by T. Greenwood
“Well, where do you need to go to today?” she asked.
“I want to pick out our crib. Daddy said he’d buy the crib and changing table for us. I also want to start looking at strollers and car seats. If we have time after, I thought I might get started on some of my Christmas shopping.”
Ben sighed. Sara hadn’t mentioned that Frank would be footing the bill for the furniture. He didn’t know whether he should be pissed or relieved. “Maybe I can wait here for your dad,” he said.
Sara laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“Come with us, Ben,” Jeanine said. “It’ll be fun.”
Four hours later, Ben sat in a glider in the furniture department of Babies “R” Us, listening to the Muzak wafting down through the speakers. He racked his brain, trying to figure out what it was. Prince. That’s it. “When Doves Cry.” Christ. At least it wasn’t Christmas carols.
Jeanine and Sara, who had not lost an ounce of steam, were discussing the various types of mattresses available: pillow-top, vibrating, ones that sang the baby lullabies. Finally, when she had decided on the cherry sleigh crib that would later convert into a toddler bed, Sara pulled Ben out of the chair. They went to the service desk to arrange for delivery, and she gave the salesman her parents’ address.
“Why are you having it shipped there?” he asked.
Sara waved her hand dismissively. “It’s just easier. We don’t need it right away. We can come down and pick it up when we’re ready.”
Ben shrugged and said to Jeanine, “Thank you. For this. It’s very generous.”
Jeanine made an identical gesture of dismissal. “This is my grandchild. I’d give him the moon. What’s a place to sleep?”
“It might not be a boy, Mom,” Sara said.
“But it might be,” she said.
Back at the house, Frank was already outside at the grill, sporting flip-flops and his golfer’s tan.
“Dr. Bailey,” he said. “These ladies managed to drag you along today, huh?”
Ben smiled and eyed the fish, which was marinating in something that smelled really good. He patted Frank on the back. “You need some help?”
“You can help me drink this beer,” he said, gesturing to a silver bucket full of ice and Coronas. “The limes are in the fridge,” Frank said.
Jeanine and her mother disappeared into the house to go through the loot from the day. Ben had anxiously watched as Sara loaded up the cart with little clothes, a hundred-dollar ear thermometer, and zillion-thread-count crib sheets. He’d cringed a little when Jeanine got out her wallet to pay, but he also knew exactly how much was (and wasn’t) in their checking account.
Ben opened up a beer, squeezed a lime in, and watched the foam rise to the top of the bottle. He stared through the pale-colored liquid. It made everything look golden.
“So has Sara talked to you about New Year’s at all?” Frank asked.
“Not really,” he said. “We’ll probably be coming down here for Christmas again, I expect. But I don’t think we have plans for New Year’s yet.”
The last few years, they’d spent Christmas Eve in Kachina with Melanie and then driven down to Phoenix the next day. Ben would have preferred to stay at home, but Sara had never been away from her family for a Christmas before. New Year’s Eve was sacred, though. They went downtown and watched the giant pinecone drop off the balcony at the Weatherford Hotel and spent the next day watching football.
Frank nodded. “So she hasn’t dropped the bomb yet?” he asked.
“What bomb?” Ben asked.
“Well, here comes the little missile right now,” Frank said and winked as Sara and her mother came outside, each carrying a salad.
They sat at the table by the pool. The fish was incredible, and the beer tasted good as the heat of the afternoon fell around their shoulders. Ben waited.
“So Sara tells me you aren’t going to be at the university next spring,” Jeanine said, offering Ben some more potato salad.
“Yeah,” Ben said. “I’m really burned out. You can really only be an adjunct for so long before you start to lose your mind.”
“Overworked and underpaid,” Frank said.
“Well, I don’t know about overworked, but you got the underpaid part right.”
“Do you have any plans yet?” Jeanine asked, and Ben felt suddenly like a tennis ball, bouncing from one side of the table to the next.
“Well, I still have the job at Jack’s. Business really picks up in the winter with all the traffic going through town from the mountain,” he said. He didn’t mention the job opening at the museum.
“Do you like working at the bar, Ben?” Jeanine served.
“Jesus H. Christ, why don’t you stop pussyfooting around here?” Frank volleyed.
“Daddy,” Sara said, her face clearly anxious about something.
“What’s going on?” Ben asked.
“Sara?” Jeanine said. “I think you better tell him.”
Sara stared at the gray skin of her salmon, at the wilted lemon rinds.
Frank clapped his hands together. “Sara’s applied for a position at Children’s. And if she gets it, I’d like you to come down here and work for me.” There was the drop shot.
Ben looked at Sara, who would not look up.
“Sara?” he said. “What is he talking about?”
“It’s a great job, and after the baby comes, I can transition to part-time. And Daddy’s opening a new dealership right near the hospital. A specialty shop dealing in imports and antiques. Isn’t that great? And the best part is, you would be in charge. It would be your shop. It’s opening right after New Year’s.”
Ben put his face in his hands and rubbed hard at his temples. “What the hell, Sara? I’m sorry,” he said to Jeanine. “But Jesus, Sara. You wait until we’re sitting here to spring this on me? Don’t you think that we should be discussing this at home? Alone?”
“I thought you’d be happy,” she said. “It’s a great opportunity.
“I have a PhD, Sara. In history. I don’t know the first thing about selling cars.”
“You work at a bar,” she said angrily. Her voice was rising into that angry octave above her normal speaking voice. “Good thing you have that PhD. You’d never be able to mix a screwdriver without that.”
“Sara,” Jeanine reprimanded.
“If you haven’t noticed,” Sara said, standing up, “we’re having a baby. It’s time to grow the fuck up, Ben. Sorry, Mom.” And then she stormed into the house, leaving Ben alone with Frank and Jeanine.
“Well,” Frank said, sitting back in his chair and stretching.
“How about some sorbet?” Jeanine asked.
The drive up to Flagstaff that night was silent. Sara pretended to sleep, using her jacket as a pillow against the window, and Ben fumed. Sara was a lot of things lately: bitter, sarcastic, moody. But he’d never seen her be dishonest or underhanded before. He thought about her covertly submitting her résumé to Children’s, making plans with her dad. For all he knew, they’d picked out a house for them. Probably right next door. That’s why she didn’t bother having the crib shipped to Flagstaff. And then, as the landscape began to change—saguaros replaced by Ponderosa pines, desert assenting to snow-covered ground—he was hit with a horrific realization. Maybe she’d planned all of this. Maybe the pregnancy hadn’t been an accident at all. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought about this before: the possibility that this was her way of getting what she wanted. That maybe it wasn’t dumb luck or a blessed life at all. Maybe she was just a manipulative liar.
He looked at her, curled into herself and leaning against the passenger door of the truck. He turned the radio on, to a station she hated, and waited to see if she’d stir. Nothing. He thought about slamming on the brakes, jarring her out of her pretend dreams. He thought, though briefly, of smashing the truck into a tree.
Finally, as if reading his mind, she sat up and turned to him. She said softly, “You know, I might not even get the jo
b.”
“What?”
“I didn’t tell you yet because I don’t even know if I’ll get the job. It’s pointless to get all worked up when I don’t even know if they’re going to want me.”
She sat up straighter and pulled her coat on. Ben could feel the air growing colder, but he didn’t turn on the heat.
“What on earth makes you think I would agree to move to Phoenix and work for your father?”
“That’s the good thing, Ben. You wouldn’t be. You’d be running the place. It would be your shop. And you love antique cars. You could keep the truck. We’d be close to my folks, so my mom could watch the baby while I work.”
She had clearly been formulating this argument for a while now.
“I think a better question is why you wouldn’t want to do this,” she said.
“What the hell does that mean? I hate Phoenix. I hate the heat. I spent five years getting a degree I might never use again if we do this. There are a zillion reasons why I wouldn’t want to do this.”
Sara rolled her eyes.
“What?” he asked, staring at her.
“Keep your eyes on the road.” She gasped, gripping the dash.
He had drifted over into the next lane and had to yank the wheel to correct.
“I’m just wondering if maybe there’s something else keeping you in Flagstaff,” she said quietly.
“Like what?”
Sara looked at Ben, her face angry, but her eyes wet. “I don’t know, Ben. I don’t know. But ever since Halloween, you’ve been so weird. At first I thought it was just finding that guy, you know? How awful that was. But it’s different. It’s like when you’re with me, you’re not really with me. It’s like your body is walking around doing stuff, and you’re saying stuff, but your mind is on something else.” She paused and looked down at her lap, touched her stomach with her hand. “Or someone else.”
“Christ,” Ben said, gripping the wheel tighter. They were pulling into town. “What are you accusing me of? Exactly?”
“Nothing,” Sara said. She stared at her hands.
Ben felt a sharp pain in his temples.
She reached and touched his leg. “I just … I just miss you. I miss us. And it’s even worse now because of the baby. I just want everything to be normal and okay. I just want for you to be happy. For us both to be happy. Why is that so hard?”
Ben thought about waking up in Shadi’s trailer, about the softness of her blankets against his naked skin. About the sunlight filtered through the dark veil of her hair. He thought about the smell of coffee lingering from the night before. He thought about the geometry of her collarbones, her hips. Happiness. That was the last time he’d felt happy, felt the promise of a life about to begin.
Sara lifted her hand from his leg and turned to face the window. They didn’t speak the rest of the way.
At home, Sara ran straight to the bathroom and slammed the door. He could hear her vomiting, the awful sound of her gagging and then spilling and splashing into the toilet. He knocked gently on the door when it was over.
“Go away, Ben,” she said.
“Sara.”
“Just let me be.”
At work on Wednesday night, Ben tried to imagine what a life living in Phoenix would be like. He thought about getting up every morning and putting on a suit and tie. He thought about the sun beating down on him as he made his way to his sedan. (The truck did not fit into this picture at all.) He thought about car lots, about the barren desert beyond. Golf with Frank on Saturdays. Sara. The baby.
But no matter how hard he tried, he could not imagine the baby. He had dreamed about it once, about Sara in the hospital, holding the new baby in her arms. But when he looked down to see its face, there was nothing there; it was just a blanket wadded up into a swaddled mess of flannel.
He saw himself and Sara piling into a minivan and driving across the desert to Disneyland. He imagined backyard barbeques, sitting in the bleachers at soccer games in the scorching heat. He imagined the sweaty auditoriums of dance recitals and piano recitals. He dreamed of hot metal swing sets and blistering monkey bars. But he couldn’t imagine the child. It was like the vapors rising off of hot pavement. Distorted, unreal.
“Hey,” Hippo said, coming out of the kitchen with a fresh basket of hot French fries. “Want some?”
“Not hungry,” Ben said.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” Ben said. He still hadn’t told Hippo about Sara being pregnant.
“Hey,” Hippo said. “I was just thinking about that kid you asked me about, the one you found. You said his name was Ricky, right?”
“Yeah,” Ben said, snapping out of his reverie.
“Remember he used to play pool with this other kid from the rez sometimes?”
Ben tried to remember. Ricky was always shooting pool. He couldn’t remember him hanging out with anyone in particular. He didn’t remember him having any friends. Shadi hadn’t mentioned any friends.
“I only remember because the other kid had a tattoo of an eagle on his arm, and I asked him where he got it. I thought maybe Emily did it; it looked like her work.”
“And?”
“Well, he came in the other day and I asked him if he remembered seeing Ricky on Halloween night. At first he looked spooked, but then he said that he did see him on Halloween. He ran into him at the Monte V Ricky came in with some frat guy who talked them both into going to some party. He said he thought they might be trying to hustle another fraternity, and they wanted him and Ricky to be their ringers. I don’t know if that helps at all,” Hippo said.
“Jesus,” Ben said. “That proves that he was there. There must have been a fight at the house. Was he there with Ricky?”
“I don’t know. You know how those rez kids are. Super quiet.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“He calls himself Lucky,” he said. “He washes dishes at Beaver Street too. I think that’s how he and Ricky knew each other.”
“Listen,” Ben said."Is there any way you can cover the end of my shift?”
“I think I can handle it.” Hippo laughed, gesturing to the empty bar. It had been dead since school let out. They’d even been closing early.
“Cool,” Ben said. “I appreciate it.”
As Ben walked down San Francisco toward the tracks, he thought about what Shadi had said about just letting go. But if she knew that he was so close, would she still want him to stop? If he could just get one person who saw what happened to speak up, then he could go to the police. Somebody had to crack.
He knew the Beaver Street kitchen staff hung outside the door by the parking lot for cigarette breaks. When he got there, three guys were sitting on upturned pickle buckets, smoke curling up into the night air.
He approached them and they stiffened.
“Hey, do you guys know a kid named Lucky?” he asked.
“Yeah,” one guy with a greasy baseball cap said. “He’s in the kitchen.”
“Do you think you could ask him to come out?”
“What do you want with him?” the other guy asked. Ben wondered how much other people knew, because this guy sure was acting like a mother hen.
“I just wanted to talk to him for a minute.”
The guy sized him up and then said, “You a cop?”
“He’s not a cop,” the kid with the baseball cap said. “He’s a history prof. I had him last semester.”
Ben squinted; the exterior light was bright in his eyes. “Hey!” he said, offering the kid his hand. The kid ignored him. This was clearly not one of the front-row students.
“Hey, Lucky!” the guy yelled into the open doorway of the kitchen, and the kid appeared.
He was about half Ricky’s size, maybe five foot five. He had a wild mess of hair and a filthy apron tied around his waist. As he approached, the other guys slipped back into the kitchen, leaving only a hazy fog of cigarette smoke in their wake.
“Are you Lucky?” Ben asked.
The kid nodded and sat down on one of the buckets. He motioned for Ben to do the same. The kid pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and held it out to Ben.
“No, thanks,” Ben said, shaking his head.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I knew Ricky,” Ben said.
The kid nodded.
“And I know that something happened at that party. I’m the one who found him.”
The kid took a long drag on his cigarette and blew a long, skinny stream of smoke into the air, aiming it away from Ben. “Nobody’s gonna do nothing about it,” he said.
“Were you there?”
Lucky looked at Ben, as if trying to figure out if he could trust him or not. It was the same look Shadi had first given him at the hospital.
Ben continued. “Hippo, from Jack’s, told me you guys were playing pool that night. Did you go with Ricky to the party?”
“Man, I told you it don’t matter. Nobody cares what happened.”
“I care what happened. His sister cares what happened. If you were there, we can go to the cops. If there’s a witness, we can get the guys who did this to Ricky.”
Lucky took another drag on his cigarette and closed his eyes. It looked like he might just fall asleep.
Ben sighed and threw up his hands. He stood up from the bucket and was about to walk away, when the kid said, “Wait.”
Ben turned around, waiting. The air was quiet, the air heavy with the promise of more snow.
“You want to know the worst part?” Lucky asked.
Ben nodded. He could feel every inch of his skin tingling. It was cold out already, but it felt as though he’d been doused in ice water.
“After it was over, they locked the doors. Kept on partying. We didn’t even have our coats.”
“Why didn’t you call 9-1-1?” Ben asked. “The police?”
Lucky smiled again. “You think the police gonna help two kids from the rez saying that a bunch of college kids picking on them?”
“He was totally beaten up!” Ben said.
“He was bloody.” Lucky nodded. “But he was walking, standing up. He said he was okay. He said he was gonna walk to his sister’s house and she would take care of the cuts. He said he would be fine.”
