by Ann Bauer
“You want a drink?” Jobe shouted into her ear.
“Yeah, better make it a seltzer.” She was really thinking of her father but didn’t want to say so. Instead, she held up her wrist with its neon yellow bracelet. “I’m tagged. Nine months ’til I’m twenty-one.”
“Really?” He looked amused, that rusty smile glimmering through his beard. “That’s unfortunate. Stay right here, okay? I’ll be back.”
She watched his head, above most everyone else’s, as he bobbed away from her and toward the bar. He returned fifteen minutes later, sweat staining his shirt, holding four enormous plastic cups: two filled with clear liquid and two packed with ice and several inches of something brown.
“Here,” he said, giving her one of each. “I told the bartender I didn’t want to fight my way back through, so I was ordering twice. And I tipped him a twenty, which makes anything possible. It’s a triple Glenlivet,” he shouted, as she took a drink from the half-full cup and the smooth scorch started down her throat. “I figure if anyone comes up to us, you can just drop the Scotch and say you’ve been drinking the soda.”
Carmen looked up at him. Talking was too hard and besides, it interfered with the insistent, sexual thrum. Her father was thousands of miles away, and she needed this. She took another long drink and started to go limp, weary from the day of travel, from the heat, from the rich food. Closing her eyes and edging a little closer to Jobe, she used his body like a post to lean on and he stayed perfectly stationary, though after a time—two inches of her drink later, perhaps—he put his left hand on her left shoulder, the bare one, so technically his arm was around her, but she didn’t care because she was floating and it seemed necessary that someone, even this odd, loose-limbed scarecrow of a person, be there to hold her down.
“Do you want to dance?” he asked. His voice came to her out of the murk and swirl of cigarette smoke, his face lit with flashing lights. Maybe an hour had passed and her Scotch and half her seltzer water were gone. Jobe was still holding his cup and she glanced at it.
“Hey, you aren’t even drinking!” She meant to sound accusing but the words came out like syrup.
“I’m driving,” he yelled, mimicking with his full hands the act of steering. “I have to be careful.”
“Okay, then.” She giggled and grabbed his cup, taking a big swallow. “Fine, I’m ready.”
He took the cup out of her hand and set it on a nearby shelf, a newly intense expression crossing his chronically worried-looking long face, and took one of her hands firmly in his. Once they were under the lights, Jobe dropped her hand and for one awful moment he stood; maybe he can’t dance at all, she thought muddily, and he’s going to try to fake it. Luckily, she was drunk enough to make the best of whatever happened. She took a step to the right, intending to circle him, and then he began to move.
Now it was Carmen who stopped, struck with wonder. Jobe had a robotic, perfectly syncopated way of dancing: his head moved by precise increments, his body dipped to the side, his feet made complicated diagrams on the floor. He was like a combination of David Byrne and Grizzly Adams. And precisely at that moment—as if the DJ wanted to highlight Jobe’s odd, courtly dance—an old-fashioned silver ball dropped from the ceiling and its spangles bounced rhythmically across Carmen’s world.
She couldn’t have been more surprised if Jobe had pulled a boa constrictor from his pocket—her amazement due partly to the Scotch, no doubt—but eventually she found that if she made small movements mirroring his, he would pause just long enough to flash that gleaming smile.
For an hour, two, they lived on the dance floor and she watched him change with the shifting of the light. Her steps grew braver, more her own sinuous, bare-shouldered kind of moves, occupying the three square feet of floor space until Jobe reached forward to grasp her arm and reel her in—which she embraced, conforming her body to his side—and said hoarsely, “I need a drink,” then led her back to the perimeter of the gyrating pack of people. Carmen had expected cheers and waves when they left the floor, but the crowd simply opened to allow them a path and closed again behind them. Jobe reached the bar and held out a ten-dollar bill. “Two glasses of ice water!” he called, and the bartender scowled until he looked up and saw the money.
“Coming right up,” he said, filling cups with stuck-together ice clumps and shooting water in from his gun.
“Do you mind?” Jobe asked once they had the water and he’d turned over the ten, shaking his head in response to the bartender’s gruff question about change. “I want to get outside.”
They had their hands stamped at the door—in case they wanted to go back in later—then walked through a night that was, miraculously, no longer stifling but soft and warm and hazy. The nightclub was in a cluttered warehouse-filled area, the streets lined with low buildings and large vehicles. Both of them drank greedily, and the inside of Carmen’s hot mouth turned cool as mint. When they came to the end of the block, Jobe tossed his plastic cup into a huge Dumpster. “Want me to throw yours away?” he asked, but Carmen said no, she was still eating ice. And quietly then, they walked back toward the car.
“Do you want?” Jobe looked out into the night, and for a moment Carmen thought the question would end there. Did she want? God, yes, she wanted the ease of her childhood and an answer about how she would pay for her last year of school and a plan for her, until recently, blessedly disorganized life. She wanted her mother back—or a mother, the truth being that it didn’t have to be hers. She wanted to paint, to dance, to live somewhere other than inside her father’s depressing, sinking house.
Jobe swallowed. “Do you want to take a ride?” he asked. “There’s this place called Fell’s Point.”
“Sure.” She swooned as she bent to open the door and climb into the car. Jobe got in and pushed a button to open the sky roof. Carmen gazed up and made a sound, feeling under her legs for the lever that would allow her to recline her seat and lie back. “Here, let me,” Jobe said, and he reached underneath her—a strangely intimate feeling—to push on something that gave and suddenly she was prone.
Riding this way felt like levitating. She was rushing through the streets of Baltimore, feet first. She was sorry when he stopped the car but she said nothing. Jobe opened the windows and the faintly Japanese scent (Carmen had never been to Japan, she only imagined it smelled this way) of wet bark and cherry blossoms floated in.
They paused, with Jobe sitting looking straight ahead and Carmen lying back, peeking from time to time through slitted eyes at the charcoal sky that lay flat against the windshield pane.
“Do you?” he asked, and again he stopped so that Carmen began formulating answers to the truncated question. Did she? Well, yes. She did feel the lilt of alcohol still making her hopeful and heedless of the circumstances that had brought her out here, to this foreign place.
Jobe twisted in his seat, put one long hand on each of her arms, and asked, “Is this alright?” To which she murmured something that sounded like an assent but was nothing really. How could she have said what was alright? She had no clue. But everything felt as if it were happening according to some universal dictate. She was here in this unlikely place, utterly by chance, and had danced for hours with a boy she would have sworn might trip walking across an open field.
Then he was leaning down to kiss her, the Scotch on his breath identical to hers, his tongue hesitant at first but moving as his body had, with small darts that pleased her. She wasn’t electrified by this, not at all; it wasn’t the way she’d felt with the T.A., her body straining to mash itself against his. With Jobe, it was simply entertaining: the night, the breeze, the new sensation of this sinewy set of lines—torso, two arms, his long neck—making its strange narrow marks on her skin.
She did not participate as much as she could have. Her excuse could be drunkenness, she decided quite clearly through the woozy haze. But Jobe did not seem to mind: He had moved so he lay on top of her and rather than crushing her, as happened with the powerful, b
road-shouldered men that she favored, this was like making out with a giraffe who was extended in all directions, all legs and hooves and neck and head. Imagining this, she giggled, and Jobe raised himself enough so he could angle his eyes down and look at her.
“What is it?” he said in a tone so plaintive, it actually hurt.
Not thinking of the consequences, only that he might be wounded forever—unlike her hot tea in the garden at Kensington, the careless derision she spilled on him might, she worried, genuinely emasculate him now—she said, “No, it’s nothing, it just tickled for a minute,” and pulled his head awkwardly toward her for a long, open-mouthed kiss.
After a few minutes he was panting and she pretended that she was, too. “I’m just too goddamn tall,” he said.
“It’s these German cars,” she answered. “You should have bought American. A nice, long Chevy truck bed would come in handy. See?”
They both laughed then, which caused an aching sensation to begin in her bladder. She could see the large cup of water and picture herself drinking it, the splashing like a waterfall through her body’s systems, down her throat and over the cliffs of her lungs.
“Uh, besides, I think I need a bathroom.”
Jobe folded himself up, long limbs retracting and retreating to his side of the car. “Can you make it ’til we get home?” he asked. “It’ll take about twenty minutes.”
“Sure,” said Carmen, relieved. She could make it for another hour if it meant the awkwardness was over. She’d done her duty, kissing her sweet but nerdy host so he would feel better about himself. Now she wanted nothing more than to go back to that purple bedroom and sleep until about noon.
She closed her eyes as Jobe drove deliberately through the [night, and when they arrived at the house, she rose unsteadily, having neglected to put the seat up before trying to get out of the car.
“You okay?” he asked as they entered through the door in the cavernous five-car garage.
“I’m fine.” She nodded emphatically. “Just tired. You know.”
She took a long time inside the little powder room off the kitchen, washing her hands twice and drying them with precision, staring into her own wide green eyes. Her hair was long and wavy, held back with a thick band that was woven on top of her head but just an elastic cord underneath her hair. The contraption was digging into her neck so she removed it and searched through the drawers for a brush but came up with nothing, so she raked her hands like claws several times against her scalp. One more look: Her face had grown older, somehow, in only the time she’d been here in Baltimore. It was more beautiful but also serious and more defined, as if crossing the threshold into this house she had skipped ahead several years, moving unintentionally from wild student to mature adult.
He was, of course, waiting for her when she emerged—sitting on a stool in the darkness of the kitchen. “Just like old times,” he said.
“Yeah, only this is a lot nicer than that raunchy little WC in London. If you guys have so much money, how come you stayed in a place like that anyway?”
He shrugged; she saw the ghost of motion, his shoulders moving up and down. “I don’t know. I guess maybe sometimes I get tired of … this.”
Carmen leaned on the counter next to him. Apparently they were going to talk. She didn’t want to be rude, but the Scotch had mostly worn off and she was so tired that parts of her, parts that she rarely noticed—her jaw, her ankles—had begun to ache. She closed her eyes for a few seconds and when she heard him stand and felt him reach for her, she wasn’t really surprised. Maybe she wanted this, she told herself; maybe it wasn’t just easier.
The stool turned out to be a convenient aid. Jobe backed up and sat again, drawing her with him, placing her between his knees. Now they were exactly on par, shoulders even. She could lace her arms around his neck and lean in and it was like being held or carried though her feet were still, technically, on the ground. Once she got used to the feel of his face, the bristling and hard bones, Carmen relaxed and began having fun. What the hell? He was a nice guy and he smelled good; so many of them didn’t. She snapped at his mouth like a turtle and he responded by pulling her in tighter. It was amazing how perfectly okay this was, like spending the night eating popcorn and watching an old movie on TV if there was nothing better to do—it wasn’t your first choice, but it was certainly good enough to fill the time.
Ten minutes went by this way and then, almost roughly, he rose and took her hand, leading her toward the stairs.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“I’ve always regretted,” he said, stopping and staring at his feet as if he were a small boy, confused. “That night when you offered … and I didn’t. I wish that we could …”
And that’s where they hung, in that space between what could have happened in London and his sweet, nearly pathetic longing now. Carmen was—she knew this about herself—not a good enough person, too quick to judge people according to their appearance or status. She had not showed her mother enough kindness at the end when she was burned and wan and bald. It was time that she, Carmen, become more generous, concerned about the feelings of others. And Jobe had been heartbreakingly honest with her earlier; he liked her, it was that simple. Now she just had to figure out the right thing to do.
They reached the broad second-story landing and stood for a moment. Three hallways branched off it like half the rays of a star. They stood a few feet from the opening to Jobe’s room and he raised his index finger to his lips. “My parents,” he mouthed and pointed to the right.
She nodded and without even deciding, really, only sliding into this one harmless act that she saw as good and selfless, Carmen gave Jobe a little shove and followed him. They walked past the room where his parents slept and two more closed doors and an open bathroom whose fixtures and white tile glistened. Then across the threshold of the room at the very end of the hall and toward his extra-long, twin bed.
JUNE 2007
A week ticked by and Carmen was split. If she let this thing go, this hard comet, it could take over her whole body and she might die. But the doctors at the breast clinic were strangely noncommittal: It was cancer—the biopsy clearly showed this—but what kind and how dangerous was up for endless debate. The only thing to do was to get inside her, cut it out, and look at it under a microscope, yet no one’s schedule seemed to match up and she spent hours on the phone trying to arrange for an operating room, a surgeon, and a friend to take her to and from. It was tempting simply to give up and forget about the comet. Go on about her life.
But the emptiness of the days echoed. Without work, without Jobe to look after and fetch medications for, without the steady stream of people coming in to relieve and feed and console her, she was mostly alone. Siena was either working or curled up somewhere with Troy. Luca had a morning “jobs readiness” program this week. And then there was Michael, whom she was tempted to cling to and needed every ounce of her willpower to treat with motherly distance in order to let him return to feeling like a typical adolescent boy.
Technically Michael was the child she and Jobe never should have had. If they had stopped at two, her family would be nearly raised by now, admittedly complicated by Luca’s Down’s but basically grown. There was no question Carmen would be freer. But even when she played the game where she erased Jobe and Luca and Siena—in her darkest moments, shuddering, but able to imagine such a thing—Michael was the one she couldn’t bear to think about letting go.
He was the evolutionary throwback to Carmen’s father, Antonio, and his father, Gus, a deli owner in Brooklyn. Like the sensuous working-class men in her family, Michael was doe-eyed and boisterous and at ease with his body. He played sports and collected friends like bottle caps. He didn’t have Luca’s sweetness or Siena’s brains; but Michael alone emanated the robust normalcy that Carmen remembered from her youth.
Probably because he fit into the world so well, it was tempting for people to overlook Michael and assume that whatever happened he
’d be fine. But what she had observed in the days after Jobe’s funeral was a boy with no outlet for grief. Her younger son’s job was to be happy and funny. Most of the time, this is what he did. But lately he’d begun, for the first time in his twelve years, to have trouble sleeping. He had terrible nightmares. Occasionally, despite the dust of mustache on his upper lip, he even came to her room at night.
She and the two older children—along with Troy, the fourth child she appeared to have inherited—had agreed not to tell Michael about her cancer until they knew more. So Carmen hid in her bedroom with the door closed, as secretive about these medical phone calls as she had once been about Danny. Finally, after calling the seventh name on her list of referrals, she found an oncologist willing to perform what everyone insisted on calling “the procedure.” This was because, Carmen realized slowly as she sat on hold, they could not accurately name it prior to the doctor’s cutting a hole in her. She would be trusting this man she’d never met to decide—while she herself was unconscious—whether to preserve her left breast or lop it off.
Sitting on her bed, clutching her cell phone with one shoulder, Carmen breathed in shallow sips. By the time the nurse returned from scheduling this event, Carmen was light-headed. Obediently, she wrote the woman’s instructions on a half-used notebook abandoned by one of the kids on the last day of school.
“You’ll need to make an appointment with your doctor for the day before the procedure,” the nurse said. “Get a clean bill of health, other than the tumor, of course. And some Xanax. You’ll need it.”
This woman was completely insane. Last time Carmen had called to get an appointment for an annual physical it had taken a month and a half to get in. What were the odds she’d be able to pinpoint a day and demand a slot? But she scheduled the surgery anyway, because she had to start with something. “Your surgeon is Dr. Woo,” the nurse informed Carmen crisply. “You’re lucky. He’s very good.”
“That’s great, thank you,” Carmen said sweetly, though she wasn’t feeling lucky. She might need this woman to do something for her in the future: slip her some Vicodin or put her out of her misery with a cleaver to her head. But this business about excellent surgeons was a lie; she’d found that out with Jobe. He’d had the best at Johns Hopkins; the university had insisted upon it, even pulling on medical school resources to dig up a specialist who had worked with precisely Jobe’s type of non-Hodgkin’s his entire career. This was the guy who set out the course of treatment that ultimately killed her husband. Eerily, that doctor had accomplished the terrible thing that she was secretly afraid she’d wanted bad enough to have caused. Since meeting Jana’s Wiccan friends, Carmen wondered sometimes if she was some kind of inept witch, conjuring up evil unwittingly yet unable to fix Luca or make herself magically content with a perfectly nice yet tentative and periodically impotent man.
