He must be comfortable with me, with the way I am with Alice. And, of course, he is always watching.
But then I think that he does not want to be here. That he is still hunting for whatever he lost when the woman who lived here before me died.
“I’m hungry,” Alice says. She reaches her arm through the bars and I take her hand and press it to my lips.
“I know, sweetheart. Do you want to tell me what there is in the kitchen and I can teach you how to make something?”
She hangs her head, chin to chest, but then raises her narrowed eyes so I can still see them. Her lips disappear under her teeth and her nose scrunches. I call this expression of hers Angry Face.I don’t say this out loud, but I make a note of it, and also what makes it come, and what makes it leave.
“I don’t have any better ideas, but if you do I will try to help you with them,” I say.
Now she crosses her arms and huffs. I try not to laugh, but it is amusing. I haven’t been amused for a very long time. Maybe even for years. There is a new power stirring inside me that has given this impulse of being amused some latitude. Some room to breathe.
“Did he tell you what to do in case of an emergency?” I ask now. “For example, if you got sick, or if there was a fire? Is there a way to reach him? I can help you study and play with you from inside my room, but that’s about it,” I say.
She uncrosses her arms. Angry Face softens, becomes whimsical, mischievous. She tilts her head and pushes one shoulder, always the right one, a little ahead of her chest. This is Coy Face. She knows a secret and she wants me to get it out of her.
Nicole had this face by the time she was four. Annie didn’t have it until she was six or seven, and even then it was more playful than precocious. Evan never had it. My only boy, but I could read him like a book.
I have had time to think these past fourteen days, and not just about the man and Alice and my plan. I think about why I am here, and that perhaps I have finally been sentenced for my crime. I am finally being punished. This has done something to me, shifted my insides.
With this shift has come a reversal of how I had come to see my own daughters. Annie the good girl. Nicole the bad girl. We are not supposed to do that. Parents. Good parents. But I have stopped pretending that I am one. I hate the person Nicole has become these past few years. If I met her on the street, I would thank God she was not my child. I would judge her parents with contempt. Who would allow such behavior? Who would permit their grown child to behave this way?
But now I can see that it was Annie who was also precocious,strong-willed. She could be defiant to her sister when I left her in charge. And she resented her brother. She resented them both, how they pulled her, kicking and screaming, from her pedestal as the baby, wanting her to grow up and be less of a bother. She had managed to become our sole focus. Our squeaky wheel. Babies always need more attention.
The memories keep crossing the line, and the pain they carry lessens each time. Even now, as I speak to Alice about helping her cook, I see Nicole standing on a stool, staring into a bowl of flour and sugar, mixing them together with a big wooden spoon that can barely fit in her hand.
She liked blueberry muffins and we would make them together. I still know the recipe by heart. It never leaves me. Two cups of flour. One cup of sugar…
And John, the memories of John… they reach back and unearth feelings that live more in my body than my mind. His hand on the small of my back. The rush that would follow. I thought they were gone forever.
It doesn’t change what I did. I do not feel it should commute my sentence. To the contrary. I see now that this sentence, being forced to live here with this man and his child, has scratched an itch. The guilt recedes a little every day. The rock I carry gets lighter.
I suffer now to keep Nicole safe. And possibly Evan. This man could know about him. Maybe he covets him as well. In the suffering, I make amends. And the amends bring a kind of healing.
“Alice,” I say with a smile. “I know that face! What are you thinking?”
Alice looks up at the monitor in the corner at the end of the hallway. She positions herself so her back faces it. She lowers her voice as well, for good measure, I imagine.
“I know where the key is,” she says.
Her words reach out and choke me with surprise. But I manage a little smile, the smile of only a tepid curiosity.
“You do?” I ask.
She nods slowly, Coy Face firmly lodged.
“In case I really, really need you,” she says.
I sit back a little and uncross my legs. They have started to tingle.
It’s not easy to sit on the floor all day at my age.
I consider my options now. I could start to cry. Say how hungry I am and how much I need her to help me. But she does not seem to be wanting that. She already saved me once with a glass of lemonade. Her daily fix has been had.
She craves other things, though, as I have come to learn.
Hannah gave it away one day when she was talking to Suzannah.
