Home > The Smallest Part(6)

The Smallest Part(6)
Author: Amy Harmon

“You’re a psychologist, not a pediatrician, Noah. You don’t have a medical degree. What do you know about it?” Her tone was weary, not angry, and he didn’t push it. Maybe he should have said he knew a lot about it. He’d had a mother who was clinically depressed, who suffered from debilitating anxiety, who rarely left the house in the daylight, and who died in her sleep a week after he turned nineteen. But hey, what did he know?

He sighed, rubbing his hands over his face, and watched Mercedes sweep up his hair clippings and tidy the kitchen. Mer never stopped moving, never stopped doing, and he wanted to beg her to stay, to cancel her trip, so he didn’t have to be alone. He was so damn lonely. So damn tired.

He rose and carefully removed the tray from Gia’s high chair. He needed to change her pants and put her pajamas on. It was bedtime—or close enough—but he was afraid he would wake her and be unable to get her back to sleep.

He unlatched the little seatbelt that kept her from slipping out of her chair and eased her up into his arms. Her diaper felt dry and maybe pajamas weren’t that important. A few golden clumps of hair were stuck to her back, and he felt a flash of panic. It was her first haircut. Was he supposed to save her hair? Didn’t some parents do that? And where did he put hair clippings if he saved them? Oh God, was he supposed to make a baby book?

“Feed, clothe, comfort,” he chanted softly. “Stick to the basics, let the other shit go.”

“Words to live by,” Mercedes said, drying her hands. She brushed a kiss on Gia’s soft head and, standing on her tiptoes to reach his scruffy face, pressed a sisterly kiss on his cheek.

“If you need me, I will come home. You know that, right?”

“I know that.” But he wouldn’t ever ask her to come home.

“I love you, Noah,” she said quietly.

“I love you too.”

“It won’t always hurt like this, will it?”

“You know the answer to that, Mer. We both do.”

“Yeah. I guess we do.”

She kissed his cheek again and let herself out. Noah climbed the stairs, put Gia in her crib, covered her gently, and tiptoed out. He showered quickly and fell across his bed, exhausted. But he didn’t sleep. Like he’d done every night since Cora died, he pulled a blanket and a pillow from his bed and slept on the floor near Gia’s crib, afraid he would sleep so hard he wouldn’t hear her, afraid she would cry and no one would come.

Three

1986

“What are you making?” Mercedes asked.

“Paper dolls,” Cora answered.

Mercedes watched as Cora folded the paper and snipped away, cutting a little here, a little there. Then, her tongue sticking out between pink lips, she pulled the paper apart. Cora held a row of paper people—hands joined, feet touching—between her fingers.

“Now you color them, so they don’t all look the same.” She reached behind her. “I made this one earlier. I messed up and accidentally cut too deep, so this one only has three instead of six. But I liked it. It’s us, see?”

She’d given the middle figure short brown curls and blue eyes.

“Is that Noah?”

“Yes. And that’s you and me.” The figure on Noah’s left had long red hair, the figure on his right, tan skin and black braids. She’d given them all radiant smiles and colorful clothes. Mercedes recognized the striped red shirt and the jean skirt she’d worn on the first day of school. Noah was wearing the Karl Malone jersey he got for his birthday, and Cora’s paper doll was colored entirely in purple—one of the colors of the Utah Jazz—indicating her new obsession. Noah liked Jazz basketball, so Cora did too. Mercedes pretended she liked the Lakers, just to be contrary, but she had a poster of the Jazz point guard, John Stockton, on the inside of her closet door. Her favorite number was 12, like the number on his jersey. John Stockton was the little guy on the floor. He handled the ball and made everyone else look good. Mercedes liked that.

“What do you think?” Cora said, dangling the paper trio in front of her.

“Cute.” Mercedes still played with her Barbie dolls when she was alone. Twelve was a little too old for play-acting, but she liked to dress them and experiment with their hair. Paper dolls would be fun to decorate.

“You can have these. There’s six of them, just like your family,” Cora offered.

Abuela, Mami, Papi, Mercedes, and her two older cousins, Jose and Angel, did indeed make six. Tia Luisa had gone back to Mexico, and Mercedes had big news. “Jose and Angel are moving out. I won’t have to share a room with Abuela anymore. I will have my own room. Just like you and Noah.”

“That’s easy to fix.” Cora promptly cut two figures off the end of the row of dolls, making a family of four, and the detached figures fluttered to the ground.

“Adiós, Angel and Jose,” Mercedes said. She and Cora laughed, and Mercedes began to decorate her paper family with Cora’s markers. Cora retrieved the severed couple—Angel and Jose—from the floor. She held it, studying the faceless figures.

“My dad wants to leave too,” she murmured. Slowly, she separated one paper doll from the other and watched as it fell. “Bye, Daddy.”

* * *

“Noah?”

The blinds were all closed, and the house was so dark Mercedes stood just inside the door, blindly feeling along the wall to locate the switch. Finding it, she flipped it and gasped as the living room was flooded with light. Noah had always been obnoxiously tidy, but the living room was a wreck. It smelled like sour milk, moldy takeout, and wet dog. Noah didn’t even have a dog. A small trashcan, overflowing with tightly wrapped diapers stood near the door as if Noah had intended to take it out and gotten distracted. A mountain of laundry that seemed to be clean but hadn’t been folded spilled from the couch. Mercedes walked slowly through the mess, flipping on lights and breathing through her mouth, her alarm growing with each step.

“Noah?” she called again, louder. His kitchen looked like a scene from that Bruce Willis movie where the kid sees dead people. Every cupboard was open but half-empty. Most of the dishes were in the sink and piled on the table. The refrigerator was ajar, emitting a tired light and a foul odor. A box of Raisin Bran spilled its contents across the counter, and a half-full carton of milk sat beside it, the cap missing. Something squished beneath her left shoe, and she did a shimmying side step to avoid the long row of ants surrounding the crushed banana skewered by her stiletto heel.

“Noah!” Mercedes hollered, more worried than angry, but a little pissed too. He should have called her. From the looks of the house, the last six weeks had not gone well. She balanced on one foot and freed her shoe from the gooey ant feast.

Her shoe restored, Mercedes climbed the stairs to the two small bedrooms, stomping so that if Noah was naked, he had plenty of time to pull on some pants.

The lamp by the bed was on, but they were asleep, Gia sprawled across Noah’s chest. Drool dribbled from her mouth and onto his white undershirt. He’d pulled a pink blanket over her back, and his arms cradled her, but they were out. Mercedes studied them for a moment, father and daughter, and felt a rush of tenderness and despair. For months he’d been juggling everything alone, and he’d obviously hit a wall. She felt bad for yelling when she’d entered the house. It had been so quiet—and so filthy—she’d overlooked the obvious. Mercedes backed out of the bedroom and softly shut the door behind her.

Mercedes kicked off her heels, dug through the pile of clean laundry in the living room and found a pair of Noah’s boxer shorts, one of his T-shirts, and a pair of socks, because walking around barefoot in the apartment in its current state gave her the heebie jeebies, and she wasn’t going to scrub floors in a pencil skirt. She flipped on the lights and got to work, making a grocery list as she went; the refrigerator was so empty it wasn’t hard to clean. It appeared Noah and Gia were living on mashed potatoes and baby food, and there wasn’t much else in the house. She scrubbed the bathroom, walls and all, taking off a little paint in the process, and added paint to her list. She’d give the bathroom a facelift when she had a minute.

Bug spray, toilet paper, trash bags, dish soap, laundry detergent, eggs, milk, cheese . . . the list kept growing. Three hours, three loads of laundry, and three garbage bags later, Mercedes had the place whipped into shape, and still silence from upstairs. She changed out of Noah’s clothes and donned her pencil skirt and heels once more, slipping out to make a much-needed trip to the grocery store.

She was unloading groceries into Noah’s clean refrigerator when she heard footsteps overhead, the sound of the bathroom door opening and closing, and the shower turning on. She finished putting her purchases away and started a pot of coffee. If Noah was up, she was going to run the vacuum. It would alert him that she was there if his clean bathroom hadn’t already clued him in.

Ten minutes later, he descended the stairs, and Mercedes called out to him.

“I’m in here, Noah, declaring war on the thousands of ants living in your kitchen.”

He walked in, wearing sweats and a grey, Jazz Basketball T-shirt. He opened the refrigerator, took stock of its contents, and removed the orange juice, pouring a glass and drinking it before rinsing it, drying it, and putting the glass back in the cupboard. That was the Noah she was used to. He moved to the kitchen table and sat down wearily.

“You’re back.”

“I am.”

“You didn’t have to do this,” he muttered.

“I did. The place was a mess, Noah.”

He nodded slowly, but he didn’t defend himself. His eyes were darkly rimmed, and his wet hair stood on end, like he’d run the towel over it and forgotten about it. She smoothed it down so it wouldn’t dry that way. He bowed his head beneath her hands, submissive.

“Are you growing out your hair?” It clearly hadn’t been cut since she saw him last. He always wore it in a severe crop and it was now curling over his forehead, reminding her of his boyhood days.

“No. Not on purpose. It’s just another thing I haven’t had time to do.”

“How are you?” she asked, needing to know, hoping he would tell her.

“I’m tired, Mer.” He was the only one in the whole world who called her Mer. Everyone else called her Mercedes or Sadie.

“Why haven’t you called me?” she asked quietly. She’d only been back for two days, but all the time she’d been gone, she hadn’t heard a word. He hadn’t answered her emails or returned her calls. She’d called Heather several times just to make sure everything was okay.

“And said what? Come home from LA and clean my house and buy me groceries? I’m a grown man with one small child. I’m handling it. Not always well, but I’m doing the best I can. Gia’s been sick, and it’s thrown the schedule off.”

“Sick how?”

   
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