The Bird House A Novel - By Kelly Simmons Page 0,34

newest client, a pharmaceutical company accused of using tainted vaccine. He said he was glad he hadn’t been asked to defend them, since one of their friends had an autistic child and claimed the vaccine had been the cause.

“Can’t you turn down assignments, now that you’re a partner?” I asked.

He shrugged, and I saw Ellie in him then, the not giving anything away.

“If you’d lived through the polio epidemic, you’d understand how important vaccines are,” I added.

“It’s probably not the best dinner conversation with a little one, though, Tom,” Tinsley said.

“What?” Ellie said, looking up from the small snake eyes she’d just formed.

“Nothing, honey,” Tom replied. “Just grown-up talk about diseases and stuff.”

“If I’m going to be a doctor, I need to know about what you’re talking about.”

“Do you want to be a doctor, baby?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Then I could cure Grandma’s breast cancer.”

I dropped my head to avoid Tinsley’s gaze, but couldn’t help allowing a smile to curl up on the edges of my mouth. I had inspired her! This is what they write about in people’s autobiographies, the exact moment their passions took hold!

“Sweetie,” Tinsley said softly, “Grandma isn’t sick anymore.”

“I meant cure it for everyone.”

Tinsley blinked. “Oh.”

“Ellie,” I said, emboldened, turning to her in the half-circle booth, “doing this project together gave me an idea. What if,” I said, my eyes dancing, “you and I had a regular get-together to do crafts?”

“Like a playdate?” Her eyes seemed to brighten.

“Yes, just like that. We could do it perhaps twice a month, or once a month if you’re busy.”

“Great idea,” Tom said, but Tinsley was quiet, and so was Ellie for just a moment. She glanced at her mother nervously before she looked back at me. Had I read her wrong? Had they discussed something I wasn’t privy to? I thought if I asked them in a group, in public, they couldn’t say no. The same way Tom used to ask if his friend could stay for dinner when the child was standing right in front of me with a rumbling stomach.

Ellie’s brief silence—two seconds? three?—crushed me in the way that only a child can crush you. I felt my face start to flush on the edges.

“I think that would be fun,” she said with a nod of her head for punctuation.

“We have to look at your schedule, though,” Tinsley said, frowning. “And see if you even have a couple of hours free.”

Ellie didn’t look at her mother, but she flashed me a small conspiratorial smile.

I smiled back widely. “Yes, of course, Tinsley,” I said brightly, “and I’ll look at mine.”

When the pasta dishes arrived, the plates were enormous and steaming in a way that struck me as false, like a restaurant commercial. I could have eaten for a week off my plate of primavera alone. I thought of our visit to Stuart’s, and the genius of those old red plastic baskets: they always held a perfectly sized portion.

When we finished eating Tom slipped his arm around his wife and she squirmed a little beneath his grasp. If I had just been looking, I wouldn’t have noticed, but I was watching. Oh, I was watching her now, too.

July 1, 1967

shallow bath

THE BABY HAS BEEN SITTING up for weeks, but he didn’t smile properly until today when I got back from the doctor, after Betsy put him down for his nap. He was in his crib, kicking that excited, jerky baby kick that looks like it hurts to do, and when I leaned over to pick him up, he smiled from ear to ear.

“What are you smiling for?” I asked with a sigh. “Huh? What are you so happy about? This is not a happy day, silly.”

My breast had been hurting more than usual, so Dr. Ferrell’s office fit me in right away. The nurse said it was probably a clogged milk duct, and I nodded my agreement as she handed me a gown. Of course that was what it was, what else could it be?

Dr. Ferrell’s hands seemed colder than usual as he fingered each breast, his eyes focused on a painting of a seascape over my head. I told him it was on the left side and when his fingers pressed there, I winced.

“Hmmm,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, Ann, there’s an irregularity here. Could be nothing, but we’ll have to be sure.”

“And if it’s not nothing?”

“It could be a benign growth. Or… it could be a cancerous growth.”

“My mother had breast cancer,” I said quietly.

“Yes, sometimes there’s