The Office of Historical Corrections(34)
Adam and Derek had grown on her. They were only a few years older than Vera was, but they seemed younger sometimes, both prone to fits of silliness and then mercurial sulking. They’d been friends since high school, somewhere in the Jersey suburbs, and sometimes they spoke their own language, comprised entirely of shared memories. They claimed to live untethered lives, apparently oblivious to how helpless they would each be without the other. Adam always left a coffee on Vera’s desk in the morning. Derek made her playlists or left her notes with her name drawn in fanciful script. A few years ago, Derek had been trying to start a graphic design business, about five years too late. Adam had been a bike messenger, who figured that if he were the person running things instead of the person delivering things, he could make more money without damn near killing himself in city traffic. Adam convinced Derek that he could turn his design business into a courier business if Adam went in for half, which, thanks to a loan from an uncle, he did. After a rough first year, they started splitting their business between legal and illegal goods, and three years later, here they were.
And now here was Vera, wiping her old life clean. She could have explained New York, probably even the job, maybe even the money, but there was no accounting for William. She deleted her Facebook page. She closed her old email account and opened a new one that only people who knew her now were aware of. She canceled her old cell phone service and bought a new phone. She called her mother once a week, using a phone card and a pay phone at the laundromat. I’m fine, she said, over and over again. I love you. I don’t know when I’m coming home to visit.
William began to talk more, and Vera took a certain pride in hearing him say her name. He called her Ve-ra and not Ma-ma, which seemed only fair, and which she explained by telling people she’d felt too young to be anybody’s mama when she had him. She read him bedtime stories at night and taught him his colors and letters. She had no one to ask how to do this right. At the first threat of snow, Derek bought him a winter hat, which Vera interpreted as part friendly gesture, part admonishment.
That night she gave William a bath with lilac baby soap. She washed his curly hair and his chubby body. He splashed in the bathtub.
“Are you happy?” Vera asked. “Am I taking good care of you?”
He flashed his baby teeth at her. Vera scooped him into a towel, dried, lotioned, and powdered him, and put him in his fleece pajamas. He fell asleep with his head nestled into the crook of her neck. Even as kids, some girls were about babies the way other girls were about bands or horses or witchcraft, but Vera had never been like that. Babies were loud and sticky, and part of why she’d started college in the first place was sex ed made it seem like it was one or the other—either you got a degree or an infant would be assigned to you. On the same block as Josh’s record store there’d been a coffee shop where one of the girls who worked there brought her toddler sometimes. The owner told her not to, and whenever she saw his car go past to pull into the parking lot, she’d run out the front door of her shop and into the front door of Josh’s and leave her son to sit until her boss left. Josh didn’t care because the girl was pretty, and anyway he didn’t do shit but plop the little boy in a corner. It was Vera who’d have to play games with him and turn safety hazards into toys, and even though she tried, he always just started screaming, and wouldn’t stop until his mother got back. He wouldn’t even smile for her. That William was so calm with her seemed like its own argument, like the universe telling her he belonged with her.
One night in November the city was blanketed in unexpected snow. Business operations shut down early. The trains were running slow and cabs were near impossible to flag. Vera wasn’t looking forward to the icy walk from the office to the train, or from the train to her apartment. She accepted Derek and Adam’s invitation to stay the night. They lived on the upper floor of the loft that housed the office. They put William to bed on the couch, and made her toaster pizza and hot chocolate with shots of rum in it. Though she teased them about their bachelor dinner, it felt good going down. It had been months since she’d spent an evening with people her own age.
Somewhere after their third cup of cocoa, Derek kissed her, or she kissed him, or in any case she spent the night with him, and then the next, and the one after. Within a week she had a toothbrush and a few changes of clothes upstairs in the apartment, and William had a second bed. She saw less and less of the attic in Red Hook, and when she was there she could sometimes see the landlady in the window of the building next door, marking her comings and goings with suspicion.
In December, they threw a holiday party at the loft. Vera hung garlands and mistletoe and purchased and decorated a small plastic tree. Everyone got drunk on rum-soaked eggnog and, when that ran out, cheap beer. People took slightly pornographic pictures making out under the mistletoe. At a dollar store, Vera had found a box of ornaments that were meant to be written on with permanent marker. She gave one to each of the party guests, and before long the tree was covered in bulbs that said things like New York I love you but you’re bringing me down. William was passed around from person to person like a particularly lifelike doll, and Vera was feeling charitable enough to let him be a part of everyone’s fantasy of domesticity, instead of just hers. People had brought him toys and stuffed animals. Derek bought him a set of wooden blocks. When he presented a second box, Vera started to protest that he was spoiling William, but he indicated it was meant for her. Vera stared for a minute. She’d been counting William’s presents as her own and couldn’t remember when she’d stopped seeing herself as a separate entity. She opened the box Derek had given her, and then put on the glass-beaded necklace it contained. Derek kissed her.