face up.
“Honey,” Joanna says, for a minute sounding so much like C.J.’s real fucking mother she can’t stand it. “What is it? Do you need money? Are you in trouble?”
She paws the air and then fans her face so her mascara won’t run. “No! Nothing like that. I’m just PMS or maybe I’m just all fucked up. Maybe I’m nervous about having a date. Who wants to date someone with a six-month-old?”
“Lots of people would,” Joanna says. “Look at you. He’s lucky and he better treat you that way.”
“How’d you learn to say all those mom things?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I know all the things I wish someone had said to me long before I did try to vacate the planet Earth.” Joanna pats her shoulder and pushes her toward the door. “No reason for you to have to wait to learn all those things, right? So go and have fun and when you come back first thing in the morning, we’ll start all over again with you selecting a fine piece of kitchen or glassware to claim as your very own.”
“It’s a deal,” she says, and leans to the side once more so she can see Kurt sleeping, his head leaned to the right, pacifier still in his mouth. “You sure you want him to sleep over?”
“Instead of you waking me up at one or two? Um, yeah, I think so.” Joanna paused. “And if you decide to go home early, just call and swing by.”
“Okay. If you’re sure,” C.J. says, and takes a good deep breath—a cleansing breath, Toby would say. She is feeling better. She is feeling hopeful. “It’ll be early because I promised Rachel Silverman I’d ride her around tomorrow and give her a tour of the town. She’s pretty cool. You’d like talking to her some time when you’re over with the living ones.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Now go, have fun. Kurt’s fine and I’m fine and you’re fine,” Joanna stands in the doorway and waves. “And take good notes so that someday when you actually decide to let me in on what is happening in your life, you won’t forget a thing.”
“I do trust you. I do want to tell you.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“You know me,” she says, and sticks out her tongue. “Always something up my sleeve.” C.J. waves and takes another deep breath. She starts the car and notices Kurt’s new stuffed dog there on the seat beside her, but she decides not to go back in; she’s afraid she would tell everything if she did and for now it’s best to keep the secret. She will hope for the best and even if the best doesn’t happen, she still has plenty of good stuff going on. She has Kurt and she has a job and a place to live and who knows what could happen with Sam Lowe and actually that big white vase isn’t so bad at all. In fact, she can imagine filling it with something like peacock feathers or sunflowers and tacking little lights up along the ceiling of every room. She’s already thought how she wants to paint Kurt’s room so it looks like he lives in a castle; she wants him to always feel like he has a good home. A family and a home. The parking lot at Pine Haven is empty and she’s twenty minutes early so she lets herself in the side door and goes to the beauty parlor to check her hair and makeup and make sure she doesn’t have mascara or baby spit on that new blouse. This place is like a tomb after about seven, faint buzzings of televisions behind apartment doors and of course that goddamned music Mr. Stone can’t get enough of. If it was this quiet during the daytime hours, she would have to beg him to listen to something else because it would drive her crazy but in the daytime, she has her own music going and lots of hair dryers and nail dryers and a bunch of people who can’t hear anyway and have to scream at each other. She takes out her lip and nose rings and brushes the spikiness from her hair, wipes the smudge of burgundy lipstick from her mouth. It surprises her lately how much she looks like her mother. Some nights before bed—her face stripped clean of all makeup and studs—she can’t even bear to look.
Abby
THE SIDE DOOR OF Pine Haven is still open and so Abby is able to