Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom [30]
“I’ve got to bury the baby.”
Huddie looked at me, too kind, or too scared, to argue.
“Where do you want to go?”
I wanted to go to Wadsworth Park, but I couldn’t leave Mrs. Hill. I wanted not to abandon anyone ever again. I wanted to be good.
“Get a shovel from the garage. We can go into the woods behind the church.”
“Behind the church?”
Well, it wasn’t my church. I didn’t care. There were tall pines and soft ferns and no one there on a Thursday afternoon.
“Get a shovel, okay?” All I wanted was the sweet clean smell of pine and a safe place for my baby.
Well into the woods we dug a deep, fast hole, Huddie sweating through his shirt in the afternoon sun. We laid the jelly jar down, wrapped in plastic, wrapped again in tinfoil, and we covered it up and smoothed out the dirt.
“We ought to tamp it down more. So it’s solid,” he said, not looking at me. And we stamped on it with our sneakers and threw pine boughs and decomposing leaves over the space.
When Mrs. Hill woke up, I was sleeping on the couch, my feet in Huddie’s lap. He wouldn’t leave, even though he had other deliveries to make.
Mrs. Hill, who couldn’t remember the day of the week or whether or not she’d eaten, looked at my face, at the sheets of newspaper I’d put under me to protect her ugly blue brocade couch, at Huddie’s hand on my leg, and knew.
“That you, Horace Lester? You delivered my groceries already, haven’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Huddie said, not moving.
I don’t think my mother knew Huddie existed. Huddie’s father knew there was someone, but he didn’t know it was me. Huddie delivered to Mrs. Hill once a week, but I didn’t think Mrs. Hill had ever caught a glimpse of us together. I was the one who was blind, thinking we were invisible. Huddie and I sat there, watching our fates juggled by a crabby old lady with bad eyesight and severe self-righteousness.
The doorbell rang, and I could hear Mr. Lester’s rough voice calling for Mrs. Hill. She shuffled off to the door and he bowled in past her, his round face hard and black, his leather apron shiny and tight over his big chest.
“Horace, you are planning on finishing your deliveries, aren’t you? I’ve been looking for you for the last hour. Miz Hill, do you need any more of Horace?”
“No, Gus, I don’t. I do appreciate his coming by and all. It’s a big help.”
Huddie had taken his hand off my leg at the sound of his father’s voice, and I had thought of jumping up, but we stayed on the couch, frozen, committed. I wondered if we were all going to pretend I wasn’t there. Mr. Lester’s eyes were red pin dots in his black, pitted face, and I wondered how anyone so butt-end ugly could have produced someone as perfectly formed as Huddie.
“You know Elizabeth Taube, the girl that helps me out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, don’t you?” Mrs. Hill sounded like my mother at a bridge party, gracious and wary and ready.
“No,” said Mr. Lester, clearly knowing, right then, who I was. “Sorry to have barged in, but I do need my boy back at the store. Horace?”
Huddie rose like a six-foot puppet, and I saw Mr. Lester’s big hands come down on his shoulders. I winced, and Huddie made two fists and put them in his pockets.
“Say good-bye,” whispered Mrs. Hill.
“What for? He didn’t even say hello to me.” I was not showing off my good manners for Mr. Lester.
“To Horace, say good-bye to Horace.”
“Good-bye,” I called out in confusion, and I saw the gold-brown tips of his fingers waving, his left thumb and forefinger forming the letter L, for Love, for Liz, as he walked beneath the kitchen window, picking up his bike. I knew he’d heard me.
Mrs. Hill fell into her recliner as I sank back on the couch, keeping my muddy sneakers propped up on more newspaper. She looked at the clock and picked up the phone. I was amazed to hear her tell my mother that I seemed a little unwell, that I was welcome to spend the night, and that she would enjoy my company. Her