Sleeping Tigers (13 page)
Now I opened the curtains across the garden doors and sat in it, rocking Paris slowly as the sun’s warmth filled the room. When the baby was asleep at last, her body heavy against mine, I got up and slipped into bed with her, pulling the quilt high around both of us.
I
woke with a start when I felt something pressing against my face. Paris had wriggled up against me so that her body was curled like a puppy’s on the pillow, her hot, rounded back against my nose. Outside,
I could see the papery red bougainvillea blossoms gleaming and plastic looking against the bright white fence. There was no trace of morning fog. I guessed that it must be well after noon. I shifted my weight away from the baby an inch at a time, tugging my hair free of Paris’s hand as I lifted my head off the pillow.
I was terrified of waking her and not knowing what to do next. Gradually, though, I managed to sneak out of bed. I pulled the blanket up to cover her and then stood there, breathing in the baby’s presence.
In sleep, Paris’s face was pink and relaxed. Her sparse hair was tinged gold in the morning sunlight. She looked more like a baby and less like a monkey. She was almost pretty, really. I could see Nadine in her high, flat cheekbones and wide mouth, but my brother and I were there too, in her arched brow, long nose, and sharp chin. Paris’s fingers were slightly curled, the nails like tiny iridescent seashells. I had to resist the impulse to pick her up and hold her again.
But this whole situation was impossible! What was I going to do with a baby? In theory, helping Cam with his daughter’s care had seemed like the most logical thing in the world last night, while I was sounding off to Karin like Mother Theresa. In reality, it was a terrifying prospect. In eight short weeks I’d be back in Massachusetts, working full-time. What would I do with a baby?
No need to dwell on that yet. Cam probably didn’t even know that Nadine was gone. I’d tell him, and he would have to decide Paris’s future. She was his child, after all.
I propped the pillows around Paris to keep her from rolling off the bed, then tiptoed across the room and dressed. I opened the front door and scanned the steps and sidewalk. Had I missed some magical clue to Paris’s appearance? Had Nadine left anything else, like a scrap of paper with a forwarding address or cell phone number?
As I stood there with my bare feet going numb on the cold cement, I heard the front door of my building open and slam shut again. I trotted up the short walk from the side of the house, where my door was located, to the front sidewalk, where Louise was regally descending the steps in her bright red cloak.
When I greeted her, my landlady stared at me with unblinking doll’s eyes. “What are you doing out here?” she asked. “Waiting for a bus?”
“Just checking the weather. Chilly, huh? But it looks like another nice day.” I don’t know what prompted me to lie. Louise could hardly evict me for having a child in the apartment, even a screeching one, for just one night.
Louise shrugged, and the folds of the cloak rustled around her massive body. “It’s always a nice day here. But that’s the whole point of California, isn’t it?”
“Looks like you’re ready for any weather opportunity.” I gestured at her layers of red and gray.
“I hope to be,” she replied with dignity.
Where was Louise off to now, in that opera diva rig? This was San Francisco. Anything was possible. “Off to work?” I ventured.
She swiveled her head, owl-like. “Work? I’m going to church!”
Who went to church on a weekday afternoon? And in a red cloak? But I nodded as if this made perfect sense. “Of course. Sorry. Anyway, I was just wondering if you heard any strange noises last night.”
“What kind of noises?” In their layers of fat, Louise’s eyes were as dark as currants sunk in pastry.
“Like a cat, maybe?”
“Not so I noticed. Of course, there all kinds of noises in a city,” Louise said. “Cars, cats, sirens, dogs, birds. People talking. People laughing. People we’ll never meet, living lives we’ll never know.”
Amen to that
, I thought.
Louise was gliding away, moving so smoothly down the sidewalk that I imagined roller skates under that cloak. “Things happen in cities,” she murmured. “Every day,” she added with a wave.
Things happen. Every day! Huh. My new mantra.
Inside, Paris was still sleeping peacefully in her nest of pillows on the bed, one impossibly skinny little arm showing above the blankets. Seeing her pale, smooth skin reminded me that she had nothing clean to wear. I could buy her an outfit, but what would she wear to go shopping?
Somewhere in this mess I had a sewing kit. I hadn’t planned on bringing it to San Francisco, but Mom had thrust it into my hands at the last minute.
“You never know when you’ll go missing a button,” she’d explained, trying to look at the flowered enamel box and not at me as we stood in the driveway of her house, saying goodbye after my last day of teaching in June.
Both of us had pretended not to notice that Mom’s eyes were red because she had cried all through breakfast, standing at the stove with her back to me, frying bacon I didn’t want to eat.
“There’s nothing worse than needing a pair of scissors and not having any,” Mom had sniffed, handing me the sewing kit as I packed the car.
My mother had devoted the spare hours of her life to creating things for other people out of yarn, fabric, needles, and thread. I had never so much as darned a sock. But I brought the enameled sewing box across the country anyway, feeling comforted because it was almost as if some part of Mom had joined me.
Now I dug the kit out of the rubble in my closet. Everything was just as I remembered: the spools of colored thread arranged in a rainbow of possibilities, the velvet packets of silver needles, the strawberry wrist pincushion leaking sawdust.
I rummaged in the closet again, this time for my softest t-shirt, an ancient beach coverup with magenta stars on a white background. I found it tangled on one of the hangers and laid it on the floor.
Finally, I dug Paris’s t-shirt out of the trash, spread it out on top of mine, and began cutting the fabric, feeling like a pioneer woman two steps ahead of the coyotes.
Just before two o’clock, Paris and I stood outside Karin’s building and rang the buzzer to her apartment. Karin lifted the screen of one front window and hung her head down, her face glowing pink in the tangle of dark hair falling like a shawl over her bare shoulders.
“What?” she hollered, then spotted us standing on the steps below. “Oh, it’s you. I was hoping it was Wally.”
“You were? Why? Did you two make up?”
“No. I just wanted him to know that he’s locked out forever.”
“Doesn’t he have a key?”
“I’ve always got spare locks around. And I’m pretty handy with a drill.” Her eyes widened as Karin fully comprehended the fact that I was carrying a baby. “Cam’s, I presume?”
“So it would seem,” I said.
“Okay. Hang on and I’ll buzz you.”
I shifted Paris to my other hip and marveled at Karin’s calm. She’d greeted me as if it were perfectly normal for me to show up on her doorstep with a baby.
Nothing was normal about this. Carrying Paris around this morning had made me feel like an actress in a play–an actress who keeps fumbling with the props. Yet, having a baby in tow did have its up side: I’d apparently earned an honorary membership in some sort of secret Mothers Club. I’d lived in this neighborhood for almost two weeks, yet I hadn’t met a single person. Everyone who passed typically shifted their eyes away from me in that typical city survival mode.
Today, however, as I walked to Karin’s with Paris on my hip, nearly every person said hello. Two women stopped to compliment Paris’s halo of yellow hair, the dress I’d made for her (crooked but cute), and her two-toothed grin. An older man had even offered to let Paris pat his dog, a waddling Corgi that looked like a pot-bellied pig.
It was unnerving to be so suddenly approachable. I didn’t know whether people were talking to me because I now seemed safe, or whether babies just brought out the best in people. I was bone tired, though, after carrying Paris just four blocks. I put the baby down in Karin’s front hall and let her climb the stairs on her own.
Even going uphill like this, Paris managed to crawl with her tail end pointed up like a dirt-scratching hen’s. She grunted as she conquered each step.
By the time we reached the landing, Karin was standing there with her arms folded. She had thrown on a shimmering gold slip, tucked her feet into fuzzy pink mules, and twisted her black hair up with red chop sticks.
“You look fabulous,” I told her.
“Thanks. I have to look good since I feel like crap. I can’t stand it that Wally hasn’t called to beg me to take him back. Life is so boring. Thank God I have you and your little friend to distract me,” she added, watching the baby’s steady progress.
“Maybe it’s good to be bored,” I suggested. “Beats a crisis.”
“Being bored
is
a crisis at our age, honey.” Karin stepped back and Paris scuttled inside the apartment like a crab.
“Then my life is as serene as can be.”
“She looks just like you,” Karin said. We both watched the baby race-crawl toward the coffee table, her makeshift dress up around her waist. “She’s definitely got Cam’s go-for-it personality, though.” She squatted down to get a better look at Paris. To my amazement, Paris shrieked and crawled over to my leg, where she attached herself like an ankle weight.
I picked the baby up and cuddled her. “Wow. Did they teach you that bedside manner in nursing school?” From the safety of my embrace, Paris grinned at Karin and wound one hand in my hair.
“This always happens. That’s why I like my patients best when they’re fast asleep,” Karin said softly, passing one hand in front of her face to play peek-a-boo until Paris grinned at her.
Karin’s kitchen was in its usual state of chaos. While Karin somehow made tea amid the rubble, I told her about the baby being left on my doorstep. Paris sat on the floor playing with a couple of pots and a wooden spoon. The baby alternately gummed on the spoon and used it to bang on the pans.
“What’s your game plan?” Karin shouted over the noise.
“I have to get hold of Cam, obviously. I called him twice before leaving my apartment, but he’s not picking up and I didn’t want to spook him by leaving a message. I’m hoping Cam can help me track down Nadine, see if she’s sure about giving up the baby. Even if she has already left, how hard could it be to track her down? There’s a finite number of orchards in Oregon, right? I could just drive up there.”
Karin looked skeptical. “Orchards, maybe. Workers, no. Those pickers come and go, sometimes daily, and get paid under the table. Nadine would be just another faceless pair of hands. You’ll never find her.” She nodded towards Paris. “Anyway, why the hurry?”
“What do you mean?”
Paris crawled over to my feet and plopped down on her rear, sucking her fist with the slurping sound of someone walking in mud. I lay my hand gently on her silky head.
“You know the baby’s better off with you,” Karin said, “even if it’s only for a little while. She can get her immunizations up to date and beef up a little before she hits the road with her crazy mother or moves into that Berkeley flophouse with your brother. I bet this kid’s never even seen a pediatrician. She’s how old?”
“I’m not sure. Seven months, maybe?”
Karin shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Babies all seem like puppies to me until they’re upright. She looks little for seven months, but who knows if that’s because she’s malnourished, or if it’s because her mom sniffed, shot, and gobbled up all those fun drugs during pregnancy?”
My throat tightened. I didn’t want to find out something was wrong with Paris. “Well, whatever I do, I’ve got to find Cam first. You can see by looking at her that he’s the father, right?”
“Oh yeah,” Karin said. “He might as well have tattooed his name on that kid.”
As I continued to stroke the baby’s hair, I felt her head lean heavily against my leg. “Maybe having to face up to parenthood will help Cam decide to turn his life around. He was using drugs, but he’s clean now.”
“What kind of drugs?”
Mentally, I slapped myself. I hadn’t even asked him. “Pot, I assume, since that was always his self-destructive tool of choice. I’m betting he’ll stay off it if he’s got a kid around, though.”
Karin gave me a hard look. “Yeah? How likely is that?”