Darling Rose Gold(17)

“How old were you?”

“Thirty-four.”

I had finished an appointment with the admissions office and headed to the cafeteria for lunch. The food at Gallatin Community College wasn’t fresh or healthy, but I’m a sucker for nostalgia, so I went anyway. I ordered and paid for a plate of mozzarella sticks. (Forget His only Son—mozzarella sticks are God’s greatest gift to mankind.)

I was making my way through the second mozzarella stick when a kid who looked to be in his early twenties sat at my bench. Not too close to me. In fact, I thought he’d chosen the perfect distance: not so close he’d be intruding, but not so far we couldn’t talk. He wasn’t sexy, but his shirt was pressed, body lanky.

“Hi,” I said, more to my mozzarella stick than to the boy with the blond crew cut.

He swiveled around. “Hi?”

He said it like it was a question. I should’ve known from the first syllable he wouldn’t be the kind to step up.

Rose Gold interrupts my reminiscing. “How long were you together?”

“A few months,” I say.

“Did you ever think about marrying him?”

I choke on my laughter. “Lord, no.”

“Why not?” she asks so seriously that I know I need to be careful.

“Because I was ready to grow up. He wasn’t.”

I tell my daughter that Grant Smith became my boyfriend too fast. I say I ignored the signs, as every smitten girl does: the dilated pupils, the heavy sweating, the shoving of objects under the couch cushion when I came over unannounced. It had been a long time since I’d had a boyfriend, an embarrassing number of months (fine, years) since I’d had sex. I never heard wedding bells with her father—a man twelve years my junior—but I thought he was a good way to pass the time until someone more appropriate came along. He could string several sentences together without sounding like a moron. I never said we were soul mates.

I was thinking about babies at that point. A lot. Not babies with him, but a baby for me. I spent countless nights dreaming of tiny toes and names for little girls. Sometimes I think I jinxed myself, dreaming about babies so often while I slept next to him. How else can you explain getting pregnant while on the Pill?

I thought about the predicament for a while before I told him. Was this a predicament at all? I’d wanted a baby for so long, and now I’d somehow found one in my belly. Maybe we could become a happy family. Maybe he would step up to the plate, hit the home run. (I’ve now exhausted my knowledge of sports metaphors.) Maybe he needed a baby to straighten out his life.

Right.

Her father was horrified in the way most young men would be. He didn’t want a baby; he had his whole life ahead of him. He couldn’t believe I’d “done this.” He was paranoid and irritable, and I told Rose Gold it became hard to discern whether Grant or the meth was talking. I couldn’t bring a baby into his world. I’d have to go it alone.

We wouldn’t be the Brady Bunch family I’d hoped for, but let’s face it: Mike Brady was a drag. I could raise a kid on my own. I’d raised myself, hadn’t I? And I turned out okay. I ended the relationship and started checking out town houses.

Rose Gold pipes up again. “And he died of a drug overdose?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“So you don’t know for sure?”

“I know.” I scowl at my daughter. “All I meant was we weren’t in touch by then. Someone from the neighborhood told me.”

“Who?”

“I don’t remember,” I say, irritated.

“Where is he buried?”

“How on God’s green earth should I know?”

“I thought you might have heard,” Rose Gold says. She’s being smart with me.

“I’m sorry if this comes off harsh,” I say, “but Grant didn’t want to be your father.”

“Tell me about it,” Rose Gold says, dripping with bitterness.

The movie’s end credits roll, and we watch the names scroll by. I turn the TV off, shrouding the room in silence. Rose Gold yawns and stretches in her baggy sweatshirt.

She takes Adam from me and curls him against her chest. She opens her mouth to speak, but her cell phone vibrates loudly on the coffee table in front of us, stopping her. I lean forward to see who’s calling, but she snatches the phone away before I catch a glimpse.

Rose Gold glances at the screen. The blood drains from her face. Her hands begin to shake. I worry for a second she’s going to drop Adam.

“Can you take him?” she mumbles as she thrusts the baby into my arms. She hurries down the hallway, clutching her ringing phone. A few seconds later, her bedroom door slams shut. The lock clicks into place.

I sit back in my chair and begin rocking Adam again, thinking about what I’ve just seen.

Someone wants to talk to my daughter.

The real question is, why doesn’t she want to talk to them?





6





Rose Gold


When the interview was over, I picked up the paper grocery bag holding all my sleepover stuff and left the café. I got back in the van and typed Alex’s Lakeview address into the map on my phone.

I drove north on Western Avenue and took a right on Fullerton, thinking about the lies I’d told Vinny. Of course I felt bad for Mom. On more than one night in my apartment, I’d gazed at the recliner to my right and wished she were sitting in it. She used to draw the alphabet on my back and braid my wigs. She made up wild vacations, without us ever leaving the house. She gave hugs that squeezed the air from my lungs. She fought for me. In spite of all her sins, I knew how much she loved me.