9

Lee had been in Madison for almost two years, and still she couldn’t relax. Every night she made lists of what she had. A place of her own that she liked. A job. A boyfriend. She kept telling herself over and over, I have these things, I have them, but no matter how many times she said that, she still felt that any second she might not.

She couldn’t understand how people got through their lives, how they were able to trust. Andy told her every terrible thing he had ever done in an attempt to get her to open up to him. Valerie confided how the week before she had married Roy she had gotten cold feet so badly that she had slept with the dishwasher she had just hired. She looked at Lee, so expectant that Lee finally made up a story about finding out her old boyfriend was secretly in love with her best friend.

“I’ve got another secret for you,” Valerie said one day. They were both in the kitchen of the restaurant, chopping up greens for salad. “And you’re the very first to know it.”

Lee put carrot curls into a wood bowl. She had this terrible feeling that she was going to have to think of something to tell Valerie in return. The odd thing was, she had told so many stories, so many times, that sometimes she couldn’t remember anymore what had really happened and what hadn’t.

“Roy and I,” said Valerie. “We’re adopting a baby.”

Lee put down her paring knife. “A baby?”

Valerie leaned against the sink. “I can’t have kids,” she said simply. “We tried everything and, well, when you have a good relationship, kids just seem the way to deepen it, don’t they? Anyway, we got this lawyer. We were going to wait for a newborn, and then this little girl popped up. Four years old. Mother died in a motorcycle accident. Lord knows who the father is.”

She dug into her back pocket and pulled out a photo. A little girl in overalls and a plaid shirt stared out at the camera. Her hair was very straight and very black and barely scraped her chin. “Isn’t she adorable?” Valerie said. “Her name’s Karen. It’s been final a long time, but we don’t get her for another month.”

“Four years old,” Lee repeated uneasily.

“You like kids?” Valerie said. “You ever want them?”

“Oh, I can’t imagine it,” Lee said.

Valerie laughed. “Sure you can. And you’ll change your mind. Everyone does.” She gave Lee a sly look. “You’d be a great mother. And Andy loves babies.”

“It’s not for me,” Lee said brusquely. She whisked toward the other room. “I hear customers,” she said.

The “Montana Kid” was what Valerie called the girl. Given to a home when her mother died while drunkenly driving her motorcycle. She had been just twenty. No one knew who the father was. No one could even pinpoint a friend. “The Montana mom,” said Valerie.

Nights, just before closing, when not one single customer except maybe Andy was there, Valerie would sit around the restaurant and swap stories with the waitresses about who they thought the Montana mom had been. “She adored her baby and wouldn’t give her up when she got pregnant. She was drunk that day only because she was coming home from a date gone wrong.”

“Wrong,” said Addie, a waitress who had just started that day. “Her name was JoLeen, pronounced the same way as the mustache bleach. And she was drunk because she discovered she was pregnant again.” She yawned. “You know what? All this talk makes me want a baby,” she said. “I’m gonna have to have me a mighty serious talk with that boyfriend of mine.”

Lee silently stacked clean glasses.

“The Montana mom couldn’t drive by a red light without thinking it meant ‘speed,’” said Andy.

“The Montana mom never ate in good restaurants. She and her kid ate Cheez Doodles all day long,” said Addie.

Lee stretched up to put a row of glasses onto the shelf, She made herself nod and smile, then backed casually into the front room until the voices receded, blurring into a backdrop. She started swabbing down the front tables, upending the chairs back onto the tables. Then she reached for her coat, hugging it about her.

She went back to the doorway and stood there, waiting for Andy to look up and see her, He was excited about becoming an uncle. “Home,” she mouthed.

She didn’t want him to say one word about Valerie’s adoption, She didn’t want to think about babies or abandonment or anything other than how lucky Karen might be to have loving, ready-made parents. She needed him to fuss over her, to soothe her, and when he came toward her she reached for his arm and wrapped it about her shoulders. “Here’s my baby,” he said, kissing her. Quietly she gripped the front door and then led him out into the freezing night.

Karen became theirs in the spring. Roy made all the arrangements, paying for a first-class flight for her, making sure a social worker was beside her right up until the second Karen was relinquished at the gate in Madison.

His wife’s nerves were all on the surface. The morning they were going to get Karen, she paced the den they had made into a child’s room. She fluffed up the yellow duck-printed curtains she had sewn up herself. She took the stuffed animals from the bed to the bureau and then back again. He sloped against the wall, watching her, thinking how very beautiful she was, how all he had to do was reach out one arm and he could touch her. All Valerie could think or talk about was Karen, but all he could think about was Valerie and how this child might change her. He loved his wife. He wouldn’t have cared whether they ever had any kids at all—the only reason he consented to adoption at all was that she was desperate to have a child.

“Relax,” he soothed her.

She whisked past him to the hall phone. “Where’s Andy?” she said, dialing. She had impulsively asked him and Lee along for moral support. Roy had shrugged his okay when she had asked him, but really he wanted Valerie to himself for as long as possible, right up to the moment the child took one of their hands and made them a trio.

Wearily Valerie hung up the phone. “Great,” she said. “They can’t come. Lee’s sick and Andy doesn’t want her to be alone.”

He lowered his head against her shoulder, “Now that’s a shame,” he said, and kissed the soft curve of her neck.

Lee had all these excuses why she couldn’t go to see the child. She felt fever brewing. She said she had to go to the doctor, that’s how bad she felt. She told Andy to send Valerie her best, to tell Valerie she was too woozy to call and she wanted to see the child as soon as she could.

It took her an entire week. She encouraged Andy to come visit her, but she wouldn’t let him say one word about the child. As soon as she saw he was about to open his mouth, she would interrupt to ask for some tea, to ask for aspirin or a cool cloth she didn’t really need. Sometimes all she had to do was unbutton a few buttons on her shirt, and on his, and then there wasn’t room for either one of them to think of one single thing except each other.

She needn’t have worried about Andy. His first flush of unclehood didn’t last very long. He had been going to visit Karen almost every day, stopping by on his way to court. But things weren’t going the way he had planned. She wouldn’t come near him, wouldn’t touch the toy gavel he had bought for her. She tore angrily around the house. She cried for no reason. Karen seemed either frozen in silence or wild almost every time he visited. She wasn’t adjusting, and his sister looked so drained that it began to worry him.

“I don’t know about this kid,” he managed to tell Lee. “She’s pretty ornery,” He dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Valerie keeps asking when you’re coming over.”

Lee pulled on a sweater. She laced up her sneakers.

“We could go Saturday. Spend just an hour and then leave. I can’t say I really want to spend more.”

Lee, crouched over her sneakers, was silent for a moment.

“Well?” he said. “Just a few hours? A quick dinner?”

“Sure,” she said finally. “All right.”

They drove up on a Saturday, the blond doll they had bought for Karen cradled in Lee’s lap. “You feel okay?” Andy asked Lee. “You don’t look so chipper. You want to postpone this?” Lee glanced at her watch. In a few hours it would be nine and they’d be leaving. “I’m fine,” she said.

When they pulled up, Valerie and Roy were racing across the front lawn. Andy punched on the horn, skittering Valerie to a stop. She shaded her eyes, frowning. And then, behind her, was a maelstrom of red and yellow and blue, blurring into shape, freeze-framing into a little girl. She stared at the car, her face expressionless. She was so small and thin that she startled Lee. Pale as white paper, with scrubby black hair and eyes like a piece of hard blue sky. Valerie reached to grab Karen, who pinwheeled across the lawn with a shriek.

Andy led Lee over to his sister. “She does know how to stay still,” Valerie said lamely. “It must just be a bad habit coming out. You know. Speed. Motorcycles. From her mother.” Bewildered, she looked at Roy.

“She’s just getting used to us, that’s all,” Roy said.

“Sure she is,” Valerie said.

Lee took Andy’s hand and folded it between her own. Valerie seemed to see Lee for the first time. Brightening, she draped an arm about her, leading her toward the house. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Valerie said as if she were surprised. “One minute I don’t have a daughter, the next minute I do. Next fall she’ll even be in kindergarten.” She turned toward Roy. “Can you get her?”

They all settled into the living room. “Mom called,” Valerie said to Andy. “You know, I don’t know what’s wrong with her. She gets hysterical. She keeps calling me up with these articles about mass murderers. ‘It’s in the genes,’ she says. Do you believe this woman offered me money to hire a detective to find out about Karen’s mother?”

Andy grinned. “Aren’t you curious?” he said.

“The woman’s dead,” Valerie said.

Karen sprang into the room, arms and legs like elastic. Her dress had a damp grassy stain spread across the front. Roy trailed behind her. “Look what Lee and Uncle Andy brought you,” Valerie said, lifting up the doll. “No,” said Karen, veering violently, crashing into Lee.

Instantly Lee recoiled. Karen surveyed her with stony eyes. “Baby, this is Lee,” Valerie said. Lee didn’t move. Karen swayed on her sneakers, started for Lee, and then pivoted abruptly, storming from the room.

Valerie pushed out a breath. “Don’t worry,” she told Lee. “It just takes her time to take to people.”

Lee slowly unfurled on the chair.

“I’ll put her to bed, then we can have dinner. Potluck, I’m afraid,” Valerie said.

“It’s hard to be a chef with a child,” Roy explained.

Karen slept through dinner. Every five minutes or so Valerie would disappear and come back, eyes bright. The next time she got up, though, Roy gripped her arm, lowering her back onto her seat. “This chicken’s delicious,” he said.

Valerie kept yawning. By the time Roy served peach pie, she was propped up by her elbows, fighting sleep. “I’m sorry, I don’t get much rest these days,” she said.

“We have to get going anyway,” Andy said.

“So soon?” Valerie said.

“Just let me wash my hands,” Lee said.

On her way back, she passed Karen’s room. The door was open. A Donald Duck night-light shone through the shadows of the room. Cautiously Lee looked in. Karen was lying in the kind of ruffly canopy bed any child would adore. Her eyes suddenly flashed open, locking with Lee’s. Karen didn’t move, didn’t break her gaze. Unnerved, Lee stepped back. For a moment she felt caught in place, like a specimen pinned against an examining board. Abruptly she jerked free, striding into the living room. As soon as he saw her, Andy smiled. “Now, I take my baby home,” he said.

The whole first week Karen spent with Valerie and Roy, she acted as if she didn’t know them, as if she had been somehow kidnapped and placed into the wrong life. She seemed dazed. She kept planting herself on whatever spot Valerie led her to, or sometimes she would tear fiercely around the house, screaming, striking Valerie if she tried to stop her.

Valerie had done her best to be soothing, to be patient and understanding. “I know you’re scared, but you’re going to love it here,” she said. Karen stiffened under her touch. Her eyes seemed liquid pools of grief.

“What is it?” Valerie whispered. She crouched down to Karen’s level. “Can’t you tell me?” She gently tilted Karen’s small chin so that Karen was looking at her.

“Does my mother know I’m here?” Karen said finally.

Valerie hesitated. She believed in telling children the truth, but on the other hand, she believed in comfort. She half wished she herself could believe in heaven, then maybe she could see all this as a trial that would merit her a just reward in the afterlife. Straightening, she stroked Karen. “Honey, I’m sure she does. I bet she’s happy you found such a good home.”

Karen blinked. “Is it easy to get here?” she said.

Valerie frowned. “I guess it’s easy enough,” she said. She smiled uncertainly. “Why, you expecting company?”

Karen jerked from her grip. Valerie tugged her back, a little roughly, but Karen pulled free again.

Valerie didn’t understand it. She had thought Karen would be delighted to be in a real home, that she couldn’t help but warm to two parents as loving as she and Roy, but Karen stayed remote. She ignored Valerie’s offers of paints or crayons or brownie mix. She made her body a board if you so much as looked at her. But she could spend hours staring out the windows, nose to the glass, breathing clouds of mist onto Valerie’s clean windows. She gazed outside until Valerie finally opened the front door. “You want to go out, scoot,” she said, irritated. Cautiously Karen peeled herself from the window. She followed Valerie out onto the front lawn, and then, almost immediately, she went to the edge of the lawn and stopped, staring at the street, straining right and left. “There’s nothing out there,” Valerie said.

If Karen wasn’t staring at the roads, she was at the phone, frantically dialing numbers. “You want me to call someone for you?” Valerie coaxed. Karen slumped and then burst into tears. Astonished, Valerie drew her to her. She stroked her rough hair; for a moment Valerie thought this might be the proverbial breakthrough. She was actually holding Karen and Karen was allowing it; Karen was holding her back, “Oh, doesn’t this feel good,” Valerie said, but Karen suddenly tore from her, staring at Valerie as if she hated her. “What?” Valerie said, but Karen was gone.

The more she tried to calm her, the wilder Karen became. She screamed in tantrums; she ran around the house. At night she fought going to bed. When Valerie went to check on her, Karen was fully clothed, stunned, staring out the window.

When Karen finally slept, it was with the uneasy sleep of an adult. She twisted under the coverlet, flinging her pillow to the ground. She moaned and sweated and tumbled among the bedclothes. Sometimes, too, in the middle of the night, she screamed, frightening Valerie into a kind of dizzy paralysis. She lay planted and terrified against the bedclothes, waiting until Roy got up and went to the child. In Karen’s woozy half-sleep, she never recognized him. She kicked and scratched at him. He had to hold her against the bed, gasping the loveliest lullabies he knew until gradually she grew interested in his effort. He let go, continuing to sing hoarsely until he saw her drowsing. When Valerie came into the room, he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

Karen always woke at six, running to the front door, banging on it until Valerie and Roy woke up. They’d stumble toward Karen, who, alarmed, would race into the kitchen. “Don’t play with the door.” Roy called after her. Valerie would try to make some semblance of breakfast. She’d try to talk with Roy, but usually she ended up mopping up the juice Karen had spilled deliberately, grabbing Karen’s hands before she could topple her juice. “Stop,” she said, a little harder than she had intended. Karen drew back abruptly.

She spent most of her day feeling like the meanest person alive. She tried to be nice, to be understanding, and then Karen would scream or run, and before she could stop herself, she would have slapped her. When Roy called, she was tense. He wanted to make plans for that evening. “I’m beat,” she said. “How can I possibly go out?”

That evening when Roy came home, he brought her wildflowers in a pink paper cone. “Oh, how lovely,” she said.

“Where’s Karen?” he said.

“I got her to go to sleep,” she said. He swayed her body against his. “You must be hungry,” she said.

“Yeah, I am,” he said, touching her hip, swaying her toward him. “Come on,” he said, dipping her to the floor. She was too tired to enjoy this. She sleepily catalogued twin scratches on his collarbone, a span of freckles along one shoulder. He slid his body against hers, he pulled at her buttons, and only when his hands were on her bare skin did she feel a prickling of desire. She lifted her face to his. “Roy.” she said, and then, at the moment she kissed him, Karen screamed.

“Shit,” Valerie said. “No, I’ll go,” Roy said, staying her. She stumbled after him. Karen was standing in bed, crying. “You just had a dream,” Roy said, but Karen kicked at him, toppling herself into the bed. Roy lowered himself onto the bed and carefully stroked Karen’s trembling back. “It’s just a dream,” he said, and when Karen took his finger, he looked up at Valerie with relief.

They both stayed by Karen until she fell asleep, and by then they were exhausted, It took Valerie longer to get into bed than Roy, and when she lifted the covers, his eyes were shut. She rested her face against his.

“What does she have, radar?” he said, his eyes still shut. “What can she possibly have against us?”

“Come on,” Valerie said. “You just made real contact. It’s more than I’ve done.” He rolled away from her.

“Maybe the Montana mom gave her tranquilizers,” Valerie said dully, into the steady new silence of the night.

It didn’t last. The next evening, when Roy came home and tried to sweep Karen into a hug, she bit him. He kept trying, but only Valerie loved him for it. She tried, too. She tried one more week, and then another, and the only emotion she could summon up toward her daughter was a kind of draining despair, a feeling that somehow a mistake had been made and she was responsible for it.

An “institutional child” was the phrase that always came to Valerie’s mind when she looked at her daughter. She scrubbed her and put her in a gingham dress, and still there was something rough about her, something that smacked of trailer parks and motorcycles. She took her to the playground, to measure her against other kids. She was sure they must be as rowdy as her own, and also that maybe what Karen needed, simply, was friends of her own age. She wasn’t in the park for five minutes when Karen roughly pushed a little boy off a swing, tumbling him into the dirt. Stunned, he scuttled away from her. “Hey, hey!” a woman called. She was small and lean and dressed in a sleeveless flowered jumpsuit. She didn’t look tired at all, Valerie noticed. The woman scooped up her son, brushing him off, and then marched up to Valerie and Karen. “We don’t hit,” she said sternly to Karen, but she was looking at Valerie. “That’s right,” Valerie said to Karen, who was stubbornly standing by the swing, chewing on her grimy fist. Valerie felt like a fool. She felt as if she were the one being chastised because she couldn’t control Karen. She felt like blurting out that Karen was adopted.

She was crying when Roy came home that night. He rocked her against him. “We have to do something,” Roy said finally. “We have to get her checked out.”

“She’s not a car.”

“Come on. A child psychologist.” Miserably he dug his hands into his pockets. “I mean, maybe it’s us. Wouldn’t you want to know that?” She gave him a grudging shrug. She thought queasily of the times she had hit Karen. Innocent times. She had never meant real harm. “I have some names,” he said at last.

“We’re just going to meet a friend of Daddy’s,” Valerie told Karen. She smoothed down Karen’s red dress.

She and Roy had driven twenty miles to a small office in a shopping complex, a waiting room with four dog-eared copies of Psychology Today and Highlights for Children, two blue leather couches, and no other people at all.

“Well,” Valerie said doubtfully. She riffled through the Highlights. There was a puzzle, a maze inviting the reader to find the rabbit hidden somewhere on a page crowded with trains and trees and people. “Karen, look, want to find the rabbit?” she said, and when Karen glumly looked at her shoes, Valerie turned to Roy. “You want to find it?” she said helplessly.

“There,” he said, kissing her nose. “There’s the rabbit.”

The door opened and a woman suddenly strode out, in a bright yellow dress with matching glasses, and as soon as she spotted Karen, she smiled. “Well, who have we here?” she said encouragingly. Karen stood up.

“I’m Doctor Wymon,” the woman said, thrusting out a hand to Roy, who shook it limply and then passed it on to his wife. “We’ll just have ourselves a chat without the parents present,” she said. She looked down at Karen. “I have a puppy in my office. You want to see?”

She had led Karen into the waiting room, ushering her in to see the doctor by herself. And when Karen came out, barely half an hour later, sullen, dark, Valerie’s heart sank. Karen sat with Roy while Valerie went in to talk to the doctor, who said her daughter was acting normally, considering the circumstances. “There’s been some trauma. Having her mother die, Being in a home. But she’s young and resilient. I wouldn’t do anything until I saw how she handles kindergarten. With enough children around her, she’ll learn to socialize. She’ll start to accept that her mother’s gone.” The doctor smiled. “These things take time,” she said. She leaned forward and handed Valerie a folded bill for two hundred dollars.

Life had to have spaces in it. Roy left every morning; some part of the weekend he went to the solace of his office. She resented his cheerful exits, the easy way he could extricate himself from Karen and sometimes from her as well. She missed the evenings of just lying in bed with him, talking, making love. She was exhausted and he was tense. The one time they managed to go out to dinner, Valerie had fallen asleep at the table, and he had been furious with her.

She tried to forge some sort of path for herself, some escape. She searched for a sitter, using the local high school girls, but none of them ever wanted to sit twice. She went to the restaurant when she could.

“We missed you,” Lee told her.

“Motherhood agrees with you,” said Nellie, the newest waitress. Valerie colored. She knew what she looked like, with her hair bunched into a flowered band, her haphazard dressing. Her tights had ladders, her shoes scuffs. “Bring the kid in so we can spoil her rotten,” said Nellie.

“Soon,” Valerie said. She looked toward the kitchen.

“What’s she like?” asked Nellie.

“Wonderful,” Valerie said. She pulled on an apron, knotting it tightly. She sniffed the air. “Creole shrimp,” she said.

It was Lee who found Valerie crying outside in the back of the restaurant, tearfully smoking a cigarette. When she saw Lee she continued crying, but her face was defiant. “I’m getting my period,” she said. “You know how I get.” Lee nodded and then very gently placed both arms about Valerie. She rocked her for a moment. “Are you and Andy getting married?” Valerie said, swiping tears from her face. “Do you want to have children?” she cried. Lee’s hands contracted and for one second time seemed to separate like a seam.

“Every woman wants babies. It’s perfectly natural to want your own,” Valerie cried. “You probably can have them. You look like the kind who can have dozens. You’re so lucky.”

“Let’s go inside,” said Lee.

One night Valerie showed up at Lee’s with Karen in tow. Andy had night court and Lee was reading Tom Jones in the kitchen, her feet propped on the table. She had melted a whole chocolate bar in a copper saucepan, thinning it with milk, and was now sipping it luxuriously. When the bell rang she ignored it, polishing off the chocolate. She didn’t do anything until she heard knocking, too, and then she was only going to peer out the curtain and see whom she could blame for disturbing her. She pulled the curtain and saw Valerie, with Karen in tow. Valerie’s eyes were swollen, but when Lee answered the door, she kept a bright smile on her face. “We came to visit,” she said, looking down at Lee’s book. “You weren’t busy, were you?” she said. “We won’t stay long. This one has to get to bed, and I’m tired myself.” She gestured at Karen. Her hair was newly shorn. She was wearing one of Valerie’s red clip-on earrings.

Lee looked at Karen doubtfully, who was staring at Lee’s long braid with such intensity, it made Lee step back.

“Uh, you like long hair?” Lee said to Karen.

“It’s the blond, not the length.” Valerie said wearily, following Lee into the living room. “Yesterday on the bus, she stood so close to a blond girl that the girl tripped getting past her. The girl was mad, too, but at me.”

Karen settled nervously onto the pink velvet rocker Lee had found in a thrift shop. She petted the chair the way she would a cat, carefully grooming the armrests.

Valerie yawned. “You don’t have any aspirin, do you? It’s been such a bad day. The sink at the restaurant started flooding the kitchen, and I had to hassle with the plumber, and even now the sink still doesn’t seem fixed to me.”

“Bathroom,” Lee said. As soon as Valerie was out of the room, Lee felt uncomfortable. She glanced uneasily at Karen, who was sitting on the velvet chair, watching her angrily. “What?” Lee said, then picked up Tom Jones again. The words braided together, but she kept the book up and pretended to read.

Almost immediately Karen began running to every window in Lee’s house, slapping her hands against it. “Hey,” Lee said, following her, but as soon as Lee was within a foot of Karen, she took off for another window.

“Valerie,” Lee called, exasperated. “Valerie,” She looked at Karen, who was standing in the center of the room, poised for flight. “You wait here,” Lee told her. She found Valerie sleeping on the bed, an opened bottle of Bayer aspirin in her hand. Aspirin flaked across the coverlet. “Hey,” Lee said, shaking her gently. Valerie reached for Lee’s hand and wrapped it about her shoulder, cozying into it. Lee pulled her hand away. “Valerie,” she said. “Valerie,” Valerie rolled away.

Lee walked into the living room to find Karen spread on the rug, eyes drooping with sleep. “Come on,” she said. “Don’t lie on the rug. You can sleep on the couch.” She patted the couch. She bent to take Karen’s arm, and instantly Karen whipped it from her.

Lee lifted her hands. “Fine with me, Sleep on the rug.” She went back to her chair and picked up her book.

Lee flipped pages. She forced a look at Karen, and suddenly, in the shadows, Karen’s hair looked the same yellow as her own. If she turned so Lee could see her, her eyes might be the same deep, bottomless black. Unnerved, she bolted from her chair. She was sweating. Something was surfacing in her, something she didn’t want. She was suddenly furious with Valerie. “Come on,” she said. Karen looked out the window, searching. “In the bedroom,” Lee said, pulling Karen up and releasing her hold so abruptly that Karen stumbled.

“Come on, let’s wake her up,” Lee said, rustling covers about Valerie, Karen tugged at the sheet and Valerie’s eyes stuttered open. “What time is it?” she said, bolting up, blinking at the two of them. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I was just so tired.” She swung her legs over the bed. “What do you say we go home?” she said to Karen.

On the way out she chattered at Lee. “Look, I’m sorry. I really did want to visit with you.”

“It’s okay,” Lee said. “Just call the next time.”

“Sure,” Valerie said. “Sure, I’ll call.”

The apartment was empty, but Lee still felt a child in it. Disturbed, she wandered the rooms, checking the closets, and then, in the middle of the bedroom, she felt so suddenly overwhelmed with loneliness that she had to sit down. She leaned across for the phone and called Andy. “Come over,” she said.

He laughed. “I’m beat. I’m falling asleep as we speak.”

“I’ll come there, then,” she said. “I’ll take a cab.”

“You all right?” he said. “You sound funny.”

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” she said.

He was half-asleep by the time she got there. She didn’t care. She led him back into bed and tucked him in, and then shucked off her clothes and slid in beside him. She was wide awake. In her own apartment she would have been prowling the rooms, memory stalking her like a dangerous intruder. Beside her, Andy sighed in sleep and then his breath bottomed out. Lee spooned her body about his. She lifted one of his arms and looped it about her. She wasn’t such a bad person that someone didn’t love her. She did good things for people. She had someone. She had a life. She was not orbiting endlessly. She wasn’t that Lee anymore.

Two days later Valerie showed up with Karen again. “I know,” Valerie said. “I didn’t call.”

Lee dug hands into her jeans pockets. “I was thinking about going out,” she said.

“We won’t stay long,” Valerie promised. “Roy’s out of town and I just wanted some adult companionship.” She tugged at the tag end of her braid.

“What makes you think I’m an adult?” Lee said.

Valerie bustled Karen inside. Karen, in red sweater, red pants, and red sneakers, headed for the one red chair in Lee’s apartment, the one chair where Lee had been. She sat on Lee’s book. “Hey,” Lee said, pulling the book from under Karen, who glared at her. Valerie shucked off her jacket and slumped on the sofa. “So,” she said. “Here we are.”

“Why do I feel like eating cookies all the time?” Valerie said. “You got any?” She looked at Karen. “I eat more than she does. She doesn’t even seem to like sugar, just salts away those potato chips.” She rubbed at the sleeve of her sweater. There was a small dark stain on the elbow. The yarn unraveled at the hem.

Karen pulled silently at the tufts in the chair.

Valerie wandered into the kitchen. Lee heard her opening the refrigerator, pulling something out, probably the black forest cupcakes she had bought that morning. “I’m just going to call the restaurant and check on that bloody sink,” Valerie called.

“Fine,” Lee said. She was uncomfortable sitting there, with Karen staring at her, so she got up and went into the kitchen, Valerie was hunched over the phone, frowning.

“What?” Lee said.

“I’ll be right there,” Valerie said, and then hung up. She leaned along the counter, annoyed. “Listen, I have to get to the restaurant. The kitchen’s flooded again, and the plumber told Nellie he can’t get there for another hour. Everyone’s panicking.” She stroked back her hair. “Do you believe this?” she said. “Why can’t this get taken care of without me?”

“I’ll go,” Lee said, but Valerie raised her hand. “Look, can you just watch Karen? I won’t be long,” she said.

“We could all go,” Lee said, but Valerie was pulling on her jacket, shaking her head. “Please. This one splashing in water, no, thank you. I’ll be right back. I’m just going to mop what I can and threaten the plumber with lawsuits.”

Valerie whisked into the living room. When Karen saw Valerie’s jacket, she stiffened. “I’ll be right back,” Valerie said. “God, I hate this,” she told Lee, but Lee noticed that when she left her step seemed progressively lighter.

Lee couldn’t control Karen, As soon as Valerie had left, Karen started racing around Lee’s apartment, arms whirling propellers. At first Lee tried to ignore her. Karen would wear herself out running; exhaustion would push her into an early, bottomless sleep. Lee sat on the couch with a magazine in her lap, and she counted ten times Karen rampaged past her, ten times she didn’t turn one single page of the magazine. The eleventh time, screaming, Karen rounded the comer, knocking over a vase full of daisies, shattering it across the floor. She leaped over the puddle and dying flowers and kept running, arms still beating stiffly, careening toward the hall, and this time something in Lee snapped. “Stop!” Lee shouted, furious. This time, when Karen came back around, Lee grabbed her. “Okay,” she said roughly. She dragged Karen over to the closet and tugged her jacket from the hanger. She pried Karen’s arms into her jacket, zipping it up tight. Karen, terrified, made her body rigid.

“Out,” she said, jerking Karen outside, into the backyard. The night was spilled with stars. Lee pushed Karen. “You want to run, run then,” she said angrily. Karen stood there baffled. And then Lee herself started running in the dark, around in circles, passing Karen. She felt as if she were cutting a swath through the thick, sticky air, as if she were cooling herself with motion. “Move,” she said, giving Karen a shove, grabbing her by the hand and making her run, too. She led her out of the backyard and into the street, slowing herself down so Karen could keep up, running until her own anger had burned out of her, until she had calmed, and then she slowed her pace and tended to Karen.

Karen’s face was flushed. Her eyes flashed. But she was worn out, panting, “Okay,” Lee gasped. Her side stitched up. Her white sneakers were muddied, but she wasn’t angry anymore. “Now we can go back.”

They walked. Karen kept looking at all the houses they passed, her head switching roughly left to right. They passed someone’s red Yamaha motorcycle parked on the front lawn, and Karen came to a dead stop. “Go,” Lee prodded, and then she saw where Karen was looking. Lee didn’t say anything. She just let her stand there in the deepening night, not moving, just staring at the red motorcycle. Finally Karen walked toward it, tentatively touching the seat, laying her head against it. Something inside of Lee dissolved. She crouched down. Karen was suddenly crying, burrowed against Lee, pushing open her legs so she was pinned there. “Oh,” Lee said, wrapping her arms about Karen, “I know.” She let her cry until her shirt felt damp against her skin, and then she scooped her up and carried her the rest of the way home in silence.

Inside the house, they stayed silent. Lee called the restaurant, but the line rang and rang and didn’t catch at all. Karen stretched out on the rug and Lee draped a yellow coverlet over her and watched her thoughtfully.

Valerie arrived in less than an hour. Her jeans were rolled up and stained, and she had a smear of dirt across one cheek. “I’m sorry I’m so late,” Valerie said. “The goddamned plumber took his sweet time getting there.” She swabbed at her face with her hands. She looked exhausted and happy.

They stepped inside. “Oh, no,” Valerie said, seeing Karen asleep on the floor. “Did she give you a terrible time?”

“Not terrible,” said Lee. She thought about the Yamaha. She remembered seeing a high school kid zooming around on it, laughing, his body loose and boneless on the bike.

“I’ll carry her to the car for you,” Lee said abruptly. She bent down. Karen’s heated breath rose and fell against Lee’s hand. Lee lifted her up, and in midmotion one of Karen’s hands fluttered about Lee’s shoulder, holding on.

Valerie began bringing Karen over more and more. Sometimes she called first, sometimes she simply showed up, and she always stayed along with Karen. And then once she called weeping, begging Lee to sit. “Please. It’s an emergency,” Valerie said.

“What emergency?”

“My emergency. My life. I have to have a few hours alone with Roy. I can’t find anyone else to sit.”

“Valerie, I can’t,” Lee said. She heard the fissures in Valerie’s voice, and then she remembered Karen, crying in the moonlight, and something caught at her.

“Just tonight,” Valerie promised.

“Just tonight,” Lee repeated doubtfully.

“One night. Three hours,” Valerie said.

That one time, that evening Valerie spent with her husband, she lit dozens of white candles all over the apartment. Roy brought her a dozen tiger lilies and a small glittering bottle of a French perfume she had never heard of. There was Chinese food heating in the kitchen, recipes she had never tried out before on anyone. In the living room Gene Pitney wailed about a town without pity, and the door to Karen’s bedroom was closed so tightly, someone might think no one had ever lived there at all.

Lee didn’t really know why, but she began to sit for Karen more and more. “You can say no,” Andy said, though the truth of it was he liked it when Lee sat. Evenings after Karen had left, Lee couldn’t seem to get enough of him. She trailed him from room to room. All he had to do was move two steps closer to her and she would reach out for a kiss.

Lee watched Karen with increasing confusion. She dreaded having her come over, as much as she felt compelled to see her. Sometimes she thought she brought Karen out into the night just to be back in her own element, just to add distance between the two of them, but then Karen would take the same deep pleasure from the darkness that Lee did, confusing her even further.

Lee kept trying to vary the route. It was Karen who wanted to walk all the way home, who liked standing outside in front of her own house and watching the dimly lighted windows. “Want to call out?” Lee asked. “We could wave at them from out here.”

“No,” said Karen, but she wanted to stand out there a while longer.

Every night, too, eventually, Karen kept piloting them toward the house with the motorcycle. Every time she saw it, she would end up crying, a sound so desperate it made Lee feel undone. Karen never wanted to leave the bike. “Wait,” she said. She kept staring out into the night, her body tensed. Light flickered on from the house. She fluttered her small fingers over the chrome, over the soft leather seat, the smooth red paint. The door opened and Karen lifted her face, expectant. A teenage boy came out, in black pointy-toed boots and a white T-shirt. He was smoking a cigarette, taking deep, angry draws. “Hey, get away from there,” he said. “That’s private property.” Lee straightened. She reached for Karen’s hand, but then Karen suddenly grabbed back at the motorcycle, swaying it. “Hey!” the boy called, “Get your friggin’ kid off my bike!” Karen ran into the street. “And stay away!” the boy called.

It took Lee half a block to reach Karen, and even while she contained her in her arms, Karen was trying to escape. Her small body heaved. “It’s okay,” Lee said, and suddenly all she could think of were those nights after Claire had died, when she had run and run through the neighborhood, half certain she heard Claire’s breath just behind her.

When she got Karen home, Karen fell asleep in her lap. Lee, half dozing, glanced down, and for one moment the child in her lap wasn’t Karen at all. All she saw was a sudden flutter of lids, a pair of eyes as luminous as her own, and deeply blaming, before the lids shut again.

Sometimes, when Karen was the stormiest, when she was flailing her arms, racing toward no destination at all, Lee felt the most moved. She recognized loneliness like that. It didn’t matter if it inhabited a child or her own self. She knew how dangerous it made every bit of life, how much energy it took to steel yourself against it.

She knew something about how to deal with such a thing. She tried to treat Karen the way she had wanted to be treated. She tried never to touch Karen, and when Karen touched her, she kept herself slightly aloof. She wouldn’t punish Karen’s rages but instead burned them out with long tearing walks in the night. And she treated Karen just as if she were another adult. She didn’t lie to her about anything. When Karen woke screaming from nightmares, Lee didn’t turn on the lights and tell Karen there was nothing in the darkness that wasn’t in the light. She never said there was no such thing as monsters. Instead she sat in the dark with her, with the moonlight creating shadows on the bed. She didn’t touch her, but in a low calm voice she asked her about the nightmare, “What do you dream about?”

“Motorcycles,” whispered Karen.

Lee was silent for a minute. “And what do they do?”

“They chase me,” Karen said. Alarmed, she sat up. “Sometimes a ghost comes to my room.”

“A ghost?” Lee said quietly. “What ghost?”

“I don’t know. I’m afraid to really look.”

“You talk to it?”

Karen’s mouth trembled. “It always leaves too fast,” she said, falling against Lee. Lee didn’t move, although her arm had fallen asleep. She settled against Karen and thought about ghosts, about all the voices you might hear whispering toward you, all the meaning you might miss.

The way Lee was suddenly taking to Karen surprised Andy. He loved kids. He wanted at least two, but he knew Lee wasn’t crazy about them. He had seen how short she was with kids at the restaurant. He wasn’t that crazy about Karen, but he had taken Lee’s affection as a good sign. He liked it that he could come into her apartment and find her sprawled on the floor with a child. And he liked it even better that when Karen left she would keep close to him. She would seem to need him.

He didn’t know what happened, when Lee began to change toward him. He came over one evening and she was coloring a map of Chile with Karen, the two of them not saying one word, not even to each other. He sat watching, reading a Time magazine that was two weeks old, and when he got up to leave, Lee looked at him as if she had just noticed he was there.

She began to cancel plans with him. Oddly protective, she sometimes wouldn’t let him come to the house when Karen was there. “It disturbs her,” she said. But really it did something to the whole momentum. When Andy was there, things seemed to go wrong. The fuses blew. The apartment was much too hot or much too cold. And Karen seemed somehow more distant, as if Andy had put space between them.

“I’ll come by later, then,” he said.

“Yes, please,” she said. So he showed up late those nights, and although the house was dean and empty of Karen, although she seemed glad to see him, she fell asleep against him almost instantly. Karen, he thought, and felt a vague flicker of anger toward her.

Karen knew everybody was mad at her. Valerie walked by her so fast, she seemed to create a wind. Roy stumbled over a chunk of her Erector set and kicked it violently against a wall. It didn’t matter. No matter what Valerie kept telling her about this being her home, she knew that it wasn’t. She was only going to be here for as long as it took her mother to find her. Roy told her he was her father now. Valerie called herself “Mother.” She had told her that her mother was gone, gone for good, but Karen didn’t believe her for one minute. In Montana Karen had spent a lot of time at the next-door neighbor’s because sometimes her mother didn’t come home at night or even the next day, but eventually she showed up. How was anyone to know that this was different?

She watched the roads, She waited. She tried to dial on the heavy black phone that Valerie had placed too far for her to reach because Valerie didn’t want her going anyplace, especially back to her mother. She could call so many numbers one of them would be her mother’s. Every house she saw outside could be one with her mother in it. Every car could be her mother’s. But every time she strained to look, Valerie would get angry. She’d hit her, tugging her away, keeping her prisoner. “Please behave now,” she said.

Sometimes, though, she could feel her mother near her. A presence, closing in. The smell of leather, the beat of her boots on the floor. Sometimes, too, at night, she could hear her whispering through the walls, calling Karen, Karen, and when she looked up there was a faint white mist, a ghost, terrifying her so that she’d tighten herself away, pulling the covers over her head so only her nose poked out. It isn’t real, she told herself. It isn’t my mother.

She remembered her mother, Cropped blond hair and long earrings Karen’s hands were slapped away from. She remembered riding in front of her mother on the red motorcycle, a small hard helmet wrapped about her head with scarves. She couldn’t see anything of her mother but her hands on the handlebars, but she could hear her breathy laughter. Sometimes, too, when the bike was parked out in the front, her mother would perch her on it alone, teaching her to drive.

She didn’t remember a father. There were no pictures, no stories, and whenever she asked her mother, her mother just laughed. For a time, too, Karen remembered Jack, her mother’s boyfriend. He had a ponytail and a leather jacket he sometimes draped about her shoulders, but not in a friendly way, and when he smiled at her she thought of wolves’ teeth. Her mother shut the door of her bedroom the nights Jack was there. Karen was supposed to be in bed, but she always got up, prowling the dark living room until she found Jack’s cigarettes. She played games with them, arranging them like dominos, breaking the tips and scattering tobacco like dandelion heads. Sometimes her mother would come out and put her to bed, sometimes Karen would just fall asleep on the rug. And in the morning Jack always looked at the cigarettes and shook his head admiringly. “Jesus. I musta really tied one on last night.” He shuffled fingers through Karen’s hair and then left. Her mother, swollen-faced, surveyed Karen. “Okay, dirty puss, into the bath for the both of us,” she said.

The day her mother died, Karen had been at the neighbor’s house. The woman’s name was Tina. She lived alone, addressing envelopes at home for a living, and she had been happy to feed Karen noodles with butter and ice-cold Coke in a coffee mug. “There’s your mum, I bet,” she had said when the phone rang. She wasn’t on it two minutes when her face turned white. “You poor little piece of sugar,” she said to Karen, and then burst into tears.

Karen didn’t believe for a moment that her mother was gone. She didn’t believe it when Jack showed up, his face swollen, his eyes like spilled pools of ink. When he tried to hold her, she pulled away. She kept thinking there was a way to get back to her mother. If she was good.

She was silent when a policeman took her over to a big white house filled with children. Silent when she was brought into an office to talk to a woman who said she only wanted to help Karen. She was there only a little while, but in that time she was polite. She kept to herself, ignoring the other kids, She ate everything on her plate, even the oatmeal that made her want to throw up. Every time the door opened, she looked up. Then she was called back into the office and told how lucky she was, how some children waited for years for what was going to happen to her now. She was going to be adopted, but all she thought was that now her mother would never find her.

Every time Roy and Valerie acted like her parents, it made her furious. Every time Valerie hugged her, she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Valerie’s kisses felt wrong, like brands. Every word Valerie and Roy told her—mother, father, home—felt like the biggest lies she had ever heard. Who were they to lie to her, to pretend nothing had happened? She had to run and run around the house, whirling up a wind, just to roughly breeze those kisses off her. She had to scatter the house with screams to blot out all the lies. She had to move and shriek and break everything she could get her hands on to keep them seeing how she didn’t belong there, to stop them from trying to swallow her whole.

Only once did she feel any hope, the night when Lee swung her into the night and the wind pushed against her back, the way her mother’s hand might, the night Lee led her right past a motorcycle almost like her mother’s. The way Lee had held her. Lee had hair the same yellow as her mother. Lee always acted as if she knew Karen belonged to someone else. “Where’s Mommy?” she asked Lee, but Lee didn’t say “Right here” or “Home with Roy.” Lee’s face showed a brisk flicker of pain, and then Lee just looked at her as if she knew the answer and just wasn’t telling yet.