“Don’t you want to know what it is?” she says, holding his present out in front of her.
He’s afraid he won’t like it. How special can it be, wrapped in a plain white sheet like she was in a hurry?
“Go on, buddy,” his father says, and pauses the movie. “You’ve waited all morning.”
Under the sheet is a black case with latches, and inside, his very own guitar, black and brown and small enough for him to hold by himself.
“A travel guitar,” his father says. “You can take it with you on the road.”
“It’s from both of us,” his mother says.
“HE YOU,” Dusty says.
“You’re welcome, buddy.” His father tunes the guitar, then sets it across Dusty’s lap and shows him where to put his hands. “Hold this string down,” his father says, mashing his pointer finger, “and use this hand to strum. Like this, just these four strings. That’s a G chord. Key of the angels.”
Dusty practices. Playing guitar is easier than talking and sounds better.
His father goes to the closet for his own guitar. “Okay, buddy. Ready to rock?”
His father starts playing. His hand moves up and down the long part of his guitar. He makes a lot of notes. Then he nods at Dusty, and Dusty bangs out his chord.
“That’s it,” his father says.
His father plays more notes and Dusty hits his chord again. His father is happy. “We rock,” his father says.
“REE RAH,” Dusty says.
His mother is dancing in her dotted pajamas. “I’ll sing,” she says. “I’ll be your chick singer.”
“This song doesn’t have words,” his father says.
Milestone
For the last hour she has been sitting in her front window holding her phone and a Rolodex card.
Dear Byrd, there are so many questions I’m afraid to ask.
She dials Janet’s number, hangs up. Dials again, hangs up.
Have no right to ask.
She dials again, this time waiting for Janet to answer. “Can you tell me how my son is doing?”
“Hold on,” Janet says. There’s a scrape of metal on metal as she opens her file cabinet. “I’ve got a letter here, his milestone letter from six years ago. You’ll need to sign for it.”
“I’ll be right over,” Addie says.
“Take your time,” Janet says, without a trace of irony.
Janet hasn’t changed. She looks as tired as ever. Even her dress looks the same — wrinkled, like the dress she wore to the hospital the day Byrd was born. Maybe the same dress, Addie thinks.
“Here you go.” Janet hands her a plain white envelope. No address, no postmark. Tucked inside is a letter from 1990. “It’s something we require during the first year,” Janet says, “before the adoption is final. A record of the child’s development, his early milestones. All non-identifying, of course.”
Addie turns the envelope over in her hand, again, again. “So long ago,” she says. “Why didn’t you tell me when it came?”
“I’m not supposed to initiate contact, not with you, not with the adoptive parents. I thought you understood.”
“This is the only letter? You don’t have anything more recent?”
“This is all we require.” Janet smiles her tired, patient smile. “You don’t have to read it here, Addie. It’s yours. You can take it.”
The letter is written in forward-sloping longhand on lined notebook paper. There is no greeting.
He was six weeks old when he first smiled.
He rolled over at four months, sat up at six, crawled at nine. Now, at eleven months, he has two teeth on bottom, one and a half on top. He finger-walks — holds your finger and waddles along beside you and makes this sound: ya ya ya ya ya ya. He loves walking. He’s worn holes in his sneakers.
Addie pictures the sneakers — blue, with big white rubber toe guards.
He waves bye-bye. He flails his arm and smiles.
He’ll imitate you sticking out your tongue, but he likes it best when you imitate him. That makes him laugh. He likes to dance, which for him is bouncing up and down at the knees and turning in circles. He likes being picked up and twirled and dipped. Dipping is his favorite thing. Why do babies like to see the world upside down?
Addie pictures them dancing in a kitchen where everything is bright and clean and the cabinets have fresh baby latches and the radio plays world music. The mother is barefoot, with wavy hair and a bright, full skirt. She scoops him up in her arms, her baby, and cha-cha-chas him across the floor. She dips him. He squeals at the upside-down refrigerator. He is happy. He knows she won’t drop him.
The letter has no signature, only this postscript at the bottom:
His first word was “da-da,” then “ma-ma,” then “bug.”
Addie wonders: a fly thumping the kitchen window? An ant in the sugar bowl? Or maybe not a bug at all, but something that reminded him of a bug. A raisin squashed in his tiny fist.
And what about now, she wants to ask the mother. What words does he know now?
Second Chance
John Dunn starts asking Addie what her plans are. Not in an unkind way — he would never be unkind — but in a her-own-best-interest way, which is almost worse. She figures he’s tired of being sympathetic, tired of being the one to help her carry her secret around, that heavy, sloshy bucket.
Also, there’s now a woman in the picture, an English professor who dresses only in black. She comes in the shop every night and leaves with John Dunn at closing. The two of them have been talking about the future.
Addie remembers thinking about the future. She remembers long-ago afternoons, sitting in Shelia’s kitchen, the air warm and greasy. They played Crazy Eights and daydreamed what their lives would be. Addie never had a clear picture, only that hers would be extraordinary somehow.
“Have you ever considered opening your own store?” John Dunn asks.
The thought has crossed her mind. She has insurance money from Bryce and no one to spend it on or save it for.
“I know of a place for sale,” John Dunn says. “It’s in Raleigh. Second Chance, it’s called.”
“Sounds like a pet shelter.”
Second Chance is in a two-story brick building, plain except for the mural on the side from when it was a hardware store years ago. The paint is flaking off, but you can still make out the giant red hammer, cocked at an angle as if it could come smashing down any minute.
The store still smells like lime, sawdust, insecticide. Even now, customers come in from time to time looking for household items, usually old women whose husbands used to shop here. They are surprised by the books.
The manager, Peale, dresses the part, in overalls and a stiff white T-shirt and orange work boots. Like everything else, he came with the place. He is tall and thin, with skin dark as walnut, a deep part incised in his fro. He keeps a pencil tucked behind one ear and red-rimmed reading glasses on a cord around his neck. His smile is quick, bright, self-assured, genuine.
This morning he’s at the front counter rummaging through a carton of books. He unearths a hardback with a purple dust jacket and holds it up to show Addie. “This poet wrote a whole book about not having children,” he says. “I thought poets were supposed to know how to sum things up.”
Addie wishes she could be as opinionated about anything as Peale is about everything.
He’s the one who came up with their new window display, “Women Who Write Too Much: The Books of Joyce Carol Oates,” because suddenly they seemed to have at least five copies of everything she had published.