by Jason Mott
Carmen could blame the tears that came on the pregnancy. She was always crying about something, it seemed. But she wasn’t crying because she wanted Macon to concede, nor was she crying because of her hormones. She wept because, like her husband, she was terrified—adrift in a strange, unsure world. And she knew he would not cry, so she cried for him.
“Isn’t there any better way?” Carmen managed.
“If you can think of it,” Macon said, “I’ll listen.”
She had no reply.
“Look at where we live, Carmen.” He made a motion with his head to indicate the house behind her. She did not turn. She knew, as well as Macon did, where they lived. “We’re not quite starving,” Macon continued, “but we need money. You know that. We’re just scraping by and now we’re going to have another member of this crazy little family of ours. There aren’t any teaching jobs around here and being the sheriff is a joke.” He shook his head. “I spent my entire life living in this house, watching it fall apart, unable to do anything to change it. Unable to make a decent living. And now, by some chance, we’ve got a chance to change that.” He reached up and wiped a tear from Carmen’s face. “I know we’ll make this work. I believe that something special is happening in our lives right now. And I don’t want to turn away from that.”
Carmen had a thousand things she wanted to say. A dozen different arguments against Reverend Brown alone. But she loved her husband, and she was as afraid and uncertain as he was. At least now, they could be afraid and uncertain together. At least now, neither of them would be striking out alone at things. “Okay,” she said finally.
Then she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. Her stomach—holding the baby they had made together pressing between them—was the proof of her love for him and her willingness to follow him into the days ahead. “But if we’re going to do this, I’m not wearing any of those god-awful flowered hats that women at his church wear.”
And then they laughed and the night did not seem quite as cold and the days looming ahead less arduous.
* * *
The drive over to the Campbells’ had been more of a headache than Tom expected. If things were bad before with Ava and all of the attention they were getting, they were worse now.
As he drove through the town, he found the streets of Stone Temple lined with people, all of them with their eyes on his car once they saw that it was Wash inside. They knew that, more than likely, he was going to see Ava. When Tom stopped at an intersection, one man—a young man with a heavy, thick beard swaddling his face—raced over and knocked on Tom’s window and offered Tom a thousand dollars if he would simply let him come with them to see Ava.
The man’s sudden rushing of the car startled both Tom and Wash, but once Tom understood what was happening he only looked at the man quizzically and laughed. “What a crazy bastard,” he said, then he pressed the accelerator and continued on. For the rest of the drive to Ava’s no one else charged the car. While there was never any lack of people watching Tom and Wash as they passed, they kept to the side of the road and only shouted things or waved their signs or simply applauded. “You’d think we were the kings of England,” Tom said at one point. Then he whistled—a long, diminishing note—to further punctuate his disbelief. “I don’t think I’d wish this on anybody,” he said.
“We can’t even leave the house,” Wash said.
Tom nodded. “That’s what her mother told me.”
“Carmen’s her stepmom,” Wash corrected. He was wearing blue jeans and a light sweater and, just now, he noticed a stain on the front of it. He wondered how it had gotten past his grandmother.
“I know,” Tom said. “I remember the day we all met at the fair. But just because she didn’t give birth to Ava, that doesn’t mean Carmen’s not her mom. Parenting’s what you do. It’s a job. And Carmen took the job.” And then it was his turn to take stock of his clothing. His pants were dirty and the blue flannel shirt he wore had a torn pocket and smelled of motor oil, but it was the best he had.
“She’s great,” Wash said. “But Ava doesn’t like her.”
“That happens,” Tom said. “She probably figures Carmen is trying to replace her mom. But she can’t expect her old man to hoe his row in this world all by himself.” His face tightened. “It’s tough,” he added.
For the first time since his father had returned, Wash noticed that his father was wearing a wedding ring. A knot formed in his stomach. He hadn’t really considered the notion of his father remarrying in the time that he had been out of his life. He remembered his mother’s face—pale and round, her blue eyes sparkling, wrinkled at the corner from prolonged smiling and with a light dusting of freckles across her cheeks. And when he remembered his mother he remembered his mother and father together.
“Can I meet her?” Wash asked.
“Meet who?” Tom replied.
“Your wife.”
Tom’s brow furrowed. He was concentrating hard on the road—the people lining the narrow mountain road were beginning to grow in number again now that they were getting closer to Ava’s house. “What are you talking about, son? I’m not married.” Then, as if understanding, he looked down at his left hand. “This is the only wedding ring I’ll ever wear,” he said. And then they turned the final corner—waved through by the police blocking the road—and started up the steep hill to Ava’s house.
Tom parked the car near the front door and as he and Wash got out of the car he whispered, “Not sure I’m built for this.”
“You’ll be okay,” Wash replied.
Tom put his arm around the boy’s shoulders and the two of them knocked on the door together. As soon as the door opened Wash greeted Carmen. Tom did the same, making sure that she saw him remove his hat in a gesture of courtesy.
“I’ll be back around dark,” Tom said to Carmen. “You’ll let me know if he’s any trouble. But I don’t think he will be.” Then he patted Wash on the head and tousled the boy’s hair and steered him inside the house. Wash headed for Ava’s room. The two of them had hoped to leave the house and go into the woods as they usually did, but there were too many people outside. Too many things that could go wrong.
“Have fun,” Carmen said to Wash as he passed. Then she turned to Tom. “He’s never any trouble,” she said. “He’s practically family.”
Tom nodded. “That’s what I hear,” he said. “But it just sounded like the type of thing a parent’s supposed to say when they drop off their kid.” His hands fidgeted in his pockets. “I’m still getting the hang of all this,” Tom said.
“We all are,” Carmen replied, smiling. “Every single day. Would you like to come in and sit for a while, Tom?” Carmen asked. “That’s the kind of thing parents do, too.”
Finally, Tom looked up at her. His brow furrowed, growing the “thought trenches” that Ava often teased Wash about. “I guess they do,” Tom said.
“Come on in and make yourself at home,” Carmen said, leaving the living room and walking into the kitchen. “I’ll fix us something to drink.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tom said, but he only lingered in the doorway.
“I appreciate the manners,” Carmen replied from the kitchen, “but don’t ma’am me. Hell, I’m guessing we’re about the same age.”
“You’re probably right,” Tom said. Finally he took a few steps inside the doorway, and he remained there, just inside the house, looking around, feeling uncomfortable. “I’m not sure how to do any of this,” he said to himself. “I feel like I’m wearing a costume.”
“What’s that?” Carmen said, waddling back from the kitchen. She carried two glasses of iced tea and smiled brightly.
“Nothing,” Tom said. He took the glass and looked at it skeptically. “I don’t suppose you have any beer, do you?”
Carmen shook her head. “Not since I got pregnant. We hardly drink, anyhow, but once I got pregnant and couldn’t drink at all, Macon decided to give it up, too.” She wanted to sit, but Tom was still standing near the door
and she didn’t want to be rude. “So how are you and Wash getting along?” she asked.
“Okay, I suppose,” Tom said. “He’s a smart kid. Smarter than me.”
“I know the feeling,” Carmen said. “He and Ava are two of the smartest kids I’ve ever known. Sometimes I feel like I’m just holding her back, you know?”
Tom nodded. Still he had not tasted his tea. The glass was ice-cold, forcing him to shift it from one hand to the other intermittently.
“We’re all just doing the best we can, though,” Carmen said. “Ava and I have some tough days. She’s still warming up to the idea of me being married to her father.” She couldn’t bear to stand any longer. The night had been sleepless and her muscles were sore and her back ached and her ankles were swollen and there were a dozen other things that her body was doing to her in the throes of the pregnancy. So, finally, she sat. “You’re welcome to sit down,” she said.
“No, thank you,” Tom said. “I...I should be going.” He stepped forward and placed the glass of tea on the coffee table in the center of the room. When Carmen began preparations to stand, he motioned for her not to. “No, you sit,” he said. “I’m okay.”
“You don’t have to leave, Tom,” Carmen said. “This might sound strange, but it feels good to talk to someone who’s new to this parenting thing, too.”
Tom flinched.
“I don’t mean it as an insult,” Carmen said, keeping her eyes on her glass. “It’s just that, well, Macon has been doing this for years and Brenda’s been a mother and a grandmother. Me, I feel like I’m always playing catch-up. And, to make it worse, things between Ava and me are tense.” Finally, she looked up. “I guess it’s just good to meet someone else who’s struggling.”
Tom watched the woman for a while. His first thought had been that she was coming on to him, but looking at her now, listening to her, he realized that it was the exact opposite. She was just as frightened of being a parent as he was. The only difference between them was the fact that she was enduring the struggle, day after day, while he’d run off into the world after the death of Wash’s mother. He’d abandoned his child.
“I’ll be going now,” he said. He turned to leave.
“Wait, Tom,” Carmen called after him. She struggled to stand. It was a clumsy and ungainly maneuver, getting up from the chair in a rush—an awkward maneuvering of her hips and stomach, followed by a hard push into slow, vertical lurch—and if Tom had continued walking, she wouldn’t have been able to catch up to him. But he stood, and he waited.
“Nobody’s asking you to be perfect, Tom,” Carmen said when she had finally crossed the room. “You’re allowed to get it wrong sometimes.”
Tom nodded. He tightened his jaw, preparing his mouth for something. “Can I ask you something?” he said. “About Ava?”
“Sure, Tom,” Carmen said. She did not know what Tom wanted to ask. And, yet, at the same time, she felt that she knew exactly what he wanted to ask. Everyone had their own version of the same question about Ava. And Carmen was getting adept at answering them. There was a balance that needed to be struck. A compromise between saying that she didn’t know more than anyone else and reassuring people that, regardless of what she knew, there was a plan in place.
Now it was Tom’s turn to phrase it how he wanted to. Tom’s eyes were downcast when he spoke. “How, uh, how does it work?” Tom asked. He lifted his eyes from the floor and looked at Carmen. He seemed afraid and penitent all at once. “Could she fix somebody that’s never done nothing but fuck up their life?” He laughed darkly and twisted the hat in his hands. “Does what she’s able to do work like that?” he continued. “Can she fix mistakes?” He looked down at his wedding ring. “And if she can’t fix things like that, can she make it so that a person doesn’t remember? Can she make it so that a person doesn’t dream about the moment when everything in their life fell apart?”
“I don’t know,” Carmen said. She had learned to answer quickly when people asked her impossible questions. To delay was to offer hope where she did not have hope to offer. Then she added, “However she’s able to do it, I don’t think it works like that.”
Tom nodded. He cleared his throat. “I figured as much. I just thought I’d ask,” he said. “I’ll be going now. I’m sorry for...well...‘I’m sorry’ about sums me up, I guess.”
Without pausing, he turned and walked out of the house. Carmen stood in the doorway and watched him walk to his car and leave. She wanted to call out to him, but the words she would have said eluded her.
* * *
“Do you like having your dad around?” Ava asked. They sat on opposite ends of Ava’s bed with their legs folded beneath them with Wash’s copy of Moby Dick between them. Ava still didn’t particularly care for the book, and Wash was still determined to sway her. Once or twice since the two of them had been sitting, she opened the book to the dog-eared page where they’d stopped last time. She stared down at the words, then closed the book with an exaggerated look of disgust on her face.
“Grandma hates him,” Wash replied. “But he’s not that bad. He’s different than I thought he’d be, is all. I’ve been staying with him a couple of nights.”
Ava folded her arms across her chest and shrugged. She rubbed her arms to generate warmth. Both she and Wash were beginning to get used to the way she was never able to feel warm anymore. She wore jeans with a layer of gym shorts underneath, along with an undershirt, T-shirt and sweater. While she waited for Wash to answer the question about his father, Ava grabbed a knitted hair sash from the bedside stand. She tucked it onto her head—wrestling with the thick black frizzy mass of her hair. It was a comical process, watching her puffy hair resist the sash. When she had finished, they resumed their conversation. “What did your grandma say about it?”
“She said, ‘He’s your daddy. You’ll figure out the rest.’” Wash looked down at the book in his hand. He considered reading it, but did not. “It’s not like my dad died,” Wash said. “He just left. And I think a part of me thought that maybe he had died. But now suddenly he shows up again, which is almost worse because I know that every day he’s been gone was a day that he woke up and decided not to come see me.” He paused for a moment, taking in the sight of Ava in all of her swaddling. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. “New topic,” she said. Ava sat with her legs folded against her chest and her arms wrapped around her knees. She looked down at the copy of Moby Dick. “This book is pretty terrible,” she said. She picked it up and tossed it into Wash’s lap.
“It’s a classic,” Wash replied. “Just ask anybody.”
“Just because people say it’s a classic, doesn’t mean it is. That’s all I’m saying.”
“It’s an adventure book,” Wash said. “But it’s more than that, too. It’s a book about a whole lot of things.” He took a breath in preparation to continue, but could not find what he wanted to say. He could see the words in his mind—all the things he wanted to say—but they were like bees buzzing about him in the air: just enough to catch sight of, but impossible to contain. “It’s hard to really get my head around it all.” Wash’s face tightened, not unlike his father’s sometimes did. “You just don’t get it,” he said, frustrated at himself much more than at Ava. “Even I don’t really get it. Not all of it, anyway. But I think that’ll change when I get older. Just think about all the stuff people have said about this book.” He held up the novel as evidence of both its existence and merit. “It wouldn’t still be in print if it wasn’t really doing something amazing, right?”
Ava gave him a sidelong glance. “Just shut up and keep reading,” Ava said.
Wash snorted a laugh and opened the book. He searched for his place, but when he found it he immediately closed the book again, still keeping his finger in place to hold the page. “Why do you think he did it?”
“Who?”
“Ishmael?”
“Why do I think Ishmael did what?” She reached o
ver and took the book from Wash’s hand. “I swear, Wash, how many times are you going to start conversations halfway in the middle?”
“It’s all part of my charm,” Wash said quickly. He sat up straight and smoothed his hair the way people did on television.
“Who said you were charming?”
“People.”
“Whatever,” she giggled.
“Why do you think Ishmael left home?”
“I thought it was because he was tired of being on land. He’s a sailor, right? And that’s what sailors do—they sail.”
“Yeah,” Wash replied, “but what about the people in his life. He had family.”
“He didn’t have any kids, though. So he could really do what he wanted.”
“I guess,” Wash said, his face confessing his confusion.
“But...”
“But why does someone do something like that?” Wash said. “He had to have people that cared about him. Friends, cousins, somebody. We’ve all got somebody, you know? We’re all connected to somebody. What does it take to just pick up and leave like that?”
Ava turned and looked out the nearby window. Beyond the window there were trees and brush and, beyond that, the steeply rising mountain. Sliding over the mountain, like a narrow serpent, was a thin, discernible trail. Ava and Wash had walked that trail countless times. It led away. It led into the world. “Wouldn’t it be something,” Ava began, “to go off on your own like that? To get away from everyone?”
“Would you do it?” Wash asked.
“Maybe,” Ava said.
“Why?”
