À la Carte

by Nia Forrester

  “One kid, two … what’s one more?” I say instead, faking a smile.

  “What’s one more what, baby?”

  Dani, Freya and Jennifer have all finally surfaced, all of them carrying their own food. Everyone’s plate is piled high, except for Danielle’s. She catches me noticing that and evades my glance. She doesn’t always eat as much as she should, because she’s afraid of gaining too much weight. Sometimes I’m worried it’ll become a head thing with her. When we met, she told me she used to be overweight, though I’ve never seen it.

  Now, even though weight gain is part of a healthy pregnancy, I know it makes her nervous, the bigger she gets. Sometimes I catch her checking out her neck, thighs and arms, with a self-critical purse to her lips. She says the only place she can stand to gain weight is in her middle “because that’s where our baby is.” I told her that’s crazy and irrational, and she said with a roll of her eyes that she knows it is, “but still …”

  “One more child,” Josette responds to Dani’s question. “I was saying that sending Rocket to spend more time with his grandparents will take a little of the load off you both when the baby comes and your hus … Randall said … well, you heard what he said.”

  I see Freya’s eyebrows lift at the words ‘sending Rocket to spend more time with his grandparents.’ And Dani’s smile falters a little.

  “Oh …”

  She looks around, trying to figure out how to maneuver herself into a seat while holding her plate.

  I hurry to help her, taking her plate with one hand, and holding her elbow with the other while she extends a hand behind her and lowers herself into the couch. Our eyes meet. Hers have a slightly reproachful look, and I know that my guess was right. She’s going to have something to say later about me entertaining talk about Rocket going away again, especially when he’s just gotten home.

  While she would never try to stop me from having Rocket spend time with his grandparents, I know she feels in her heart that he’s her kid, too. She expects to have a say about things that pertain to his care and well-being. And I like it that way. It’s one of the things that I love about her—my kid is by default her kid. Even though we’re not even married yet.

  The craziest thing about my relationship with Dani is this: I can’t wait to make her my wife. I mean it. I can’t wait. I look at the engagement ring—which she sometimes takes off lately because her fingers are swollen—and I think about when I can slide the other one right next to it. The wedding ring; the one that will symbolize to the world that we’re a done-deal.

  Once Dani is settled in her seat, I hand her her plate and she mouths a ‘thank you.’ Then, as I’m about to sit next to her, she touches my hand.

  “Why don’t you go downstairs and see how the boys are doing?” she asks aloud.

  I nod and feel a flash of gratitude.

  “Yeah. I probably should,” I say.

  I’m so eager to get out of there, I almost forget to take my food with me. As I leave, I glimpse my sister and Jennifer exchanging an amused glance.

  My son is running around cheering on cue though I’m not even sure he completely understands the game.

  Watching football games on the big-screen is always an occasion in our family, especially when we do it with Garrett and my nephews. There’s always a lot of screaming and cussing and jumping up and down from our seats, hollering at the calls the refs make, second-guessing the plays and calling the QB a bum for not running hard or fast enough. We go all in, dimming the lights in the basement so that the action is projected at us with all the drama we think just about every football game is worth.

  There are no throwaway games. We pick a team, always. The best game-watching experiences are when Garrett and I are not on the same side. Today is one of those days and Rocket is loving it. Every time I erupt in a cheer, he does the same and runs a lap around the room while my nephews Lance and Matt take their father’s side and try to drown us out with shouts of their own.

  Matt, who is almost seventeen, and a decent-sized defensive lineman looks up to me because of my time in the League and I think secretly wants to choose the same team as me today, but doesn’t, out of loyalty to his father. He’s a good kid, who will probably get drafted one day if he puts in the work and that’s the path he chooses; but my sister rides him hard about academics, probably keeping her fingers and toes crossed that he doesn’t end up in the NFL like me.

  When the game gets interrupted by a commercial break, Lance, Matt and Rocket head back upstairs in a stampede to refill their plates. Rocket’s plate, which he leaves behind, is still half uneaten, but he likes to do whatever his older cousins do.

  “You decide whether you gon’ get little man in Pop Warner?” Garrett asks, tipping back his beer and taking a swig.

  My brother-in-law is a big guy and takes up a good bit of real estate on the oversized sofa. He probably could have played ball himself back in the day. He’s a student of the game, but never treated me like a superstar, even when, for a brief flash of time, I was one. Because of that, and a lot of other things, my respect for him runs deep.

  “Nah. Haven’t decided yet.”

  Garrett laughs. “So, basically, you ain’t found the balls to mention it to Danielle yet.”

  I suck my teeth. “It ain’t like she would stop me,” I say, scoffing.

  Well, yes and no. The one time I mentioned getting Rocket into football, she gave me a flat stare and then pursed her lips in that way she does when she doesn’t agree with something but has decided that there’s no point voicing her disagreement for the moment.

  I know her objection is based on worries about head injuries. She was almost evangelical about that movie that Will Smith did on the subject, trying to tell me without saying outright that I was lucky to no longer be on the field. Sending Rocket out there is more than likely not one of the things she has planned for him as an extracurricular activity.

  “Yeah, right,” Garrett scoffs. “Go ahead. Act like she don’ run your ass.”

  I laugh. “Hey,” I say throwing my hands up. “I got a good life. And that all comes from making sure I keep my woman happy. So, call it what you want …”

  “I’m just messin’ wit’ you. You know I ain’t in a position to talk,” Garrett says. “But happy wife, happy life, right?”

  We bump fists.

  “But speaking of wife, when’s that gon’ happen? You got Danielle up in here about to pop and no sign of a preacher in sight. Y’all set a date yet? Freya’s just itching to get her hands into some wedding planning.”

  I smile at that, remembering my sister’s hands-off approach to my previous wedding—the one she didn’t think should happen.

  “She says she wants to be back ‘down to weight’ when we get married, so …” I shrug. “Just waiting on her, man.”

  “Nah,” Garrett said.

  “Nah, what?”

  “Don’t wait on her. Make it happen.”

  “But if she doesn’t …”

  “There’s no ‘buts’ about it. Make it happen. Remember my wedding to your sister?”

  I nod.

  It was a swelteringly hot summer day in a county clerk’s office that had no air-conditioning, just a tepid breeze from a lazy overhead fan. Garrett and Freya faced a shabby lectern and behind it, a bored-looking woman administered the marriage vows and then pronounced them husband and wife.

  When the brief ceremony—if you want to call it that—was done, Garrett and Freya turned and looked at each other and it was as though no one else was in the room. There were perspiration stains at the armpits of Garrett’s once-crisp white shirt. Freya had sweated off a good bit of her makeup. But for what felt like a full minute, they stared at each other and their bond was sealed.

  “Freya wanted more than that. And I wanted to give her more than that,” Garrett said. “But we were almost dead-broke, and I knew that by the time I’d made the money to give her the wedding of her dreams we might’ve been married five years already.r />
  “And what would have been the point in that, when the most important thing was being able to call her my wife? And when we did have that wedding she wanted? Eventually? By then we’d put in some time, and it was about more than a party.”

  I remember that wedding too. A destination event in Antigua for a renewal of their vows, that I offered to help pay for. Garrett refused and told me it wasn’t my responsibility. Another notch in his favor. Don’t get me wrong, I would’ve been happy to foot the bill. But I was even happier that my sister was with the kind of dude who could never allow that to happen.

  “It ain’t about a wedding. Let her know you want her—fat, thin, pregnant, not pregnant … It’s about her. Right? Your sister has never, not one time said to me, ‘Dang, Garrett, I wish we’d had the big-ass expensive wedding.’ Not one time.”

  “Don’t be droppin’ knowledge in the middle of a game, man,” I say, trying to lighten the mood. “I ain’t even in the state of mind to receive all this heavy shit you be tryin’ to give me right now.”

  Garrett looks at me, his face serious. “No,” he says. “I think you are.”

  Just as I’m about to respond, we hear the sound of feet making their way back downstairs, and accompanying them, voices as well. Rocket’s voice, excited and elevated, and behind that, Eva’s.

  Lance and Matt come down first, both carrying their refilled plates and the game resumes, so I turn to look at the television again.

  “It’s a whole other world down here,” Eva says from somewhere in my periphery, though she is not yet within view.

  And then what I hear next is the unmistakable, bone-chilling sound of someone taking a fall down the steps.

  ~3~

  I sit up in bed as Rand enters our bedroom and shove aside the issue of Parents magazine that I’ve been idly flipping through.

  He exhales so deeply his chest heaves, and then sits on the edge of the bed. I wait while he toes off his shoes and shrugs his shirt over his head. He doesn’t speak.

  Finally, he falls backward and reaches overhead until he can touch me. I scoot closer and he turns over onto his stomach, now kneeling at the edge of the bed, only his torso on it. He palms my massive belly.

  “You guys good?” he asks, referring to me and the baby.

  “Fine. But how’s Eva? What …?”

  “Broken ankle,” Rand says dully.

  We all heard the tumble when it happened. It was awful. Just a series of dull thuds, that was eerily recognizable as the sound of a human body striking a hard surface. Except there was no scream, exclamation, or anything.

  Eva’s fall sounded almost like someone tossing a bag of potatoes into a cellar. Because she didn’t yell, from upstairs it took us a moment to react. And while I was trying to stand, which these days takes me a minute, that’s when I heard the yelling.

  When Jennifer, Freya, Josette and I got to the top of the stairs, Eva was lying at the bottom of it in an ungainly heap and all the guys were crowded around her. For one awful moment I thought she was dead, especially when Garrett started shouting for us to call 911.

  Rand followed the ambulance to the hospital, as did her friend Josette and the rest of us stayed put, not knowing what to do. Once she was admitted, Rand called me briefly to let me know she was conscious and being looked over by a doctor, and then warned that he probably wouldn’t be able to call again since cellphones weren’t allowed.

  Now, just before midnight, he is finally making it home.

  “And her head? Did she …?”

  “Mildly concussed. They kept her up for a while. I didn’t leave until they allowed her to go to sleep.”

  “Jesus, Rand, this is …”

  “Yeah, I know. Bad enough Weston thinks I killed his daughter. Now he probably thinks I tried to assassinate his wife.”

  “That’s not funny,” I say.

  “Who’s joking? You should’ve heard him on the phone. Like he knows it’s my fault but doesn’t know exactly how to blame me just yet.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s just … But god, that’s the worst luck ever. Is he coming?”

  “He said yeah, but then he talked to the doctor and Eva who told him he should wait a day or so, because she may still be able to fly out on Tuesday …”

  “Well, that can’t be wise.”

  “No,” Rand agreed. “It’s not. But you know … she’s not my mother, so …” He lets his voice trail off.

  “Does Faith … Did … do they have other kids?” As I ask this, I can’t believe we’ve never discussed this before. Not that we talk about Faith often, but if Rocket has an aunt or uncle, I guess I should know.

  “One son. Faith’s brother, Daniel. He lived in Idaho or someplace like that last I heard. A real fuck-up. Faith was the good kid.”

  “So then,” I take a breath. “You’re as close to a kid as she has out here, Rand.”

  At that, he raises his eyes to look at me, instead of at my belly, which he has been lazily stroking. His hands freeze in place.

  “I mean, she’s Rocket’s grandmother and she’s hospitalized in a city far from her home. So, she’ll need someone to …” I shrug. “I don’t know. Take care of things for her.”

  “Like what? She has her friend Josette, and …”

  “I know,” I say hastily, sensing his rising resistance. “But just … make yourself available to her. I think that’s the right thing to do. Don’t you?”

  He looks at me for a few beats and then heaves another sigh.

  “You were right about what you said before. It was awkward as hell having her here. Before, when she was at Rocket’s birthday party and it was at Freya’s, it was different. But having her here …”

  “Yes, it felt a little strange,” I acknowledge. “But she got hurt in our home. In the home where her grandson lives. Where her daughter used to live. You should make yourself available to her, and …”

  “Okay, I’ll make myself available to her. Whatever the hell that means.”

  “Maybe you should offer to pay for Weston’s flight up here?”

  “Okay. Sure,” Rand says.

  From his tone, I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.

  “I’ll go see her in the hospital tomorrow, and we’ll go from there.”

  He nods, and then his hands are under my nightshirt, lifting it up to the area just beneath my breasts so I know this topic of conversation is being put to bed for the evening.

  “Rocket felt terrible,” I say, as Rand moves in further and presses his lips to my belly. “He thinks he should have caught her or something.”

  At that, Rand smiles a little. “My little superhero,” he says. He kisses my belly again, and goosebumps rise on the surface of my skin.

  He looks at my belly with such awe that it gives me a pleasurable chill, just watching him. I run my fingers along the angles of his chiseled jaw as he kisses me, my nails scoring through the rough hair of his five-o’-clock shadow.

  “Something happened last night,” I tell him.

  He looks up, his brow momentarily furrowing. “With the baby?”

  “No, not with the baby. She’s fine. With Rocket.”

  “What happened?”

  “He called me ‘Mommy’,” I say. Just recounting it makes my voice tremble a little, as the emotions I felt in that moment surge through me once again.

  Rand smiles. “He calls you that all the time.”

  “Yes. But not to me. He said it to me, Rand.”

  Rand grins and then shrugs. “Cool. It’s what you are, right?”

  I sigh. “You’re always so casual about things like that. It’s a moment. A milestone. Maybe in two years he’ll be calling me that all the time and I’ll take it for granted. But for right now, it’s huge.”

  “Okay, it’s huge …” Rand is sitting on the bed now, raising my nightshirt higher, lifting it until I raise my arms to allow him to remove it altogether.

  “You don’t get it,” I say, shaking my head.

&nbs
p; “I get it.” He looks me in the eye. “But I loved you long before I could make myself say it. And Rocket saw you as his mom long before he called you that last night. Believe me.”

  I smile. “I guess you’re right. But it felt good …”

  “Good.”

  “… but also wrong for it to feel so good.”

  Rand’s hands, now cupping my breasts, feel warm. I like them there, supporting the new heavier weight, and relieving a new pressure that they seem to have these days, like they’re growing riper and riper, and could soon burst.

  “Why would it feel wrong?” he asks.

  “Because … you know. Faith.”

  At the mention of her name, Rand’s hands fall to my sides, resting on my hips. He twists his lips a little, and a little twitch appears above his eye.

  He doesn’t like talking about Faith, I know. Because she represents to him a time in his life when he wasn’t his best self. She gave him his greatest joy in Rocket. But she is, at the same time, his life’s greatest tragedy.

  “He knows he has another Mommy,” Rand says finally. “He knows she’s … in heaven, or whatever. I don’t know why you’d feel …”

  “I know I shouldn’t feel that way, but sometimes I do. And having Eva here, it felt complicated, y’know, like we should give him some more context, and …”

  “Baby, he’s five. What kind of context does he need? His other Mommy is dead and you’re his Mommy now. What’s so …”

  “Rand,” I pull back, so his hands fall from my hips. “That’s … don’t be callous. I mean, I don’t want to dishonor his mother’s memory by pretending she didn’t exist, that’s all.”

  “Do we do that?” he demands. “Do I do that? He has pictures of …”

  “But you never talk about her to him.”

  “Any why should I? She’s gone, and now he has you. Isn’t that good enough?”

  He’s raised his voice, and so I decide that maybe now might not be the best time to discuss the intricacies of a blended family. After all, Faith’s mother almost broke her neck in our house tonight. Perhaps that’s more than enough for him to feel guilty about in a single day.