“Is she asleep?”
Adele looked up at her nanny and back down at the woman lying in the bed. She looked asleep. Her eyes were closed. Adele wanted to touch her, but something about the way the woman was sleeping made her feel scared.
“I think she must be in some kind of coma,” Nanny Jane replied.
“What’s a coma?”
Jane had that look on her face like she was trying to think of the best way to explain something. “It’s when you go to sleep and don’t wake up again for a long time.”
“Oh,” Adele said. “I know all about that.”
“You do?”
“Like in Sleeping Beauty,” Adele replied with a shrug. Sleeping Beauty was her favorite Disney movie ever. She must have watched it a thousand times. She liked the part at the beginning in the forest when the princess danced around with all the animals, and then the prince came and fell in love with her, and they all sang together.
I know you, I danced with you once upon a dream.
I know you, that gleam in your eye is so familiar a gleam.
Yet I know it's true that visions are seldom what they seem.
I know you. I know what you'll do.
You’ll love me at once the way you did once
Upon a dream.
It was funny because Adele dreamed about her mommy a lot. She knew what she looked like because Daddy had shown her a picture once, and her mommy looked like a beautiful princess in a long white dress. The woman in the bed looked a little bit like the woman in the picture, but different too. Maybe because she wasn’t smiling, and she had a tube running into her nose. But the hair was the same. She had long brown hair that reminded Adele of her own hair. That’s how Adele knew her nanny was telling the truth when she said this was her mommy – because little girls have hair like their mommies and daddies.
Adele wanted her to wake up and smile and look pretty again like she did in the picture. A new thought suddenly occurred to her. “We have to tell Daddy she’s here!” she said, turning to her nanny with wide eyes.
“He knows, sweetie.”
“No he doesn’t,” Adele protested, suddenly feeling like she wanted to cry. “He doesn’t know. He would have told me.”
Jane didn’t answer, but she came over and bent down, folding Adele in her arms. “How come he didn’t tell me?” Adele asked in a quavering voice.
“That’s a very good question,” Jane replied softly. Adele hated when grownups said that. If it was such a good question, how come they wouldn’t tell her the answer? She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. She was so confused right now. She had been getting ready for bed earlier when Nanny Jane had come into her room to get her. She’d looked funny – her face was all red and she was out of breath.
“Come on,” Jane had said in a rush, taking her by the hand and leading her out of the room. “We’re going for a ride in the truck.”
“But I’m in my nightgown!” Adele had protested. “I don’t have my shoes!”
“You don’t need them,” Jane had assured her, picking her up carrying her quickly down the stairs and out the front door. She had buckled Adele into the passenger seat and then went around and climbed up behind the steering wheel.
“Shouldn’t Daddy drive?”
“He isn’t coming.” Jane had tried to smile at her then but it looked fake. It made Adele feel scared. Grownups only fake-smiled like that when something bad was about to happen. Like getting a shot. They always fake-smiled like that just before she had to get a shot.
“I don’t want to,” Adele had started to whine, but Jane had ignored her. She had already turned the key in the ignition and was concentrating on pulling the truck out of the long driveway. She was driving way faster than Daddy usually drove, and then she’d turned onto the road in the direction they usually took to go into town. “Can we get ice cream?” Adele had asked.
“No, sweetie. That’s not where we’re going.”
“Where are we going?”
Jane hadn’t answered, but in another moment she was already pulling the truck up to the gates of the scary hospital they always drove past.
“Why are we going here?” Adele had asked as the truck came to a stop. She had watched as Jane took the key ring out of the ignition. Daddy’s key ring. Nanny Jane must have borrowed it.
“Hmmm?” Jane had murmured distractedly as she flipped through the keys, searching for the right one.
“Whhhhhyyyyyy?” Adele had asked again, her voice rising in agitation. Nanny had looked up from what she was doing and reached out to touch Adele’s face. “Where are we going?” Adele had asked her again.
“We’re going to see someone we both should have seen a long time ago,” Jane had told her as she reached across to unbuckle her seatbelt. “Come on, little girl. We’re going to see your mom.”
***
Adam stood at the kitchen sink, angrily clattering the pots and pans and splashing water all over the countertop as he washed up the dinner dishes and stewed over the argument he’d just had with Marcy. Why did she always have to be such a pain in the ass? It never failed – she’d been Jane’s best friend since they were all a bunch of 18 year old kids, and she’d been a thorn in his side every single step of the way. Even at the wedding, she’d managed to strike the one sour note in an otherwise perfect day. Of course, she’d been all smiles in front of Jane. She’d been the matron of honor, and she’d led a perfectly gracious toast for them after the ceremony, wishing them both well. But she’d pulled him aside at the end, just before it was time to cut the cake. He’d expected her to say the usual words of congratulations. But no, that wasn’t Marcy’s style. She’d smiled up at him and pulled him down to kiss him on the cheek, making a good show of it for anyone who might have been watching – and in his ear she had whispered through her gritted teeth, “I swear to God, Adam, if you hurt her I will make you sorry you were ever born.”
It still rankled with him. She’d been counting the days until he fucked it up. She was practically gloating now that she finally had something on him. To be fair, he knew, it was his own fault. He’d forgotten that she was scheduled to come for a visit this week, and now she’d caught him redhanded, canoodling with the nanny.
Of course, it meant nothing to Marcy that the nanny was actually a good girl. She was funny and sweet, and she liked taking care of him and Adele. She would make a good stepmother. He might even come to love her eventually – and if not, it wouldn’t be so hard with her to fake it. There was no way he was going to send her away now just to appease Marcy. Yes, technically it was wrong to be hooking up with someone else while he was still married, but was it really so terrible? His wife had been in a coma for three years now. Three years with no progress. Three years of him being alone out here with no adult companionship other than that silent, living statue that used to be his wife. Marcy had no idea what he was going through. It was all well and good for her to come out here and visit a few times a year, but she had a family of her own waiting for her back home. She wasn’t stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, with no other human being to talk to other than a toddler and a vegetable.
