‘But she can’t tie the laces,’ said Mallory.
‘If she can learn buttons, she can learn laces,’ said Mrs Ortega.
‘No more damn Velcro. That’s like buying a wheelchair for a kid who only limps a little. It’ll cripple her.’
‘But she can’t—’
‘She has to!’ Exasperated, the cleaning lady threw up her hands. ‘How’s that kid gonna make it in life if she can’t even tie her shoes?’
Indeed. Mallory, in her feral days, had survived by packing razor blades in the pockets of her child-size jeans; and by stealing only the best running shoes, and running like crazy to escape kiddy rapists; and she had learned to make her bed only places where she was most likely to live through the night. She had stolen wallets and wheedled money from whores and acquired so many other skills that Coco could never learn for lack of guile.
The little girl stood in the doorway, and her face had a worried look. Of course, she had overheard everything, and now her steps were timid as she stole up beside the detective and shyly took her hand. Those blue eyes were full of hope – and thus alien to Mallory, who saw all hope as pointless.
The cleaning lady went downstairs to ready an apartment for Charles Butler’s guests, the Harveys of Illinois. And the detective sat on the floor, teaching Coco to tie shoelaces so that this tiny child could survive in the wide world. Their fingers intertwined for hours as they worked the laces together. The child so loved Mallory that, though she tired, she would not stop until she had done this one thing right. And so the final triumphal knot was a gift that each of them gave to the other.
When Charles Butler entered his apartment, he heard the sound of a motor running, and Coco was yelling, ‘Stop! That’s it!’
He raced to the kitchen, and there he found the child seated at the table, both hands pressed to her ears. Her mouth formed a silent scream – while Mallory powered down a mechanical device. His kitchen counter was lined up with motorized things. This was torture for a child with hyperacuity.
‘Hi.’ Mallory turned to Charles, smiling as if this might be a perfectly normal way to occupy a little girl’s time. ‘Coco identified the motors she heard in the Ramble. I need a letter from you to back up how good she is with sounds.’
Coco was rocking back and forth, hugging herself – calming herself.
Charles’s face was grim. ‘A moment, Mallory? Out in the hall?’ This was not an invitation. He took her by the arm and propelled her from the kitchen, through the apartment and into the outer hallway, shutting doors behind him so the child would not hear him ask the detective, ‘Are you insane? I can’t believe you put her through that. Don’t you ever go near that child again.’
The detective was squaring off, gearing up for a fight. ‘I need—’
‘Who cares? The prospective parents are downstairs right now. Don’t make that little girl choose between you and them. Even you couldn’t be that cruel.’
Did she flinch? She did.
He pressed on. ‘Those two people are all prepared to love that child on sight. You have only the most superficial interest in Coco. Get out, Mallory! Just go!’
Mallory turned away from him, and she was striding toward the elevator when Coco came running out the door, screaming, ‘Wait for me!’ She wriggled free from Charles’s grasp and flung herself down the hall, lurching, crying, ‘Mallory! Mallory!’
The detective never even turned her head to acknowledge the little girl. She only put up the flat of her hand and commanded, ‘Stop.’ Obedient as any dog, the child did stop. ‘Stay,’ said Mallory as she stepped into the elevator and vanished.
‘No! No-o-o!’ Coco ran to the end of the hall and banged the metal doors. She sank to the floor, a puddle of a child. Charles was at her side, reaching down to her. She waved her arms to ward him off, and then her interest wandered to a shoelace that had come undone.
Laces?
Her face was anguished. Lost again, anchorless. Her arms flung wide, small hands curling into fists. This was the breach he had wanted; the precise moment to replace one bond for another was now. He knelt down beside her. ‘There are two very nice people downstairs. They’ve come all the way from Illinois to meet you.’
‘I want Mallory.’
‘She won’t be back.’
Coco shook her head. ‘Mallory loves me. She loves me.’
And now he watched her bow her head to – tie – her – shoelace. And when she was done, she looked up at him, so defiant. She stuck out her foot to show him this accomplishment of an awkward child-tied knot. ‘Is that superficial?’
Oh, God – her remarkable hearing. Every word said in the hall had been overheard.
Coco leaned toward him, eyes glittering and wet, and there was anger when she said with great dignity, ‘Mallory loved me.’
Past tense.
Stripped of all hope, the floundering child wrapped her arms around his neck. Her tiny body was shaking with sobs, her voice cracking as she recited a litany of deep pain. They sat there in the hallway for a very long time, Charles dying, Coco crying, grieving over every unfair loss, lost home, lost love.
The Harveys of Illinois had finished unpacking their bags in the downstairs apartment, and now they were surprised when the elevator doors opened upon the sight of a tiny child with swollen red eyes. Mrs Harvey picked up the little girl to carry her down the hall and through the open door to Charles’s apartment, saying all the while in tones of motherlove, ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’ In charge now, Mrs Harvey pulled a tissue from her purse and wiped Coco’s face clean of tears.
Charles was unprepared for the child’s reaction to this small kindness, and it killed him to watch it play out.
Coco’s fabulous smile was instant and wide – if not genuine – as she informed the Harveys that rats were carriers of bubonic plague. Next, she ran to the piano in the music room. She played them a song and sang for them, then danced back into the parlor and began a monologue of vermin trivia. How hard she worked, auditioning for a new home and negotiating for love to replace what was so recently ripped away. And the Harveys were blindly enchanted by a child’s ruthless pitch for survival.
Excusing himself, Charles retired to Coco’s bedroom, where he sat alone with his pain. The drapes were drawn, and the only light was the glow of fireflies. How bright. How odd. They should have begun to die off long before now, but there was not one dead insect in the jar.
Oh, fool. Would that he could die of foolishness.
It was so obvious. Mallory had been entering by stealth, by night – every night – to replenish the lightning bugs so that Coco would not wake up in a dark place.
The sorry man reached beneath the pillow and found Coco’s one-button cell phone. He pressed the button, and the connection was instant. ‘Mallory?’
And she said, ‘I signed Coco’s release form. You’ll find it on the kitchen table. Are you happy now?’
‘No,’ he said.
This summer afternoon would remain in his memory forever, a bookmark to a sad and curious passage that he must return to again and again. Well into his nineties and long after the death of Kathy Mallory, on every fine, warm day, he would sit in a garden where he would only suffer daisies to be planted. Sometimes his great-grandchildren would find him there, tearing petals from flowers. They would smile to see the old man playing a children’s game of loves me, loves me not, never suspecting that he grappled with an old problem of bugs in a jar.