“Okay, got it.”
Sabrina hummed—not a spooky, mantra hum, but a show tune of some kind.
Try to remember the kind of September
… the one that went like that. She massaged
his hands and Theo pictured the Madame wearing a red kerchief, carrying her basket of brown eggs.
She’s an old, old woman.
Sabrina had been trying to convince Theo and
his brother and sisters that God was a woman all their lives.
Think of her infinite compassion,
Sabrina said.
Her nurturing.
Now Theo felt like laughing—his classmates were at home listening to
All Things Considered
—but part of him was anxious. Was the Madame saying anything?
Abruptly, Sabrina stopped humming. “Riley,” she said. “A black woman?” Her voice sounded surprised.
“Yes,” Theo said. “Yes, yes, she’s black.”
Calm down,
he thought. His grandmother probably already knew that. She was teasing
him. But maybe not; Sabrina wasn’t cruel. “Do you see her? What does the Madame say?” Theo held the picture of Antoinette in
his mind and added other pictures of her: Antoinette standing nude in the bathroom after the first time they made love, Antoinette lounging on her back deck with a glass of wine balanced on the flat spot between her breasts, Antoinette slapping
him across the face. She had feelings for him, yes, she did.
Sabrina was quiet for a long while. Theo heard her slow, rhythmic breathing and he feared she’d fallen asleep. He was close to sleep himself, so when her words came, she startled him.
“The Madame says the woman is alive. And the baby, too. The baby is alive.”
Theo opened his eyes. Sabrina was looking at him with the kindest possible expression.
“She’s alive, Theo,” Sabrina whispered.
Was she telling him the truth or simply saying this to make him feel better?
Sun of my son. Come into my life. I can help you.
She was
his grandmother, and if Theo wanted Antoinette to be alive, she would make it so. This was her way.
That night, Theo wrote in his journal. Because his journal was supposed to have something to do with
his reading, he wrote about Antoinette living in India, disappearing into one of the Marabar Caves. So many dark openings, one indistinguishable from the next. Which one was she in? Where was she hiding?
He wrote,
Am I transforming?
The week before Thanksgiving, Theo saw Antoinette on Clarendon Street, getting out of a cab. It was Sunday and Theo had taken to sitting at the bar of T.G.I. Friday’s where he drank Coke, ate chicken fingers, and watched the Patriots game. Sabrina didn’t have a TV and Theo liked to sit at the bar with his food and his drink and his anonymity. He liked listening to John Madden and Pat Summer all, he liked the roar of the crowd. His whole family were Patriots fans, and because his father didn’t work on Sundays, he used to sit with the rest of them in the living room watching the game, eating potato chips. “These are the good times,” his father used to say. “Don’t you ever forget it.”
At dusk, Theo was riding Antoinette’s bike home when a cab stopped a few yards ahead of him, and Antoinette stepped out.
Theo squeezed the brakes. Antoinette in black pants and a black leather jacket. He saw her profile as she rummaged through a backpack for money.
“Antoinette!” Theo called. He ran toward her with the bike before she could hop back in the cab and escape from him. He grabbed her arm. “Antoinette!”
Antoinette yanked her arm free. “Hey!” she said.
“Antoinette,” Theo said. He started to cry. A line of cars formed behind the stopped cab. Antoinette leaned in to pay the driver and Theo took in a huge gulp of autumn air. A sense of peace settled over
him. He’d found her.
The cars honked. He moved the bike to the sidewalk and she came to him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Theo wiped his eyes. He couldn’t answer. Sabrina had been right, and the Madame—Antoinette was alive. But then confusion rattled
his brain. This wasn’t Antoinette. Or rather, it was Antoinette, but younger, prettier even. It was Lindsey. Her daughter Lindsey.
“Oh, shit,” Theo said. His whole body was shaking. “Shit, I thought you were Antoinette.”
“You thought wrong,” she said. “I’m Lindsey. You’re Theo.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, well, I’d think you’d have better things to do with your time than wander the streets of Boston looking for a dead woman.”
“Antoinette’s not dead,” Theo said.
“Oh, really? She’s turned up?” Lindsey said. “News to me.”
“She didn’t turn up yet,” Theo said. “But that doesn’t mean she’s dead.”
Lindsey snickered. “You should see the look on your face. You are such a sorry sight.” She hitched her backpack over her shoulder. “You were in way over your head, baby. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to meet someone.”
“Wait,” Theo said. He followed her. “Wait, I want to talk to you.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Lindsey said. “You and your mother are responsible for what happened, and I can’t tell you how it bums me up. Your mother should be thrown in jail. She should be on death row. I’d like to see a white person get it just once for killing a black person.”
“No,” Theo said. “Because. Well, you don’t know the whole story.”
“I don’t care anymore,” she said. “I’ve been in therapy for almost three months over this, and I don’t need you appearing like some ghost bringing all the bad shit back. Now quit following me, or I’ll call a policeman.”
“I loved your mother,” Theo said. “She was pregnant with my baby.”
“I know,” Lindsey said. “And the thought of it makes me want to vomit. Now please!” She crossed the street against the light, running in front of two cars. Theo had to wait for a stream of traffic to pass; he watched Lindsey hurry down the next block. He should just let her go—she hated him, she probably would get a policeman after him, and he didn’t need that kind of trouble. But, God, what were the chances? She wasn’t Antoinette, but she was
close,
a whole hell of a lot closer than he’d gotten in months. So he mounted the bike and chased after her, weaving among other pedestrians, and an old man with a dog. When Theo was within feet of her, she whipped around and screamed at
him.
“What do you want from me?”
“I want to talk.”
Her brow creased and her eyebrows met sharply in the middle, two angry diagonal lines. An element of her face that did not belong to Antoinette. Weird.
“Antoinette used to talk about you. I could tell you what she said.”
“Why should I care what she said?” Lindsey asked. Although Theo knew from the sound of her voice that she did care. Three months of therapy aside, she did care.
“Because she was your mother,” Theo said. “Because she loved you.”
She agreed to have coffee with him—his suggestion, because having coffee was an adult thing to do and Theo didn’t want to call attention to the fact that he was too young to drink alcohol. Plus, he only had ten dollars left in his wallet, which wouldn’t go far with anything except coffee. They went to Rebecca’s Café and stood in line for coffee, which Theo loaded down with cream and sugar. Lindsey got jasmine tea, and Theo said, “Do you want a scone or anything? I can pay for it. What about a
cwasant oh jam-bone ay fro-maj?”
He used
his corniest French accent, a relic from his days with Brett and Aaron and his other school buddies a hundred years ago. It worked: Lindsey smiled the tiniest smile, and Theo rushed ahead of her to pay for “One large coffee and one jasmine tea, please.” They sat at a very small round table in two uncomfortable wrought-iron chairs. Theo sipped his coffee and burnt his tongue.
Lindsey stirred her tea bag with a thin plastic straw. “Why don’t you just tell me what you have to tell me?” she said. She looked at her watch.
“Do you really have someone to meet?” Theo asked. “Your boyfriend?”
“You may have been screwing my mother,” she said. “But you’re a far cry from being my father. Got that?”
“No, I didn’t mean …”
“How old are you anyway? Nineteen?”
Theo was pleased that she thought he looked nineteen. “Almost.”
Lindsey huffed. “Disgusting. My mother and you, I mean.”
“It wasn’t disgusting,” Theo said. “Don’t think that.”
“Whatever,” Lindsey said.
“Your mother is a beautiful woman,” Theo said. “And you look just like her.”
Again, the tiniest smile. “Please.”
“It’s true,” he said. “She told me the whole story about how she was pregnant with you and what happened … with her husband … your father. She said she loved you. She loved you, but she gave you away because she was in so much pain.”
“My father cheated on her,” Lindsey said. “Antoinette told me that already, when I spoke to her on the phone. He cheated on her because that’s what men do. They cheat.”
“Hey,” Theo said. “That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” Lindsey said. “Like, I finally get the courage up to contact my mother and the day before I get to her, she vanishes into thin air.”
“Why did you contact her in the first place?” Theo said. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
Lindsey leaned forward and parted her lips so that Theo could see a tiny chip on her front tooth. “Because I wanted her to love me.”
“I wanted her to love me, too,” Theo said. He tried
his coffee again, but now he had a sore, dry spot on his tongue. “She never forgave herself for giving you up. So I can’t understand why… why she wanted to abort our baby. You’d think she’d want to try again, you know? Do things the right way?”
“I have no idea,” Lindsey said. “I never met the woman. Never even seen a picture of her face.”
“I have a picture of her at my house,” Theo said. “A picture of her when she’s twenty-seven years old. You should come see it. You’d see how much she looks like you.”
“I thought you lived on Nantucket,” Lindsey said.
“I do. I did. I’m spending this year with my grandmother. I go to Boston Hill.”
“Boston Hill? You’re still in
high school”
“I got held back,” Theo said. “I should be a freshman in college.”
Lindsey looked out the plate glass window at the dark street. Theo tried to predict
his grandmother’s reaction if he brought Lindsey home. It was almost five-thirty. She liked him home by six to eat dinner.
“So what do you say? Do you want to come see the picture? Oh, and I have something else you might want.”
“What?”
“Just something. Come with me. It’s not far. Marlborough Street. You can meet my grandmother.”
“I don’t drink so,” Lindsey said. “But thanks, anyway.”
“Please?” Theo said. “Don’t you want to see the picture? I’ll give it to you if you want it. It’s, like, the only picture of Antoinette in existence. Come on.” He took her empty cup and
his full coffee cup and threw them both away. “Follow me.”
It was very cold outside. Theo wore a flannel shirt with a fleece vest. He shoved his hands into the front pockets of
his jeans.
“I have to meet someone,” Lindsey said.
“This won’t take long,” Theo said. He unlocked Antoinette’s bike, and even considered telling Lindsey that it was Antoinette’s bike, but he didn’t want her to claim it as her own or anything. “I’ll give you the picture and you can go. I promise.” He walked the bike with confidence, checking twice out of the comer of
his eye to make sure she was following him.
“I’m not staying long,” she said.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We eat at six, anyway.”
“And don’t introduce me to your grandmother as Antoinette’s birth daughter or anything. Just tell her I’m a friend from school.”
“You bet.” He slowed down a little so she could walk alongside him. “Was it you who turned my mother in to the police?”
“I didn’t
turn her in,”
Lindsey said. “I just told them what I knew about you and Antoinette. About Antoinette being pregnant. Those seemed like relevant facts, and your mother certainly wasn’t going to come forth with them. That guy, John? He told most of it, anyway. He had it in for his wife and your mom.”
“My mom didn’t do anything to Antoinette.”
“Prove it.”
“I can’t prove it,” he said. “But they haven’t found a body, have they? I’m telling you, Antoinette is alive somewhere.”
“You can hold on to that fantasy if you want,” she said. “But I’m not going to.”
“My mother didn’t do anything wrong,” Theo said. “If you need someone to blame, blame me.”
“I do blame you,” Lindsey said. “High school. God, I can’t believe it.”
They approached his grandmother’s apartment. He had
his own keys now. Lindsey regarded the building. “Nice place,” she said. “I’d hate to imagine the rent.”
“Two thou,” Theo said, though he had no idea if this was true or not. He locked Antoinette’s bike up at the bottom of the stairs. “Where do you live?”
“None of your business,” Lindsey said. He turned to look at her as they climbed the stairs, and she glared at him. “I don’t want you stalking me.”
“You
are
like your mother,” Theo said. He took a deep breath outside
his grandmother’s door; then he unlocked it. “Sabrina?” He smelled roasting chicken, and Sabrina emerged from the kitchen wearing a flowing orange dress and a gold lame head scarf. She shimmered like a flame. Sabrina on fire. Theo watched Lindsey’s eyes widen; she was expecting another kind of grandmother, maybe.
“Well, helllooo,” Sabrina said. “Hello, hello. I’m Sabrina Montero.” She smiled and offered Lindsey her hand.
“Lindsey Allerton.” Lindsey transformed immediately into the kind of woman that one would want to introduce to one’s grandmother. Charm lifted off her like perfume. “It’s lovely to meet you. I’m a friend of Theo’s from school.”
Sabrina blinked. She looked between Lindsey and Theo. “Really?” she said. “How divine. Theo hasn’t brought any of his school friends up to meet me yet. Ashamed of me, probably. Will you stay for dinner? We’re having Cornish game hens—and you won’t believe this, but I put three of those little yummies in the oven. I had a feeling company was coming.”
Lindsey hugged her backpack close to her body. “Thank you for asking, but I’m meeting someone in a short while, so I’ll have to pass. Too bad—it smells delicious.”