​TEN

Elena

I had a dream last night that a tattooed clown was chasing me through a courthouse where I was supposed to show up for jury duty. I think it had something to do with that dreadful woman's face—Peg, I think—who decided a needle was a better idea than replacing a tube of lipstick.

It’s been over a week, and I still want to shower it all off. Those two bridge-dwelling individuals who stole nearly all the cookies, that man in the fishing hat with the name of a four-year-old boy, and my husband, Mr. Popular, owning the place with his crybaby face. Geez, I sound like a real nag, but really, here the man is sharing his soul with a room full of strangers, and they eat up that garbage like that greasy street urchin in the chair next to us said they would. But of course, Mitch leaves out the most important part: he’s cheating on me. He’s breaking our family.

When we came home, he wanted to make love. He called it that, too. Love. I refused and stayed up, eyes open all night, staring at the fan that adjusted into a twirling shadow in the dark. And he got up around one—didn’t even bother to check to see if I was asleep—and left the house for an hour. I didn’t hear the car, so I think he hoofed it. Next time, I’m going to follow him.

“Stand still for crying out loud,” Ronnie says and shoves a polka dotted jumper against Trudy while the kid has another unlucky finger jammed up her nose. There’s something that’s pleasing to think about: money can’t force your kid into cuteness.

We’re in Dillard’s, and my stomach’s a little funky about it. Doesn’t help that I took the liberty to pour myself a secret double serving of Schnapps before we left for the mall. They talked a lot about personal responsibility in that meeting, how the alcohol skews your understanding of right and wrong. But I can’t do the mall sober because I never do the mall sober, and you just can’t reason with habit.

Trudy is cut free from her mother’s badgering, and she and Sela take turns sitting Indian style in front of a mirrored pillar in the children’s section, making funny faces. Sela copies whatever face Trudy makes which starts to itch at the back of my neck.

“Make your own face,” I say, but “face” comes out as “space,” and I’ve scratched the back of my neck so hard, I’m afraid it's going to bleed.

“What?” Ronnie asks, but she doesn’t wait for my answer because she’s holding up the blue and white polka dotted jumper with the red and white one.

“I like both,” I lie, and Ronnie says, “Me, too,” so she drapes both over her bangled arm. Her dress isn’t nearly as ugly today, and her feet are shoved into a pair of slingback flats, so at least I don’t have to look at them. She drove us all in the new Beamer because Luke was working from his home office. I sniff at my wrist to see if I can pick up the hint of new car smell.

“Are you okay?” she asks. It’s the type of thing usually tipsy people ask when they’re sober, as if their on-a-whim sobriety makes them better than you. She didn’t make herself a “special” drink this morning but left the stuff out for me. And that irked me, the fact that she thinks I need to drink even if she doesn’t.

“Just fine, sweet cheeks,” I say and muffle a burp behind my hand.

“Uh, okay. Listen, I need to tell you something.” We move away from the girls who are playing one of those handclapping games, and Trudy keeps jerking Sela’s hands in the right position because she’s supposedly doing it wrong. I’ve never wanted to deck a kid harder in my life.

I look at Ronnie, and her face is drowning in smile. She takes my hands in hers and bounces them a little and the bangles attack my arms like a steel drum.

“Okay,” she says and sighs. “I’m pregnant!” She squeals, looking like the pot-bellied pigs on her kitchen counter. Trudy snaps her head around, and behind her bug-eyed lenses are a watery set of eyes.

“No,” she says, quietly like a tiny serial killer. Then “No, no, no, no, no!” until it punctures like the nails against my neck. She gets up and lunges at her mother's stomach, and Ronnie tackles her into a half-hug. The jumpers fall to the ground, and Sela runs to me, grabs my hand. I squeeze it a little.

“Great news,” I say, but my voice is somewhere lingering near the flowery headband display. I blink in time with Trudy’s clawing, Ronnie’s frustrated gasps. Bloodied toilet. Blink-blink. Wounded gut. Blink-blink. Cheating husband. Blink-blink. 

I’m walking backwards, gently tugging Sela along. “We’ll see you soon!” I say, like we’ve agreed to meet up for tea and biscuits at a later time.

“But I drove you here!” Ronnie says, and I keep fluttering my fingers at her and turn with Sela toward the open cavity of the mall.

“What happened?” Sela whispers. She looks up, dwarfed in her Minnie Mouse t-shirt my mother sent her that’s two sizes too big.

“Nothing. She’s just a crazy lady,” I say, catching my reflection in a mirror on the Clinique counter.

#

We’re stranded, so I buy us lunch in the food court. I call Mitch on his cell, but he doesn’t answer, and I do that thing where I picture his mistress, the color of her hair. Horrible word, “mistress.” Let’s go with “super skanky homewrecker.” Much better.

Sela is sulking in her chair and won’t touch the sub I bought her. Can’t blame her. The gyro I ordered is a slaughtered mess on a bun.

“Are you going to divorce Daddy?” she asks, and I feel like I’ve swigged down another shot. My head is light, and my stomach is in full-on queasy mode.

“Why. Why would you ask that.” Declarative, right? A sentence with no question mark. I stab my eyes into Mickey with his ridiculously white hands and concentrate the vomit back down.

“Because the yelling.” The yelling? Oh. At night. Outside. She can hear us. Funny how whiskey blurs those edges down into a dream-like state where no one but you exists.

“I’m sorry,” I say. The vomit’s settled, but the tears have stirred, and I smother them all in my tzatziki-covered napkin. I kept calling that sauce “mayonnaise” at the Little Rock Greek Festival, and you would have thought I was threatening to gut Mitch’s entire family alive. Tzatziki for crying out loud, Elena. It’s called tzatziki.

I wait for Sela’s “it’s okay,” but it doesn’t come. My phone buzzes near my Dr. Pepper, and I answer it without looking at who it is.

“We need help,” I say.

“What happened?” His words are soft, but then I think of his mouth. Where it's been.

“We just need you to pick us up, okay? The White Smoke Mall.” I strain my ears through the phone, and it sounds like he's at a restaurant. The call came in this morning. They got the St. Bonaventure job, sixteen grand—the largest job we've gotten in the past two years. They're supposed to be at a meeting with Father John, so I ask him about it, measure his response.

“It's going well. Just hashing out the details,” he says.

“I bet.”

“Are you okay? What's wrong with the car—”

“Ronnie drove us. She's pregnant,” I say. His “Oh, Elena,” tastes like love even if it's a tiny crumb in my mouth. But I savor it. We've been weaving something since childhood—this understanding of each other's pain—and sometimes that's what I think I'm going to miss the most. There’s no one on this planet, in this universe, more willing to kiss my scabbed-up soul. 

“I'm coming. I'm leaving now,” he says.

“Sorry. I didn't mean to screw up your meeting.” He doesn't say anything for a second, and then I know. “Can I talk to Jimmy for a second?” I say to make sure.

“Oh, uh, he's in the bathroom. I'm leaving now.”

I finger my soul, pick a scab.

“I love you,” he says and hangs up before I can.

#

The seats in the truck are stained with dried caulking that has broken apart, so it roughs up my skin when I twist in my seat.

“You all right?” Mitch asks, and I nod. I glance behind me, and Sela is wiped out. Seeing her friend melt down like a psychopath must have taken it out of her. There's no booster seat in the truck, so she's slumped over in a position that's almost painful.  I touch her knee, watch her nostrils slightly flare. Kids need booster seats, and it's like a check mark in my mind. I'm failing. Again.

“So, sibling rivalry already?” Mitch says, and I nod, thinking of Trudy.

“Little brat doesn't like the idea of not having Mommy and Daddy's full attention, I guess. She likes an audience when she's jamming that finger up her nose.”

“I bet. She creeps me out, that kid. She's not like Sela.” It starts to sprinkle a little, one of those odd sun showers that freak me out because to me, sun and rain don't mesh. Mitch puts on the windshield wipers, and it feels like a pulse beating through the cab. The details in this moment start to add up: the quiet, Sela's slight snoring, the fact that we're together and whiskey isn't stealing the show. But I can't say it. I can't tell him how my fear tastes. That if he leaves me, I'll be left with empty bottles and an unused TV. That I don't know how to do anything without the boy who used to trace our future in the palm of my hand: two kids, one house, and us, forever and ever.

But forever's a pipe dream.

“So, she doesn't know,” he says.

“Know what? Oh, and let's throw in a 'who' for good measure.”

“Ronnie. You haven't told her? About us trying?”

“Oh yeah, she knows. But she doesn't know about—”

“The miscarriages.”

“I hate that word. Let's go with deaths. Or disappointments. Or tiny little steppingstones to hell...”

He's quiet. I've done that thing where I've pushed too hard, and he doesn't know what to do with me, which is a scary proposition since I hardly know what to do with myself.

“We'll figure it out. We have the appointment,” he says. I suck on it like a lozenge. The appointment, the “maybe.” It claws a little and then harder, so I start to say it, “Are you ch—”

“Here we are,” he says, pulling into the Gibson's driveway behind my GrandAm. “I can go ahead and take Sela home so she doesn't wake up,” he says.

“Yeah, alright.” I'm half out of the truck, half in it, and I linger there. Just say it, Elena. Just say what you want to say and stop being such a scared little girl. But then I think of me at seven when the cutting first started, and I see Sela's face, clean of worry. And so, I don't say the thing that's weighing on my every organ because if I do say it, her worry will become an animal that follows her everywhere, and it will be something far worse than peeing herself in public.

“I love you,” I say and suck until I taste the truth in it.