The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [131]
The house was quiet, the hot water heater ticking. Paul went downstairs and stood in the cool light of the refrigerator, eating macaroni and cheese from a Corningware dish with his fingers, studying the shelves. Not much. In the freezer he found six boxes of Girl Scout cookies, thin mints. He ate a handful, rinsing down the cool chocolate disks with milk drunk straight from the plastic jug. Another handful, then, the milk jug swinging from his hand, he walked back through the living room, where his father’s blankets were piled neatly on the couch, to the den.
The girl was still there, sleeping. He slipped another cookie in his mouth, letting the mint and chocolate melt slowly, studying her. Last night the familiar angry voices of his parents had risen up to his room, and although they were arguing, the stone he had felt in his throat at the thought of his father lying dead somewhere, his father gone forever—immediately, that had dissolved. Paul got out of bed and started down the stairs, but on the landing he stopped, taking in the scene: his father in a white shirt that had gone unwashed for days, his dress pants stained everywhere with mud, limp and bedraggled, a full beard on his face and his hair barely combed; his mother in her peach satin robe and slippers, curved around her folded arms, her eyes narrowed, and this girl, this stranger, standing in the doorway in a black coat that was too big, clutching at the edges of the sleeves with her fingertips. His parents’ voices mingling, rising. This girl had looked up, past the swirling anger. Her eyes had met his. He’d stared, taking her in: her paleness and her uncertain glance, her ears so delicately sculpted. Her eyes were such a clear brown, so tired. He had wanted to walk down the steps and cup her face in his hands.
“Three days,” his mother was saying, “and then you come home like—my God, look at you, David—like this and with this girl. Pregnant, you say? And I’m supposed to take her in, no questions asked?”
The girl flinched then and looked away, and Paul’s eyes had fallen to her stomach, flat enough beneath the coat, except that she had rested one hand there protectively and he saw the slight swell beneath her sweater. He stood very still. The argument went on; it seemed to last a long time. Finally, his mother, silent and tight-lipped, had pulled sheets, blankets, pillows from the linen closet and thrown them down the stairs at his father, who had taken the girl very formally by the elbow and led her to the den.
Now she slept on the fold-out couch, her head turned to the side, one hand resting near her face. He studied her, the way her eyelids moved, the slow rise and fall of her chest. She was lying on her back; her belly rose up like a low wave. Paul’s own flesh quickened, and he was afraid. He’d had sex with Lauren Lobeglio six times since March. She had hung around during quartet rehearsals for weeks, watching him, not speaking: a pretty, wasted, eerie chick. One afternoon she had stayed after the rest of the band left, and it was just the two of them in the silence of the garage, light moving through the leaves outside and making patterns of flickering shadow on the concrete floor. She was strange but sexy, with her long thick hair, her black eyes. He had sat in the old lawn chair, adjusting the strings on his guitar and wondering if he should go over to where she was standing by the wall of tools and kiss her.
But it was Lauren who crossed the room. She stood in front of him for a heartbeat, then slid onto his lap, her skirt hiking up, revealing slender white legs. This was what people said: that Lauren Lobeglio would do it if she liked you. He’d never really thought it was true, but there he was, slipping his hands beneath her T-shirt, her skin so warm, her breasts so soft beneath his hands.
It wasn’t right. He knew that, but it was like falling: once you started you