by Andrew Roe
Did he know the impact he had? Maybe he’s already forgetting me, or has completely forgotten me. But then: Went to the blood place, met a girl. Maybe—in San Francisco, in Portland, somewhere—he will think of me, wonder what if, wonder about the possibilities like I am now. There is so much that is beyond me, an ocean of mystery and uncertainty. So much water in which to swim. Or not swim. And there is no more nest egg. We don’t live in that world anymore. Did we ever?
The name on the prescriptions: T. Niederbach. I remove one pill from each bottle. The first is small, white, round, efficient; the second even smaller, a soothing baby blue, more rectangular. In my hand, they look magical. Like magic beans in a fairy tale. I swallow them and lie down on the sofa, then wait for the effect, wait for the difference.
THE BIG EMPTY
We took the kid. And I know how bad that sounds, really, I do, but believe me: He was sitting by himself at the gas station, out in the back by the bathrooms and dumpsters and stacks of greasy cardboard boxes, and when Jim came out of the men’s room, all sweaty, looking like he might hurl (he didn’t), and we started heading back to the car, there he was—this kid, by himself, sitting with his knees tucked up tight against his chest and his head leaning sideways, cheek resting on his knees like he was trying to fall asleep and dream his way out of where he was. I remember thinking: Am I seeing what I’m seeing? There was no one there with him. No sign of parents or brothers or sisters or anybody. He was alone, forgotten, and seemed like he was used to it.
So it was just us and the kid. Waiting there. And the heat—the soul-sucking, melt-your-brain, make-you-stupid Arizona desert heat. We glanced around. No other cars, no other people, nothing. It was August and unforgiving. The bright light burned right into our bloodstream. We had to get inside the car soon or we’d fry.
I tapped him on the shoulder. He raised his head, slowly. And even then, when I saw his round little boy face for the first time, I didn’t know how old he was because I’ve never been good at estimating the age of children. It’s just one of those gaps that you know you have and you move on.
“Are you with someone? Do you have anyone?” I asked, but he didn’t answer.
Once we were in the car, the A/C cranked as high as it could go without causing the engine to choke, Jim asked, “How old are you?” The kid thought about it for a while and then said, “Pikachu.” So that didn’t help.
He didn’t say anything else after that. We’d ask a question, get no response, wait a while, drive some more, fiddle with the radio, pass the pipe, pop another Tecate, then ask another question. Do you have a mom? What about a dad? Did somebody hurt you? Who left you at the gas station? Where were you born? Do you like cartoons? All kids like cartoons, right?
He was probably older than four. But no more than seven. He had these big blurry brown eyes. As we asked the questions he just looked out the window, just looked and looked, like he was watching a dumb movie out there, out in the desert, the dirt, the sky, the sun, the big empty we were passing through.
“What are we going to do with him?” Jim asked finally.
I didn’t answer because I didn’t know.
We kept driving. Heard the same Eagles song on two different radio stations. Then we stopped for some food. In the drive-thru line we asked what he wanted. But surprise, he didn’t answer. He just stared and stared. Those eyes. What did they know? What did they see?
“Get him a kid’s meal,” I said. “That’s what kids get, right? And they come with a toy. He can play with the toy.”
We blasted through the heat, more driving. We were on our way to see Jim’s mother. She lived in San Diego and was maybe dying and had some money. The idea was to get back in her good graces. A few years ago, Jim had said some things. Now he wished he hadn’t. “You never know,” he told me after he said we were making the trip, from Tucson to San Diego, the middle of summer, and I didn’t really have a choice because I’d let too much go at that point. “You just never know, Cyn. Lesson learned.”
But the kid: he started crying. This after about, I don’t know, three hours or so, when I’d almost forgotten about him. Not crying with sound. But crying quiet. We looked at him in the backseat and saw the tears streaming down his face. Sad tiny rivers that didn’t know how to stop.
“Jesus,” said Jim. “He’s crying. I can’t take it.”
We pulled off at the next town, found a Laundromat. That seemed as good a place as any. It was empty, but dryers dried and washers washed. Someone would be along soon to claim their clothes.
The kid didn’t complain when Jim said it was time to hop out of the car. He stood in the Wash N Go and waited. He was no longer crying.
“We should put a note on him,” Jim said.
“What?”
“A note. Write something. To explain.”
I went back to the car and looked for a pen. Instead there was a crayon in the glove compartment. I don’t know how or when it got there, but there it was, a goddamn crayon, magenta or some shit. It was partly melted, but I tore off a piece of our California map and managed to smear something that was halfway legible:
WE FOUND HIM. WE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO. WE TRIED. HE DOESN’T TALK MUCH. SORRY.
After, we felt bad. Then later, we felt a little better. Then after that, we felt a little worse.
“We did the right thing,” said Jim. “Us? Parents? I don’t think so.”
It was dusk by then, the sky all dramatic and filled with colors that don’t have names, and we probably had four more hours of driving ahead of us. Jim and Cyn. That always made us laugh. That made us think it would last. Eventually we’d discover that Jim’s mom had moved. We never found out where.
“You’re probably right,” I said, looking out the window and wondering what he saw out there in the desert, the kid who was somewhere between four and seven and who would haunt my dreams for years to come, one of those mysteries that stay with you and fuck with you and make you question everything you’ve ever done.
Neither of us spoke for a long time. And it wasn’t until we hit El Cajon that I said what I’d been wanting to say for miles:
“We should probably call the cops or something.”
Jim shot me a look like yeah right and turned back to the road, concentrating, focusing on the thing he hoped would soon be there in front of us—a sign, a warning, an ending, something.
“People like us don’t call the cops,” Jim said.
And he was right.
MY STATUS
Pictures don’t lie. And there I am, in a photo that’s now prominently displayed on the fridge, among the magnets and coupons and crazed crayon drawings of my eight-year-old son. It took a while to recognize myself. Then it was like: Oh shit, that’s me. Bloated, drunk, ugly, looking like a man who’s made an all-star career of letting people down, including himself. Damn. Is that really me? Are my eyes really that close together, that guilty? And how long has the photo been up? I don’t live here anymore, so maybe it’s been a while and I just haven’t noticed it until now, here to pick up my son. Every other Saturday is the agreed upon arrangement. That’s when I’m still a dad.
I close the refrigerator door, a Diet Rite Cola in hand. Julie’s doing something by the sink, her back to me. She doesn’t turn around until she hears the pssst of the can opening. I picture myself stewing about the photo and saying nothing for weeks and weeks, letting it become a bigger deal that it actually is, but no, not this time: I’m going to say something right now.
“New addition to the fridge,” I say, casually, like it’s no big deal, before I take a sip of the Diet Rite. The fizzy carbonation floods my nostrils. “Nice touch,” I add. “Really ties the room together.”
Julie wipes her brow with her arm. I see now that she’s been scrubbing the sink. She’s wearing red rubber gloves and looks pretty good—at least pretty good for it being Saturday morning and taking care of housework and sweating and working all week and managing to hit the happy hour at Black Angus last ni
ght. Her jeans are tight and her shirt is tight, something she can still get away with. Strands of wet hair—long desperate streaks—cling to both sides of her face.
“It’s for perspective,” she says, a little out of breath. “Enjoying your complementary beverage?”
“I can put it back. What do you mean perspective?”
The picture is an extreme close-up, also a little out of focus, which makes it worse somehow. I try to pluck it off the fridge but Julie’s quick, always has been, one of her trademarks, like high heels and the rose tattoo above her left boob, and she blocks me.
“Like symbolic,” she says. “Of before, after.”
I get it. I’m the before. And I guess Brad, the new boyfriend, would be the after.
“How about taking it down?” I ask, a reasonable request.
“Why would I do that?”
“Come on, Julie. I look like crap. The kid’s going to see it all the time, every day. It doesn’t even look like me. It’s like a different person.”
The photo has some history. There’s no memory of Julie taking it, or of the specifics that led up to the moment I was captured. Just haze. Another long weekend, another round of ultimatums and declarations. It seems like the photo was taken years ago, but it’s more like months. After Julie got it developed, she put it under my pillow. I woke up one morning and felt it underneath. I looked at the photo, groaned, then tossed it on the floor, thought nothing of it again until I was confronted with this grotesque reflection of myself on the refrigerator, which, by the way, has a broken ice dispenser and a cracked crisper.
“Nope, it’s you all right,” Julie says. “Again, that’s part of the point. That’s the perspective.”
“Ah, I see. You get to have the new life, the new boyfriend, and the going back to school. You get to change and I don’t, I can’t. Is that it?”
“The weather changes, Cal. People don’t. Not you anyways. It’s just fact.”
I’m holding the Diet Rite and I want to fling the blue can across the kitchen, watch it, hear it smash against the wall. But I don’t. That’s what I might have done in the past. That’s why I’m not living here anymore. And I want to tell Julie, See? I didn’t. I could’ve. But I didn’t. That’s change. That’s progress. But I don’t say anything. I’m not good with speeches, with words. Yet another thing I’d like to change. The right words at the right time can save you.
“And speaking of facts, let’s be honest,” Julie continues. “The fact that you’re standing here. The fact that I’m still allowing you in here, letting you take our son out. After what you did. Consider yourself lucky. The picture stays.”
“All right,” I say, setting down the soda can on the counter. “The picture stays.”
Why is it that you run into someone from high school just when the other day you were thinking It’s been a while since I’ve run into someone from high school? It doesn’t happen too often in La Mirada. This particular Southern California suburb is large enough to provide a fairly comfortable level of anonymity. You can blend. You can avoid having to explain yourself to people you don’t know anymore. But that’s the danger of staying in your hometown: every now and then you see a ghost. Getting gas. Waiting in line at Blockbuster. Or, in this case, shopping at the Trader Joe’s up on Whittier Boulevard.
Scott Yoder was known only by his last name back then, one of those guys. And that, plus the fact that he could reliably get pot from his older brother, is about the only thing I could remember about him. He shook my hand like a politician. I had gained weight, achieved little. He had actually lost weight, achieved a lot. He’d married Amber Whitlock, the girl who went to the rival high school and had honey-blonde hair and a tan Mustang—the unattainable dream girl. Somehow Yoder had attained her. I wondered if she called him Yoder. Yoder, let’s go out tonight. Yoder, how about Europe this summer instead of Cancun?
“Wow, Amber Whitlock,” I said, noticing that his shopping cart was full of things like yogurt, tofu, vegetables, while mine was not full of things like yogurt, tofu, vegetables.
“How about you?” asked Yoder. “What’s your…status?”
My “status” was complicated. I was married but I wasn’t. I had a son but I wasn’t a father. I was supposed to call a lawyer. Julie kept asking about it, the lawyer, the lawyer, the lawyer. I told her I’m on it, that it’s on my list. My brother worked with someone who had been through a divorce and said the guy was pretty decent as far as lawyers go, which isn’t saying much, I know. But I hadn’t called. So that, I guess, was my status.
“It’s complicated,” I said. “My wife and I, we’re going through some stuff. We’re separated, actually. For now. But we’ll see. We’ll see what happens. We just need to turn a corner.”
“Sorry to hear that, man. What is it, that statistic—that one out of every two marriages or something fails? But I hope things work out the way they should work out.”
“They will, thanks.”
“Well good seeing you, Cal. It’s been a while. High school was a trip.”
Yoder pushed his cart away and got in the checkout line. After he left the store, I added some items to my cart: yes, yogurt; yes, tofu; yes, vegetables. I put back the chips, one of the bottles of Stoli. See? I’m trying. But what the hell do you do with tofu? Now I’ve got two slabs of the stuff, taking up space in my refrigerator, which, by the way, doesn’t have any photos or magnets or anything. It’s just white empty space.
The kitchen looks different, feels different. And it’s not just the addition of the picture. It’s something deeper. I walk over to the cabinet next to the sink to get a glass for some water. I need it after the Diet Rite. I don’t usually drink much soda and now I remember why. I open the left door. But that’s where the plates are. I open the right door and there are the glasses. Had it always been that way? I could have sworn the glasses were on the left.
“Jagger’s getting dressed. He’s a slow dresser, you know.”
Jagger—I’d lost the battle on the name. I mean, I like the Stones as much as the next guy. But Jesus. Jagger?
“I know,” I remind her.
“And if you guys go out to eat, remember, he shouldn’t eat pickles. They make him burp like crazy.”
“I know, Julie. Just because I don’t live here anymore doesn’t mean I don’t remember things about my son. It hasn’t been that long. I haven’t lost that many brain cells yet.”
Jagger walks into the kitchen, just as I’m finishing that last sentence and my voice rises to an almost-yell. He’s wearing a white karate outfit, about two sizes too big for him. He holds up his pants as he walks.
“Hey buddy. That’s new.”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Julie says. “You’re taking him to karate today.”
“Not karate,” says Jagger. “It’s Shotokan. That’s what Sensei Jerry says to say.”
“I didn’t know you were into karate, buddy. I mean, what you said.”
“It’s okay. I’m not.”
“There’s a waffle in the toaster,” says Julie.
He grabs the waffle with one hand, still holding up his pants with the other, and leaves. The TV goes on in the living room, loud. That’s pretty much what he does, too, when he comes over to my new apartment. My first day there after moving in all my stuff, which wasn’t much, I went into the bathroom, looked at myself in the crooked mirror, and then found a surprise in the toilet. It’s hard not to view something like that as a sign.
“Saw someone I went to high school with the other day.”
Julie moves on to unloading the dishwasher.
“Yeah? Who’s that?”
“Scott Yoder.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“No reason why it should. We just knew each other, were in the same class. We weren’t friends or anything.”
“And what’s Scott Yoder up to these days?”
“Scott Yoder is doing good. He’s doing really good. Living the life. Good job, wife, kids. He’s got a boat.
They take it up to Arrowhead. They have a place right next to some actress who’s in a soap opera or something. He told me the name but I can’t remember.”
“He’s probably lying. What’d you tell him?”
“I told him the truth.”
Julie pauses from her dish-putting-away to frown, a frown I know all too well, the left side of her mouth creeping up, up. I’m just standing there, wishing I still had the Diet Rite so I could be holding something, occupied in some small way.
“Why would you do that? That’s one of those rare opportunities where you could’ve said anything, could’ve said anything in the world. You could’ve been a doctor, a lawyer, a freaking professional golfer. I would’ve lied my teeth off. Gave him a good story.”
“The truth isn’t a good story?”
“Not usually.”
“What would you have said then?”
“That I live up in Malibu in this big mansion. That I’ve got my own business. That my husband is rich and comes from a rich family and treats me like a queen. That my kid is gifted and got skipped two grades. That—”
“You’ve been thinking a lot about this.”
“I think about things, Cal, it’s true. Have him back by six, K?”
“I will,” I say, and start toward the living room. “You sure about keeping that picture up?”
“I’m sure,” says Julie.
What I did was this: I kidnapped the damn dog. Julie’s dog, Nibbles, a little Shitzu that she loves more than anything. Things between us had been going down, down, down (sometimes we ignored it, sometimes we didn’t), and for whatever reason it was now even worse than usual, and I was sleeping in the living room and supposed to be looking for a place. So I figured, with the help of the Miller Brewing Company, that I could get back in her good graces by being a hero. How could I be a hero? That was a good question. I didn’t know. But the idea came to me one night, flipping around the cable channels and scratching off lottery tickets, when Nibbles went on one of his barking jags. Ah-ha! Why not take the dog to my brother’s for a few days. Console my wife as she gets upset, cries, etc. Put up missing flyers. Scour the neighborhood. Be a rock. Then, after a couple of days, cruise over to Jeff’s and pick up the dog and bring him home, saying I found him hiding near some bushes, shivering, whimpering, poor little thing. I’d save the day! I’d prove myself! So that was the plan. And yes, many beers were involved in the conception of all this, and when many beers are involved in anything, my already shaky judgment tends to get even shakier.
