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From what Danny had seen, the Arive theht of that before Where was he going?
"I’irl said
She looked like an April It was funny how some names were like that They just seemed to fit
"I’m Danny," he said
"I know," said April "Just please, Danny? Get us the hell out of here"
Chapter 7
The color wasn’t right, Lila decided No, it wasn’t right at all
The shade was called "buttercream" On the sample from the store it was a soft, faded yellow, like old linen But now, as Lila stood back to inspect her work, dripping roller in hand-honestly, she was s?-it looked more like: well, what? A lemon An electrified leht, sunny kitchen s looking out to a garden But not in a nursery My God, she thought, a color like that, the baby wouldn’t sleep a wink
How depressing All her hard asted Hauling the ladder up the stairs fro herself onto her hands and knees to tape off the baseboards, only to find she’d have to go back to the store and start over She’d planned to have the rooh ti the wallpaper border, a repeating pattern of scenes froht the border was silly-"sentimental" was the word he’d used-but Lila didn’t care She’d loved the stories of Peter Rabbit when she was a girl, crawling onto her father’s lap or snuggling down in bed to hear, for the hundredth tiarden The yard of their house in Wellesley had been bordered by a hedgerow, and for years-long after she should have stopped believing in such things-she’d patiently searched it for a rabbit in a little blue jacket
But now Peter Rabbit would have to wait A wave of exhaustion enfolded her; she needed to get off her feet The fu with the AC, although with the baby, she always felt a little overheated She hoped David would get hos were crazy at the hospital He’d called her once to let her know he’d be late, but she hadn’t heard from him since
She made her way downstairs to the kitchen The place was an awful mess Dishes piled in the sink, counters stained, the floor beneath her bare feet tacky with gri puzzled She hadn’t realized how badly she’d let things go, and what had happened to Yolanda? How long since she’d been here? Tuesdays and Fridays were the housekeeper’s regular days What was today? To look at this kitchen, thought Lila, you’d think Yolanda hadn’t been to the house in weeks Okay, the wolish was not the best, and so the teaspoons with the tablespoons-how David gruht into the recycling bin Annoying things like that But Yolanda wasn’t one toshe’d shown up with a cough so bad that Lila could hear it from upstairs; she’d practically had to pry the , Por favor, Yolanda, let me help you, I’m a doctor Soy medico (Of course it was bronchitis; Lila had listened to the woht there in the kitchen and written the prescription for a full well that Yolanda probably didn’t even have a doctor, let alone insurance) So, okay, she sometimes threw the mail away and mixed up the silverware and put the socks in the underwear drawer, but she was a hard worker, tireless really, a cheerful and punctual presence they depended on, ith their crazy schedules And now not even a call
Which was another thing The phone didn’t see, on top of which there was no o outside under any circumstances, so Lila hadn’t checked Maybe the newspaper was sitting in the driveway
She fetched a glass froroan fro The water, too! Then she remembered; the water had been out a while Now she’d have to call a plu else Or would have, if the phones orking Wasn’t it just like David to be ahen everything went to hell in a handbasket That had been one of Lila’s father’s favorite expressions, hell in a handbasket A curious turn of phrase, now that Lila thought about it What exactly was a handbasket, and hoas it different froular basket? There were lots of phrases like that, even just sie, as if you’d never seen them before Diaper Misled Plumber Married
Had that really been her idea, to , I will marry David Which a person should think, probably, before they went ahead and did it Strange how one minute life was a certain way and then it was another, and you couldn’t remember what you’d done to make it all happen She wouldn’t have said that she loved David, exactly She liked him She admired him (And who could fail to ady at Denver General, founder of the Colorado Institute of Electrophysiology, a man who ran ets and the opera, who daily hauled his patients fros add up to love? And if not, should you actuallyplanned, it had simply happened-and because, in a moment of characteristically David nobility, he had announced that he intended to "do the right thing"? What was the right thing? And why did David so David, based on David, a man-sized, David-like object? When Lila had told her father the news of their engage at his desk in his study, surrounded by the books he loved, stroking glue onto the bowsprit of a enerous eyebrows, the truth ritten "Well," he said, and cleared his throat, pausing to screw the top onto the little jar of glue "I can see how, under the circuood man You can do it here if you like"
Which he was, and which they had, flying off to Boston on the front edge of a spring blizzard, everything rushed and jammed into place, just a handful of relatives and friends able torooed (it had taken all of about twotheir excuses Even the caterer had left early It wasn’t the fact that Lila was pregnant that made it all so aard It was, she knew, that so
But never(really, it had felt more like a wake), with its piles of leftover sal was the baby, and taking care of herself The world could go to hell in a handbasket if it wanted to The baby hat irl; Lila had seen her on the ultrasound A baby girl Tiny hands and tiny feet and a tiny heart and lungs, floating in the warm broth of her body The baby liked to hiccup Hiccup! went the tiny baby Hiccup! Hiccup! Which was a funny word as well The baby breathed the a the epiglottis to close A synchronous diaphragult, "the act of catching one’s breath while sobbing" When Lila had learned this in ht: Wow Just,And of course she had immediately started to hiccup herself; half the students had There was acontinuously for seventeen years She’d seen him on Today
Today What was today? She had radually aware, as if her e, that she had drawn the curtain aside to take a look outside Nope, no newspaper No Denver Post or New York Tiht into the bin Through the glass she could hear the high, tree-borne buzz of su by, the post a stroller, but not today I’ll be back when I know o out under any circus to her; she re at the atch his car, one of those new hydrogen-powered Toyotas, zip silently down the drive Good God, even his car was virtuous The pope probably drove one just like it
But wasn’t that a dog? Lila pressed her face closer to the glass The Johnsons’ dog was toddling down the middle of the street The Johnsons lived two doors away, a pair of ehter off e MIT? Caltech? One of those Mrs Johnson ("Call hbor to show up at their door the day they’dhellos, and Lila saw her nearly every evening when she wasn’t on call, so Roscoe, a big grinning golden retriever so submissive he’d hurl himself tummy-up on the pave fairy of a dog," Geoff said) That was Roscoe out there, but soht He didn’t look the sa out like the keys on a xylophone (Lila was touched, fleetingly, by a rain a disconcertingly ai in hisDid the Johnsons know he’d gotten loose? Should she telephone the, and she’d promised David she’d stay indoors Surely someone else would notice hiotten out
Goddaht He could be so stuck on hi God knohen here she was, no water and no phone and no electricity and the color in the nursery all wrong It wasn’t even close! She was only twenty-four weeks along, but she kne the time raced by Oneyou knew you were hustling out the door in the dead of night with your little suitcase, driving pell-mell to the hospital, and then you were on your back beneath the lights, huffing and puffing, the contractions roaring down upon you, taking you over, and nothing else would happen until you had the baby And through the fog of pain you would feel a hand in your own and open your eyes to see Brad beside you, wearing a look on his face you had no name for, a beautiful terrified helpless look, and hear his voice saying, Push, Lila, you’re almost there, one more push and you’ll be done, and so you would: you would reach inside yourself and find the strength to do this one last thing and push the baby out And in the stillness that caical swaddled present of your baby, rivers of happiness running down his cheeks, you would feel the deep and per that you had chosen this man above all others because you were simply meant to, and that your baby, Eva, this warether, was just that: the two of you, made one