Everyone but You by Sandra Novack Read Free Book Online

too, applied for work. They needed health insurance, and, even with their small house, for which Raulp’s parents had generously cosigned, there were mortgage payments, water bills, trash removal, prenatal doctor visits. It was simple to trace, Sylvia knew, how one thing got in the way of another, and then something else followed, until another life—one you never dreamed of—suddenly was yours for the keeping.
    They painted the spare room yellow. They rearranged furniture, picked out bedding. When she delivered, Raulp was there, helping her, urging her to push so hard she felt as though she might split open. Their daughter was born and taken right to intensive care. A respiratory complication, the doctor explained. In the days that followed, Raulp and Sylvia approached the baby’s incubator with all the hopeful trepidation of parents who wanted only for their sick child to be well. They reached through tiny holes and held their little girl’s hands, coaxing her to get better, to scream, to cry—anything—but after two days, the baby died.
    They rarely discuss the baby now, though in the first years following her death Raulp periodically brought up the idea of having another child. When he did, Sylvia told him there wastime, that they were still young, but really, she wasn’t sure if she could go through it all again. She reminded him that they were still paying medical bills from their first pregnancy—Raulp’s insurance didn’t offer full coverage until after a year at the bank—and that for all the worry and all that time, they had nothing. But she still sometimes thinks about the baby, and how fragile things can be in the world, how there is, in everything, a desperate struggle to survive.
    T HE MODEL SHOWS UP the next Monday evening, a newspaper tucked under her arm. Sylvia guesses the girl is no more than twenty-two. She has a smooth, round face and a full mouth, and she’s very slender. She brushes back a wisp of long brown hair. “I’m Reese,” she says. “I spoke with your husband on the phone?”
    “Is that a question?” Sylvia asks, thinking that there’s still time to tell this girl that she’s got the wrong address, the wrong husband, the wrong look. She lets out an embarrassing laugh before opening the door wider. She feels as if she has suddenly become transparent glass. “Can I get you something?” she asks. “Water, tea, bourbon?”
    “No thanks,” Reese says. “I’ll just wait in the hall.”
    “Of course.” Sylvia calls for Raulp. Reese slides awkwardly by, and it’s then that Sylvia notices the clubbish, sullen limp in the girl’s left foot. In the hallway, Reese stops at one of Raulp’s paintings, a moonlit landscape done in the style of the Romantics. She inspects it with interest. “This is good,” she says.
    “I support my husband in his brilliance.” Sylvia closes the front door. She doesn’t have the faintest idea what to talk about that wouldn’t involve the subject of both her husband and nudity,but she doesn’t want to leave this girl alone, either. She could be a scammer, Sylvia thinks. Anyone can answer a newspaper solicitation. So much deception can lurk under a clear complexion. So she stands next to Reese and pretends to admire the painting, and she’s relieved when Raulp eventually appears from his studio, shakes Reese’s hand, and introduces himself in a way that is much too exuberant for Sylvia’s taste. “Well, great!” he says, and shoves his hands anxiously in his pants pockets. “We can discuss payment in the kitchen.”
    “Perfect.” Reese follows along behind him. “I’m in college, so I always need a little extra cash.”
    “Raulp’s in night school,” Sylvia says. She trails after them both, listening, hoping in vain that Raulp will say he’s sorry but the gimpy leg is a deal breaker, though this, of course, does not happen. In the kitchen, instead, he pours them all iced tea while he and Reese work out schedules, payment, and