by Pete Fromm
He lifts her up. The bathroom. The towel. The smear of zinc oxide. Lights off. Back to the crib, but still she screams. He sits in the rocker, wonders if he’ll eventually wear through the floor, crash into the basement. He should have peed while he was up.
She goes quiet, but every time he peeks, her eyes are still open.
When he stands, as if carrying pure nitro, her eyes widen. At the first hint of separation, her face begins its crunch. Her lip curls down. “I got to pee,” he says, nearly begging.
She starts up. He puts her down. Moves the rolled towel. She raises the decibel level.
“Pee,” he says again. “As if you don’t know what that’s about.”
He leaves her. She screams as if he’s falling into the abyss.
The light off, he sits on the toilet, holds his head, knows for certain that it is possible to go insane. That he’s close already.
When he stands, forgets to flush, she is only screaming harder. At the door he turns left instead of right. Goes into their room instead of Midge’s, lies down on the unmade bed, the stained mattress only flipped over. He pulls the crumpled pile of cleaned sheets and blankets over himself, clamps a naked pillow over his head, and whispers, “I’m sorry, Marn, I’m sorry.”
He wakes just before six, automatically. The next feeding. But the house sits deathly still around him, dawn not quite there. His breathing jerks and he sits up, remembers. His feet hit the floor and he’s up before he knows it, staggering with vertigo, but still driving down the hall, a punch-drunk has-been.
The nightlight flashes on. And she is there, asleep. Her mouth just barely slack around her thumb. He has to hold on to the side rail. Even in the gray light, half covered in a tangle of blanket, she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. “Okay, second,” he whispers to Marn.
No, she says, the most.
He slide-steps back to the door, turns, retreats down the hallway, then goes back, just to make sure, before finally letting himself crawl back under his nest of blankets and pillows in his own room. He will only wait, arise at the first sound, bottle ready. He will do everything right. Marnie will not be afraid of him. For her.
And then he smiles, thinking of Midge in her crib, getting over the hump, settling herself, thinks of Marnie in this bed, with him, marveling over the genius of their child, thinks even of the Murphy bed he’d started on, how he’d laughed over it, wondering how he and Marn had never thought of one for their house. “Your mother,” he whispers. “Make it all up, turn the sheets down, let her slide in, tiptoe over, tip it up, swoosh, gone.”
Marnie laughs, says, It would have been so perfect, and, falling asleep, Taz dreams of her, as he has not since the day sliding nude into the North Fork, that first time, before they’d even thought of Midge.
Midge’s first squawk brings him almost back, and he rolls in his blankets and pillows, looking for Marn, reaching to find her hip, to spoon in, cup a breast.
He opens his eyes. He is only in a pile of bedding. Alone. He listens for Midge, but she’s gone quiet. Even the air waits as he holds his breath.
He sinks back toward the dream, the skin of her. He reaches down, the stupid, useless strain of his own skin and blood and desire. He runs his fingers over it the way she did, seeing if he was ready. Around the ridge, the entire head. It jumps in his hand as if his fingers have become hers. “Oh boy!” she would say, almost a giggle.
He tries, as he would have as a teenager, to picture her breasts, the surge and sway of them as they drive into each other, or the gentle prickle of her shaved mound, her ass cupped in his hands, lifted from the bed. But, as he runs her fingers up and back, all he can see is her face, her smile, her lower lip caught between her teeth, as if amazed at their boldness together. The dimple in her left cheek, a toddler’s fall into a table corner, a place he has fitted his tongue into, just as he has her ears, the corner of her jaw, the hollow between her collarbones. Every inch of her.
Flat on his back, as lost in her as ever, he comes over himself with a groan, her name pulled from him as if he’s tied to her by his sinews. “Marnie,” he cries, choking back a sob, then unable to as they wrack him, pulling at his insides as if they will empty him, turn him inside out. His ribs strain, his sternum cracking. He rolls onto his stomach, curls onto his elbows and knees, face pressed into the mattress, the pillow, huge gulping choking wails, soaking the sheet pile. He feels her arms around him, clutching, the way she did sometimes, as if they could never be close enough. “Oh fuck,” he moans. “Oh, Marn,” and she moves her hands, rubbing his back, patting him, whispering, Shh, shh, you’ll be all right, you’ll be okay.
From the other room Midge answers with her own wailing and he beats his fists against the sides of his head, and she takes hold of his wrists, stills his hands, pulls his head tight to her breast, and keeps whispering, Shh, shh, shh.
After she is fed, he lies with her beside the little mobile. He spins the rattle. He squeezes the round thing, not sure what it is. Saturn maybe. It quacks. Midge waves her arms. He can’t help it. He smiles. “Marnie,” he says. “You should see her. You did so good.”
She struggles to roll over. Taz does too. There’s a day ahead of him. Laundry to do again. Sheets. Blankets. Everything they own. He’ll have to call Marko.
Instead, he pushes himself up, starts the washer, dumps in the pile from the bed, closes the lid. He makes himself a sandwich, fills the water bottle, a thermos with what’s left of the coffee. Picks Midge up, blows a raspberry against her naked belly. Slips her into a onesie. Trusses her into the car seat. Off to face the debilitating drop-off, another day of work.
DAY 60
Hards stands in the living room, his list in her hand, a smile she can’t quite hide. “You sure you didn’t forget anything?” she asks.
“I know. It’s just, god, it’s, it’s just, I mean, you wouldn’t believe that day care.”
She looks at him.
“I’m, she’s . . . We’re not used to it, being apart.”
“I know,” Hards says.
“And, really? Dan is coming over later?”
“It’s the weekend. A practice run. But don’t you dare tell him I called it that.”
Taz looks at her. Her best friend on the planet. “Are you two . . .”
She nods shyly, something not nearly committed enough.
“Be careful,” he says, as if care has anything to do with it at all.
He leans into the crib, gives Midge a kiss on the forehead, tells her not to light any more fires, to quit playing with the knives. At the door he picks up his tool belt, another new place today.
He snags the yellow pad from the table, touches Hards’s elbow, says, “I’ve got my phone,” and walks out into the world.
DAY 62
It is not going to work. At all.
Hards and Dan. They had their weekend. Their chance to play, to imagine, to fantasize. Probably went back home and rutted like stoats, an expression Taz’s father used to use. He imagines it, though he doesn’t want to, the two of them tearing it up in every room, pretending they’re making their babies, their family, their happily fricking ever afters. It flips, as he knew it would, to Marnie clutching at the couch upholstery, trying to hang on, to stay off the floor, then failing, trying to avoid the rug burns, his knees already glazing, something that will burn like acid, but only later.
He sits on the half-collapsed couch, the house darkening around him, listens for Midge in her crib, but the house is silent. He rubs at his eyes, the two of them so hot, so sweat-slicked, so unable to stop, to imagine ever wanting to, ever being able to.
He stands, wipes at his eyes, walks around the living room, avoiding, as long as he can, the first step into the kitchen, spinning the computer toward him. He drops down into the chair, and, elbows to knees, he holds his head, closes his eyes, practices his breathing.
No matter the money situation, Marn was going to stay home. She was going to raise Midge. They’d talked about homeschooli
ng, then worried about the religious freaks, the conspiracy kooks, social bonding.
To Hards, who couldn’t make it after the weekend, was never thinking of a long-term thing, he’d said, “It’s going to be mostly shop work anyway,” as if that meant he’d need no help, as if he could just shift Midge from shaper table, to saw table, to jointer bed.
How did normal people do it? How did they even know how?
There was Rudy. And he’d do it.
Or her mother. Lauren.
He thought of Mary Poppins again. But he lived in Montana. People in New York had nannies. Hell, they imported them from Montana. And, for christ’s sake, he was a broke, half-assed finish carpenter slash cabinetmaker. As far from log homes as he could get, yes, but still only what his father had left him. All he’d ever had.
He could afford a nanny like he could afford . . . He couldn’t even finish the thought. Afford? He couldn’t afford a single thing. They’d hardly ever been able to.
He pushes himself up straight, opens the computer, sees the green glow of the dot from down under, clicks in the call before he can stop himself, prays it’s his mother who answers.
And, one prayer finally answered, her face appears before he’d have guessed the satellites, or whatever it is, could have traveled so far. She looks half frightened. He tells her quick that everything is fine. Midge is fine. Flustered, she tells him that his father is out, won’t be back till dinner. “Fishing,” she says.
“Good,” Taz says, and she lets loose a tiny, shy smile, and says, “What is it, Ted?”
“I was wondering,” he starts, but does not finish.
His mother waits, finally says, “Taz?”
“I’m—” he says, and rubs at his face. “I’m not quite, I’m not . . . I’m not really making it here.”
She closes her eyes. “I’d come, Ted, you know that, months ago, but, your father, he—”
“I know, Mom,” he says. “I know. But I was wondering, you know, about visas.” He hadn’t once thought about such a thing, but he goes on. “Work visas, you know? If there’s any work down there for finish carpenters. If I’d be allowed.”
She blinks. Stops looking around the room. Stares right at him. She says, “I don’t know, Taz.” Her lip, he can see, even with the lousy, shifting image, trembles. “But, Christchurch,” she says, “I think, since the quake, they’ll take anyone.”
He says, “Okay.”
“It’s a long way from here,” she says. “The South Island. But you’d love it. It’s like Montana with oceans. Midge could . . .”
He chews his lip.
“I’ll talk to your father,” she says. “As soon as he gets back.”
He only nods.
She asks, “Ted? What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m just wondering, you know. Like if things might be any easier down there.”
She says, “Are you serious about it?”
He blows out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “I don’t have any idea, Mom. About anything.”
She holds her hand up, fingers wide, presses it close, too close for the camera. Like a prison-visit touch. “My god,” she says. “To see you again. To finally see Midge.”
He feels he might smother.
“It’s been so hard,” she says, all she can get out.
“Not exactly walking on cake here either,” he says.
He lies, says he hears Midge, that he’s got to go. She talks fast, rushing out promises to call after she’s talked with his father. They’ll look into things for him, she says.
“Great,” he says. “That’d be good.”
He closes the computer. Sell the house? His tools? Just flee? Some brand-new start? Leave every last scrap of Marnie behind? Him and Midge?
The next morning Rudy finds him still sitting at the kitchen table, the computer closed before him, no coffee on the stove. He lifts an eyebrow, and Taz says, “Called New Zealand last night.”
Rudy stops folding the newspaper he’d been reading on the porch. “What’s that like? Calling a whole country?”
Taz doesn’t crack a smile and Rudy sets the paper on the table in a kind of wad. “Hards told me about their weekend,” he admits, as if he’d been spying.
Taz reaches out, fiddles with the edge of the newspaper. “That’s what you do now?” he asks. “Sit out there and read the newspaper?”
“You called your dad?” Rudy says.
“My mom,” Taz says, then, “Do I get the paper?”
“Your neighbor’s.”
Taz works on sorting it, folding it back up. “Rubber band?”
Rudy holds it out.
Taz goes back out, pitches it across toward the neighbor’s porch.
Back in the kitchen, Rudy’s rocking on the chair’s rear legs. He says, “Some serious long-distance day care. Would she stay, or just make the commute every day?”
“Travel’d probably go the other direction.”
Rudy drops the chair back down with a thump, sits watching him until Taz finally says, “I know, I know.”
“And what? Work with your dad again? How long’d that last before one of you killed the other?”
“I just called, Rude.”
“You wouldn’t last one second.”
“I wasn’t thinking of working with him.”
“So, what, move down there for day care? What the hell planet are you on?”
“She is her grandmother, Rude.”
“What about Marn’s mother?”
“I don’t know, she—”
“She raised Marnie,” Rudy says.
Taz dips his head. “True,” he says.
“And there’s the cooking,” Rudy says. But he can’t quite keep it going. “Your mom? She wouldn’t come back? Not even for a little bit? See the grandkid?”
“Can’t see her getting it past my dad.”
Rudy says, “I suppose not,” but then lights up, snaps his fingers. “I’ve got it!”
Taz waits.
“A wet nurse!” Rudy says. “Do they still have those?”
Taz puts a hand up over his eyes, rubs at them.
“Well, you got to admit, it’d be pretty hot.”
DAY 70
Rudy lays off for the next few days, off on one of his secret missions, and Taz does what he can without power tools, taking Midge with him once on a measurement job, Marko floored, but the owner delighted.
He calls Lauren, just to test the waters, but when he gets the voicemail he loses his nerve, clicks off without a word, though he knows she’ll see his number there.
He’s sitting at the table, putting together the numbers from the measurements, sketching out a buffet that might fit the pseudo-Craftsman Marko’s building, when he stops, thinking he heard a tapping. He turns toward Midge’s room, but it comes again, from the front door, and Taz gets up, steps over, wondering why Rudy’s gotten so formal. But, instead of Rudy, it’s hardly even a kid standing in his doorway, looking at him, her smile growing less certain by the second as Taz stares. He’s thinking, Girl Scout cookies? when she says, “Rudy sent me.”
He hears the formula water coming to a boil. “Rudy?”
“He says you call him Rude?” She dips her head toward her shoulder. “Which I totally get.”
He turns toward the kitchen, the kettle, then back to her. “Sent you for what?”
She pulls at her lower lip with her teeth. “He said you have the most beautiful baby in the world.”
He looks away. “Rudy talks a lot.”
“I don’t think he’s far off,” she says, and it comes to him, the girl in the bar, dipping the glasses, that one quick peek she’d shot at Midge.
“He said—” she starts, but then looks back out to the street, anywhere but at him. So, Rudy had told her everything. “He said that you might be looking for someone to watch her. That you could maybe use a hand. During the days. So you can work.”
“That’s what Rudy says?” She looks
about fifteen.
She turns back to him.
“How old are you?” he says. He’s not sure what he’s expecting. Mrs. Doubtfire, maybe.
“Twenty-two, and, yes, I know, I’ll be getting carded at fifty.” She looks to the ceiling. “I’ve heard that one before.”
“And you’re looking for work?”
“I’ve got two sisters. Five, seven. A brother, too, eighteen.” The slightest eye roll. “Yeah, there was round two. The new wifey, the second fam.” She does almost a curtsy. “And guess who got to raise them.”
“Doesn’t sound like you wanted to.”
She flashes a duh look, makes it disappear before he’s quite sure he’s seen it. “It’s different, you know, if it’s your choice. Or, you know, if you get paid.”
Taz says, “I do know that,” and they stand there, looking at each other, until he finally says, “You want to come in?”
She steps in about three feet. Takes in the floors, the stripped trim, the wavy-glassed double-hungs. “Rudy says you did this all yourself.”
Taz says, “I didn’t.”
She looks once, quick, then away. “Yeah,” she says. “That’s what he really said.”
“So, you’re looking for work.”
“I’ve got one more year of school. Then student teaching.”
“Sounds busy.”
“It’s not exactly rocket science.”
“It’s all rocket science to me.”
She smiles. “That just means you’ve got at least a clue.”
“Is school on now?” he asks. He walks to the windows, looks for the cars jamming every parking space.
“Mr. Davis, Rudy told me—” she starts, but Taz interrupts, says, “It’s Taz,” and closes the window, the day getting hot. “Not Mr. Davis.” For christ’s sake, he’s what, six years older? Seven?
Still, though, seven years. A quarter of his life. Exactly how long he’d known Marnie. His whole life.
“Taz?” she asks.
