Our Little Secret(40)

“You want to hold her?” HP wore his old track T-shirt from high school, and his face was puffy with sleeplessness. It was two weeks since we’d sat in the bar together.

“Let’s leave her,” Saskia urged. She was already back in her skinny jeans. She craned in past my shoulder to peep into the crib and I could smell her—her faint, frangipani-petal sweetness. The three of us stood together, a line of faces, a little team of awe. I stepped back and away.

“It’s really nice of you to come over,” HP said. “You look well.”

“Appearances are deceptive.”

“You’re not well?”

“No, no. Just kidding. I’m fine.”

“Well, you should come visit us more, Little John.”

“You can’t call her Little John anymore. She’s Angela,” Saskia said. “Angela, it’s such a pretty name.”

“It’s true,” HP said. He put his hand on my shoulder but he was looking at his wife. “Listen, Saskia and I have been thinking, and we’d like to ask if you’d be Olive’s godmother.”

I tried not to look horrified.

“Uh, gosh,” I said. Godmother?

“Is that a yes?” Saskia was beaming at me.

“Of course!” Laughter, smiles and hugs, smiles and hugs.

I wondered why they welcomed me into their life with this invitation, but when I told Mom about it, she was uncharacteristically positive.

“You should take that opportunity and run with it, darling,” she said, sorting her clothes on the bed into piles of keep and giveaway. The giveaway pile was huge. “As much as we don’t like the show, we might as well get you a leading role in it.”

So as it turned out, I got over myself and accepted the chance to be a part of the Parkers’ lives. I started to spend more and more time at HP and Saskia’s house, and began to actually feel useful.

“I told you we needed your help,” HP said one day while I was holding Olive. “Your mom’s pleased, too. It’s a win–win.”

I wasn’t sure what my mother had contributed to the situation, but having Olive around me all the time was like a joint I didn’t know I had, clicking smoothly into socket. It was a physical improvement: being near the baby as she cooed and discovered her toes meant that any blocked frustrations in me started to turn fluid and change color. A few months into being her godmother, what poured out of me into Olive was pure connection, a gentle force. I was almost a third parent.

Like my mom had predicted, it was good to be a strong influence in Olive’s life, and as she grew up I grew closer and closer to her. I never missed a birthday, and every year I bought her a chocolate cupcake, replacing the fondant butterfly with a Lego Star Wars figurine. Saskia asked me not to buy the ones with the little, detachable helmets—choking hazard—but seriously, our parents never worried about stuff like that and we all made it.

Olive’s eyes were a deep, inky indigo, a feline curve to the edges. She was chubby as a toddler with wrinkles at her wrists and thighs that looked like she’d wrapped her legs in hair elastics. Whenever I went to HP’s house to see her, she’d be dancing to tunes from The Little Mermaid or clapping homemade play dough between plum-thick fingers. She ran right into my arms the second I arrived.

At Christmas three years back, Saskia was threading tree decorations made out of pasta. On the floor Olive drew an oversized snowman on a wide sheet of paper, coloring his scarf outside the lines with a gold-glitter crayon.

“She has her dad’s temperament,” Saskia said. She tilted her head the way mothers do when all they can see in the world is their own beautiful creation. In the background, ABBA played on a continuous loop.

“She’s lucky to be like HP,” I said, then added, “And you.”

“We all are lucky and so, so blessed.” Saskia got up from the breakfast counter and put her arm around my shoulders. Her touch baffled me, made me feel like plastic.

“Are you like HP?” I inched along the countertop so that my rib cage separated from hers.

“Hamish and I are peas in a pod,” she said. “I feel so lucky that we see life the same way: as a journey, a series of amazing adventures. Anything’s possible once you figure that out. Don’t you think?”

I couldn’t answer. I’ve never had assurance like hers.

I babysat for HP and Saskia whenever they needed, and the more I did, the more Saskia confided in me. After a while she got real. She went into great, unrequested detail about how having a baby can really drive a wedge between a husband and a wife, and how important it was to secure a “date night” just to stay in touch. She seemed desperate for a confidante and perhaps believed that telling me all her deepest thoughts and fears was a currency with which she might buy my allegiance.

One night last August, I sat with Olive at bedtime. As she liked to remind me, she was starting preschool in the fall like a big girl, so whenever I was over at her house we had to practice reading all the time. HP and Saskia were at the movies, watching some flick about love and time travel—Saskia’s pick. For some reason, Olive had had a meltdown when they were leaving, and I’d bribed her with candy. Finally she was calm, exhausted, just in time for bed. Olive’s hands were still sticky from the candy, even after I’d washed her up.