I'll Be You(53)

“Thank you,” she said. “I know your father told you it would be a few days and now you’ve been here a whole week. And you didn’t complain at all. So, I’m sorry I questioned you, and your motives. I really do appreciate everything you’ve done for Charlotte. I know that taking care of kids doesn’t necessarily come naturally to you. You’ve never struck me as very…” she hesitated, as if regretting the thought she’d been about to utter.

“Maternal?”

“Well, no.” Her eyes blinked with relief, as if I’d finally verbalized something that she’d been waiting years to say. As if all the traits typically assigned to mothers—love and nurturance, reliability, protection—were missing from me, and that explained why my life had gone so sideways. It stung, in a way that I hadn’t expected. I wasn’t maternal. I was missing a gene. Elli had it, but I did not: another way in which we weren’t identical at all. Another way in which I was flawed.

“Not everyone is meant to be a mother,” I said, and I went to get my bag.



* * *



—

I didn’t drive to Los Angeles.

Instead, I drove to Caleb’s apartment. The day was turning out to be sunny and mild, and I wondered if he might already be out with his daughter, but when I got there his Mazda was parked out front.

Mae answered the door, wearing an old T-shirt of Caleb’s that reached down to her knees and had paint stains down the front. METALLICA MADLY IN ANGER WITH THE WORLD TOUR 2004, it read.

“Hi…” Mae hesitated. “Charlotte’s mom?”

“I’m her aunt. Sam. And you really shouldn’t open the door to strangers,” I admonished her.

“You’re not a stranger,” she responded. “You slept on the couch the other night.”

“But you couldn’t see me before you opened the door. So I could have been a stranger.”

She stuck a hand on her hip and squinted at me. “You’re trying to trick me.”

I liked her; she was sharp. I bet she’d get herself a helicopter someday.

Caleb appeared in the doorway from the kitchen, wearing a T-shirt and threadbare boxer shorts. He had a pancake flipper in his hand and white flour down his front, and when he saw that it was me he looked flustered.

“Mae, you know you can’t open the door without asking me.”

“You’re just embarrassed because you’re not wearing pants,” Mae sang.

Caleb flushed.

I felt my own face going hot, too. “I can come back later…”

“No, it’s fine.” He wiped at the flour on his shirt, as if this and not the gaping underwear was the issue that most urgently required fixing. “Are you OK? I called you yesterday but it went straight to voicemail. I was worried.” He glanced at Mae, then back at me, his eyes telegraphing what he couldn’t say aloud. Why did you leave the other night? Are we OK? I do not understand this situation and I am in over my head but am trying to remain cool about it. At least that’s what I hoped he was saying.

I telegraphed back, I am not sure if I slept with you or not and I am mortified by this not knowing, but I like you and I hope I didn’t screw everything up by being such a mess.

Maybe he couldn’t read my mind but he was, at least, smiling.

“Everything’s fine,” I said. “But I need a favor from you.”

He waved me in. “Come on in, we’re about to have pancakes.”

I stepped inside and Mae closed the door behind me. Caleb and I stood there staring at each other, no hugs or kisses, just an awkwardly polite distance while Mae examined us with obvious suspicion. Surely I would remember something if I had slept with him, I thought, but I had nothing, just a memory of the coconut smell of his hair, a faint flash of his arm bracing me upright as I stumbled in his living room. Still, it was possible he was remembering me naked right now.

“So what’s the favor?” he asked.

“Do you have an electric razor?”

He laughed and self-consciously touched the week-old stubble on his chin. “Sure, why?”

“I need you to give me a haircut,” I said.



* * *



—

“Set it to three.”

Caleb’s eyes met mine in the mirror. Mae danced in the bathroom doorway, delighted by the spectacle she was about to observe. Their bathroom had cracked peach tile that dated back to the 1970s and a night-light that looked like the moon, and it appeared that both father and daughter used the same bubble-gum-flavored Crest Kid’s toothpaste. I wanted to sniff Caleb’s breath to see if it smelled like candy.

“That’s got to be too short,” Caleb said, hesitating as he held the clippers against the back of my head.

“No, it’ll be perfect. Those women looked like shorn sheep. I swear.”

I could feel it buzzing, a hairsbreadth away from the nape of my neck, an electric tension. “But you have such beautiful hair. It’s a shame. Couldn’t you just wear a bald cap or something?” He cupped my skull with his palm as he gently lifted my ponytail away from my neck. His hands were warm and strong.

“Just do it,” I said.

And he did.

It almost didn’t matter, then, if we’d slept together yet or not; this felt like an almost unbearable intimacy, the slow reveal of my bare scalp, his palm braced against the side of my head as he carefully worked his way around my ears and past the pulsing vein at my temple. I watched myself in the mirror, the shape of my skull coming into view, fascinated by my transformation into a stranger. Blond hair fell in clouds to the floor as Mae, her eyes huge, squealed with excitement.