Chapter 8
The pediatrician had cleaned Maya's hands with a wipe that smelled like almonds and said her skin was fine. Just polish, she said, not ingested, not absorbed. Maya sat on the paper-covered table swinging her legs, her Mary Janes tucked into the diaper bag because I'd wiped them down and didn't want her wearing them yet. I nodded and thanked her and paid at the front, and the whole time I felt like I was watching myself do those things from a step behind.
I didn't drive home right away. I parked in the lot behind the clinic with the engine running and the address from the letter pulled up on my phone. It wasn't even a full address, just a street name and an apartment number in Memphis, the kind of thing listed under prior residence on a filing. I'd looked it up the night before and told myself I wouldn't go.
Then I went.
I told myself I was just driving. Memphis was two and a half hours if traffic was light, but I didn't take the highway all the way. I took 40 west until the exits turned familiar and then followed the GPS voice to a grid of streets where the houses were smaller and closer together. Brick duplexes with chain-link fences. Cars parked half on the grass. A corner store with a hand-painted sign for snow cones.
The apartment was in a low, beige building with four doors and outdoor stairs. Second floor, the number I'd memorized. There was a mat outside that said Welcome in faded letters and a plastic tricycle on the tiny landing. A window air conditioner dripped onto the siding. I pulled over across the street and put the car in park and just sat there with my hands on the wheel.
I could see a curtain move. A woman's shape passed behind it, quick, carrying something on her hip. My breath caught and I didn't mean it to. Maya was asleep in her car seat behind me, her clean hands curled in her lap, her mouth open a little.
I had rehearsed a version in my head where I got out, knocked, said I was Ryan's wife, that I just wanted to understand. Every version sounded like an ambush no matter how polite I made it. The woman inside hadn't asked for me. Her child hadn't asked for Maya staring at them from a car across the street.
I put the car back in drive. I made the loop around the block slow enough to look but not slow enough to stare, and then I pointed us east again. My hands were shaking a little on the wheel, so I tightened my grip until they stopped.
On the edge of town I pulled into a gas station parking lot where the lot was empty except for a delivery truck. I called my sister.
She picked up on the second ring. "Elise? You okay?"
"I'm in Memphis," I said. My voice was flat. I hadn't planned to say it like that.
A pause. "With Maya?"
"She's asleep in the car. We saw the pediatrician, she's fine, it was just polish. I drove to the address from the filing. I didn't knock. I just... looked."
I heard her exhale. My sister in Knoxville always had the same kitchen sounds behind her, a kettle, a chair scraping. "Okay," she said. "You didn't knock. That's good. That's actually really good."
"I wanted to," I said. "I sat there and I wanted to get out and ask her if it's true, if she knows what this has done."
"I know you did," she said. "But you don't get truth that way. You get a scene. And then someone calls someone, and then you've made it adversarial before there's even a table to sit at."
I rested my forehead against the steering wheel for a second. The plastic was warm from the sun.
"What do I do then?" I asked.
"You document," she said, not unkind. "You keep the envelope where it is. You write down what you saw, what Ryan said, what the clinic said. You set a boundary that this goes through a mediator or lawyers, not parking lots. You're not after revenge, Elise. You're after clarity for Maya. That's the whole job right now."
Maya made a small sound in her sleep behind me and I turned to check. She was still out, her head tipped to the side.
"You're right," I said.
"I know I'm right," she said, and I could hear her smile a little. "Come home. Do something small you can control today. That's not nothing."
We hung up and I sat there until a man came out of the gas station and looked at me curiously, then got in his truck and left.
On the drive back I stopped at a drugstore just off the highway, the kind with fluorescent lights and a squeaky floor. I left Maya buckled in the stroller where I could see her and walked straight to the shoe care aisle. The black polish was there in the same tin, the brand with the little dog on it. I picked one up, put it down, picked it up again and put it in the basket.
In the hardware section I found packs of felt grip pads, the brown circles you stick under chair legs. I stood there turning one over in my hand. The stool in our closet had always slid a little on the marble. Maya had leaned on it that morning and it had shifted. I remembered the sound it made.
I bought both. The cashier asked if I wanted a receipt and I said yes.
In the car, Maya woke up properly and asked for water. I gave her the sippy cup and she drank, then held it out to me to hold while she looked out the window at the cars going by on the highway. Her hands were clean and pink again.
May you like
I drove the rest of the way home with the polish tin and the grip pads in the bag on the passenger seat. I wasn't hiding anything in that moment and I wasn't exposing anyone. I was just driving east with a plan forming that didn't involve knocking on a stranger's door. I would put the envelope where Ryan could see it, on the wood built-in where we had first stood with Maya between us, and I would tell him we needed a mediator, a table, a structure. Not a hallway fight. Not another secret in a closet.
Maya fell asleep again before Nashville. I kept my eyes on the road.
