by Monica Drake
It was a picture the size of the photo from the Kirlian photography machine. But this one was a picture not of orange energy, but of a pale green house with a gravel driveway and a tire swing hanging from a crooked apple tree. A dog stood in the sun. A tanned shirtless kid ran barefoot across the lawn. There was a mailbox up close, near where the photographer must’ve been standing.
“I’ll take you there.”
Arena looked at the house, a one-story box.
He put a finger to the photo, as she held it. Arena had never seen AKA smoke, but she could smell smoke on him, and his fingers were stained from nicotine. His nails were bitten low.
The kid in the picture wore torn shorts. His face was as wide and open as the face on his soft-eared dog. The two of them looked happy. The house was big-eyed and welcoming, like it didn’t know a gutter had fallen off. The boy was the same. AKA pointed a nicotine-stained finger at the kid in the picture. He said, “That, right there. That boy is me.”
Humble walked in the side door of their house, and there was Georgie with Bella in one arm, her other hand in a bowl making meatloaf: raw hamburger mixed with raw egg clung to her wrist. Jesus, Humble thought. It was a bowl of salmonella, E. coli, parasites—could she get their baby any closer to death?
Thump-thump.
The white noise machine was on.
Bella was still awake, her round eyes two little walnuts. The house was warm and smelled overripe with tomato sauce, a bowl of apples, and noodles boiling on the stove. Humble was drunk and trying not to be, mostly glad to see Georgie and his baby girl but also guilty—he said he’d be home earlier; did it matter that he wasn’t? He was always guilty. Home was where the guilt lived. He smiled and said, “Hey.”
The single word came out slurry, longer than it needed to be: “He-e-e-ey.”
Thump-thump.
Georgie, her pale skin splotched, looked tired, like she had too much face and not enough features; and with that sound track the house was absolutely creepy. “Welcome home,” she said.
Was that sarcasm? He couldn’t tell. He’d turned away just then and dropped his keys on the table.
He said, “Did you get to those life insurance papers?”
She hadn’t. The papers were still on the table, now ringed with a beer stain. The heartbeat machine kept up its rhythm. “What if you died today?” the life insurance papers asked, through the stain.
Any minute now, he thought. Any minute and she’d ask where he’d been, how many drinks he had. Who counted drinks?
She’d say, “So you’re drinking alone again?”
He drank alone, except for all the other people in the bar, and the bartenders, and everybody who’d learned the dead girl game and called him “Dead Man” because that was his nickname these days and he didn’t mind. He drank alone except for Justine, this twentysomething with big tits who showed up with her skater boyfriend and a rotating cast of girls, and this guy named Max, who said he just got fired from Taco Del Mar. Humble was like their dad, if they drank with their dad.
“Why’s the machine on if she’s awake?”
“I was just about to put her down,” Georgie said. She mixed bread crumbs into the meatloaf.
He waited for her to say something as he put his coat on the back of a dining room chair. He used the toes of one foot to coerce the heel of his shoe off the other foot, and as he did he tipped and started to stumble. He put two hands on the back of the chair and acted like that was what he meant to do: He meant to hold on to the chair, do a little dance, and work his shoes off. His socks were wet with sweat and rainwater that had seeped in on his way home. He kept his eyes on his shoes as he took them off but felt Georgie and Bella waiting.
“Every time I change her diaper, it’s clean.” Georgie said.
“What’s that?” Humble said. He’d been prepared for a different grievance. This was a relief. He said, “Then don’t change ’em. Sounds like you’re makin’ work.”
Georgie stepped into the living room and picked a dirty diaper off the coffee table. Like she’d saved it. She said, “Look at this.” She held the diaper in the air and bobbed it up and down. It was like a fat pelican. “There’s two pounds of pee.”
Her wrist was covered in raw hamburger.
“Throw that out, Jesus.” Humble ducked around the diaper. Did he want that in his face? Did she really expect him to look at it?
She said, “They’re all like that. She’s not dehydrated, but she hasn’t pooped in days.”
“Days? I doubt it.” Hum walked into the kitchen. He opened the fridge. Georgie and the baby and the diaper full of pee followed.
Georgie said, “I can’t remember her last poop.”
So Georgie counted drinks and counted shitty diapers. Humble said, “The house smells like baby shit. Somebody’s cranking it out.”
“That’s the diaper pail.” It was designed to keep odor in, and it didn’t. Usually it was up in Bella’s room. Now it sat by the front door. Georgie said, “I washed it and put baking soda in. But really, seriously, she hasn’t pooped for days.”
Thump-thump, thump-thump …
She held Bella close to her body, a heavy, wrapped bundle. Humble couldn’t see his own kid’s face. It was like they were merged, his wife and his baby.
Humble wasn’t ready to worry. He said, “Sounds like the perfect kid. Maybe she’s more evolved.” He found a bottle of Fat Tire amber ale in the crisper in the bottom of the fridge. Then he needed an opener. Why the hell couldn’t microbrews use screw tops?
He riffled through a drawer. They had, like, three openers—where did they all go? There was a latte frother, an olive spoon. He ran an impatient hand through the clutter, and a paring knife flipped out to the side. It swished between them. The knife fell blade first and stuck in their wooden floor.
“Humble!” Georgie’s voice was shrill. He couldn’t let that knife of a voice in. He let it go by like the wind. She said, “Somebody could’ve been hurt by that. You could’ve put Bella’s eye out, blinded your own daughter.”
That heartbeat in the background was driving him nuts. It made everything into a drama.
“Nobody’s blind.” He found an opener and opened his beer. It gave a satisfying crack and hiss.
Georgie picked up the knife. She said, “How much have you had to drink?”
There it was. Humble finished his swallow. He said, “You’re so predictable.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Georgie looked shaky. She said, “Oh, nice. You’re wasted, and that’s predictable. I’m sick of it.”
Hum said, “You threatening me?”
“What’re you talking about?” Georgie bounced the baby. She stepped back and forth, her bare feet on the kitchen floor.
“Put down the knife. I don’t talk to anybody holding a knife.” He took another drink of his beer.
“Oh, Jesus Christ.” Georgie tossed the knife in the drawer. “You’re crazy.”
“Name-calling,” Humble said, and turned to walk away.
Georgie followed. She said, “I don’t want to be the only one worrying here. You don’t get up when she wakes up. You don’t care if she has a rash. She hasn’t pooped in days. You think it’s a big joke.”
Her voice didn’t stop.
Humble turned around then. He said, “You’re tedious, you know that? You’re tedious.” He yelled it. It felt good to yell. Yes, maybe the neighbors could hear, their houses were close, but so what?
Georgie, her voice lower now, almost a whisper, said, “Don’t raise your voice around the baby.”
He yelled, “I don’t want to come home and talk baby shit!”
Georgie hissed, “This is not about what you want. I’m sick of being alone in this parenting thing.”
In the kitchen, a timer went off. The noodles were done. Still, they boiled on, and the heartbeat played in the background, and the timer sang its song. Georgie said, “You’re never even here.”
Humble watched her mouth move
up and down. Her chin shook. Her chin never used to shake like that. She was talking but all he saw was that mouth moving and Bella screamed in her arms and he couldn’t hear over the screaming. It was two women, yelling. It was the story of his life: his mother, his sister, always this noise. His wife loved his jokes. This wasn’t her anymore.
“Who are you these days?” he said.
She said, “I’m not your mom. I’m not here to police you and keep you in line, and drag you in from the bars, like some big drunk baby—”
He reached a hand out and grabbed Georgie’s neck and slammed her into a wall and then she shut up and it was only Bella screaming. Georgie, her eyes wide with shock, wrapped both arms tight around the baby, and held her close. Georgie’s neck was soft under Humble’s hand. There was a smell like a party now, like a moment from high school Humble could almost remember. It smelled good.
It was the smell of being unencumbered, out all night. It was the smell of freedom.
It was beer—his beer had spilled. The bottle was in his other hand, and the baby and Georgie were soaked. Georgie’s face was red. Her mascara bled into the creases under her eyes the way it did when she got sweaty in the heat of summer, and when they had sex, except now it was like she couldn’t see him, her eyes weren’t focused, and he let go.
She put a hand to her throat. She curled around Bella.
Humble turned away. He put his shoes on. Georgie said, “Humble?” She wasn’t crying but her voice cracked in a way that meant she was ready to. She said his name like it was a question. Then she hissed, “Get out.”
He was already going.
He had both shoes on now. He took his keys and went out the door. She followed him to the doorway. It was all he could do: leave. He could’ve killed her. He knew it. He knew it, and his heart pounded inside and his hands shook and he felt like somebody else, far away, not the man in the body that moved with him, and he walked. There was a rhythm to the lurch. His steps beat out a word: un-en-cumbered. All he’d done was push her away. By the throat, yes, but shit, he needed her to stop talking. The further he got from the house, the more he could believe he’d just overreacted, that was all. He wasn’t a complete bastard. Unencumbered. She wasn’t hurt.
Jesus.
He wanted to scream. He was a bad husband, and bad father, and he knew it, and the voices in his head sang a different song, and he kept walking. His phone rang in his pocket. He pulled it out, saw his wife’s name, and put it back. What would they do, yell? He couldn’t do it, couldn’t talk. The phone was so small between his fingers. What did it say, that he had such a prissy little phone?
He hunted for a bar that would feel like home.
Georgie held the baby and breathed baby smells. The meatloaf was raw in its bowl on the counter. The noodles, undrained, grew fat. Bella was sound asleep, but Georgie was afraid to put her down. She stayed on the couch and picked up a ballpoint pen. What came next—kick him out? Fix things?
It’s hard to build a family when you didn’t have one to begin with. It’s harder to know when to let your new family, the one you made, go.
She called Humble. This was a nightmare. Maybe, she thought, if they talked, they could fix it. But her head throbbed where she hit the wall, Bella was half-awake now, in her arms, and Humble didn’t answer.
On the rhetorical triangle, that tattoo on her arm, she wrote “Mom,” in a scrawled hand caused by reaching over the sleeping baby girl. That was one point of the triangle, one corner of the making of meaning. At another juncture, she wrote “Baby.” And who held up that third side?
AKA tagged along beside Arena like a stray dog, but no worries. He had his clothes on again now. They’d started “the project.” He did what he could to keep his hands off her.
He walked with her on the street, both of them dressed, and remembered being naked in front of her—the feeling was still with him—and though maybe it looked like he walked beside her, he knew he was really a step behind, following her lead.
Overhead, there was one heavy cloud in the sky, a floating mountain, Mount Hood’s weightless cousin. It was a place they could live. AKA entertained the dream. He said, “What do you see?” and gestured at the cloud.
Arena squinted to the sky. He waited. If she said a floating mountain, their dreams would be in sync, like two iPods with the same playlist.
“In the cloud?” she asked.
He nodded yes, hungry for communion.
She said, “Drops of water and frozen crystals, suspended in the atmosphere.”
Gawd. Not the answer. Her words made him want to lace his fingers through her hair, pull her head back, and kiss her until she agreed to see what he saw. He wanted to demand.
She said, “Isn’t that amazing enough?”
She didn’t wear makeup. Her mouth was red, always a little open. Her skin was pale. She was weird in the way she could go forever without talking, and then when she did talk, it was only to him, not to anybody else that he’d seen, and that was cool. It was like he could be her translator.
He had a monopoly, and she let that happen.
As they walked, their feet kicked out in front together, each step. She said, “What happened to your shoes?”
The rubber toes of his Chuck Taylors had been turned to blackened cheese. He said, “Radiator.” He’d been trying to dry the rain soak out and left the shoes a little too close. “Shoulda seen the smoke, Jesus.”
Arena said, “You should get a new pair.”
Like he had money. That was the difference between her and him.
They walked side by side in silence, past a brick wall with an ad for a bar on the side: FINE CHAMPAGNE AND CRAFT BEER! A little rattle-can art had altered the message to read FINE CHAMPAGNE AND CRAP BEER! Which was probably about right, too.
AKA nodded at the wall and jostled Arena’s shoulder. “I did that,” he said.
“Really?”
“You don’t believe me?” He was proud of his work, his voice. It was supposed to stay secret, that was part of the tagger’s code, but he’d told her and right away he felt exposed: He wanted to share. He hated even trying.
They reached a bus stop. She started to say something. Her red mouth opened. She looked away. Her tongue touched the corner of her lips. His eyes were on her mouth. She said, “I’m going to leave you here.”
Here? AKA felt her words like a shove.
Leave him?
That was a gut punch.
He could push back, there in the middle of nowhere, a dead zone between industrial and new built. It was a city block with a short row of stores—some of them boarded up, others with businesses—across from an abandoned warehouse. He tried to smile and felt his mouth twitch. He said, “Where’re you going?”
In one cube of a store, a man changed an overhead lightbulb. In another, a woman rearranged her furniture. The woman pushed and shoved, directing a love seat across the floor.
Arena said, “I’m going to catch a bus.”
He said, “I’ll wait with you.”
She said, “That’s okay. No need.”
Behind Arena, in the store, the woman moving furniture stopped pushing the love seat. She put her hands on her hips, then wiped stray hair away from her face. It was dark out and light in her store, making her as good as on TV, under those bright lights. Hers was another yuppie dive.
Arena hung on the bus stop pole. She was so thin. She and the pole were twins.
“What’re you going to do with the footage?” AKA asked. He felt weird about letting her take a movie of him naked. That’s what she had asked for: him, naked, in his apartment. She asked him to dance, just a little, and slow. She filmed him letting his jeans fall to the floor. Now that would go out in the world? She could do anything with it. She could show it as art or post it on the Internet. And she was leaving him.
She said, “Trust me. You’ll like it.”
She made him nervous. He knew he’d like it. He liked everything that had to do with her. “Trust isn’
t my strongest thing,” he said. “I didn’t sign a release form, right?” He tried to sound cool, like he knew things.
She said, “We have an oral agreement.”
God. It made his cock hard, to hear her say it: oral. Her red mouth. She held the video camera, in its case, at her shoulder, her arm bent at the elbow. It wasn’t her camera; it was borrowed from school, in her new classes.
She was back in school. That made him nervous, too. She was moving forward. He never graduated and never would. She had a mom who cared.
Of course they had an agreement. Oral, written, written on the body even: She could have what she wanted. Arena won. Arena would always win.
He said, “Next time, maybe I won’t be the only one naked.” He lifted her hair and came in for a kiss. She shrugged him off, and she smiled, but she looked over her shoulder like somebody might be watching, and he had that feeling of pushing things—he wanted to push, to tear her shirt off, make something happen—and he held back. He kept himself in check. This kind of situation was why he didn’t drink and had cut out the weed. Not just because they made him do it, in juvenile detention. He had to work hard to keep his impulses in check.
His counselors at the Donald E. Long Juvenile Detention Home told him that. He wanted to be a better person. But he wasn’t. Not inside.
A TriMet bus came down the road, wheezing and belching diesel. Arena stepped away from the stop. When the bus came near, she waved it on, shaking her head. “I thought you were waiting for the bus?” AKA knew he had trust issues. But still.
“I’ll catch the next one,” Arena said. “Go on. I’ll be fine.”
Behind Arena, the woman in her store was alone, with her little black dress and her ponytail, puzzling something out. She was maybe the most vulnerable woman in town, her head full of the wrong problems. Maybe she had an SUV and a husband, a house in the hills. She probably had a tiny little phone that she thought could save her life. Women did that, even men did it—clung to their phones.
