​FIVE

Elena

We drink spiked coffee, smoke outside. Ronnie's backyard is more like Disney Land, so there's always something to gaze at when she talks about her procedures or why her Mexican neighbor bothers her, which has nothing to do with the fact that he's Mexican. Allegedly.

Why are you friends with her? It's the question my husband originally authored and rings through me every time I sit and smoke and drink with a woman who knows the different shades of Lexus colors by their specific names (Neptune Blue is her favorite). I try to dig out an answer that doesn't make me seem like a crazy person, but the only thing I got is that when I go over to Ronnie's, it feels like I'm wearing my perfect skin. Her home, her things, her Botox injections - they all could have been mine if the universe had swayed just a few inches to the left.

“So, who's right?

“Sorry? About what?”

“The crow's feet? Luke says he can't see them, but that man is blind as a nearsighted bat.” Ronnie is poking her pointer finger at her eye, and I can tell she's gotten too close to her target because she blinks a little.

“He is, of course. You're crazy if you're going to let them slice and dice you up like a plate of sushi,” I say. She laughs, and I feel warm for a second.

“See, this is why I like you so much, Elena. You never feed me baloney.” Like her other friends, she's thinking. The charity thing still gnaws at me, but it's my country roots, my deep South “take no nonsense” attitude that Ronnie laps up like her kicked-up coffee. It's hard being a princess twenty-four seven. That's why she has me. And the affairs.

“How's Mitch?” she asks. She stretches out her feet, still bare, and grazes the chiminea with her toe. She has astoundingly ugly feet for someone who likes to show them off so much.

“Mitch is Mitch.”

“You always say that.”

“It's true.”

“You don't even realize how lucky you are.” One of the ugly pair is now resting on her leg, and I watch her dance her fingertips against her sole. She drags on her Virginia Slim, and I imagine the smoke crawling down her throat and nestling in her lungs. I think about writing that image down, but I don't have any paper. And really, it's a weird thing to do anyways.

“How so?”   

“You have a man who loves you. No, screw that,” and her head swivels, searching for little ears. “You have a man who is in love with you, Elena. I mean by his very definition; he shouldn't be a man. An alien maybe.”

“And you'd put Luke in a different category altogether?”

“I'd put Luke on the moon if I could. He's in love with making money, with the idea of his happy little family. But me? Nope.” There's a gazebo out in the middle of the yard and in front of it, a stone bird bath. A writhing medusa acts as the pedestal, and her hair—snakes for strands—curve up and form into a bowl. There's a red-breasted robin flapping its wings in the water, and a spray of droplets catches the sun, and that's when I'm taken by the way Mitch's arms feel when I stand at the toilet and look into the “what could have been.”

Lucky? Yeah, real lucky.

“Well, not that I really care. I have my fun. You should try it some time,” she says with a wink.

“Cheating? I'd rather take a nap.”

“Gosh, you make it sound so dirty. Not cheating. Just company,” she says. The latest is Sean, the kid who manages this unending mecca they call a yard. Not really a kid—more like twenty-three—but considering I'm edging thirty, have a daughter, and a nine-year marriage under my belt, I could easily be his grandmother.

“I don't need company,” I say. I go to say what it is I really need, but I stop because I can't find the words, let alone stack them up right. I want another baby. I think. I want to stay with Mitch forever. I think. I want to get in my car and not stop driving until I see the surf and taste salt every time I breathe.

I want a time machine.

“Everyone needs company. You know what I deal with? Between the twits at Junior League, and my husband, Sergeant Moneybags, and my daughter who has the vision of a seventeen-year-old beagle, I need a little time to myself, you know? I need a little Ronnie time.” I have a feeling she’d be slurring at this point if it weren’t for the caffeine in the coffee.

“Fair enough,” I say. I’m not nearly as gone, and I hate knowing why. For Ronnie, drinking is a Saturday morning ritual. For me? It’s a way of life.

Noon hits sooner than later, so I nominate myself coffee cup holder while Ronnie tries to balance her way into the house on her ugly feet.

Before we leave, she shows off the new Beamer they bought, but she does it while chewing on her thumbnail. She's snockered, and at this point is prying Trudy's hair from her scalp, believing she's gently running her fingers through it. Poor Trudy has tears in her eyes behind those awful coke bottle glasses, and every time I look at her, I can’t stop picturing a geriatric dog.

“This has been fun,” Ronnie says as we stumble into a hug. She kicks up the blackened sole of her foot, and I breathe in our smell, a noxious combination of Donna Karen and the bleach I used to scrub the bathroom grout yesterday that’s stood the test of my morning shower.

“It always is.” Something grabs my hand, and I almost swat it away, but I see it's Sela shouldering close to me. She's mousy in a way that's cute now but won't be when she's older, and I pray she isn't cursed like Mitch's sister, Tammy, who looks like a stillborn kitten. That woman is hairless and loud-mouthed and one of sixty million reasons I'm glad I got the heck out of Helena. But sometimes, when I look down at the crown of Sela's head, it's like I never moved an inch.

“Where we going?” Sela asks when I loop around the Gibsons' circle drive in my GrandAm. Ronnie pirouettes a final goodbye, and the sun strikes hard against Trudy's glistening bug eyes.

“Mall,” I say. Mitch leaves cash wadded in the console of his truck, and I sometimes sneak out there late at night to swipe a few bills. The trees aren't diving toward the ground, and lightning isn't striking me dead, so it's no big deal. Seriously.

“What are we getting?” she asks.

“Whatever we want.”

#

I bought a TV. I didn't mean to, but then Sela and I were standing in Radio Shack at the White Smoke Mall, and our faces were blown up around the room. She started jumping up and down, waving her hands. Her face was happy, and for a second, I forgot about her bed wetting, her school wetting, the fact that she might one day end up like Mitch's used up sister, Tammy, so I bought the dang TV.

“Oh no,” I say as we drive around in circles for a while.

“What's wrong, Mommy?” Sela asks. I look up and see a small fraction of her face in the rearview mirror. She looks a little like me at this angle.

“What's not wrong, really,” I mumble. “Hungry?” I rack my brain for places I can stash the forty-inch, flat-screened mammoth that's lightly bobbing in the trunk of the Pontiac. The dang thing hardly fits even after I spent twenty minutes and half a nail bungee cording it shut.

“Mmm, Happy Meal,” she says in that way that annoys me. Just ask for the thing, kid. But I agree and smile because I read on the Internet how you always have to smile around children. They absorb sadness like sponges.

We start-stop through the line, and I order her a Happy Meal, me the chicken nuggets, and chow down like there's no tomorrow. She doesn't ask, but I know she wants to eat inside and play on the disease-infested jungle gym with the other children. But it's too loud in there, too bright. I feel like I'm up on stage in that place, and I'm liable to trip and spill our food for an audience of fat-gutted looky-loos.

“What did you and Trudy play?”

“House. She made me be the Dad.”

“Her home, her rules.”

“Yeah, but she always makes me be the Dad.”

“Well, then do her the favor. Might be the only time in her life she knows what it's like to have a husband.” I shouldn't talk this way about her friends. I really shouldn't talk this way to her period. But she has these doe eyes, this simple way of opening them up like she wants to know the truth. Goodness knows no one else does.

“She can be mean sometimes,” Sela says. And that hurts my heart, like “knock it hard with a hammer and watch it crumble” hurt.

“Everyone can be mean sometimes, Sela, but not everyone can be good. Not like you.” And I smile at her again. But I really don't feel like smiling.

We coast down Pyle Drive after I snatch at the lone fry that fell to the passenger side floorboard and plop it and the rest of our trash in the outdoor trash bin. I coat my hands in hand sanitizer and do the same to Sela's because greasy hands roughly the size of half dollars are one of my triggers. I don't want another bleach day. 

We sail down through a green light, pass Fox Funeral Home, and that's when I see it. A1 Storage. I hook a right and land next to a banana yellow station wagon with a bumper sticker that reads, “American by Birth, Southern by the Grace of God.”

My TV has a new home.

#

They were running a special, so the first month’s rent is only a buck. The manager—Lara, according to her name tag—helped me lug it to the unit, and I have a feeling she doesn’t do that for all the girls.

She gave me her card, all business of course, but kept nodding her graying shaved head at me like everything I said was coming from God himself.

“Where’s your toilet?” must have sounded like “Want to run away with me forever?” to her pink-tinged ears because she walked us there herself.

“I don’t have to go,” Sela said when we went into Lara’s “personal throne.”

“I know, but Dr. Mailer said to make sure we go every couple of hours.” There’s that “we” again. It’s something my mother use to do that would royally perturb me, as if me being the only one of her kids who shared her mutual anatomy meant we were the same dang person. We would like a Dr. Pepper. We want to go see Aunt Earlene. We just got our period! 

“But I don’t—”

“Just go, Sela! Please? Please?” I hiss it, and the finger drills into my head again. She looks up at me, and the worst part is that she doesn’t cry. She’s not even shocked anymore because this is her mother. The nightly drunk who’s generous with her “we’s” and has a knack for ruining her entire day.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she says.

She finishes up, and I flush while she lets a wimpy trickle of water clean her hands. I scrub mine too with the rose scented soap Lara has filled with water to stretch a dime. I use my nails—always use my nails—and when I'm finished my hands are streaked with angry stripes, and I try not to notice that Sela's are, too.

Outside the bathroom, Lara is stacking up empty boxes in the front window display. She's rolled up her sleeves to show off a thick layer of fat that I'm sure she hopes I confuse for muscle.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Any time, be sure to call if—,” but the door swings shut behind us before I let her finish. There's still a couple of hours to pack tight with “activities.” That's another thing they say online about kids—that they always have to be doing something so that their brains work right. And sometimes I have to laugh at hogwash like that because my mother put Dr. Pepper in my bottle when I wouldn't take the formula, and I turned out just fine.

But I can't laugh at it because there Sela is, strapped in her booster chair in the back, and her face is expectant-like, waiting for me to make the call. That's another thing about kids. It doesn't matter if you have a headache or you can't get pregnant again or that all you want to do is recount the years in your aching head and pinpoint the exact moment life's sweater began to unravel. You're still in charge. You still have to play the game even if you don't feel like it.

“Park,” I say. “Let's go to the park.”

#

I don't hate having a kid as much as I hate that other people have kids. Other women, really. Besides Ronnie, I don't hobnob with the local females who all seem to congregate at the holy church of Target. Instead, when we go to the park, I sit on the bench while Sela swings on her belly like Superman, and I pretend to read a tattered copy of Great Expectations. I've stop-started this book roughly forty-five times in my life, and a lot of it I blame on conversations like the one happening right next to me.

“Oh right, yes, totally. I practically fainted when Trenton told me that. I mean, who does that little brat Henry think he is telling Trenton not to touch his stuff? Free country.” I side-eye the talker, and she's thin with a long shiny ponytail and a face that screams late thirties, although I'm sure she's closer to my age. Sun damage. I apply SPF so often, I sweat it.

“It's the mother, always the mother. Abby, Gabby, whatever the heck. She's always talking about boundaries, so the kid thinks he has license to be a jerk.” The woman next to McSkinny is bigger-boned and her drawl is more noticeable. She's wearing a Razorbacks sweatshirt and yoga pants, but the diamond in her engagement ring is about the size of my knuckle. I hate that. I hate the “I'm a bum for a day” look, and I hate it even more when I glance down at my feet, at last year's wedges. The red leather tops are scuffed, and there's a chunk of cork missing on the inside heel. “You look nice,” Mitch said last weekend before we went out to Red Lobster with Jimmy and his heinous wife, Pam. He was wearing that stupid Polo of his, the green one the color of a Christmas tree with his black belt and brown shoes. And I was wearing these busted up wedges and a white blouse that has a light ketchup stain near my belly because Sela hugged me right after meatloaf a few nights before. It kept digging at me—the Christmas tree polo, the stained-up blouse—so when we finally got to the restaurant, I washed my hands so hard in the bathroom that the side of my thumb began to bleed.

“Sometimes, I wish I could teach a course on how to be a good mother,” McSkinny says, and I think she glances at me when she says it, but I can't be sure. Oh, I get it. I'm supposed to be pushing my child on the swing or at least looking lovingly on from afar or gabbing it up with a big-boned, sweatshirt-wearing best friend to be a “real” mother. My mind breaks a little, and the pieces scatter at the base of my skull. And I feel like I'm inhaling the pieces, choking on them. I have to get out of here.

“Sela,” I say, and she looks up, but I don't wait for her. I beeline it to our GrandAm and ignore the stupidly shocked faces of Big Bones and McSkinny. I can only breathe again when I'm inside the car and hours old French fry smell replaces the pieces stacked high in my lungs.

“I thought we were going to play,” Sela says when she gets inside and buckles herself into her booster seat.

“You thought wrong.” I back out of my sandwiched spot between their cars—an SUV on steroids and a brand-new Prius—and I try to fragment together what Big Bones and McSkinny must be saying now.

Some people just shouldn't have kids. 

#

At home Sela plays with her Barbie who she’s made the Dad. I can hear her telling it to take out the trash while she makes the spaghetti, and I remember to grab the camera that’s always shoved in a mystery drawer whenever I’m looking for it. But when I get to her door, she’s given up her game and is curled up on her comforter, her breath heavy. She does that sometimes, just runs out of battery, and her body goes still with sleep. I sit on her bed and lightly scratch her back, and I start crying until it hurts even farther into my brain than where the finger in my temple is.

Sometimes when I call my brother Hank, and I talk to his wife Belinda, I use the same voice I use with Ronnie, that “my poop don’t stink” voice that gets on my own nerves. And I can hear it in their own voices, that tiny shred of pity they have for a grown woman who’s playing out her childhood dream even though her reality is a short fall from a nightmare.

Screw them all.

Sela stirs a little, and I stop my fingers that are digging too hard in her back. I kiss her temple, shut the door. I go and get the bleach.

I did Sela’s bathroom yesterday, so I do mine today. It’s not just the scrubbing I like but the burn I get from inhaling it. Now don’t get it wrong, this isn’t about getting high. This is about cleaning what’s dirty. What’s very very wrong.

I do such a thorough job, that my brain starts singing that B-52's song, and I can't shut it off. When I’m done, I strip and change into my robe. I put the bleach back, my grout scrubber back and put my clothes into a trash bag that I throw in the garbage at the side of our house. Sometimes, if I’m not careful, that stuff takes the color plum out of everything. I used to worry that Mitch would notice, but God love my husband. The poor man never notices a thing.

The shower is hot, and I make it hotter until I whimper, and then I make it colder again. My brain feels clean, and I feel better. My headache is gone.

I grab the phone from the kitchen and let my wet hair dry from the overhead fan in our bedroom. I blast it high and listen to the ringing and wonder if he can hear his phone or if he’s water blasting and maybe the sound is lost on him. But he picks up, and when he talks, I know he’s inside somewhere, although he pretends he’s working.

He’s cheating on me—“spending a little Mitch time” as Ronnie would put it. It’s been going on a few Saturdays now, and there’s a switch in me that just won’t click over. I’m supposed to be angry, but I guess it’s more like I’m sorrowful because I know now that it's not just me. He sees it, too: this isn't the way it's supposed to be.

But it doesn’t matter because that’s not why I’m calling.

“I want to quit drinking. AA,” I say, and at first, he says we’re fine, and I want to laugh. But I know I've planted the seed in his brain and that he'll come around. And he does, saying he'll go at the exact same time that I look into the mirror above our dresser, and when I see myself, I see my future self in a 900-square-foot condo on the beach, my beautiful bare feet caressing the bamboo flooring in the living room.

My TV will look lovely in there.