“So she’ll get better?”
How am I supposed to answer that? I don’t dare promise she will, but I don’t want to upset Lily any more than necessary. “The doctors think so. They’re doing everything they can to give her the best chance of recovery.”
“What’s a ‘chance of ’covery’?”
Oh, the things that a three-year-old has yet to learn! I hate that these lessons have come so early in Lily’s life. “It means she’ll probably get well, but it’s not definite.”
“What’s ‘def’nite’?”
Nothing but death and taxes. Jeez, what’s wrong with my brain? It’s been a long, long day. “‘Definite’ means something we know for sure. Like how I love you and always will.”
“Will you take care of me now?”
Tears gather in my eyes. “Yes, sweetie. I’ll do my very best to take very, very good care of you.”
Her eyes brighten. “So I get to live with you?”
“Yes, honey.”
“Forever an’ always?”
“Well, we’ll have to wait and see how thing go with Miss Margaret, but you’ll be with me at least through the summer.”
“Yay!” Alicia cheers. Lily cheers with her.
“We don’t want to wake the baby,” Caroline says, putting her finger to her mouth. “Lily, you’d better go gather up your things to go home. Alicia, please help her.”
I stand up as they scamper off.
“Kids this age are totally focused on the moment,” Caroline says apologetically. “Please don’t think they don’t care about Margaret.”
“I don’t. Lily was relieved her Grams isn’t dead, and relief translates into happy.”
“That’s it, exactly,” Caroline says.
I only wish my reactions were as simple. I’m exhausted and overwhelmed by everything I’m thinking and feeling. How can so many emotions—sadness about Margaret’s health, joy about my baby, grief about Brooke, delight to have custody of Lily, and terror about Zack’s sudden presence in my life—coexist in one person at the same time?
—
THIRTY MINUTES LATER,I’ve tucked Lily into bed in my guest bedroom and fallen into a restless doze in my own. I don’t think I fully sleep; my dreams are a weird mishmash of memories that slide back and forth in time and keep me tossing and turning. I dream of Brooke. I dream of my brother, who is ten years older than me and as distant as a total stranger. I dream of my father’s second wife and my mother’s third husband. I dream of my childhood home in the Lakeside area of New Orleans.
I dream of my eighth birthday—or do I just remember it? It’s as if the years roll back and I’m living it again.
I’m waiting in the front yard early on a Saturday afternoon, because Daddy said we’d go to the zoo when he gets home. There’s a chocolate cake in the kitchen from Schwegmann’s grocery for later. Mommy didn’t bake it; she says baking’s a waste of time and that store-bought birthday cakes are better, anyway. I wanted to have a party, but Mommy says a roomful of children would workon her nerves and make a big mess, and wouldn’t it be better to spend the afternoon at the zoo with her and Daddy?
I’m really excited. I can’t remember the last time we all went someplace together, and I love the zoo. I wait and I wait, and the sun sinks lower in the sky. I go inside and ask Mommy why Daddy’s taking so long. Mommy’s opened a bottle of wine, and she’s drinking it from a big plastic cup as she talks on the phone. I can tell she’s talking to her friend Michelle because she’s using her loud laugh and bad language. She puts her hand over the receiver and arches an annoyed eyebrow at me. She says Daddy probably went to the racetrack to spend all our money and get drunk. I hear the faint braying of Michelle’s laugh through the receiver.
It doesn’t sound to me like Mommy’s joking, but Michelle’s laughter makes me hope she is. I go back outside and wait some more. It’s starting to get dark and cold, and Daddy still hasn’t come. My chest feels all hollow. I go back inside the house.
Mommy’s still on the phone. She says Daddy’s not going to show up and that I’m creating a spectacle for the neighbors, mooning around on the porch all woebegone. She says Daddy’s unreliable and that I should know better than to count on him. She says I should put a frozen dinner in the microwave if I’m hungry.
I don’t have any appetite. When Mommy gets off the phone, she goes in her bathroom and puts on lots of makeup, like she does when she’s getting ready to go out to clubs with her lady friends. She sometimes goes out and doesn’t come home until really late. The next morning she reeks of wine and cigarette smoke, and her eyes are all rimmed with mascara because she didn’t wash it off before she went to bed.
Mommy comes out of her bedroom smelling of perfume and wearing a dress that Daddy said is too low-cut. She looks really pretty, but I beg her not to go out tonight, because it’s my birthday.
“Oh, that’s right!” she says. She opens drawers, looking for candles, and only finds two. “These are special candles,” she says, holding them up. They look like the same candles she used on my cakelast year. “They’re each worth four years. Since you’re eight, we only need two.” She sticks them in the cake, lights them, and sings me the birthday song.
I make a wish—I wish that Daddy and Mommy won’t fight and that we’ll go to the zoo tomorrow—and I blow out the candles. She cuts me a piece of cake, then gives me three gift-wrapped boxes. I open the pink one first and find new pajamas, almost exactly like the ones I already have. The yellow box holds underwear and socks. I smile, because I can tell Mommy wants me to be pleased, but pajamas, underwear, and socks are not what my eight-year-old heart desires. I want a Polly Pocket Cozy Cottage play set. I don’t need a dozen sets like most of my friends have, but I only have the Pony Stable play set, and I want my doll to have a home.
