Maybe Baby Page 13

  Gretchen poked at some peas with her fork, then set a single green orb before a dung beetle on the walk, hoping it would stand up on its back legs and push it along down the street. She imagined a neighbor—Donald, maybe—coming out of his house and seeing a single green pea going down the walk. That would give him pause. The beetle stopped, seemed to frown, then moved on toward the dirt under the front stoop.

  Off to her right, the garage door went up unexpectedly. Gretchen stood and smoothed her dress down over her belly. She carried her plate out onto the lawn and peered into the garage, surprised by what she saw: her father sitting in the passenger seat of a new Pontiac, wearing what looked to be his bathrobe. He seemed equally as surprised to see her, raising his eyebrows as she strode around to the driver’s side. “Dad,” she said, putting a hand on her back as she stooped to peer in his window. “How long have you been sitting here?”

  “In here?” He drew his eyebrows together and looked as if he were formulating an estimate.

  “Yes. Mom’s been in there preparing a huge dinner.”

  “Well.” He rubbed his chin. Then he asked in a low voice, “Are the doors still locked?”

  “The doors?” she puzzled.

  “Yes, there was that bus in the drive, and your mother got so freaked out that she locked all the doors.”

  “That was Henry, Dad. That was Henry’s band.”

  “I don’t care who it was,” Rusty fired back. “They took up the whole goddamn driveway.”

  “Why are you in your bathrobe?” Gretchen reached in through the window and fingered a fraying lapel.

  Rusty looked down and drew the robe closed, tightening the sash along the side of his stomach. She saw him eye her belly. “How’s everything going in there?” His voice sounded sheepish.

  “Okay.” She nodded. “You?”

  He shrugged. “A little hungry.”

  “Here.” Gretchen speared two peas and ran them through her remaining mashed potatoes. Later she would think, Did I really feed my father half my dinner through the window of his car? Rusty smacked his lips appreciatively and opened his mouth for more, craning his neck up like a little bird.

  “How was that for a role reversal?” Gretchen giggled, leaving the clean plate on the garage steps and clambering into the driver’s seat. “Shall we go for a drive?”

  “Sure,” Rusty said. “You okay to drive?” She could feel him watching her as she squeezed behind the wheel, fumbling madly for the lever that would push the seat back.

  “It’s all automated, buttons along the door,” he said proudly. “You have to start the car first. Then you can tip it back, raise it up, do a million different things.”

  “Fancy,” Gretchen said, turning the key and fumbling with the buttons. The windows in the back slid down. The side-view mirrors craned this way and that.

  “Here.” Rusty leaned across her lap. She felt the weight of him against her belly, a hot heap of a person. The baby kicked.

  “Whoa!” Rusty sprang back.

  “It’s just kicking.” Gretchen said.

  “Feels like a strong little guy, a soccer player.” Rusty’s eyes lit up.

  “Dad, girls play soccer, too.”

  “Tennis, more like.” Rusty shrugged. He sat up in his seat and reached for his seat belt. Gretchen clucked her tongue and nosed the car out onto the street. In front of them, a streetlamp that she hadn’t remembered seeing before came on. It lit the yard like daylight. “Ach,” Rusty said, swatting his visor into position. Down the walk, other lights, taller than the trees, winked and flickered until dusk felt strangely like dawn. “Good Lord,” huffed Gretchen. “What is this? A tanning salon?”

  “It’s to cure depression,” Rusty snickered. “The mayor’s new initiative to make everyone happy—longer days.”

  “But it’s almost fall!” Gretchen cried. “The days aren’t supposed to be longer.”

  “Maybe they’re just trying it out.”

  “This is bizarre,” Gretchen said. “This is very bizarre.”

  “Cuts down on crime, too. Double bonus,” Rusty murmured.

  “Crime? In Fort Cloud?”

  Rusty spun his head around to face Gretchen as she eased the car around a corner. “We’ve had break-ins, your mother and I.” Rusty’s nostrils flared.

  “When?”

  “Last winter.” Rusty’s voice hit a sharp note. Now he was excited.

  “Nooo.” Gretchen rolled her eyes.

  “I swear!” Rusty undid his belt and reached his arm back behind his seat. “Look,” he demanded, “your mother found this downstairs.”

  On the seat between them was an orange glove. Rusty poked at it with his finger as if it were a crab. “In your room,” he said quietly. “Lying right next to the bed. Someone”—he shook his head—“was in there.”

  Gretchen swerved, nearly hitting a parked RV as she squinted down at the mitten on the seat. It was Ray’s old winter glove, of course. She smiled to herself, remembering how she and Ray had stepped into the dark, snowy yard after lovemaking, how Ray had fumbled for this glove, patting at all the pockets of his snowmobile suit. “I’ve got to go back in,” he’d said. But before he could turn around, the sliding door had opened and Rusty had stumbled out with his cooler. He’d lugged it out into the middle of the yard and passed out then and there. Ray had been the one to run over, to make sure her father was okay. She could remember watching from the bushes how tenderly Ray touched this stranger, pulling up her father’s T-shirt and listening to his heart. The thought of it now made tears well up in her eyes.

  “Once I get things squared away with your mother, I’m going to put bars on the windows,” Rusty was saying. “We need new locks, an alarm system.” He waved his arms.

  Gretchen checked her watch. Ray would be getting home from practice right about now. She could almost hear the flap of his thongs in the entryway, his footsteps leading up to the door. He’d be in one of his leotards—the new gray one she’d made him, maybe—and it would be damp, as musky as moist earth under her nose when he leaned down to nuzzle her and stretch his hand out to touch the baby, crooning, “Hey, little one, hey little johnnycake or jillcake, how’s it going in there?”

  “Dad.” Gretchen’s voice was soft. “Gotta quarter?”

  “What?” Rusty turned to her, lowering his arms midgesture.

  “I’m going to pull over up there at the phone booth, okay?” Her voice wavered. “I’m going to call Ray.”

  Chapter 9

  CHALKINGS

  That night, as Rusty slept in the back of the Pontiac in the garage, he dreamed he was carrying a being that was half man and half woman. Its tiny body had both miniature breasts and a very small branch of flesh between its legs. It was, he thought, grotesque. But because it was part of his body, he could not ignore it and had to, therefore, pretend to adore it.

  As the face came into view, he saw that it was familiar to him, though he could not remember where he’d seen it before, and as the world around him watched his stomach expand in his dream, he began to grow his hair out in the hopes that it would grow down past his waist and hide his burgeoning belly. Your hair grows faster, he’d heard Judy say, when you’re pregnant.

  In the morning, he awoke early, unrested and aching. His stomach growled. He unfurled, rubbed his eyes, and sat up in his robe. He squinted at the Ping-Pong ball hanging above the windshield, caught sight of the orange glove on the front seat, and turned it over in his hand. What had Gretchen said? That the glove belonged to Ray? That made no sense. Either he was losing his mind—and this seemed more and more likely—or she had been thinking of something else. He sat forward, let himself out of the car, and opened the side door to the outside.

  It was still partially dark. The light was gray, a thin layer of fog all over everything. Or maybe he was just squinting. He stretched in the drive, observing the dark houses around him, the maple trees already tipped with color, and then realized something was funny. There were chalk drawings al
l over the drive—stick figures in dresses with red lips and mustaches.

  Rusty rubbed his eyes to make sure he was seeing them correctly. Then he looked down at his belly and, trying to hold it in, turned his gaze to the left and to the right. In a whisper, he said, “Surely not.”

  By the early light the drawings on the damp drive seemed to dance—all of them alike, like strange hieroglyphs. He looked across the street and down the street. There were CONTINUE THE BLISS signs on most all the lawns, but no one else had strange figures drawn in chalk.

  Rusty went over to one of the drawings and rubbed at its face with his big toe. The red lips smeared. The childishly drawn squiggles of hair smeared slightly but appeared to be stuck rather stubbornly to the concrete. He bent down to watch a dark caterpillar inch across a messy black mustache. Unnerved and hoping to catch a report on the forecast, he headed back to the car. There was only soft music at that hour. Rusty laid his head against the wheel and fell asleep.

  Hours later, Donald appeared on his stoop, took a brief look around the neighborhood, and noticed what looked like alien etchings next door. He took an extra CONTINUE THE BLISS sign from his garage and put it on his property line closest to the Glides’ as a sort of protective shield. Then he went back inside.

  Ray drove up later that morning in the truck to pick Gretchen up, and the two stood in the drive with brows raised. “The whole town must have known I was here last night.” She frowned.

  “This is great,” Ray commented, wandering around slowly, hands in his pockets. “It’s gorgeous.” He smiled. “I want to incorporate them into my new show somehow.”

  “Not that again.” Gretchen sighed.

  “It’s a collage about our lives,” he said, holding open his palms. “I see this reaction as very integral. Plus”—he bent down on one knee to study a stick figure closely—“there’s something so primitive about them, yet they portray such joie de vivre. I wish I knew the artist. It’s really fantastic.” He scratched his chin and stood up again. “It’s like a symbol of so many things—male/ female, man/ wife. I see it as a very progressive step for Fort Cloud.” He nodded, then pointed, newly excited again. “Look!”

  Next to a stick, someone had written the word penis. They had chalked vagina next to a sidewalk crack.

  “Brilliant,” Ray marveled. “So abstract.”

  Only Judy did not wake in time to catch a glimpse of what her pranksters had left on the drive. She had gone to bed drunk and slept until noon, by which time a rain shower had washed all the chalk away so that even Rusty, when he drove off later to his lot, wondered what he had dreamed and what he had seen. Reality had never seemed more slippery.

  Chapter 10

  SUNNY AND KLAUS

  Three weeks shy of her due date—after multiple talks with Ray and consultation with Hael—Gretchen called her mother and said, “You may come to the birth—not into the birthing room, you understand. But into the hospital.” She added, “Ray and I would like you and Dad there.”

  Ray, who was sitting on the couch, shook his head. As someone who had peered into this family through windows, he had a pretty good sense that having the Glides at the birth would spell disaster. But he was feeling guilty himself, guilty for succumbing to the pressures of his own mother, who had announced that she not only would come for the birth but had subleased a condo for three months along Lake Shore Drive. She was coming, she said, and there was no stopping her.

  “We’ll do anything, anything,” Judy was gushing into Gretchen’s ear. “Tell us how we can help!”

  “Well”—Gretchen paused, trying to gain strength from Hael’s suggestions—“I have a bit of an assignment for you.”

  She could hear Judy’s breath catch.

  “Nothing big,” Gretchen said. “You just have to remember that this is a really private affair for us, and we don’t want a lot of commotion.”

  “Sure, sure,” Judy said.

  “Just you and Dad and Ray’s parents, no one else,” Gretchen continued.

  “It’s not as if we’d invite the neighbors.” Judy laughed at her own joke.

  Gretchen was silent. “Okay then.”

  “Just tell us whatever you need, hon.” Judy was on a roll. “We can run last-minute errands, stock the fridge, paint a bedroom, I could make some of those little —”

  “Mom.” The word came out like a dart.

  “Fine, fine,” Judy said. “You’ll call us, then?”

  “Just remember what I said. No commotion. I don’t want you even to ring up friends. Just come and make sure things stay calm, quiet. Can I trust you to do that? That’s your assignment.”

  “Absolutely,” Judy said. “One hundred percent.”

  “Good.” Gretchen breathed a sigh of relief.

  The next week, Ray’s mother and boyfriend flew in from Florida and called from the airport. Though Gretchen had never met her, she had talked to Ray’s mother, Sunny, on the phone. Sunny had a showboat voice, loud and spunky, with just a hint of her Brooklyn past, so that “Ray” sounded like “Way” when it came out of her mouth. Sunny, who had never married, had gone from hopping around communes in her younger years to living in a grotesquely overdone beach house on an island off the coast of Florida with Klaus, a retired ophthalmologist and her partner of fifteen years. Ray had been down to visit them once and came back appalled by his mother’s abuse of shell wall hangings and gauche peach-tone furniture. After her wild youth, she told Ray, she ached for normalcy, and surrounding herself with mass-produced date palm prints and copious seafoam throw pillows seemed to play into this fantasy.

  To Gretchen she said things on the phone like “I bet your flat is too adorable” and “It sounds like you and Way are having a lot of fun with this neutral baby fad.” Then she’d add, “Have you tried those vitamins I sent you—the shark cartilage? The raspberry leaf capsules?”

  The other thing about Sunny was that she was a distributor for everything—always scheming, always mailing Ray pamphlets and catalogs with things circled in red pen, a note in her bubbly scrawl alongside: “What a good deal on this humidifier!” or “Aren’t these wind chimes nifty?” Anything you mentioned—a vacuum cleaner, sunscreen, kitchen scissors—Sunny seemed to be an independent contractor for some company that sold it.

  It didn’t sound like a very profitable career choice for someone living on an island with few inhabitants and no real commercial businesses, but Ray intimated that this situation was the key. Sunny could strike up a conversation with anyone, and she had a pool pass to the resort on the island’s eastern tip. It was just a five-minute ride by golf cart. She’d saunter through the gate with her straw hat and a beach bag full of product leaflets, plop herself in a lounger next to some sucker lazing poolside with a giant rum drink, and, well, Sunny knew how to spot an opportunity.

  “They’re tired from their flight. They want us to come over for takeout,” Ray told Gretchen when he got off the phone with Sunny.

  Gretchen flashed him a pained look. She was reading on the couch in a black sports bra and underwear. “You’ve got to be kidding. I thought they were going to entertain themselves until the birth.”

  “They want to meet you.” Ray looked sheepish. He sniffed his armpits. “It’s my mother.” He shrugged.

  “They could come here. You should have told them to come here.” Gretchen put down her book on the Bradley Method and rested it on top of her stomach.

  “Don’t be grumpy.” Ray stood with a hand on his hip in the hall and ran a washcloth over his chest. His eyes followed the motion of the rag, like a cat fixated on a toy. “Believe me,” he added, “it’s better this way. She comes here, she’ll want to sell us stuff for the kitchen.”

  Gretchen sighed and hoisted herself off the couch. “You owe me,” she called over a shoulder as she padded into the bedroom. She poked her feet into flip-flops. “I have half a mind to show up in my underwear.”

  “Go in your underwear,” Ray said.

  Gretchen pulled a black
elastic skirt and a thin sweater over her belly, then waited out on the front steps for Ray. The air felt heavy, full of the damp smells of early October. M16 came toward her across the yard, kicking up leaves, a Nerf bat in one hand and what looked like a Barbie in the other.

  “M16, does your mother know you’ve got that?” Gretchen asked. She pushed her sunglasses back on her head and leaned forward over her belly.

  M16 hid the Barbie under one arm and stood before Gretchen, looking down at where one small clog was covered in mud.

  “I found it in the dog park,” the little voice said.

  “I don’t think your mother would be very happy about that.” Gretchen tried to use her most reproachful tone, but already she felt herself caving. She remembered her own collection of Barbies, and despite all the implications of Barbie’s blazing femininity and unattainable body, she had turned out all right.

  M16 held out the doll by its feet. “You take it,” the little voice said sullenly. Barbie’s blond hair swung across Gretchen’s kneecap. She took it reluctantly and put it in her carryall. She watched M16 squat down and scratch at a patch of bald grass with a stick. As much as she believed in following through on the community’s mission, there were times when she found herself feeling ambivalent about some of the policies. She was all for gender neutrality, but even she thought foam blobs in lieu of actual toys were a bit harsh. The rule at Hael’s house, though, was “no gender-centric toys on the premises.” It was unrealistic to think that kids might not come into contact with them at someone else’s house, although most of the group’s children were young and didn’t circulate much. But once they hit six or seven? M16, the group’s eldest child, was just now five.

  “Listen,” Gretchen waffled. “How about you come with us? We’re going to meet Ray’s parents downtown. If you come along —” Gretchen tapped her shoulder bag—“you can play with it there.”