Perfect Little World(74)
“Bye,” she said, and she walked to her car, wondering what she’d lost and what she’d gained and thinking, maybe, she had come out entirely even. An hour later, pulling into the complex, she thought to herself, No. She had come out ahead. She had come out way, way ahead.
Izzy was reading the Dr. Seuss book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, long a favorite of all the children, in the day care center. All the parents took turns signing up for times to read aloud to the kids, which Izzy always looked forward to. The kids cheered as each successive rendition of what was happening on Mulberry Street became more and more fantastic. Maxwell had started a tradition where, with each new object or person or animal that the story included, the kids would shout, “Yes,” and point their index fingers in the air. As Izzy looked over the top of the book at the kids, she watched them mischievously grinning, their fingers pointing out from their heads like devil horns, waiting for yet another new thing on Mulberry Street. “Yes,” the kids shouted to a Chinese man who eats with sticks (the parents were encouraged not to say the book’s term Chinaman for obvious reasons), to a big magician doing tricks, and to a ten-foot beard that needs a comb. “Yes, yes, yes,” they said, gesticulating wildly. And then the book returned to its quiet beginnings, a plain horse and wagon, and the kids all groaned dramatically and fell to the floor.
When the book was finished, Izzy asked the children what they would like to see on Mulberry Street, and the kids gave their own fanciful versions. Ally said she would like a polar bear on roller skates holding a big birthday cake. Jackie wanted to see a fancy car with princesses inside. When it was Cap’s turn, he said that he wanted to see himself and Izzy riding together on a motorcycle. “That’s it?” Maxwell asked, and Cap nodded, smiling. Izzy smiled so hard back at Cap, her son but not quite yet her own son, that her eyes began to well up with tears, and even the kids understood it was a good thing.
Izzy popped kernels of corn on the stove, machine-gun fire rattling inside the pot, while Carmen made hurricanes, toxic red and syrupy. Chocolate chip cookies baked in the oven. They were watching Mahogany on DVD, but mostly they talked over it, recounting their week, the numerous weirdnesses of their lives.
The two of them got together at Izzy’s every Wednesday night if they could manage it. Of all the people in the project, Izzy felt the strongest connection to Carmen, found it easiest to talk to her, and Izzy was pleased that Carmen confided in her above everyone else. Izzy felt like Carmen’s younger sister, constantly striving for her approval, sure that Carmen had experience where Izzy didn’t. And Carmen, if not her older sister, gave Izzy enough attention and care that she felt most like actual family.
Carmen had grown up near Memphis. Her parents divorced when she was only three, and her dad took Carmen’s brother, who was nine at the time, and moved to Texas; she never saw them again, heard not one word from her dad or brother. “For all I know,” she told Izzy, “they’re both dead. Or on the moon. Or still in Texas, not thinking a thing about me.”
Like Izzy, Carmen was thirteen when her mother died, a swift and inoperable lung cancer, and Carmen moved to Memphis proper to live with a distant, older cousin who already had a family of her own. She did that until she was sixteen, when the cousin and her family moved to Florida, and Carmen spent the next two years living with friends, until she graduated from high school. Then she’d met Kenny, who’d been working at a garage where Carmen, one of her two jobs, worked the register. They married two months after getting together. “We loved each other,” Carmen admitted, as if Izzy had doubted her, “but we also were just so happy to be with somebody who wasn’t going to up and leave as soon as they had the chance. Both of us had a bad history of getting left behind, and so we thought we’d do much better if we held on to each other.” Two months after Carmen had decided to enroll in nursing school, a step toward the future, she got pregnant, and now here she was, so much further into the future, on Izzy’s couch, the two of them slightly drunk, talking about Izzy’s love life.
“So it’s not going to happen with David?” Carmen asked.
“I don’t know that it ever was, but it’s definitely not going to happen now,” Izzy replied, her teeth stained red from the hurricane. “I’ve shut the door on that.”
“His loss,” Carmen said. “There are lots of other guys for you.”
“I can’t imagine starting anything with them. They seem very, very young to me.”
“You old soul,” Carmen said, shaking her head.
“Well, I have a kid. I have responsibilities. I don’t begrudge the fact that they don’t. But I don’t have time for them.”
Then Izzy, just buzzed enough, spoke before she could consider how smart it was. “What do you think of Dr. Grind?”
“What do you mean? Romantically?”
“I guess,” Izzy replied, knowing she had made a mistake.
“Izzy?” Carmen said, and then laughed loudly, a quick burst of surprise. “You have a crush on Dr. Grind?”
“I don’t know.” Izzy’s face, she could feel, was blazing hot. But there was no point in turning back. “I guess I do.”
“He’s cute enough, I guess, though he looks so much like a little kid. Plain, but not unattractive. He’s sweet. He’s too earnest for me, though. He talks to everyone like they’re a purebred dog that might bite. Always wearing that tie. Kind of spooky, the way he moves so quietly through the complex.”