Cinnamon Smoke

“Happy New Years.” Rylan almost smiles as he tells Jadin this, but then his lips turn downward, sad and small.  “She’s beautiful,” he says as he sits down by Jadin’s daughter sleeping in the middle of the couch placed at the side of the living room, away from the loudest part of the New Year’s Eve party.

            He must have been outside smoking, even though winter had surely chilled his thin suit-coat and made its way up his dark sleeves and around his plain navy tie.  The powerful smoky smell drifts in the air around her.  She breathes it in, unsettled.

            Her heart pounds deeply.  She hasn’t seen him since Annalise had first started growing within her.

            “Thank you.  She’s five,” Jadin says, as if Rylan didn’t know how long he’d been gone.  She shifts and Annalise sleepily snuggles closer to her, stretching so her small feet brush Rylan’s leg.

            Even now, with Annalise in the middle, he is still too close.  The tension in her stomach that caused her hands to shake and a pale, clammy complexion to sweep across her face had been hard to hide after first noticing his unexpected presence at the yearly party.  She had lifted her head to find his blue eyes staring into her own brown ones from across the room.  Before turning away she had taken in the familiar tall, thin man with hair falling softly across his forehead and around his big ears. She had moved deliberately away then, hiding behind minimal conversation while searching him out behind the blurred vision of her emptying wine glass.  But Annalise was tired, it was nearing midnight, and Jadin had moved to a leather couch in the corner of the room where her daughter could rest.  And now she is stuck, Annalise’s head resting softly in her lap, her own smooth legs pressing into the cool leather couch beneath her party dress.

            She strokes through Annalise’s softly tangled cinnamon curls.  Her daughter’s hair is the same color as her own straight hair, but the lively curls come from her father.  Keagan is somewhere in the crowd.  But by now he is getting too drunk to think about his wife and tired child.  Jadin would drive them home later, though she isn’t sober either.  She would put Annalise to bed, and then take care of her husband who would be passed out by then somewhere near their bed, unless he only made it as far as the living room couch.  She thinks about he cool space on the left side of their double bed if he sleeps downstairs.  Goosebumps scatter their way across her arms.

            “Where have you been?” she says.  Rylan is watching the party, not her.  His eyes are light.  His hair is dark and thick.  He still has a little beard.  His suit looks new, but creased, from folding in a suitcase most likely.  His hands rest on his legs.  A small silver wedding ring shines on his left hand.

            She wonders how long he’s had that ring.  Groups of people are drinking and celebrating the coming of yet another year, their voices gaining volume with each sip of alcohol.  Soon midnight will strike and they will cheer and explode with newfound energy.  Their glasses will clink together like wedding bells.  They they’ll wake up with headache and go back to the same jobs and the same people.

            “I was staying with my brother in Chicago for a while.  He got me a job with his company.”  He says, and the smoke drafts towards her again.  She thinks a while is an inadequate description of a little more than five years.  And then he adds, “I got married two years ago though, I have a little girl too.”  His voice shakes.  “Why did you bring her with you tonight?”  His voice is still low, rasping on the last word.  He’s looking at Annalise intently; she knows he’s looking for features of himself in the child, even though there are none.

            “She gets scared when we leave her with a babysitter.  She’s not ready to be away from me yet.”  Then she adds quickly, “She’s Keagan’s.”

            His blue eyes lift to briefly stare at her.  Her eyes meet his, locking him in, but he wriggles his way out and looks away.  She wonders if he believes her, and if he wants to believe her.  He swallows, “How is he?”  The words are forced.

            “Keagan is…” she doesn’t know what to say about Keagan.  Rylan’s never even seen Keagan, or if he had he hadn’t known who he was, though she had been married to him when she met Rylan.  She had been married when she went to Rylan’s apartment those nights too.  Keagan had guessed, but never said anything, though he became more violent with her; when he saw Annalise he must have been convinced that she was his because he went back to ignoring Jadin, and staying out late.  Rylan had believed the bruise was from tripping, and that the twisted ankle had really happened on his front porch as she walked to his door one night.  He hadn’t known about her marriage until the guilt from a child pressing inside her made her confess.

            “You have a husband?” Rylan had said loudly, surprise causing his voice to sound extra loud and full of laughter.  She had backed up, afraid he’d hit her without letting her explain.  She had rubbed her hands across the cotton shirt on her stomach, despereatly praying to some god that the child forming inside her was Rylan’s.  She could get tested, find out, leave Keagan as she had planned.  But Rylan hadn’t waited to find out.  And after fives years her anger and pain had ebbed away, but it was flowing up her throat now.

            “It’s almost midnight,” Rylan says.  “Take her home before it gets too wile in here.” He stands up and she still can’t say anything.  “I’m going back to Chicago this weekend,” he continues.  “I came back to get some stuff from my parents.  They’re moving to Florida, retiring.  Kaylee…uh, my wife, stayed in Chicago for the week because she couldn’t take off work.” He looks at Annalise again, and Jadin looks with him, noticing her hair, her small hands, her hair – and then he walks away.  The smoke scent lingers.

            Jadin puts her hand on Annalise’s arm and watches as Rylan reaches into his coat pocket for his cigarettes.  Then the clock strikes midnight, the room fills with cheers, and the crowd swallows him in their enthusiasm.  Annalise sits up.

            “Mom, is it New Year?” She says, rubbing her eyes.

            “Yes.”

            “Happy New Year!” Annalise says as she bounces off of the couch.

            “Come on, Anna, lets go home.” Jadin says.  She will leave Keagan here; he will find a ride with a drunk friends.  She’s tired.

 

            The ten minute drive is loud with fireworks bursting into the sky.  The pops and whistling startle Annalise and she screams, tiredness making everything more frightening for her.  The sky flashes with red and white.

            At home Jadin carries Annalise to her bedroom.  The walls are blue.  She had known by then she was having a girl, but after staning in the store with paint swatches called Easter bunny pink, bubblegum, strawberry, and rose, handed to her by a salesgirl trying her best to help, she decided that the bucket of rich blue on the opposite shelf was what she needed.  She had brushed out her sorrow over all these walls.

            She tucks the blankets around Annalise now, already almost asleep.  Bending down to kiss her forehead she brushes the curled hair from her daughter’s face.  The lingering smell of cigarette smoke caught in the red-brown hair rises, and for a moment Jadin shuts her eyes.