I do not have a faucet filter, by the way. But I fill up two glasses with water, two ice cubes each. That'll have to do.
Hallie is sitting on Moises's lap on the armchair when I get back
"… and we'll name one James," she is saying, "and Michael, and … and … Stu. And a girl, we'll name her Ashley, or … something pretty that's not weird. I like Veronica. Do you like Veronica? We could call her Ronnie, how fucking cute is that?"
"So I met Hallie about five hours ago and we're picking out names for our children," Moises explains to me, as he takes his water. He pronounces Hallie like it's the first true syllables of Halleluiah: Hal-Lay. No stress on the first syllable. No stress on the second. Equal parts hal and lay. Ponytail Man does not know what to make of him. Moises is unique. He loves this girl. He loves a girl named Halleluiah.
"Five hours, eh?" I say. "Well that's why they invented the term, whirlwind romance."
"And no silly names," says Hallie. "If Moises and I haven't earned a girl named Jane, then I don't know who has. Hey, so how long have you lived in here?"
"Oh, I—" I am taken aback for a moment. "About five years. This was my parents' condo. They died, and I inherited."
"No like, how long since you've left? Moises says we are gonna go walking. Like down the hallway. But like, don't knock it, you know, Mrs. Jam? This is like, a big hallway. I'm not just saying that. This is the biggest condo building I've ever been in. I almost feel like I'm in an Ocean City hotel, like. You know? Those big hotels that have like stores in them? You can go buy candy and all, and take the elevators, and they open up like, an ice skating rink in the lobby? You know hotels? At the beach?"
"Yes," I say sagely, and nod my head, glad to grab on to what she is talking about. "I've been to one of those hotels a couple times, when I was young, and I remember getting fireballs, those hot hard candy suckers, in the hotel store. And our room had a Murphy bed. Do you know what that is? It's a pull-down bed, that looks like part of the wall when it's upright."
"Oh my god, I totally stayed at that hotel!" squeals Hallie, jumping to her feet. "I was like, totally in high school, and we stayed there for some like youth group or something. I don't even know. I know I got drunk with these boys from another high school. I think it was a retreat or something. All I remember is the schnapps. This why I am going to hell. Hey guess what?" she says suddenly, perching on Moises' lap again. "Jews don't believe in hell. As long as I'm with Moises, I'm not going to any kind of hell."
She smiles, looking into his eyes like she's known him her whole life, and wonder of wonders, he smiles back without reserve.
Moises is in love.
"Chosen one," she says, and jabs him in his chest with her finger. She jumps to her feet again.
"So we walkin' or what?"
Chapter 16
I'm on my fourth lap. The kids are on each side of me, like I am a toddler. Hallie started to take my hand for a second before she thought better of it. I am obediently putting one foot in front of the other, listening to her ramble on and pop her gum. Moises occasionally nudges me when she says something particularly outrageous.
"So like, they have to mate, or they die. Isn't that sick? I had no idea. I mean, ferrets don't come with an instruction sheet, so you just assume they're like, big social hamsters. I mean, I knew they were social, which is why you're supposed to get two if you're not, like, planning to make out with it all day. So they're not like hamsters. But what? The females go into heat like, forever, unless they mate, and if they don't mate, they die. They die of heat. They die of horny! It like, breaks down their bones! I just cannot believe that."
"It's a design flaw," says Moises, seriously. Nudge. "I'll take it up with the big guy when he next appears to me."
"Right," says Hallie. Crack. Pop. "Next burning bush appears next to you, imma pee on it. Put that shit out."
She cracks up. Nudge. If he keeps nudging me, I might fall over. I still haven't shaken the feeling of being light-headed. It's a long hallway, but we are walking slowly. I am careful to keep a pace that does not make me pant – no one is going to hear me breathing heavily just because I took a walk: I don't care what kind of pity train I am riding. Pride keeps my toes carefully curled tightly with every step, making entirely sure I am balanced. The mental effort is greater than the physical one. I am concentrating hard to look and sound normal, which of course is antithetical to behaving normally. I must make sure I do not start panting.
At least I am in my fancy muumuu. I try not to think of my housedresses as muumuus, but the word is there – I can't not think it. This one looks like a shower curtain that someone took two of and sewed together. It has a sheen to it that makes it appear to repel water, but when I touch it, it's soft. My feet are in crocs. So, I have that going for me. Can't say I'm not trendy. Black crocs. No jibbits, though. Which is almost a shame – those seem fun, for the kids. My muumuu has pink and red gardenias splashed across it. The neck is elastic. The sleeves are what I might have called cap sleeves, a few hundred pounds ago. I sincerely hope it wasn't made in Asia because those women must think that whole tribes of people at a time are meant to wear this. There is fat America, and then there is fat America.
"… carry their fur for good luck. No seriously. One is white and one is black, so I made a little ball and like, rubbed it together in my fingers until it turned grey."
"And that's in your pocket?" Moises asks, amused.
"What? No, of course not. It's in my wallet. It's flat now. Looks like a grey disc. But definitely good luck."
"Sure it is," says Moises. "Because ferret fur is good luck. I definitely read that in my sociology text last semester. When I was studying the indigenous habits of idiot teenage female Baltimoreans."
"Shut up. You're a fartini. You know why it's good luck? Do you know why? Go on, for real. Guess." Hallie is reaching past me and lightly smacking Moises.
Nudge. "I'm a fartini?"
"Yeah, cuz you have that bowel disease. So you have diarrhea all the time, right? So, it's like a concoction. Like liquid. Guess why it's good luck."
"Why my digestive disease is good luck?
"No, you fuck, why my ferret fur is good luck!"
"Gyeeh. Why?"
"Because I met you, today, the very day after I put the ball of fur in my wallet. Turd." She smacks him harder, reaching past me. It's like I'm not even here, but in a good way. They're with me but paying no attention to me. My struggles walking down this hallway are not exceptional. My role as their hobby does not actually require their attention. I am not a freak, and I am not special.
I smile.
"Which am I, a turd or a fartini? You don't get it both ways, female."
"Sure I do. It's all crap. Ha! Ha ha!"
Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot. I try to walk like a normal person, and not like a boulder shifting its weight back and forth. I wonder how I used to walk. Hallie smells like coconut oil – I think she has it in her hair. Or maybe it's old suntan lotion on her skin. Her eyes are so dark they're almost black, but that's the smudged eyeliner at work, too. She could definitely use a shower. She looks like she rolled off someone's couch, about three days in a row. But darling. God, the dimples. Her ears have a lot of gear in them – silver hoops all the way up the cartilage. A little diamond in her nose.
We reach the end of the hallway and we all turn around to walk the other way.
Blow. Pop. "How you doing, Mrs. Jam? I gotta say, I never thought we'd still be out here. This is awesome."
"Yeah, thanks. You don't have to talk down to me. We're only on the fifth lap."
Her eyes pop open wide. "This is awesome, don't you doubt it! Look how long this hallway is, compared to an apartment. You'd have to walk in, like a hundred circles in an apartment to get as far as we got in the hallway. And unless you're in there walking in circles all day, then this is awesome." She pokes me in my upper arm. "You're like, allowed to be proud of yourself."
"Hallie," I sigh. "There's n
ot a lot about my life I'm going to stand here and be proud of."
"For real, Mrs. Jam. Moises says you've only been in there for a few years. You weren't shut away for, like thirty. It's been three. Really, how big a deal is that. Three years passes like that." She snaps her fingers.
I chuckle, and I see Moises's shoulders lift up and down next to me in a silent beat of a laugh. "Three years is quick?" I say. "How old were you three years ago? I bet you were a child three years ago. With braces. And posters of boy bands on your wall."
"As if. Three years ago I was 14, and I have never had posters of boy bands."
"I'm sure all your posters were very hard core," I say drily. Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot. There's the door of my neighbor across the way, the saint who now takes out my trash. Mr. Warrington's old apartment. I'll need some ten dollar bills to catch up with her, soon. I haven't put a trash bag out in a while, though. Haven't actually eaten enough to fill one. Wow. "You know what though, I think this should be my last lap." I really am dizzy.
We head back inside my apartment and I sink into the couch. I close my eyes. "Moises, my bank card is in the top drawer," I say. "Whatever you're willing to do."
I hear him open the drawer. "Which one?" he says. "You must have ten cards in here."
I don't answer. I am comfortable. Maybe it was the exercise, but I have a pleasant drifting sensation.
I hear him mutter out loud: "American Express, a club card, a club card, Visa, Discover, oh this one? Bank of America, with your picture on it."
I nod and drift further. "Last time I went, you could get two hundred dollars out at a time. Maybe that's the same, now. I don't know. Oh, the code. It's my first name. The numbers on the keypad that have the M, the O…."
And I'm out. I am floating. I am in the sky, with cotton candy cumulus clouds around me. I see an eagle. I see a little baby cherub with wings and a harp, who winks. I see an airplane. I see a rainbow. I am floating but now I am flying, picking up speed.
And now I am running, still effortlessly, gaining speed on a downhill. I am running down a mountain trail, deftly sidestepping the roots that grow thick and gnarled into the path. I feel branches whip by me, and it's getting dark. I am exhilarated, but scared to be caught in the woods at night – I know that soon I won't be able to see the path well enough to make it all the way back to my car. I am with John and Heath, both students from the computer lab at my college, nerds who know DOS and word processing and help the students crank out papers, the brave students who aren't still using a typewriter. They are in the same class as me, and we hiked up the mountain today, a Saturday, to see Lookout Peak, and it was fun. John and Jim are non-threatening. There is no sexual tension. They are computer nerds and I am hefty. We are friends. Now, they are running behind me but I keep an easy lead. We all realized the danger when we stayed at the Peak to see the sunset, and jumped to our feet and took off when Heath said, "You know guys, it'll be pitch black within the hour, and we parked really far away…."
Faster and faster. I giggle – I am not out of breath. I keep waiting for the stitch in my side but it doesn't come. This is what it must feel like to be a marathon runner – someone who can run and run and run. I wish the whole world were downhill. I cannot see details in the gathering dark, but that actually helps me – I am not concerned with the overgrowth or spider webs that I was so careful to step around on my way up. I fly by all of this.
We run for what must be 45 minutes, and we get to the parking lot for the hikers, where I am parked. I am high as a kite. I want to do cartwheels to my car. John and Heath are bent over, wheezing, laughing, congratulating each other on making it. I want to run all the way back to campus – I do not want to drive. But as we stand there in the parking lot, catching our breath, I feel myself settle back into my sneakers, heavily, and I feel my weight and the asphalt under my soles. By the time I am breathing normally again, I can see the stars above me, and I can feel all my heft pressing down below me. The magic is gone.
"Mrs. Jam?" Hallie is sitting next to me, shaking me, her hand on my shoulder. Moises in standing in front of us, bending over and peering into my face. "Oh, jesus god," she says. "We were about to call an ambulance."
"I just fell asleep," I say, my voice husky, as I struggle to sit more upright.
"No, Mrs. Jam," says Moises, shaking his head. "I've been back with your money for a half hour. We could not wake you. I think you actually fainted."
"Really." I couldn't have fainted. I dreamt. Unconscious people don't dream. Do they? It wasn't really a dream – it was a memory. One of my favorites. "Well, I guess exercise was a rude awakening. I'm fine now."
"I dunno, Mrs. Jam…." Hallie has spit her gum out, or swallowed it. Her jaw is surprisingly still as she looks at me closely. "You're a funny color."
"Give it a minute," I say. I'm sure I'll be turning red as a beet if I try to stand up again, which isn't happening. But I want to sit up, not wedged back into the corner of the couch on a half-reclined angle. I try like hell to shift my weight forward a little bit, but to do it without looking like I am pushing out a one-ton baby. I cannot do this delicately. I cannot do this with an audience. But the moment of effort works – I can feel the blood flush my face.
"We'll come do this again tomorrow, right Moises?" say Hallie. "You'll be better tomorrow. Every day it'll get easier."
I nod. "Okay child," I say. "No pep talks. I know how it works."
She grins and unwraps a fresh piece of gum, and pops it in her mouth. "Do you want a drink?" she asks. "Let me get you water." She bounces to her feet and takes the two old water glasses with her to the kitchen. I hear her running water in the sink, for too long only to be getting me a glass.
"She's washing the glasses you two used," I say to Moises. "She's quite a kid."
"Gyeeh. You have no idea."
"So five hours, eh?"
He looks at the time on his cell phone. "Six, now."
"Do I get the story?"
"There isn't one really. She was in the parking lot of Food Mart when I finished the morning shift. Just stocking shelves. She was screaming at this guy, so of course I had to go rescue her."
"Why, was he screaming back at her?"
"No. I rescued her from herself."
"Ah. And then what?"
"And then … we melded. A few hours later I almost didn't realize I was still with another person. I felt like I was by myself. But with her."
I let a moment of silence pass.
"She's not too young?" I ask carefully.
He nods. "Oh, she's too young. She's not even 18 yet. But, in a few years, that won't matter anymore."
Hallie returns and hands me a glass of water, with ice cubes. "You're probably dehydrated," she says. "If I just did all the work you just did, I would have walked up and down the hallway carrying Moises, and my mom, and, like, a good sized dog or something. I mean, think about what you just accomplished!"
"Hallie," says Moises. Hal Lay. "You have a way with words."
"Do you know there's this awesome thick chick song out right now?" she asks. "I'm all about that bass, 'bout that bass, no treble. I'm all about that bass, 'bout that bass, no treble." She shimmies a little bit while she half-sings it. "Isn't that clever? That chicks with the booty got the bass line?"
I snort. "I left off somewhere around, fat bottomed girls you make the rockin' world go round. I didn't know there were still songs written like that. Good to know."
"You better believe it." Hallie does some kind of crazy move I've never seen outside of a music video, shaking her ass up and down so it looks like it's a separate part of her body. "I'm bringing booty baaaaack," she sings, and goddamn if a baby Aretha didn't just come out of her pipes. I glance at Moises and his jaw is slack. I guess they hadn't covered singing and dancing in the past six hours. "Go ahead and tell them skinny bitches thaaaaat." She twists and does something that looks like an invisible hula hoop. Her face is pure grin. She was born for this. "Cause I got
the boom boom that all the boys chase, and all the right junk in all the right places."
Chapter 17
So I've already slept half the day away on my mattress, and fell asleep again on my couch after the walk. Something's wrong. I break all my rules and ask the kids if they will put the fresh sheets on my bed – I clench my fists in my lap and put every ounce of faith I have into my housekeeping skills, that I will not be embarrassed by their experience with my mattress. They come back into the living room without looking like they are keeping any secrets – I had heard Hallie's colorful conversation the whole time and she never missed a beat. She chews her gum and kisses me goodbye on my cheek as I thank them.
"Back tomorrow!" she chirps and I nod, too exhausted to protest. Moises gives me a thumbs-up and a head bob, and they are gone.
God. After three years on my own, this feels like a party. If I lined up 500 kids their age and picked the only two who could have looked at me without judgment, made me laugh, and treated me like an equal, that's who I got. I'm lucky, I think. I'm grateful. I reach for my book I have on the coffee table, thinking I'll read, and enjoy the silence, and realize I can't lift my arm. I feel so weak. I want to be alarmed by this, but I cannot quite muster the energy to be alarmed. I am pretty comfortable. I close my eyes and wait to worry, but I am not worried.
I don't fall asleep again, I don't think, but my thoughts shift lightly through my head, skipping from one scene to another, like a slow slideshow without any purpose. I see a stream, where I used to wear last year's school shoes to balance on the rocks, until I inevitably slipped and ended up in water up to my ankles. But then I could slosh right through the stream and not worry about rock-walking anymore. I see the kindergarten courtyard, and how high the fence was, as I struggled to clear it. I see my tenth grade chemistry class, where I sat next to my friend Ivy and ate French fries out of the inside of her desk, French fries that she smuggled in from lunch. We used to dip them in mayonnaise packets. I don't remember if that was gross or not. The chemistry teacher was also the track coach, and one day when we had a substitute, Patrick Grinder took a shot put and launched it across the room, breaking a chair and denting the floor. He had the grace to be horrified by what happened – I don't think he really got how heavy a shot put was until it was too late. But practice shot puts are twice the weight of the ones used in competition, we all learned the next day, when the teacher ranted at us, trying to get us to rat on who had done it. No one did. I see my college roommates, both of them theater majors, both of them rehearsing Chekhov on their beds, interrupting themselves to convince me to at least assist the stage manager, and I really should try out once or twice for a part, so we could do a play all together. And I did, and it was fun. I didn't do Chekhov though. I did a vaudeville melodrama that my roommate directed, and I played Betsy Lou and wore pigtails and a short gingham skirt from the costume shop. I felt almost thin, because the skirt didn't have to be modified for me, but when Joel McCray saw me in costume during the first dress rehearsal, he, who was supposed to play my fiancé, said, "Betsy Lou! You're pregnant!" I laughed as hard as anyone – it was just the ill-fitting skirt. Not my flabby, happy stomach.
Take a Load Off, Mona Jamborski Page 12
