“We could manage with that.” She got a determined look on her face. “There’s her food, and clothes, and things for her room, not to mention all the extra trouble of teaching her good English. It won’t be long before she’s a teen, eating us out of house and home, growing out of all her clothes. Then there’s the books…”
She was rehearsing her argument for Jud. I felt around under the table until I found the transmitter. It peeled off easily and dropped into my hand.
“… thousand and one other things a man doesn’t pay any attention to…”
Once they were used to the arrangement, I would buy items such as a television and computer and music system. I’d provide the money for private tuition so Luz could catch up on those subjects Adeline might not have covered. I’d pay to send her to interesting places on vacation, make—
All money and no love. The way my mother had been with me.
No. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t. I wasn’t Luz’s mother—she already had one, or at least someone who loved her.
I stood carefully. “You’ll talk to Jud tonight? Then I’ll take my leave. I’ll talk to my lawyer and get a preliminary agreement drafted. I’ll come back tomorrow. Afternoon.” I was sweating; the bug cut into my palm.
There was still the booster unit in the tub of flowers by the door, which would be easy enough to retrieve on my way out, and the transmitters upstairs.
“If I may, I’ll go up and use your facilities before I leave.”
I used both hands on the stair rail, and counted backwards from two thousand in sevens as I climbed. Pain is just a message.
In the Carpenters’ room, the back window was open. Faint voices—Button chattering, Jud answering, one short phrase from Luz, an acknowledgment from Jud—drifted up on the night air. The bug was exactly where I’d left it.
Luz’s room looked different without the books on the bedside table. Maybe the suitcase was still downstairs. My heart felt too big for my rib cage, and my lungs too small. I had to sit on the bed for a minute before I could lean forward and reach for the transmitter. When I stood, my face felt cold. The door seemed a million miles away.
I dragged myself to the bathroom, telling myself I did not have concussion, that if I could just drink some water, splash some on my face, I’d be all right, but when I got there my good leg started to fold under me, and I half fell, half sat on the toilet. I shivered, swallowed. I just needed a few minutes, and some water.
A child thundered up the stairs. The bathroom door slammed all the way open. Luz. She stared.
“I have to use the bathroom,” she said.
I didn’t move.
“What are you doing?”
“I was going to get some water,” I said. She looked at the sink, then at me. “My leg hurts.”
She absorbed that. “Would you like me to bring you some?”
“Yes. Please.”
She tipped the toothbrushes out of a glass, rinsed it, and filled it to the brim. She carried it from the sink with great deliberation. When I reached for it, she said, “Use both hands. If you spill it, it’ll make the floor slippery.”
I sipped. “Thank you.” My breathing steadied.
“What did you do to your leg? Did you fall down?”
“I hurt my knee.”
“Aba helps me if I hurt myself, she helps Mr. Carpenter, too. But most people don’t have an Aba. Most people have a mom.”
“Mine is a long, long way away.”
She nodded, unsurprised. “What about your brother?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Button’s not really my brother. Mr. Carpenter isn’t really my daddy, either. My daddy’s dead.”
A child skipping along the pavement, holding my hand on one side, Karp’s on the other. “Mine too.”
She looked worried. “Then who’s going to kiss you better?”
The bathroom walls wavered. A little hand took the glass from mine.
“Don’t cry,” she said. “I can do it. See?” She kissed my cheek, light as a cricket. “There. All better. Only I hope it works. I don’t think you’re supposed to be older than me.”
Her tenderness was unbearable. She was nine years old. She knew how to kiss me better: a simple thing, but one I could never have taught her. And I had come here to save her.
“Aud? I have to go to the bathroom now.”
“Yes,” I said, “of course,” and hauled myself to my feet.
She closed the door behind me.
On the way down the stairs, climbing into the truck, putting the engine in gear, I kept feeling that cricket kiss on my cheek.
Back in the park, I managed to get out of the truck and into the trailer. The dizziness was passing; probably more long-delayed shock than concussion. I stripped, and probed at my ribs cautiously. There was no way to be sure without an X ray but I didn’t think anything was broken. I strapped myself up as well as I could, took more ibuprofen and some Vicodin—not much left—and forced down an apple, half a can of tuna, and two glasses of water. I propped myself on the couch with a bag of ice on either side of my knee. It hurt too much to lie down.
I dozed for a while.
When I woke, I felt shaky, but I could think. I forced myself to my feet, found a flashlight. My phone was in the truck. Might as well take a look at the hitch while I was out there.
The lever that unclamped the tongue had snapped off. Not dangerous, just a nuisance: I’d have to drag the trailer behind me for the rest of my stay in Arkansas because getting the hitch off would destroy it.
Back inside, I called Bette’s emergency number. It was an hour later in Atlanta, and she usually retired before nine, but she answered on the third ring and didn’t ask questions, just let me outline what I needed. I spelled out the exact terms: money, school attendance, home access to information, penalty for breaking the agreement. “Please e-mail me a draft as soon as you can.”
“Shouldn’t take long. Basically we’re talking about customizing a general child custody agreement. Do you want any visitation rights—her coming to you, you going to her? Vacations, weekends?”
I touched my cheek.
“Aud? Hello?”
When I had gone back to Norway as a child, speaking English with more fluency than Norwegian, my great-aunt Hjordis gave me books and helped me with the words I didn’t understand. When my mother was busy and my father out of town, she had wrapped me in a warm coat, taken me by the mittened hand, and walked with me through the city, pointing out the different buildings, telling me their history, funny stories about people who had lived there that weren’t written on the plaques or in books. She had helped me belong.
“Are you still there? Hello? Goddamn these cellular—”
“Sorry, Bette. Yes. Visitation rights. I don’t know yet. Can you keep the door open?”
“I could write a general clause about unsupervised access, to be mutually determined at some unspecified later date, permission not to be unreasonably withheld, etc. etc. Would that suit?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get right on it.” She hung up.
Bette loved the unusual, the unexpected. She loved her work. I could see her pulling on her robe, walking barefoot down the carpeted hallway to her home office, sitting down, rubbing her hands. I’d have the draft within the hour.
There were other things to do, but I felt restless and unsettled, as though my skin didn’t fit. I managed half a bottle of beer and no food at all. Towards midnight I left the trailer and stood in the dark under the trees.
The afternoon sky above the Carpenters’ house was an ominous yellow gray and the air smelled metallic. If the temperature fell a few more degrees it would snow. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. I transferred the briefcase to my left hand and knocked. Adeline answered the door in a daffodil yellow apron, wiping flour from her hands. Julia and I had eaten homemade food once. It was at Aunt Hjordis’s house in Oslo. “A fine morning,” she said. Her faded blue eyes looked ten years younger. “Jud will be just a while.” She glanced at the briefcase.