Nesting

by Renee Mackenzie

  Macy didn’t remember the rest of the drive. The next thing she knew, she was turning onto her ex-in-laws’ street. She was looking so hard at the dark, sleeping house, that she didn’t see the white Mustang until it pulled up beside her.

  “What are you doing?” Macy said.

  Her ex-husband shrugged. “I guess it’s too late to go on up, huh?”

  “I would think so, Jack.”

  “I really was working.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I believe you or not.” She considered the importance of consistency in raising kids. If that was a big deal, at least Jack was consistently absent from his son’s life.

  Macy checked out Jack’s new car. He was always trading for a newer model, just like he did with employment. He’d start a job, make it work pretty well financially, and then decide it wasn’t enough. Instead of sticking it out, he’d move on to the next “perfect opportunity.”

  “I’m moving into a new apartment the first of the month. When I get settled in, I want to take Jeremiah for a weekend,” he said.

  “Another new apartment?”

  He rolled his eyes, and she noticed his face looked fuller. “Does that mean another new girlfriend, too?” she asked.

  The low rumble of his Mustang sounded like he was growling at her. More consistency.

  “And what are you doing? Taking the night off from screwing around?” he asked.

  Macy sighed. “Goodnight, Jack.”

  He gunned the engine, creating a brief squeal of tires and leaving her behind to mutter, “Jerk.”

  She looked again at the dark house, its hedges cut into perfect rectangles. Their symmetry was comforting. She imagined J-man asleep, undoubtedly curled under a blanket, and realized she was more than a little relieved that Jack hadn’t spent time with his son.

  Chapter Five

  Rezoned

  Kenny looked around at all the people who had the same idea as he had to hit the flea market early. Dorianne made a beeline to a small pen of black puppies. Kenny sighed as she squatted beside them and reached in to stroke their soft heads.

  “I’ve been wanting a puppy,” she said.

  “Yeah, but you want one in the house.”

  “That’s where they belong. I don’t want a yard dog.”

  “I wasn’t brought up with no dogs in the house. You weren’t either.” Kenny had always had bird dogs penned up out back. And no way Dori’s daddy would have any dogs in his house. Even her cocker spaniel had stayed in the garage at night.

  One of the puppies licked Dorianne’s hand, and she smiled. Kenny realized it was the first time he’d seen her smile since the bad scene at the Barnes and Noble.

  Kenny knew a cuddly puppy wouldn’t fix everything, but that was all he could think of to do for Dori. So he bought one of the puppies for her, on account of her being so upset over that Grace woman calling her a liar about them being kin. Besides, twenty bucks for a Lab was a great deal.

  †

  Later that night, Kenny went out with Tank and Tank’s cousin Eddie. They walked into a bar that changed names every two years or so, all depending on whether they were playing loose with the alcohol laws or the taxes. Kenny didn’t care that the place was small and dark, or that the stale beer and smoke smells mingled with what could have been urine. It was where he’d had his first legal drink, and that counted for something with him.

  “Hey, Kenny,” Tank said.

  “Huh?”

  Tank pointed to the right. “Check out up at the bar. It’s your dad.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Kenny muttered. “I’ll catch up with you guys later, okay?”

  Tank nodded. Kenny had already told Tank a little about how him and his dad almost never got to see each other on account of Kenny’s mama being mad at Kenny for taking sides with Dorianne against her.

  His mama constantly talked Dorianne down, always dogged her about something or other. Kenny had finally had enough when his mama ticked Dori off with some meanness over a chicken potpie. Ever since then, they exchanged Christmas cards from three streets away.

  As Kenny crossed the few feet between them, he studied his dad. The lines on his face seemed a little deeper, his hair grayer, but he looked good.

  “Hey, Dad,” Kenny said.

  Ken, Sr., extended his hand. Kenny shook it and looked closely at his dad for any sign of discomfort at seeing him.

  “How you been, son?”

  Kenny smiled. “I been good. You?”

  “Fine. How’s Dori?”

  “She’s still putting up with me.” Kenny thought his dad was a bit too thin, maybe a little haggard. “You okay, really?”

  Ken, Sr., nodded. “Yeah, really. Your mama’s about honey-doing me half to death, but I’m okay.”

  “How is Mama?”

  “She’s still making me put up with her.” He chuckled as he held up his mug to get the bartender’s attention. “One more for me, and get one for my son.”

  When Kenny got home four or five hours later, Dori was pissed. He wasn’t whipped or anything. He did get to go out with his buddies every now and again, but the rules were that he had to give Dori an estimated time of when he’d be home. So she wouldn’t worry. He’d missed his expected time by at least two hours.

  “Where the hell you been so late?”

  “Out at the bar with Tank and Eddie.”

  “Just Tank and Eddie?”

  “Who the hell else would I be with?”

  “You damned well better not have been hanging out up there with any women. And I know Macy goes there sometimes.”

  “Macy wasn’t there.” He wanted to remind Dori that he hadn’t technically cheated on her back then, that they’d been broken up, but he didn’t.

  “Then why are you so late?”

  “We were just hanging out.” Kenny didn’t want to say anything about seeing his dad. He wanted to wait and tell Dori in the morning, when he wasn’t feeling so raw.

  “You’re sure Macy wasn’t there?”

  Kenny clenched his jaw. “I was at the bar talking to my dad. Okay?”

  He could see shock on her face. Hell, he was shocked, too.

  “So, me and the guys walked in, and there’s Dad having a beer. Right away I went up and we started talking, and it was like no time at all had gone on since the last time I saw him.”

  He took a deep breath and started talking fast. “I figured, screw it, I’m going to talk to my own father. We talked and talked, and it was real nice, and I didn’t want to mess it up by leaving to call you. I was afraid if I walked away, even just long enough to make a call or take a piss, Dad might decide talking to me wasn’t worth Mama’s wrath, and he’d leave, and that would be that.”

  “Oh, Kenny.” Dorianne hugged him and pressed her body against his.

  †

  When Dorianne didn’t show up at the shop to get Kenny, he couldn’t figure out what was going on, since they hadn’t fought or anything.

  Tank drove him home. They pulled up to Kenny’s house in Tank’s spit-shined F-250. There sat the old Maverick. Kenny shrugged, figuring time must have slipped by Dorianne. He got a brief flash in his head of Dori on her knees, apologizing in that sexy way of hers.

  Kenny went inside and saw Dori with her back to him, on tiptoe to reach the mantle over the spotless fireplace. She wouldn’t let him burn any wood in it because she didn’t want the neat rows of brick to get charred and dirty. The dust rag in her hand reminded Kenny a lot of his old Johnny Cash T-shirt that up and disappeared awhile back.

  Dorianne held the ceramic owl, the same owl Kenny wasn’t allowed to touch because she always said his big hands were just itching to break any pretty thing she had.

  Then she was dusting the glass sea turtle. Her precious, hands-off-or-die, glass sea turtle she said was a symbol of fertility from Hawaii, but he’d seen the little oval stuck on the bottom that said it was made in China.

  Kenny looked at her whitish face and her feathery-perfect hair, and thought, Damn, m
y wife is beautiful. Then he noticed the smudged eye makeup.

  She heaved loudly a few times and went to him. He held her, because he’d learned a long time ago that was what females wanted you to do.

  “What’s wrong, babe?”

  He knew she’d get that mascara stuff all over the shoulder of his T-shirt, but that was okay, since she was the one who did the laundry.

  It took a lot of crying and standing there before she tried to talk. And then it was just words—some he recognized, some he didn’t.

  Just when he was about to give up on figuring out what she was saying, she said it so he understood. The doctor found something during her yearly “girl exam.”

  “They might need to operate, and I’ll probably never have kids now, and God, why’s it all so unfair?”

  “It’ll be all right.” He held her tighter. “You’ll see. It’ll be fine.”

  Knowing she had a way of being overly dramatic, he figured it probably wasn’t as bad as she was making out.

  †

  “You got to go to work when we get done?” Dorianne asked.

  “No. Martin gave me the whole day off,” Kenny said.

  “Good. I hope I can remember how to get to the Medical College.”

  Dori drove, sitting all stiff behind the wheel of the Maverick. They’d talked about getting another car, something newer and more reliable, but decided to wait until they’d started their family.

  She stuck to the speed limit, and Kenny just sat there, thinking about how he’d always figured if he could get her to relax—get her mind off it—they could actually pull off getting pregnant. He thought if he could just quit influencing her apologies, if they’d quit wasting so much of it doing that, they’d have a baby eventually. And there he sat—dog that he was—getting aroused at the idea of her going down on him. He thought how maybe he didn’t deserve a baby, or a beautiful wife like Dori, for that matter.

  The parking garage at the Medical College of Georgia got a bit confusing, but Dori did real good. They took the stairs and followed the directions she’d written down on the back of a grocery receipt.

  They waited a long time in the clinic, both of them holding magazines they weren’t reading.

  “Did you give the puppy fresh water?” Dori asked.

  “Yeah,” Kenny answered, but then they fell silent.

  Eventually a nurse called Dorianne to the back.

  Still gripping his magazine, Kenny sat there thinking. He was doing more and more of that lately—thinking about Dori and kids and family in general.

  He sighed. At least he did still see his Aunt Eileen and Uncle Russ. They were his cousin Jack’s parents. Jack and Kenny didn’t get along, especially not since Kenny had a thing with Macy their senior year. Hell, Jack shouldn’t still be mad after all that time—he done married and divorced Macy since then.

  Kenny quit faking it with the magazine and tossed it onto the table. He walked across the room to see what other magazines were around but didn’t pick one up.

  Yes, he remembered putting water down for the puppy, but he couldn’t be sure there was clean newspaper on the bathroom floor. Oh well, a puppy mess wasn’t the worst thing going on those days. Kenny would even surprise Dori and clean it up himself.

  “Kenny Brewer.”

  He stopped pacing and looked at the nurse in the doorway. He followed her into a room where Dori sat in the corner with her eyes all red and puffy. Dori nodded toward a chair a few feet from her, but she wouldn’t actually look at him. After a few minutes, when she still wouldn’t look him in the eye, he started glancing around.

  A red trash container was stuck in the corner. It had a black, tribal-art-looking symbol on it. Kenny wasn’t so much of a hick that he didn’t know what bio-hazard meant, and he couldn’t help but wonder what in the world about his wife could be that dangerous.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Dorianne stared straight ahead.

  He shrugged, and his attention went to a paper liner on the padded table. He could still see where Dori’s body had crinkled it. Kenny couldn’t stop looking at the paper, and he figured it had to be killing Dori, the way she hated wrinkles. At home she’d iron everything—clothes, sheets, curtains. Once she’d even chased Kenny around the room trying to iron the shirt he was wearing.

  “Them wrinkles driving you crazy?” Kenny teased.

  “What?”

  The strained look on her face shut him up.

  Then he saw the stirrups he’d heard women talking about when they wanted to embarrass their husbands or boyfriends. Women knew they could clear men from a room with just a word about their periods or girl-exams.

  The doctor came in, introduced himself to Kenny, and took a seat across from them. “Dorianne has told you…”

  “Nothing,” Kenny said, stealing a look at his wife.

  “Okay, then. We found two large tumors, both in or on the uterus. So far, there’s nothing to indicate the ovaries are involved, so we hope to save them.”

  Kenny studied Dori’s imprint on the paper liner.

  “We should schedule the surgery sooner rather than later. Any questions?” the doctor asked.

  Kenny looked at Dorianne.

  “No, no questions,” she whispered.

  The doctor looked at Kenny.

  “No, me neither,” Kenny said, thinking if there was a pop quiz, he’d flunk for sure.

  They left the exam room and made their way back to the Maverick.

  In the car, Dori started shaking something terrible. “All I ever wanted was to have a baby.”

  “I know,” Kenny whispered.

  “It’s all I ever wanted.” She shook harder and harder.

  The next thing Kenny knew, he was shaking too, and he leaned into her, but she shrugged him off. She pivoted so she was just out of his reach, and he knew her body was telling him, “Not even you can fix this one.”

  He didn’t know how to tell her he needed fixing, too, that he needed her to hold him and tell him it’d be okay. He couldn’t ask her for that, so instead he said, “You’ll have your baby, one way or another.”

  He knew his voice came out way too loud and clumsy. But, Lord help him, no matter how stupid it sounded, he’d never meant anything more.

  Part Two

  Migration

  Chapter Six

  Flying South

  Orange dust clouded Cam’s view as she ran toward the braking Chevy truck. She stepped onto the road to avoid the blood- and dirt-matted roadkill in front of Jim Bob’s Used Cars on Highway 278. The door of the blue and white pickup creaked when Cam pulled it open. She hesitated before climbing in, and a calloused hand swept a Coca Cola can, snuff tins, and other debris from the passenger seat onto the floor.

  With her duffle bag balanced on her lap, Cam gingerly fumbled around for the seatbelt, running her injured hand between the frayed seat and the door.

  “Ain’t none.”

  “Excuse me?” She was caught off guard by the gruff tone of her new ride.

  “If you’re looking for the seatbelt, ain’t none.”

  The driver, probably old enough to be her grandfather, pushed black-framed glasses up the thin bridge of his nose. Cam marveled that the old man could even see through the heavily scratched lenses.

  “Isn’t it the law?”

  “That’s the point.” The old man gripped the steering wheel with fingers swollen close to splitting. The late March sun filtered through the nicotine-yellowed windshield. “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Cam Webber.”

  “Hmm. Where you headed all alone?”

  “Augusta.” She struggled to ignore the stench of sour mint and rotten meat that caught her attention.

  “I ain’t got it in my mind to go into Georgia today, but I’ll take you as far as the bridge.”

  “Thanks, every little bit helps.” Cam pushed some of the trash to one side with the toe of her Reebok. She studied the writing on a cracked cassette case until finally identify
ing it as Anne Murray. “How far will I be from Augusta at the bridge?”

  The man’s soiled shirt hung limply over his bony shoulders. “You ain’t from around here.”

  Trying not to stare at hands too big for an otherwise thin man, Cam glanced at two shepherd-dog mixes rooting around in the overgrown weeds on the side of the road. “No, sir. Baltimore. Maryland.”

  “Maryland? You should have stayed on the interstate. It would’ve been quicker.” He tapped the brakes on the way down the hill, keeping below the speed limit. “What’s in Augusta?”

  To the left, a hand-painted sign for a gift-and-bait shop advertised worms and crickets. “My aunt. She’s been living in Augusta for a while now. I’m surprising her.”

  The old man laughed. “Boy, never surprise a woman, family or not.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “I’ll drop you at the bridge. That’s the Savannah River, the state line. Augusta.”

  “Thanks.” Then it sank in. The old man thought she was a guy. Heat rose on her neck as she remembered the first time someone had tried to stop her from going into the ladies’ room, thinking she was male. At the time she was mortified. These days it didn’t really bother her as much, and in this case it might even be a plus.

  The old man’s tongue slid behind his bristly cheek and lingered at his lower lip. “You see, seatbelts are just one more way for the government to chip away at our rights.”

  Another downhill stretch brought more brake tapping. At the bottom of the hill, they stopped for a red light. Four men sat on chairs or overturned milk crates under a large shade tree. The light turned green, and the old man half-crooked his finger in greeting as they passed the loiterers.