The Girl in the Green Raincoat_ A Novel - Laura Lippman [51]
“Just think,” she said, “it could have been a double ceremony.”
“You never told me,” Tess said, “how Epstein reacted when you brought him to your mother’s house and explained that you weren’t exactly who he thought you were.”
“He was a pretty good sport,” Whitney said. “You know what? I think the pump was primed. He was terrified of Carole. It was probably only a matter of time before she killed him. Someone named Harold Lenhardt has sent you a very pretty dress. Well, not you, but Carla Scout. I can’t see you squeezing into this frock.” She held up a summery dress.
“Carla Scout will swim in that. She’s still just at fiftieth percentile for height.” Strange, they had never planned to use both names, but it suited the baby somehow, who had lost much of her hair and developed a skeptical squint in her still-hazel eyes. Lord, how she would hate them some day, for saddling her with that unwieldy name. Much as she had once hated her parents for making her Theresa Esther. Could have been worse. She could have been Shirley.
“And this is from me.” Whitney handed Tess a flat box. It was a baby book, a pink and white one without a shred of irony. “There’s a place for the first lock of hair, and all the developmental milestones.” Tess’s heart lurched a little. The doctor had said—no, settle down. “But the best part is this page, where you write down the story of her birthday. And who has a better one than you?”
“Whitney—”
“Come on, all’s well that ends well. You don’t have to put in the part about the dog urine, or the taser. But you have to give Dempsey his due. Dempsey loves Carla Scout.”
This was true. Tess suspected the dog, now relegated to being one of the pack, was relieved that someone smaller was finally on the premises.
“I don’t think one page could ever be enough,” Tess said. “Where do I start? With the discovery I was pregnant? The day I met Crow?”
“You better write small, if you’re going back that far,” Whitney said. “Just don’t leave out my part. I’m the comic relief.”
Tess picked up a pen, but instead of marring the pristine baby book, she grabbed one of the black-and-white composition books she always had close at hand.
“Dear Carla Scout,” she began. “In the weeks that I was waiting for you, I had to stay in bed, where I spent most of my time staring out the window. One day, I saw a girl in a green raincoat . . .”
FROM
LAURA LIPPMAN
Never Steal Anything Small
In 1986, I went to visit my parents in the beach town where they live to this day. The first day of my vacation was a trifecta of summer pleasures—body-surfing, meals made from the abundant local seafood and produce, soft ice cream after supper. On Day Two, while swimming with my sister, I felt a strange sensation, as if I had kicked a crab that gave me a polite little “Hey, I’m right here” tug, a reminder that the ocean, large as it is, must be shared.
“I think I stepped on something,” I called to my sister, and headed out of the surf to see.
The second toe on my right foot had been almost severed. I will flash forward, as is my wont, past the bloody hour that ensued. Ultimately, a smart plastic surgeon who knew that the water posed the greatest risk to healing, patted me back together with nary a stitch and prescribed antibiotics. I spent the rest of the vacation on crutches. This incident would inspire my sister to suggest that I write a story about a young woman in a desolate place, recovering from a similar injury. The only hitch was that I was still more than a decade away from becoming a published novelist. My sister claims no memory of this, yet The Girl in the Green Raincoat was inspired by this long-ago suggestion.
Of course, as the book makes clear, it also owes much to Rear Window and The Daughter of Time, not to mention an article I wrote in 1998, about three very different families who had bonded in the Johns Hopkins neonatal intensive care unit a decade earlier. I also had several friends who had been put on bed rest during their pregnancies, most notably Leslie Linthicum,