Love Stories in This Town Page 13

  “Okay, great,” I said. I started to close the door, muttering platitudes.

  “Mom?” called Louis from the kitchen table, where he was masticating a plum. Julia, the baby, shrieked.

  “I see you're in your nightgown,” said my father. “Come on, let me in.”

  I sighed. “Lola?” called my husband, Emmett.

  “I'll cut to the chase. I need a ride,” said my father.

  “A ride,” I repeated.

  “Lola?” called Emmett.

  “Beverly,” said my father. “She lives out in Baytown. It's our first F2F.”

  “Mommy,” said Louis, “who's here?” He ran in from the kitchen, crashing against the couch and then my leg. There was fruit all over him. He wore Batman underpants and his Indian headdress. “Chain saw!” he screamed, pointing to the tree crew.

  “It's Grandpa Fred,” I said, trying to refocus his attention.

  “But why is it Grandpa Fred?” he asked.

  “Ho ho there, Chief!” cried my father. “How, Chief Louis! Are you going to put me in your cauldron and boil me up?”

  Louis's eyes grew wide. “Dad,” I said, “I really have to go now.”

  “How about lunch?” said my father. “My treat, honey.”

  “I'm sorry,” I said.

  “Honey,” said my father. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked so tired.

  “Lunch?” I said.

  “I'll be at Ginny's Little Longhorn,” said my father. “Noon?”

  “Okay,” I said, “okay.” I shut the door.

  “Mom,” said Louis, “did Grandpa Fred say something about a treat?”

  “No treats,” I said.

  Louis ran back into the kitchen, colliding with the table and then yelling, “I need a Band-Aid!”

  The baby, strapped into her high chair, looked at Louis with surprise.

  “Smile, baby,” commanded Louis.

  “She'll smile,” I said.

  “But why will she smile?” said Louis.

  Emmett came into the room freshly shaven. “Your father,” he announced, “is an asshole.”

  As promised, my father was sitting at a table at Ginny's Little Longhorn, nursing a glass of amber liquid at the crack of noon. The baby wriggled in my arms. “Oh Christ,” said my father. “You can't bring a kid in here! Jesus.”

  My hand tightened around Julia's fat thigh. “Just tell me what you want,” I said evenly.

  My father sighed. “Sit down,” he said. “Here, I'll take the kid.” He reached out, exposing dark spots under his arms.

  “I'm fine,” I said.

  “Remember when you were skinny?” said my father. “You had that job, at the ASPCA? Remember that?”

  “That was a long time ago,” I said. “Actually, I'm in veterinary school.”

  This was either something my father could not understand or didn't want to. He drained his drink and looked around for the waitress. “Did you hear me?” I said. “I'm going to be a doctor. A veterinarian.”

  “That's swell,” said my father.

  A woman with a great deal of blond hair approached the table. She held a spiral notebook and a pen. “Greetings,” she said, looking me up and down.

  “Hi,” I said. “Urn, I'll have some fries.”

  “This is a bar,” said the woman.

  “A saloon,” my father corrected, winking.

  “We don't have food,” said the woman. “Unless you count chili on Chicken Shit Bingo night. But it's not Chicken Shit Bingo night. And you don't mind my saying so, this is not a child-friendly establishment.”

  “I'll have a beer,” I said.

  My father lifted his empty glass. He shook it, and the ice clattered from side to side. I sat down.

  “Where's the boy?” asked my father.

  “You mean Louis?” I said. “You mean your grandson, Louis?”

  “Who the fuck else would I mean?” said my father.

  “He's at nursery school,” I said.

  “Nursery school?” said my father.

  “Remember? Like Christ's Church,” I said. The baby began to wail. “You used to drive me some mornings,” I said, “to Christ's Church. In the convertible.”

  “I'll get right to it,” said my father. “I'll cut to the chase.” I bounced Julia, but she did not stop crying. Her face grew red.

  “I can't drive,” said my father. “I lost my license. …” He closed his eyes and waved his fingers. “Anyway,” he said, “I told Beverly I'd come. I really think this is love, honey. I don't know if you can understand that.”

  “Dad,” I said, “I'm married. I understand love.”

  “Right, sure,” said my father, dismissing Emmett and our ten years together with a swipe of his glass. “So it's just a few hours away. I want to start this out right. I mean, I can't take a bus, you know!” His voice grew louder and louder, competing with Julia's cries.

  “You could be sober,” I said, standing. I slipped Julia onto my hip and swayed. Pain shot through my back, and the baby opened her mouth and screamed. She had two bottom teeth. “I have to nurse her,” I said.

  “For the love of Christ,” said my father disgustedly. I bit my tongue. Literally, I did: I bit my tongue. “Your mother never did that with you,” mused my father. “Bottles and bottles of milk.”

  I thought of my mother for a moment, alone in her condominium. I vowed to call her that afternoon, and I knew what she'd say when I did: “Lola! What a fabulous surprise!”

  I walked out of Ginny's Little Longhorn. The hot air slapped me in the face. I got in my minivan, started the engine, and latched Julia onto my breast. She was almost a year old—not too old to nurse. Not quite a year old.

  When Julia was sated, I settled her in her car seat. Her head tipped over and rested on her chins. Her mouth was slack, eyes closed. She had a bit of brown hair, and it curled away from her face. Her nose was a tiny comma, though her presence in my life seemed to be more of a period, or an endless ellipsis. My “semester off” had ended four months ago, and the thought of all the years I still had in front of me was daunting.

  But I'd made it through the first day of Anatomy, when I'd met my dog cadaver, George W. I'd studied the bodies of cats, goats, even a horse. The horse cadavers were stored in a walk-in freezer, held upright by meat hooks. Each morning, we'd wheel our cadaver to the front like dry cleaning. I was happy to be studying something clear and tangible: how to set a bone, remove a tumor, even how to euthanize. When I brought Daisy to the vet, I'd sit in the waiting room and think, Someday, I'll be the one behind that door. I'd return to school in the fall, or perhaps the spring.

  I got back in the driver's seat and fiddled with the radio. Billy Joel, NPR, some country singer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, some country singer, Mexican. Back to Billy Joel on his down eastern Alexa, cruising through Block Island Sound. In the rearview mirror, I looked strangely pretty, flushed and dewy. A young mother, a doctor-to-be. I straightened my glasses.

  My father was knocking on the window of the minivan.

  “I'm sorry, Dad,” I said, opening the glass a few inches. “The baby has an appointment with the pediatrician this afternoon. My hands are tied.”

  “Hm,” said my father thoughtfully. “I did wonder …”

  “Wonder what?” I said, my voice brittle and frightened. My father held my gaze. For this, I loved him.

  “I did wonder,” he said softly, “about the baby.”

  My breath caught, and then resumed. “Get in,” I said to my father. I didn't need to ask him twice.

  As I drove down Burnet, I thought about the pool party. Something had happened at the pool party. It was a work event for Emmett, welcoming a new researcher to the department.

  I hadn't known if there would be swimming. I had dressed Louis in a polo shirt and khaki shorts and squeezed the baby into a dress with matching bloomers. I brought bathing suits for the kids in my enormous bag, which also held diapers, swimmy diapers, wipes, fruit snacks, Operation Iraqi Freedom figurines
from our neighbor Bam, mini cheese circles, assorted sticks that Louis had handed me (Mom, this one is a sword, not a gun!), a small sock or two, receipts, a tampon, half a bagel, and an orange. That bag—and the car, which I treated like an extension of my bag—drove Emmett wild. I mean, he'd say, some Saturday when he'd drunk too much coffee and paced around for too long, something spilled in there, some juice … and you never even cleaned it up! It wasn't juice, I didn't tell him. It was ice cream, from when Louis had upended a bowl of cookies and cream on my lap. I hadn't cleaned my lap, either.

  “Hold my hand,” said Emmett, after we parked and unstrapped the children. For a moment, I thought he was talking to me.

  The Austin Country Club reminded me of the Apawamis Club in Westchester where my mother worked as the tennis pro after Dad left us, and I felt a twinge of dusty shame. I had hated hanging out at Apawamis, where I couldn't order a snack with my member number. After her lessons, my mom might get a free Fudgsicle to share with me, but it was always a favor, never an entitlement.

  At the party, Emmett chatted with his colleagues. I sat by the baby pool watching Louis splash around in his Bob the Builder bathing suit. I held Julia in my lap. At some point, Emmett brought me a plate of barbecue and a plastic fork, but no napkin.

  Above the big pool, there was a diving board. Kids hurled themselves into the water, crashing as cannonballs. Louis watched hungrily, and when some smaller kids jumped from the board to their parents, he begged for a turn. “Get your daddy,” I told him. Emmett was listening to his boss intently, an oatmeal cookie in his hand. Conversation about the war drifted in my direction: Stable government in the Middle East … Exxon chomping at the bit … Lord knows, you can't shock-and-awe twice.

  I knew my husband believed we had to stay the course in Iraq. He was not the type to cut and run, even if the situation sucked. And sure enough, Emmett's voice rose above the din: At some point, though, a mistake becomes a decision, whether you like it or not. In this, my husband and I were fundamentally different. In my opinion, a mistake required a getaway.

  Louis ran at top speed from the baby pool to his father, leaping into Emmett and almost knocking him down. Emmett bent to talk to his son.

  “How old is the baby?” said a heavyset woman in jeans, easing into the chair next to me.

  “Her name's Julia,” I said, turning her to the lady, so she could see her chubby cheeks and bright eyes. “She's eleven months. Eleven and a bit.”

  Her smile faltered, but she reached out a jeweled finger. Julia ignored it.

  “She's … is she sitting up? Crawling all over?” said the woman.

  “Oh, well,” I said. I speared a round slice of sausage with my fork, dipped it into thick sauce. I ate the sausage and stood. The woman smiled politely, and I walked toward the diving board.

  It was getting dark, and the lifeguard had climbed off his chair and was standing by the side of the pool, his red flotation device under his arm. Most kids were out of the water, lounging on the lawn in drying bathing suits.

  Emmett was in the pool, his milky skin almost blue in the evening light, his sandy hair wet. He was inches from the end of the diving board, where Louis crouched nervously. I stood next to the lifeguard. “It's his first time off a diving board,” I said.

  “Yikes,” said the lifeguard.

  Emmett coached Louis to sit on the board, his legs dangling. My son extended a foot, and my husband pulled on the toes. Then he moved a few feet back.

  “I should stop this,” I said to the lifeguard nervously. He didn't answer, just watched intently.

  Emmett said, “One, two, come on, Louis! Louis, on three!”

  “You don't have to jump!” I cried, but Louis half-fell, half-jumped into the water. I grabbed the lifeguard's arm.

  The woman appeared at my side. “It's none of my business,” she said. “But maybe you should have the baby evaluated. I'm a neurologist. It's important to detect, um. The earlier the better …”

  I didn't look at the woman. I looked at the pool. Emmett lunged for Louis but missed him, and he sank like a stone, his blond hair visible and then less so as he descended. Emmett dove underwater, and for a moment everything stopped. The woman was still talking. Julia rested her head on my sun-warmed shoulder. Emmett surfaced, my son sputtering in his arms.

  • • •

  I told my father to fasten his seat belt and I rolled the window back up and put the car in reverse. To reach Baytown, we would head south, and then east.

  “I'm supposed to meet Beverly for lunch tomorrow,” said my father. “We can make a day of it, get some authentic Tex-Mex. I'll find my way back, Lola, you don't even have to wait around.”

  “Baytown's just three hours,” I said. “I'll take you there, but then I have to come home.”

  “Did I say Baytown?” said my father. “I meant New Orleans.”

  I didn't answer.

  “You'd have to reschedule some things, I admit,” said my father, “but it is the Big Easy, after all.”

  I hesitated, thinking about another day without having to see the doctor, even if it was a day in a minivan, followed by a night in some skuzzy motel, then a long drive home. In fact, I'd probably have to postpone Julia's evaluation for two days, maybe even a week. By which time, who knew? She might be smiling and holding up her head, even crawling. I put on my blinker.

  I turned on Avenue F and drove to Louis's nursery school. I found my son sprawled in a beanbag, wearing My Little Pony panties. “Whoa,” said my father. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “His underwear was wet from the sprinkler,” declared a little girl. “So I gave him my spare pair.” Louis nodded seriously, verifying her account. From across the dirt field that served as Creativity Corner's playground, Louis's teacher, Roy, waved lazily, his python tattoo vivid in the bright sun.

  “I'm taking Louis with me,” I called, gathering the clothes in his cubby.

  “Rock on,” said Roy.

  “Are they trying to make him into a gay or what?” my father said loudly.

  Back in the minivan, I explained to Louis that we were headed on a road trip to New Orleans. I called Emmett's office, but when I got his voice mail, I hung up. “Why are we headed on a road trip to New Orleans?” asked Louis.

  “We're going to find a pretty lady named Beverly,” said my father.

  “But why are we going to find a pretty lady named Beverly?”

  “For love, kid,” said my father. “Now shut the hell up.”

  “Please don't tell Louis to shut the hell up,” I said.

  “Fair enough,” said my father.

  We drove in silence for about three minutes before Louis screamed, “OLD MAC DONALD'S! OLD MAC DONALD'S!”

  “I could use a Quarter Pounder with Cheese,” my father said. I got in the right-hand lane.

  While Louis and my father went inside, I nursed the baby with the air-conditioning on. Julia ate greedily, and I stared at her beautiful face. When she was finished, I propped her in the passenger seat, but she slumped over. I propped her again, and cheerfully, she slumped again. I took her in my arms, and contemplated my life. If only she would stay small, I thought. I wouldn't mind having a baby forever if she were small. It was the adult baby I was scared of, lying around the living room in pajamas, watching Pimp My Ride.

  The door to the minivan slid open. “Grandpa Fred,” Louis was saying, “did the gook die, when you shot him in the head?”

  My father had the dignity to look at me sheepishly.

  “Of course not,” I said soothingly.

  “He went to the hospital,” said my father. “Where all is magically fixed.” This barb was in reference to the last time I had seen my father, a year before, when Emmett and I had presented him with a one-way ticket to the Promises rehab facility. Presumably, he had not found all the answers there.

  I drove for a while on 290, and the city ended. There was a stretch of farmland before the Houston sprawl began. There was the road to Dime Box, Texas,
where Emmett and I had picked out a puppy, back when I got accepted to vet school and we thought a puppy would teach us all we needed to know about caring for small things. But the puppy didn't interrupt us when we tried to talk, and the puppy didn't exhaust us past wanting to care for each other. The puppy didn't require ten phone calls and fifty bucks for me to have a pizza and a pitcher of beer with my husband. We didn't wonder, while making love, if the puppy would hear us.

  “Dime Box!” I called out gaily as we passed, thinking of Emmett in the canvas sneakers he'd lost years ago (and that Ouray Volunteer Fire Department T-shirt, now in tatters), petting golden retrievers and deciding which one to fall for. Because she had jumped into Emmett's lap, we had chosen Daisy, the last girl left from the previous litter. She moved awkwardly on her big paws. All the way home, we had laughed as she climbed over us, almost causing us to have an accident when she scrambled down by the brake and Emmett practically stepped on her, trying to slow the car.

  “Why did you say Dime Box, Mommy?”

  I opened my mouth, but it seemed impossible to explain all that Dime Box had meant to me, to us. I peeked at Julia via my Baby in Sight Back Seat Mirror. She stared brightly ahead. She didn't smile, which was another sign. “It's just the name of a town,” I said.

  “But why is it the name of a town?” said Louis.

  “Sometimes,” said my father, “things just are what they are, bud.”

  Louis considered this for about five seconds.

  “But—”

  “No more talking!” said my father harshly. “Grandpa Fred needs a nap, and all this racket is giving me a headache.”

  The baby began to cry, crammed into her infant seat, and my father yelled, “Shut up!”

  In the distance, I saw a sign for the Brenham bus depot, a beacon. I followed the arrow, then pulled the car off the road. Julia continued her crying, and Louis began to whimper. “For the love of GOD,” said my father, “I'd rather take the Bonanza bus!”

  The bus station's front window framed an old couple holding hands. They gazed at us placidly. If I turned around, I knew, I would make it back to Austin in time to see the pediatrician. I had read about autism online, and I was deeply afraid that something was wrong.