Bird in Hand - Christina Baker Kline [27]
But now she was merely grateful.
Robin found a coffee mug, filled it, brought it to the table along with the milk. “Sugar? Sweetener?”
Alison shook her head. She poured milk into her coffee and took a long sip.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Robin asked. She fished a knife from the block on the counter and cut into the banana bread. Steam rose from the plate. She put it in front of Alison, who pinched off a bite. She couldn’t even taste it; the bread was like Styrofoam in her mouth. She had an impulse to spit it out but forced herself to swallow. “No,” she said.
Robin nodded. She sat down in the chair across from Alison.
“The boy died,” Alison said.
“Oh,” Robin exclaimed. “Oh, Alison”—putting her hand to her mouth.
“I … really … don’t want to talk about it.”
“All right.” After a moment Robin reached out and put her cool fingers on Alison’s forearm. “I’m here when you need me. Okay?”
She started to get up, but Alison said, “Please—don’t leave. Stay for a minute.”
“Sure. Of course.” Robin sank back into her seat.
Alison forced herself to smile. It felt as if her mouth were smiling on its own, a purely mechanical activity. Then she started to cry.
Robin sat at the table with Alison as tears streamed down her face. She cried and cried, until the fluid seemed to have been drained from her. Then she cried some more. Robin got up; even through her tears, Alison was aware that she was looking for a box of tissues, but she didn’t find one and ended up tearing off some paper towels and handing Alison a big wad.
Charlie came into the kitchen. He was clearly startled to see Alison sobbing wordlessly into a white muff, and Robin sitting there. “Oh, goodness,” he said, patting Alison’s shoulder. “Honey, can we let Robin get back to her family? I’m sure she has things she needs to do this morning.”
“Do you want me to stay?” she asked Alison.
Alison shook her head. She did want Robin to stay but was ashamed of being so inappropriately needy.
“Anytime at all,” Robin said. “Just call me.”
She gave Charlie a sympathetic smile, which Alison understood as: we will both take care of this person. No man should have to shoulder this alone; I can help.
And she wondered: Why didn’t Charlie marry someone like Robin? His life would be so much easier.
After Robin left, Charlie sat at the table with his entire hand covering the bottom half of his face. Alison recognized this as a rare but significant gesture in Charlie’s repertoire, signaling that he was flummoxed.
“I called a lawyer,” he said after a while. “Ben’s roommate from Harvard. Nice guy. Lives in Bergen County.”
Alison nodded.
“He said it sounds fairly straightforward. He needs—everything.”
She sniffed and cleared her throat. “Today?”
“No. Tomorrow is soon enough. The police report. Etcetera.”
She nodded again.
“We’ll get through this, Alison.”
“Will we?”
He looked her in the eyes, but his gaze was opaque; she couldn’t read what he was telling her.
She took a deep breath. “When I called you last night, the first thing you said was, ‘What did you do?’”
Charlie sat back. “Well. It was a shock, getting that phone call.”
“You were so—cold.”
“I was asleep, Alison,” he said tetchily. “You woke me up.”
“Still.” She could feel the tears gathering inside her again.
He wiped some crumbs into a pile.
“‘What did you do?’” she repeated in a self-pitying whisper.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said.
But she couldn’t let it go. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand where that came from.”
“There’s nothing to understand,” he said. “Don’t read too much into it. In fact, don’t read anything into it.”
She looked at him dully. She didn’t want to read too much into it. She didn’t want to read anything into it. But his halfhearted protestations weren’t helping much.
“We need to be thinking about the next steps,” he was saying.
Next steps. Baby steps, she thought. One foot after another, toddler steps. Phantom steps—steps the three-year-old boy who