The Perfect Mother(79)

I have to get home to Poppy.

The door at the end of the car skids open. “You didn’t think this was coming?” The guy wears jean shorts and a thin white tank top revealing wiry, muscular arms. He walks briskly through the car toward the door at the opposite end, weaving between the people standing in the aisles. “You didn’t think we’d see a suicide bomber in New York, with this jackass as our president?”

The panic builds in her chest. She sees Poppy’s face, how she looked in the middle of the night, nursing, her deep blue eyes naked with love, staring up at Colette. Colette is incredulous, still, that she can feel a love this bottomless, like the abandoned quarry she was too afraid to jump into as a child, the one that later swallowed up a boy from her high school, his body never found. She takes her phone from her lap and types a text to Charlie. She won’t be able to send it without service, but if someone finds her phone, if it survives the explosion . . .

I love you more than anything. Poppy. Please let her know—

The lights flash back on, and then the jolt of the AC hits. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the conductor. We’re going to open the doors in the front car. Make your way forward to exit. Be as quick and orderly as you can.”

Colette stands, entering the silent stream of people making their way down the crowded aisle. In the next car, a teenage girl is sitting alone at a window seat, holding her phone in her hand, a tear sliding down her cheek. She wears argyle tights, with a rip in one knee, and a gold stud glitters at the bend of one nostril. Colette touches her arm, and the girl looks up at her.

“I need to call my mom, but I don’t have any service.”

“Come on,” Colette says, taking the girl by the arm. “Walk with me.” She keeps her hand on the girl’s elbow, guiding her forward. When they get to the first car, she’s relieved to see that the front half is in a station; they won’t have to walk along the tracks. She waits her turn to exit, and then she and the girl begin to run with the rest of the crowd, down the platform, through the turnstiles, and up the stairs. The girl disappears in a swarm of people, and Colette sprints away from the subway entrance. On the next block she sees someone exiting a cab and dashes toward it, stepping in front of a man about to climb in the back seat.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I need to get home.”

She slams the door against the horrible names the man is calling her, the sound of his fists banging the window. “Brooklyn,” she says to the driver, giving him her address. “Please hurry.”

She closes her eyes, and it seems like hours have passed when they arrive at her building. The sky is drained of light, and her legs are weak as she goes inside, approaching the doorman’s desk. “I need Sonya’s apartment number.”

On the second floor she tries to compose herself, and then knocks gently on Sonya’s door. There’s no answer. She keeps banging, so hard her fists ache.

“Hello? Sonya?” The door across the hall opens. It’s a man in his late twenties, a small dog nipping at his heels behind him, classical music playing in the background.

“What are you doing?” he asks, easing the dog back into the apartment with a bare heel.

“She’s not answering her door. She has my baby. I live upstairs.”

“She left.”

“Left?”

“Yeah, I heard her go out. You can hear everything through these walls.”

“What time?”

“I don’t know. Twenty minutes ago?”

Twenty minutes? Did Charlie have milk to leave her? Did he give her the sunscreen? Colette doesn’t know this woman’s phone number. She’s not even sure of her last name.

She turns and runs up the stairs, taking the steps two by two. She’ll call Charlie, disturb his meeting, demand he come home and help look for the baby. She hunts for her phone in her bag and enters the key into the lock.

Charlie.

He’s there, lying on the floor next to Poppy, who is reaching for her toes on the play mat at his side. Colette drops her bag and rushes to the baby, lifting her from the mat, kissing her face so eagerly, Poppy whimpers with annoyance. Charlie’s breath is raspy; he’s fallen asleep. Poppy nuzzles the warm skin of Colette’s chest, rooting for milk. Colette feels the full weight of her exhaustion, the room shifting around her. She closes her eyes, imagining lying down next to Charlie, curling against him, and telling him everything. About what happened on the subway, about losing the job. About the terror she’s been feeling, the desperate need to know that Midas is still alive. She wants to tell him about her guilt over being away from the baby, about how hard she’s been working trying to hold it all together. She wants to wake him up and tell him she can’t wait three months until Poppy’s next appointment to start worrying. She’s already terrified.

But she’s too afraid. Afraid that if she begins, she’ll start to cry and never stop, that she’ll be swallowed by her sadness, her fear, how overwhelmed she is, how certain she is that everything she has is slipping away.

“Do you have to do that right here, in front of me like that?” The sound of Charlie’s voice sends a jolt through her body. He’s awake.

“Do what?”

“That. Be all over her.” She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have the words to respond. “It’s not easy watching how affectionate you are with her when you pull away every time I touch you.”