Ricky, p.3
Ricky, page 3
Imogen shrugs, but her heart flutters. The baby leaps in a biblical way. The pine straw rustles. “What’s your number?” she stammers. “Your phone?”
Bart acts as if he has misheard. He smiles. “I’ll organize,” he says. “What fun.”
On the day of the shower there is a scattering of gift cards on the conference table but only Bart and Imogen in attendance. The office is empty.
“Where is everyone?” Bart is perplexed. “This can’t be right.”
Imogen peels the blue wrappers from six blue cupcakes and sets them back down, naked on the tray. She is quivering. She does not eat them. She is filled with the thrill of possibly being loved. “What’s your address?” she says to Bart. “Where do you live?”
Bart looks at Imogen and eats a cupcake slowly. Imogen imagines Bart wiping her tears, braiding her hair, assembling a tricycle, stirring a stir-fry. Here he is, his arm around her waist. They are picking out towels, picking out a beach house, picking out headstones. Here they stand in a garden of roses, and here is a sword, and here goes Bart falling on it, for her, their son. Who was not his son but now is.
“I have to go,” Bart says. There is blue frosting in the corners of his mouth, as if he has suddenly understood something and can no longer attend to basic manners. “Congratulations.”
And then, nothing new; Imogen is alone with her gift cards. At home that night she sits in the baby’s femur-colored rocker and thinks of her estranged parents, her strange self. She waits for the baby to kick her three times: I. Love. You.
* * *
Imogen pays someone to be with her in the delivery room. A delivery guy. A literal one. His name is Shawn, from Domino’s, and he needs money. Imogen offers him five hundred. Shawn stalls. Imogen offers a grand. Shawn accepts. Imogen pays him three hundred up front and takes her pizza, mushroom. Shawn writes the date on his palm. The birth is scheduled in three weeks, a C-section.
“Rad,” Shawn says at the fifteen crisp twenties. “Sweet!”
“It’s a boy,” Imogen says. She will throw out the pizza when Shawn leaves. “His name is Earl and you can meet him when he is older and pretend to be a cousin, an uncle.”
“I can teach him to drive stick,” Shawn says.
Imogen sees Shawn at her door in sixteen years. He has a beard. He tousles Earl’s tidy crewcut. “Will you hold my hand when they cut me open?” she whispers.
Shawn laughs like a boy, because he is a boy. “For a grand I think I have to.”
* * *
On the morning of Earl’s birth, Imogen drains the bleach from the meat bones and sets them to dry on her dining table. There are enough bones to build an entire cow, minus its skull. The apartment smells of chlorine, a drained pool. Imogen drinks a glass of prosecco in the nude. She fries a cube steak in butter and eats it with a spoon. She puts on a silk robe, baby blue. In the cab, she tells the driver that her husband left her for an infertile redhead named Jennica. The driver tells her he is sorry, and Imogen drinks his pity like a second glass of wine. At registration, Shawn, the delivery boy, is waiting. He wears jeans caked with flour and smells of tomato sauce. Imogen hands him an envelope with fourteen fifties.
“Go and buy me a blue teddy bear in the gift shop,” she tells him. “And a blue vase of blue lollipops and a giant blue balloon shaped like a stork.”
Shawn nods his head. He trots off in the direction of the gift shop but forty minutes later has still not returned. Imogen knows: he was only there for his money. She proceeds on her own. She puts on her hospital gown. She lets the nurses prep her. They shave her. They swab her abdomen with yellow antiseptic. She lets the nurses look into her sad eyes with their sad eyes, and their concern fills Imogen with joy.
An hour later, when the doctor pulls the baby from Imogen and announces that it’s a girl, Imogen pretends he is wrong. She pretends that girl does not rhyme with pearl. She pretends not to see the swollen folds between Earl’s legs. She pretends not to notice Earl’s narrow shoulders and rosebud mouth. When she holds Earl to her breast and coos, “My son, my prince, my boy!” she pretends the nurses regard her with admiration and not terror. For the four days Imogen is in the hospital, she pretends she is trembling from love and is sleepless from joy.
* * *
For a month, Earl is a pearl. Imogen feeds and hums and swaddles. She sleeps in seven-minute intervals. She lives on sugar water and canned sausages. She practices different ways of laughing. Imogen watches the wound below her breasts and above her privates, from which her prince emerged, heal into a shiny pink smile. She talks to herself in French. She composes a national anthem in her head. Earl is the country to which she sings. One day, Imogen feels well enough to take the bones from the dining room table and attempt a chandelier, but she cannot find the glue. She cannot remember what glue looks like. She puts the bones into the metal trash can and begins to cry. Soon after, Earl begins to cry. Before long, Imogen begins to scream. Not to be outdone, Earl follows suit.
Earl and Imogen howl for days. The tenants respond at first by pounding on their floors and ceilings with broomsticks, but then on Imogen’s door with fists. Imogen takes the metal trash can of bones and rattles it for an hour until Earl sleeps for an hour. An hour of rattling, an hour of sleep. Over the course of a week, Imogen’s biceps grow large, her eyes grow frantic. Scream, shake, sleep. Weep, bang, heap. At last, the landlord arrives. His smile is sheepish. His hat is wadded in his hands. He asks Imogen to temporarily relocate.
“Two months,” he says. “The rent is on me.”
“A beach vacation?” Imogen says. She repeats it to herself in French. Des vacances à la plage? She laughs for the first time in weeks. It flutters to the ceiling like a bird let out of a cage. “How generous!” she says. “How kind!”
“Well, I …” the landlord stammers. He looks at his feet. He shuffles his feet. Earl lets loose with a shriek. The child turns the color of Mars. The landlord turns ivory—rib, calcium, skeleton. Broomsticks bang overhead and underfoot. “The beach it is,” he mumbles. “The beach it is!” he shouts.
Imogen stares at the landlord. His hair is gray at the temples. He looks drained and pained. Imogen sees him in a beach chair with a tropical drink. She sees him beside her, feels him inside her. “Come with me,” she says. “Come with us.”
The landlord opens and closes his mouth. He fumbles for his wallet. He hands Imogen its contents and backs out of the apartment, flustered. “I have to go,” he says. But Imogen hears: I love you so.
* * *
Imogen packs a suitcase with the bleached bones, the baby-blue robe, the baby-blue suit, her grandmother’s thimble. She slides the unused gift cards from her office shower into her wallet like a slick brick. She places Earl in a linen sling printed with gray whales and wears the baby across her body like a pageant sash. For two cab rides and two flights, Earl is uncharacteristically silent. When Imogen arrives at the hotel, she stands in front of it and feels light and elated. She breathes in the sea. She takes in the sun. She marvels at the silence. Earl has nothing to emote until Imogen is in her double queen deluxe, sipping from a pineapple filled with cream and rum and looking out at the ocean, and then Earl unfurls like a tidal wave. Earl’s screams crash through Imogen’s room and the rooms beyond like a storm surge. By dinnertime, Imogen and Earl are relocated by the management to the highest floor, and the surrounding guests are relocated to the lowest. On the second day, Imogen is sent a complimentary breakfast and three blue pills. On the third day, she is sent away. With free shoehorns and shower caps.
Earl is a relentless, vacation-ruining rain. But still, a second hotel takes Imogen for a night, and a third takes her for an afternoon. A bed-and-breakfast lets a banished and famished Imogen eat her takeout dinner in their parking lot, but at the town’s final motel, the staff sees her coming and locks the doors. From the tiny glass lobby, they wave and shrug and hold up a sign that reads: WE’VE HEARD ABOUT YOU. “Heard” is painted in bright, furious-baby red.
Imogen wheels her suitcase down to the beach. It digs its heels into the sand, and Imogen pitches forward as if beaten back by a headwind. At the water’s edge, she looks left, which is north, and right, which is south, and, craving warmth, decides on south. She staggers past sunbathers and ball-tossers and dogs with their ears pinned flat to their heads. Everyone hears Imogen and Earl coming. Everyone stops for the parade. The spectators’ gapes are their salutes. Their silence is their homage. The suitcase’s wheel ruts mark the highway to hell, and nothing dares cross over them. Not person or pet, sea-foam or seaweed.
When the day is done and the sky is the color of funeral ash and the bait fish rise and fall like tossed silver coins, Imogen nears a stretch of protected land free from civilization where she can, at last, be uncivilized. She sets Earl down in the sand. Earl writhes and wails in the sling. Imogen opens the suitcase and dumps the bones into a pile, and beside the pile she lays back, ready for outlining, like a gunshot victim. One by one, she takes the bones and pokes them into the sand, tracing herself. She goes around her legs and in between them. She pokes around one arm using one hand to place the bones. Around the other arm using the other hand. When Imogen is done, the bones are a white picket fence and she is the vacant house within.
Imogen sits up and sighs. She stands and tiptoes outside of her perimeter. She gathers the gift cards and presses them into the sand above her picket head, fanned like a liberty crown. She takes the complimentary shoehorns and arranges them into the shape of a sword, a tortoiseshell weapon that begins in her bony hand in the sand and points north, away from a pretend god. As Earl would have it, milk pours from Imogen’s breasts the entire time she works. As Imogen would have it, she removes her stained suit at sunset and stands naked. She gathers the free shower caps and sets them out to sea like manmade jellyfish. She releases her suit to the wind, and it lands in the ocean behind the translucent shower caps, a pale-blue polyester ray. Imogen puts on her robe. She puts her grandmother’s thimble on her thumb. She puts on the writhing, wailing, whale sling and tiptoes back inside of her bony outline and reclines with Earl on her chest.
* * *
The screams fade out as the tide comes in. The sea laps at Imogen’s swollen feet, at her veined legs and virgin crotch. It reaches the pink smile on her abdomen, then Earl’s back and her chest. The baby turns silent and still. Imogen pats Earl’s back with the silver thimble. She hums “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.” She sings an anthem, hears a cello. She sees cockroaches turn into water bugs and water bugs turn into thimbles. Each wave fills a thimble with wet sand, and each thimbleful is dropped into a canyon. As the canyon fills, the birth is rewound in Imogen’s mind. Earl shrinks from infant to gourd, from gourd to green nut, from green nut to golden flower to tadpole. Imogen sees a tadpole sucked into a syringe. A popsicle refrozen. She sees a teal-eyed veterinarian who cannot bring himself pleasure holding an empty sample cup. Imogen opens her eyes. In the path of the moonlight, the bones float out to sea, one after another, in the shape of a ladder. A perfect girl climbs one slippery rung at a time, but Imogen pretends not to see her. Imogen closes her eyes. She tastes salt in her mouth, but whether it is seawater or tears, she cannot say.
In the morning, Imogen wakes from a dream in which a single bone rattles in a metal trash can. When she opens her eyes, she sees her thumb, the silver thimble, tap, tap, tapping on her chest. In place of Earl, there is a breastplate made of pearl. Mother of pearl. Imogen rises in her wet, blue robe. She looks north and south for her prince, and then she looks out at the ocean and remembers. A champion swimmer. The butterfly.
* * *
Imogen packs her empty suitcase with ten thimblefuls of wet sand. Of the three gift cards that remain, she takes one and slides it into the pocket of her robe. She sets off, wheeling further south until she can hear the whine of civilization but not see it. Imogen trudges eastward over sea oats and dunes. Thrice she stops to catch her breath, to tap the silver thimble on her breastplate. Eventually, she emerges in a parking lot. Across a two-lane road, she spies a diner. Imogen proceeds toward and through the cry of traffic. She parks her suitcase at the restaurant’s door. She tightens the sash of her robe. Inside the diner, she requests a table for one. Imogen’s server narrows his eyes at her as he hands her a menu.
“Would you like to hear you’re special?” Imogen thinks she hears him say.
“No,” Imogen says, eyes downcast. “I’m good.”
Imogen knows she will order a salad. The one with the most ingredients. Croutons and chickpeas. Green goddess and raspberry vinaigrette. Reticent eggs and pickleballs and green nuts and pumpkin seeds.
“One loaded salad,” the server will say. “Do you want me to hold anything?”
And Imogen will keep looking down and she will answer No, because she knows if she looks up, she will say Me.
The Joneses
Let me introduce you to the Joneses. You don’t know them, but you do. I mean, you haven’t met them, but you have.
You might recognize the dad. He sports brown hair with strands of silver, moderate sideburns, size ten driving moccasins. He has a smile like he broke a vase and hid the vase. He is forever, desperately, trying to look like he cares even though he doesn’t. Mr. Jones always says things like “Great job, kiddo!” and “Love you, babe,” and “Chicken sounds great,” when what he means is “When do you move out?” and “Leave me alone,” and “A bottle of gin, an Ambien. A box of fudge. Another.”
Mr. Jones feels nada. Emotion is a letdown. Caring is such a charade. Speaking of, when Mr. Jones is asked to play charades, he doesn’t do anything. He just stands there with his arms at his sides and waits for people to guess the answer. The answer is NOT GIVING A SHIT because he is not giving one.
Here’s what’s good in Mr. Jones’s world: Obliteration! Cirrhosis! Diabetes! So much porn it becomes like watching a dull weather forecast. Partly cloudy, partly cloudy, partly cloudy. To be numb—a human callus—that’s the ticket for Mr. Jones! Do you still recognize him? Yes or no? If it helps, he’s wearing a vest. It’s a fleece one, from Costco. Charcoal gray. His phone case is black. It’s the industrial kind of case meant for contractors, but he is not a contractor. Mr. Jones’s job isn’t worth mentioning. I see you nodding. I see that you see him.
Now. Here we have the wife and mother, Mrs. Jones. Wave hello, because you know her, too! Don’t act like you don’t. You guys are buds. Mrs. Jones has her hair up and her sleeves up and she looks like she needs a nap. She smells like Bounce dryer sheets and one desperate drag from a Camel Light. Mrs. Jones is always trying to make everyone care as much as she does. Really, to have such a giant heart in this world is so precious, so pathetic. Every day, Mrs. Jones shows up for life with that genuine smile of hers. It’s like bringing a butter churn to the battlefield. God bless Mrs. Jones. After everything she’s been through—the in vitro, the Bell’s palsy, the learning to make risotto—she is still somehow able to muster an appreciation for a flawless peach in the produce section, the sound of a distant woodpecker in the Dave & Buster’s parking lot. When the sunset is pinker than usual, Mrs. Jones stops what she is doing and takes a picture and then she shares the picture. Not on social media, but in an email. In an email titled BEAUTY IS EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK. Mrs. Jones could have been an immigration lawyer or a judge or even a patent attorney, but she is involved in a pyramid scheme peddling collagen powder.
I know you know this, but just a refresher: Mrs. Jones has many pairs of shoes that appear identical but aren’t. The woman has an eye for subtle variation. She knows the difference between ballet flats and regular flats and skimmers and slides and mules. She’s good with paint colors, too. She can help you decide between teal and peacock and pistachio and Prussian. You know what else about Mrs. Jones? She’s sorry she quit piano, because the piano can bring such unexpected joy to everyday events. Like at dinner parties! How about “Camptown Races”? How about “Raspberry Beret”?
Another fun tidbit: sometimes—okay, daily—Mrs. Jones imagines having sex with people much, much younger than herself. Like, say, Kai. The Qdoba cashier. She does not imagine doing him in a somewhat respectable way, like in The Graduate. Not in a bed or in a hotel or surrounded by ashtrays and rolled-up pantyhose and starched white blouses draped over the backs of chairs and heavy crystal tumblers here and there bearing an inch or two of Maker’s. No, she imagines ravaging Kai (and/or Kai’s friends) in a frantic and furious way. Maybe in an H&M dressing room or in a damp culvert by the church soccer field. Mrs. Jones is open for business, because life is short, and you might as well go out with a bang. Or banging. Mrs. Jones’s best guess is that Kai is sixteen.
Okay. Now, I see you putting your hand down. Like you never meant to wave to Mrs. Jones but instead were waving away a gnat, but you can keep on waving, because, like I said: you know her. She practically birthed you. You lived inside of her. You basically came out from between her legs and drank from her breasts.
Here comes the Joneses’ son. Let’s give him a name. How about Skyler? No? How about Tyler? Yes? Tyler’s face says MEH, but his eyes say YEAH. He plays lacrosse but once played a cat in a school play and deep down that’s all he wants to be: a gray tabby. Tyler has a secret plan. He’s going to make it through high school and then get into the state college. Then, a week before college starts, Tyler is going to let his parents take him to Target to buy extra-long twin sheets and milk crates and clip-on lamps and faux-fur pillows and laundry baskets. He might let them buy him a desk blotter, even. A shower caddy. Some Pert Plus and Froot Loops. A goddamn artificial succulent or three.
After Target, Tyler is going to go through all the motions of freshman orientation. He’s going to sign up for Sociology 101 and Human Development and write his name on the Ultimate Frisbee Club’s clipboard. He’s even going to pretend he’s thinking about eventually majoring in Econ, but when school starts, Tyler won’t be there. He’ll be in the desert getting loaded on something that could kill an elephant. He’s going to pay an internet doctor on the down-low, using the money his parents (Mr. and Mrs. Jones) thought he was going to spend on a pre-owned Mini Cooper, to have his face tattooed with stripes, his teeth filed into points. Tyler wants synthetic whiskers surgically inserted into his cheeks. He wants hair plugs all over his body like corn seedlings, row after row. A tail is not out of the realm of possibility, because it’s the twenty-first century and he found a surgeon on the internet and he has cash. Anyway: Tyler has a plan and it involves a man-sized litter box, a giant jingle bell collar. But you knew that, because you know him better than you know yourself.
