I’d never hop onto his side of an argument, holler and spit in people’s faces, but I didn’t mind where we lived either.
* * *
—
BACK AT HOME, Billy had a surprise waiting for me in bed.
“Where the fuck did you get a cat?”
A fat orange tabby lay on my pillow, licking itself. His eyes were large and green and watched my every move. I went to the other side of the room to hang up my coat, and his eyes followed me the entire time. I immediately knew we were not going to get along.
“Super-cute, right?” Billy flopped on the bed and started rubbing the cat’s belly. He stretched and purred and, I swear, he smiled. “I feel like if he was a human he’d be chubby and his clothes would be stylish, redneck chic. A NASCAR dad that also reads The New Yorker. A lover, not a fighter.”
The cat’s purring grew louder and I wasn’t surprised—four legs, two legs, whatever, you’d have to be crazy not to love Billy Bradley.
When I first brought him home to meet Mom, he took his shoes off at the front door and ate every scrap off his plate, told Mom it was the best meal he’d had in a while, maybe ever. As he got up to go to the bathroom, she whispered loudly in my ear, “Hold on to this one.” He finished two more helpings and, before he left, kissed me on the cheek, and gave Mom a good long hug, told her he’d definitely be back. The second the front door clicked behind him, Mom was gushing. “Lovely! An absolutely lovely boy!” She adored everything about him, especially his Americanness. His very name made her want to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A year later, when I told Mom that I was pregnant, she cried tears of joy—her daughter would get to stay under her roof and she’d have an American husband and a true American baby.
“The Halperns’ little girl found him next to a dumpster behind the 7-Eleven. She wanted to keep him. Her parents wouldn’t let her, said he could have fleas.” Billy worked for his uncle’s landscaping company. They had a couple city contracts, but made most of their money mowing large lawns in rich neighborhoods.
“Lucky us.”
Billy frowned, sat up quickly. “Wait, are you mad? Please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad,” I said. “I just—”
“Look, you won’t even have to do any of the hard stuff.” He grabbed my wrists and kissed the back of my hands. “I’ll feed him, water him, change his litter box, you can just pet him and love him, read to him, maybe. I bet he would love it if you just sat with him in your lap and read from your books. I thought it could be a nice way to get ready. Plus, you know Billy Jr. is going to love having a furry friend around.”
He wrapped his arms around my waist, buried his face in my neck, pressed more kisses there. “Please don’t be mad.”
It took me a second, but I hugged him back.
“I’m not mad.” I kissed him once, on the cheek, pulled away, and looked at the cat. “I guess he is kind of cute. Does he have a name?”
“We’ll come up with something. We can ask Mom.” He pulled me back into his arms. “Why don’t you shower and change and come downstairs for dinner when you’re comfortable?”
One more kiss and he was out the door. I reached over to pet the cat and he hissed at me, ears flattened and eyes wild.
* * *
—
BILLY AND I wouldn’t have met if his parents hadn’t celebrated their twentieth anniversary in Costa Rica.
I was a junior with a bad haircut who ditched classes to smoke weed and nap in my car, had a few friends out of social necessity, sat quietly at corner tables in the cafeteria and read, repeating platitudes in my head like “Life is only just beginning,” trying to make them ring true. Billy was an honors student, the captain of the baseball team and the Mathletes, sat at a table in the center of the cafeteria and entertained his overpacked table—his laugh could be heard even once I’d dumped my tray and went outside.
But Billy’s mom wanted to go zip-lining and see a real live toucan, lie nude on beaches and drink colorful fruity drinks. Billy’s dad wanted what Billy’s mom wanted.
The trip was perfect until, on their last night, it began pouring rain and a sheep escaped from its pen. Excited by its newfound freedom, it ran into the street where Billy’s parents were driving, doing their best to imprint every detail of the Costa Rican landscape into their minds. Billy’s dad was a veterinarian; he swerved hard to avoid hitting the sheep, and their car spun on the slick road and off a cliff. The doctors said they both died instantly, painlessly.
Dad had died a week earlier. Soon, Billy was sitting across from me in a circle of other people who were dealing with Grief and Loss of a Loved One. The meetings were held in the local church every Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. The cookies were stale. Fortunately, the coffee was strong. We sat and listened as people wept and worried that they’d never be the same. Billy and I were the only two who never cried, although he did look sad, different, unlike the large, laughing boy whose warm presence I’d taken for granted.
One day after the meeting, he asked me if I liked ice cream. I said not really, but that I would go with him.
We sat in silence as he ate three separate cones. I was about to tell him that he could’ve saved money and just gotten a triple scoop when he blurted out that he felt bad that he didn’t feel more bad.
“Things really haven’t been so different since they died,” he said, looking down at his empty, sticky hands. “I didn’t see them much. They always seemed to love each other more than me, were always going on romantic dates or taking trips together. I kind of felt like their third wheel, an afterthought. The house has always been quiet.” He looked at me then, only for a second. “I just see all those people in there sobbing and I’m so damn jealous.” He chewed on his lip, began shredding the napkin in front of him, and I felt something in me twist and soften—I had the same nervous habit. “Sorry,” he said. “That was fucked up.”
I noticed his shoulders then, how strong they looked, like they were made of beef and steel. I pictured trees, mountains, boulders, birds’ nests, all of the Los Angeles skyline resting upon them.
I grabbed both of his hands in mine, tight. “Do you want to come back to my place?”
* * *
—
I LOCKED THE CAT in my room and went downstairs. Mom was knitting tiny sweaters in neutral colors while Billy was in the kitchen making pajeon shaped like barnyard animals. For the past couple weeks, Mom had been teaching Billy how to make basic Korean dishes: “The baby can have your hair. He’s going to have our taste buds.”
Mom came to the United States after her mom’s brother wrote to her that he’d found the promised land: Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. He owned a convenience store and could always use more help. After months of paperwork and waiting in long lines, Mom and her family were on a fourteen-hour flight straight to Chicago.
She was seventeen when they got there—young enough to be molded, not so young that she hadn’t already begun to want certain things, big things. She worked long hours at the convenience store, and when it was slow, studied English, determined to lose her accent, dreamed of the University of Illinois. All the UI students who came in to buy candy, cigarettes, condoms, and booze seemed so attractive and happy. She became obsessed with Americanness, wanted nothing more than to be a part of the red, the white, the blue.
One of the university students came in every morning to buy a pack of Luckies and two forties. He was tall and broad and 100 percent American, always smiled at her, asked her how her day was going, remembered her name, said it with a soft Midwestern twang as he walked out of the store. At night, he’d come back, buy two more forties, and wait until closing. They’d sit on the bus bench outside, talking for hours, passing the bottle back and forth, even though Mom hated beer.
Two months later, they were moving to Los Angeles. He wanted to write movies and make millions. She wanted him and
to wake up every morning, look out her window, see the Pacific Ocean. Eleven months later, I was born.
I stopped on the edge of the staircase and stared at Mom as she knitted and thought about how our house was thirty minutes from the beach.
She looked up and noticed me, smiled wide. “How are my babies doing?” Billy turned around and smiled too. They stopped what they were doing and got up to hug me. They formed a warm, loving wall around me, rubbed my belly, and whispered to it. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
We sat down and they started talking about what they always talked about.
First, they asked how I was feeling, and after I gave my usual “Fine, good. Yeah, I’m good,” they launched into more important subjects—what gender the baby would be (they both were sure it was going to be a boy), strong manly names (John, Matthew, Jacob, other Bible men, even though we weren’t religious), color of the nursery (a classic blue or a bold red), potential godfathers and godmothers (lots of names of family members I didn’t know), should we already start saving for private school (absolutely, yes), etc.
I nodded and smiled, said “uh-huh” at the right times. I was feeling fine until Mom brought up the name “Adam,” perfect for a first child.
My face stayed normal and I managed to eat more than half my plate, but I was gone, done for; my mind was on Jenny Hauser’s ponytail.
* * *
—
HER PONYTAIL was the longest I’d ever seen on a woman her age.
Most moms in my neighborhood kept their hair short or bobbed, muted, as if to have physical proof of their seriousness, their superior mothering ability—my thank-you card is nicer than your thank-you card, don’t you dare try and sign up for more Neighborhood Watch shifts than me, this marijuana is medicinal. Jenny’s hair spilled down her back, didn’t stop until it was hovering just above her butt.
She had to be at least forty, probably closer to forty-five. Her body looked soft, once fit. Her jeans were baggy and shapeless and there was a stain on the collar of her shirt. I hoped that the stain was new. It seemed more likely that she’d been wearing the same shirt for several days. There were lines around her eyes and mouth, two deeper ones on her forehead. I wanted to touch them with my fingertips, smooth them out. When she spoke, her voice cracked on the first word, like she hadn’t said anything out loud in a while.
“Jesus Christ,” she’d said. “Your uniforms are truly terrible.”
“I know.”
“Green and orange. Like Kermit the Frog fucked a pumpkin.”
“The Hulk ate a bunch of Doritos and took a shit.”
She laughed and her eyes got squinty, crinkled at the edges. I didn’t want to smooth out all her lines. “Truly, though, thank you for this,” she said. “I can’t believe you actually came.”
The air turned thick and I found it impossible to look her in the eye. I wanted to be wearing a big jacket and a hat I could pull down low. I mumbled, “No problem,” and handed her the pizza.
I was about to turn and sprint back to my car when she said, “Oh! I have to pay you!” She slapped her forehead. “And tip you! I absolutely have to tip you. Hold on, my wallet is lying around somewhere.”
She disappeared into her house and I stood there awkwardly, shifting my weight from foot to foot. I planned on politely waiting there, staying outside, but the door hung wide open and something caught my eye.
The home’s entrance was pristine, a word I’d never used to describe anything before. An intricate Persian rug, shoes lined up evenly on both sides, a center table topped with a vase of real flowers, fancy flowers, not corner-market $9.99-for-a-dozen roses, all of this underneath a crystal chandelier—none of this was what interested me.
The front of the house may have been pristine, but just beyond, into the living room, it was chaos.
There could’ve been another beautiful rug, there could’ve just been carpet, it was impossible to tell. Clothes covered every inch of the floor. On the couch there was an empty bag of Hot Cheetos, a half-eaten salad, a tub of cream cheese. The table was crowded with magazines and paper plates covered in various pools of paint. Seven chairs looked like they’d been brought in from the dining room and were serving as easels for her paintings.
I had never been alone in someone else’s house. Slow steps forward, a pause after each, a moment to consider the wrongness of what I was doing—how rude of me to violate her private space with my eyes, to let the bottoms of my shoes sink into her carpet and leave behind the filth of where I’d been, she would be back at any moment, what would I say then? The next minute I’d see something new that would wipe the guilt from my thoughts and leave behind only curiosity, bright and shiny and begging to be stroked—I couldn’t stop thinking about how, at one point or another, everything in the room had been touched by her hands. I walked through Jenny’s living room turning my head left and right, fists clenched at my sides.
I went to the nearest chair and inspected its painting closely—it was terrible. They were all terrible. Two were rudimentary portraits of turtles, two were blocky houses in open fields, one was full of unintelligible blobs, one was just three different shades of blue, the last was blank, still lovely with possibility.
“Yikes. Hi.”
I turned around to see Jenny standing behind me, a twenty in hand, and a look I couldn’t read on her face. We stood facing each other in silence among the clutter and paintings. All the apologies I could think of sounded more like pleas—I’m sorry, please, I do things without thinking and I don’t know how to stop. Before I could say anything, she surprised me again by laughing. “So—I guess now you really think I’m crazy.”
She cleared her throat. “So let me explain.”
She pointed to the floor. “Old T-shirts to catch any paint that I spill.”
She pointed to the couch. “I actually attempted a healthy lunch, but my mouth got bored. Have you ever tried dipping your Hot Cheetos in cream cheese? What? No? Do it. One-hundred-Michelin-star rating.” She paused. “Now, the paintings. What do you think?”
“Oh. Well.”
She laughed again and I found myself becoming used to the sound. “It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to worry. This isn’t a hobby of mine. I have no secret burning desire to become a painter. I was just in my son Adam’s room earlier and I realized he had no decorations on his walls and I thought I’d try and make some for him, brighten the space a little. As you can see, I forgot a very important detail.” She spread her arms wide. “I suck at art.”
“I like that one turtle,” I said. “His head is weird and dented. Like he got hit with something hard.”
“Yeah? Thanks. Turtles are Adam’s favorite animal. He wants to go to Hawaii so he can swim with them.”
I checked my watch; I’d been gone for way too long. I was about to ask for the money when I felt my lunch rising in me—a slice of pizza and a Snickers bars—ran toward a closed door that looked like it would lead to a bathroom, but was actually to a closet. I sunk down to my knees, grabbed the least expensive-looking thing, a rain boot, and puked in it.
The puke was watery—I could see a full, undigested circle of pepperoni—I puked some more and felt a hand on my shoulder, turned around to see Jenny hovering behind me. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I—”
“You’re pregnant.” She helped me off the ground, her smile stretched and warm, and I wished that a detail other than my pregnancy had made her look that way. “Congratulations! You doing this favor for me is proof you’re going to be a great mom.”
I almost puked more, but swallowed it down.
I didn’t know if I was noticeably showing yet and I was doing my best not to find out. In the mornings, before I showered, I’d undress with my back to the mirror. When I walked, I’d keep my head up and eyes focused straight ahead, I avoided looking down. It made my palms itch to think about the
day when I wouldn’t be able to fit into any of my clothes.
My hands went to my belly as if to cover it. “Thanks.”
She frowned. “You’re not excited.” It wasn’t a question. She said it firmly, unblinking, a statement.
I lied often. It was just simpler that way. As a little kid, I remember being told repeatedly that lying was bad, lying never fixed anything, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and never lied. But no one ever told me how wonderful and easy it was to lie, how many conversations it would save me from and the stares it would avert—“Yeah, I’m fine!” “What? No, I’m not mad!” “Don’t worry, it’s okay!”—and did Abraham Lincoln really never, ever lie? In bed at night during the Civil War, did he toss and turn and soak his sheets with sweat and eventually wake Mary Todd to tell her, “Hold me, I’m scared, I think I fucked up,” or did he lie awake and sweat quietly, working his hardest to remain still, to keep his mouth shut, to let Mary Todd sleep soundly and unaware?
Lying was simpler. I repeated this in my head over and over as I stood in Jenny’s living room looking at everything except her—each shitty painting, the blank canvas, the tub of cream cheese, the old T-shirts on the ground. I kept returning to one T-shirt. It was purple and had a large cobra head in the center with the words “Excellence is” underneath. The rest of the sentence was cut off by a Hawaiian shirt.
“Hey, you okay?”
I looked away from the cobra and back to Jenny. She was staring at me with wide eyes, her mouth hanging open a little. I noticed a piece of lettuce stuck between her bottom front teeth and I desperately wanted to reach over and pull it out, let my fingers linger in her mouth and spit, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to lie, even if it was easier.
“No,” I said. “I’m not excited.”
She looked away from me and I regretted saying anything, regretted that I spoke truth and it revealed my ugliness, let it breathe and writhe in the daylight. Then she looked back at me and said, “Good.”
Pizza Girl Page 2
