Read Online The Crooked Branch by Jeanine Cummins - Free Book Online Page B

I squeeze plenty of produce before adding two lemons to my basket. When I finish shopping, I take two more laps around the shop just to fill up some extra minutes with people and food and comforting public noises. The thought of returning to the empty, aching house terrifies me. Emma begins to stir and stretch. She will be hungry. She is always hungry. I pay for the food and stuff the ingredients into the storage basket under the stroller.
    “Oh, what an angel,” the cashier says to me, leaning across her register to get a better look at Emma.
    “Yeah,” I say, rearranging her blanket.
    “How old is she?”
    “Three weeks.”
    “Oh, she’s brand-new! God bless you!”
    “Thanks.” I smile. “Do you want to come over for dinner?”
    The startled cashier looks up at me and leans away from us, back into her comfortable little work space.
    “I’m kidding,” I say. “I kid!”
    The cashier tries to chuckle.
    “NEXT ON LINE,” she says.
    The whole way home I mutter to myself about what an idiot I am. I hadn’t really meant to invite the cashier over for dinner. I meant to
say
it, but I also meant to laugh afterward, to indicate that I wasn’t serious. My voice is getting into an awful habit of doing things I haven’t sanctioned.
    “She thought I was a total freak,” I say to Emma, whose eyes are now open and blinky. “Mommy’s not a freak, baby.” I can’t tell if she believes me.
    It’s late afternoon now and as we walk down Seventy-eighth Avenue, two kids skateboard around us single file. Most of the street is shaded by trees, but in the sunny patches, the skateboarders cast fast-rolling shadows along the uneven pavement beneath. They shriek and call out loudly to one another. They make kissy-face noises at a young couple who are smooching against the railings of P.S. 119. At the corner ahead of us, the boys kick up their skateboards and carry them over the crosswalk and into the deli. I round the corner and unstrap the car seat to lug Emma up the steps to the front door. Across the street, my hot neighbor, Brian, is pulling his slick, black non-dadlike car into his driveway. My parents loved him, when they lived here. My mom called him “an old soul,” which is the highest praise she can bestow on anyone under the age of sixty.
    He scrunches on the parking brake with virility, I swear. I try to wave a casual hello, but with my shopping bags hanging from one elbow, and Emma’s car seat from the other, I may actually appear to be signaling for help. He waits on a passing car and then skips across the street. Here is a man so inherently masculine that he can
skip
without fear of ridicule. He can cross his legs elegantly, at the knee. He can drink a cocktail of a pinkish hue without irony. He is that manly. He takes the eight stairs in two strides, and lifts all of the shopping out of my hands.
    “I won’t touch the baby until I receive instruction!” he laughs. I want to kiss him.
    “Thanks,” I say. “I wasn’t flagging you down or anything, just saying hello.”
    “Hello!” he says back. “No, you just looked like you could use an extra set of hands.” Emma is starting to whimper loudly in her seat. She has a big voice for a tiny newborn.
    “I could use an extra set of boobs, too,” I say, immediately regretting the breast-feeding humor that is funny to no one on earth except me. But he laughs. He laughs!
    “Aw, she’s hungry, Majella. You’re hungry, aren’t you, beautiful?” he says, peering over the edge of Emma’s car seat while I fiddle with the keys in the lock. “She’s gorgeous. Looks just like you.”
    I blush. Which is totally stupid. Because he is only being kind, saying the sort of automatic thing that people say about squished-up, squalling newborn babies and their haggard-looking mommies.
    “Thanks,” I say.
    The door swings in and bangs the wall inside while I lumber through the doorway, gracelessly dragging Emma behind me. Brian follows us down the long hallway