How to Party With an Infant (9 page)

They walk toward the entrance, and she tightens her grip on Gabe’s hand. “We can’t run around in here, okay? Do you think you can calm your body? Perhaps play and run around in your mind?”

He tries to squirm away. “I have candy,” she says. “I have candy to give to good boys.”

“Gabe want,” he says.

“If you’re good in here then I will give you one.”

“Want now!” he says, then jerks his body away from her. When she reaches for him, he arches his back and wails.

“I know,” she says. “You’re upset because you want a piece of chocolate. You’re upset because this isn’t part of our routine.”

She doesn’t know how “talking him through” can help if he can’t hear what she’s saying. She feels her body heating up. Gabe’s red face
is wet and blotchy. When he tantrums, two red dots bloom on his forehead.

“You look like the devil,” she says because he’s crying too hard to hear, and then she says loudly: “Crying is not the best action, Gabe. Try to find a better action!”

More crying, arching, glaring through fat, pulpy tears.

She sifts through her purse and gives him the damn chocolate.

*  *  *

After Georgia posts Chris’s bail, hugs him, cries, is admonished for hugging him and crying and acting like a “freak,” she and her children walk back to the car, and once everyone is buckled in she drives out of the lot. She says nothing. She waits for Chris to make the first move. This requires so much self-restraint that she keeps shifting in her seat and fake-yawning.

“What’s your problem?” Chris says. “Do you have a hemorrhoid or something?”

“No,” she says and refrains from telling him that his father does. “I think I have a hemorrhoid,” he said last night during
Dateline
.

“They’re pretty common,” she says. “Nothing wrong with it.”

She can feel him looking at her. Eric has beady ferret eyes that Chris fortunately didn’t inherit and thin little lips that he did. Zoë coos, and Georgia remembers her soiled diaper, but doesn’t want to stop, especially since Gabe has fallen asleep. She looks in the rearview mirror and sees him with his pacie in his mouth, his filthy blue blanket over his legs. Chris looks back at his sister. “You’re dumber than knuckles,” he says.

“That’s not a nice thing to say.”

“I don’t mean anything bad by it,” he says. “She was playing with this toy the other day. I took it away and she didn’t even notice it was
gone. Then I put a mirror in her face and she didn’t know it was her own reflection. Babies are funny. You can totally mess with ’em.”

Georgia holds the steering wheel tightly. She takes a deep breath. “Why?” she says. “What?” She doesn’t know what to ask. An officer told her that he was arrested for third-degree burglary. She gasped, but then he explained that Chris walked onto someone else’s property with the intent to burglarize—that’s what constituted the burglary.

“Why did you go onto this person’s property?” she asks. “And who’s Leroy? I had no idea you had a friend named Leroy.”

“It’s pronounced
Lee
roy. He’s not frickin’ French.”

Chris puts his foot on the dash and plucks off dried clumps of dirt from his boot. “This guy stole Leroy’s jacket. We know him! His name’s Dumb Todd. So we went to his house to get it back and he called the cops like a little bitch. You can’t steal your own threads. It’s a bullshit charge. Don’t worry about it.”

He fusses with the stations on the radio, then stops on what Georgia thinks is Brazilian music. She waits for him to change it, but he doesn’t.

“Well, I am worried about it,” she says. “I’m very worried about it. About you.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Chris says. “I’m the least . . .” He looks up at the ceiling and crosses his arms over his chest. She isn’t sure if she should take 280 or 101. She slows down hoping he’ll indicate which way he’d like to go.

“Oh, wait, stop,” he says. “Turn in to there. Can we get In-N-Out? I’m starving.”

“What’s In-N-Out?”

“You’re kidding me? Are you serious right now? Are you for real?”

She doesn’t answer.

“It’s fast food,” he says. “Hamburgers.”

“Oh,” she says, noticing he didn’t say “It’s fast food, God!” because
everything he usually says to her is constructed that way: “Do you want dinner?” “Yes, Mom. God!” “Are you ready for school?” “Like ten minutes ago, God!” Sometimes when he speaks this way she wants to shake him and ask, “Don’t you remember how much you loved and needed me? You used to hold my face and repeat ‘Mommy’ in the sweetest voice that made me feel like we were in on something together. Something small. Something tremendous.”

She turns in to the strip mall, then takes a deep breath. “Do you remember going to the playground with me?” she asks. “Do you remember all that time we spent together? Do you remember holding my face?”

“Are you having a stroke or something?” he asks.

“Maybe,” she says, giving up.

She drives to the end of the lot toward the neon lights sparkling like a refuge. Zoë makes a frustrated whimper. Georgia wishes the other two weren’t here, that it was just her and Chris. She glances back at Gabe. His pacifier has fallen on his lap and sits there like a severed thumb.

“How have you not heard of this place?” Chris asks. “You and Dad are so disconnected or something.”

“We like that Thai place on Masonic,” she says, remembering that when Chris was little they used to get takeout from there every Friday. They called it Thai Day Friday. Eric always got number 42, and it was sort of an unspoken agreement that they’d make love that night. They’d do a position she called Thai Me Up, which was really just missionary position, but it was fun to say, and she was really into themes back then. Then Thai Day Friday turned into every other Friday. Then it disappeared. She misses it—the food: green curry and prawns with chili paste, that soft, squishy eggplant she’s never been able to re-create. They still have sex occasionally, though she really has to give herself pep talks or trick herself into attraction. If she squints her eyes when Eric’s
on top of her, he kind of looks like Eliot Spitzer, so that helps. It helps a lot.

“Is this where I go?” she asks, turning in to the narrow passage.

“Yes, Mom. You look at the menu? Then order?”

She used to go to drive-throughs all the time, but it seems so different now.

“Just order me a cheeseburger, fries, and a shake,” he says.

“Could I order a cheeseburger?” she says to the neon sign.

“Not here!” he yells. “You need to pull up, God!”

She pulls up toward the window.

“Stop!” he yells.

She slams on the brakes and sees a metal box. Someone says something out of the box.

“Hello? Okay. Well, my son says he would like—”

“Don’t introduce it,” Chris says. “Just say the order. Just say it!”

“Oh, well. We would like a cheeseburger, fries, and a shake.”

“What kind of shake?” the voice asks.

“Whatever,” Chris says.

Her face burns. “Well, I don’t know.”

“Just pick one,” Chris says.

“Chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry,” the voice says.

“Which one would you like?” she asks Chris.

“It doesn’t matter! Just pick one!”

“I suppose the chocolate then. Or could you do a Neapolitan?”

“A what?” the voice says.

“Nothing. Chocolate. Chocolate’s fine.” She glances around, feeling as though a lot of people are laughing at her or waiting for her to parallel-park.

“Anything else?” the voice asks.

“I don’t think—I suppose a Coke or something. Or maybe I’ll have a chocolate shake, too.”

Silence.

“You need to say ‘I’d like a chocolate shake,’ ” Chris says. “Not ‘maybe I’ll have one.’ She takes orders, not wonders.”

“I’ll have a shake then,” she says. “Chocolate. Okay. That’s that.”

“Anything to eat?”

“Well, maybe—”

“Just double the order!” Chris yells, leaning over her. “Two of everything!” He goes back to his side. “God!” he says. “Sometimes you can just, like, kill events. You make things so unnecessarily difficult.” He flicks his hand forward. “Pull up.”

Georgia does as she’s told.

*  *  *

Driving on 280 she feels protected by the rolling hills and the silence of the cool night. With the light of the moon on the hills the ride feels almost romantic.

“If you’re having any trouble you can tell me, you know.”

“I’m not having any trouble,” Chris says.

“But I just picked you up in jail.”

“All I did was get a goddamn jacket, then I’m in some ghetto holding cell stripping in front of a guard who could have butt-raped me if he wanted to.”

“I still think something is going on—”

“I just explained!”

“You’re not . . . you’re not in a gang or anything, are you? I’ve heard about these initiations—”

“With the artichokes! Oh my God, that is so messed up. Where did they even come up with that?”

“So you’re not—”

“No, I’m not psychotic! That’s like
Clockwork Orange
shit. Scary.” He looks back at Zoë with what seems like concern.

“Well,
you do get detention a lot,” she continues. “That’s trouble.”

“That’s nothing, too. Just a bunch of bullshit. I was in there last time for not running. Big deal.”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

He looks up at the ceiling. “In our timed mile I hid behind this blue mat. The mat people land on after they leap over a pole with a pole. What’s that called again?”

“Pole vaulting,” she says, happy not only to know the answer but that her brain had transmitted this knowledge so quickly.

“Why the cock do people do that?” Chris asks. “Who even came up with that? I mean, for reals. So I hid behind the pole-vaulting mat, then joined in on the last lap. Curt, a total vagina, ratted me out.”

“Why didn’t you just run?”

“Because it’s a ridiculous thing to do,” he says. “People need to compete all the time. Coach Ron is standing there with his clipboard. Coach Jon is recording our times. Why? What’s the point? People eat spiders and roll around in bat feces to win something. I’m not going to put on little shorts and
jog
so I can beat my record.”

He needs a role model, Georgia knows, and yet Eric is proving to be a bad one. Chris doesn’t respect him—his art, his mind, and his “alert approach” to living. If only he could relate to him somehow, to both of them.

“Your father thinks running is ridiculous, too,” she says.

“Yeah, but he has no problem putting spandex on every Saturday morning and riding down hills on a bicycle with his asshole in the air. I don’t see why they all have to wear those tights. You can bike in normal clothes, you know.”

“Your father was in the army,” she says, having no idea why she would say such a thing and what it’s supposed to accomplish. She was watching something about Navy SEALs on the
Today
show and they seemed so stoic and wise, not to mention incredibly sculpted.
She supposes she wants him to envision his father moving through a swamp with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. There he is in the jungle or the desert, squinting in the hot sun. He’s had a hard day, lost one of his best friends in a surprise attack. He holds a letter to the friend’s wife that says, “If you get this it means I’m gone, my love.” Eric looks up at the sky and shouts. The other men look away, uncomfortable with his savage grief. He’d cheer up later that day after receiving the letter from Georgia, telling him she was pregnant with his son, a war baby.

“He was not in the army,” Chris says. “Are you kidding me?”

It’s a horrible lie, and what did she expect to get from it?

“I think he was,” she says. “Just a little stint—to pay for his education.”

“Big deal,” Chris says. “And if he was he sure doesn’t act like it. At that barbecue he had to scrape the grill because bacon touched it! It’s like someone’s done a 187 on his manhood.”

She remembers Eric scraping the bacon essence. She caught her friends exchanging looks, Mele mouthing,
Oh my God
.

“He has allergies,” she lies.

“Bullshit.” He coughs.

“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” Georgia says. “Your brother and sister are susceptible. They’re like sponges.”

“Yeah, right,” Chris says. “Gabe can hardly talk. Kids are supposed to talk by now.
Gabe want milk. Gabe make peepee
.” Chris laughs.

Georgia experiences a shock of humiliation and guilt. She has a faulty child, and it isn’t a manufacturing problem. It has to do with care and maintenance. She fills Gabe with juice and candy. She lets him watch hours upon hours of toons, and the toon he loves happens to be about a bunch of kid scientists who, quite frankly, behave as though there’s no chance in hell that they could be scientists. She gets too tired to make lunch for him and gives him Lunchables instead,
which make his fingers puffy. She wonders why Chris isn’t eating. The burgers smell sweet and smoky.

“Kids are all different,” she says. “They all move at different speeds. Gabe excels in other things.” She tries to think of the other things, but when she measures his abilities against those of the Panhandle bunch, Gabe comes out a dwarf. He doesn’t have milestones. He has centimeterstones.

Zoë begins to make her hungry cry, and Georgia speeds up. She doesn’t want to have to nurse her in front of Chris. The absolute worst thing would be if Gabe woke up and wanted to nurse—
Gabe want boobie!
—fussing with her breast like a kitten with a ball of yarn. She has kept it a secret from Chris and Eric that he still breast-feeds.

“Hush, Zoë,” Chris says. His voice isn’t soft, but it’s kind. He always speaks to Zoë as though she’s an adult. “I bought you a blanket,” he says. “It’s pink. You’ll love it. Don’t cry.”

“You got her a blanket?” Georgia asks.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Where?”

“Giggle.”

Georgia has never gone in there—that fancy Marina baby store with modern baby furniture and poison-free plastics.

“The saleswoman said some celebrity has the same blanket. She said to a customer, ‘If they have an ugly baby, just get it some gorgeous clothes!’ She sucked.”