The Bright Side of Disaster

by Katherine Center

  “Maybe,” the nurse offered, “she’s just wakeful.”

  It was all I could do not to shout, “You think?” Instead, I thanked her and resolved to wait Maxie out. Eventually she’d get so tired, she’d have to sleep.

  But not before I turned into a sleep junkie. Sleep became all I thought about. It was the only thing in the world, besides maybe Maxie, that mattered.

  But I still had to do all the things I had to do. I had to nurse, rock, love, and amuse Maxie during the day. I had to feed us all somehow and get things like laundry done. I had to stay awake. Every night, I felt amazed that I’d made it through the day.

  And then a series of things happened.

  Gardner decided to stop in to say hello. Dean was at band practice, and then he had a gig, and I’d had Maxie, who was in a foul mood, since 5:30 in the morning. It was almost noon, and she did not want to nap. She wanted to stay awake and cry. After a while, I started to cry, too.

  And that’s how Gardner found us: in a living room piled high with Dean’s dirty clothes, rumpled blankets, copies of Rolling Stone, and bowls of dried mac ’n’ cheese. Maxie wailing, and me sunken-eyed and hunched over, listlessly doing a shuffle dance, though I’d lost all hope awhile back that it might soothe her.

  He was not expecting to see us this way. “What’s going on?” he said, taking Maxie, who settled as soon as she hit his arms.

  I told him—how she wouldn’t sleep, how Dean couldn’t take care of her, how my mother was practicing a policy of tough love and insisting that Dean learn how to take responsibility. He listened, and rocked Maxie back and forth.

  “How long has it been since you’ve had more than two consecutive hours of sleep?” he said, frowning over me like a doctor—or like an ex-doctor.

  “I can’t remember,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. He nudged me down onto the couch and set Maxie on my lap. I started nursing her and watched him move around the room. He gathered up toys, the diaper bag, some of Maxie’s clothes off the top of a clean laundry pile, several bags of my milk from the freezer. He filled up some grocery sacks with all the stuff and left with them.

  When he got back, Maxie was looking sleepy.

  “I’m taking her to my house,” he said. “And you are going to bed.” He told me he would come get me when it was time to get up.

  I didn’t resist. I didn’t even put up a pretense. I just stood up, handed Maxie to him like a bag of sand, and shuffled off to the bedroom. I closed the door and set the clock radio to a static station. There, with white noise cushioning my ears, I slept and slept.

  When I woke up, it was nighttime. I charged out into the living room with one eye squinted like Popeye’s. There, on the sofa, in a room that had been radically tidied, was my mother, sitting with Maxie in her arms.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Your sweet neighbor called me. He thought you might need some help.”

  “I thought you were practicing tough love with me.”

  “He was too charming to resist.”

  It turned out he had watched Maxie at his place while my mom came over to my house and did dishes and cleaned up. Then Gardner had needed to leave, so my mother took over with Maxie.

  “He sure is cute,” my mother said.

  She stayed with me while I ate canned soup and then put Maxie down. Then we sat on the sofa together while she stroked my hair.

  “I’m sinking,” I told her.

  “I’m not going to let you sink, baby,” she said.

  “Can we call an end to tough love now?”

  “We can,” she said, “if you’ll admit I’m right.”

  “About what?”

  “About Dean.”

  “I admit you’re right,” I said. And then, “What am I admitting?”

  “That he’s not helpful,” she said.

  Maxie woke up again before my mother left, and she waited for me while I put her back down. When I came out, I clipped the monitor to my sweatpants and followed her out to the car.

  “Where is he, anyway?” she asked of Dean.

  “They have a gig tonight.”

  “You know what I think of him,” she said.

  “Mom,” I said. “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m sure it is, sweetheart,” she said. “But please trust me when I tell you that no man at all is better than a bad man like that.”

  I gave her a sweet kiss. “Spoken like a woman who is dating her ex-husband.”

  30

  The next morning, when I heard a knock at the door, I hoped it would be Gardner. Maxie and I tiptoed past a motionless Dean on the sofa and turned the knob. But it wasn’t Gardner—it was my dad.

  “Hey, sunshine,” he said. “I found that picture.”

  I stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind me, careful not to let him see Dean. I hadn’t told my dad that he was back. I didn’t think he would be pleased. Maxie was in her carrier, pleasant and a bit sleepy. I ushered my dad over to the porch swing, and the three of us sat and swung.

  “What picture?” I said.

  “Our crabbing picture,” he said. “Don’t you remember me telling your boyfriend about it?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said as my father handed the picture over.

  “I had to go through seven shoe boxes to find that baby,” my father said, hovering over my shoulder as I looked.

  And there we were. The two of us holding a gallon bucket of blue crabs. My dad in red swim trunks and a wrinkled fishing hat, me in a green one-piece and sneakers. I had zinc oxide on my nose. I must have been about seven. I was missing a tooth. And my father, God bless him, looked young and dashing and just as proud as he’d described.

  “I told you I had it somewhere!” he said.

  “That’s quite a picture,” I said.

  “Keep it,” he said. “It’s yours. Pull it out next time you can’t remember any good times with your dear old dad.”

  I pretended to punch him in the arm. “Okay,” I said.

  I had been concealing from my dad the fact that Dean was back, for some time. I had actually pretended to be sick so he wouldn’t stop by the house. I didn’t want to see his reaction to the news. But after all that trouble, I’d been found out.

  “I hear the bum who knocked you up has returned,” he said.

  “Mom told you?”

  He nodded. “Last night. Just before she told me not to call her anymore.”

  I winced for him. “Ouch.”

  “She feels we’re not a good match,” he said. “Actually, she feels we never were.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I’m amazed she said yes even once,” he said.

  “You’re very charming,” I said.

  “And handsome,” he added.

  “And she really loved you,” I said.

  He nodded and looked down at his hands. “She really did.”

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  “Well,” he said, “there are some wrong things you’ll do in your life that you’ll never get to make right.”

  “Is that what you were trying to do?”

  “I was just trying to spend some time with her.”

  “She’s quite a lady,” I said.

  He nodded. “I didn’t deserve her.”

  We swung for a bit. Maxie was in a porch-swing trance, and my dad seemed lulled by the motion, too. But after a little while, he stood and pulled a folded-up envelope out of his pocket.

  “I have something else for you,” he said, handing me the envelope.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “It’s just something I thought you could use,” he said. I started to rip it open, but he told me to wait until he was gone. Then he said not to return it to him, because he’d give it right back to me. “Stick it in a drawer,” he said, “if you don’t want it.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  He blew a kiss to Maxie and then kissed me on the forehead. “Hey, kiddo,” he
said. “Here’s the best advice I’ll ever give you: Lose the idiot on the sofa.”

  When he drove away, I waved Maxie’s hand after him.

  And it was there, standing at the curb and waving after my dad, saying, “Bye, bye,” in my baby falsetto, that I noticed a yellow sign out in front of Gardner’s house. A sign that said FOR SALE.

  I walked over and took a look, as if it might say something different upon closer inspection. But there it was. He had listed it with a realtor named Randy, who had his picture on the sign with a cartoon bubble coming from his mouth that said CALL ME! I knocked on Gardner’s door, but there was no answer.

  “You should make an appointment to see it,” Claudia said that afternoon as I paced the neighborhood on my cell phone, Maxie napping in the carrier.

  “I’m not going to do that,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve never been inside his house,” I said. “It would be weird to see it without him.”

  “You’ve never been inside his house?”

  “He didn’t want me to see it until it was finished,” I said.

  “And now he’s gone and you’ll never get the chance.”

  “He’s not gone,” I said. “He’s just not here.”

  “Important distinction,” Claudia said.

  That evening, Dean came home from band practice and said, “Your mother has agreed to babysit tonight and I’m taking you out to dinner to celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?”

  “The fact that we have a babysitter.”

  I was reluctant to leave Maxie, but my mother showed up a few minutes after he said it and practically shoved me out the door. I put my cell phone on vibrate, tucked it into my jeans pocket, and made her promise to call me at Maxie’s slightest discomfort.

  “Dean wants to talk,” she said. “So go, have a good talk, and I’ll be here when you get back.”

  Dean took me to the restaurant where we’d first met. The candlelight, the wine, it all pointed in one direction. And Dean seemed a bit nervous. He delivered a monologue from appetizers to dessert.

  “I haven’t been nearly as good to you as I should have. I know it must have really hurt you for me to leave the way I did. I want to be a better person and I believe that I can be. I think you must still love me, deep down, or you wouldn’t have let me stay with you and Maxie. And what about Maxie? I mean, she’s six months old now—”

  “Eight,” I said. “She’s eight months old.”

  “Eight,” he went on. “And we’re great in bed, aren’t we? I mean, we are really good together in bed. And though you’re angry, and though you’ve been pretty mean to me lately, I want to stick it out. Because I believe in us.”

  I took a big slug of wine. The table where we’d first met was across the room. I tried to picture the two of us sitting there, him in that crazy leather jacket he used to wear, me lighting up at the thought that it was me he’d come to find. There we were. Younger, sweeter, far less tired, just starting up this whole story.

  “Jenny,” Dean said, pulling me back. “I’ve really changed.”

  “People don’t change, Dean,” I said.

  He was the flip side of the letter he’d written me all those months ago. One proclamation after another about love and commitment and family. And though I knew what he was working up to asking me, I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. I had no clear feelings to point me in a direction. My insides were foggy. I waited for some kind of sign.

  At one point, I interrupted him to ask, “What about the girl from your office?”

  It was the first mention of her in a long time, and Dean gave me a look like I was really spoiling the moment. Then he shrugged and said, “Well. She’s dead.”

  I nodded, and he revved up again.

  And then, after the desserts were gone and a waiter had scraped the crumbs off our table, the ring came out. I’d been waiting for it all night, curious to see how he’d do it, curious to see what this new one would look like. What does an “I’m sorry I left you just before you gave birth to our baby” re-engagement ring look like? His parents must have paid for it. It had to be something fancy, to impress me, to wield whatever kind of persuasive power expensive jewelry was supposed to have. I expected some kind of huge, blinding diamond.

  So when he put his closed hand on the table and said, “I have something I want to ask you,” I felt a little jolt. I was being proposed to! He was giving me a ring. A new ring, a new start. I reached out and touched his fingers, resolved to get him a clipper for those hang-nails, and opened his hand. And there in his palm was the ring he gave me the last time.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “It’s an engagement ring,” he said.

  “It’s the ring you gave me last time!”

  “You loved this ring!” he said.

  “Did you take it out of my jewelry box?”

  Dean shrugged like it was no big deal.

  The ring was still lying there in his hand. I didn’t touch it.

  “What happened to the other ring?” I demanded.

  “What other ring?”

  “The new ring you got me. ‘For a new start.’”

  “My mother told you about that.”

  “Where is that ring?”

  He looked down and started pushing the old ring around on the tablecloth with his pointer finger.

  I asked again.

  He said, “I won’t tell you, because I don’t think you’ll understand.”

  “I can guarantee you I won’t understand.”

  We stared at each other.

  And then he didn’t even have to say it. “Band equipment,” I said.

  He looked away, and I knew I was right. I stood up, picked up my ring, and walked out of the restaurant with it in my fist.

  Dean threw some money on the table and scrambled after me. “It was an emergency!” he said. “Like ten things broke all at once! I was going to get it back! I’m sorry! Everybody was counting on me!”

  I was outside on the sidewalk, striding so fast he had to bob behind me like a dog to keep up. “Jenny!” he was pleading. “It wasn’t about you! I’m sorry! I didn’t use it all! I put the rest in a savings account. For Maxie! Jenny, please!”

  After a few more steps, I stopped and faced him. “Dean,” I said steadily. “I don’t believe in you anymore.”

  I started walking again and left him behind on the sidewalk.

  I made it a few more blocks by myself before I faltered and admitted that it was somewhat scary to be a woman alone in midtown at this hour. I started making my way back to the restaurant, figuring I’d call a cab.

  When I got there, Dean was waiting for me outside, smoking. We didn’t say anything to each other, but I walked with him to his car and got in. We drove toward home, listening to something rattle in the way-back. Maybe a tambourine.

  My eyes rested on the FOR SALE sign at Gardner’s as we pulled up to my house. “You might want to back into the driveway,” I said to Dean, “so you can load up your stuff.”

  “I’ll just park in the street,” he said.

  We sat in silence a minute after the engine cut out. This was it. This was the end. Then a question came to my mind that I had to ask.

  “Dean,” I said. “Did you come back because your parents threatened to stop giving you money?”

  Dean didn’t say anything, just fingered the steering wheel. It was answer enough for me.

  “Dean,” I said. “You are never going to be happy.”

  Those could have been my last words to Dean. Inside, I sat with my mother at the dinette and had a cup of tea while Dean carried loads of his stuff out to his car. He could hear everything we were saying, but what he heard or thought didn’t really matter anymore.

  “I didn’t know he was going to propose!” my mother yelped. “I thought he was going to break up with you. He sounded so morose when he called me.”

  “Nope,” I said. “He proposed.”

 
“Well,” she said. “I never would have agreed to babysit if I’d known he was going to do that.”

  When I told her he’d offered me the ring that I already had, she said, “You should have sold it the day he left.” When I told her about the other ring, she guessed it right away: “Band equipment!” And when I told her about his parents cutting him off, she offered to paint the word bastard on the door of his car with some fingernail polish she had in her purse.

  Just as she said that, Dean dropped a pair of maracas, which hit the ground with an amazing clatter. And it was that noise that inspired the last words that I actually ever said to Dean, which were as follows: “If you wake up the baby, I will skin you alive.”

  He let himself out after that. When my mother got up to pour us each a second cup of tea, she stood at the counter and said, “Sugar, did your daddy come by and give you something recently?”

  “Yes,” I said, and told her about the crabbing photo.

  “Did he give you anything else?”

  And then I remembered. “Yes! An envelope.”

  “Have you opened it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  I thought it might be in the pocket of the pants I was wearing earlier. “Although,” I said, “I may have put them in the washer.”

  My mother touched my arm in a gesture of urgency. “With the envelope in the pocket?”

  I tried to think. “Maybe?”

  “Do you know what’s in that envelope, sweetie?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s a check for more money than the down payment on your house.”

  I raced over to the washer and pawed through the wet laundry. Then I went into my room and found those pants on my bed. And in them, a check for more money than I’d ever seen. And a note that said “There’s more where this came from. Love from your grouchy old dad.” My mother followed me into my room and saw me staring at it.

  I looked up. “You knew about this?”

  She nodded. “He asked me if I thought it was a good idea.”

  “What about his bootstraps?” I asked, more to myself than anything.

  “He’s just always had a soft spot for you.”

  At that moment, I couldn’t fathom why my mother wouldn’t want to be with him.