Our Little Secret(48)
“Thanks for doing this, LJ,” HP called after me as he grabbed his door keys.
I didn’t respond. Instead, I pulled out the bottle of New Zealand Pinot Noir they’d been saving for a special occasion and sliced at its neck with a paring knife.
Once Olive had eaten enough, I ran her a bath and sent her to find pajamas and a hairbrush. I don’t know why, but I wandered into HP and Saskia’s bedroom with my glass of wine. How had I never noticed the scarlet throw Saskia draped across the white comforter, the tea candles scattered on every windowsill, the fairy lights over the dark oak headboard? She’d hung themed pictures of trees, all of them cone-shaped and Tuscan-looking, though she’d never been to Italy.
Her jewelry box overflowed with long-stringed pendants—feathers, arrows, keys—and bulbous rings. Behind that was a cluster of lavish perfume bottles.
“Godmother Angie,” Olive said suddenly behind me, and I jumped to find her in the doorway. Her belly was nut brown against the yellow fabric of her underpants. “What are you doing in here?”
“Oh, just looking.”
“I’m not allowed,” she confided, padding over to me in her bare feet. “Mommy says I mustn’t touch her jewels.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Olive pulled down the jewelry case from the dresser, standing on tiptoes with her tongue sticking out. Once she had the box in both hands, she crouched and set it on the carpet. “Which one’s the best?” Her chubby fingers played with the silver strings, ran over the smoothness of the pendants. “I think this one.” She held up an elephant pendant on a chain, her dark eyes watching the light as it caught on the jade and aqua.
“It’s pretty. Your mom has a thing for elephants.” I hated the necklace. It took me straight back to that beer tent at the May Ball.
“Mom says elephants are good at being sad.” Olive folded the silver necklace into the small curve of her palm. “You have it.” She held her closed hand out to me.
“No, Olive. Thank you, but no.”
“Mommy would like you to have it. She says it’s nice to cheer people up.”
I wanted to laugh, long and loud and dry, but instead I pushed her hand away gently. “Put it back. Good girl. Now give me a hug—there, that’s a great one—and go find your hairbrush. Wait for me in the bathroom; don’t get in.”
I watched her trot away and picked up my wineglass, sipping as I surveyed more of the room.
There were no signs that HP slept in there. No baseball caps, no watches, no shorts left crumpled by his side of the bed. To the side of me was a heavy, beach-washed dresser; I slid open the top left drawer. Here were Saskia’s socks, paired at the neck with a decisive fold, two by two. I closed that drawer.
The one below was double the size and harder to open. Inside lay all the T-shirts, ironed flat and nudging shoulders. Burrowing in between them, I dug farther, looking for some sign of their marriage that wasn’t humdrum. A pair of handcuffs, zebra-furred? A blindfold? Leather? Didn’t every couple have some secret hidden away in a corner of their room?
The top right drawer held all of Saskia’s underwear: I dipped my hands into the softness, letting the fabric fold like water over my fingertips. Pulling out a pair—pink with a chocolate ribbon and lace around the stitching—I reached up under my skirt and gently tugged my own underwear down, rolling them off into a straight line by my bare feet. The slipperiness of the new silk fabric slid against my thighs. I turned around and stared at my reflection in the long pine mirror by the wardrobe. The sight made me giggle: my butt looked pert and perfectly hoisted by the expensive cut of the cloth. Two steps backwards and I pressed my flesh to the mirror, leaving a round crescent imprint on the glass. Before I straightened my skirt and walked back out towards the bathroom, I kicked my old underwear under their bed, wrong-side out.
The bath was ready. Olive came in with her pajamas and a hairbrush piled above the level of her chin and I sat her into the piping-hot water and gave her the cork from the Pinot Noir. She prodded it with her forefinger, trying to make it sink. Now and again she stood to stamp on it with her bobbly toes, exposing a ring around her plum belly where the bottom half of her body glowed hotter.
“Wash everywhere,” I said as she made a beard out of bath foam.
“I’m Santa,” she said, peering at her mirrored face in the shiny disk below the tap. “Do you believe in Santa?”
My wineglass already needed a refill. “Santa is to kids what God is to grown-ups. We all need bedtime stories to keep ourselves cozy.”
She stood suddenly and slapped her round, red belly with both wrinkly hands. On the rack were three fluffy white towels, each embroidered with a first-name initial in the lower left corner. I rolled my eyes and grabbed the S one. Olive clambered out of the bath and I wrapped her up. I made sure to dry her well.
“Can I have a bedtime story to keep me cozy?” She stepped her rosy knees into her matching pajama bottoms, which were covered with owls.
“Sure. I’ve got lots in my head.”
She crawled into bed quickly, curling with her hands pressed palm-to-palm under her cheek. I pulled the blanket over her and turned off her Tinker Bell lamp so that shadows from the landing light split her ceiling.
“Once upon a time,” I said, stroking the white-blond strands of hair at the crest of her forehead, “there was a little girl who grew up by a lake. She was a pretty girl and very clever. Everybody loved her.”