RIgHT AFTER ZOE’s oatmeal and strawberries, I broached the subject of sidewalk chalk. “Do you have any?” I asked Zoe. “Mommy,” she said in a slurpy voice around the lip of her sippy cup, a tiny dribble of milk rolling down her chin.
“Mommy has it?” She shook her head, yet pointed to Libby’s office. It was a mixed message, but I walked over anyway and rapped gently on the door.
“Yes?” Libby’s voice was curt. I instantly regretted approaching her.
“I thought I could take Zoe outside and play with some sidewalk chalk,” I told her. “Do you happen to have any?”
“We just moved here, Annie,” she sighed. “Do you really think we had time to stock up on sidewalk chalk, of all things?”
“Okay. Well . . . maybe we’ll play in the sprinkler, then.” I smiled over at little Jackson, who was enjoying tummy time in his pack-n-play. Apparently babies were supposed to lie on their bellies for a while every day in order to strengthen their necks. Jackson couldn’t stand not looking at us—it was cute to see him struggle to lift his neck in my direction.
“I’m happy to help out with Jackson more, if you want,” I said hopefully.
Libby looked up at me, her eyes suddenly suspicious. “Jackson’s fine here with me. And why do you want to spend time outside all of a sudden?” she wanted to know. “Is it the boy next door? I know you went over there yesterday,” she said disapprovingly.
“I did . . . just to thank him. But no, that’s not it. I just want to enjoy the warm weather while it lasts. Didn’t you say this is unusual for San Francisco?”
“Yes,” Libby said. “It’s usually much cooler than this.” I could tell she wasn’t completely satisfied, but I wasn’t sure why it mattered; why should I feel guilty for making a friend? Or even a boyfriend . . . if it ever got that far? Nevertheless, I felt a little uncomfortable, as though I’d let her down. “Well, you’re welcome to set up the hose and sprinkler,” she said reluctantly. “They’re both in the yard.”
“Okay, great.” I turned to go.
“Annie . . .” Her voice sounded wary, concerned. I stopped at the door and looked back at her, waiting for her to go on. “It’s just . . . we don’t know anything about that boy. I don’t want him to hurt you. You know, if you get involved with him.” She held my gaze in hers. “I know you’re vulnerable, and I don’t know if I’m prepared to help you mend a broken heart.”
I took a deep breath, forcing a smile. “I’m fine,” I said. “Really. It’s not an issue. But if it were, I’d be fine.”
“Okay,” she said, turning back to her paperwork. “Please keep Zoe far away from the street.”
A few minutes later, Zoes and I were outside running through the sprinkler. We were having so much fun that I almost forgot why I’d wanted to come outside in the first place (which of course was to entice Owen out, too). But I couldn’t get Libby’s words out of my head. Was she being protective? Or did she not think I was good enough for Owen? I tried to convince myself that she’d just been looking out for me. That she was being protective because she’d grown to care about me.
Fifteen minutes later, when Zoe and I had turned off the sprinkler and were sitting on towels eating apple slices as we dried off, I heard the distant sound of a door slamming. I couldn’t see the front of Owen’s house from where we sat, at the bottom of the hill that formed the front lawn, but I held my breath anyway, hoping it was him.
Izzy rounded the bend first, loping past the hydrangea bush. She was off-leash. Zoe froze up mid-bite, and I wrapped my arm around her protectively. Izzy came right up to me, planting one paw in my lap and licking my face aggressively.
“No!” Zoe shrieked from beside me. “Bad dog! Go away, dog!”
“Shhh,” I told her, stroking Izzy’s head. “She’s a nice doggie. See?”
“Doggies awe bad!” she insisted.
“No, sweetheart. Who told you that?”
“Mommy,” she said, looking at Izzy suspiciously. Izzy sniffed at Zoe’s apple slice and Zoe held it out, allowing the dog to take it gingerly from her palm.
“See, Monkey? Not all doggies are bad. This one’s very nice,” I told her as Owen came around the corner.
“Sorry!” he called. “She slipped out without a leash. She’s not bothering you two, is she?”
“Not at all,” I said. And I meant it: Zoe had begun stroking Izzy’s fur of her own accord. “I think somebody’s made a new friend,” I told Owen with a smile.
“Awesome,” he said. “So who’s this little lady? I don’t think we’ve ever met.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised. “Well, she’s been your neighbor longer than I have. Zoe, meet Owen. He lives next door. Owen, this is my friend Zoe.”
“Hello,” he said, kneeling on the grass. He took Zoe’s hand in his. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Hi,” she mumbled, still transfixed by Izzy, who was now slobbering all over her face.
“Zoe, Izzy’s so big she’s almost like a pony. I bet you could sit on her back and she’d carry you around the yard.”
Zoe looked at Owen without saying anything, then turned back to Izzy.
“I think that was a no,” I told him.
“I think she won’t deign to talk to me,” he said.
“Can’t blame a girl for having standards.”
Owen swatted my shoulder, making me blush. Something about him lit me up. He made me feel like I was about to laugh all the time whenever I was around him. I felt both prettier and more self-conscious all at once, in particular since I was wearing the red one-piece-and-tunic combo, still wet from the sprinkler.
“Where’d you go on Words with Friends last night?” he wanted to know.
“I fell asleep early,” I told him. “I had to get up early today to watch Zoe. Why, did you want to further humiliate me?” When we’d stopped last night, he’d just scored seventy-two points on “placate.” My WWF vocabulary was mostly three-lettered.
“Nooo,” he said. “I just missed you after you disappeared.” I felt the beginnings of a serious blush spread across my face. He cleared his throat and looked down at his shoes. “Seriously, though,” he said then, “what’s the deal? Are you babysitting for them full-time? Doesn’t Mrs. Cohen work from home? My mom said she’s an interior designer, but her car’s always in the driveway.”
“She has a home office,” I replied, a little wary of telling Owen too much. I had the feeling the Cohens liked their privacy, given the fact that they had promised to value mine. “And I’m in school. I just started at SFSU. The hours are different every day depending on my classes, but Libby promised me it wouldn’t be more than twenty-five hours a week when she hired me. She just wants to make sure she can get some work done without having to worry about the kids. And what they’re paying me is amazing—I wouldn’t be able to afford college without it.” I stopped short, worried I’d said too much. But Owen didn’t seem bothered. He was listening carefully, but there wasn’t any judgment in his face.
“And I don’t know, Libby’s just gone above and beyond to be as supportive as possible,” I continued. “And she seems totally comfortable having me around Zoe.”
“What about the baby?”
“Jackson’s mostly with her, so far. I barely ever look after him. He just sleeps and feeds all the time, so she keeps him in her office. But anyway, another thing she did was help me pick out my courses and get me registered. I had no idea what I wanted to study when I came here a few weeks ago. I just knew I wanted to do something kind of creative. But I never thought about interior design, and I’m pretty sure it’s perfect. I mean, look at Libby’s life! Look at her job.” I paused, aware that I’d been going on for a while. “Sorry,” I told him, eager to change the subject. “Guess I got carried away. It’s been a while since I’ve talked to someone who isn’t just out of diapers.”
“No worries,” he said, looking thoughtful.
“Why did you ask?” I wondered aloud. “They’re really great, you know.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “I only asked because I wanted to get an idea of your schedule.” He fidgeted a little, looking nervous. “I was thinking maybe we could go out sometime. I could show you around San Francisco a little. You know, since you’re new here and everything.” I wasn’t sure if he was suggesting that we go on a date, but I almost didn’t care. Whatever he was asking was enough to make my face flush and my heart pound out of my chest.
“Sure,” I said. “Yeah, that would be great.”
“Okay. Great.” He smiled, relieved. “That’s awesome. Just, you know, let me know when you’re free.”
“I have Sundays off,” I told him.
“Oh . . .” He trailed off. “That’s almost a week away. Will you have any time during the week?”
“I’m not really sure. It’s kind of a play-it-by-ear situation.”
“No set hours?”
I shrugged. “Not really. I mean, once I get started with classes it’ll probably even out, I would assume. But for now it’s just whenever they need me.”
“Just be careful,” Owen said.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing, really. I just mean that I could see that situation getting a little weird.”
“Weird how?” He sounded so negative, and it was starting to irk me. As much as I liked Owen, I didn’t want him ruining my high. Everything was going so well. The last thing I needed was for someone to plant a seed of doubt.
“I don’t know, what if you want to change majors and Libby gets pushy or insulted? Or, like, what if they start asking you for more hours and you feel awkward saying no? It all seems great now, but when you’re working and living with someone, things could get weird. It’s like that thing people say about not eating where you sleep, or something.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s ‘Don’t shit where you eat.’”
“Same concept.”
“Not at all,” I said stiffly. “And anyway, I’m used to working hard. I think I can handle this.”
“Look,” he said again. “I’m not trying to piss you off. I just know that I’ve had some situations where friends and I have worked together and it hasn’t panned out, and things became complicated and it was harder to sort out than if it had been strictly friendship or strictly professional. So I guess what I’m saying is, set boundaries. Don’t be so in love with that family that you let them take advantage of you.”
“‘That family’ wouldn’t do that,” I told him coldly, my voice shaking. I clutched my hands together tightly in my lap, so Owen couldn’t see how upset I was. “And you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t even know them, and as far as I can see, you don’t know a whole lot about keeping a job, either. And you don’t even go to college.” I regretted my outburst as soon as it was over. My cheeks were flaming for what seemed like the millionth time that day, and I was so upset I’d begun to shake. He didn’t respond, and his face looked stoic, but I could tell from the pained expression in his eyes that I’d hit a nerve.
“I should probably walk the dog,” he said, standing up.
“Owen,” I started.
“I’ve got to go,” he interrupted. “It’s cool. It’s not like you said anything that wasn’t true.” He brushed off his shorts and hooked Izzy’s leash onto her collar.
“Okay.”
“Come on, Iz,” he said. “Nice meeting you, Zoe. Catch you guys later.” Then he was off. It occurred to me belatedly that I might have ruined my first and only chance at going on a date with Owen. I struggled to hold back the tears I felt forming in the corners of my eyes, while Zoe babbled about her newfound love for “doggies.”
It wasn’t until I headed up to my room later on to get cleaned up, though, and suffered the minor frustration of not being able to slam the door behind me—a frustration I’d borne all my life—that I wondered why I’d reacted so intensely. Was it because I finally found a place where I belonged and people who cared, and I was eager to protect that? Or was it just because Libby and Walker knew my secret, and that bound us more tightly than I’d realized? Either way, I felt bad. The trembling, the anger—that kind of thing hadn’t happened since I was a kid. It couldn’t start happening now. Maybe I’d blown my chance with Owen, but I wouldn’t let my emotions get in the way of my position at the Cohens’.
Zoe shook her head adamantly. It was the day after I’d completely ruined everything with Owen forever, and babysitting was not going well. It was only two P.M.; Libby and Walker were out, the baby was sleeping, and we’d already run through most of our typical go-to activities. We’d made a craft—pumpkin-shaped votives to line the front yard at Halloween; we’d baked cutout cookies in the shape of stars, which Libby would likely throw out for their dangerous nutritional content; we’d read five Fancy Nancy stories and three Amelia Bedelia; we’d watched an episode of Dora the Explorer; played a game of Red Light, Green Light; built a tower with Legos; and Zoe had gone down for a brief nap only to awaken twenty minutes later, restless and crying. We didn’t have use of the car, so I couldn’t take Zoe to the park or zoo. I was running out of ideas.
“What about a walk?” Zoe looked excited for a second, offering me the beginnings of a dimpled grin.
“What about my twike?” she asked hopefully, making me laugh.
“Sure. Is it in the broom closet?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head and laughing.
“In Mommy’s bedroom?” I asked, making a game of it.
“Nooo!”
“In the microwave?”
“NO!” Now she was full-on giggling, and I sighed with relief. I’d learned over the last month or two that keeping Zoe’s spirits up was a big deal. If she had a crying fit or sank into one of her inexplicable spells of toddler grief, nothing but the coming of a new day would snap her out of it. It was kind of worrisome, definitely stretching the bounds of normal childlike emotion, but it was something I hadn’t felt comfortable talking about with her parents.
“Well then, where?” I threw my hands up in confusion. “If it’s not in the refrigerator, I don’t know what I’ll do,” I informed her.
“The gawage!” she shouted, collapsing with laughter on the floor of the family room, a room ironically named, since Zoes and I were the only two who ever saw its interior.
“Okay, okay, on to the garage we go.” I took her hand in mine, feeling it press trustingly into my palm, our two heartbeats merging. I felt a brief pang. It had been happening more lately, these nagging reminders of my Lissa. I shook my head to clear it. In order to move forward, I had to give her up. If it took forgetting her entirely, then that’s what I’d do.
It was immediately obvious that the seemingly simple task of unearthing Zoe’s tricycle from the depths of the garage was going to be way harder than I’d anticipated. The garage was a war zone of stuff—all kinds of stuff filling a space that would normally accommodate four cars—with an SUV-sized space carved out. It was weird—I’d never seen the inside of the garage until that moment. Libby always parked outside; and if Walker drove us, he made sure to let us out before pulling into the garage, maybe for this very reason.
“I don’t know about this,” I said. The sobering news did not sit well with my girl, who promptly screwed her face up into the purple beginnings of hysteria.
“Okay,” I told her. “We’ll take a look. Fine. But you’ve got to stop this tantrum thing. For real. You’re way too old for his.”
“I’m thwee.”
“Exactly,” I told her mock sternly. “You’re basically an adult.”
“No,” Zoe said.
“Don’t argue,” I told her mildly, beginning to pick through the rubble. “You have much to recommend you, but I’m both older and wiser than you are.” Zoe popped her thumb in her mouth in response and followed me across the garage.
“Stand there,” I said, pointing to the center of the SUV space, “and don’t move. I don’t want you to wind up buried under a pile of old CDs, or whatever they keep in here.” The light in the room was garish, creepy. It cast its sinister glow over the boxes and bags and bins. I already didn’t like garages—they were worse than attics. They housed spiders and all kinds of unwanteds. I crossed the room again and pressed the red rectangular button next to the door to the muck room. The garage door lifted with the groan of mechanical gears, and natural light flooded in. I watched it travel up Zoe’s flip-flops, knees, dimpled elbows, and head. She smiled trustingly and sat down in the center of the floor.
“I don’t see it,” I told her skeptically. “Are you sure it’s in here?” What I wasn’t sure of was why I was asking a three-yearold anything and expecting a reliable answer.
“Back thewe,” she said, pointing toward a corner that was completely obscured by a tower of plastic bins. I leaned closer and barely detected a tasseled handlebar.
“Ugh, Zoe, I don’t know. I’m going to have to pull all those boxes out. Maybe we should just wait for Daddy to get home. We can go on a walk now, bike ride tomorrow—how’s that?” Zoe screwed up her face again and began gasping for air. I groaned inwardly and felt something like frustrated anger well up in my chest. But really, I asked myself, how was I going to spend the rest of the afternoon? May as well spend it lugging boxes around. Even manual labor was preferable to a tantrum.
I lugged a few boxes aside, and divine intervention led me to a bucket of sidewalk chalk (they had some after all!) that I handed to Zoe—she might have a while to keep herself entertained until the tricycle was unearthed. After about twenty minutes of this, I could see the bike beginning to emerge, little by little. I pulled at the handlebars, but it still wouldn’t budge.
“How am I going to do this?” I whispered to myself, forgetting my present company. Zoe glanced up at me, but seemed unconcerned. My habit of talking to myself on occasion apparently wasn’t going to get me in any trouble with her. I turned my attention back to the massive load of boxes rising in front of me like the Andes.
I’d have to rearrange several heavy stacks that sat at the bike’s base, trapping the wheels. I was getting sick of the whole project. I lunged for a pile and kicked it, hard, trying to move it to the left. It stayed firmly wedged. I leaned my body weight against it, my hands resting on my knees, feeling sweat trickle down my ribcage.
“Shit.” I glanced at Zoe. Thankfully, she hadn’t heard me that time: she was absorbed in drawing what looked like water, a long stripe of squiggles colored in blue. She hummed her usual tune under her breath, seemingly unaware. I barely noticed it myself by now, she hummed so much. It was part of who she was, just another element of her developing personality. Maybe she had a future as a musician, who knew?
“How badly do you want to ride your tricycle?” I asked her in an even tone, trying to hold my temper. Before I had the sentence out, her eyes had begun to well.
“I want to wide my twike,” she told me. “Pwease.” If she hadn’t added that “pwease,” I might have resisted in the name of discipline. But her face was so plaintive, so sweet, those curls framing her face in just the way my dead sister’s had. . . .
“Okay. Fine.” I gave the stack a final shove with my hip, fully expecting to meet resistance. But in the world of physics, something in my first couple of shoves had upset the balance. And when I leaned just so with my hip, shifting the boxes a fraction of an inch, the stack gave way and tumbled down, the taped sides of the lower boxes bursting under the weight of the upper, their contents spewing onto the dusty cement floor. I stifled my urge to let out a frustrated scream-slash-screechslash-grunt. But there it was, the tricycle: the golden nugget. Was this what miners felt like? I grabbed its tasseled handles and gave it a tug. It was still wedged behind some stuff, and in that moment I both cursed the Cohens’ disorganized ways and felt a rush of pride for my own tenacity. One more good pull and I was holding it aloft.
“Zoe! Look! I got it.” I held it in the air for another second in a dramatic display of victory. Zoe’s humming merely grew louder, but at least she turned toward me.
Rockabye Baby, on the treetop. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. . . .
“Zoe,” I said calmly, “you are getting on this tricycle even if it’s the last thing in the world you want to do right now. Unhand your chalk.” She stopped humming and looked up at me, confused.
“The chalk, Zoe, put it down,” I said as calmly as possible. Sensing I was near my breaking point, she relinquished the chalk mid-rainbow and came over to me. I helped her aboard her tricycle and gave her a shove. To my satisfaction, she seemed content to pedal around the garage for the time being. It would be a while before we actually left the property. I turned back to the mess.
Clothes, papers, knickknacks surrounded me.
But they were beautiful, these clothes. Intricate patterns reminiscent of India and Sri Lanka, gold-embroidered silks and cottons, unlike anything I’d seen on Libby. I held a silk scarf aloft. It was a vibrant blend of greens and blues, bright even against the afternoon sunlight that filtered into the garage.
“Mommy!” Zoe cried out, noticing my find. She climbed off the tricycle and toddled over to where I was now sitting, piles of clothing surrounding me. She clutched the scarf in her fists, playing the puppy in our tug-of-war.
“Does Mommy wear these?” I wondered aloud, sifting through the vibrant fabrics.
“No, not now.”
“Do you think she would mind if I borrowed this scarf?” I asked. It was one of the loveliest things I’d ever seen, like the ocean and its many hues encapsulated in one piece of silken material. I imagined how it might look against my olive skin and dark hair, and how Owen might look when he saw me in it.
“No. Mommy won’t mind,” Zoe confirmed.
“Probably not,” I agreed, given how much she’d given me from her own closet. I folded it and put it aside, making a mental note to ask Libby for permission later. Maybe these were donations bins. Maybe they’d want to donate to me—I was definitely a worthy cause, my wardrobe consisting mainly of Tshirts and jeans beyond what Libby had given me already.
“Here, hon,” I told Zoe, leading her back to the trike. “Pedal around for a little while longer, okay? But stay in the driveway area, where I can see you. I have to clean this mess up.” There were at least two boxes of papers to reorganize. I felt a slight flutter of panic, worried Libby would think I’d been snooping.