There were twenty-three messages waiting on Kate’s machine when she got home, half of them from an anxious Dee who had apparently forgotten until her penultimate one that Kate wasn’t even in town. Kate was glad she had left her cell phone turned off since the funeral.
“Geez, I’m such a jerk,” the recording began with an effusive apology. “It was the funeral thingy, wasn’t it? Your sister? My God, you must be feeling terrible and here I’m harping on and on about work. Well, listen, never mind. You just hang in there and we’ll talk when we talk.”
Five minutes later, she had left another one breathlessly asking whether it was at all humanly possible to wrap up the new Cirque du Soleil piece the very second she got home. “No pressure,” Dee added, “but I really, really, really need it.”
Kate smiled in amusement. Dee’s emergencies, she had come to realize over their years of working together, could be always be prioritized by the number of “really’s” she used in any given sentence.
As she played the rest of her messages back, scribbling their essence on Post-It Notes, she watched a perplexed Jimmy take in the strangeness of his new surroundings. If he had moved a single inch except to scratch his nose since the last time she looked at him, it was microscopically imperceptible. Welcome to Oz, little one, she wanted to tell him. Except for the fact that neither the name nor the correlating view of an Emerald City that would be magically glittering all around them as soon as the sun went down would likely have registered with him a single iota.
That Vegas’ grandeur from the forty-fifth floor of her condo—Dee’s condo, actually, since she was informally subleasing—routinely took the breath away of her visiting adult friends made it hard for Kate to conceptually put herself inside the head of a youngster who had always lived in ground floor apartments and a succession of motel rooms. The Art Nouveau furnishings alone, with a tasteful mix of black, white and splashes of hunter green, were certainly a far cry from what he had spent the past five years growing up with.
Likewise, the expansive open floor plan that included two-bedroom suites and a custom kitchen that spilled into a step-down dining and entertainment room even made Kate sometimes feel as if she were visiting a lavish movie set.
When she and Jimmy first arrived, she had made a point of taking his hand and giving him the full tour, chattering the whole time about Dee and her job, and about how Dee’s oil baron daddy in Texas had bought this place for his only daughter but that she was never there anymore since she was either always working long hours at the magazine or being seen at the clubs or hanging out with her new boyfriend, Anton.
I may as well be reciting the Vegas phone directory, she realized with a wry pang. “I’ll tell you one thing, you’d make a great little poker player with that face,” she praised him, kneeling to his level and affectionately ruffling his hair. Her expectation of a smile, a laugh, even the most minimal of eye contact, went unrewarded.
“I need to check my messages before we start putting our things away,” she told him, squeezing his hands and kissing him on the nose. A part of her expected him to happily follow her across the room to see what she was doing but he didn’t. For whatever reason, the patch of carpet he was standing on now held his undivided attention.
Who could have seen any of this coming, she thought, suddenly conscious of the fact that the last time she’d sat at her desk on the perimeter of the living room was when she’d gotten the phone call about her sister’s accident. Up until that moment, her life had been entirely her own and she had gone to sleep every night with only the sound of her breathing to keep her company. She had eaten when she felt like it, partied with friends whenever invitations were extended, indulged in long bubble baths for stress reduction, and, when her workload at the magazine accommodated it, even taken extended vacations.
Yet none of those freedoms she so casually took for granted as a single career woman ever entered into her mind when she offered to bring Jimmy back home with her after Cassy’s funeral. Nor, until now, had she pictured the condo as such an incongruous place to take in a child she had previously only seen for short stretches at a time.
Why, then, was she guiltily starting to question whether she had really allowed herself enough time to make such a profound and life-altering decision for the both of them? With a mild shudder, she caught herself wondering whether Lydia’s cynical remarks that maybe she’d bitten off more than she could chew held more truth than she dared to admit. What did she really know about the demands of motherhood anyway except, perhaps, not to emulate the traits that vexed her so much about her mom.
For one thing, she couldn’t begin to imagine what the world looked like through Jimmy’s eyes, especially since none of his reactions followed any sort of predictable pattern. There had been her initial apprehensions, for instance, of how he’d feel about riding on an airplane for such a long flight. She knew he had been on one at least once before with his mother and, by Cassy’s account, had screamed from takeoff until landing.
To that end, Kate had encouraged him to run around and play as much as possible beforehand to tire him out a bit. That it worked so well he had conked out prematurely in the taxi before they even got to the airport made her worry that his second wind of hyperactivity could threaten to make her one of those passengers everyone else glared at with venom.
To her surprise, however, he’d been completely unperturbed by the noise of the engines, mesmerized by the clouds out the window, and, unless she was mistaken, even grinned at a little girl about his same age and tried to crane his neck to see where she went. She even prided herself on discretely slipping the flight attendant a single-serving box of Fruit Loops and asking her if she’d mind presenting it to him half an hour after takeoff as if it were part of the airline’s regular meal service. Jimmy had looked pleased with this even if he subsequently managed to disperse half the contents into his lap and on the floor.
At least he’d been neater in John’s cab, she thought. Or rather, John’s friend’s cab. Typical John, she thought with a smile, always there to help others out. If memory served, the caption under his yearbook picture said pretty much the same thing. Kate shifted uneasily in her chair, disturbed by the effortlessness with which she was able to conjure such snapshots from a past she no longer belonged to.
She glanced at her watch and, in doing so, discovered that she hadn’t reset it to the right time when they’d landed at McCarran. Her mother would be watching the news about now, she imagined and then trying to decide what to fix herself for dinner, an exercise that, by Lydia’s own admission, she found to be tedious if there was no one around to share it with.
John was probably sitting down to dinner, too, she thought. His wife, if he had one, was no doubt a good cook. At least a way better cook than she was, having inherited her mother’s lack of culinary imagination and patience. Were there children at the dining table as well or were they young enough to have already eaten before he got home? Behind closed eyelids, she tried to envision the scene. Were they laughing and passing the mashed potatoes and talking about their day as if they didn’t have a care in the world? Did John and his spouse sit at opposite ends of the table or right next to one another so that he could occasionally touch her hand?
Why are you beating yourself up like this? the little voice in her head screamed. Let it go already!
Opening her eyes, she came back to the reality of not only having to fix dinner for Jimmy and herself but also not having any real clue of what his favorite meals were. She looked up to ask him if he was getting hungry and discovered he had moved over to the floor-to-ceiling windows and was pressing his hands and nose against the glass. What is it about kids and leaving their mark on glass, she wondered, trying to remember if she and Cassy had shared that particular fascination when they were little girls growing up in Avalon Bay. She made a mental note to pick up a healthy supply of Windex wipes.
“It’s a pretty view, isn’t it?” she said as she stood next to him. “Did I tell you we’re forty-five stories high? That means there are forty-four floors below us.” She quickly recalculated. “Actually, forty-nine if you count the garage that’s underground. That’s where all the cars live.”
Jimmy was completely nonplussed by this revelation even though she knew for a fact that some of his favorite toys were cars.
Toys. Yikes. With the exception of a fleecy stuffed bear named Mr. Ollie that he’d brought along in his backpack, everything else was being packed up in boxes by a neighbor of Cassy’s who had offered to keep them until she got instructions on where they should be shipped. Having no idea when that would be, Kate made a second mental note to take him toy-shopping the next day.
Vegas. Toy-shopping. Okay, not exactly the words she’d expect to find in the same sentence unless the latter was of the adult variety. Maybe instead she could just go online after he went to bed and find some playthings that could be FedExed overnight.
“Do you think Mr. Ollie would like to look at the view?” she suggested. “I bet he’s never been up this high before.”
When Jimmy made no move to go get him, Kate went into the spare bedroom herself to retrieve the bear from his backpack. In her best falsetto voice, she squealed Mr. Ollie’s excitement at being in a new place and flapped his tiny arms up and down.
Jimmy looked at her, his mouth dipped into a frown, and then resumed his vigil at the window.
What? She thought. Didn’t I get the voice right? Clearly, there was quite a lot about doing anthropomorphic impressions that she didn’t know. With a sigh, she set the bear down on the carpet facing the window. Patience, she reminded herself. He’ll come around when he’s ready to.
“I’m going to call and order us some groceries,” she continued. “What do you think we should have for our dinner? Spaghetti? Mac and cheese? Fish and chips?” She paused. “Squiggle bugs and ants?”
No response.
“All righty then,” she said. “Let’s make it a surprise.”
She crossed back to the desk and flipped her Rolodex to the entry that was every career woman’s Godsend—home-delivered groceries. “Comes free with the condo twenty-four-seven,” Dee had informed her when she first moved in. Kate tried to remember the last time she’d set foot in an actual supermarket and cruised the aisles. Rarely had she ever exceeded the $500 monthly cap. The responsibility of feeding a growing child three squares and snacks, of course, would probably change that fairly fast.
She had barely hung up the phone after placing her order when it rang again.
“Hello?”
“You were supposed to call me from the airport,” Lydia sharply chided. “How do I know your plane didn’t crash?”
It would probably have been on the news, an exhausted Kate was tempted to reply. “Sorry, Mom,” she apologized, “but things got a little crazy.”
“Problems with the boy already, hmm?”
Lydia Toscano, the queen of gloating, was already seeking confirmation of her predictions.
“No, just getting our bags, getting a cab, that kind of thing.” Jimmy, she noticed with a smile, had picked Mr. Ollie up by his hind leg and was casually swinging him back and forth at his side.
“Speaking of cabs…”
“Yes?’ Kate asked.
“Did he say anything to you?” Lydia wanted to know.
“Who are we talking about, Mom?”
“Don’t be smart with me, young lady. You know exactly who I’m talking about.”
“Oh, you mean John Neal? Yeah, I suppose we caught up on some news and stuff. Why?”
“You’re not going to get back in touch with him, are you? Because if you are, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“I kinda gathered that,” Kate remarked. “Besides John and I moved on a long time ago. Why are you so wrapped around the axel about him?”
Lydia ignored her question, inquiring instead as to how the boy was liking Las Vegas.
“Too early to tell, I think.” Vegas at any age, she added, was an acquired taste that took a little getting used to.
From the corner of her eye, she saw a sudden movement at the window followed by an unintelligible grunt. Inexplicably, a red-faced Jimmy was now repeatedly pelting Mr. Ollie against the glass.
Kate cut her mother off in mid-sentence. “Gotta go, Mom! I’ll call you back!”
Dropping her handheld phone on the desktop, she hurried over to subdue him. “Hey, hey, hey,” she cooed as she tried to calm him down and grab hold of his flailing arms. “What’s this all about, huh?” She repeated his name over and over but he only responded with grunts and whimpers and tried to extricate himself from her firm grasp. After what seemed an eternity, he finally gave up and plopped down on the carpet with a thud.
As casually as she could manage, Kate brushed the hair off his forehead and asked him again what was going on. “It’s okay,” she said. “It really is. I’m going to make everything all right. I know it’s all new right now and kinda scary, but we’ve got each other, okay? Okay, honey? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
He sullenly turned away from her to look at the window and for a moment she wondered whether he was going to pick up where he left off just as soon as she let him go. Thank goodness it was only a bear, she thought in relief. She took a glance around the room, reminding herself that the phrase “childproofing a house” had suddenly taken on a dark and significant meaning that she’d have to attend to as soon as possible.
The phone rang.
“Ooooooh,” she said, feigning giddy astonishment in an attempt to distract him. “Shall we go see who that is?” She gently hoisted him to his feet, took his small hand in hers, and pointed toward the desk. “Let’s go answer the telephone, okaaaaaay?”
To her surprise, he didn’t try to pull away from her or hold his ground but, to the contrary, actually looked a little curious about where she was taking him. “He likes to go for walks,” she remembered Cassy telling her when Jimmy was around three. “I think he thinks it’s an adventure.”
Either that, Kate now mused, or something in his head is connecting the touch to feeling safe.
She picked up the phone with her free hand.
“Oh cool, you’re back,” she heard Dee say. “Have you had a chance to work up the Cirque piece yet?”