She wiped her forehead on the back of her hand, sat there until the hot pulse calmed in her wrists and temples. Then she pulled herself to her feet and managed to get herself and all her groceries home. The cool, dim air of her apartment felt welcoming and safe; she was so glad to be home, and she felt as if her jaunt to the store had been a metaphorical pilgrimage, a difficult journey with some high, imperative meaning. She hoisted the bags onto the kitchen counter, then went to see how things were going with Ethan and Marcus.
She found them in Ethan’s room. Ethan lay on a mat, and Marcus was helping him through his leg lifts. Abigail was always amazed at how rigorous these exercises were and how well Ethan was able to do them. Marcus was a big believer in the therapeutic benefits of exercise, and he had convinced Abigail several years ago in her initial interview with him that this would help Ethan more than anything else. And he had been right: Ethan’s mood swings had stabilized; his sleep was better.
“How is everything, boys?” she asked with a cheer she didn’t feel.
“He’s in a good mood today,” said Marcus, who always seemed to be able to divine things going on in Ethan that even his mother couldn’t. Marcus was a large, sweet black man who had told Abigail he had eight children at home. He seemed much too young to her to have any, but she knew that the older she got, the younger everyone else seemed. Marcus’s head was large and round, and his face gleamed with sweat and goodwill. He didn’t seem entirely human.
“Glad to hear it,” said Abigail. She backed out of Ethan’s room and went to her quiet, dark bedroom to lie down for a little while. Her bed was broad and comfortable; she lay on top of the bedspread with her shoes on. She intended to lie there for five minutes, then get up and make lunch, but when she awoke, her pillow was soaked with sweat, her hair was damp, and her mouth was dry. She sat up, befuddled. The clock said it was nearly noon. She had been asleep for two hours. She leapt up and, patting her head to smooth her hair, rushed to the kitchen. She stood there blinking for a moment, trying to orient herself, then sat down in the breakfast nook and pored over the recipes, trying to get her mind around how she would do all those things in time for Samantha’s arrival in half an hour. Picturing herself from an aerial perspective, she had an image of herself as a rumpled old woman in a dull apartment with a weird son, mussed hair, and nothing good to eat. Meanwhile, Samantha’s mother cooked exciting food, always looked glamorous, and lived in an interesting house; Abigail had always suspected this. She started to weep with self-pity. This was extremely unlike her. She shook herself, dried her eyes on a napkin. Of course this was just silly, irrational anxiety. She was nervous. That was all. There was nothing to be afraid of: This was Oscar’s daughter, after all, Oscar, whom Abigail had known as well as she knew herself.
When the doorman called to say that Samantha was on her way up, Abigail had managed to cut the cantaloupe in half and get the scrubbed potatoes in some simmering water. She wiped her brow with the back of her hand and went to the door.
“Hello,” she said, opening it, squinting at the figures in the brightly lit hallway. “I’m Abigail Feldman. Please come in!”
“Thank you,” came a woman’s voice. “Come on, Buster, let’s go.”
Abigail led them back to the kitchen and gestured to the breakfast nook. “Please sit down,” she said. “Oh, shoot! What do I have to offer your kids to drink?”
“Oh, I brought stuff for the kids, don’t worry,” said Samantha. She stood in the center of the room, a tall, rather ungainly young woman with flyaway dark hair and a baby riding on her hip, a little boy clinging possessively to her legs. She looked like a less remarkable, more pragmatic version of Teddy. She was painfully thin and seemed harried and tense.
“It’s really so nice to meet you finally,” said Abigail, oddly at ease now that she saw who Samantha was.
“Oh,” said Samantha, “thanks for inviting us. We can’t stay too long, don’t worry.”
“I was just in the middle of cooking lunch,” said Abigail. “Sit down. Would you like…” She regarded her, thought for an instant. “A beer? I think I have one or two bottles in the icebox.”
“Would I like a beer,” said Samantha with a longing little laugh. “God, would I. But I’m breast-feeding, so I better not.”
“I’ve read on-line that a little beer is good for breast milk,” Abigail said, feeling protective toward this gaunt, unhappy creature. “It’s got B vitamins or something.”
“My husband would kill me.” Samantha sat on the breakfast-nook bench, settled the little boy next to her, rummaged around in her enormous bag, and produced a small box of apple juice with a miniature straw protruding from it, which he began sucking on aggressively. “Can I help you cook?” she asked then, looking up at Abigail, suddenly bright-eyed.
Abigail handed her the cold bottle of Tecate she’d opened. “Oh gosh,” she said. “I don’t know. I was going to make an elaborate feast, but I…fell asleep.”
Samantha laughed. “I do that all the time. Big plans, then I conk out the minute these two go down.”
“I have no such excuse,” said Abigail.
The little boy squealed and slapped his baby sister, who smiled and blinked. He gave a wild-eyed grin to no one in particular. He looked like an evil little elf. He was about three years old, pale and thin, with bluish circles under his eyes and a fragile neck, but Abigail could see the potential for explosiveness in the manic corners of his mouth, his eyes darting to adults’ faces to gauge their reaction to him, the kinetic restlessness of his limbs. His baby sister was, by way of contrast, fat, placid, and unassuming.
“Buster, no,” said Samantha. “That’s uncalled for.”
Buster laughed at his mother, his whole face perverse and gleeful.
“Hey, Buster,” Abigail said, “I bet you can’t count backward from ten.”
He looked up at her. “Yeah I can.”
Abigail sat at the other end of the bench. “Come here and sit in my lap and prove it to me.”
Buster climbed into Abigail’s lap. “Ten nine seven,” he shouted, nestling against her. “Five three four one.”
“That is very good!” Abigail said, smiling at Samantha, who didn’t smile back. “I think you might have missed a few, though. Want to try one more time?”
He leapt off her lap and went over to the refrigerator, where he began making smeary palm prints on the shiny whiteness.
Abigail produced her two recipes. “I was going to make these. I got as far as boiling the potatoes.”
Samantha took them from her and looked them over. “Oh, how nice. But so much trouble! We could just have boiled potatoes and sliced cantaloupe.”
“You could use a good meal, looks like,” Abigail blurted. “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry.”
Samantha looked at Abigail. Then she took a slug of beer. “I’m too thin,” she said.
“Well, compared to me, anyone would be,” said Abigail.
“Since the kids were born, I just run around all the time.”
“Drink your beer. Put your feet up. I’m going to make this salad. Maxine was talking about tuna fish this morning and she got me craving it. What’s your little girl’s name?”