The Push, Ashley Audrain [popular novels TXT] 📗

hospital bracelet I’d seen the day before. The top of her hand looked badly bruised.

‘Are you okay?’

She didn’t take her eyes off the window.

‘Yes, Blythe.’

‘There was blood in the bathroom.’

She looked surprised, like she’d forgotten that I lived in the house, too.

‘Never mind that.’

‘Was it from a baby?’

Her eyes lifted from the window and found a spot on the ceiling. I saw her swallow.

‘Why would you say that?’

‘Mrs Ellington. She had a baby that didn’t make it.’

My mother finally looked at me. And then through me. She blew air through her teeth and looked back to her window, shaking her head. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

I immediately regretted telling my mother about Mrs Ellington. I wished I could shovel the words back into my mouth – I didn’t want my mother anywhere near my relationship with her. It was the only thing I had in my life that was sacred. I left the room and went to school and when I got home everything seemed to be back to normal. My mother was standing in the kitchen, burning dinner on the stove. My father was pouring a drink. The phone on the wall rang, and he picked up the receiver to hit the hook and then let it dangle. We listened to the faint dial tone while we ate.

43

The day before Sam died we went to the zoo.

The weather was unseasonably warm and there was sun in the forecast.

We listened to Raffi in the car. Zoo, zoo, zoo, how about you, you, you? We packed our lunches and brought the nice camera, but we forgot to take pictures.

Violet tugged on your arm all day, wanting to run ahead. She always wanted to be ahead. The two of you against the world. I couldn’t take my eyes off you from behind, the way you looked so much alike. The shape of you together. The way you leaned a little lower to the side where she stood, how she always reached up to feel the bend in your elbow.

I fed Sam outside the polar bear exhibit and you got Violet some apple juice from the vending machine because she said our juice boxes from home had a weird taste. A squirrel stole a leftover cookie from the bottom of our stroller. Violet cried. She wouldn’t wear the hat I’d brought. Sam spit up his milk and I cleaned him with the brown paper towels from the bathroom because I’d forgotten our wipes. I made circles on his palm and then ran my fingers up his arm and tickled under his chin. His laughter was like a scream, spirited and expansive, and I lived for it. An older woman nearby with a little boy’s mittened hand in hers said to me, ‘What a cute baby you have, such a happy little guy!’ Thank you, he’s mine, I made him. One whole year ago. He was so much a part of me that in the seconds just before he cried, my insides grew physically tight, like someone was blowing up a balloon in my rib cage.

‘Wait until you see this!’ you said to Violet, and we walked down the ramp to the dark, echoing underground, and you both stood at the glass wall. You were shadows against the electric green glow of the water in the tank, particles of dirt and fish scales floating around you like the dust from dandelions. I stood back, with Sam in my arms, and felt like I was watching someone else’s family. That you were both mine seemed impossible in that moment. You were so beautiful together. The polar bear pressed his paw up to the glass right in front of Violet’s face. She caught her breath and threw herself around your waist, in awe, in terror, in amazement, the kind of reaction you might catch only a few times in your child’s life, a reminder that they are new to this world, that they can’t possibly understand when they’re safe or not.

We bought them a pair of tiny lions at the souvenir shop, and Violet threw hers out the window of the car on our way home. I was angry, looking back at the highway, wondering if the plastic toy had hit someone’s windshield. You yelled and told her it was dangerous.

‘Well, I didn’t want the mom lion. I hate my mom.’

I looked over at you and took a deep breath and turned the other way. Let it go. And then Sam started to cry, so Violet reached for Benny, which he’d dropped from his car seat, and tossed it back to him. She hushed him nicely and you said to her, ‘Good girl, Violet.’

Her nose was sunburned – I hadn’t thought of sunscreen in February. I squeezed aloe from an old tube and dabbed it on her nose with my finger. I counted the freckles on her face, wanting to hold her in that rare moment when I was allowed to touch her. She stared at me as though she had never heard anyone count before. I wondered if she might hug me and my muscles tightened, bracing for what she would feel like against me – it had been so long. But she looked away.

She watched as I bathed Sam before bed and then she sat with me on the floor and rubbed his tummy and said, ‘He’s a good baby, isn’t he?’ She handed him Benny and he chewed on one of the ears while she watched him quietly. I let her put his pajamas on, an exercise in patience for us both, because she so rarely asked to do it. As she was pulling up the second leg, she said, ‘I don’t want Sammy anymore.’ I clicked my tongue at her and wiggled his belly. He smiled at Violet and kicked his chunky legs. She gave him a kiss anyway, and then sat on