by John Searles
“Dominick?” Jeanny called, sounding farther away than she really was.
“There’s a door,” I shouted. “It opens to the next room. I’m in here.”
I walked to the back window and looked outside. Directly below me, in the rear parking lot, was a Dumpster. From where I stood I could have pretty easily opened the window and dropped the pistol and bullets down inside of it. And that would be that. But as uncomfortable as I felt holding the gun, something told me I should keep it after all. Not a voice or a sign from my mother. Just my own instinct. After all, who knew what could happen or when I might need it? Just in case, as Leon had said.
I walked to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer. Inside was another phone book and a Bible, too. I opened the Bible to a random page and stuck the pistol and bullets inside.
“Just in case,” I said out loud.
The Bible didn’t close all the way, but I shoved it in the drawer, then walked back through the closets to my room, closing the doors behind me.
“Did you get rid of it?” Jeanny asked. She had finished changing Sophie and was holding her again.
“It’s all gone,” I told her because I didn’t want her to worry. “I opened the window in the next room and dropped it in the Dumpster.”
“Good riddance,” she said.
I glanced at my watch. Ten-thirty already. I thought of Jeanny’s words when I answered the door: If I’m not home by midnight, I’ll turn into a pumpkin. The thought of her leaving made me feel lonely. I hated the idea of sleeping here tonight with just me and Sophie, that haunted vision of my mother calling to me.
When Jeanny turned to open her guitar case, I shoved the condoms under the bed. It wasn’t that some part of me didn’t dream of making it with her, because I did feel that way. I mean, she seemed prettier to me by the second. And those small, loose breasts of hers kept catching my eyes. Just being with her made me forget—if only a little—what had become of my life. But it seemed weird to think about sex in the room where my mother had died. And if I was going to be with Jeanny, I wanted it to be perfect. Not like that night with Edie when I had let go in my pants, felt my stomach twist and turn. Besides—not that it made a difference to guys like Leon and my father—but we had only really met that afternoon. As liberated as she was, I doubted Jeanny wanted to go all the way, or even part of the way, with me already.
“Do you take that thing with you everywhere you go?” I asked when Jeanny lifted her guitar out of the case. Beneath the strings the belly of the instrument was a gaping dark hole that opened in my direction. Ooooooo, I imagined it endlessly mewling. Oooooooooooo.
“As a matter of fact I do,” she said. “It’s like my best friend.”
I asked her if she was going to play for me, and she said she already performed once for me on the bus that day. “Check with me another time. But I thought I could put a pillow in here and use my case as a little crib for Sophie. We’ll keep it by the heater so she stays warm.”
This is what I thought: If Sophie falls asleep, Jeanny might leave her guitar case behind and come back for it tomorrow. Or maybe she would just have to stay.
“You’re the expert. Whatever you think is best.” I waited for her to pick up the line of questioning she had begun before Leon and Ed arrived, but she kept quiet about it. We made the miniature crib for Sophie with towels from the room next door for blankets, then put her down to sleep. When Sophie stopped fussing, Jeanny went into the bathroom. I thought of her looking into that mirror and wondered how she would react if she saw what I had seen in there, heard that strange message.
A moment later she emerged holding her hair behind her head in a way that made me want to kiss her again, to touch her skin. She sat next to me on the bed, both our heads propped on pillows against the headboard. I stared at the whiteness of the ceiling and counted the smudges up there in an effort to keep my mind calm.
“So are you ready to tell me about Sophie?” Jeanny asked finally.
Ready as I’d ever be. I took a breath and began at the beginning. “Last summer my mother and I were out looking for my father. When we couldn’t find him in any of the usual bars where he drinks on Hanover Street, I convinced my mother to drive to his girlfriend’s house on Barn Hill. . . ”
Jeanny listened quietly as I spoke. Unlike Leon, she stopped me from time to time to ask questions. “Did you have any clue that your mother was pregnant?. . . Did Edie ever mention moving to New York?. . . Do you think your father really hit her?”
No.
No.
I don’t know.
I answered each question as best I could. And when I was done with the story, I found myself crying. Cursing Roget, who was out there walking around without any blame for leaving my mother to die. I wanted to get him, I told Jeanny, but I didn’t know how. And the harder I tried to bury my feelings, the way I promised myself, the more it all came gushing out. It killed me to break down in front of her like that. To let her see me so messed up and weak.
Jeanny didn’t seem to mind, though. She moved my head to her shoulder and stroked my hair. “It’s okay,” she said, the same way she had to Sophie. “It’s going to be okay.”
We stayed like that awhile. Her comforting me as I listened to the steady thump of her heart beneath her sweater. The room grew quiet, except for the occasional whiz of a car driving by outside. As tired and sad as I was, after a long time of lying close to her like that, I felt myself get hard in my pants. It wasn’t the usual quick surge. This was something that came more slowly, but stronger, as we lay there. It seemed funny to be turned on at the same time as all those other emotions. But with my head so near the softness of her breasts, it was impossible not to be. I told myself to hold back, though. It wasn’t right in this room. So I simply let myself float in the feeling of being next to her.
Her hand stroking my hair, touching my forehead.
My arm draped over her stomach, absently playing with the cuff of her sweater.
Slowly my mind began to drift off to sleep, until Jeanny said quietly into the dim light of the room, “Dominick, you have to give Sophie back.”
I jerked my head up and looked at her, suddenly awake again. “What are you talking about? I thought you’d be on my side.”
“I am,” she said, keeping quiet so as not to wake Sophie. “But, Dominick, that baby is barely a month old. She needs her mother. She needs to go to the doctor. She needs a lot of things you can’t give her.”
“So I’ll find a doctor. I’ll figure it all out.”
Jeanny sat up, crossed her arms in front of her, covering those snowflakes over her breasts.
“Didn’t you understand what I just said? Edie used me. She tricked me into stealing that money. My poor mother was conned into giving away her first kid. Then I betrayed her. And her third baby. . . well, we know what happened. Besides, Edie is living in some drug den. Sophie deserves better.”
“Like living in an abandoned motel. Now, there’s a privileged life. From here she’ll go off to boarding school, right?”
“This is just temporary,” I told her, imagining that same purple glow from the windows of Ed’s grandparents’ cabin in the woods, wondering for the first time if somehow I could get money from the Burdan family and use it to start a new life. “I have plans for us. We’re making a pit stop here, then splitting.”
Jeanny’s face changed. Flicker of surprise. Flicker of disappointment. She lowered her voice still more and asked, “Where are you going?”
“I can’t tell you. Because you can’t come.”
“So you’re going to ride off into the sunset with an infant in your arms,” she huffed. “That’s really going to solve your problems.”
“I’m not saying I have it all figured out. But I know what I have to do. And that’s make things up to my mother. Save this kid from Edie.”
Jeanny stared over at the little dark lump that was Sophie in the guitar case–turned–bassinet. A truck zoomed by on the street, and when it
was quiet again, I could hear the baby softly breathing. Maybe I shouldn’t have told Jeanny everything. It was a lot for anyone to make sense of. What had I expected?
I looked at my watch. Quarter to twelve. Fifteen minutes and Jeanny would be a pumpkin. I thought of Hansel and Gretel again, dropping bread crumbs behind them. A dark, floppy-winged bird scooping that food up in its beak as they disappeared behind the trees. “Look, I’m sorry for involving you,” I told Jeanny as we both watched Sophie. I hated her for not taking my side, but the truth was I needed her. Just the thought of being in this room without her made me lonely. I swallowed and said, “If you want to leave now and just forget about me, I understand. And I probably shouldn’t be pulling you into this, but if you wanted to stay here with me tonight, I. . . I would like that.”
Jeanny seemed to actually be turning the possibility over in her mind, not taking her eyes off Sophie. I wondered if she saw this whole situation as another crusade, something for her to fight for. I imagined the picket signs taking shape in her mind: RETURN SOPHIE TO HER RIGHTFUL OWNER. . . . BRING THE BABY HOME. . . She watched Sophie for a long while, then looked at me finally and said, “I’ll stay only if you promise me this: that you’ll think about giving her back. Just think about it. That’s all.”
“What about your mother?” I asked.
Jeanny laughed the way she had on the bus when she told me about her mom. Like there was something funny in the sad things she said about her. Something I didn’t understand. “Maybe my absence will get her attention. She’ll realize I didn’t die when my father did. Besides, it’s winter break. I don’t have classes to go to. But will you think about what I said?”
I put my arm around her and pulled her close to me. Felt myself get hard again. She smelled like the motel soap she had used to wash her hands. Up close I could see that scar beneath her chin again. My mind filled one more time with the image of her as a little girl hurt on the playground. What she was saying made sense, the same way my uncle had made sense to my mother when he showed up in New Mexico. But I knew that the rational choice wasn’t always the right choice. Look at the way it had wrecked my mother. If I gave this baby back, I would regret it the way she did, for the rest of my life. So no, I wouldn’t think about it. “You have to understand. My mother’s death was all my fault,” I said, trying to make her see things my way.
“It’s not your fault,” Jeanny said.
“Then whose is it?” I asked her.
“Do you really want an answer to that?”
“Yes,” I told her. “I do.”
“I think it’s the world’s fault.”
“The world’s fault?” I said, feeling once more like she hadn’t understood what I’d just told her at all. “That makes a lot of sense.”
“Listen to me. It’s the world’s fault because of the way it’s set up for women. Your mother didn’t have any choices, so she got stuck in a lot of bad situations. If she could have just left your father and gotten a decent job, she might have had a chance. But it’s practically impossible for a woman with a kid to survive on her own. As much as my mother drives me crazy, I see how hard it is for her without my dad. Women aren’t paid the same. Women aren’t given the same chances. And if abortion was legal, then your mother could have just gone to a doctor or a clinic and gotten a safe one on demand.”
“But what about the baby?” I asked her, remembering that PBS priest.
“You mean, ‘What about the fetus?’ I’m not going to claim to know when life starts. But I know when it ends. It ends when a woman like your mother dies because she can’t decide for herself.”
I didn’t say anything, because Jeanny seemed pretty worked up. I thought of all her picket signs and bumper stickers. Her war on the world. I replayed that moment when my mother and I first laid eyes on Jeanny at the policemen’s auction. What was it my mother had said? I like a woman who fights for what she believes in. Something like that.
“Don’t get so quiet,” Jeanny said to me. “Guys always do when I talk about the world. I mean, don’t you read the papers? Don’t you think these things, too?”
I thought of the way I had started to read the paper when I got to know Edie. All those headlines about faraway places. The world seemed so immense and unpredictable. Too much to know. Too much to think about.
“I do think about it,” I told her. “I just don’t have all the answers.”
“Neither do I,” she said and turned to face me again.
“Just ninety-nine percent of them, right?”
“Ninety-nine point nine,” she said and laughed just enough to soften things between us.
I didn’t know what else to say, so I leaned over and put my lips to hers. We moved our mouths together for a long while. This time I thought of Edie telling me, I can spare one kiss. And it will make you feel in control the next time you’re test-driving a new girlfriend. I had thought the day would never come, that Edie was the only woman I would feel this way about. But Jeanny’s mouth was smaller, more tender, less pushy to kiss. My feelings for her were already the same but different.
When we separated, I felt around my mouth with my tongue for my mother’s gum. I had forgotten to push it aside the way I did when I ate.
“What’s wrong?” Jeanny said.
“My gum. It’s gone.”
She reached into her mouth and pulled out the piece, grinning. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
“Yes,” I told her. She had no idea what that stale, overchewed piece of gum meant to me.
“What flavor is this? Week-old rubber?”
“I’ve been chewing it for a while,” I said, because there was no way to explain.
“Well, let’s put it on the nightstand,” she said and stuck it to my empty water glass. “Maybe next time your dealer friend stops by, you can ask him to buy you some more.”
My mouth felt barren and empty without it, like I had lost a tooth or maybe my tongue. I wasn’t getting rid of it, I told myself. But I decided to leave the piece where Jeanny had put it for the time being. I wrapped my arms around her and held her close and tight to me. We were both so tired from the day that we stayed quiet and were well on our way to sleep, holding each other on top of the covers. I found myself imagining all the families who must have stayed in the rooms of this motel in the summertime. Children unable to sleep, too charged with excitement thinking of the next day at the racetrack, the bright blur of stock cars zooming round and round their minds.
“So you never gave me an answer,” Jeanny whispered in my ear as I drifted off to sleep thinking of those cars that I knew were made from junks. Gutted, then re-created into something stronger in their afterlife.
“About what?” I asked.
“About whether or not you’ll consider giving Sophie back. Will you at least promise that you’ll think about it?”
“Yes,” I told her, as my mind stepped down a dark path in the forest. Jeanny’s hand in mine as we made our way between the white birch trees that looked like bones. That dark, big-winged fairy-tale bird not far behind pecking away at our trail. “I will think about it.”
“Promise me?” she whispered.
“I promise you.” I meant it, then fell asleep.
NINE
That first night in the motel I dreamed about blood on the floor. Not the stain washed away after my mother’s death but a glowing red pool that came from a second accident. One that hadn’t yet happened. The red was radiant, phosphorescent, like the juice from those cherries that used to stain my hands and sweatshirt pockets when I stole them from the bars where I found my father. The shape began as a round cardinal’s hat, as big or as little as Sophie herself. Soon it spread and transformed into a shining scarlet light that shimmered on the ceiling and coated the walls like the paint in my uncle’s living room.
When I woke, it was still dark, and Sophie was crying. Jeanny wasn’t moving, so I decided to get out of bed and figure out what was wrong with Sophie on my own. I remembered what Je
anny had said about her brothers’ limited demands when they were this new to the world. Bottle. Diaper. Crib. Since I wasn’t completely confident about tackling a diaper problem if there was one, I carefully picked up Sophie and tried giving her a bottle. Thankfully, that seemed to be the answer. She started sucking, and I pushed back the blankets and curtain from the window and stared outside. A branch had fallen in the spot where Roget usually parked his car to snag speeders. I watched the wind blow its crooked old woman’s hand shape around until Sophie began to fuss again.
“What’s the matter, little alien?” I whispered. “There’s no need to cry. I’ve got you now.”
With some coaxing she took to her bottle once more and quieted down. I felt like maybe I was starting to get the hang of this baby thing. If only I could get used to how delicate she felt in my arms. Every time I held her, my body went stiff with worry that I’d move her the wrong way and hurt her somehow. I knew that Jeanny had told me babies were more durable than they looked, but it was a hard idea to wrap my mind around when Sophie seemed like nothing more than a wrinkly lump of flesh. In my mind the heart that beat beneath her chest seemed too tiny. Her lungs couldn’t have been any bigger than a kitten’s. I nestled my nose into her soft yellow outfit. Breathed in her sweet, simple smell.
New skin, bones, and breath.
Saliva and tears.
Formula and powder.
When I looked into the dark of the room, Jeanny’s eyes were open, watching me. I knew what she must have been thinking: You have to give that baby back. And maybe, I admitted to myself for the first time, maybe she was right. After all, I thought as I held Sophie close to me, what could I possibly do now that I had her? I couldn’t take care of her, raise her, be a parent to her. But every time I thought of returning Sophie to Edie’s arms, my mind burned.
I just couldn’t bear to do it.
There had to be another option. Something I wasn’t considering.
