EIGHT

Leslie always felt discouraged when Nick left on business. She knew how Robin tried to keep him at home, and she knew that she herself was just too stubborn to attempt the same. She had never wanted to travel with him before, but now, sometimes, she thought how easy it would be to hire a sitter, pack a bag, and take off with him. She didn’t care if they went to some hick town; she didn’t care if it rained the whole time. She could take her sketch pad and do some designs in the hotel room; she could visit the local shops and see if they’d take some of her designs on commission. Nick, though, never asked her to go until he was already there, and then it was because of the loneliness in the night. He’d call her, the pull in his voice reminding her how she missed him, but she was never quite willing to join him then; she never quite felt that his asking her when he was already there was very fair.

She took care of things, she managed. She always told herself that this time things were going to be different between Robin and her; this time they would really use the time to get close.

She started out all right. She missed Nick. She wanted Robin’s company, so she was tolerant when Robin played her new James Taylor album over and over. After all, she was playing it in the living room, where Leslie was; she was sitting in a chair right next to her. Leslie took Robin shopping, and tried not to feel wounded when Robin chose cheaply made denim shirts and bell-bottom jeans, when she said she didn’t need to see the designs Leslie had sketched for her, because all she wanted to wear were the things Leslie had just bought for her.

They cooked dinner together sometimes. They stayed up on weekends watching the late-night horror movie, sharing popcorn, hugging when the film got scary. But Leslie couldn’t seem to keep things working for very long. Whatever was good between them started souring with the first of Nick’s calls. As soon as Leslie heard his voice, her yearning for him flowered, her loneliness intensified. But he was so casual on the phone, and then he kept asking for Robin, and it did something to her. She wanted him to whisper something private to her, tell her how much he missed her, how he remembered their nights. Instead, he asked if Robin’s cold was any better, if she had stayed home from school, if she dressed warmly.

“If you’re so worried, stay home,” Leslie said, her voice flat, and then his tone changed, too, he seemed less glad to talk to her, and the call seemed spoiled. She was restless with anger, blaming him a little, blaming herself, and then Robin took the phone, turning her back to Leslie, whispering so Leslie couldn’t hear, and Leslie’s anger found another target.

She told herself it was crazy, that she couldn’t really be jealous of her own daughter; she wouldn’t let such a thing happen. But when Nick came home, she saw how he always had something for Robin—a tape, a book, a poster. He whispered to Leslie that he was the gift for her, but they never got to bed until after Robin was asleep, and by then Nick was too tired to do more than stroke her, whispering that he would make it up to her in the morning. He left her to lie awake and remember one clear, cool night when he had slept two houses away from her in his car because he hadn’t been able to tear himself away.

She hated herself for it, but sometimes when Nick called from a nearby gas station saying he’d be home in two seconds from his business trip, she wouldn’t tell Robin. She’d send her out for milk just so she could be alone with him for a while. Sometimes, too, when she was on the phone with Nick, she lied and told him Robin was out, when really she was just upstairs in the shower. Once, she was caught in her lie. She turned to see Robin in the hall. “I’m here,” Robin said angrily, taking the phone from Leslie. “I was outside.”

Leslie made some excuse, and later that evening she took Robin to a movie, whatever one Robin wanted to see, but she couldn’t meet her daughter’s eyes, and she was grateful for the dark theater.

Leslie sometimes felt as if she were on a roller coaster. The anger would suddenly drop from her and she’d feel how much she loved her girl, how much she wanted to be close. But Robin was used to her mother turning on and off to her—used to her being preoccupied with Nick when he was home, and seeming to need Robin only when Nick was away. Robin had learned to fend for herself from years of practice, and although she did love Leslie, she still couldn’t quite trust her.

Leslie’s attempts to get close always turned clumsy. She watched Robin peering anxiously at herself in the mirror when she thought no one was watching. She saw how her daughter sometimes seemed too eager to please when they had company. And sometimes, too, it made her ache to see how silent Robin became after a phone call from her father; she’d feel twinges of guilt that she had ever thought to keep Robin away from Nick. She’s just a lonely little girl, she thought. But when Leslie went to put her arms about her, Robin, suspicious, stiffened, and then before she knew it, Leslie started to criticize her for wearing a stained blouse, for not combing her hair, until Robin jerked away.

Even when Robin did let her get close, something went wrong. Robin would come home crying about something, wanting comfort, and Leslie would sit with her, talking in a low voice, feeling so suddenly close to her daughter that she took on her sorrow and ended up being the one who needed comforting. It made Robin furious. “It’s my problem!” she cried.

“Can’t I even feel for you?” Leslie asked, stung.

“You’re not doing that, you’re taking over,” Robin said.

But Leslie didn’t see it as taking over. Not then, and not when she rearranged things in Robin’s room to make the space seem larger, not when she kept pulling up the blinds Robin pulled down. Robin, who was used to coming and going as she pleased when Nick was home, who was even encouraged to stay over at friends’ homes, was now expected to stay put in the house. Every time she found reasons to go out, Leslie found reasons for her to stay. Robin couldn’t go to the library, because Leslie had to dash out and someone had to stay to let a client in. Robin couldn’t visit a friend until she had helped Leslie with the dishes. And then it would be too late for Robin to go anywhere, they’d both be tense from trying to have their own way, and in the end, both of them would be as alone in the house that evening as if they had no family at all.

When Robin was twelve, she decided to adopt another family altogether. She was in seventh grade, and her best friend was a girl named Mandy Hartford. Mandy was an only child, too, and she had absolutely everything she wanted. She told Robin it was because no one had ever really expected her to exist at all; her parents said she was a miracle baby. Her mother, Evie, had suffered three miscarriages before Mandy was finally born, and when she got pregnant with Mandy, she had taken to her bed as if she were Sophia Loren. The doctor said that was hardly necessary, but Evie was taking no chances. She wouldn’t move, not even to go to the bathroom. She made her husband carry her; she hired a girl from the neighborhood. She was in bed for eight months, but she remained cheerful because she believed emotions could affect the unborn. She ate meals from a hot plate by her bed. She closed her eyes for fifteen minutes a day and willed herself a healthy baby.

Mandy confided to Robin that her mother wouldn’t sleep with Mandy’s father, Jake, during her entire pregnancy; she made him camp out in the spare room on a lumpy couch that kept throwing his back out. Robin, shocked that Mandy knew such a thing, stared. Sometimes, Mandy whispered, her father even cried. But when Mandy was born, they threw a big party and Evie pranced around on what she called her sea legs and there wasn’t ever enough anyone could do for Mandy.

Robin began spending more and more time at Mandy’s, calling Leslie when Mandy’s mother had already cooked extra dinner especially for her, when it was too late for Leslie to object. Robin adored Mandy. They made prank calls on Mandy’s white Princess phone. They had secret pacts where they swore eternal friendship. Robin saw how it was at Mandy’s home, and she began to think that Mandy had the kind of life she should have had herself, the kind of parents.

Evie treated Robin as if she were another daughter. She gave her the run of the house, let her do whatever she pleased, and when she saw Robin was upset about something, she didn’t push. She sat beside Robin and quietly took her hand, saying nothing, but just being there, and it always made Robin feel a lot better. She didn’t turn on and off the way Leslie did; if she was in a bad mood, she still smiled at Robin, still gave her impulsive hugs the same way she did with Mandy.

Jake made her doubt Nick in new and disturbing ways. He was always home nights. Once she had even heard him canceling a business trip for no other reason than he wanted to be home with his family. Robin went home that evening brooding about it. She approached Nick and asked him if he would stay home from his next trip, just one time, just for her. He ruffled her hair. “Why, I can’t do that, baby,” he said.

“Well, could you take me with you, then?” she said. She thought that would be more fun anyway, because the stories of the places he visited always mesmerized her.

“Come on, you have school,” he said, and she turned from him.

Jake took Mandy and Robin everywhere. He spoiled Robin the same way he did Mandy, bringing them both chocolates and comics. When Robin talked, he didn’t move; he concentrated on her as if there were nothing else worth his attention. And he took them both shopping. He picked up bright silk shirts and held them up against Mandy, and when Mandy found the one she wanted, he told her to buy it in two colors. When he saw Robin wistfully fingering the shirts, he sent her and Mandy downstairs, telling them he had some personal business to take care of, and when he came down, he handed Robin a brown bag.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Beats me,” Jake said. “Why don’t you just open it?”

She did, and a red silk shirt spilled out into her hands.

She took it home, delighted, but Leslie was not pleased. “That’s some expensive present,” she said, looking at the tag. “I could make you this for half what it cost.” She folded the blouse up. “I just don’t feel comfortable about this. You take it back, say thank you, and that’s that.”

Robin hated her. “Look, I’ll make you one just like it,” Leslie said.

“I don’t want one you made,” Robin said.

Leslie sighed. “Fine, have nothing then.”

Robin took the blouse back and Jake was very solemn, but he told her that he had no intention of taking the shirt back; instead, he’d keep it in the spare room for her, so that anytime she felt like wearing it, she could.

Robin began collecting more and more things that she kept at Mandy’s. Sweaters, skirts, even a hamster that was named and kept in a cage. When she wore the clothing home, she felt daring and special, and she lied to Leslie, telling her it was something Mandy had loaned her. Her mother knew how spoiled Mandy was—something they were beginning to argue about. Mandy would beg for this and that, and then wear it once before she decided it was no good. Evie couldn’t bear to throw anything away. She was sure Mandy would change her mind, so she kept all the clothing in mothproof plastic bags in the basement.

The first time Robin had been at the house, Evie had taken her on a clothing tour, showing her the furs Mandy had discarded, a tweed jacket from just a week ago. “Throw that junk out, would you?” Mandy said, but Evie said she would like hell, and she kept trying to get Mandy to try the things on again.

Robin began to think of Mandy’s home as her real life, and her life with Leslie as some movie bound to end. She kept her world at Mandy’s like a secret. Sometimes she told herself that Evie and Jake were her real parents—she had been born when they had thought Evie had miscarried; an evil nurse had sold her. Or maybe Jake had had an affair and she was the product, given away at birth. She studied Jake; she watched Evie; she stood in front of a mirror trying to squint her features into theirs.

She felt more a part of Mandy’s family than her own. As soon as she stepped into the house, she felt herself change. She’d go into the closet and pull out one of the shirts Jake had bought her; she’d go and see to her hamster; and she’d dip her fingers into the cookie jar as if they belonged there. She could take a shower without asking anyone. She could flop onto any bed in the house and read. She could use Mandy’s phone and shut the door for privacy. When Jake came home, she ran to the front along with Mandy, and fished in his pockets the same way Mandy did.

Every Friday, Robin went over for dinner. Evie really couldn’t cook. Robin was used to Leslie’s garden snap beans and fresh fish, to lightly braised meats and salads, and here was Evie making a big presentation out of corned-beef hash and canned peas. Robin would always grab a peanut butter sandwich before she came over, wolfing it down as she sped to her friend’s, so that by the time dinner rolled around, she wasn’t all that hungry anyway. Both she and Mandy picked at the food. Mandy was always on some new crazy diet, though she was thin enough, and Robin followed her lead.

Still, Robin loved the dinners. Jake told jokes and teased. He kept asking when Robin would be old enough to run off and marry him. “I’m old enough right now,” Robin said. Everyone laughed, everyone interrupted everyone else. She and Mandy did the dishes, but it was kind of fun. They blasted rock on the radio; they made up lists about what ten boys they would like to go out with, what five boys they would like to kiss. Robin thought, Jake, Jake, but she didn’t dare say it.

“You’re gone an awful lot,” Leslie said. She didn’t like Mandy much. She had overheard her call Evie an old goat because Evie had brought home a sweater that Mandy claimed was burgundy and not magenta as she had wanted. Leslie insisted that Mandy come over sometimes, but when she did, the two girls stayed in Robin’s room, and when Nick was home, Robin seemed angry.

Missing Nick made Leslie want to flood her time with work. She told her clients she was available to their friends. She took out small ads in the local papers, and gradually business increased.

Sometimes, when Nick was away and Robin was at Mandy’s, Leslie was sure she was starting to go mad. She tried to talk clients into coming over in the evenings. “I just got a cancellation,” she said breathlessly over the phone. “There won’t be another opening like this for a month.” She tried to sound like she was giving out favors, but she felt the silence on the phone. Clients rarely came. They had husbands who were taking them out someplace nice for dinner. They had kids who had to be squired to the school play or to Brownies. They had their own night classes over at Pitt.

Leslie couldn’t stay alone in the house on nights like that. So she walked. She put her hair in one long, sloppy braid; she put on Nick’s black leather jacket that always smelled of him when she lifted the collar up against her nose. She slowly made her way up and down the streets of Shadyside. She sometimes walked up the series of steep hills that led to Squirrel Hill itself. She walked slowly to make the time last, to stretch it out like gum.

She liked Wednesday nights the best. The shops were always open along Walnut Street until ten, and she liked to wander in and out of them, gliding like a ghost, touching skirts and sweaters, the very feel of the cloth a comfort to her. It made her feel good to see expensive clothing so cheaply made, to know a seam wouldn’t hold for more than a month, to see how faddy a design really was. It gave her own work extra value to her, made her feel special. She walked past the coffee shops and looked in at the couples. She felt the easy lure of company. She imagined people happy.

Sometimes, too, she imagined she was close to Robin. She imagined Robin coming to talk to her about her problems, to tell her that she didn’t really hate her at all, it was just adolescence. She thought about Nick telling her he was going to settle down to a desk job in Pittsburgh because nothing was more important to him than she was. Nothing, nothing.

By the time she had circled back to the house, she was restless and angry. She started packing a small overnight bag, jamming in a clean sweater, a fresh pair of socks. Then she called Mandy’s mother and said she had to go out of town and would it be all right for Robin to spend the night there? “No prob,” said Evie, and when Leslie hung up the phone, she felt light, dazzled with sudden new hope.

It didn’t take long to get to Harrisburg, where Nick was. When she got to his hotel, though, the man at the desk wouldn’t let her up to Nick’s room. He said Mr. Austen was out, and he didn’t care that she had a driver’s license with the same last name. He said Mr. Austen was out. “I can’t let you up unless he’s up there himself. If you want to wait in the bar, you’re welcome to.”

So she waited in the bar, sitting in a booth, snacking on stale goldfish crackers tumbled into a plastic bowl, sipping a weak bloody mary. Every once in a while, a man would approach her and offer to buy her a drink. She wouldn’t look up—she pretended she didn’t hear the soft invitations. Someone dipped toward her, and she sprang up, scattering the goldfish across the table, and there was Nick, uncertainly smiling.

“Surprise,” she said weakly. If he asked what she was doing here, she would kill him. If he didn’t seem glad, she would go home and pack her bags and take Robin and go and live in the mountains someplace. They could live on Milky Ways.

Instead, he gave her a real kiss and led her to the elevator, carrying her bag, and as they passed the desk clerk, Leslie turned and gave him a hard, deliberate stare.

The room was small and done in faded blues. Nick made a big deal of showing her the small white refrigerator filled with soft drinks and beer, the soap and shampoo in the shower, the complimentary toothbrush wrapped in cellophane. And then he grabbed her and rolled her with him onto the clean bathroom floor, so if she looked up she could see the papered glass by the sink, the folded white towels he hadn’t used yet. He burrowed into her hair, started undoing her braid, and Leslie sighed, letting out all her fears in a rush of air.

Nick woke in the middle of the night. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. The room seemed strange, dangerously unfamiliar. Leslie was curled on the far side of the bed. When he touched her, she moaned and curled up tighter. She made him think about Robin, made his mind drift into disasters. He felt like getting up and calling her, waking her at whatever friend’s she was camping out with, letting her voice soothe him.

He got up and sat in the chair by the window. There were heavy blinds, but it didn’t matter. There was no view. He was glad to see Leslie. He loved her. But it was funny, too, how much simpler it was to love her at a distance, how much safer when he could imagine her invincible in his mind, when he didn’t have to see her shaken or stumbling. He got back into bed and wrapped his body about her as protectively as he could.

It wasn’t much of a morning. Nick had too much to do, and it discomfited him having Leslie sitting there on the edge of the bed, watching him rush about, her serious black eyes unblinking. She had wanted to laze in bed with him that morning. When he bolted at the alarm, his appointments worrying in his mind, she had stiffened. Now she was silent—judgmental, he felt.

He tried. He squired her to a soggy breakfast, but he had to stop her from ordering a second cup of coffee or he would be late. He dropped her off at a movie theater and then dashed for his first meeting. But he couldn’t concentrate. He kept seeing Leslie sitting in an empty theater, watching a bad movie. At every store he walked out of, he knew he had lost sales. By the time he was through for the day, he was irritated. She shouldn’t have come.

They were both stony during the ride home. Leslie was annoyed that Nick wouldn’t stop for dinner, he was in such a hurry to pick up Robin. “She’s a big, capable girl,” Leslie said, but Nick was silent. They were halfway home when Leslie fell asleep, her eyes rolling into dream. It was tornado weather all over again, only this time she was the one down in the ditch, alone, calling for Nick, calling for Robin, and all around her there was only the sound of the wind, screaming its way toward her.

Nick felt Leslie changing. When he looked at her, he remembered everything about her—the way she combed her hair with her fingers because it snagged on plastic combs; the way she would pull on one of his sweaters even if it didn’t match her skirt; the smell of her hair, her touch. When she moved, when she spoke to him now, she seemed somehow different. She didn’t ask to visit anymore. She didn’t call him several times a night at his hotel. Sometimes when he came home, he was surprised to find the house empty and a note tacked up for him—the phone number of a client she was visiting. His dinner would be a dish in the oven, a boiler bag in a pot on the stove.

He missed her. He didn’t want her to get up mornings, but kept her in bed with him. He made love to her, lapping at her until she cried out, and then he kept her taste in his mouth as long as he could. But it was suddenly metallic and unfamiliar. It worried him so he would have to keep her in bed even longer; he wouldn’t let her get up to shower until she just kicked the covers back and pushed herself free.

He wanted Leslie to last. She still hypnotized him. He remembered how her face used to fill his mind those last months with Dore, how he couldn’t bear to drive away from her. She was drifting and he didn’t know where she was headed, didn’t know how to bring her back to him.

Sometimes he worried she’d leave the way Dore had. He could sit right beside her and suddenly he’d be missing her, as if she had left him already. He felt as if he were being slowly erased.

And then, of course, there was Robin. She had turned thirteen when he was on the road; she was a teenager now, already whispering about boys. Kids that age ran off to New York City and lived on the streets until they were turned into hookers or found strangled in the seamy pit of the subway. Kids that age got themselves pregnant and had babies of their own to edge them into adulthood.

He slunk about the house watching her. He went into her room when she wasn’t there, ignoring the KEEP OUT sign that drove Leslie mad. It was tattery on the edges from all the times Leslie had yanked it off. He found The Facts of Love and Life for Teens on her bureau, and leafed through it, trying to gauge which pages looked the most wilted, the most read. Married people had intercourse twice a week, it said. He snorted. That wasn’t very much, that was impoverished. There were all these line drawings in the book. Girls shaking their heads no so adamantly that there were wiggly lines emanating from their heads like halos. Flat-chested girls woefully staring at big bras in store windows. He put the book down and lay on Robin’s bed. He leaned against her headboard. If she had a diary, would he read it? He felt this sudden rapid clip of tension about what might be scrawled there. His fingers burrowed under the mattress, but he found nothing.

She wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was more than half a dozen times older than Susan had ever gotten to be, and still he felt that she might leave any minute, he was aware of the danger of getting too close. He watched her at dinner that night and suddenly saw how lovely she was becoming, with her flash of red hair, her serious deep eyes, and he thought how soon there would be boys coming around. He felt as though a milestone he hadn’t ever been looking for was somehow passing. She was at that age now where parents didn’t fit. He reached across the table to touch her, and ended up startling her so much that she toppled her glass of grape juice, pooling it across the table. She jerked up. “God, will you watch,” Leslie sniped, but it was at Robin and not at him.

He began to look forward to the little things he could do that didn’t act as disturbances, that Robin sometimes didn’t even notice. If he was careful, he could kiss her hair as she brushed past him to get to school; he could stand at the window and watch her striding past the house, her long legs as coltish as Leslie’s, her hair nearly as wild. He looked in at her when she was sleeping, before she got up mornings, and he prowled through the photo albums until it began to chill him a little, seeing how she had managed to grow; how, so far, she had been safe.

She was angry a lot now. When they all went to dinner and he took Leslie’s hand, she scowled and grumped, but when he tried to take hers, she pulled away. She told him she was no baby.

“You’ll always be my baby,” Leslie said, and Robin frowned and walked ahead.

“I can’t help it,” Leslie said to Nick. “She will.” But Nick, who considered babyhood the most dangerous of all possible states, felt soothed by Robin’s denial.