Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [100]
He had straight, longish, slightly feathery black hair. She thought of Ralph Macchio in the original Karate Kid, and then she felt the need to suppress a giggle. She’d had a huge crush on Ralph Macchio. The next thing she thought of was Jones and his shaved head.
The father looked over at her, seeming to sense she was looking at them. She smiled, a peace offering of sorts for all the mean looks and cursing during her phone-withdrawal phase. His face altered slightly, but she didn’t think you could call it smiling.
In her mind she begged the little boy to say something to his father, and at last he did. He told his father he had to go to the bathroom. She couldn’t tell anything from the boy’s accent, so she waited eagerly for the father’s response, but the father was remarkably economical with words, she’d noticed. He simply nodded. He was like the Latin version of Paul. But when he stood up he did something quite surprising. He turned directly to Carmen.
“Excuse me. You could—could you … take for me … the baby?” His English faltered appealingly and she realized he had absolutely no idea she was a Spanish speaker.
She was too surprised to do anything but accept the baby. He figured she was a woman, maybe a mother herself. He figured she’d know what to do. He didn’t realize she was an actress.
“We come back soon,” he told her, leading the wriggling, dancing boy to the bathroom at the front of the car.
So Carmen held the baby. She was anxious at first. She tried to think back to her early days with Ryan. But truth be told, she’d been eighteen at the time, and hadn’t exactly gone out of her way to hold him. Tibby, his godmother, had probably held him three times for every one time Carmen had.
Carmen tried to bring the baby into her body a little, not hold her out as if she were a disease. She rested the baby’s considerable diaper on her lap. The baby stared at her with her giant eyes. She didn’t express a point of view, she just stared.
“Hi, sweet pea,” Carmen said. She smiled, and to her gratification, the baby smiled back. She bounced her a few times. The baby smiled bigger. Carmen had to wonder: Who else in the world would make friends with you so quickly?
“Hey, poopie,” Carmen said in a cooing voice.
The baby took this as a compliment and smiled more. She tried to grab Carmen’s face in her hand, but Carmen pulled back.
Carmen was just explaining to the baby about hair, when the father and brother returned.
The father gave Carmen a real smile this time. He took the baby from her gratefully, but the baby appeared not to want to go. She leaned and reached for Carmen as she got pulled away. She started to make the barking sound.
Carmen felt as flattered as she had ever been in her life. More flattered than when Bobbi Brown told her she had good bones. “It’s okay, I can hold her for a bit longer,” Carmen offered. It wasn’t like she had a lot of other things to do.
“You … no mind?” the father asked.
“No, not at all,” Carmen said. She took the baby and bounced her a bit more. She arranged the baby’s dress and diaper and smoothed her hair. “You are a very pretty girl,” Carmen told her. She turned to the father. “What’s her name?”
“Clara,” he said.
“Oh. That’s beautiful,” Carmen replied.
As she talked to the baby, she wondered why she wasn’t talking to them in Spanish. And moreover, why the father didn’t know she was Latin. Although her hair was highlighted and her accent was as polished as that of any New York actress, she still expected people to know what she was. Wasn’t it obvious?
When she was with Jones, she felt it was obvious. Here he is with his Latin girlfriend, she would think. Jones is cool, he’s going to marry his Puerto Rican girlfriend, she would imagine his friends and colleagues thinking. And for his benefit, she tried to tamp