Pretty Girls Dancing(15)
Claire looked up, summoned a smile. Marta stood framed in the doorway, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a concerned expression. Her apparel was a vast improvement over the ridiculous gray dress and apron their former cleaning service had required of their employees. David frowned whenever he saw the maid—he was a stickler about appearances. But he was rarely here during the day, so Claire had ignored his objections.
After years together, she thought the maid knew her better than her husband did.
“Nothing, Marta, thank you. I’ll see you on Monday. But if your daughter isn’t better by then, give me a call, and we’ll adjust your hours.” For a moment, she wondered why they clung to the outdated notion that their home still required a maid twice a week. David spent more time at the office than he did in the oversize house he’d insisted they buy a decade ago in the ritzy neighborhood. Janie had always been relatively neat, and it wasn’t like Claire didn’t have the time to clean.
But in the next instant, it occurred to her that without Marta, some weeks she would go days on end without anyone other than family to talk to. Mostly because making the effort with others seemed just that. With David away so much and Janie well ensconced in her high school world, the other woman’s presence was sometimes a welcome distraction from her own moods.
It wasn’t that Marta was or had ever been a confidant, but it was impossible to keep the family dynamics from the help. And after all these years, she and Marta had developed a sort of verbal shorthand.
“I’ve got your recyclables. We’ve got pickup tomorrow.” The other woman lifted a white trash bag clutched in her hand that Claire knew would contain vodka bottles. She kept them beneath the bathroom sink in the guest bathroom, behind the cleaning supplies. Without it ever being mentioned, every week Marta disposed of the empties.
There had been a time when the unspoken knowledge inherent in the exchange would have shamed Claire, but she’d come to embrace it with a weary sort of gratitude. “Thank you, Marta. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You won’t have to find out. See you next week.” She disappeared down the hallway, and Claire sat silently, listening to the sound of the maid’s receding footsteps.
The house phone rang in their bedroom. She ignored it, lying down on the bed, cradling the glass against her chest, her face pressed into Kelsey’s pillow. She could no longer smell her daughter’s shampoo on it, but she drew some small comfort in curling up on the mattress the way Kelsey used to, her eyes on the room that had stayed precisely the same since the day her daughter had left it.
Janie had always been the tidier of the two girls. She never needed reminding to hang up her things, to put her shoes in the closet, or to put her book bag away. Even now that she’d taken up smoking—she thought Claire didn’t know—there were no signs of her habit in her room. Kelsey had been a dervish, rushing from one activity to the next. The blue sweater she’d worn on her last night home still lay on the floor. A pair of scruffy sneakers sat exactly where Kelsey had toed them off. A couple of books were carelessly tossed on the bed. Marta replaced each item precisely in the same spot when she cleaned.
Claire’s gaze wandered to the bookcase against one wall. The shelves were jammed with trophies and plaques from Kelsey’s earliest years on the child beauty-pageant circuit. If Claire had to choose, those years would stand out as her favorite memories with her daughter. David hadn’t wholly approved of the entire scene and had rarely accompanied them. So it had just been Claire and Kelsey going to dance lessons, singing lessons, photo shoots, and of course, the weekend contests themselves. She’d loved the time so much that she’d put off having a second child, even lying to David about trying to conceive when in reality, she’d still been taking the pill. She’d reveled in the glamor of it, the camaraderie and competition with other mothers, the time alone with her daughter, who’d done quite well in the pageants. It wasn’t until David had suggested they see a fertility specialist that she’d reluctantly gone off birth control. She’d been pregnant within three months, and as she’d feared, Kelsey’s pageant days were over a couple of years later. David had quickly grown tired of being left with Janie while Claire took Kelsey to lessons and competitions. And having Janie along had given Claire her first inkling that something was wrong with her youngest daughter. Even as a baby, her oldest had been sociable, holding out her arms to people who stopped to speak to her. Janie had been just the opposite, screaming with fear when strangers appeared, whether they spoke to her or not.
David had never understood her love for those experiences with Kelsey. Just as he hadn’t understood her reaction to losing her. Four years after their child had been taken, Claire had come home to find every single thing in her daughter’s bedroom boxed up. The bed had been stripped. The closet emptied. Walls and shelves bare. It’s time, David explained in that infuriatingly logical tone he had, as if an unseen clock had tolled the exact hour when all should be ready to accept the unacceptable.
They’d had the worst fight of their lives then. For a long time, Claire hadn’t been certain their marriage would survive it. She’d said hurtful things, horrid things. Some she’d meant, but others she hadn’t. Just as she’d hoped that David hadn’t meant all the invectives he’d hurled her way. After he’d slammed from the house, she’d set about like a woman possessed, returning the room to normal. Every article of clothing was replaced in dresser drawers and on hangers. Every item to its place on the shelf. The same books positioned just so on the carefully mussed bed.