Chosen (17 page)

H
e calls her pretty much every day now, uses Brandi’s pink girlie phone or the pay phone out by the parking lot. Sometimes Brandi does it too, when she’s off work and bored like she is today, waiting for Lisle to get home on the weekend.

She comes at Jason shaking her phone like she’s ringing a bell, thinks it’s a game. Between caller ID and cell phones, kids Brandi’s age never really got the fun of prank calling Jason grew up on. Sometimes when they call, he says things, but mostly he stays silent, just to rattle her, get another envelope floating under their door. Why not, she’s got the money.

But today Penny catches them, Brandi, on the couch, with a paper towel over her phone saying curse words into Chloe’s voice mail, because she’s stopped picking up.

“Bitchwhorecuntslut, slut-slut-slut,” Brandi cackles like she’s calling chickens.

Penny slams the bedroom door; they must have got too loud. Brandi snaps her phone closed, grabs her cigarettes off the coffee table, and crosses behind Penny to the courtyard, yanking the front door half shut behind her.

“What?” he says before she’s even said anything.

Penny snorts air out her nostrils and walks right past him, pulls
open the fridge, and stares at the ketchup packets and two heels of bread.

“What?” He follows her into the kitchen, stands behind her while she moves things around, half a can of ginger ale, the butt ends of the bread, not taking anything out.

“Ketchup sandwich, breakfast of champions,” he tries again. Christ, what’s her problem now? He’s sick of trying to figure out her fucking moods.

She spins around, stares right into him.

“What? What do you want me to do? You want the baby? You want me to knock you up again? What? ’Cause I’m busting my ass trying to get us some money, so don’t start in about that.” Trying to get another one of those magic bank envelopes to appear, he thinks. What more does she want?

“Doing it by drinking it up with those two clowns?” She snorts, pours the ginger ale into a jelly jar, and sips at it. “Flat!” She spits into the sink. “You going to start tweaking with them too, next time they go off?” She doesn’t say it, but he knows she is about to bring up Des’ree Bonds, and what happened the week after he lost his license and went on his last meth binge.

“I’m getting things worked out with the social worker!” He doesn’t mean to lose his temper, but he kicks the leg of the table and it snaps, cheap particleboard crap, comes crashing down, sending up a cloud of ash from the saucer they’d been using for a tray.

“
I’m
getting things worked out with the social worker.” Penny smirks; she hadn’t even jumped when the table fell. Steps right over the mess to get up in his face.

Brandi comes back in, picking at a raw spot on her forearm. “What the fuck was that?”

Penny ignores her. “I went to the agency yesterday.” She points her thumb at her chest. “
I
got their last name.”

“Whose?” Brandi looks from one to the other. Jason steps back
from Penny, stoops over slowly to pick up the broken saucer. “Whose?” she says again.

“The rich people who got Buddy,” he finally says as he stands up, his back twanging.

“So you know their car, and Penny knows their name?” Brandi claps her hands together. “What are we waiting for?”

“I thought you said you know where they live?” Penny’s pocked-up face is right up in his; girl like her should know better than to do that.

“I know a lot of things,” Jason says without moving his mouth much, and she backs the fuck down. That’s right. With her stubby-nail fingers, Penny scoops the broken-up ashtray out of his palm and carries it to the trash, head down.

“Come on!” Brandi’s still yapping. “Let’s go rustle up some cash—I’m ready for some action!”

H
e waits for her at Strohecker’s. Portland Heights has a lot of big-money houses, a handful of parks, and some excellent schools, but only one place to get decent coffee on the way to the interstate.

He timed it just about right too—remembering from last time, and guessing it takes her about forty minutes to get out to Troutdale at this time of day, and that the agency is pretty nine to five, he doesn’t have to wait long. At 8:25, she comes in juggling her tiny purse and some files, the cell phone jammed to her ear, and Paul can’t stop himself from grinning stupidly while he waits for her to recognize him.

“You need a briefcase or something,” he says, and she smiles when she sees him.

“Paul Nova!” She puts her things down on the table where he is sitting, wraps her arms around him. “So good to see you again. Happy New Year.”

He pulls out a chair for her, offers her one of the two coffees he has waiting in front of him.

“Cream, lots of sugar, right?”

“Wow, good memory. But am I drinking Eva’s coffee?”

“No, I’ll get her a fresh one before I go. Please, sit.” She does.

“This must not be your usual time,” she says, tipping her head forward to sip from her cup, and he can smell the floral of her shampoo in her slightly damp hair. “Or we’d be seeing each other here every day.”

“I’m getting a late start. Rough night with the baby. Of course, it’s a lot harder on Eva than it is on me.”

“So you’re picking up coffee for her. Does your wife appreciate how lucky she is?”

“What?” Paul sips at his coffee to hide his smile. It has been a long time since Eva has even said he’s a handy guy to have around.

“Nothing, you’re just like the perfect guy. Successful business, thoughtful husband, great dad. She’s lucky.”

After this, they don’t talk about Eva—not her dark moods or the baby’s crying, as he had planned. They talk about Chloe’s work for a minute.

“Still the dream job?” he’d asked, and she looked out the window before saying quietly, “Sometimes.”

Then, because it’s always on his mind, they talk about money.

“I should buy stock in this place,” Paul says, waving his arm at the adjacent fancy grocery store with its sprawling floral department, wine steward, and exotic fruit and cheese section. “We’re certainly spending enough money here. Yesterday I come home, and Eva and her brother have bought a twenty-eight-dollar tray of cut fruit from here. We do have knives, we can cut up our own fruit. Wyeth’s a month old, and they’re still celebrating, acting like the circus is in town, spare no expense! And the deli sandwiches and the gourmet coffees—” Paul stops, looks down at the recycled paper cup steaming between his hands, and laughs. “Our French press is broken,” he continues lamely.

“You know,” Chloe says, “they say the biggest points of conflict in relationships are money and children.”

“Bingo.”

Somehow, the conversation drifts to their dead mothers, swapping stats: diabetic complication, age forty-seven; brain tumor, age thirty-two.

“Everyone thinks that’s why I do this job, mother issues, like I’ve got to make everyone the happy family I had but lost.”

Paul nods. “It’s been a long time, years, but I miss her more than ever now with the baby. Eva’s brother flies up from L.A. sometimes, but I want family who is actually helpful. My mom would have made the most wonderful granny—nothing ruffled her.”

“You know, there’s a lovely quote by C. S. Lewis, from when his mother died. He said something like, ‘With my mother’s death, all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.’”

Paul can’t take his eyes off her. “Or something like that, huh?” He laughs, and she blushes, tucks her hair back from her face.

“Okay, I memorized it. I discovered it when I was twelve, and it spoke to me, everything I was feeling.”

“It’s beautiful.”

They sit for a minute, and then Chloe checks her cell phone, starts to collect the files in front of her.

“This was fun.” She glances at the piles of paper in her hands. “I didn’t get any work done, but it was lovely. Thank you, for the coffee, and the company.”

“My pleasure. Nice for me to start my day with a beautiful woman and poetry instead of a screaming baby for a change.”

“We should do it again sometime,” she says, standing.

And by unspoken agreement, they do, half an hour of coffee every morning for the next thirteen days, until the last Monday in January, when Paul doesn’t show up.

From: [email protected]

Subject: The end of the quest

Date: Jan 20, 2001 1:39:47 AM PST

To: [email protected]

Consider this e-mail an apology:

For taking you on a journey that I knew in my heart was more my quest than yours, for letting it grow up above everything, take precedence over the couple we might have been.

We might have ridden the Orient Express (was that really one of our dreams?!).

We might have been happy with matching two-seater sports cars (red for you, silver for me) and a circle of friends not swallowed by weekend soccer tournaments, people who subscribed to and could read a weekly newsmagazine in one sitting. We might have become a couple who traveled northern California on wine or olive tasting tours. We might have joined Pumpkin Ridge (we used to talk about it, remember?), where I might have learned those things that girls who grow up in a Florida trailer park don’t. You wouldn’t have golfed, too much walking, but you might have enjoyed cards or cigars on the balcony, and I could have turned some heads in tennis wear.

If things had happened differently, I might have resigned myself, redesigned myself (I was still young enough!) to a fabulous, childless life. I might have taken pottery classes and yoga retreats, grown my hair long. You could have learned to use that fancy Nikon I got you for our wedding. We might have moved to Arizona, the dry heat better for your health, and lived in an active adult community where everyone drove golf carts. Or together, we might have found a hobby to bond us—scuba diving, making our childless couple friends sit through endless underwater movies after dinner.

Think of the money we might have saved! Between infertility specialists, failed IVFs, agency fees, and the nursery, we’re at approximately $163,000.

Before the quest, there was only our first year, and what is the first year? The acquisition of things, and learning, accommodating, chiseling each other.

Did you shape me? If not for you, I would know nothing of Jacobean furniture, the difference between zinfandel and vidal blanc. I wouldn’t have known what a saphenous vein was, and that a person could live without both of them. I would not know the architectural trailblazers Glenn Murcutt or Jean Nouvel. In
Pretty Woman
Richard Gere teaches Julia Roberts about champagne bringing out the flavor of strawberries; if not for you I would never have known that half a lemon in the bottle of a glass of hefe-weizen makes the perfect thirst-quenching summer ale. I would certainly never have tried carpaccio, unagi, or
The Sopranos
on my own.

As for adoption: Like a cartoon snowball rolling down a hill, engulfing ski lodges and pine trees and hapless snowbunnies, the quest took on a life of its own. Would it have been different if the baby boy now in our lives was a true Angus, your copper-haired Scottish son? Would he have had his half sister Melinda’s eyes or laugh, sparking in you some hope of second chances?

Meringues! We both loved the vanilla meringues at Strohecker’s.

What is left?

A single mother, alone in the middle of the night (doors locked, alarm system armed!) in what was the house of our dreams, that I won’t be able to afford once I pull the trigger, hit send on this e-mail.

And of course, my coffee-and-cream-skinned boy, six and a half weeks old, ten fat little fingers that close around my thumb, simply sighs as he polishes off a bottle and then tucks his hands over that kissable Buddha belly of his. A boy already twice abandoned. A boy who, after kicking his nicotine addiction, has become my sunny-son, who already grins when I lift him out of his crib, who waits for me, not crying, just waits, each morning, as though his life doesn’t start until mine does. Easy as a melody, my son—

Francie stops; she cannot swallow, a lump like a whole roasted chestnut lodged in her throat.

[SELECT ALL, DELETE]

She types:

From: [email protected]

Subject: You nearsighted, gimp-legged sonofabitch

Date: Jan 20, 2001 3:14:37 AM EDT

To: [email protected]

I believe these belong to you, from the autocomplete on my computer, when browsing for stroller rating sites, your History:

[SELECT ALL, COPY, PASTE]

S—

Sexy Asian teens

Singapore bridal services

Singapore bride connection

Singapore match services

My attorney, Larry Steinfield, Esq., 503-DIV-ORCE, awaits your call.

[SEND]

I
feel her before I see her, a magnetic draw, a smell, and she’s biting my neck, hot, like a bitch in heat, I think, pushing her back against the cinderblock wall, her faded red sweatshirt,
HOT STICK
it says over the left tit, and I am, I am one hot throbbing stick…

“You wore this to the agency picnic,” I say, but it doesn’t sound stupid. “When I first met you. I wanted you then.”

“Mm-hmm.” She unzips it, nothing underneath but perfect teardrop breasts, two halves of a ripe jumbo avocado, and I cup them, because she wants me to, wants me to bang her standing right up against the hospital wall, grinding against me in her jeans, her flat, Dallas-cheerleader stomach against my cock, the belly button with the little blond hairs around it that I’ve kissed a thousand times, no, wrong body, wrong girl, and she’s leaning into my neck, hot warm breath, “Hurry,” she says.

“Baby…,” I whisper.

A baby is crying, there is the usual urgency, get this done before the baby really gets going, and I’ve got it out, ready, and I look over her shoulder, past that smooth golden hair, through the glass window into the nursery, where I heard the crying, and it is empty, rows and rows of empty plastic cribs, the babies are gone and I don’t give a damn, I think as I use my knee to scissor open her creamy thighs—

P
AUL STARTLES
. H
IS BIG-EYED
son’s head is bobbling, turtling up off his chest, a puddle of drool and white cheesy spit-up on his chin, on the collar of Paul’s T-shirt and his neck, cooling and wet on his hot skin.

“Hey,” Paul whispers. Magnus is across the room, head thrown back, sleeping in the rocker; a gargling snore catches in his throat. Paul checks the TV; the Ravens have scored, but who cares about the Super Bowl? Paul squints at his brother-in-law; he’s not even watching, but the TV’s got to be on all the time. “Mind if I find a game, man?” Magnus always says, with the remote, Paul’s remote, already in his hand.

Paul wraps an arm around his son, cupping the stem of his neck to steady him as he swings his legs to the side of the couch. He stands, clutching Wyeth against his chest. Magnus blinks, straightens, moves the sports section off his lap.

“Did I doze off?”

“You guys all looked so sweet in here,” Eva says from the stairs, the lens of the Nikon resting in the V of her thumb and index finger. “I took a picture.” Then she and Magnus both look right at, but do not comment on, Paul’s giant boner.

She follows him upstairs.

“So…” She sits down on their bed. Paul hands Wyeth to her, and before the baby even opens his mouth, in one motion she has her shirt up and her bra open, wedging him on the boob. The baby looks surprised but pleased, latching on. Lucky, Paul thinks as he goes to the closet for a clean shirt.

Outside the windows, it is already dark, the afternoon gone. He should have at least gone to the Sandy job, checked in, but now the day is over, a Sunday night stretching before them, no different from any other night of the week anymore. Having a baby is the great leveler of life, he decides, taking the distinction out of day and night,
workweek and weekend. Parenthood is the ultimate lather-rinse-repeat.

“So, I’m feeling sort of…” She leaves the sentence open, waiting. He hates it when she starts conversations like this, pussyfooting.

“What?” He comes out of the closet; he didn’t mean to sound so sharp, but his balls are aching and he’s angry with himself for sleeping the afternoon away in front of televised football. It’s no way to grow a business.

“Never mind.” With her thumb she breaks the latch of the sleeping baby. She sighs, and her shoulders slump forward. She sits like this for a minute before closing the flap of her bra, tugging her shirt down. “I don’t know. I just don’t feel like…”

“Like what?” Paul says softly, and he sits on the edge of the bed, runs a hand over the baby’s head, down over her forearm that is holding him, lays his hand over hers. “Like what, hon?” It is so easy to be generous. Paul wonders why he doesn’t do it more, why he can’t set it as his default mode. He keeps his hand over hers.

“Nothing,” she says, and he exhales, relieved, lets it drop.

Later, he will remember this moment, and it may be what saves them in the end. She tried to tell him; he didn’t want to hear it.

Now, through a slick of tears, she is giving him that look, the girl from Anthro 101 and the Pygmies. She moves the baby meaningfully to his bassinet, winds up the mobile. She takes the bottle of apricot baby oil from the changing area by the windowsill and moves it to their bedside table. “Oh.” Paul smiles, feeling like Wyeth moments earlier, surprised and pleased. He thinks back a month, their first godawful postpartum attempt, and nothing but a sympathy handjob, one dry missionary quickie, and one hot shower blow job since then. She lies down in a C shape.

“So Maggie leaves tomorrow,” she whispers as he slides in bed next to her, curling behind her back. “It will be nice to have the house to ourselves again.”

Thank god she said it, because if he had, she would have jumped down his throat.

“You know, I’m working on a theory,” Paul says as he slips a hand up under her shirt and is met with layers, the industrial nursing bra, the absorbent milk pads. “I think once you’re over thirty, the only people you should be living with are those you’re having sex with, or those who are the product of said sex.”

Eva laughs and goes slack against his chest, shimmying her shoulders so the bra straps slide off them in his hands. Easier to just pull it down than try to tackle a triple clasp. Downstairs, the floorboards creak as Magnus walks into the kitchen, opens a cupboard, a glass on the counter, the clink of ice cubes. Eva reaches for the apricot baby oil on the nightstand. “We should be quick,” she whispers, wriggling out of her pants, rubbing her warm ass against him, and then the phone rings. “Let it be,” he hisses, but her brother answers it. “Just a moment…. Paul! It’s the answering service!” And then Wyeth and his ack-ack windup cry—“Forget it!” It comes out disgusted, like a slap. “Coming!” he yells back to Magnus.

Once, they might have rolled their eyes and shared a smile over the irony in his word choice, but Eva just yanks her pants back up and gives him a bitter, plaintive over-the-shoulder look as she picks up the baby.