One Small Thing (26 page)

Daniel sat in the back seat. She’d expected him to jump in beside her, but he’d opened the back, right-hand door and buckled himself in before she had even started the car.

“Do you want to sit up here?”

“No. I’m not supposed to.”

Avery looked at him in the rearview mirror. “What do you mean?”

“The airbag. I’m supposed to be twelve before I can sit there. I’m only ten.” His eyes were wide and serious, his hands raised up just like Anita’s had been earlier. Avery shook her head and turned on the engine. She should have known that. She’d looked up the information on car and booster seats, read the latest recall information on airbags, and studied the new safety designs for cars. But with all that, she wouldn’t have known how to protect Daniel. If they’d been in an accident—and she did remember that most accidents occurred within five miles of home—he would have been crushed by the too-hard pulse of the expanding airbag. How would she have explained that to Dan and her mother and Valerie? No one would forgive her for that.

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Can you turn on KLLC? I like that channel.”

Avery rolled her eyes and pushed on his station. He sat back against the seat and stared out the window. Releasing the parking brake, she looked in the rearview and side view mirrors a few times and then slowly backed out, looking for small children and pregnant mothers and yard duty supervisors. Even principals. She was dangerous, a lost cause. She wasn’t a mother at all.

At home, she poured him a glass of milk and gave him four giant chocolate chip cookies before she picked up the phone.

“I’m supposed to have fruit. I’m not supposed to have sweets. The doctor and Flora said.”

Avery held the phone to her chest. Daniel stared at the cookies with the same longing with which she’d looked at Mischa’s knee. “Don’t you like cookies?”

“Yeah, but—“

“Look, I won’t tell. Flora won’t be here for a half-hour or so. Eat them up and do your homework. Whatever you have. You know.”

Daniel bit his lip, touching the cookie gently with the tips of his fingers, and then picked it up and began eating, taking even bites, turning the cookie like a wheel in his mouth. After one spin of the wheel he drank exactly a fourth of his milk. He didn’t look up at Avery.

She shook her head and walked into the living room with the phone. She dialed Dan’s cell number and held the phone away from her ear because of the scratchy static when he answered.

“Dan! Dan!”

“Avery! I can’t hear you very well. I’m in Sac—“

“Where?”

“Sacramento. I went on a call. There’s been some kind of jam on I-80. I think I’m going to go to my folks’ for a while.”

“What?”

“My FOLKS.”

“I know. I heard you. But—“

The phone went dead, and she dialed again, gritting her teeth. He wouldn’t be home for hours. His number rang six times, and then the automated answer came on, “I’m sorry, the PRQ customer you have called isn’t available.” Avery clicked off. There was no use talking with him anyway. She wouldn’t even bother trying to call Bill or Marian. Dan couldn’t clear the freeway. All the alternative routes would be clogged with desperate drivers trying to get back to the Bay Area, and the only smart thing to do was to wait it out.

But it meant that Avery would be forced to come home at six and make dinner and get Daniel in his shower and read him a story, just like Dan did every night. Her stomach growled. Lunch had been so long ago, almost on another planet.

She started back toward the kitchen, when she saw Flora walking down the sidewalk toward the house. Flora could stay late, while she went back to work. Avery could ask Flora to stay until Dan came home, and then everything would be fine.

When Flora walked up the front path, Avery pulled open the door. “Hi, Flora. I’m so glad you are here.”

Flora broke into a wide smile and then almost seemed as if she would cry. “Mrs. Tacconi. You are here. Oh,
dios mio
, I am so glad. I say to myself, God, help me today. I cannot work. Is no emergency, but I want to go home because of my daughter. Her baby coming today. Now, she in labor. My first grandchild. I have to go home, but I think of Daniel, and I don’t know what to do. Your mother, she call me earlier, but I don’t understand it all. Something about school, yes? I was talking to my son-in-law.
Pero
, now, I go home. The bus, it comes in ten minutes. I see you tomorrow. No problem then. My youngest daughter, she will be here to help with the baby. I call Mr. Tacconi at his work. Yes?”

“But Flora!” Flora turned back to Avery, but when Flora faced her, her brown eyes full of tears and relief, Avery sighed. “Okay. That’s—that’s great. See you tomorrow.”

Flora gave her a little wave and walked quickly back up the street, her red and green colored bag swinging as she walked. Even though it involved a baby, Avery would trade places with Flora, right now. She’d take the bus to where?—Oakland, San Pablo, El Sobrante—and go to the hospital with Flora’s daughter, hold her hand, whisper the same encouragement she had to Val. She would try not to care about yet another baby slipping into the world that wasn’t hers. Anything would be better than being in the house with Daniel and his relentless looks.

Avery closed the door and walked into kitchen. The cookie plate was empty, and Daniel had turned on the television, a music video screaming across the screen.

“It’s time for homework,” Avery said. She put the plate in the dishwasher. “Daniel? Daniel! Turn off the television.”

Daniel ignored her and turned up the volume.

“Daniel!” His small back hunched, but he still stared at the screen. She would have never done this with either Isabel or her father, turning off the television as soon as either of them said one word. If her father yelled, she and her sisters froze, waiting for the words that would come next, a promise of punishment or threat of grounding. Isabel would give them the
stern
look, her eyes narrowed and dark, and they all knew they had gone too far. But this kid? Avery shook her head and walked over to the television.

“That’s it,” she said, flicking it off. “Homework.”

“I didn’t bring it home.”

“What?”

“I didn’t go back to the classroom, remember? I don’t have it.”

That damn Anita
, Avery thought. She forgot or maybe she didn’t. The principal probably believed Daniel needed a break from the usual three hours of homework his teacher gave him. Every night, Dan said, “I don’t remember having this kind of homework until I was in college.” He even went over to talk about it with Luis, who told him that it was the parents. Parents wanted high test scores and college prep starting in elementary school, and homework was the evidence that some good results were in the offing.

Tapping her foot, Avery looked out the window at the pool. The cover floated on top of the water like a giant blue lily pad. What were they going to do for the three hours until dinner? And then what would they do after that? She turned the television back on, sat in the leather chair, and closed her eyes. This was why she’d gone back to work. To avoid hours like these, long, terrible hours of nothing with a kid she didn’t know.

Letting the sounds of a song seep in, Avery thought about babysitting. Every weekend of her high school life, she’d had one, two, sometimes three jobs. After her father died, it was a way to get out of the house for a while, to avoid Isabel’s droopy presence. And then, she got used to the money, going with her friends on the weekends to Macy’s or Nordstrom to buy outfits to wear during the week. How had she walked into strangers’ houses and started up conversations with the parents and then the kids? She’d even gone to Hawaii with the Costellos, sleeping in a cabaña with the oldest girl and eating with the children every night at a restaurant when the parents went out to clubs. Maybe she’d been able to do it all because she knew what she was supposed to be. They knew exactly who she was—the babysitter.

“Who is this?” she asked Daniel, opening her eyes to angry, obscene lyrics, the exact, terrible noise experts warned against in the “Adolescent” sections Avery had skimmed through in the books she bought on childrearing. Dan would probably kill her for letting him watch this.

“Eminem.”

“Like the candies?”

“No, spelled like E-M-E-N—“

“I get it. What’s so great about him?”

“I don’t know.”

“So why are you watching it?”

“Don’t know.”

“Who do you like?”

Daniel was silent.

“You can tell me. I don’t know anything about music. Ask Dan. I listen to a news channel in my car.”

Daniel turned to her, his eyes narrowed, and then turned back to the screen. “I like N-sync. And Britney Spears.”

“The soft drink one. The one with the blonde hair?” He liked blondes. The actress on his mirror. The singer. After Midori’s first call, she had thought about Dan’s past for a couple of day before she’d made him show her pictures of Randi. He’d dug in a box she’d thought was full of college memorabilia and brought out stacks of photos that dated from high school. Avery had flipped through the stacks until she felt sick, even telling Dan to go to bed because she wasn’t done. She’d learned a lot about her husband from the photos, but mostly she’d stared at Randi, his first, true love. The girl in the pictures was always smiling, leaning forward, her teeth white and big, her eyes crinkled. It was hard to find the drug addict under the laughter.

And Randi had been dark and fair and skinny, nothing like these smooth, butter-brown, blondes Daniel seemed to prefer.

“Yeah.”

“So are there girls at school you like?” Avery sat up and crossed her legs.

“No!” Daniel stared at the screen.

“But if that actress was your age—“

“Only girls think like that. I just think she’s pretty, that’s all. When I’m older, maybe I’ll have a girlfriend like that, okay?”

Avery was silent, watching the pale singer move his hands and yell into the camera. Daniel’s picture on the mirror was like her list of perfect boyfriends. She’d written the list, hoping that maybe she’d find a different life, one unlike the strange, sad space with her mom. He’d brought the actress with him from home, needing the same reassurance. He wouldn’t always live like he had with his mom. With the Martins. With Avery.

“So what do you like to do? Do you like that video game your dad got you?”

He shrugged and didn’t turn around.

“Have you ridden your bike around here much? It’s pretty flat.”

“No one rides bikes here. They all have skateboards.”

“Oh.”

A commercial for Neutrogena soap flashed on the screen, a flawlessly-skinned actress splashing herself with water. Daniel stood up. “I’m still hungry.”

“So do you have a skateboard?”

Daniel stood in front of her, a small ten-year-old boy with too-big jeans and a pale, drawn face. If she saw him on the news in a story about an abandoned child, she’d write a check to the account set up by the station. If she were at Sunvalley mall and he walked up to her and said he was lost, she’d hold his hand until they found a security guard. If he came to her door and said his cat was run over in the street, she’d hug him. What was wrong with her? Why had she let her feelings about Dan’s huge lie step between her and this boy who needed so much?

“No.”

Avery stood up and smiled. “Let’s go get one. I know just the place. And we’ll go get something to eat, too.”

“What are all these people doing out here?” Avery asked as she circled the Fiesta Square parking lot for the third time. “Does everyone need to be out here at this exact minute?”

“Maybe they are buying dinner. My mom took me out after school for dinner sometimes. I like KFC the best.”

Avery looked at Daniel in the rearview mirror. He was staring out the window, his eyes searching for a space. “Is chicken your favorite food?”

“I guess.”

“Did your mother ever cook it for you at home?” He was silent, and she looked back at him. “Well, I had to learn to cook when I quit work. But it must seem like I don’t make anything.”

“Dan makes stuff. Isabel makes stuff, too. Chicken. Valerie and Luis brought over something to BBQ. I liked that.”

Avery stopped the Rover and let it idle, scanning the lot. Mothers and children walked back and forth, slipping into MacDonnell’s Department store, Starbucks, and Noah’s. Couldn’t one of them flipping go home? she thought. She was sitting here with this kid who didn’t even know she could make the best pasta salad with pine nuts, kalamata olives, and currants. He didn’t know about the epic dinners with Val and Luis and Isabel and Loren and her family, Avery making every single dish. He probably didn’t know what she did for work, either, and then she sighed. Of course, he didn’t. She’d never talked to him about it. Not once.

“There! There!” Daniel said, his hand waving. “A space!”