over her head-the thin blue flannel dress that smelled like her sheets, her nubby bed-wetted sheets. “Splish-splash, I was taking a bath, all on a Saturday night.” Emma would look over at that tub, that big old clawfoot tub with the chipped porcelain finish. It looked as big as a house. Filled with two inches of the coldest water that pipes could produce. “Daddy’s gonna come back, Emma baby, and we’re all gonna move to a fishing shack on the Gulf Coast, lie in the sun and smoke reefer and paint. Now you gonna get in that water or not, you little piece of shit?” And Emma would step into the tub. At least in the tub she could huddle over, hug herself, hide her body from her mother’s eyes. The water was so cold it hurt and she’d close her eyes and clench her teeth and wait for what she knew was coming. It’d start on her lower back-the loofah mitt, the frayed loofah mitt from Walgreen’s. At first her mother used a light touch and Emma always had a moment of sweet hope that it would be different this time. “How do you get so dirty, you cute little nasty thing? Your father knew you were a dirty girl, didn’t he? That’s why he ran away, to get away from you, you dirty thing.” And as she talked, she’d press harder with the mitt, scrubbing Emma’s back and then her shoulders and then pushing her back in the tub and scrubbing her chest and stomach and her thighs, pushing her legs open and scrubbing until little red pinpricks covered Emma’s body. “Filthy little girl, dirty dirty Emma. Daddy hates dirty girls. I’m going to make you clean. Clean clean clean. Scrubba-dub-dub, two freaks in a tub.” And that naked blinding bulb swung overhead. And finally, when her whole body burned and went numb, Emma would float up from the bathtub and look down at her mother scrubbing away, sometimes sprinkling Comet on the loofah mitt-she’d watch as the little girl’s skin got redder and redder, watch as the weird woman did mean things to the little girl. Mean mean things.
Emma stands in the bathroom doorway taking deep breaths. She makes herself look at the rest of the room. The floor is black-and-white linoleum tile. There’s a pedestal sink with a medicine chest above it. Emma resolutely pushes down her pants and sits on the toilet, leaving the door open. As she pees, she slowly forces her eyes over to the tub. It’s just a bathtub. Her bathtub. But she doesn’t deserve a bathtub-she’s a dirty girl. Emma feels the dread spreading like a stain, the familiar tightening in her throat, the queasiness in her stomach; her jaw goes slack and her eyes half close. Moving slowly, she stands up from the toilet, slips off her pants, takes the little tin box from her bag, and climbs into the tub. She crouches down with her legs spread. She runs her fingers over the tiny raised scars that line her inner thigh. The scars are her friends. But no more scars. She’s learned that. Don’t press too hard and you won’t leave a scar. So she opens the box, lifts the velvet, takes the razor and presses gently against her skin-just hard enough for the sweet obliterating pain to bring up a perfect line of blood.
13
Enthralled, Anne drags he sumptuous virtual sofa down from the corner of the computer screen and moves it around the tiny virtual room until she finds just the spot for it. She resumes browsing through Home On-line, dragging down one item after another until the room is, well, perfect. Then she orders the items she wants by moving around the room and clicking on them. That’s all it takes. The warehouse outside Poughkeepsie ships the products; credit card billing is instantaneous.
“Absolutely fabulous,” Anne says, turning to a beaming Nikki Spinoza, the genius behind InterMagic, a woman in her early forties who wears her extra poundage sans apology, dresses in thrift-store rejects, lets her flyaway hair fly away, makes no secret of her lesbianism, and runs a very loose ship. InterMagic is housed in a converted stable in Tribeca. The staff, none of whom looks over twenty-five, are encouraged to bring in their latest toys, and the yeasty chaos-strewn with everything from a beach ball to a four-foot robot-resembles a kindergarten classroom.
“I’m glad you like it,” Nikki says.
“Nobody else in the industry has anything approaching this. It’s more like playing a game than shopping. How soon can we have the site up and running?” Anne asks.
“A week.”
Anne feels that exquisite surge of elation called success.
“You’ve done an amazing job.” Anne turns to the entire room and applauds. “You’ve all done a fantastic job. I can’t thank you enough. Call Dean and Deluca. Lunch is on me.”
Now it’s the turn of the dozen motley designers and computer nerds to applaud. Just at that moment the front door opens and a three-year-old boy wearing denim overalls rushes up to Nikki.
“Mommy! Mommy!”
Nikki sweeps him up and tosses him in the air. “Hey there, Tiger Balm. Justin, this is Anne.”
Justin says “Hi” and sticks out his arm. Anne shakes his tiny hand.
“We went on the Staten Island Ferry,” Justin says.
“No kidding, sailor.” Nikki looks about to burst with maternal pride.
“It was rough out there,” Justin announces.
“Well, it’s a windy day.”
“Choppy,” Justin corrects.
A woman in her mid-thirties, athletic, wearing black jeans and a T-shirt, walks into the office and gives Nikki a spousal kiss.
“Lisa, this is Anne Turner. Lisa Lewis.”
Lisa and Anne share a firm handshake.
“If Home gave frequent buyer miles, we could trek to Timbuktu. And that was before you hired Nikki. What a pleasure,” Lisa says.
“Well, Nikki has done a fantastic job with the website,” Anne says, feeling an immediate rapport with this loving and enthusiastic family. With it comes a twinge of longing.
“Let’s go to lunch. I want focaccia!” Justin says.
“Only a downtown kid, huh?” Nikki says.
“Hey Justin, get a load of this!” a voice calls from the other end of the office. Anne turns to see a giant plastic firefly sailing through the air.
“Wow!” Justin screams, charging off.
“I didn’t know,” Anne says, nodding in Justin’s direction.
“The crazy part is we didn’t want a kid, a couple of hip downtown career dykes like us. But Lisa had this cousin in Oregon she’d never met,” Nikki explains.
“Heroin addict, prostitute. Who’da thunk it? Oregon. She was Justin’s mom,” Lisa says.
“She died of an overdose. Justin was in the bed with her.”
Anne tries to imagine the horrific scene. “How old was he?”
“Eight months. We got him three months later.”
“Nobody knows who his father is,” Lisa adds.
“Has he asked?”
Lisa nods. “And we told him the truth.”
Anne turns and looks at the boy, who is gleefully launching another firefly. “He’s a very lucky child,” she says.
“No. We’re the lucky ones,” Lisa says.
Their marriage seems so guileless, so free of hidden agendas. Suddenly Anne feels dizzy and slightly faint. This is followed by a wave of nausea-they’ve been coming with some regularity for the past week.
“May I use your office for a moment?” she asks.
“Of course.”
Anne retreats to the sanctuary of Nikki’s large cluttered office. She sits down and stretches her legs out and waits for the nausea to pass. How would a child affect her marriage? Would the rivalries and resentments fade in the face of a new life? Or would the kid just become one more thing to struggle over?
And what would the baby look like, with its chubby little limbs? Would it have Charles’s smile? His eyes? Her coloring? If so, they’d have to buy sunblock by the gallon. Then it floods back-that afternoon on John Farnsworth’s leather couch, his flabby white body, his fat stubby penis poking into her, his tongue on her neck and cheek. She presses her fingertips into the knot of self-hatred at the back of her neck. She takes out her cell phone and gets Directory Assistance, then punches another number.
