Mercy Street(89)

“Let me put this inside,” said the neighbor—Latina maybe, her speech accented. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.”

Claudia waited in the hallway—why, she wasn’t sure—until the woman reappeared. She took the bags from Claudia’s hands and set them inside the door.

“Thanks. Timmy used to do that. He was always carrying things for me. I heard you asking about him.” Her eyes lingered at Claudia’s midsection. “I’ve seen you here before.”

Claudia felt her face heat.

“He didn’t move away,” said the neighbor. “He went to jail.”

Claudia’s stomach groaned audibly.

“Jail,” she repeated. “Are you sure?”

“That’s what people are saying.” The neighbor raised her hands, palms up: What could you do? “I knew what he was into. But he wasn’t a bad guy, you know? I liked him.”

Claudia said, “I liked him too.”

SHE COULD FIND HIM IF SHE WANTED TO. IT WOULD TAKE SOME effort, but she could do it. She didn’t know his last name or his age or where he was now or how long he’d be there, but those questions had answers, and answers could always be found.

When she thought of him at all, which wasn’t often, she remembered the way they’d talked to each other, their conversations mediated by television. She could place him easily in her childhood, on the sagging couch between Deb and the fosters. Claudia gave Timmy his own TV tray, his paper plate, his plastic cup of cola. In this way it seemed that he’d been with her for her entire life.

He was her kind.

They weren’t in love and never could be, but for a time he’d felt like home to her. In the terrible year after her mother died, his apartment was the place she went to.

His porch light was always on.

TIMMY WAS GONE NOW. THERE WAS POWER IN KNOWING THIS. The knowledge made all things possible. She couldn’t imagine having a child with him. She could only imagine doing it alone, as her own mother had done.

When she fell pregnant, she had a choice to make. That the choice wasn’t automatic or obvious is a truth no one wants to hear. Falling makes for a better story: falling pregnant, falling in love. If she fell in love with Timmy, or with her future child, if she fell in love with the idea of motherhood, she would be a more sympathetic character. This hasn’t changed, and likely won’t: We prefer our heroines helpless. Helpless means blameless.

It wasn’t her fault. She simply fell.

SOME WEEKS LATER, HER PREGNANCY CLEARLY SHOWING, CLAUDIA drove to Clayburn. “I’ll stop by Saturday afternoon,” she told Nicolette’s voice mail. But she didn’t say why.

They sat at the kitchen table. Nicolette moved aside a pile of junk mail, catalogs, and unopened bills, a child’s coloring book. From her handbag Claudia took a piece of paper.

“What’s this?” Nicolette said.

Claudia took a deep breath—cigarettes and air freshener, the smell of her entire childhood. “The title to the trailer. It’s yours now. Mom”—she said experimentally—“would want you to have it.”

The decision, once she’d made it, seemed entirely obvious. Not for a minute of her life had she wished to own a single-wide trailer—a place she’d never live in and couldn’t bring herself to sell, if such a thing were even possible. A tin can, fifty feet long and eighteen feet across; the home her mother had made for them. Its resale value was approximately zero. The trailer’s worth couldn’t be expressed in dollars. Another metric was required, a currency Claudia would have to invent herself.

“This is just for the trailer,” she explained. The land beneath—her grandfather’s—now belonged to his one surviving child, her aunt Darlene. “I don’t think she has any plans for it, but that’s between you and Darlene.”

Nicolette studied the paper in her hand.

“Keep it in a safe place, okay? You don’t want to lose it.” Claudia looked around at the chaos of the trailer. Get a safe deposit box, she thought but didn’t say.

“I have something for you too.” Nicolette got up from her chair and brought a plastic laundry basket from the living room. “Darlene said you were having a girl.”

She set the basket on the table. Inside were pools of silky nylon fabric, hot pink and turquoise and buttercup yellow. “I used to wear these on Skylar.” Nicolette touched the cheap fabric tenderly, almost reverently. “She can’t fit into them anymore.”

Claudia knew this. Judging by recent Facebook photos, Skylar—now six years old—was a little butterball. Claudia wondered, fleetingly, if she had plumped up on purpose, to avoid wearing these godawful outfits.

Nicolette held up a dress for Claudia’s inspection. The shiny purple bodice was studded with rhinestones, the green satin skirt cut to resemble a tail.

“The Little Mermaid. Mom loved this one,” Nicolette said, her eyes glittering with tears.

And Claudia—who would never in a million years inflict such a costume on a child—felt her own eyes tearing.

“Thank you,” she whispered. Then she did a thing she had never done, not even at their mother’s funeral. She took Nicolette into her arms.

IN PREGNANCY SHE WAS ALWAYS TIRED. MAKING A PERSON, IT turned out, was exhausting work. For the first time in many years, she slept deeply and dreamed vividly. According to What to Expect When You’re Expecting, this was common. The dreams of pregnant women were full of magical creatures. In dreams they gave birth to dragons, to snakes and monsters.