“Isabel a.”
“Sorry, okay. So she has bad taste in names.”
“Bad taste? She wants her granddaughter to be a teenage singer who wears leather pants and vows to stay a virgin before getting pregnant at seventeen.”
Mary started to cry and Isabel a patted her back. “Maybe it wil be a boy,” she offered.
The baby was born with al of his fingers and toes, which made Mary happy. She hadn’t been that worried, but there’d been one night before she knew she was pregnant when she and Isabel a had drunk enough wine for a smal country. And so, when she was able to count everything for herself, she was relieved.
He was a chunky little baby and they named him Henry, after Ken’s dad. Mary knew it made Ken happy and also she liked the name Henry. Mary liked to hold his feet and put them in her mouth.
He had light blond hair and blue eyes, like Ken. Sometimes when he was concentrating on going to the bathroom, it looked just like Ken when he was working on a case he thought he was going to lose.
“He’s the cutest baby you’ve ever seen, right?” she asked Ken.
“Yes,” he said. “I think he is.”
Button came over the day they got back from the hospital. “I just can’t wait to see him!” she said to Mary when she walked in.
“You could have come to visit in the hospital,” Mary said.
Button shook her head. “No,” she said. “I remember how it is. You need some time alone to get it together. My mother-in-law stormed into the hospital right after I had Ken, and it was just too much! People didn’t do that in those days.” She leaned down to whisper to Mary. “Between you, me, and the lamppost, my mother-in-law was a little bit of a terror.” She winked at Mary.
Henry waved his hands and feet in the air. “Oh!” Button cried. “Look at those feet! Don’t you just want to eat them?”
“Al the time,” Mary said. She leaned over and smiled at Henry. “Look who it is,” she cooed at him. “Look who came to see you! Grandma Button is here.”
“I think he needs to be changed,” Button said. “It’s the kind of thing you should do right away.”
Mary picked up the baby and brought him to the changing table. She started to wipe him, but Button came over and edged her out.
“No,” Button said, grabbing the wipe from Mary’s hand. “You want to do it like this. Here, let me show you. Go like this.”
And then: “Jesus is coming, folks, you should be ready.”
Isabel a looked down the subway platform to see if she could find the man who was trying to tel her about Jesus. She couldn’t see anyone, which made her nervous. His voice boomed around her: “Are you ready? Jesus wil know if you aren’t ready.” It was Friday night and Isabel a just wanted to get home. Lately, she’d had the feeling that someone was going to push her onto the track while she waited for the subway, and just because this man was talking about Jesus didn’t mean he wouldn’t be the one to do it.
“Wil you be ready when he comes? Wil you be ready?” the voice echoed down to her. Isabel a shivered and hoped that the train would come soon.
The whole week, things had been off for Isabel a. New York, it seemed, was out to get her. It started on Sunday, when a crazy bearded man spit at her on the street and cal ed her a cunt. Monday, while she was watching TV, a giant roach the size of a smal dog crawled out from behind the bookshelf and died in the middle of the room. It shook and gyrated and then final y stopped moving. Isabel a thought it might have had a seizure.
Tuesday, there was the situation with her underwear. Her laundry was delivered to her door that night. Usual y this made her feel wonderful y organized and put together—for only a dol ar a pound, she could drop off al of her dirty laundry and have it delivered clean and folded the same day
—but this time, as she unpacked the bag, she found a pair of underwear that didn’t belong to her. It was a large, flesh-colored, silky pair of underwear with a rose on the waistband. She held it between her thumb and pointer finger like it was dirty, although she realized it must have been cleaned and washed with her things. Her dog, Winston, sat and stared at the underwear, his head cocked to one side, trying to figure out why Isabel a was holding it in the air.
In the end, she threw it out. She thought of returning it but figured the cleaners wouldn’t know who the owner was anyway. It was such a smal thing, but it made Isabel a feel sick, like someone had broken in and touched al of her underwear. It didn’t make sense, she knew. After al , she paid these people to wash her underwear. She did it on purpose. But it stil left her uneasy, the thought that people’s personals could get mixed up so easily—that someone else’s underwear could find its way into her drawers.
On Wednesday, Isabel a found a whisker on her chin. She hadn’t noticed anything strange that morning, but when she touched her face that night, there it was: a coarse black whisker. When had it had time to grow? “This is not right,” Isabel a said to the mirror as she plucked the whisker out.
“This is not right!”
“What?” Harrison asked from the other side of the door.
“Nothing,” Isabel a said.
Thursday, Isabel a found out that Beth White was getting a divorce. She couldn’t believe it. It left her unsettled. Beth and Kyle had gotten married five years ago, in a perfectly bland New Jersey wedding where they’d had a DJ instead of a band and served chicken instead of steak. They weren’t the kind of couple you looked at
