He offered to get me a prescription for some sleeping pills, but I said I’d rather do it naturally. He chuckled indulgently as if I were opting for primal-scream therapy instead of taking an aspirin. I’m always amazed at how prescription-happy that generation was. I suppose if they now admitted it’s wrong, they’d have to own up to turning half their patients into drooling addicts.
I insisted that they allow me to drive them over to the bed-and-breakfast. I had to drop Margie off at nursery at the same time, so after an infinity of packing, dressing, and general organizing, we all bundled into the car. Margie started singing the noises-in-our-car song- parp parp peep peep- and I felt my heart swell in elation. I was going to be alone, actually alone, very, very soon. I joined in, singing the choruses, perhaps a little too joyfully. When I caught Mum’s eye in the rearview mirror, she looked terribly hurt. I apologized.
She sniffed and looked out of the window. “In front of her…” she said, or something upsetting like that. I pretended not to hear.
My attention was elsewhere: Mum and Dad were leaving. I was going home to be alone for the first time in over a week, and I had arranged for Yeni to pick Margie up at lunchtime so that I could sleep. I was days ahead of myself. Margie ran in to nursery, kicking her little legs up behind herself, working her fisted hands at her sides, all her gestures expressive of her absolute determination to enjoy the day. She stopped inside the door, scanning the horizon for the jolliest children as I pulled her coat off, and then lolloped off across the room toward a ginger-haired boy. The mums were sweet to me. Gathering around, they said they’d seen me in the paper but not to worry. I know I looked nice in the paper because they were all either smiling at me or trying not to smile. One woman got flustered and pointedly ignored me. Harry’s little blond mum was on the other side of the room, and then suddenly she was standing at my shoulder, slightly behind me, behaving like a politician’s supplicant wife on the campaign trial.
I don’t understand why she is selling herself so hard. She has perpetually untidy thin hair, which looks as if she has just got out of bed. Her eyes are small and green, the smallness being a positive benefit in one’s midthirties, in the sense that small eyes age better than big eyes. The divorcée’s tinge of bitterness and regret that infuses her conversation doesn’t show on her face. Her lips are swollen and red, as if she’s been eating all the red candies in the box and needs admonishing. Even the way she stands is profoundly sexy, with her butt sticking out, emphasizing her chest. She flirts with me, with glances and looks and the way she turns away and then back toward me. It flatters me so much I get quite flustered. Until today I comforted myself with the thought that she was probably a vacuous idiot, but now I know she isn’t. I’m quite taken with her.
I only realized Harry’s mum was there because the mum who was talking to me glanced behind my shoulder a couple of times, as though addressing my partner. She was standing so far back that I had to turn a full 180 degrees (away from everyone else) to see her. She was wearing a low-cut green sweater with a silver stick on a chain that sort of pointed down into her cleavage. Our eyes locked, and I nodded hello just as a hush descended over the room behind me. Even the babies were momentarily quiet. Everyone in the room stared at the kitchen door and sort of gasped under their collective breath.
I turned to see the young woman assistant standing in the middle of the room. She was so brown she could have been working on a sugar plantation in the Caribbean for a month. Her eyes were an eerie blue, her dark skin, her white-bleached hair making her look like a photographic negative. Aside from dramatically increasing her risk of developing a melanoma, she’ll ruin her skin using a sunlamp that much, and she’s only young. Aware of the effect she was having, she drew herself up. She actually seemed quite pleased with herself.
“Good God,” I muttered. “She shouldn’t do that.”
“She can’t help herself,” whispered Harry’s mum. “She’s tanorexic.”
It was so unexpected, I laughed out loud, even though it was obvious who we’d been talking about. I couldn’t stop myself. It would have been even more rude to stare straight at the girl and laugh, so I turned my shoulders to Harry’s mum. She laughed back and fingered her necklace.
I pointed at her. “Funny lady,” I said, and blushed. I sounded like a horrible old creep, but she didn’t seem offended. She smiled coyly and ran the tip of her index finger up and down the silver drop pendant on her necklace in a way that made me think fondly of my knob.
Back in the car, the atmosphere was thunderous. It had turned into a wet, gray day. Dad had booked a B amp;B somewhere in Paisley because it was quite near the airport but outside the two-mile rip-off radius. Unfortunately neither of us was familiar with that area. We couldn’t find the right street and ended up stuck in a grubby one-way system of streets near the city center. The rain washed across the windshield, and we couldn’t read the street signs. Big red sandstone terraces sat back from the pavement just far enough to make the house numbers unreadable. The streets were short and litter-lined. Mum barked from the backseat that no way on God’s green earth was she staying the night here.
Every time I felt my blood pressure climb, I thought of Harry’s mum’s joke and smiled. I wish I’d said something debonair and charming back. I couldn’t think of anything, so I imagined myself laughing comfortably and brushing my fingers down the back of her arm and sliding away across the room, leaving a trail of aftershave.
We finally found the place. I parked illegally and carried their suitcases upstairs as Dad signed in. It was a nice spacious room with a big window and tea-making facilities. As I was leaving, I weakened and invited them back over for dinner this evening. Mum breathed in to speak but Dad coughed and she said no. We left it on an uncomfortable note. Mum kissed me grudgingly, sighed tremulously (twice, in case I hadn’t heard the first one). Dad gestured to me to get out of the room before she started a scene, so I did. She never used to be this self-indulgent. Dad feeds it in a way. I think he quite enjoys the drama of it since he’s retired.
I shed all sense of worrying about them as I left Paisley and hit the motorway for Glasgow. I came straight home and took a long, hot bath in my house, leaving the bathroom door open. I got out and walked, gloriously, balls-swingingly naked to the bedroom, where I pulled on a pair of underpants and slid into a big cream-puff bed.
I slept like a barbiturate-sodden housewife, waking up at four o’clock this afternoon. The sun was already setting outside the window. Margie was standing at the end of my bed, drinking from a cup and staring at me. She grinned when she saw my eyes open. Blood red Kool-Aid spilled from the sides of her mouth (I’ve asked Yeni not to give her that stuff). As if she knew that peace had come to our house, Margie climbed up on the bed and lay down, spooning me. I wrapped my arms around her, crossing my hands on her chest, tucking my fingers into her damp little armpits, feeling her heartbeat on my thumbs.
In moments of perfect clarity, when I’m not tired or upset or worried, I know that Margie eclipses her mum and me, that her life and health matter more than the respect of my peers, the history of literature, my financial security. Everything I loved was there at once, every precious thing. She wriggled her tiny bum backward into my chest, bending forward and sticking her legs out. My darling, all-encompassing comma.