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Arlene (from chapter 3, Crossword) Taylor was just five--finally asleep at midnight, a little later than usual. I tried, but it always got so late by the time we realized it was time for a child to go to sleep. I lay on the bed on my stomach, breathing out of one nostril because the other was pushed into a musty pillow. Just breathing, and trying to read 14-Down in the crossword puzzle folded on top of the nightstand. "Et tu ______." I remember thinking it was a particularly easy one. I had just moved on to 15-Down when Ken came in. I heard him loosening his tie, the way men say they can hear a woman uncrossing her legs when she's wearing hose. When he got into bed, he rolled on top of me and proceeded to thrash around inside so that he tore me. When he couldn't ejaculate, Ken pulled out and held my face to his. I think he did that so I could see him when he said, "I guess too much pussy in one night makes Kenny a dull boy." That movie was popular then. But I was past getting worked up about his infidelities by that point. The next day I felt fire when I went to the bathroom, in little streaks, mostly on the outside. It hurt when I rubbed up against myself, even walking. Straddling my cosmetics mirrors, I could see the little red streaks. Some of them oozed clear fluid. My gynecologist told me not to wear panties, to wear a skirt for a week and keep it clean with something non-irritating. Like witch hazel. She asked if I'd ever tried K-Y, if I'd had a problem with dryness in the past. Ken left something like a month later. He got a townhouse, where else, but in town. I know he might've taken Taylor from me, but it would've been solely on principle. Ken knew that even though he spent a good seventy-five percent of his time telling me how incompetent I was , I knew what to do with Taylor, and he didn't. I found a job at a boutique by the river. Then the idea to run my own business when that one went under. I kept the house, I kept Taylor. He didn't come around much after that. So what do you do? You keep on. You wonder how on Earth you were blessed with the most beautiful living creature in the world, and you hope that you didn't ruin it. Even though I knew I was doomed to ruin her. If that's what I did, I don't know. I know her hands were always big--unnaturally big. And square. They looked like Ken's, except they were on a little girl. It was actually quite strange. She didn't have any friends, but she got along with everybody. We took baths together every Sunday night before school. Afterwards I rubbed her entire body with baby oil, until she turned thirteen and started using the guest shower. She rubbed aloe vera lotion into my skin. She poked my breasts, said once, "I got grandma's, not yours." I cleaned out her ears with Q-tips--one whole Q-tip, both ends, for each ear. One time she pulled at my wet tampon string when I was toweling off my calves. Then the next thing I knew, she got a waterproof radio and hung it over the showerhead in the guest bathroom and started bathing by herself. Every morning she listened to the traffic report on Providence radio. We didn't even have to drive through town and worry about traffic in order to get Taylor to school. And so today she moved to another coast. It was the first time I'd called Ken in well over a year. In the many years since the divorce, he wore down just like I did, and he didn't have to be so mean. He asked whether I wanted him to stop by the house on his way home. I said, "No, don't." I couldn't give her more than a fifty-dollar bill. I know that's odd; no one carries fifty-dollar bills. But one of my regular customers bought an embroidered pillow that said Honey for his wife on the way home from work, and he paid with a fifty. "It could get you to St. Louis," I said to Taylor, handing over the bill. That was all I said. She had come by the store on her way out of town. I didn't even recall her saying anything about leaving in the first place. I followed her outside, and Taylor rearranged the bags in her trunk. It struck me as the muscles in her forearm flexed under the weight of a duffel bag, that this is the kind of girl who gets pregnant and comes back home. Maybe I got this from watching too many made-for-TV movies, and it had nothing to do with Taylor. But that's what I thought. And at least getting pregnant wasn't really a threat. Or maybe it was. Maybe we'd already been through that with the teacher in boarding school. I think she had an abortion. She made me sign a blank permission slip for March fourth through the fifth, and mail it to the headmaster's office. I think it takes two days for those things; she was away in western Connecticut for two days, then back at soccer practice on Monday. The teacher, he was on leave from dorm duty that weekend too. I telephoned the school and asked. When I called to tell him my concerns at the time, Ken had said that he didn't want to hear about it. Whatever it was, he wasn't paying for it. His wife had just lost a baby of her own. Their second. He said it "spontaneously terminated because it was genetically unsound." Down syndrome can do that. I liked that. Something's so fragile it just decides what it can and can't take. What it simply is not equipped to handle. Obviously, I lost the ability to do this when I left the womb. Before Taylor left this morning, and I gave her the fifty-dollar bill, I didn't even tell her about her Uncle Charlie. I still couldn't tell her. I think she already knew. We don't really talk anymore like we used to. And Charlie said that we didn't need to trouble her with any of it until he gets sick anyway. If he gets sick. That's how Charlie puts it, but it sounds like a veritable death sentence to me. Excerpt 2 Charlie (from chapter 4, Beginning to End) back to top back to book