Free Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott Page A

Flora out for as long as you can if the weather’s good. She sleeps better when she’s been out all day.” She turned to Ana as if we had all left the room.
    “It’s going to be as hot as hell in Manhattan ,” she said. Despite the curse word, she was smiling under her long nose, anticipating something delightful—perhaps what a fine time she would have in Manhattan while we were all back here trying to wear Flora out. I thought of my own summer visits to the city with my parents, the stifling streets, the gritty air, the hot smell of the subway blowing up from those heel-catching grates.
    Women in short white gloves and sleeveless dresses, touching shoulders, sweating, waiting in crowds at corners for the light to change. And that moment of disorientation and fear when we left the Music Hall or the
Museum
of
Natural History
or the restaurant (Patricia Murphy’s) where we’d gone for dinner, and saw that the sky above the city was now pitch dark—that the city had become a city at night. I was pretty certain that it was this particular city, the city at night, that Flora’s mother was bound for—and delighted to be bound for—while we, the caretakers, stayed behind.
    “I must be out of my mind,” she said, turning away from us, clearly pleased with herself but still annoyed with Flora, because she did not give her a kiss goodbye, although Flora, weary from weeping, didn’t seem much to mind.
    From the kitchen window, I saw her cross the driveway, Ana scurrying behind with a small valise that she stopped to put into the back seat of the car while Flora’s mother went on, through the side door of her husband’s workshop. I didn’t recall ever seeing her go in there, and she wasn’t inside for more than a few minutes when she came out again, her face harder and tighter than before, the white sweater buttoned at her throat and thrown over her shoulders like a little Superman cape of resolve and indignation. She gestured to Ana, and Ana quickly got into the car. Then she turned on her heels once again and came back into the house. I heard her shoes on the wooden floor, across the hallway, through the living room, back into the carpeted bedrooms, and then, a few minutes later, out again. I looked at Daisy, who was used to the permutations in the weather of a house with people in it. She shrugged and smiled. Then Flora’s mother once again appeared in the kitchen door.
    “My scarves,” she said, and I pointed to the top of the refrigerator, where she had placed them. She reached up and took them down, sorted through them, and then chose the turquoise-and-white one, placing the others on the kitchen table right in front of me. I took the moment to introduce Daisy, and although she seemed hardly to hear, she did say, as she shook out the scarf, pausing to examine a small hole the diaper pin had made, “What a pretty dress. I had one just like it.” She then folded the scarf into a triangle and placed it over her hair, leaning her head back as she did, her eyes half closed. She tied it under her chin and then wrapped the ends around her neck and tied them again.
    “You might also want to come by a little earlier while I’m gone,” she said.
    “Eight or eight-thirty or so, to give Ana a hand.” I said that I would. She leaned down to look at her reflection in the side of the toaster. On my lap, Flora said, “Bye-bye, Mommy,” and Mommy said, “Bye-bye, dear.”
    She straightened up. In the scarf she seemed very tall and very elegant, but homely, too, without her dark hair to soften the hard lines of her face and that gray, precise skin.
    “If my husband tries to fuck you while I’m gone,” she said softly, “don’t be frightened. He’s an old man and he drinks. Chances are it will be brief.” She cupped her fingers to the back of Flora’s head, which put her hand right under my chin.
    “You can always send him to Ana, if you want,” she said, and then bent down, the fragrant scarf right at my