A nursing home having a bingo birthday party. Two roommates, both accountants at the same firm, who were ditching work and playing Xbox in their underwear. A couple at a bar already drunk and arguing over a bag of Doritos. The lady so large that it was hard for her to get off her couch, who always hollered at me to come in—the door was unlocked, leave the pizza on the couch next to her, money was on top of the TV set. A dude who smiled and tipped well, but was certainly an asshole—no non-asshole has a lime-green Camaro. The guy who worked at the crematorium who once told me, “I like to get high and burn bodies”; he also liked pepperoni, sausage, and onions.
Fortunately, one of my favorite regulars also called in.
Rita Booker and her husband, Louie, gave me hope that it was possible to make it into your thirties with the same person and still be in love.
They’d always answer the door together, wrapped around each other, usually minimally clothed. They barely looked at me as they paid. Rita would ask me how I was doing, how was that man of mine, wasn’t life wonderful?—all while staring directly into Louie’s eyes. Sometimes she would stroke my face and smile at Louie. “Look at this caramel. I hope our future babies are as pretty as she is.”
When they answered the door that day, he was shirtless and in basketball shorts. She was naked underneath one of his button-downs and I could see her nipples through the soft pink material. I handed her their large Buff Bleu Chick and made sure to keep my eyes on hers.
“How’s it going, girl?” Rita smiled at me, was immediately distracted by Louie nibbling on her ear. He gave me a quick grin, a wink. I knew she didn’t need an answer, so I just smiled back. “That’ll be $19.99.”
Louie pulled a wad of bills out of his shorts and handed me a twenty plus a solid tip as Rita fixed her attention on his neck. They laughed and ran their hands over each other’s bodies, searching, mapping, squeezing spots that spoke to them. I normally didn’t break through their haze, just took the money and walked back to my car, but that day I had to know—“How do you guys stay so happy?”
They turned to me and their cheeks had a lovely rosy flush, and if I’d had a camera I would’ve snapped a picture of them right there. Once I got home, I would’ve stared at the photo and pulled out a set of paints, mixed until I got the exact color of their cheeks.
Louie shook the box in his one hand and played with the collar of Rita’s shirt with the other. “Pizza and sex seems to help.”
“Seriously, though,” I said.
“I mean, we’re being pretty serious.” Rita looked at Louie, a stone-melting look. “Like, yeah, pizza and sex is not all it is, but when you’re with someone that you love—like, really love—you work through whatever shit that’s managed to stick to you over the years, and when you want to punch walls, or rip out your hair, or if you feel like if you opened your mouth only screams would come out, you remember those pizza-and-sex days.”
They started kissing with tongue, so I thanked them and wished them all the best.
* * *
—
I CIRCLED AROUND THE BLOCK three times and still got to Jenny’s house early. It was 4:23 and I didn’t want to look overeager. I parked my car a few houses down and put the radio’s volume at 10, 11, 12, back to 11, stared at the clock.
4:24
The song that was on the radio said the word “release,” over and over. The drumbeat was too aggressive and I felt it weirdly in my elbows and knees. I changed the station and focused on making my thoughts unfocused.
4:25
A Christian Rock station. The song wasn’t annoying, wasn’t saying anything like “I love you, God. You are everything, God. God likes his steak rare.” The song was slow and soft, not many lyrics, just a few “Hallelujahs” exhaled here and there.
4:26
Would I ever carry a briefcase? How many times in a row did you have to listen to a song you loved before it became a song you liked hearing every now and then? Is it only called a nervous breakdown if there’s someone there to point at you and be, like, “Yo, get your shit straight, you are nervous and you are breaking down”? The heart of a shrimp is located in its head.
4:28
Dad used to carry a briefcase, even when he was working jobs like graveyard-shift mall security, office janitor, mover—and there was an odd stint when he had a paper route—he’d put his briefcase into the bike’s front basket as he cruised around the neighborhood tossing the L.A. Times into people’s front yards.
The briefcase never had much in it: a sci-fi paperback, a few sheets of paper, pens stolen from dentists’ offices and car dealerships, jelly beans. Dad would put a couple green ones in my hand, my favorite, and say, “You need the briefcase. People don’t take you seriously without the briefcase. How would it look if I was walking around with just a pack of jelly beans in my hand?”
4:30
I got out of the car and hit the lock button twice, started walking toward Jenny’s house.
* * *
—
I ONLY HAD TO KNOCK ONCE before the door swung open and a little boy in dirt-stained clothes answered.
We stared at each other and I tried to think of something to say, but I found quiet children to be strange, unnatural. I would’ve been less alarmed if he’d answered the door hopping up and down, screaming. He just stood there, staring, mouth closed and tight; even his blinks seemed solemn.
We were saved by Jenny sliding into view, nearly falling over. “I forgot how slippery these floors get when you’re wearing socks.” She hugged me, and I was rigid for a moment, shocked by the easy intimacy, and then I leaned into it and breathed deep. “I see you’ve met the most beautiful boy in the world. I swear, he’s not usually this dirty. He just got home from baseball practice.” She ruffled his hair. “This is Adam.”
Adam remained staring. His eyes were the same shade of brown as Jenny’s. “Adam,” Jenny said, “can you thank this nice lady for the pizza? Remember how good it was last week?”
“It was okay,” he said. “Thank you, though.”
My chest twisted at this muted, muttered thank-you. A part of me wanted to shake the kid, change his face, and the other felt achy, bruised, a flash of recognition and fear. I remembered being a quiet little kid, constantly aware and uncomfortable with the ways grown-ups talked to me, how much they seemed to want from me.
Jenny took the pizza and handed me another too-much tip. “So—how’re you doing? You look a little more worn out than the last time I saw you.”
“I’m doing okay,” I said, wondering if my equally bland response would catch Adam’s attention, warm him to me.
“Well,” Jenny said, “if you’re not, there’s a support group that meets every Thursday at eight-thirty p.m. at that little church between the hardware store and the doughnut shop. It’s for expecting moms and current struggling moms. They used to be two separate groups, but they joined them together after funding was cut. The group isn’t bad, and there’s always hot, fresh cookies.”
I almost told her that the church was Catholic and called Holy Name of Jesus, and that the cookies weren’t fresh, just microwaved before the group started. I didn’t want to talk about how I knew that, though, the many afternoons I’d spent there listening to strangers grieve.
She put the pizza down and took my hand in one of hers, Adam’s in the other. We formed a chain. “Please come. I go every week, and some of these women are just nasty. I need a friend.”
I looked at Adam and, I can’t be sure, I thought I saw him nod. Just once, not even a nod, a slight tilt of the head. I knew what it meant—“Go, watch, protect her.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.”
5
MOM AND BILLY ooh-ed and aww-ed as they stared at the crumpled ultrasound photo. I stood by the fridge, alternating between eating strips of cold chicken and scooping peanut butter with
my fingers straight from the jar and into my mouth.
My lower-back pain had worsened during the last hour of my shift and I was starving for something, anything, other than pizza. I’d gotten home and immediately dropped my bag to the floor and lain across the couch. Mom was talking about making me a hot meal, something with rice and veggies, a little hot sauce, when Billy asked to see the baby’s first photo. After I pulled it out of my pocket, they swiped it from my hands and began smoothing out its edges. Soon, they were huddled together on the couch, admiring the photo like the secrets of the universe existed in the profile of this fruit-sized creation—which maybe they did, and I was just blind.
I dipped a piece of chicken directly into the peanut butter and watched the two of them together. Billy’s arm was around Mom’s shoulder and she was leaning into his side. The cat Billy had brought home, whose name I didn’t care to remember, was on the couch, the top half of its body in Billy’s lap, the bottom half on Mom’s. They were talking loudly at each other—“You see that, Mom? That’s the Bradley family chin!,” “Those little feet! Think of how they’ll grow and all the places they’ll carry him,” “I can already tell he’s got a good sense of humor”—I had a vision of them six months from now in the same position on the couch, except instead of a picture, they were cradling and cooing at a bundle of blue blankets. Even the cat would be involved, meows and coos mixing together.
It was so easy to close my eyes and see Mom feeding baby food she boiled and mashed up herself because she didn’t trust big-name brands, “That Gerber baby freaks me out.” Billy crawling on the carpet with Baby, pretending to be a tiger, dinosaur, semitruck, some large, roaring creature. Mom singing to Baby as she folded laundry, Korean lullabies and Joan Jett. Billy changing Baby’s diaper while reading him words out of the dictionary: “ ‘Abide: uh-byde, verb, to bear patiently, to endure without yielding, to wait for, to accept without objection, to remain stable or fixed in a state, to continue in place.’ ” Mom and Billy on the couch again, Baby between them, TV on, but they’re looking down at him softly, with care.
It was so easy to close my eyes and see them, but I could never conjure myself into those scenes. No mashing, feeding, crawling, roaring, folding, singing, diaper changing, reading—I was never snuggled into the couch with them. I stood watching them with a hunk of peanut butter and chicken in my mouth and wondered if I would spend the next eighteen years standing there.
It took me a moment to realize that Mom and Billy had started talking about me.
“I miss when she was a baby, you know,” Mom said. “Her dad, rest his soul, was busy all the time trying to write and make money. He’d leave for hours, sometimes days. The house would always be so empty. I used to just walk from room to room, touching the walls. Sometimes I’d go to the store and buy different paints and test them out—Cornflower, Seafoam, Mango, did you know there’s a shade of purple called Fandango?
“Then, one day, she was born and the house wasn’t empty anymore. She filled every inch of it. She took up all my time. I stopped buying paints. There’s a reason the house’s walls are Goldenrod now—it’s the color I painted the house two days before she was born.”
Billy hugged Mom and said something that I couldn’t hear—I was running past them to the bathroom. I had a second to appreciate that someone had just cleaned the toilet, the water was blue, toilet-water blue might’ve been my favorite color. The next second, I was throwing up.
I’d thrown up many times before I got pregnant—when I was fourteen and worried my face would be round and chubby forever, during a party where I was debating losing my virginity to the boy in my pre-calc class who smelled like Old Spice and Doritos, after Dad told me that all his best memories were before I was born, stomach flus, gas-station burritos—but now I got no relief as I emptied myself into that pretty blue toilet water.
I felt Billy’s hands kneading my shoulders, Mom’s gathering my hair and holding it back. They whispered soothing things into my ears until I finished. I lightly pushed away Billy’s hands when he tried to wipe the puke from my mouth with a tissue and did it myself, with the back of my hand.
* * *
—
BILLY SHOULD’VE BEEN GOING to USC in the fall.
When he first got accepted, everyone thought that he got in because of baseball, that he was going to be the Trojans’ newest relief pitcher. This frustrated him. “I love baseball, but I’m really not that good. Like, I’m the best at our high school, but that doesn’t mean much. A lot of people are the best at their high school. Besides, I can do more than just throw things and sweat.” He’d say this frowning, un-frowning, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice and failing.
Along with being the best baseball player at our shitty high school, Billy also had a near-perfect grade point average and SAT score, did nice things like volunteer for organizations that made him spend his weekends picking chip bags and empty beer cans off beaches and reading to old people in rooms with lighting that made everything look sadder, closer to death. USC had given Billy a full academic scholarship; the baseball coach had no idea who he was.
Billy believed in video games. He talked often about how they got a bad rep, that people used adjectives like “senseless,” “frivolous,” “mind-numbing,” to describe them. But what was wrong with mind-numbing? What was wrong with wanting to stop moving every once in a while, with wanting just to sit on your couch and let your head drain as you thought about nothing except racing along Rainbow Road, killing Nazi Zombies, how there were over 150 Pokémon to catch. His big plan was to major in game design and create a video game called The Helpful Sheep.
“Explain it to me again. What’s the point of The Helpful Sheep?” I would ask, even though I knew exactly what the point was. I just liked hearing Billy talk about it. His eyes would widen and his hands would move all over the place. He liked gesturing, consciously or unconsciously, pairing words with sharp slices and punches to the air.
“So, okay, it’s very simple. It’s exactly what the title promises.” His hands would move separately—right slice, left punch. “You’re a sheep who lives in a studio apartment in a major nondescript city. You wake up every day and eat a bowl of fresh-cut grass and milk. After scrubbing your hooves and washing your wool, you trot out your front door and provide people with everything they want and need, hate asking for—free, unsolicited help.” Generally, I kissed him around this time. He would always need a minute after, to wipe his lips and smile bashfully, before continuing his rant. “The game is free-roam. You can go anywhere you want in the city. It doesn’t matter where you go—everywhere there are people that need your help.”
“What kind of help?”
“Any kind. Let’s say a guy—we’ll call him Doug—is making a sandwich and it’s all looking good. Doug’s got the ham, Doug’s got the cheese, whole-wheat bread, lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mustard, mayo, maybe a strip of bacon for a crunch. Before he pops the sandwich on his Foreman Grill, he decides he wants an extra salty bite. He needs pickles. He goes to the fridge and pulls out a jar of Vlasics.” Another kiss, with tongue. “Fuck! The jar won’t open. The folks at Vlasic are serious about keeping their shit airtight fresh! What do you do? What can you do? Do you just throw out the sandwich? Order Beef and Broccoli, hold the broccoli, from Panda? Nah, fuck that, you’re so close. It’s time for The Helpful Sheep.”
Billy often stood up at this point. Both hands above his head, quick punches. “As the sheep, you can fix problems like this. You can open Doug’s pickle jar, save his lunch from being bland. After that, you can walk next door and scrub in and around Mrs. Wilson’s toilet bowl. She was a basketball player in her youth, her knees are wrecked, you’re eliminating so much pain from her life. Li’l Susie across the street is sad that she’s the only one of her friends that doesn’t know how to ride a bike. You can help her get off those training wheels and not feel left out! The sheep
accepts no payment for these services, just hugs.”
Flopping back on the bed, he’d wrap me in his arms, press sloppy wet kisses wherever he could reach. “I’m telling you, babe. This game is it. It’ll reduce stress, encourage people to be kinder to others.”
“How does a sheep open a jar without thumbs? And it’s going to be a cartoon sheep, right? Cartoon sheep are much cuter than the real thing.”
I missed these conversations. Shortly after we found out about the pregnancy, Billy called USC to let them know that he wouldn’t be attending that fall. I told Billy that it was okay, that he should go be a student and kick ass, live in the dorms, and drive home on the weekends to see me and the baby. He wouldn’t budge, though, kept repeating that he didn’t want to miss anything. He told me with a tightness in his voice that he didn’t want the baby to grow up and feel about him what he felt about his parents. “Our kid is going to grow up wondering about a lot of things. Never, though, will he wonder if I’m going to be home for dinner. I will always be there to wonder with him.”
We stopped talking about USC and The Helpful Sheep.
* * *
—
I WATCHED BILLY’S BACK as he undressed for bed. I knew I wanted to start a fight. I also knew that I hated fighting, hated how ugly I felt and was sure I looked when I screamed. I waited until he was down to his underwear and one sock before I stood up, grabbed his dick firmly between my hands.
“I need you to fuck me. Hard.”
This always got him going. Not the part about fucking, not even the idea about fucking hard. The word “need.” It was a sexy word. “Want” was something you applied to new CDs by your favorite bands, the desire to ditch class and smoke weed on the beach, deep-tissue massages, five-ply toilet paper, 24/7 A/C, guac that was a full dollar extra. “Need” was reserved for things like air, water, sleep, shits that cleaned out your insides, the stuff that kept you breathing. Billy was hard before we kissed. All my clothes were still on.
Pizza Girl Page 4
