Magnus had said sharply to get her attention as he tucked his ticket into his jean hip pocket. He made meaningful eye contact, waited to speak. “You and Paul are doing a good job, Chicky.”
“I’m glad someone thinks so.” Her voice wavered as she wiped at her eyes.
They had hugged, and she watched him walking into the airport, his oversize carry-on bumping beside him like a companion dog.
There were clothes still hanging in the narrow guest-room closet under the eaves; two shirts, a pair of khakis, and his gigantic creased Adidas. Magnus would be coming back, but much sooner than either of them realized just then.
NOW EVA PULLS INTO the gas station off Sunset, right near Portland Heights. There is a thick fog rolling up the hill, and she can barely see the little brick building as she waits for the attendant. She ticks through the list of things to do in her mind.
Maggie—airport
Gas!!!!
Go to gym, elliptical, 40 minutes
Coffee!!!!
Wash sheets
Call Francie?
Take walk to grocery w/Wyeth if not raining
Milk, lemons for pasta dish, and ice cream. Wine?
It’s not much, but making these lists, adding structure to her yawning days, days that will no longer have the company of her brother and the endless analysis of his disastrously dysfunctional relationship, his suggestions that they go out for lunch or browse Powell’s, his willingness to hold the screaming baby for the thirty seconds it takes her to twist her hair back into a knot, just might keep her afloat. Until what? she wonders. Lather rinse repeat, as Paul would say. This is her life now.
The night before, when Wyeth had finally cried himself out and she and Paul were bumping around each other in the bathroom taking out contacts and brushing teeth, the alarm system had gone off at Paul’s Hillsboro office, activating one of the hallway fire sprinklers. It was a fluke, but he had stayed until two in the morning getting everything sorted out, and she knew he planned to go back early today with the cleaning crew, arrange for industrial dryers and dehumidifiers to come and draw the damp out of the carpet before it had to be replaced.
“It’s not that we can’t afford to replace the carpet,” Paul had assured her. “Just no need to.”
Wyeth had woken up to nurse around two twenty, startling at Paul’s big boots clomping up the wooden stairs. It had taken him until almost three to nurse both sides, some kind of a growth spurt maybe, and then her brother’s flight was at nine, but he wanted to leave at seven…. God, she’s exhausted. It is only the sight of her thighs spreading to touch each other on the car seat that is driving her on to the gym.
A skinny teenage girl shuffles out with her hands in her jacket pockets to pump the gas, shoulders braced against the morning damp rolling up the hill off the highway below. Her sweatshirt hood is bunched up behind her black hair, a sad smattering of deep pits and sores around her mouth, slight trickle of clear snot just under her nose. She sniffs hard, wipes at her face with her sleeve.
“Fill it up?” Eva says. While the girl fiddles with the pump, Eva rifles through her gym bag, always so awkward to be waited on for something she could easily do herself. She has her portable CD player, a towel, but no water. Squinting, she can see the light of a vending machine just inside the glass door of the no-frills gas station. Eva counts out two dollars in quarters, thinking that should be more than enough, even in Portland Heights. She gets out and crosses the pavement to the building, stepping around the coiled black hoses as if they are snakes.
It will be okay, she thinks to herself, if she can just get Maggie into his own place up here, less tension between him and Paul, fewer pleading/stabbing looks between her and Paul, and then she can put her life in some semblance of order, maybe even get a sitter for Wyeth a few times a week while she pursues something of interest…something of interest…Eva closes her eyes in the empty gas station office, tilts her head forward against the vending machine.
The machine dispenses an Aquafina, ice-cold, and Eva pulls her fleece sleeve down over her hand to carry it back to the car. She quickly shuts the car door, rubs her hands together, almost starts the engine to turn on the heater out of