For a while I leaf through this book, which Lenny’s bought me. I bet he’s real excited. He so looks forward to becoming a father, the second time around. I can just see him in my head, like, holding the baby’s hand, guiding him already in his first steps. Then, letting go, he’s gonna take a step or two back, and hold his breath, waiting there for the little one to walk into his open arms.
Lenny’s gonna buy him a brand new tricycle, and teach him how to set his little feet on top of them pedals, and push, push harder, even harder—yeah! Just so! And again: Go on, push, until—oh boy! With great joy, he’s gonna clap his hands, because here—for the first time—you could detect a move, a slight move ahead.
And then, a few years down the road, he’s gonna surprise our child with a large, shining bicycle, and adjust the training wheels as time goes by, until they wasn’t needed no more; at which point, Lenny would remove them, and hold them in his hands, like, to weigh them for a moment, and try to wipe the rust, and wish that time would like, slow down, just a little, because it’s hard, so hard for the old heart to let go.
Yes, Lenny needs a son: someone to need him, trust him, and make him trust himself again.
I turn the page over, only to find some of them words much too long—but I read them anyway and like, I enunciate them, as slowly and as clearly as I can, ‘cause it’s gonna make him proud of me, and make me worthy of him.
The book says that just four weeks after conception, basic facial features will begin to appear, including passageways, I repeat, passageways that will make up the inner ear, and arches that will contribute, contribute, I say aloud, to the jaw. And it says that the baby may now be a quarter of an inch long, which sounds like they’re talking about some lizard, or maybe a fish.
But the book don’t say nothing about what I’m really worried about, which is: how to become a ma—and at the same time, how to be totally different from my ma.
Me, I often wonder about that, ‘cause it’s kinda hard to know the right thing to do, even with the best of intentions, when all you have before you is nothing, nothing but a life cursed by violence, and by misery, and by a long list of mistakes.
Falling in love with Lenny should have been the end to all of Anita's troubles.
For her, it's only the beginning, when family secrets start unravelling. His ex-wife, Natasha, is succumbing to a mysterious disease. How can Anita compete with her shadow? How can she find a voice of her own?
And when his estranged son, Ben, comes back and lives in the same small apartment, can she keep the balance between the two men, whose desire for her is marred by guilt and blame?
"This story, like most great dramas, isn't always easy read, but you'll find yourself unable to leave it alone and these characters will stay with you long after you've finished it."
- Aurora Dawn, VINE VOICE
