Would I ever carry a briefcase? How many times in a row did you have to listen to a song you loved before it became a song you liked hearing every now and then? Is it only called a nervous breakdown if there’s someone there to point at you and be, like, “Yo, get your shit straight, you are nervous and you are breaking down”? The heart of a shrimp is located in its head.
4:28
Dad used to carry a briefcase, even when he was working jobs like graveyard-shift mall security, office janitor, mover—and there was an odd stint when he had a paper route—he’d put his briefcase into the bike’s front basket as he cruised around the neighborhood tossing the L.A. Times into people’s front yards.
The briefcase never had much in it: a sci-fi paperback, a few sheets of paper, pens stolen from dentists’ offices and car dealerships, jelly beans. Dad would put a couple green ones in my hand, my favorite, and say, “You need the briefcase. People don’t take you seriously without the briefcase. How would it look if I was walking around with just a pack of jelly beans in my hand?”
4:30
I got out of the car and hit the lock button twice, started walking toward Jenny’s house.
* * *
—
I ONLY HAD TO KNOCK ONCE before the door swung open and a little boy in dirt-stained clothes answered.
We stared at each other and I tried to think of something to say, but I found quiet children to be strange, unnatural. I would’ve been less alarmed if he’d answered the door hopping up and down, screaming. He just stood there, staring, mouth closed and tight; even his blinks seemed solemn.
We were saved by Jenny sliding into view, nearly falling over. “I forgot how slippery these floors get when you’re wearing socks.” She hugged me, and I was rigid for a moment, shocked by the easy intimacy, and then I leaned into it and breathed deep. “I see you’ve met the most beautiful boy in the world. I swear, he’s not usually this dirty. He just got home from baseball practice.” She ruffled his hair. “This is Adam.”
Adam remained staring. His eyes were the same shade of brown as Jenny’s. “Adam,” Jenny said, “can you thank this nice lady for the pizza? Remember how good it was last week?”
“It was okay,” he said. “Thank you, though.”
My chest twisted at this muted, muttered thank-you. A part of me wanted to shake the kid, change his face, and the other felt achy, bruised, a flash of recognition and fear. I remembered being a quiet little kid, constantly aware and uncomfortable with the ways grown-ups talked to me, how much they seemed to want from me.
Jenny took the pizza and handed me another too-much tip. “So—how’re you doing? You look a little more worn out than the last time I saw you.”
“I’m doing okay,” I said, wondering if my equally bland response would catch Adam’s attention, warm him to me.
“Well,” Jenny said, “if you’re not, there’s a support group that meets every Thursday at eight-thirty p.m. at that little church between the hardware store and the doughnut shop. It’s for expecting moms and current struggling moms. They used to be two separate groups, but they joined them together after funding was cut. The group isn’t bad, and there’s always hot, fresh cookies.”
I almost told her that the church was Catholic and called Holy Name of Jesus, and that the cookies weren’t fresh, just microwaved before the group started. I didn’t want to talk about how I knew that, though, the many afternoons I’d spent there listening to strangers grieve.
She put the pizza down and took my hand in one of hers, Adam’s in the other. We formed a chain. “Please come. I go every week, and some of these women are just nasty. I need a friend.”
I looked at Adam and, I can’t be sure, I thought I saw him nod. Just once, not even a nod, a slight tilt of the head. I knew what it meant—“Go, watch, protect her.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.”
5
MOM AND BILLY ooh-ed and aww-ed as they stared at the crumpled ultrasound photo. I stood by the fridge, alternating between eating strips of cold chicken and scooping peanut butter with my fingers straight from the jar and into my mouth.
My lower-back pain had worsened during the last hour of my shift and I was starving for something, anything, other than pizza. I’d gotten home and immediately dropped my bag to the floor and lain across the couch. Mom was talking about making me a hot meal, something with rice and veggies, a little hot sauce, when Billy asked to see the baby’s first photo. After I pulled it out of my pocket, they swiped it from my hands and began smoothing out its edges. Soon, they were huddled together on the couch, admiring the photo like the secrets of the universe existed in the profile of this fruit-sized creation—which maybe they did, and I was just blind.
I dipped a piece of chicken directly into the peanut butter and watched the two of them together. Billy’s arm was around Mom’s shoulder and she was leaning into his side. The cat Billy had brought home, whose name I didn’t care to remember, was on the couch, the top half of its body in Billy’s lap, the bottom half on Mom’s. They were talking loudly at each other—“You see that, Mom? That’s the Bradley family chin!,” “Those little feet! Think of how they’ll grow and all the places they’ll carry him,” “I can already tell he’s got a good sense of humor”—I had a vision of them six months from now in the same position on the couch, except instead of a picture, they were cradling and cooing at a bundle of blue blankets. Even the cat would be involved, meows and coos mixing together.
It was so easy to close my eyes and see Mom feeding baby food she boiled and mashed up herself because she didn’t trust big-name brands, “That Gerber baby freaks me out.” Billy crawling on the carpet with Baby, pretending to be a tiger, dinosaur, semitruck, some large, roaring creature. Mom singing to Baby as she folded laundry, Korean lullabies and Joan Jett. Billy changing Baby’s diaper while reading him words out of the dictionary: “ ‘Abide: uh-byde, verb, to bear patiently, to endure without yielding, to wait for, to accept without objection, to remain stable or fixed in a state, to continue in place.’ ” Mom and Billy on the couch again, Baby between them, TV on, but they’re looking down at him softly, with care.
It was so easy to close my eyes and see them, but I could never conjure myself into those scenes. No mashing, feeding, crawling, roaring, folding, singing, diaper changing, reading—I was never snuggled into the couch with them. I stood watching them with a hunk of peanut butter and chicken in my mouth and wondered if I would spend the next eighteen years standing there.
It took me a moment to realize that Mom and Billy had started talking about me.