“You’re Jamie, right? Don’t worry; your Dad and I are close. Where is your Mom?”
The boy nods, but doesn’t say anything.
“Is she at work? Is she still working at the mall?”
“Yeah,” Jamie says. He’s still looking for his ball in the grass.
“And she just leaves you here all day?”
He nods again. The driveway is cracked and filled with weeds. Crabgrass and dandelions border its edges. Harriet wants to pluck them up, but she resists. Doris might notice. She seems to keep a record of everything. She probably has a photo of every single plant out here.
“Well, isn’t there like a babysitter or someone?”
Jamie stares up at her. He looks like a chubbier Henry.
“Sometimes. At night, yeah. But the sun is out.”
Harriet knows she should call Henry. Some proof of neglect, a way to get the courts to take his side against Doris. All Doris has to do is summon up his high school ghost, but now they have something substantial on their side. There is no guardian in sight. No one to watch the kid.
“The sun is out, yeah. Your Mom says that’s alright?”
Jamie nods again and tries to bounce the ball. It doesn’t even bother hopping away this time.
“How about you come with me for the day? We can do whatever we want. How does that sound to you? You want to go somewhere for lunch or something?”
Doris gets the kid and the house. Doris seems to get everything but Henry. And all Henry seems to do these days is sleep. He is slowly falling apart in front of her, no matter what the doctor says. Maybe her sisters are right. Maybe there is something wrong with him, something she just can’t see yet. Harriet grabs Jamie by the hand and they walk toward her car. She is tired of trying for a kid like Jamie. She just wants someone to hand her one already, fully formed.
“Okay, but we have to come back soon or she will be mad.”
Harriet knows she can handle the pain.
* * *
The restaurant is one of those off-brand waffle house places that sprout up like fungus along highway exit ramps. Jamie has five Belgian waffles in front him, piled with bananas, strawberries and whipped cream. Harriet only has a coffee. Her sisters say the caffeine is going to destroy her heart eventually. The restaurant is close to empty and everything is sticky.
“I don’t think I can eat all of this, Harriet.”
“You can do your best, that’s all anyone can ask for, Jamie.”
Harriet feels bad lying to the kid. Her best is rarely ever acceptable. Henry seems to tolerate her attempts at least. He was there at the hospital every time her body had turned against her, poisoning itself against the future she was trying to create. He brought her food from outside the hospital, sneaking in chocolates and real egg salad sandwiches. The hospital used powder eggs. Harriet refused to swallow any institution’s food. She didn’t trust the nurses. They all looked too much like her mother, all knowing eyes and cooing voices hiding their contempt.
“Are you going to eat any of these?”
“I think you can handle it,” Harriet says. The kid is well behaved. He didn’t even try to change the radio station on the way over. They talk about basketball and stepping on Lego in the dark. Jamie asks her what she did for a job and Harriet says it’s none of his business. He doesn’t seem to mind. His Mom cuts hair at the mall and brings home a lot of coins inside her purse. Harriet smiles. Maybe it could be this easy. If only she could get her body to agree for once, to lend her a pass. Jamie tries to pour syrup on his waffles and misses the plate entirely. Harriet sops it up in one motion and throws the napkin on the floor. Let the waiter clean it up.
“I think I need to sleep, Harriet.”
“We will take you home in a bit, okay? I’m sure your Mom will be looking for you.”
Doris won’t be able to explain this. She just needs to draw it out a bit longer. And Harriet likes Jamie. He might not be a clean eater, but he hasn’t crapped himself or done anything stupid yet. All the awful years have already passed, including the terrible twos. When he gets into his teens there will be problems, but Henry can handle that. Henry is good with those kinds of situations. He is the one who handles Harriet’s sisters when they come by to ask about her stomach, her health, her future plans. Henry is very good at slamming doors.
“When my Dad comes over, he and my Mom talk about you sometimes.”
Harriet stops drinking her coffee. She pours more sugar into the grainy remains.
“What do you mean, Jamie? Is your Mom still mad at me? You know, you can’t always trust everything a grown-up says. You have to learn what to believe. It’s hard to know sometimes.”
“I know,” Jamie says. His eyes are drooping and he misses his mouth with a fork of waffle.
“Well, what do they say Jamie? Is your Mom upset about something?”
Jamie stabs at his food again, but can’t bother to raise the fork.
“They say they just want you to go away. I wanna lie down. Can I lie down?”
Harriet doesn’t answer. She places both hands on the sticky table and closes her eyes. Henry said the visits with Doris always devolved into some screaming match about the drapes or the water heater. Harriet never asked why they took so long. She never asked about the social worker or the supervised visitations. There were messages Henry deleted from the answering machine before Harriet could listen. There were long car drives and strange clothes in the trunk. Harriet always wrote it off as part of the business—selling hot tubs wasn’t like selling pens or hair clippers. Harriet pulls her sticky hands off the table. Jamie has curled up in the booth with whipped cream in his hair. She wants to reach over and wipe it away, but her hand won’t let her.
With every attempt she and Henry made for a child, Harriet had tried to erase the malformed image of the last one—the twisted hands and half-formed faces. She pushed Debbie Anderson’s crushed legs from her mind, the screams echoing up the delivery shaft at the factory. She clenched Henry’s body between her legs and drowned out her prying sisters with moans to rattle the bedroom. Henry’s grunts helped hide the fear humming inside her diaphragm, rattling her organs. She could almost negate her mother’s voice from beyond the grave, the one tapping at the window, begging to ask about her grandchildren, her legacy. She had left so much behind. Harriet had filled her mind with one desire, for a wriggling thing made of flesh and blood to take up a space inside her, to call it her own. She just wanted something new, something no one had used yet. Henry didn’t fit the bill—he never really had. Doris wasn’t finished with him yet.
Jamie is still asleep when Harriet stands up from the table. The waiter is flirting with some hostess near the back. There are no other customers. She takes a few steps away from the sticky table. Jamie does not move; he only snores. She clenches her hands around her purse and walks toward the door. Harriet does not want Doris’ child. She does not want Henry’s leftovers. She wants to ask Henry if she was just a distraction, to ask him why he’s always drawn back to the same fire, the one Doris keeps lighting between them.
Harriet steps outside into the parking lot. No one has followed her outside. The sun is out and, somewhere, Doris is still at work, cutting hair, talking shit, talking about Harriet and her poisoned womb. Too much time in those hot tubs, she will say. Too much time in that putrid, tacky hot tub Henry purchased as their honeymoon gift. It was bright pink, you know—such an ugly looking thing. Harriet climbs into her car and slams the door. Jamie sleeps alone inside the restaurant, surrounded by waffles with eyes and mouths mounted on the walls.
Harriet starts the car and pulls onto the highway. She tosses soiled tissues out the window and tries not to look back. She waits for the police to pull her over as the miles turn into hours.
Harriet is driving until she finds a desert. Any one will do.
A Bird in the Hand Is Worthless
Three hours after we boost the TV, Cal starts talking about going to California. He talks about the girls with t
hose tits you find online, the ones who never have to bundle up for the winter ’cause the sun never sets on Burbank or Malibu or any of those places. He talks about bottomless margaritas and endless shrimp buffets, room service and escorts you can pay by the minute. Cal says he will teach me to surf, teach me everything.
I’m trying to figure out where we’ll unload this Panasonic for more than a hundred bucks, so I try to ignore him. I don’t even think Cal remembered to grab the remote before we left the Stockyard. He’s only been bouncing there for two weeks and Big Randy doesn’t tell him shit. Just says to keep sticky fingers off the girls and watch for those assholes with the spy cameras tucked up under their hats. They’re the ones ruining the profits.
“The best part is no snow. No ice. No waking up at night with your balls shrunk to prunes.”
No way am I getting the kids back if someone finds us with this TV. No one’s going to report a missing TV these days. Not when we left how many thousands tucked inside Randy’s office, covered in white powder and protein stains or whatever else is dripping from the DJ’s nose. The report will just go into a file folder somewhere in the station basement until the annual Christmas bonfire consumes it all.
“You ever think about learning to surf, Jimmy? I seen too many guys bust their faces on America’s Funniest Home Videos to try that shit, but maybe if I hired a trainer…”
The lawyer says motions take money to file, and I got a lot of motions to make. I’ve got pictures I went and printed off at the library. Pictures of Alice doing shots of tequila in Georgia, pictures of long salt lines stretching up her stomach and down the sides of her hips. She’s lost weight and her nose is red. Every time she smiles, the camera burns her eyes a little deeper until they’re just holes. She’s got denim jeans on down there in Florida, sleeping every night in Brad Paisley’s tour bus. No snow to keep her shrivelled and cold. She says she’s in love, says he’s the one, ever since they met at the Havelock Jamboree. Lawyer says I need to file each piece of evidence separately, but his office smells like cat piss and the law degree hanging from his wall is missing some punctuation. He drives a Buick with three bald tires and smiles too much when I step into his office. Alice keeps posting pictures from down in the Keys, her arms wrapped around bodyguards, her tattoos of Jason and Marlee poking out from under the straps of her bathing suit while she sips champagne and the sun sets like it’s the end of the world behind her.
I am waiting for her camera to break.
“Cal, let’s take it to Donna.”
Cal looks up from his fantasies of ten-pound shrimp and naked eighteen-year-olds. He needs his pills to stay lucid and awake, but he doesn’t get paid until we sell this piece of shit. I can’t carry a TV by myself.
“Whatever you wanna do, man. She might still be up.”
The road is pockmarked and swallows up my front tire as we bounce away from the arena parking lot. The streetlights guide me and I try to spin the radio dial away from country stations where Paisley sings about mud on the tires, Southern girls and the endless bounty of America. All I can see is Alice writhing on the stage under some kind of smoke machine and a bunch of cigarettes burning in the audience before her, burning until I start to cough. A stoplight pulses into my vision and reminds me to make a left onto the busted gravel. Only one set of lights glows down the row of bungalows. There are snowmen watching us as we pass.
Donna used to work with Alice at the Stockyard back before Paisley and his tour bus. Her old boy Delany got her some Oxys after he was run off the road a few months ago by the cops. They keep her from dreaming, she says. Keep her from all the boys leering in her sleep. She’s always got cash laying around, tucked between underwear and couch cushions. No bank account. I have Cal knock at the door and try not to let her see me standing beside him in the cold.
The Panasonic sits in the backseat and stares at us.
“Five in the morning, Cal. Five in the goddamn morning. You got some need? I don’t have anything for it. Told you that once before. Now get off my porch before I wake up Del.”
“We got something for you, Donna. Why you always gotta spin it back at me?”
Donna leans her head out the door into the cold. Her hair is wet.
“Oh hell no. Fuck that. You wanna bring that asshole in here?”
I jam a hand into the doorframe before Donna can close it.
“We’ll make it worth your while, alright? I promise I won’t do any crazy shit.”
Donna knows all about the phone calls. She knows about the messages I left on Alice’s voicemail, the ones that allowed her parents to come and grab the kids. Alice played them for her. I told the officers I wasn’t in a very good state of mind at the time. Alice played them for everybody, even got me suspended from the mill for a month. That didn’t stop the bills though, and it didn’t stop the lawyer. Voice mail ruined all of that. Voice mail and Brad Paisley’s hairless chest.
“Yeah? You won’t—what was it—string me up like a kite? Chop me up so I’ll fit down the drain better? What else did you say to her? You’d lock the kids up in a hole before you’d let her touch them? Got enough holes on your property to do that, Jimmy. Got enough holes to bury everyone if you wanted to. Get off my porch.”
Cal turns back to the car.
“Hey, grab that thing and show her off. Don’t just run,” I say.
Headlights roll up the street, and Cal skitters back up to the porch.
“I can’t get fired again, man. If they find out about this—”
“About what?’ Donna says. Her hair is starting to freeze and my hand turns red inside the doorframe. “You really got something for me, or is this all just bullshit to figure out where Alice is at now?”
“We actually have something,” I say and the pressure loosens up off my fist. I crack my knuckles and look at the damage. Donna shakes the ice in her hair and we follow the droplets down the hall. Her living room is stacked with magazines and lingerie and all the furniture is orange. Donna lives inside a pumpkin, and her TV is a piece of shit.
“Two hundred bucks for a Panasonic. Thirty-two inches of glory. What do you say?”
Donna flips through a magazine and ignores us on the couch. Cal is pacing back and forth. He needs to get back to his apartment before he starts freaking out again. Twenty years dealing with Cal and I never understood why he won’t carry his meds on him.
“Not even a scratch on it, alright? You can replace this piece of crap and save yourself five hundred bucks in the process. Cash. Right now. All we gotta do is pull it outta the backseat.”
Sometimes Donna babysat Jason and Marlee. She used to play hide and seek with them until Marlee climbed into the dryer and hid there for a few hours. Alice almost took off Donna’s head when she came home from a shift covered in cold sweat and make-up to find her daughter banging on the lint trap. After that, it was just movies and board games.
“Can you keep your voice down, Jimmy? You’re gonna wake up Del. He’s supposed to find out tomorrow if they’ll let him do any physio after the trial is done. Doesn’t want to be a cripple forever—Cal get your hands off of that shit. I’m air drying those things.”
Cal takes a seat and pulls out some postcards he jacked from the gas station. He’s written letters to his mother across the back with fake addresses stretching up and down the Golden Coast. It’s the only excuse he can think of to avoid the hospital. Cal can’t handle hospitals—too many reflective surfaces, too many people asking how he feels today, asking for reasons and for his personal information. His Mom is only twenty minutes down the highway, but it may as well be Florida for all he cares.
“Who gives a shit about Del?” I say. “He shouldn’t have run. They catch him with three or four plants in the car, so what? Could plead that down. Get off with some probation.”
Donna rolls her eyes at me. While I was plotting murders in Alice’s inbox to try and win her back, Del had been trying to move his stash from an abandoned cottage to the family farm. New owners and buyer
s in the area had everyone a little on edge. Lots of old things lying underneath rotten decks and docks that no one with any sense wanted to find. Del was just trying to do some clean up when the sirens came on behind him. He let them chase him for twenty minutes until they forced him into the ditch and broke his collarbone.
“You know, I could probably get two TVs for the same price if I just wait you out,” Donna says and pries a bottle out of her housecoat. The pink fabric and orange furniture make my eyes burn. Cal is picking through Donna’s underwear while she tries to twist off the childproof cap.
“You’re talking about two hypothetical TVs there,” I say. Hypothetical is a word the lawyer likes to drop in my lap whenever I talk about getting the kids back. He says we’d have to start with some anger management classes, some group therapy—all the court-ordered treatments I’ve tried to ignore. Maybe I could get a few hours of supervised visitation if I followed those suggestions. The lawyer gave me the name of Cal’s shrink, the same one writing prescriptions for half of Owen Sound and most of the reserves outside this town. We may be second cousins, but I know my brain isn’t as mangled as that boy’s mind.
“Hype-a-what?” Donna laughs, and slides an Oxy down her throat. She doesn’t need to chase it with anything. Her lips are always wet.
“Hypothetical. Yeah, we might have to steal something else tomorrow, or someone will decide to toss their old set out for garbage day, but you’re taking a risk there. We’ve got you a bird here, right in the hand. You can talk about the two you see out there in the bushes all you want, but they aren’t sittin’ in my backseat. Thing doesn’t even have a serial number.”
“Everything’s got serial numbers in California,” Cal says. His eyes have moved onto the VHS tapes stacked up by the busted old TV. Donna tapes all her performances at the Stockyard and tries to sell them on the Internet. Delaney’s convinced her video is still a viable format. He needs the money, but can’t afford a DVD player or any of that Blu-ray shit.
All We Want Is Everything Page 6
