Helplessness, I said to myself. I said it again, out loud, in the empty living room. Uselessness, I said next, hoping someone would answer, knowing there was no one. Mr. Fuzzmister, King Cotton Candy, and Eric sat next to me, slumped, their hard black eyes blank. I heard thumping. I thought it was coming from my own chest and then realized how idiotic and dramatic that was. I lifted my head, the thumping kept coming, and I knew it was coming from outside, Adam’s doing.
The thumping was rhythmic, almost soothing—THUMP, silence, THUMP, silence, THUMP. Sometimes the silence went on a little longer than the previous one, but without fail that THUMP returned. I got up and put the stuffed animals on the couch, linked their arms together. The thumping continued, and I walked to the sliding door, hesitated, unsure of what was a violation of Adam’s aloneness; after a beat, I pushed the door open wider, stepped outside.
The backyard was small and mostly dirt. A stack of bright-green squares of grass rested in one corner. An empty pool in another, with sludge and a couple Hot Cheetos bags at the bottom. A barbecue collected dust in the third corner, a sale tag still hanging off it. In the fourth, Adam stood, throwing a baseball against the back wall of the house.
His throws weren’t casual, the throws of someone just having some fun, working off daily boredom. His throws were hard and direct. His mind was not wandering, it was focused—each thought connected to his arm, passing through his fingertips, heaved along with the ball and smack against the wall. The ball would bounce back to him and he’d scoop it up cleanly, throw it again, all his strength and will being used to snuff out the next thought that dared flit across his vision. Sweat dripped off his forehead and into his eyes. He wiped away nothing, just blinked and shook his head sharply, like an animal furious at the weakness of his body, that it would distract him from the task that lay ahead.
“Hey,” I said. “Do you have a glove? We can play catch?”
THUMP. “I don’t want to play catch.”
“How about we go inside?” I pulled out my phone, looked at the time, tried to close my ears off to the sound of ball meeting wall. It was starting to make my head hurt; each thump was echoed by a throb from my left temple. “Have you eaten dinner yet? We can order delivery, or I can pour us a couple huge bowls of cereal. Even I can’t mess up cereal.”
“You could pour too much milk in it.”
“You could pour your own milk if that would make you feel better.”
“I can barely reach the counter.”
“We don’t have to pour the milk into the bowls on the counter. I could put the bowls on a lower surface, the floor.”
“You don’t have to be here. This isn’t the first time I’ve been home alone.”
He said all this without stopping his throwing. I had the urge to stand in front of the spot he was hurling all his frustrations toward and wondered if this would be enough to stop him or if he would continue, baseballs being thrown against my body, bruises blooming like deadly flowers beneath my skin. I could picture that happening without flinching. I could also picture him there night after night, the only sounds the thumping and his breathing, the small muscles in his arm twitching, exhaustion hanging over him like a fog, determination clearing it away. This made my hands shake, the cold Panda Express I’d shoveled down for lunch threatening to come up in a heap of chunky brown panic. Where was Jenny and did she know about this? If she did, how could she be driving? How was she able to grip the steering wheel with her shaking hands? What did the back of her throat taste like?
There was a bucket of baseballs by the sliding glass door. I picked one up and walked back over to Adam, stood by his side. The wall he was throwing at was covered in scuff marks, scars from his nights alone. Most were centered in one spot, but there were a few marks that lay solitary, off target, up high, down low, wildly to the left. Accidents, or bursts of desire to change things up, do something unexpected? I wound up and threw the baseball as hard as I could, at an untouched section of the wall.
I’d never liked the feel of a baseball. The game itself I didn’t mind. I went to lots of Billy’s games, cheered, clapped until my hands stung when he struck someone out or sent a ball sailing over the fence. When I held a basketball, I felt magic. Footballs didn’t make me tingle, but they made sense to me, there was a comforting solidity when I gripped their laces. Baseballs were too small and hard, throwing them released nothing inside of me, I quickly grew bored.
That night, I threw the baseball with fluidity and ease. Each time the ball left my fingertips, I was crouching down, aching to have it back in my hands. The first few throws, I just marveled at the comfort of having simple, achievable tasks, a light, warm jacket wrapped around me, throw, catch, repeat. Look at my body, look at what it can do— Then my phone started buzzing and ringing in my front jeans pocket.
I didn’t have to pull my phone out to know who was on the other end. There were only two possibilities and I didn’t want to talk to either of them.
The ball bounced back into my hands and I threw it a little harder; that jacket of calm slipped off my shoulders. Did they get home from work and sit in front of the clock? They must’ve been huddled together on the couch, waiting until the time on the DVD player told them that there was no reason why I shouldn’t be home. Who decided who would call first? Billy? Mom? Did they flip a coin or did they fight over the opportunity, hungry stray dogs clawing each other over spoiled ham straight from the dumpster? Did they know how grating my ringtone was, what vibration felt like against skin?
The phone kept ringing and the throws piled up and all my unvoiced questions and thoughts became as much a part of the ball as the cork in its center, the rubber casing, the layers of wool and leather, each of its lacings. It was weird that Billy called my mom “Mom.” It broke my heart how Mom drank her coffee every morning, how she so carefully put her lips on the rim and drank deeply, like she was grateful for every sip. Dad would pour pepper over all his food, and now I was afraid to put a sprinkle of the stuff on anything, even though scrambled eggs looked weird without it. If food could change people, I didn’t want my baby to eat anything. I wanted it to exist on air alone and take in deep gulps of it, power born from within, no outside sources.
I started to picture the world without me in it.
I saw Billy at USC around other blond, broad-shouldered boys, smiling, blending into a crowd, his hardest job deciding whether he was going to go to his next class or take a deep, long nap on the campus lawn. Mom quitting her job at Kmart, a house with only her inside, dates with men who acted their age and wore suits and had nice cologne slathered on their necks and wrists, woke up every morning before she did, their briefcases full of things of worth. Dad was dead, buried at a cemetery by the highway—this was how it was and how it would always be. I didn’t have to think of the baby: if I didn’t exist, neither did it. The lack of my existence eliminated the need to imagine it, to wonder how it would do in the world, to see it crawling, walking, stretching to its full height, doing and saying things that I would have no control over, and becoming a person I had no doubt I would continually fail to understand, despite shared DNA. I added nothing—I had no hopes, no real tangible dreams that would make any lasting impact. If I was gone, worst-case, some pizzas wouldn’t be delivered on time, Jenny would have to find another pizza girl.
The phone stopped ringing and I felt hurt, like they had heard my thoughts and nodded in agreement: Good idea, please stop existing. I threw the ball and let it roll past me on the way back, pulled my phone out of my pocket, and threw it instead against the scratched white wall of Jenny’s house.
I stood, breathing heavily, the pieces of the phone scattered among the dirt. I could probably put the phone back together; only the battery popped out, the screen a little cracked. I heard a cough and I turned, remembering Adam was next to me. He was finally no longer throwing. “Let’s go inside,” he said. “I’m ready for d
inner.”
* * *
—
ADAM INSISTED that I sit on the couch while he made dinner. It sounded like he was just banging pots and pans together, opening and closing cabinets at rapid speeds. I let him be, there were no cries or scream for help, no loud “Ow”s! I tried to turn on Jenny’s giant flat-screen, but there were too many remotes and buttons with symbols that made no sense to me, so I just sat quietly on the couch, avoiding the clock and trying not to think about the pieces of my phone that were lying in the dirt out back.
Beyond the screen door, it was black. The blue summer light I had been standing in earlier had been extinguished—the sky wouldn’t let me pretend it wasn’t late. Images of Billy patting Mom’s shoulder with one hand, assuring her it was all going to be okay, his other hand betraying his true feelings, scratching the side of his neck, a tic of nervous frustration. The lines of Mom’s face. She looked every year of her age and more. Her hair already had streaks of gray. She could name all of them after me.
I got off the couch, began pacing the room. I kept my eyes down on my feet in front of me as I paced, like I wanted to make sure they would work. This helped. One foot in front of the other, another task I could accomplish. My breathing started coming out in easy gusts, and when I felt comfortable enough to look up, I took one step, stopped, and found myself facing a wall and a framed photo.
I knew that Jenny was married, that Adam wouldn’t exist without a father, but he lingered in a distant part of my mind, a man-shaped figure whose face and features, the little quirks and details that made him a living, breathing person, unknown. I liked it that way, was relieved that Jenny never talked about him. Seeing his face staring back at me made me realize that, even if I didn’t want to know him, I had been curious.
It was a nice family photo shot in a professional studio with a camera that captured every pore, each eyelash. He stood behind Jenny and Adam, his hands resting on their shoulders like large, napping seals. They were dressed in matching white button-downs and jeans. It wasn’t that Jenny’s husband wasn’t handsome—square jaw, no signs of balding, thick brown hair that parted smoothly to the left, eyes a shade of blue that made you think of warm ocean water, waves that didn’t pound into you, didn’t even crest, just sort of flowed into you and lifted you off the sand for a moment before gently placing you back down—he smiled without showing his teeth.
Jenny and Adam had wide, open-mouth smiles, their faces glowing, like there was nowhere else they’d rather be. Jenny’s husband’s face did not look like that. I stared at his lips, stretched into a halfhearted “u,” like the photographer told him, “Look happy, now!” and that was the best he could muster. I wanted to reach into the photo and pry open his lips, grab the collar of his shirt, shake him, and yell, “Show some damn teeth!” That smile was not the smile of a man who had a son he could play catch with. This man saw his son’s quietness and assumed something was wrong with him, didn’t see that even while his son wasn’t talking, he was watching, listening, trying to understand this world that continually flipped on him. One minute upright and comfortable, the next on his back, aching and confused. This man came home and pecked his eager, waiting wife on the cheek, went to sit in his armchair and lose himself in network television for hours after. In bed at night, he slept on the left side, she on the right, back to back. He should’ve been running through the door and pulling her into his arms, kissing her full-on, a little tongue, until his lungs and heart were ready to burst. When they went to bed, his arms should’ve been wrapped around her, no space between them. With a kid and a wife like that, this man’s face should’ve been in a constant, toothy smile.
* * *
—
I STOOD STARING at the photo until Adam came into the room holding a plate of untoasted bread, cold beef and broccoli, a whole red apple, the sticker still on it, a Twinkie in the wrapper. “Every food group,” he said. He could’ve put anything in front of me and I would’ve been touched.
We sat on the couch and he turned on the TV, using three different remotes, as I took a bite of the apple, poked the soggy broccoli with my finger, tore the bread into little pieces. Jenny’s TV had more channels than I had ever seen and each one he clicked was available, not like in my house, when I clicked a cool-looking channel and a screen popped up saying I too could watch Robot Turtle Race Wars, for just $9.95 extra per month. Adam clicked through each one. We never spent more than a minute on each station.
“Do you have a favorite channel?” I asked.
“Not really,” he said.
He flipped through more channels—a man jumping out of a helicopter, animated penguins singing a song about the importance of flossing, a woman about to either fuck a guy or murder him, Oprah Winfrey Network—and I kept staring back at that photo, looking away again.
“What’s your dad like?” I asked.
Adam’s channel flipping didn’t lose its steam—old ladies racing down Route 66 on Harleys, a killer whale that washed up on the shore in Malibu still breathing, weight-loss frozen yogurt, a channel for either stoners or newborn babies, lots of flying colorful shapes and acoustic guitar–heavy music. “He’s fine.”
I heard his pain. “Fine,” a word you used when you stubbed your toe and people asked you if you were okay and you didn’t want to sound like a little bitch. When your mom gave you Cheerios after you asked for Froot Loops. Something you said to people who asked about your day and you didn’t know them well enough to give them a real answer. Never a word used when talking about anything of value. “Where is he now?”
“At work. He has an office in this big building downtown. There’s a fish tank behind his desk and he let me name every single fish in it.”
“What’re the names of the fish?”
“I can’t remember. I only went to his office once.”
“My dad was an asshole too. He died a little over a year ago.”
Adam put the TV on mute, stopped clicking channels. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. He didn’t die sad. He died stupid.” I grabbed the remote from him, put the volume back on. “An old lady found him by the railroad while she was out walking her Rottweiler. The sun had just come up. He had been dead for hours.” I turned the volume up a little louder. “Finally, he downed more booze than his body could handle. Like, seriously, don’t be sad. It wasn’t a surprise. For as long as I can remember, he was drunk. I don’t think I ever really talked to him truly sober—he’d sit at the breakfast table pouring whiskey into his cornflakes.”
On-screen, a group of children played in a field. Wildflowers swayed in the breeze, birds sang, the children laughed and called each other dickheads. I could feel something bad was going to happen to them and I didn’t want to know what. I changed the station to one that showed handsome men and women running through obstacle courses in bathing suits. “There was one weird thing, though,” I said. “The old lady said he was holding something tight, with both hands. A little toy police car. I spent weeks thinking about that police car, wondering why he had it and what he was planning to do with it. At times, I stupidly thought he saw it lying on the sidewalk somewhere and picked it up for me. When I was younger, I loved toy cars, and he would drive me to this big hill by the park and we’d watch my Hot Wheels cruise down. He would run to the bottom and grab every one, run back up so I could do it again. Maybe he saw that toy car and remembered that time and was feeling sentimental.” I grabbed a piece of bread and swallowed it without chewing. “But then I remember who he was and I know he probably just saw a shiny thing on the sidewalk after he’d taken a swig and tripped, picked it up as an afterthought.”
It was quiet for a moment, just the sounds of cheers from the TV as a woman with a six-pack and thighs wide enough to have their own ZIP code swung from rope to rope over a pit of mud. I wondered if Jenny had beer in the fridge. “I remember one of the fish’s names,”
Adam said. “It was a blue fish with a long face and a frowny mouth.”
“What was its name?”
“Joe.”
“Why Joe?”
“There’s a boy named Joe in my class who always flicks pencils at my back. Sometimes he spits in my pudding at lunch.”
“This fish reminded you of him?”
“No, I just wanted to have a Joe that I liked.”
The woman fell into the pit of mud and the crowd cheered even louder. “Do you want to keep flipping through channels?” I asked.
Adam took the remote from me. “Sure.”
* * *
—
MY FINGERS ran through his hair over and over.
Adam was rapidly flipping through channels when, suddenly, he stopped and I said, “Is this a good channel? Do you like eighties workout videos?” and he just mumbled a “No,” yawned, and lay down, rested his head in my lap.
I’d sat stiffly, unsure of what to do. I looked around, like there would be someone standing there to help me and move this child from my lap. For the first time, I wondered if Jenny was actually coming back soon or if I’d spend days, weeks here, throwing baseballs against walls and eating cold Chinese takeout and Twinkies.
Adam turned over so his face was toward me, and he looked so different when he was asleep—younger, more vulnerable—and it felt like the most natural thing in the world just to reach out and brush his hair off his forehead.
I kept brushing, as if my touch granted a layer of protection. He was so small, and this simple fact made me ache in a place deep enough inside me that I wasn’t sure how to claw it out without mangling other parts of me in the process. When the ache began to affect my breathing, I scooped him into my arms and carried him upstairs to his room. Each step, I marveled at how little he weighed. I’d carried bags of flour at Eddie’s that weighed more than him. I tucked Adam into his bed and arranged his stuffed animals in a line around him, bodyguards.
Pizza Girl Page 10
