After Alix finally closed the door behind Laney and her family, she pulled out her phone again. Correction, she texted her friends. I hate everyone except for my sitter.
You better give that girl a raise, Tamra said.
Or an Edible Arrangement! Rachel replied.
That night, Briar went to bed with her new fish on her nightstand, one of the few gifts Alix didn’t place in a donation bag. Newly three-year-old Briar promptly named the fish Spoons, and watched it swim in circles until she fell asleep.
Five
Just as Emira decided to distance herself from the now three-year-old girl, to check Craigslist and Indeed every day, and to only apply for jobs that hired adults and offered very adult benefits, Mrs. Chamberlain stepped in hard. The night at Market Depot had done something to her, and she tried to right the night’s wrongs with a forced casualness that made Emira quite cagey. Since that night, Mrs. Chamberlain started returning home at six forty-five, sitting down across from Emira, and referencing conversations that they’d never had. “Emira, remind me what you majored in?” “Tell me where you live again?” “Did you say that you had any allergies?” The timing couldn’t have been worse. These were the questions you asked at the beginning, and not at what Emira was trying to make the end. But for a part-time gig, the money was decent, making it difficult to get excited about potential jobs that offered less money and zero Briar. Every other Friday, Alix handed Emira an envelope with six hundred seventy-two dollars inside.
Two weeks after the night at Market Depot, this envelope felt particularly fat. On the front porch, underneath a flushed sunset, Emira peeked inside the envelope flap to reveal twelve hundred dollars in cash. A small note on thick card stock was paperclipped to the hundred-dollar bills with Alix’s brilliant handwriting on one side. Emira—, it read.
This is for the past two weeks, Briar’s birthday, and the awful night when you completely saved us. Thank you for everything. We love having you and we’re here for you.
Xo P, A, B&C.
Emira looked down the street. She laughed, whispered “Fuck,” and immediately purchased her first leather jacket.
The subway was packed. Emira was pleasantly late to meet Zara, Shaunie, and Josefa for a dinner, followed by drinks, followed by all the other practices of twenty-somethings in the nighttime. Everything she wore looked shiny next to her new jacket. It was black with asymmetric zip fastening and was cropped just above her hip. The belt hung effortlessly at her sides, and she let the silver zippers sit open at her forearms. Emira’s jacket came in at two hundred thirty-four dollars, making it the biggest purchase she’d ever made other than her bed frame and laptop. With one hand holding the subway pole, and the other texting Zara that she was on her way, Emira found it both funny and sad that she could feel so cheap in the most expensive thing she owned. She turned her earbuds up loud and balanced into the subway’s turns.
Behind Emira was a family of six, very much not from Philadelphia, and the mother was calling out, “The next stop is ours. Does everyone hear me?” Underneath her music, she listened to the conversation to her left, where a man in a suit was saying he needed an excuse to not attend a family function. The woman next to him said, “I don’t mind if you blame me.” Emira’s hip bones were prominent beneath her black leggings, and when she caught a flash of her gold multi-chain necklace, she flattened it out against her chest in the window reflection of fast-moving concrete and darkness. She smoothed her bangs and the dark waves at her shoulders, and in the space between one song ending and another beginning, she heard someone call her name.
Emira turned to see [email protected]. Over baseball hats and ponytails and shoulders, he said her name again, but this time he said, “Emira Tucker.” Emira readjusted her grip on the subway pole and found herself remarkably nervous.
He was cuter this time around, partially because Emira wasn’t babysitting or being accused of a crime, but he was also just cuter on his own. Kelley Copeland had dark hair and eyes; a long, pale face; and a big, strong-looking chin that for some reason implied he’d played sports all through college. Emira smiled from one side of her mouth, and Kelley said, “Excuse me,” as he inched his way toward her.
“Do you remember me? Of course you do, hi.” Kelley laughed as he answered his own question. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’ve drafted about six emails to you and I’ve never sent them.” He paused. “I’ve gotta know if you quit or not.”
Emira was still startled by his very tall and friendly presence. She crossed her standing legs and said, “Sorry, what?”
“Sorry,” he said. “I was curious if you quit your nanny job.”
Kelley Copeland was so tall that he could press his hands flat against the top of the subway car, which was what he did in front of Emira. Emira thought this was both a painfully obvious show of masculinity and also insanely attractive.
“Ohh, sorry,” Emira said. “Well . . . I’m actually not a nanny.”
“Wow,” he said. “So you did quit. Good for you.”
“Oh no, I’m still working.” Emira switched her purse strap from her right shoulder to her left. “But yeah, I’m just a sitter. I’m not a nanny.”
“Can you tell me what the difference is?” Kelley asked. “I’m not trying to be weird, I honestly don’t know.”
The subway car stopped and Emira stepped out of the way of a man with four shopping bags as he exited the train. Kelley motioned the empty seat to her, and Emira sat down. “Nannies are full-time,” she said. “They’re salaried and they get bonuses and vacations. And babysitters are part-time and they do like . . . date nights and emergencies.”
“Okay, gotchyou,” Kelley said. “Sorry, I thought I heard you say you were a nanny at the store that night.”
“No, yeah, I said I was a nanny so that guy would leave me alone,” Emira explained. “Which obviously worked really well.”
“Right.” Kelley gave her the kind of goofy, annoyed look that passengers exchange when there’s a loud, drunk person on a train, or when the conductor keeps announcing that there will be more delays. “Well, if you stayed you obviously had a reason to. But I’m hoping you got a raise at the very least.”
Emira swiped a strand of hair out of her lashes and the zipper at her sleeve jingled delightfully. She smiled and said, “They took care of me.”
Kelley leaned both of his hands on the bar above Emira’s head. “Where are you going right now?” he asked.
Emira raised an eyebrow. She looked up at him and couldn’t help but think, Really? It was Kelley’s casual determination mixed with the sight of twelve uncreased hundred-dollar bills that gave her the spirit to think, You know what? Yeah, okay. Fuck it. She pursed her lips and said, “Dinner with some friends. And then Luca’s. Why?”