, wanting me to be . . . well, who I’ve always been.”
He doesn’t say anything to break the silence. Nothing a polite person would say, like “I understand. See you at the club when you drop Hope off for her next tennis lesson.” He just waits for me to continue, and the quiet between us thickens.
“I have too many responsibilities.” I finally break the silence, annoyed that I have to justify myself to him. “For all intents and purposes, I’m the mother of a twelve-year-old. I’m also caretaker for my mother, who’s getting on in years. Seeing someone doesn’t fit into my lifestyle.”
“I’m not asking you to change your lifestyle,” he says, smiling. “I’m just asking you out on a date.” He nudges me. “C’mon. We’ll have fun.”
I smile back in spite of myself. It’s what I’ve liked about him all day today—his confidence, his optimism, his refusal to take things too seriously. He’s young; life hasn’t beaten those qualities out of him yet. Oh, if only I were in my twenties, unencumbered by my past and my child. I feel a stab of guilt—of course I don’t wish Hope had never come into my life. But at the corners of my mind, there’s a whispering “what if.” What if I were twenty-five right now and just meeting Sam? For a sweet second, I imagine it—I’m twelve years younger and I’m kissing him; I’m giddily free of so many of the things that define me today.
“Well?” he prods.
“Where would we go?” I ask, and I cringe because that’s got to be up there as one of the stupidest things I’ve ever said.
He throws up his hands and laughs. “I don’t know! Where do you want to go?”
To the moon, I think, closing my eyes for a second.
“Listen,” I finally say, my voice coming out in a froglike croak. I clear my throat and lose my nerve, just like that. I shake my head back and forth ruefully. It’s time to end this now.
Instead, my words come out in a rush. “I have to be in Boston next week. To do a piece for the magazine. You could come if you want. Not with me per se, but if you happened to be there, we could meet. See, I just can’t . . . it’s all too crazy here, and, well, maybe if we weren’t here, but there . . . ” My voice trails off, and I know I’m complicating things even more, but surely I’m allowed just one more date with him, one more blissful couple of hours where I’m living in my body instead of in my lonely head.
His eyes brighten, and he says, “Yeah, I could do that. That would be great. Why don’t you give me the date you’ll be in town and I’ll arrange my schedule to be there at the same time.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding. “Okay. My interview is next Friday. I . . . I can see you after it’s done.”
“Friday night, then?”
I nod. “But don’t . . . don’t tell anyone.” I feel my cheeks redden. “Not that it’s on the top of your list of things to talk about,” I add hastily, “but I just . . . let’s just keep it between us, okay? It’ll be . . . easier that way.”
He smiles at me, a sort of puzzled, “whatever you say” smile, and nods. Then he opens his backpack and pulls out his sketchbook and a pencil. He writes something down on a piece of paper and hands it to me. It’s one of the sketches he did today of a lavender plant, and there’s a number written at the bottom.
“That’s the number I’ll be at in Boston,” he says. “Call me when you get in on Friday, okay?”
I smile at the beauty of the sketch, each lavender sprig seemingly alive, and I shake my head and hand it back to him. “You’ll need this,” I say. I reach into my purse and dig out a small notebook. “Here. You can write it on—”
“No, take it,” he says, handing me back the lavender sketch. “I’ve got other sketches.” He smiles at me as he says, “I want you to have this one.”
D
an is serious about wanting to help me. You’d think he’d just forget about it, but no. Sometimes he rides his bike past my house, and if I’m outside, he asks me when we’re going to work on finding my dad. Usually I can’t talk long because I’m going off to tennis or something, but since I don’t have a lesson today, I’m not going to the club until later. So when Dan comes riding his bike by my house and I just happen to be sitting on the front steps, I give him a wave and walk down the driveway to meet him.
“Hey, Hope,” he says, straddling his bike and twirling a basketball on his finger. “I’m going to shoot some baskets at that school on the next block. You want to come and we can talk about Operation Padre?”
I squinch up my nose and put my hands on my hips. “What are you talking about?”
“You know,” he says. “Finding your dad.”
“Shh!” I glare at him and look over my shoulder. “It’s supposed to be a secret, remember?”
He drops his basketball, and I go into the street to grab it. “Here,” I say, throwing it back to him. “Hold on. I’ll go get my bike.” I jog up the driveway, hollering, “Be right back.”
I trot up the steps and into the kitchen, where Sara Lynn is sitting at the table typing on her laptop, her hair pulled off her face in a loose bun. “Sara Lynn,” I say, panting, “is it okay if I go bike riding with a friend? We’re just going up to Lakewood School.”
“Which friend?” she asks, still typing, her eyes riveted to the screen.
Shoot. I take a deep breath. “You don’t know him. He’s new. He’ll be going to my school in the fall.”
“He?” Sara Lynn’s eyebrows shoot up, and she stops typing. This stupid smile shows up at the corners of her mouth.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I scowl at her. “Yes. But don’t look that way. He’s just a friend.”
“How did you meet him?” she asks, cupping her face in her hands. I swear, she looks positively mushy about the whole thing, which is just so completely unlike her.
“At the library. He’s going into eighth grade, and his name’s Dan Quinn. He lives on Easton Street. And I told you to stop looking like that.” I tap my foot on the floor. “So can I go?”
“
May
I go,” she corrects. She glances at the clock and says, “Sure. Just be back in an hour.”
“Why?” I ask, spreading my arms out. “Why on earth do I need to be back in an hour?”
“Because I don’t want you running around town all day with some boy I haven’t even met. Why don’t you bring him in? Where is he now?”
I groan as I head for the door. “Fine, fine,” I say. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
I run out the door before she chases after me and reminds me to look both ways before I cross the street or something equally embarrassing. Then I grab my bike from the side yard and ride down the driveway to meet Dan.
We ride pretty fast up to the school. Well, he rides fast, and I just try to keep up with him. I guess he really wants to shoot baskets pretty badly, because right when we get to the playground, he drops his bike and starts dribbling on the court.
“So,” he says, shooting and missing, “I’ve been thinking, and I have a plan for finding your dad. It’s brilliant.”
I’m skeptical. “Brilliant?” I say. “We’ll see about that.” I’m sitting on the grass cross-legged, brushing away the occasional ant crawling up my leg.
“Yeah.” He shoots again and—ha!—misses. “What about Information?”
“What kind of information are you talking about?” Why is he talking in code today? “Operation Padre.” “Information.” Maybe it’s a guy thing.
“You know, the operator, 411. Information.”
“Oh!” I say, getting what he’s talking about. I pluck some grass and let it fall through my hands. “Well, duh. How am I supposed to call Information if I don’t know where he lives?”
“Well, I thought about that.” Bounce, bounce, bounce, shoot. “What about calling, like, every area code and asking if they have a number for him?”
“Do you know how many area codes there are?” I scoff. This is about the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.
“No. Do you?” He finally makes a basket and does that weird dance guys do when they do something good in sports. “Yah! He shoots! He scores!” he says, prancing around with his arms above his head.
I lie down in the grass. “Way too many for me to even think about calling.”
“We could split them up,” he says, dribbling between his legs. “You take some and I take some.”
“The calls will show up on our phone bills,” I point out. “It’ll never work.”
He sighs, grabs the ball, and sinks down on the grass beside me. “Jeez, you’re being so negative about this.”
I sit up, bringing my legs to my chest and squeezing my knees. “What do you mean, negative?”
“Well, you’re shooting down everything I say.”
“No, I’m shooting down your one completely stupid idea.” I turn my head away from him so I don’t have to look at his dumb face.
“Whatever,” he says. Then he shoves the ball at me. “Here. You want to play?”
“No,” I say, pushing it back at him. I’m not negative. I’m about as positive as a person can be without being an idiot. I mean, the world’s not the happy place people like Dumb Dan make it out to be. Hasn’t he ever heard of Anne Frank, for example? I get a lump in my throat just thinking about Anne and about how Dumb Dan doesn’t understand anything. I wish I hadn’t told him about wanting to find my father. I scramble up off the ground. “I gotta go,” I say, grabbing my bike and hopping on. “Sara Lynn wanted me back early.”
“Okay,” he says, and he gets up and starts shooting baskets again, like he doesn’t even care he hurt my feelings.
I gulp a few times because I’m not going to let some stupid boy with idiot ideas make me cry. No way. I pedal like crazy and say to myself, “Screw you, Dumb Dan.” That’s something Ruth says when she’s mad, something I’m not supposed to be saying. I stick up my chin and say it out loud, the whole expression Ruth says under her breath when she’s ticked off at someone: “Screw you and the horse you rode into town on.” Ha! Why don’t you just ride that horse right back to New Jersey or wherever the heck you’re from? See if I care.
I’m at the top of a hill now, and I take my feet off the pedals as I coast down. I’m practically flying, and I can just hear the fits Ruth and Sara Lynn would have if they saw me. “Careful, Hope! For goodness’ sake, be careful!”
I
haven’t been over to Jack’s in three days. I just don’t have the stomach for it. Literally. I’m queasy as all get-out in the mornings, plus there’s the added problem that I don’t know what to say to him. I mean, how do you bring something like this up?
Hi, I’m pregnant. I know you’re sixty and have grandchildren, but—guess what?—you’re going to have another kid!
Of course, there’s always the option not to have the baby. I can nip this problem in the bud tomorrow. Today, if I want to. But I don’t want to, goddammit! I’m acting like a fool, but every once in a while I get goose bumps of pleasure, thinking, There’s a baby inside me. A baby!
Stop it,
I tell myself.
You can’t have this baby.
But how can I not?
I plead with myself.
How can I not?
God! I just want time to stop so I can have a minute to think this through.
“Ruth, how about some more coffee?” It’s Ned Torkin from the insurance agency next door. Barking at me like a dog. There goes my minute, goddammit. No time to think! Not in my crazy life! How am I supposed to figure things out if nobody can give me one rotten little minute?
“Hold on a second,” I snap. I stomp behind the counter and grab the coffeepot, then march over to his booth and fill him up. “There, satisfied?”
“Whew! What’s the matter? You get up on the wrong side of the bed today?”
I rub my forehead. Jesus, now I’m yelling at the customers. “Sorry, Ned. I’m just preoccupied, I guess.”
“Everything all right?” He stirs some sugar into his cup and looks up at me, concerned.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “Just one of those moods, I guess.”
“Well, cheer up, kid. It can’t be that bad.”
I go through the motions of laughing as I walk behind the counter to replace the coffeepot.
Oh, yes, it can be that bad,
I say to him in my head.
You have no idea.
I’ve been trying to sneak out of work before Jack arrives at three. He surprises me today, though, and shows up at two. I’m clearing up after my last lunch customers when I look up and see him walking through the door, and my throat tightens. I quickly bring those dishes back to the kitchen, and there I stand, talking to Chet about anything at all I can think of.
“Jesus, it’s hot today, isn’t it?”
“Hotter back here at the grill than it is outside,” he replies, scraping off the grill.
“Don’t you think it’s hotter than normal, though? This summer, I mean. Maybe it’s that global warming trend, or whatever it’s called.”