Waiting for Christopher (8 page)

F
eena slept fitfully, only a hint of air coming through her window, the sticky plate on the floor beside her bed. In her dreams, Christy cried out again and again. Over and over she woke, peering anxiously into the night, hearing nothing but the whir of her mother’s air conditioner, the faint hum from the late-night trucks that still used the highway, and the electronic crackle of the sputtering
S
just outside the golf booth.

She’d set her alarm to go off a half-hour before her mother woke for work. But she was up a full hour and a half before that, scanning the fuzzy half dawn, then creeping into the kitchen. She was determined to do better this time, to remember things like a can opener and spoons and knives. She scribbled another note, this one a bit more detailed, aimed at warding off more mother-daughter dinners.

Had to leave early—BIG TEST! Might be late again. Don’t make dinner
. Light. Keep it light.
xox, Feen
.

Once outside, she crept to the booth, bent her head under a flap, and looked inside. Christopher lay just where she’d left him, except that the rabbit had somehow been jettisoned and was sprawled, nose down, at his feet. She took the key from its hiding place under the roof and opened the door as quietly as she could.

She had hoped to watch him sleep, just for a few minutes. But it was no good; the second she moved inside, he turned toward the door, kicked his still-sneakered feet (how could she have forgotten to take off his shoes?), and sat up, rubbing his eyes with his fists.

Instinctively, Feena knew he needed to see her face first, not the clubs or the counter or the strange place where he’d fallen asleep. Stooping down, she grabbed his hands, pulled them apart, and stared, smiling, into his half-closed eyes. “Good morning, Mister Sleepyhead,” she told him.

The smile she got back, a dazzled, devoted grin, was worth the whole sleepless night. His first words, though, were a problem. “Mu,” he said. “Mu mik.”

“You drank all the milk last night,” she said. “But don’t worry”—rolling him down, shimmying his jeans off, reaching for the box of diapers—“we’re going out to eat. Just you and me. Okay?”

“‘Kay,” he agreed, letting himself be changed, wriggling only a little, staring around the narrow room, then like a swimmer stroking for shore, finding her face again. The diapers were hard to manage, the tapes kept unsticking, and Feena pulled them so tight that they nearly met at his tiny waist.

“We’re going to play dress-up today,” she announced when she’d finished. She took the bunny jumper out of the CVS bag, slipped it on over his tee, and fastened the Velcro while he was still studying the lace border on the hem. “Isn’t it pretty?” she asked, guiding his hand so he could feel a soft velvet square in the patchwork. “And it goes perfectly with these.”

It was less easy dividing his hair into ponytails and wrapping them with the pompoms. He twisted and chattered the whole time, so that Feena, in her hurry, tied one pompom snugly behind his left ear, the other several inches higher behind the right. When she stood back to study him, she laughed. She wanted to start over, but he was much too excited. And hungry.

She stuffed the leftover plums into her backpack, closed the booth’s flaps, then led him outside and locked the door. The air was almost cool at this hour, a reprieve from the swampy furnace that would start up when the turquoise and purple streaks on the horizon gave way to the full-risen sun. They moved quickly, heading for the gas station to buy milk and check the morning headlines.

The video-game fan from yesterday had been replaced by a very large woman with frosted hair and a frown line. She looked up as soon as Feena and Christy walked into the store. “Hep ya?”

Feena tightened her grip on the baby and calculated the distance to the back of the store. “We just need some milk,” she said. She didn’t move, though, giving the woman time to turn away, busy herself with something so they could scan the morning papers in the rack under the counter.

But the woman folded her cushiony arms and stared till Feena began to wonder if she’d called the police when she’d seen them coming. Or maybe she was a plant, waiting for backup. There were lady detectives, weren’t there? At last, just when she’d decided they didn’t need the milk that badly, that they would try another store later, the woman nodded her head toward the dairy case along the back wall of the store. “It’s over there,” she said.

Suddenly aware she’d been holding her breath, Feena felt her whole body go loose. She headed down the aisle, plucking up a box of crackers and a can of tiny cocktail hot dogs on the way to the milk. Beside her, Christy eyed the shelves without touching anything, content to point out highlights as they went.
“Bwu,”
he said, reaching toward the picture of a little girl in an apron with a bright blue bow in her hair.
“Bwu,”
he repeated, jabbing a finger into the shirt on his own tiny chest.

Now that they weren’t under surveillance, Feena took her time, studied the photograph, a smiling girl on the verge of devouring an impossibly huge iced cookie. “Right,” she told Christy. “You guys are wearing the same color.” She looked down at the socks she wore. “What color are these, O Wise One?”

He beamed.
“Bwu!”
Racing to a package of doughnuts:
“Bwu!”
And a carton of cottage cheese in the case:
“Bwu!”
And an ancient, limp rubber band on the floor:
“Bwu!”

As he crouched to retrieve the rubber band, she dropped the crackers and swooped him into her arms.
“Bwu, bwu, bwu,”
she said, tickling, laughing, faint with relief. “You sure like blue, don’t you?”

He giggled, shifted wildly in her hold, pushing against her, walking on air like a tiny robot. Feena set him down and then retrieved the crackers. She chose four small milk cartons from the case, handing him two to carry. “There,” she said. “Make yourself useful, Whiz Kid. And while we’re at it, what color are the letters on your milk?”

“Bwu!”
They said it in unison, then said it again. They chanted it all the way back down the aisle to the counter. It was only when they reached the magazine rack that Feena remembered who they were. Remembered she couldn’t relax into this love. She could never relax.

But the morning’s papers told her nothing. While the woman added up their purchases, Feena even picked one up and leafed through it. As if she had all the time in the world. As if she weren’t really interested. There were no headlines, no articles about a missing boy. Why hadn’t Christy’s mother gone to the police? Wasn’t it news anymore when a little boy disappeared?

She put the paper back, then took the bag the woman handed her. She paid with the last bills she had, wondering how they’d manage tomorrow on the forty-five cents in change she got back. She’d talked Christy into surrendering his milk cartons and dropping them one after the other into the bag, when the woman surprised them both.

“Here.” The frown line was still there, but she wore a smile like a thin seam across the bottom of her tanned face. She held out a lollipop in a see-through wrapper. “On account of you like blue.”

Christy stared at the blue pop, eyes wide. But he made no move to take it from the woman’s hand.

“Here,” the woman repeated, leaning down, wrapping his fingers around it. “It’s for you. On account of you’re such a sweet little girl.”

Christy held the pop and checked in with Feena, his whole face a question mark. “I’ll bet it’s blueberry,” she told him. “And you can have it with your milk, okay?” She turned to the woman. “Thanks,” she said, meaning it. “Thanks a lot.”

Outside, Feena stopped, tried to decide what to do. It was Wednesday. Her mother was at work, and in less than an hour, she was supposed to be in school. Clearly, she was going to skip, but school made her think of books. And books made her think of the library.

So that’s where they ate breakfast—under a tree behind the branch library they’d seen near the park yesterday. As he had last night, Christy ate ravenously, finishing the plums, the milk, and half the crackers. By the time the library opened, his face was smeared, the heat was intense, and they were both glad to head for the basement restroom.

Afterward, cool and clean, they sat in baby-size chairs in a corner of the children’s reading room. Christy, his ponytails freshly combed and tightened evenly on both sides, looked almost too precious in Lady Macbeth’s jumper. For the first time, Feena wished his face were a little less appealing, his hair not quite so bright. Proud as she was of him, the last thing they needed was to call attention to themselves.

Afraid to use her library card, in case it might be traced later, she began to choose books to read right there. At first he was afraid to touch them, settled for watching her as she brought them to him one by one, opened them across his lap. But soon he learned he could take them himself—stacks of them, plucked off the low shelves and piled on a table close at hand. Big books, little books, books with red and yellow and (of course) blue covers, books with bright bold water-color splashes for pictures, books with delicate, careful illustrations as detailed as photos. Like the fruit and the milk and crackers, Christy devoured them all.

One book in particular, though, seemed to pull him back again and again. Even when they were reading another, Feena would notice his gaze wander, stealing a look at the cover of
Mama’s Music
. She couldn’t understand the attraction, didn’t think the book was nearly as exciting as the stories about gorillas attending grand balls, or lost dogs who grew wings, or laughing hyenas who told knock-knock jokes. But Christy clearly had his own opinion.

He begged her to read his favorite over and over, until she had it memorized.
I have a singing mama
, the first page read.
I have a singing, dancing mama
, said the second.
I have a singing, dancing, piano-playing mama
, announced the third and fourth, across a double spread. And it was here he always made her stop, pointing to the drawing of a round jolly woman who tapped her tap shoes and opened her O-shaped mouth while she pounded away on an upright piano. “Ma,” he said each time. “Ma.”

Feena was mystified. Could Christy’s mother possibly be a musician? She tried to picture the harsh, loudmouthed woman she’d seen at Ryder’s, seated calmly at a piano, a tinkling fountain of music spilling from under her fingers. She tried, but it was so unlikely, so preposterous, she nearly laughed. “Does your mother play the piano?” she asked Christy three different times. Three different times, he tore himself from the picture, looked up at her with his new-moon smile, and nodded.

He wouldn’t let the book out of his sight, persisted in moving it to the top of the pile, where he could reassure himself that it was still within reach. When it was time to go, he refused to unhand it, coming close to crying the way he had at Ryder’s.

They had to pass the circulation desk on the way out, and the librarian, who had obviously spotted Christy’s puckered countenance, stopped them. “Why don’t I check those out for you?” she offered, not unkindly. But Feena told her they couldn’t, that she’d forgotten her library card.

“I can look it up,” the woman said, smiling at Christy, who hugged
Mama’s Music
and two other oversize picture books to his chest. “I’d hate to lose such an eager reader.”

Feena didn’t like lying, knew she was pretty lousy at it. She persevered, though, on the theory that practice would make her better. “Actually, I don’t think the card’s on record,” she said, stalling for time. “We just moved here from out of state, and I’ve been using my aunt’s old one.” She lowered her eyes. “It’s expired.”

“Oh.” The librarian’s sharp intake of breath and hushed tone suggested she understood how much such a confession must have cost Feena. “Well, why don’t I just make a new one for her?”

Feena panicked. “You can’t,” she said, swallowing hard, thinking fast. “She died.”

“I see.” The librarian looked at the two of them as if they’d been orphaned. “I’m so sorry.” Then she brightened. “How old are you?” she asked.

“Fourteen.” It was a relief to say this one true thing.

“Then I’ll just issue
you
a card. You can take the books home now and come in tomorrow with a proof of address. How would that be?”

Feena looked at Christy, crushing the three books against the lace front of his jumper as if he’d never let go. “Okay,” she agreed. She sighed as the woman pulled out a form, then leaned across the desk.

“Name?”

“Jane,” Feena told her, inspired. “Jane Rochester.”

Before lunch, they went back to the Pizza Hut. Feena had run out of money and decided to ransack the house for loose change. She found four dollars in quarters and nickels, most of it in the pockets of her mother’s cream-colored linen jacket, the one Lenore claimed went with everything. Thankfully, it didn’t go with whatever she’d put on that morning.

Christy and Feena ate the little hot dogs at the playground, which was empty now, except for a large man who stood behind the swings, shading his eyes with one hand. Feena worried that he might be an undercover cop, like the ones on TV, but after a while, he turned and walked back to the mall. Probably a clerk on break, she decided, relieved, able to taste what she was eating at last.

When they’d finished lunch, Christy took a few wobbly rides on a sea horse that rocked back and forth on a giant spring, then headed for the sandbox. He sat, desultory, sifting sand through his fingers, probably missing Angel and his paper cups. Feena felt raw with the ache of watching him, wishing he could be happy, satisfied forever.

This couldn’t last, she told herself. She couldn’t skip school every day, and they couldn’t go on hiding in bathrooms, eating out of cans. Christy needed a bed, clothes, someone keeping track of calories or vitamins or whatever you counted to make sure a meal was balanced. What did Feena know about raising children?

She knew only that she’d never experienced anything like the smug joy she felt lying next to him, the heady responsibility of his faith in her, his assumption that she would manage everything. But how could she? Why did she think she knew better than all the people who made it their business to protect kids, the people she should have turned Christy over to in the first place?