Chapter 40 ~ Click-Clack
November 8, 2010
Ivvy went to light a cigarette but then paused. Looked down at Bella.
“Bad idea, huh?”
I shrugged.
Bella was sat on the floor, playing with some beads. Ivvy had a whole random collection in a tin box, I had no idea why.
Ivvy put the cigarette down on the table with the lighter.
The beads click-clacked together as Bella dropped them in the tin.
“What am I going to do, Ivvy?”
She just looked at me.
And, to be honest, I hadn’t known I was going to say that until I’d spoken.
“I can’t see a way forward.”
Or that.
“When are your parents coming back?”
“Tuesday. Tomorrow.”
“What will they say when they know about Bella?”
Click-clack, click-clack.
“They can’t know about Bella.”
She snorted laughter.
The clicking stopped for a moment. Bella looked up at both of us with those almond eyes.
“She’s a little hard to hide, Kenny. You can’t stay here forever and, besides, surely this girl – her mother – is gonna come back looking for her some time?”
That phantom? I don’t think so, Ivvy.
“They can’t know.”
Bella reached into the tin and pulled out a large, jade bead. She stared at it intently for a moment, a jeweller testing the cut of a diamond, and then held it up for us to look at.
“Lookit!” she exclaimed.
Ivvy looked at the bead, while I just glanced before relaunching my stare into space.
“That’s pretty,” Ivvy said, her voice developing a cadence I’d not heard from her before, “you like that one, huh?”
Bella nodded.
“Cool,” Ivvy said and turned to look at me. “So how long were you thinking of staying here?”
I shrugged.
“Forever?”
I shrugged.
“Only you’d have to start paying some of the rent, you know? Get your name down on the resident’s list and all that shit.”
There was a tone coming into her voice. One that I had heard before; storm clouds threatened the horizon.
“Ivvy.”
“No, come on… Isn’t this just like you? You blow me off for days on end. With all that weird shit about the book and the photographs and then out of the blue, you’re turning up here with your daughter who, by the way, you didn’t even know you had until a couple of days ago, and telling me that you’re staying here for you don’t know how long but it’s going to be more than a couple of days if your parents can’t know about Bella, right?”
I knew what to do right then; I said nothing.
“Let’s just say her mother doesn’t turn up. That you’re stuck with Bella forever. Are you planning to stay here with her until she’s old enough to look after herself? There are girls on the street at thirteen. Are you gonna be around until she can make some money that way? Do you want her on her back at thirteen? Do you?”
There is no plan, Ivvy, I screamed inwardly, I haven’t got one. I don’t know what I’m going to do and I don’t know where we’re going to go.
I closed my eyes; found the ticker was still running.
Child missing in New Jersey, mother dead – Police hunt for father
“What happened last night?” I asked, pure diversion.
“Huh?”
“Last night. You said on the phone that something happened.”
Ivvy looked at me.
Click-clack.
“You could say that,” she said, her hand toying with the lighter on the table.
Click-clack.
“I’ve been suspended.”
I just looked at her.
Click-clack.
“Couple of weeks back, I did a deal with some undercover narc while I was working. Thought I knew everyone on the street. DEA got it and last night I got busted. Zero tolerance. Shit!”
She lit the cigarette then, hands shaking.
I hadn’t noticed until now.
“Dope?”
She shook her head, a rueful smile ghosting her lips.
“They don’t bust you for that. Just give you a slap on the wrist and ask you to pass the joint.”
“Then what…”
“Smack.”
She’d been clean for years.
“How could you?”
Now she raised an eyebrow, anger flooding into her.
“Oh sure! Now you’re going to get all high and mighty on me… Well don’t forget, mister how-could-you, that when I first met you, you were pretty much cold turkey. So don’t go getting all judgemental on me… I don’t need it. OK? I don’t need it.”
Click-clack.
A clock was ticking somewhere in the apartment.
Click-clack.
A siren blazed from the street below.
Bella played with the beads.
Click-clack.
Click-clack.
“Bella’s not my daughter,” I said before I knew I was going to say it, “I stole her.”
“Fuck.”
Click-clack.
Click-clack.
* * *
I laid it all out for her. Everything that had happened since the previous Friday night. Stealing the car, finding out Bella was in the back. The run across Central Park. My panic when Ivvy turned up. All of it.
The one thing I left out is the one thing she needed to hear; my decision that I would play the father. That Bella would be my daughter.
She knew only some of the emptiness between myself and my parents; the dark void of my nightmares.
“I think she was on CNN,” I said, feeling tears beginning to prick my eyes, a lump beginning to form in my throat, “but I got jumpy and you’d phoned, so I figured I’d get out of the apartment sooner rather than later. And then…”
“Shhh, Kenny. Hush.”
I fell silent. Watched her.
Click-clack.
She was thinking on something.
Stood. Crossed the room, turned on the small television on the kitchen counter, tuned it to CNN.
For five minutes we watched it without a word. Reading the ticker, watching the faceless anchor.
No mention of a baby missing in New Jersey, of a dead mother or absconded father.
We scanned other news channels. Nothing.
Ended up back at CNN.
The only other sound was Bella and her beads.
The lump didn’t leave my throat.
After five minutes it was still fighting against my words.
“What am I going to do, Ivvy?”
She didn’t respond for a moment. Just watched the screen. Waiting.
“Did you love her?” Ivvy said.
This stopped my thoughts dead. The lump disappeared.
“Huh?”
“Bella’s mother,” Ivvy wasn’t looking at me, still staring at the screen, “did you love her?”
“Bella’s mother was… I made her uh…”
“Truth, Kenny. Did you love her?”
I had no clue what she was asking me.
“What do you mean, Ivvy? I just told you all of it. Weren’t you listening?”
I looked at her. Her profile. Her ratty blond hair, dirty with city grime.
“Are you still using?” I asked.
She didn’t say anything for a moment or two.
“No,” she answered, “but I was thinking about it last night. I’ve been on shift for the last week or so and… I don’t know, I just got tired of it all. Tired.”
She stared at the screen, lit another cigarette.
“Tired?”
“Yeah. The night-time, the marks, the girls. It never changes. And I’m tired of it.”
“Don’t they have… I don’t know, like counselling or something? Like social workers?”
“Yeah, they’ve got that all right but this isn’t stress or trauma or any of that shit. I’m just fucking tired.”
Now, she turned to look me in the eye.
“So, just for a minute, Kenny. For a little moment or two, humour me. Let me have something approaching a normal conversation about normal things. About love and dating and sex and relationships. Talk to me like we’re together not just wasting time with each other. That’s the conversation I want, Kenny. Normal. Not some act that I have to play every night.”
Confused, I nodded.
“Good,” she said. “Now, did you love her?”
“Who?”
“Bella’s mother. Did you love her?”
Click-clack.
I saw type-written words on paper; dialogue and shooting directions. Dived into the abyss once more.
“For a moment,” I said, “although on and off, we were together for a little over a year. It feels like I only really loved her for a moment.”
“How did you know?”
“What, that I loved her?”
Ivvy nodded.
“I don’t know. There was just a moment where I thought: I love her, I really do. But it was gone as soon as it arrived.”
“Where were you?”
“Where?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Where do you think?”
“Central Park?”
“No, guess again.”
“Grand Central?”
Click-clack.
“Not even close. We were down at Chelsea Piers. It was raining and we were trying to get over the highway, over to the piers. It was really raining and I only had a light jacket; I was drenched head to foot. My trousers were too long, and they caught under my shoes as I walked. They were soaked through – all the way up my legs.”
“Then, just for a moment, a gap came in the traffic and I grabbed her arm and we ran across the road. You know it’s four lanes, so we dashed all the way, splashing and laughing and getting absolutely soaked.”
“When we got to the other side, we were all out of breath but it was… What’s the word? Exhilarating, I guess. Just so alive. And I looked at her, looked in her eyes and, just for that moment, it felt like I loved her.”
My eyes snapped back to focus, my internal screenplay fading back into the mist.
Ivvy had tears in her eyes, welling on the lower lids.
“That’s beautiful, Kenny,” she said, “it must have been good for that moment.”
I nodded; it had been. In my head, it had been.
“Can we keep her?” Ivvy asked, sounding so much like the kid who’s persuaded a stray dog to follow her home that I did a double take, looking from Ivvy to Bella and back to Ivvy again.
Click-clack.
I shrugged.
“What do you think?”
“What do I think?”
I nodded the question again.
“I think we’d make great parents,” she said, “that’s what I think.”
Neither of us said anything for a long, long time.
Click.
The anchor on CNN was the only one talking.
Clack.
We sat and stared at the space between us.
Click.
And considered what had just passed into that space.
Clack.
“Why not?” I said. And meant it.
“Yeah,” Ivvy replied without a single pause, “why not?”
