A Nearly Normal Family(72)

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I’d been at the register for quite a while when Benita finally showed up and relieved me. The lack of sleep over the past few weeks was starting to put me a little out of balance.

“So will you be buying that?” I said to a customer who’d tried on four different blouses in similar colors.

She shot me a hateful look.

In order to get away for a while, I snuck up to the men’s department and unpacked new shirts. I got lost in my thoughts and jumped when I heard a voice behind me.

“Hi, Stella.”

A girl of around twenty-five, with blond curls, was right next to me, wringing her hands.

“Do I know you?”

There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t place it.

“We don’t know each other,” she said. “But you know Chris.”

In that instant, I knew who she was. The same girl I’d seen in the picture on Facebook.

“What do you want?”

I took a step back.

“My name is Linda,” she said. “I’m sure Chris has mentioned me. Is that why you look so scared?”

My heart was pounding. I looked around, but there was no one in sight.

“I think you should go now.”

“I will. You don’t need to be afraid of me, Stella.”

She was small and thin, extremely pretty, and didn’t show the slightest sign of being unstable or dangerous.

“I just want you to be careful,” she said. “Chris isn’t who you think.”

I stuck out an elbow and crowded my way past her.

“Please, listen to me. Chris is trying to trick you.”

I quickly headed for the stairs, but I could sense her following me. My heart pounded even faster.

“Look in the big cabinet in his room. The room he calls his office,” she said as I swung down the stairs. “The locked drawer, at the top right. You’ll find the key in the bottom left drawer.”

I headed for the registers. I didn’t turn around until I had reached the short line and could feel some degree of safety.

I just stared at Linda’s back. She was heading out the glass doors.

“What’s going on?” Benita asked from behind me. “You look like someone’s been chasing you.”

I tried to calm my breathing.

“Nothing,” I said. “It was nothing.”

I didn’t know what to think.





63


“Seriously?” I say when Shirine arrives with more books. “Those are super thick.”

Crime and Punishment. Six hundred and forty-six pages of nineteenth-century Russia.

“Listen,” I say, paging through it with my thumb. “If I could choose between reading this or having cramps for two weeks straight…”

“You’ll like it.”

“I’ll read it. To escape the stench in here for a while. Because there’s nothing else to do.”

Shirine smiles at me.

“And this one,” she says, resting a finger on the next book.

It’s called Thérèse Raquin, and it’s also from the 1800s, but it’s only 195 pages—hardly longer than an H&M catalog.

“I think I’ll start with this one,” I say.

As I read the foreword and the first chapter, Shirine sits beside me.

The book is pretty blah, tons of descriptions of Paris, and soon my mind begins to wander. I sneak a look at Shirine. It occurs to me that I don’t know much about her.

“How many kids do you have?” I ask.

“Just one,” she says, with a small, surprised smile. “Lovisa.”

“Why?”

She looks puzzled.

“Because it’s a beautiful name. My husband’s aunt was named Lovisa.”

“No, no, not that. I mean, why do you have a kid?”

“What?” she exclaims.

“Or was it a mistake? A broken condom?”

“It was not a mistake.” She smiles. “It seemed like a good time. I … I really don’t know.”

I roll my eyes.

“I have a theory, Shirine.”

“Go figure,” she says, and sighs.

“I think a lot of people have kids for their own sake. Kind of like how when everything seems gray and boring you pop downtown to buy a new lipstick just to feel a little better for a minute.”

“Are you comparing bringing a child into the world with buying lipstick?”

“Sure, maybe it’s not the best analogy, but you know what I mean. People have kids to make themselves feel good, brace up their own identity, kill the boredom—you know, whatever.”

“Or because it’s the greatest thing that can happen to you, the most beautiful form of love that exists. The meaning of life?”

“Come on, Shirine! The meaning of life? Seriously.”

She shakes her head with a smile.

“Are you going to have more?” I ask.

“More what?”

“More kids. Are you and your husband going to have more kids?”

“I think so. I think it’s good to have siblings.”

She still isn’t looking at me.

“My parents felt the same way. They went at it like rabbits for years so they could have another kid. It didn’t work. I don’t know, maybe God wasn’t really happy with how they were handling the one they already had. Anyway, sometimes it feels like half my childhood revolved around this sibling that never actually appeared.”