Girls in Trouble: A Novel Read online

  Eva put her hand back on Sara’s belly and suddenly Sara’s belly seemed to roll toward her fingers. “Oh!” she said, astonished, lifting her hand, and the roll stopped. “The baby’s communicating with me!”

  “What’s the baby saying?” Sara asked.

  Eva grinned and looked at George. “That it’s never been so happy in its entire life.”

  Oh, but she was the one who was so happy. Every time Sara walked into the room, Eva’s baby was walking into the room, too. But it wasn’t just that. Sometimes it seemed to Eva that Sara was the only one besides herself who was so bonded to the idea of open adoption. The only other one who was really in it together with her. Everyone else got so cautious it made her crazy. As if they couldn’t celebrate with her until it was a done deal! She couldn’t stop talking to George about feeling the baby kick, but she knew her George, she knew he was happy mostly because she was happy, that his big love was her. Even Christine—her best friend!—was hesitant when Eva told her, when she tried to explain how sometimes, eerie as it was, she felt as if she and Sara were connected on a deeper level than anyone could imagine. How amazing it was that they could talk for hours. How wonderful that they truly liked and respected each other, that they considered each other family. “Sara is great,” she told Christine, “and the baby! The baby’s a real presence. It’s like we’re Pyramus and Thisbe,” she said excitedly. “I swear we’re talking! I touched one side of Sara’s belly and the baby came rolling toward me!”

  “Did you hear what you said? Pyramus and Thisbe. Sara’s the wall,” Christine said.

  “No, no, she’s not the wall! There’s no wall! We love Sara,” Eva said excitedly. “We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect situation, a more perfect girl.” She looked around the kitchen, imagining where she’d dry the baby bottles, where she’d put a high chair.

  And then, Eva had seen the baby being born, standing there, gripping Sara’s hand so tightly it was as if the experience were being transfused right into Eva’s veins. She had sweated along with Sara. When Sara screamed, Eva screamed and gripped her hand harder.

  And now Anne was here, right in this house. Now people were crowded around them, and now, glory be, they were finally beginning to leave.

  “You call if you need anything,” Nora said. “Remember, I’m right next door.”

  Christine hugged her. “You’re going to be a natural! You must be so thrilled!”

  “Of course she’s thrilled,” someone said. “Look at that smile.”

  “Let me do those dishes,” Nora said, gathering plates.

  “Don’t be silly, you’re here to visit, not to work,” Eva said.

  Nora put the plates down. “They say when you have a newborn, you should go to the doctor so he can give you tranquilizers!” She laughed.

  Eva’s smile began to feel pasted to her face.

  “Are you springing for a baby nurse?” Nora asked.

  “Nah. We want to do it all ourselves. And Sara will be here.”

  “Sara? The birth mom? You’re kidding, right?”

  You sound like Jack and Abby, Eva thought. “A baby needs all the love possible,” Eva said evenly. “And Sara’s a part of our family.”

  There was a silence. “How nice,” said Nora.

  Lynne Matson, who had six cats and lived down the block, touched Eva’s arm. “Listen, I know exactly what to get the baby. One of those red and black and white mobiles they say stimulates their mind. I just wanted to wait before I bought it. To make sure everything was going to be fine. Who needs to deal with returns, right?” Lynne said.

  Eva’s smile tightened. She bet any gift from Lynne would be covered with cat hair.

  “Best of luck to all of you,” Lynne said, and headed for the door, waving.

  When the house was empty again, Eva peered anxiously into Anne’s bassinet. She couldn’t help feeling that this baby was somehow on loan.

  “Let her snooze,” George said. “She’s had a busy day.”

  George and Eva began to clean up, collecting the dishes, putting the gifts on the table to open the next day, when they weren’t so tired. “I should have let Nora help,” she told George, and he shrugged. “Next time,” he told her.

  Eva stretched. Who could imagine that such a tiny little thing would generate so many diapers, so many wipes? Every five minutes it seemed she was reaching for a drool cloth. Every ten minutes she had to change the baby’s clothes—or her own because Anne had spit up on her. And every two hours, Anne ate, which meant scrubbing and boiling and drying bottles. Already Eva’s whole body ached.

  She wanted to be held. She heard George clattering in the kitchen, and she suddenly thought of all the times he used to surprise her, showing up at her school to take her to lunch and driving her to a fancy hotel instead. They’d make love the whole lunch hour, and she’d come back to school flushed and happy, her hair a little awry, and an hour later she’d be starving because she had never gotten around to eating. Their old life, before Anne, pulsed inside her. They hadn’t made love once since they had brought her home.

  She rubbed her neck, lifted up her hair as if to cool herself, and even though George was a room away, she felt a flare of desire so strong, it nearly toppled her over.

  Eva stopped straightening the living room. Everything could wait. She went to the bedroom and put on a new sheer black nightgown. She stood in front of the mirror, admiring it. One of her friends had told her that after she had had her son Reggie, she hadn’t wanted sex for a year. “Hemorrhoids! Sore, leaky breasts!” her friend had joked.

  Eva had a baby now, but she hadn’t given birth. Her hormones were intact, her desire spiking. She brushed her hair and daubed perfume on all her pulse points. She felt as if electric current were shimmering off her. She left her feet bare and padded to the kitchen to find George. The room was empty. Everything was cleared up. “George?” she said.

  She checked the kitchen, and then she saw Anne’s door was ajar. She touched the door with a fingertip, opening it more. Anne was sleeping, her rosy little mouth an O. George was in the rocker, half dozing, too.

  “Hey,” he said with a sleepy smile. He touched her nightgown. “Look at you.”

  She smiled back at him. He hinged up on his elbows and then got up. She trailed two fingers up along his spine, so he turned and draped his arm about her. She didn’t know what it was about him—but all she had to do was look at him and she wanted him. He led her to their room, falling with her onto the bed. She touched the constellation of freckles along his shoulder. He cupped her face in his hands. He pulled off her nightgown, his shirt, his pants, letting them all puddle to the floor. He shut his eyes. He was just about to kiss her when Anne suddenly cried, a newborn mewl that made Eva think of one of Lynne’s cats, and then the moment died. Anne’s cries grew louder, more frantic, and they both bolted up, grabbing their robes, their slippers kicked under the bed, and rushed to tend her.

  “I’ll get the bottle,” George said, and then Eva lifted Anne up and sat in the rocker with her. Anne’s eyes squinched tightly shut, her mouth opened like a drawstring purse. There was that mewl again.

  “Nineteen eighty-seven. A very good year,” George said, coming into the room, presenting the bottle. Latching on, Anne sucked greedily, her small legs kicking against Eva’s.

  “Who’s a hungry girl?” George said.

  Anne fell asleep eating, and Eva gently put her back in the crib.

  Eva went into the bathroom to wash her hands, to splash cool water on her face. She came into the nursery and there, in the rocker, was George, one hand slung on the crib, the other in his lap, his eyes rolling with dreams, sleeping.

  “Come back to bed,” she whispered. His lids fluttered and opened. He stood heavily, and slung one arm about her shoulder and then yawned. She got him into their bed, and as soon as his head hit the pillow, he was snoring faintly. Eva took George’s hand in hers. I’m so lucky, she thought. She had George, and Anne. She was looking forward to seeing S
ara. And then she shut her eyes, and she slept, too.

  For Eva, falling in love with the baby was almost like falling in love with a mate. There was the first stage, that giddy infatuation and euphoria, where everything Anne did was delightful and incredible. Look at how she grabbed Eva’s finger and held on fast! Look how she was trying to lift her head just so she could follow Eva’s every move! It killed Eva with pleasure, it made her want to move around the room, taking extra steps just so she could see the baby’s response. Eva walked out of Anne’s room so the baby could nap, and two seconds later, she went back in. Leaning over the crib, she inhaled Anne’s scent: powder and roses. She touched the silky skin, the bunny toes, and then she crept from the room.

  But then there were the day-to-day adjustments to this new presence, and the mountains of diaper changes and spit-ups didn’t make it any easier. Eva boiled bottles in the kitchen and then ran downstairs to throw in laundry and got back upstairs just in time to put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher. She was just about to go downstairs and put the clothes in the dryer when Anne woke up, and the mewling cry that had seemed so impossibly delicious a week before now made Eva shut her eyes. She grabbed a bottle from the fridge and ran it under the hot water to warm it. Anne’s cries went up a decibel.

  “Here’s Mommy,” she said, entering Anne’s room. Anne’s face was scrunched tight as a purse. Her hands balled into angry fists, and when Eva picked her up, Anne’s whole body stiffened, as if it were Eva’s fault that Anne had to wait. She fed her, and then lifted her up to change her. “There, a nice clean diaper,” Eva said, and then, just as she was about to fasten the tabs, Anne peed over the diaper.

  “God!” Eva breathed, and Anne waggled her arms and legs. “Stay still,” Eva ordered. Her temper frayed. Grabbing for another diaper, she heard the jangle of the phone in the other room. It might be school and she needed to talk to them, to ask about her class for next year. It might be George. She picked Anne up to go get the phone, and it abruptly stopped ringing. How did anyone ever have time to do anything? She thought of the mothers at the preschool, how the nonworking mothers were just as harried as the working ones, how sometimes the only difference was that the working mothers were better dressed, and that instead of a sloppy pony-tail, they had a really good haircut.

  She fastened Anne’s diaper and Anne suddenly yawned. “Sleepy again?” Eva said. She felt guilty. She shouldn’t have snapped. Anne was just a baby, what was the matter with her? She put Anne back in her crib and went to finish the laundry. She boiled bottles, and then went to check on Anne, who was awake in her crib, not making a sound.

  Anne was now so quiet, it was eerie. Eva picked her up and made parabolas on her little back. “Sleeping?” Eva asked, and started to set Anne down in the crib, and as soon as she did, Anne’s eyes flew wide open. “Don’t have anything to say?” Eva whispered. She watched the tiny chest rise and fall and rise up again.

  “A quiet baby! Count yourself lucky!” Christine advised when Eva called to give her the daily report. “You can work. You can read.”

  “Of course I can,” Eva agreed, starting to feel a little better. When she got off the phone, she decided to work on her lesson plans for the next year. She set Anne in the bassinet beside the table and she started fiddling with ideas. But Anne was so silent, that instead of helping Eva to concentrate, it took her focus away. “Hey,” Eva said, and Anne gazed up at her with enormous eyes. “What are you thinking?” Eva asked. Anne yawned, her lids fluttered, and then Eva bounded up and turned on the radio. She had heard music was good for babies, that it helped them with their speech, and she, for one, couldn’t wait for Anne to start talking. She leaned over to Anne. “So what do you think, should we go to the park, see some people?” Eva asked. “Are you getting a little stir-crazy, like me?” She suddenly thought of Sara and missed her; it’d be wonderful to have her company in the house again, her help. Anne studied her toes, ignoring Eva. She got Anne’s jacket, she filled some bottles. Already, thinking about getting out, she felt a little lighter, and then as soon as she reached to put the jacket on Anne, she heard a pattering against the window, and when she looked up, she saw the rain, and the heaviness came back.

  That night, Anne woke them at three, an hour before her normal feeding. Eva turned to George, who was sleeping so soundly an atom bomb wouldn’t have woken him. “George,” she said, shaking his shoulders, but he still slept, and she swung her legs over the bed to go and get the bottle.

  She held the baby and fed her, humming something under her throat. Anne sucked more greedily, her eyes squinched shut. Anne drained the bottle and Eva set it down, standing, the baby in her arms. A slant of moon came in through the blinds. Eva looked down at Anne and was startled to see the baby watching her with grave slate eyes. “What?” Eva whispered. “Tell me.” And then Anne put her small baby hand on the side of Eva’s face, like a conversation, and something fluttered through Eva’s stomach, and no matter how late it was, and how tired she was, she stayed right where she was, swaying the baby in her arms, as if Anne might be a dream that would disappear in the cool light of morning.

  chapter

  four

  It was morning, twelve days since she had given birth, and the day Sara was due to go to Eva and George’s. She was trying to stay in bed until after her parents left. Already, she had been up since five, grabbing for her summer reading, The Mill on the Floss, trying to get lost in it the way she usually was, but today it wasn’t working. Maggie Tulliver whispered at her, but she couldn’t hear. She missed the baby too much. She missed George and Eva, and even though every day she had called, first from the hospital and then from home, it wasn’t the same. “Just have to change Anne,” Eva said, her voice rushing. “Just have to give the baby a bath. I’ll call as soon as I can,” George promised.

  She could smell her mother’s coffee, the slightly burnt toast her father loved and Abby always scraped. She could hear her father’s voice, but not what he was saying.

  Sara couldn’t stay in bed anymore. Leaping up, she grabbed her blue robe and headed for the bathroom, locking the door. She turned the water on full force, as hot as it would go. The mirrors had to be fogged over before she’d undress. She couldn’t bear to look at her belly, at the stretch marks like white webs. Her breasts shrunk down to nothing.

  She stepped into the shower. The hot water hit her like a punishment. She grabbed the soap and washed, staring up at the tiles, the door, anywhere but her body. Danny never could stop looking. He used to say her skin reminded him of apricots, that her being so sleek, so small-boned, was sexier than the lushest model. He used to wrap her hair around his hand like a skein of yarn, and then he’d draw her gently against him. She sighed just as he drew a breath in. “I inhale, you exhale,” he said.

  What would he think now if he saw her body? She tilted her head toward the water, so it coursed down her like rivers. What would he think now if he saw Anne? Would he say, “I made a terrible mistake,” the same way she sometimes did? Even now, she still couldn’t help harboring hope that Danny would come back. He still had to sign papers saying he knew there would be a hearing giving up his rights, which wouldn’t be until six months from now. A lot could happen in six months, couldn’t it? He could still find her.

  Or she could find him if she only knew how.

  She had thought about that the day George and Eva had taken Anne home from the hospital. She had been holding the baby tight in her arms. The baby seemed tinier than anything she could have imagined. Chubby legs folded in like commas. The baby’s face didn’t look anything like Danny’s, but Anne was the only part of Danny that was still hers. The moment Eva lifted the baby away from her, the whole room got darker. It didn’t matter what she had felt before, or promised, it all seemed like a terrible mistake and Sara suddenly wanted time to stop.

  “Wait!” she cried, and Eva smiled, one hand protectively over the baby’s head. “We’ll see you soon,” George promised. Stay with me, she wanted to tell
them. Don’t go. And then they had left and Sara had lain in the white hospital bed, staring at the walls, her arms suddenly so empty she couldn’t imagine anything could ever fill them.

  Sara bent to the spigots, making the water hotter. Then she sat down in the tub, the spray pouring over her, and she thought about the baby, and about Danny.

  Danny Slade.

  Sara had met Danny over a year ago, a bright sunny May day when she was fifteen. Like everyone else, she had spring fever. All that week Sara hadn’t been able to concentrate. She meant to go to the library, and instead found herself at a shopping mall, drawn to all the filmy dresses, the blouses made of cheap, shiny material. She had spent days trying to finish a paper at home, but the scent of the roses came in from the open window and drove her crazy, and when she got up and shut her window, their perfume grew even more powerful. It was more than spring fever, she told herself. This was possession.

  She was in the science lab, measuring chemicals into a test tube for a project she was doing. She was the only one in the lab besides the science teacher, a middle-aged woman who insisted all the students call her Dr. Kubin, and who wore a white lab coat every day as if any moment she might be called to perform surgery. Dr. Kubin was saying something to Sara, but Sara felt drugged from the weather, and Dr. Kubin’s voice seemed muffled.

  “Should I ask you a third time?” Dr. Kubin snapped.

  “Ask me what?”

  Dr. Kubin sighed. “Again, Sara? Those test tubes aren’t clean.” Dr. Kubin tapped one of the tubes, and Sara shut her eyes until there was a loud, sudden crash.

  Sara’s eyes flew open. Her books were now on the floor, and there was Dr. Kubin, her hands on her hips. “Now, do I have your attention?” Dr. Kubin said acidly.

  “I’m sorry—” Sara bent to retrieve the books, but Dr. Kubin kicked them out of her way with the toe of her pump. “Get out of my lab,” she said.

  Sara needed to finish this project. It was the kind of thing that would be a real plus on her resume. And it was her project, her baby.