Lymber craft's Arc

Chapter 22 of 70

The parenting blog interview held for a week, and then the comments moved on to someone else. Lymber should have felt lighter. Instead she stood in her mother's upstairs bathroom on a Tuesday morning and looked at herself in the big mirror over the sink. Her hair was tied back and greasy at the roots. Her cheeks had gone soft in a way she did not recognize. Her stomach under the t-shirt still pushed out, low and heavy. Violetta was six weeks old and sleeping in the room across the hall. Lymber's next planned photo was Sunday, a sit-down shot for a follow-up piece the blog had asked for. She had four days. She turned sideways and pulled the shirt tight and hated what she saw. She went downstairs and found Paul at the kitchen table with Violetta in the crook of his arm. She said she couldn't do the follow-up in this house. She said every time she looked in that mirror she saw her mother's mirror and her mother's kitchen and the girl who had walked out of the gym with a crown on. She said she needed her own place before Sunday or she would cancel the shoot and lose the story. Paul looked at her for a long time. He said, there's a rental across the road. He said he had walked past it twice this week. Small. Three beds. He said, we can afford it if we stop buying things. Lymber said, today. Paul said, okay. They called the number on the sign before lunch. The landlord met them at the door with a ring of keys and did not ask about the baby on Paul's shoulder. The house was one story, brick, with a window box out front and a kitchen that smelled like old paint. Three small bedrooms in a row. Lymber walked through it once and picked the middle room for Violetta. She signed the lease at the kitchen counter with Paul's pen. They moved the crib and the car seat and two garbage bags of clothes across the road that afternoon. Polly watched from her front step with her arms folded and did not come over. Lymber set Violetta down in the new room and stood at the front window. Her mother's house was right there, close enough to see the kitchen light. On Sunday the blog would come and photograph her on a couch that was hers, in a room her mother had not arranged. Lymber went into the new bathroom and looked at the new mirror. The face was the same face. The room behind it was not. She thought, this one I can work with.