Spinning (19 page)

Spring laughed.

“There. You didn’t like that the first time?”

“I wanted to see it again.”

“That’s what I thought.” I kissed her on the forehead and turned off the lamp on the night stand. “Night, Spring.”

“Night.”

As usual, I closed the door most of the way, leaving only a crack of light to enter Spring’s room and waited. I convinced myself that this wasn’t eavesdropping because I needed to know what Spring was thinking, so I could help her. She spoke to Diane nightly, but usually in the dark. Tonight, I heard the night stand light click.

“Mom, it didn’t look like a pra-rie dog. I miss you.”

I heard her pick up Diane’s picture then get out of bed and walk to the large decorative pillow that usually sat on her bed and now rested on the floor.

“You can have the bed,” she said. “Yeah, Mommy?”

Since Diane had died, Spring had become more animated in the imagined discussions with her mother. Although I hadn’t paid much attention when Diane was around, it seemed her level of imagination had grown along with her language skills.

“Yeah, I like D. Sometimes I wish he had Pop-Tarts like at daycare.” She folded her arms and shrugged. “And I don’t like squi… squid.”

I wanted to interrupt and tell Diane that I had never made Spring try calamari and that I had offered it to her on only one occasion. Instead, I continued to listen intently.

“That’s Billie. Yeah, I like her. Yeah.” She scrunched into a ball with her arms wrapped around her knees. “Yeah, grape juice. Okay, night.”

Spring put the picture back on her night stand, turned off the light and returned to the pillow. Later, when she had fallen asleep, I would put her in her bed.

As I walked out to the living room, I heard a thump on the door. And then there were two thumps… three thumps. It was late for a school night.

“Hey.” It was Billie.

“Hey.”

“I need to crash,” she said. She slipped past me and into the living room.

“What happened?”

“Nothing. I was just in the neighborhood.”

“Which is a short cab ride from your neighborhood.”

“Don’t trifle. I brought Spring some DVDs.” She held out her hand.

“Thanks. Make yourself…”

“A drink? What are you having?”

“Whatever you’re having.”

“Cool. Thanks, D-Man.”

I watched Billie strut to the kitchen. I could tell she was buzzed.

“Wine?”

“Sure.”

When Billie gave me my glass, she touched my hand. “Give me a hug,” she said. She pressed close and kissed me on the cheek. I just stood there, not knowing what to do. We had always been physical with each other, ever since we were extremely physical with each other. But in this setting in this life the contact felt different to me. Perhaps I was feeling a little starved. I was certainly feeling more than a little needy.

“Billie?”

She stayed quiet, then I felt her weight shift into my arms.

“Billie?” She had passed out. I managed to put down both of our wine glasses, lifted her up, carried her to the couch and sat next to her.

I picked Billie up and carried her to my bed where she could sleep things off. In the morning, I would get her up in plenty of time to get home and then to the office. Since
she had been “stomping out my fires,” that was the least I could do.

I took her shoes off and this must have been a trigger of some sort, because she began to pull off her top. As it came over her head, she rested with an arm caught in the sleeve. With a second effort, she pulled it off and dropped the shirt to the floor. She was wearing the sexiest bra I had ever seen. It was made of pink lace and black trim. I wasn’t staring - well, I
was
staring, but it was unintentional. She had taken me by surprise. Her red hair spilled over my pillows, her arms spread wide. She rubbed her feet together. I decided to leave the stockings alone and cover her with a blanket…fast.

“D-Man,” she whispered, “dance with me…”

“Billie, we can’t dance now. There’s no music.”

“Not dance dance…
dance
.”

A few months ago, maybe. But not tonight.
“Go to sleep,” I said.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

Tucking Billie in, I could smell her perfume. I kissed her on the forehead and closed the door to my room.

Returning to the couch, I looked at the urn. “I think this was supposed to be a lot easier,” I said.

I laid down on the couch with the blanket Diane liked to cuddle with. It was too short for me. If it covered my toes, my shoulder was exposed. If I covered my shoulder, I couldn’t scrunch into a small enough ball without getting leg cramps. So, I rolled onto my back and tried to forget about it.

Sometime during the night, as I battled the blanket from shoulders to toes, I thought I felt a kiss on my eyelids. When I got up in the morning, Billie was gone.

During the night, I’d had yet another dream about Diane’s suitcase. The next morning, I decided to check it out again, dumping its contents onto my bed. Inside, there was a shirt, a hat, a photo, a deck of cards no secret compartment and no new information. I picked up the broken thermos and tossed it into the suitcase. It bounced off and roll-clanked across the floor to the door where Spring stood. She picked it up and shook it.

“It’s broken,” I said.

“The key is broken?”

“Key?”

“Mommy had a key in there.”

I opened the thermos. The clanking I had heard since finding the thing was from a key partially wrapped in a sock.

“That one,” Spring said, pointing.

There were no markings on the key to identify what it went to; just the number
4642
. It obviously didn’t fit a house or car. It looked like an aluminum skeleton key and I could bend it if I wanted, but thought best not to.

This wasn’t a hidden drawer, but it was certainly more than I had yesterday not that I had any idea what to do with it.

A couple of days later, I went back to work. I simply couldn’t stay at home anymore. I believe it’s a common feeling for people to think their worth comes from their job, and unfortunately, it did for me at least until I made enough money for that fabulous early retirement. Now, I just wanted back in before I was pushed out for good. I just wanted to return to normal without Billie “stomping on my fires.” And I thought it would be good for Spring to get back to her routine again.

I’d tried Stephanie Eckleburg’s approach to healing, but after a few weeks, we needed love
and
routine for both of us. You can only be stuck in neutral for so long, especially when you’re in the middle of a busy intersection. I truly didn’t think that either of us would get any further along, if we didn’t get back to some semblance of a normal life.

We had the beginnings of a home routine that involved my getting up and Spring trailing close behind wearing her inside-out robe. At Spring’s age, it didn’t matter which way she wore her robe and frequently, she wore it this way. It was cute. So, we would sit in our robes, I would drink coffee and Spring her juice. We had even expanded our breakfast repertoire to include raspberry Pop-Tarts. Despite the fat grams and other nutritional devils, I had forgotten how tasty they were. Diane would have preferred granola, or just about anything else.

Dressing Spring still involved some challenges. If she had decided to wear anything more elaborate than jeans and a shirt, I sometimes became confused trying to mix and match hair accessories to outfits. I tried to let her pick out most of her clothes and coach her into attending to most of her own personal hygiene, like brushing her hair, which we now brushed only after breakfast.

We were doing pretty well together. She’d had a few tantrums, but after reading up on them, I realized that every kid had them. I had spent my career being proactive in preventing problems. With Spring, I had to learn to endure them.

When I dropped Spring off at daycare on her first day back, I said hi to Stephanie and Mr. Barnes. He said crossing through the daycare was a shortcut into the building, but I think he had a thing for Mrs. Eckleburg. He smiled at me and said hi to Spring. He seemed to genuinely like kids, though I knew he didn’t have any of his own, probably deciding that he couldn’t be a business scion and a real dad. As I left to go to the office, that logic suddenly made all kinds of sense to me.

Sitting at my desk after being gone for a couple of weeks, I was shocked at how clean it was. Billie had stomped all the work right out of my office and had left me with little to start with.

“Dylan,” Mr. Mason said, entering my office. “It hasn’t been a month. I didn’t expect to see you again until after Thanksgiving.”

“Thanks, but I couldn’t do it. I wanted to get back to the office and get Spring into her normal routine again.”

“How is she?”

“Here, I brought a new picture of her.”

She had a big smile on her face. She was pretty adorable when she wasn’t screaming.

“She looks good, Dylan. I bet you’re doing a nice job with her. Without you, there’s no telling where she’d be now. That goddamned Family Services would have her in with the Mansons by now, I imagine… and with ten other kids.”

“Probably.”

“Glad to have you in the fold again. Get with Billie on the details first thing. Now that you’re back, let’s check on how things are lining up for the new year.” He stood to leave. “You look good, Dylan. I was worried about you, but you seem like you’re okay.”

As Mr. Mason left, he was almost mowed down by three women coming to welcome me. I had flirted with each of them before meeting Diane, but it had been a while. They were happy to have me in the office again and if I “needed help with the girl,” they’d be glad to come by.

Then Laurel stuck her head in. “Hi, Dylan.”

“Laurel,” I said. She was all cleavage and miniskirt. “I’ve been thinking about you. I just found a present from you. It wound up in a towel.” Spring had somehow found Laurel’s panties in our latest load of laundry. I have no idea how they got into the laundry basket after all this time. That was a lifetime ago.

“Oh. Maybe I can come by and get them one of these nights, or you could bring them to work…in a brown paper bag.”

If Laurel came by, it meant she’d be after the next bottle of wine on the list and perhaps, if I was lucky, I’d have new presents to find before Spring did. Although, I wasn’t sure whether I could explain another thong or any other anonymous garment.

“That would be nice,” I said. My mouth started up with its old tricks of its own accord.
Maybe my mouth’s right,
I thought.
Maybe I do need to get with Laurel again? Nothing excessive, perhaps dinner just to get back into my routine.

“When?”

Laurel was just as aggressive as she had been on our first night.

“Tomorrow night?” I said. It dawned on me that I couldn’t simply do this. “Wait, before you say yes or no, let me check on a sitter first.”

“You check. If you can get one, we’re on for tomorrow.” Laurel’s blond hair fell across her cheek.

“Deal.” I smiled and she left, narrowly missing Billie as she entered. I could hear them exchanging small talk in the hall.

“I heard you were here. What was that all about?” Billie said, closing my door and nodding in the direction that Laurel had left.

“Nothing, why?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Yeah, I know. Mason said we should go over the account stuff.”

“No. I need to talk about
things
.”

“Things?”

“Yeah.” She tilted her head the way she always did when she was getting serious. “Sorry I haven’t called the last couple of days. I wanted to do this in person, but then I couldn’t get myself over to your place.”

This could not be good. Billie never offered a preamble.