I say “shhhhhhhh” to her and I smooth the damp hair down at the back of her head and across her forehead and she puts her head against my neck and then rears it back to smile into my face and say “Eeeeeh,” pointing at my chest and the blood all over my shirt and the skin of my neck with a tiny adult kind of concern, as though she’s saying “Oh dear, Mommy, you’ve soiled your shirt.” I look in the mirror and I see a murder victim, a mugshot, my hair a nest and blood everywhere. I wish Engin could see. I want to take a picture but it would be too cruel to send him. But just for me to remember, I fish my phone out of my pocket and take a gruesome portrait of mother with daughter.
Cindy is back at the door with the bag in one hand and the half of The Very Hungry Caterpillar in the other. I take the book first and set it on the counter away from the blood. I have been working to compose my face and as I reach for the bag I look at her and say “I’m so sorry—we crashed your and Ed’s date and then made this big fuss.” I smile with the corners of my mouth turned down ruefully and hope for an answering smile but she just says “Kids are hard” and I realize I don’t know whether she has any. I set Honey down on her feet and she holds on to my legs and puts her face between my knees. I get out the wipes from the bag and the hand sanitizer and I wipe away the blood and then squirt little plops of sanitizer down onto the counter. “You oughta think about a tetanus shot for her,” Cindy says, which unaccountably annoys me, of course she has had her damn shots, I even know the exact date because that’s the kind of thing I remember. “She had her second TDAP shot on the sixteenth of last month,” trying to sound authoritative. Honey raises her little arms to me and begins making her “heh heh heh” want-want-want sound and I pat her head and swiftly wipe away the last smear of blood from the bowl of the sink and run the faucet and pack away the wipes and the sanitizer and the half of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and pick up Honey and put her on my hip and kiss her hand and put her backpack over my shoulder and brush past Cindy who holds the door open. “Thank you,” I say. “I’ll just settle up.” When I exit the corridor into the restaurant the tables of patrons and the hostess look in my direction and I remember that I am covered in blood. The martyred Honey smiles a big smile and waves her wrapped-up mitt in the air and there is scattered applause for the baby. I want to disappear from the surface of the earth, I want soft merciful darkness to envelop Honey and me both. “Sorry about that,” I say to everyone, “We’re okay!” and walk in measured steps to the hostess stand where I give her my debit card and ask if I can pay for one Picon punch one greyhound and Ed and Cindy’s drinks plus tip, approximately thirty dollars down the slaughterhouse drain too. “Better stay out here, ha ha,” I tell her, because I am not setting foot back in the bar. Ed waves kindly from his seat. “They got a carpenter’s nail sticking out of that carpeting,” he says. “Must have snagged the finger on that.” “Did we get a little booboo,” says the hostess, who is a majestic figure of a woman nearly six feet tall with broad shoulders blond hair and weathered pink skin. Honey is now in full lover mode, smiling and then ducking her face toward my neck and peeking up through lashes. Thank God. “That’s what I get for bringing her into the bar, haha,” I say, and scuttle out after signing my slip and putting my card into my pocket. “We’ll get Emilio to hammer that down, anyone could just trip over it, imagine me and my sandals!” says the hostess to my retreating figure. “You okay to drive, hon?” Cindy calls from the table. “We walked here—it takes five minutes. Thanks for your help!” Big smile, big smile and wave to Cindy and Ed, big wave to the folks.
I pause in the anteroom with the little piano and put my back against the wall by the door, out of sight of the main dining room, and slump, a slump that translates itself to Honey, who puts her head on my shoulder and her injured paw on my other shoulder and inspects her new appendage. I smell her hair which has its puppy smell and then put her down to pack away my wallet her diaper shit and prepare us for maximum efficient travel on foot.
