The Forgotten Hours(67)
“Of course, darling. That’s why I was calling. You must come visit very soon.”
The softness of her mother’s tone, the quiet hesitation before she said darling, unleashed something inside Katie. How she missed the mother she wished she’d had. Why had it always been so very hard between the two of them? Was it because she was English and had so fully bought into the stiff-upper-lip approach to life? She tried to think back to when it had started. Maybe when Katie had found her crying on the toilet, bloody panties at her ankles, yet another baby unrealized. Children weren’t supposed to know a parent could be so helpless and vulnerable. Maybe her mother had been trying to protect herself in some way. Or maybe that hadn’t been it at all.
“Pumpkin?” Charlie said. “You there?”
Katie couldn’t remember the last time her mother had called her pumpkin; it was as though Katie were deep inside a cave and ahead of her she glimpsed the wavering glow of open air. “Mum, I’m really having a hard time,” she said. And when her mother murmured something, Katie burst out: “I think—I don’t know—I think it’s possible I could be pregnant.”
Her mother let out a startled cry.
“This wouldn’t be good news, Mum.”
“You’re not considering . . . ?” Charlie asked.
“I haven’t even bought a test yet,” Katie said. She would never have expected this—her mother, so sentimental. “Ugh. I shouldn’t have said anything. It might be a false alarm, anyway.”
“Who is the fellow? Is it serious?”
Katie told her about Zev, and her mother’s mmmms and ahhhhs in the background encouraged her to keep talking. Their relationship still felt so new, so full of possibility, both good and bad. She wasn’t sure how to feel about him—this was different from anything she’d experienced before, undefined, vertiginous.
“That’s called love, dear,” her mother said.
But how could Katie know for sure? And the prospect of a child, especially now, was not something she’d ever considered. She didn’t know how she felt about becoming a mother. And it was such bad timing, with Dad about to—
“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” her mother interrupted. “Go to the pharmacy and buy a test. All right? And, Katie. Don’t let your father consume you. You know how he can be. Protect yourself.”
“It’s not like that—”
“I’m just saying. Take care of yourself. Because the man can take care of himself. Trust me on this.”
As the bodega owners started packing away their sidewalk wares and locking up their grills that night, Katie walked down the blinking streets in the Meatpacking District. It had been warm again all day, and the night air brought out crowds, women in stretched-out tube tops and short skirts, teetering over the cobbles, men in ironic T-shirts without jackets. At the corner of Gansevoort and Hudson, a gaggle of teenage girls—too young to get into the clubs—shivered in cutoff jeans, faces lit blue as they huddled over their cell phones, giggling.
A strange tension infused Katie’s body, and in the night air it seemed that her muscles were taut and twangy, as though the descent into darkness were filling her with an energy that couldn’t find a way out. She had been too tired to go running, but she had badly needed some company, and Zev hadn’t picked up the phone earlier. When Ursula texted her that she and a few others were going dancing, Katie jumped at the chance to get out. She rarely went to clubs, but she did love to dance. It occurred to her that she should go dancing more often. Zev had taken her once to a salsa bar up in Spanish Harlem, and they’d danced together, arms clasped around each other and feet clacking and stomping beneath them, the drumbeat sending shivers through her. He had led her with his great flat palms pressed against her skin. Lulu used to love dancing, and whenever there were theme nights at Eagle Lake, the two of them would throw themselves around like missiles. But they’d outgrown that quickly, suffering from self-consciousness, preferring to watch from the sidelines and cast judgment on others.
Each step she took toward the club, her body loosened in anticipation. A group of men were gathered around a lamppost, dressed in black like crows glistening under the light, smoking. Cigarettes crunched between thumb and forefinger, eyes darting. One of them, wearing overdesigned glasses, called out to her as she passed, but it was half-hearted. They were not young anymore and not yet old—like her, really, stuck between being hopeful and careless and the alluring tug of orderliness that was their future. Some would insist on living out the dregs of their youthful freedom; some would throw themselves into domesticity, by choice or necessity. But now they hovered, quivering with eagerness that was as fragile as it was obvious. Katie took it all in as she strode past in her heels and summer dress: the jockeying, the foot shuffling, the smell of inexpertly applied lotions. Her birthday was in just a few months—she was halfway through her twenties already!—and she shared the same feeling of precariousness that she sensed in these young men.
At the club, she thought guiltily about the Duane Reade bag lying on her countertop with the unopened pregnancy test inside it. Her friend Ursula was chatting up the bartender, the bangles on her forearm sliding up and down as she laughed and played with the cardboard coasters. Danielle and Radha went onto the dance floor and joined the crowd that pulsed like gems in sunshine. Radha and Ursula had been at Vassar with Katie, serious girls with jobs in fund-raising, mission driven in both work and play. Radha’s black hair had streaks of cobalt blue in it that shifted like ropes as she moved.