Lucia was gone from our lives for good. And opportunities were opening up for me.
On Friday I sent Amelia a text and asked if she’d like me to babysit.
Ten minutes later she wrote back. She said yes. She said yes.
I had barely survived the strain of the previous three weeks. I felt as though I’d been drowning and Amelia’s text was a life preserver tossed in my direction.
When I arrived at the Straubs’ house late that afternoon, Natalie answered the door. I’d missed Natalie terribly. The sight of her face fortified me.
She brightened when she saw me. Maybe she’d missed me too.
I kissed her forehead. “How are you, honey?”
I hung my down coat on one of several glass hooks in the hallway.
“Mom and Dad are … crazy.” Natalie walked in the direction of the kitchen, and I followed. “Mainly Mom. The whole baby thing. I don’t know what their problem is.” She was wearing tight jeans and a glittery T-shirt with a picture of a purple unicorn on it. I could see her sharp shoulder blades and ribs through her shirt. I could see her hip bones, too, and wondered whether she was eating. Whether her parents’ anxiety had infected her.
She sat down at the kitchen island, on one of the leather-and-stainless kitchen stools, and I sat next to her. Her eyes appeared huge in her face and her skin was even more translucent than usual. She chewed on her fingernails or her fingers. I couldn’t tell which.
Itzhak lay in his usual spot on the kitchen floor nearby. He whimpered quietly.
“Mom said that you have a son in California. Why don’t you ever talk about him?”
I wasn’t troubled by Natalie’s comment. I’d known that the Straubs were eventually going to ask more about my son. But I’d grown to understand who Jasper was in a fuller way and would actually relish talking about him. “I haven’t wanted to bother you or your mom with my troubles.”
Natalie examined her fingernails, which were bitten down to the quick. “I know you’re divorced. Piper’s parents got divorced. Sometimes I think my parents should too. They act like they hate each other.” She wore a bracelet made out of colored beads that spelled her name. “Piper said her parents are better friends now that they’re divorced.”
“All marriages have problems, but they usually work out.”
“Why didn’t yours?”
The late-afternoon sun flooded in through the three sets of bifold doors behind Natalie, casting long shadows into the room.
“There are exceptions. You need to make a good choice.” I squinted in order to see her.
“What’s your son’s name?” she asked.
“Jasper.” I could see Jasper in my mind’s eye, golden skin, dark locks of hair, large brown eyes, small and wiry body. I visualized him in California with his father, at the beach among the waves and whitecaps, his toes sinking into the wet sand beneath him.
Itzhak rearranged himself on the floor. Natalie petted him with her bare foot. “When is your son coming back?”
“Soon, I hope.” The sun moved behind a large branch of the Straubs’ cherry tree, so I was temporarily relieved from the glare in my eyes.
She picked up a pencil resting on the kitchen counter and twirled it in her fingers. “I’d like to meet him.”
“One day.” Jasper was my creation, just as a child from my womb would be my creation, were I to have one. And because I knew him so intimately, every eyelash, each toenail, I could speak about him with complete candor. Without apology.
She set the pencil back down on the counter and twirled it in place.
The sound of Itzhak’s labored breathing filled the room. Natalie turned her attention toward the dog again. “I’m scared that Itzhak’s going to die.”
“Oh, honey.”
“He sleeps almost all the time. When I come home from school, he doesn’t run to say hi anymore. I think it’s his heart condition.”
At this time of day, the suspended glass cabinet glowed, as did every wineglass inside it.
“His eyesight and his hearing aren’t good either,” she said. “He can still smell me though. Itzhak has an incredible sense of smell. Did you know that a bloodhound’s nose is ten to one hundred million times more sensitive than a human’s?” She sniffed the air as if testing the sensitivity of her own nose.
“That’s amazing.”
Now one side of Natalie’s face was bathed in light. Her gray eyes had small flecks of yellow. I took several long, slow breaths. The ache behind my sternum was subsiding.
“Some bloodhounds can detect who has touched a pipe bomb after the pipe bomb already exploded.” Natalie got down from the kitchen stool and sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor, next to Itzhak. “They can detect one milligram of human sweat among one hundred million cubic meters of air. Those detective dogs are so cool. I’d love to meet one of them.”
Itzhak rolled over onto his back. She scratched him behind his ears. “You’re my best friend. Right, buddy?”
“Itzhak loves you so much,” I said.
“I read that some dogs go away to die.” She rubbed his stomach. “Is that true?”
The sun was quickly sinking behind the Straubs’ shrubbery at the back of their yard. “Itzhak, please don’t,” she said. “I’m scared that one day I’ll come home and he won’t be here anymore. No one will know where he went.” The whole house dimmed. Itzhak stood and limped away from Natalie and toward the tall glass doors.
“Maybe dogs who go away to die are hoping to spare their masters the pain of witnessing their death.” I’d been by myself with my uncle when he’d had a heart attack. I was twelve at the time. I called the paramedics, but, unfortunately, he died before they arrived.
Natalie hugged her skinny legs into her ribs. “I think it would be worse. The not knowing.”
Amelia and Fritz were going to return soon, but I was relishing my time with Natalie and wanted a few more minutes of uninterrupted conversation.
“Remember Lucia?” Natalie sat back down on
