Nature of Jade (20 page)

"She used to do a lot of competing--you know, beauty pageants. Her parents made her at first.

She hated it. I felt so sorry for her. I was like, eleven, and I wanted to save her. Hide her in my room, or something. She was so .. .fragile to me. She seemed like glass." He cups his hands in front of him, holding something delicate. "Later, she just gave up and got into it. It was 179

sad. She wasn't the same person who just wanted out, to live like a normal girl instead of on some perpetual stage. She got to liking all that stuff. From this really sweet uncertainty . . . She changed. It took me a long time to see it."

"Wow." It leaves me speechless. I mean, I've been told I'm pretty, but no one would put me in an evening gown and a tiara. "She really is gorgeous."

"Jade? You know what? I think you're the beautiful one."

It's not a beautiful-one, high-self-esteem thing to do, but I actually laugh.

"I mean it. Tiffany was so focused on her looks. It got . . . ugly. She got ugly, to me."

It seems kind of mean. To say all this about this girl, now dead. I try not to look at the picture too hard, but I want to. Same as I used to look at those pictures of my great-grandmother's sister, who died of pneumonia all those years ago. See, Tiffany didn't know when she was standing there that she wouldn't be for very much longer. That she'd get pregnant and die. I'm looking at her when I know the end of the story but she doesn't.

"Bo sure does look like her."

"I know." I watch Sebastian for signs of sadness, but he seems okay. He seems happy, really. "I think we're ready for dinner," he says. "Come on, Bo!" Bo has taken all of his trucks from his toy box and has lined them up on the carpet.

"No," Bo says.

"Dinner. Gogos."

"No."

"Power tripper," Sebastian says. "He knows about eight or ten words, but that's his favorite.

Close your ears, Jade." He swoops Bo up and Bo screams. He zooms Bo to his high chair 180

and plunks him in. Tosses the hot dog bits on his tray in a flash, and Bo suddenly stops screeching.

"You have that down," I say.

"Man's got to be quick."

I move around in the tiny kitchen, help carry out the bowls he's laid out, and the silverware. I sit in one of the wicker chairs, and Sebastian brings in the rest of the dinner.

"Cheers to our first meal together," he says. We clink our soda cans.

Bo munches on his hot dogs, which he smashes up toward his face. Sebastian gives him pieces of cheese, some crackers. A sippy cup of something that smells sweet and sticky, apple juice maybe.

"You have this handled so well," I say. "You just think, Young father . . . You know, that you'd be tearing out your hair."

"Oh, I do that," he laughs. "I do a lot of that. This is a show of togetherness to impress you."

"But you know what to do. How do you know what to do?"

Sebastian sprinkles some cheese on his chili. I have a bite of mine. It is way too salty, but who cares. "I don't always. I mean, I have a lot of help. My family." He gestures at the wall. "Without them, forget it. Even then, when Sebastian was first born? They gave him to me, you know, at the hospital. When it was time to go home. I almost handed him back. It felt so wrong. Like they shouldn't give him to me to take anywhere because I might wreck him. Or break him or hurt him.

Later, I was so tired. I'd never been so tired in my life. It's not like you have an all-nighter and can sleep the next day. It goes on and

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on. ... I'd feed him in bed with a bottle and we'd fall asleep there, and I'd jump up in this panic that I'd rolled over him and suffocated him." Scary.

"I was so crazy about him. This love just.. . overtakes. But, shit. Suddenly your whole life is dominated by this one thing. I can't even explain the adjustment. Like someone just hung a bowling ball around your neck and you've got to go on like you used to. That's not quite right, because the bowling ball's got to be kept alive. Needs to eat every few hours, cries and spits up and needs to eat again. Gets a cold and can't breathe . . . You've got to handle any need of his right then, not when you feel like it. There's this little demanding human and he is yours every day, every minute, and sometimes I'd have to step outside of the house and shut the door. Just, I was so fucking exhausted. I didn't think I could do it."

"What happened?"

"Well, we were with my mom and dad then, and they helped. Took over if things got too crazy.

And just, day by day, I guess. You get to know what you're doing. I got used to the demands, and then the demands changed. Now it's demanding in a whole new way. Honestly? Sometimes I want to strangle him. But, look." We watch Bo munch his hot dog. His shiny hair. His rows of tiny, white teeth. He tries to scoop up some cut bananas with a spoon, with maybe 20 percent accuracy. "I go to work and I miss him. I go out without him and I feel like I've forgotten something. I think, Wallet? Jacket?" He laughs.

"It's strange, because here you are, just two years older than me, and every guy my age seems like he's still thinking about his video games or sex or football."

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"Na-nas!" Bo says, holding his spoon in the air.

"Don't get the wrong idea. I used to love video games. I can't wait until Bo's old enough--man, that'll be a kick. I just don't have time. That all feels like a lifetime ago. Sometimes I feel like I'm fifty. Sometimes I feel like I was just seventeen and had this experience where someone hypnotized the real me and took over my life and, shit, look what they've done."

"I'm impressed, though."

"Don't be. It's not heroic. Someday you'll see Tess tell me to pick up my socks like I'm seven. Or hear me yell at Bo, and then feel like he'd have been better off adopted. But, talk to me about you.

I'm not kid obsessed, really. Maybe a little. But tell me more about you. Your family--start there."

So I do. I tell him about Mom and her prom dresses and her parents in Florida, and about my dad and his sports obsession and Oliver and Milo and my dad's family. I tell him how Dad once tried to teach us all to ski and how Mom had the television on all day every day after 9/11, and how she even bought masks for us in case of chemical warfare, and how I accidentally knocked out Oliver's first tooth and how my mother used to sometimes cry and stay in her room with the door closed before we had to go over to my dad's parents' house.

Bo has basically smooshed or examined everything on his tray, which now is all half swimming in what is definitely apple juice. Then he wants "Dow!" and off he runs, and Sebastian tries to clean his face with a wet paper towel, which Bo distinctly hates.

"Want to get your jams on?" Sebastian says, which cues Bo to fling off his socks and begin a frustrating attempt to take off his own clothes. Sebastian finishes the job, and Bo has a 183

glorious minute of naked freedom, running around like a cupid.

"Hey, Turbo," Sebastian says. "I'm gonna getcha!" Sebastian catches him and they wrestle Bo's pajamas on. "He can take off most of his clothes, but no way can he get them on yet," Sebastian shouts over the noise, and I carry our plates to the kitchen.

The phone rings and a newly p.j.'d Bo dashes to it, beating Sebastian easily.

"To?" Bo says, then drops the phone where it is. You can still hear a voice coming out from where it lies on the floor.

Sebastian retrieves it. "Hi. Yeah. My secretary. Hey, can I call you later?" He pauses. "No, like tomorrow." He rolls his eyes toward the ceiling for my benefit. "She's supposed to be back late.

FFECR meeting." He pauses again, listens. "Say it fast and it sounds like a word we don't want Bo to learn. Mmhmm. Okay. Tomorrow. Promise--jeez! Bye.

"My mom," he says.

"Hey, I should let you get going. Get Bo to bed."

"Let me just get him his toothbrush. He thinks he's brushing, but basically he sucks on it. He loves it, though, so it'll give me a chance to say good-bye."

"Ba," Bo says, and blows me a kiss. "Mwah!" he says, movie-actress style.

"Not yet," Sebastian says. "Hey, man, she's still here."

He finds Bo's toothbrush, and he is right, of course. Bo sits right down on his diapered bottom and sucks that toothbrush like a Popsicle. Sebastian walks me to the door.

"I really enjoyed this," I say.

"Go home and take a couple Tylenol," Sebastian says, the nature of jade 184

"No. Come on, he was great. This place ... I had a terrific time."

"Me too," he says. He gathers my hair behind my back, lets it fall. We are close enough that I can feel his warm breath on my face. He leans down, and sets his lips not quite on mine. Just to the edge of my mouth. A light brush, oh, God, and then I perfect his aim.

We kiss for a while, not long enough. His mouth is chili-warm. We pull apart. Sebastian, my red jacket boy, looks at me for a while. He puts his hand behind my neck, pulls me to him and kisses my forehead.

"Good night," he says.

"Bye," I say.

"Bah," Bo says from the living room. "Mwah!"

Wow lifts me up, plunks me outside into the cold, misty-wet night air. The lights that are strung along the dock reflect in the water of the lake. Ripple, dance. I head past the flowerpots, am just about to step off the dock, when I almost bump into a figure coming on. I barely see her, in her dark coat with the hood up against the rain. The hood comes down and out pops a fluff of gray hair, eyes direct and blue as the color of the china some old ladies have.

"Well, you don't look like a burglar," she says.

"I'm Jade. DeLuna. A friend of Sebastian's."

"Uh-huh."

She just stands there, drilling me into the ground with her eyes. This is Tess, I know, the one with the smile and the fishing pole in the pictures, the one with her arm around the big, bearded man, the one sitting with her sister on a rock wall

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somewhere that looked over the sea. Somehow, though, it doesn't seem like a good idea that I know who she is. That knowledge makes me too close, and she is already shoving me back with her gaze. I decide to fake ignorance. For a small woman, she seems capable of lifting me up in her fist and throwing me into the water. She seems too fierce for yellow gardening clogs.

"And you are . . . ?" I say.

"Early, it appears."

My insides gather up in some kind of shame, huddle together against her bad feeling of me.

"Excuse me," I say. "Good night." I walk past her, feel her eyes follow me down the dock. The wind picks up and the houses rock up and down, their moorings creaking. I have gone from happy to humiliated in less than a minute, and as I walk to the car, I start getting that creepy, alone in the dark/someone about to jump out/victim of violent crime/check your backseat feeling.

My chest starts growing dark and heavy, my palms sweat a little. I have a flash of fear that I won't be able to catch my breath, and so I get in the car in a hurry, lock all the doors and sit for a minute with my hands cupped over my mouth and nose. Breathe. In. Out. It's okay. I can. Handle this. Nothing is wrong. Only my body. Giving me. The wrong signals. Breathe. In. Out. From the diaphragm. See? There is no danger. Only the sense that I suddenly have something important to lose.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Some animals are emotionally invested in the help they give others. Rescue dogs, for example, become depressed if instead of saving lives they only encounter corpse after corpse. After the Oklahoma City bombing, the search dogs became morose, wouldn't eat, had to be dragged to work. No amount of treats or rewards could alter their sense of hopelessness. Only after a live

"victim" was placed where the dogs could find him alive did their joy in their work resume . . . --

Dr. Jerome R. Clade, The Fundamentals of Animal Behavior

"So, Abe, how do you know what to listen to inside?"

"What do you mean?" Abe sips his tea. He'd stolen another one of Dr. Kaninski's coffee cups.

GET A GRIP! it reads, with a cartoon guy holding a club in a half-swing. Probably what Dr.

Kaninski felt about his patients, too.

"Well, how do you know if something is a good thing for you or a bad thing?"

"For example."

"For example, you meet someone. And they're great. Really great. But there are these other parts of it that people would generally think of as not good. Maybe your insides think those things are okay, even nice, but you have some other worry you can't put your finger on. How do you know?

When to trust your inner voice?" Sebastian--God, he's warm and funny and smart and caring. But something is still nagging me about

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Tiffany. His reaction to her, the loss of her. Then again, maybe everything is getting wrapped up in his grandmother's reaction to me. I felt like I had been caught stealing and wasn't sure if I could go in that store again.

"Why are these questions important to you now?" Abe says. "Tell me about the person you've met."

"Don't get all psychologist on me, please? I just want to know how you know what to listen to.

Person to person. Your human being knowledge."

"Shit." Abe sighs. "That's a big question. You're looking at instinct like it's a foolproof system.

Like it's a global positioning device."

"I thought that's why we have it. That's why animals have it. To protect."

"Sure, but it's a tool. Not THE tool, one tool. More like an old-fashioned map, not a GPS. You know, it's great to have a map, but there's the chance you can hold it upside down, read it wrong.

Sometimes you just have to see where the road leads."

"But instinct should be right."

"It's mostly right. Think about it. You're descended from the very first person or creature that existed. Think what they had to do for you to be here in this time and place. All of your ancestors came from someone before, and you're the end product. You have Australopithecus ancestors."

"Who?"

"The guys with the big jaws, small brains." "Are you insulting my father?"

"Ha. But think about it. Even before that. I love this stuff! You have ancestors that made fire and fought saber-toothed tigers and explored new territory and traveled oceans and went 188