Callie tugged at her jeans. Size 4, she used to wear a 2, but these were still too tight. She pulled hard and slowly stretched them over and around her belly, ugly belly, lined with blue zigzag reminders of those last few horrid months. The aching back, peeing all the time, she figured out early on, watching other expectant mothers prancing around all pink-cheeked with their bright clean maternity clothes, she knew early on she wasn’t cut out for this.
The baby made a gurgling sound. She stopped still in front of the mirror and prayed. Sometimes the gurgle preceded a full out scream, and sometimes it faded mysteriously back into silence. Shit, not yet. Don’t fucking wake up yet. Please God, please.
Callie turned back to herself, her ugly misshapen blue-lined self, and touched it. Not on the skin, but on the mirror, feeling the cold hard glass against her fingertips. Touch me, her body called but she wouldn’t dare. It had betrayed her and did not deserve her tenderness.
And now the shower, full force, just what she needed and she let out a guttural sigh that sounded like it came from far away. The sound, no it was the baby, crying now, cries getting louder, so she turned the water on higher, turned the nozzle to pulse so the water beat down hard on her back, her neck, the sticky creases between her breasts, her ears, loud water rushed over her so she could not hear, even if she wanted to, the baby awake and screaming from somewhere across the other side of her life.
Ralph got home late, like he said he would, the turnips dissolved completely just the way he loved them. It really didn’t take much to make him happy.
Even the baby was happy now, having completed a good long sleep after that earlier fit that brought Callie’s shower to a premature halt. The house smelled delicious and she had even managed to clip a few mimulas for the table, a scraggly spray of forget-me-nots, one sprig of thyme that managed to put out a nice smell despite its pathetic appearance. Sauce and flowers and newly polished toenails, all on account of a few lucky little naps that had scattered themselves mercifully, like jewels, across her day. This is a mother’s life and it’s not so bad really, she decided, stroking the baby’s head, the fuzzy fine fur, too sparse for color, thin and pale and mostly bald. She traced the tender spot that offered scant protection to the tiny unfinished brain and nuzzled her lips into the overwhelming softness. Sucked it in.
“You’re looking pretty” he greeted her with a pat on the ass and a quick nuzzle to the baby who was starting to make cooing sounds which Ralph insisted was Daddy. Grabbed a beer first and then his wife, eager pecks on the mouth and “dinner smells good baby.” He was a good man, he was. She pulled her blouse down, it had wrinkled in their embrace, and she noticed a stray flower stem tucked into her waistband. Whisked it away. Ralph was right, she was pretty.
Later that night, he took her, hard. It had been a great day and this was his way of celebrating. Thirty-six homes were going up near Riverdale and guess what, every last one of them was going to need a sprinkler system.
“I told you baby, I told you, I told you,” he grunted as he bore his way inside her, smacking his hips full throttle against her. Sometimes Ralph could be gentle, even sweet, but those times usually coincided with some vulnerability, a lost sale, some deal gone sour, and she would nurture his smallness in her deft hands, make him feel like a man again. But this time she wasn’t expecting much in the way of tenderness. This time he rode her like a bull, so wild he was with pleasure.
“Honey,” he said, wiping the sweat from his eyes as she rolled out of his grip and on to her side, facing out to the small patch of sky outside their bedroom window, “honey, this is the deal we’ve been waiting for. Once the developer agrees to buy my systems for this Riverdale project, the rest of the valley will hear about it. He knows the mayor, Callie. He knows the fucking mayor. Over on the other side of Lookout Mountain they’re starting to bulldoze. Do you know what that means?”
“Sprinklers!” she laughed, wiggling his soggy cock back and forth like a garden hose. What was left of his juice splattered against the sheet and she rubbed it all over his belly squealing “sprinklers, more sprinklers.” They squealed and grabbed and rolled into each other one more juicy time, with the glee of the soon-to-be-wealthy, the glee of those who think they can see the backlit edge of their wildest dreams creeping into view.
Ralph had always been a dreamer, but the good kind. He didn’t just lie back all starry-eyed and certain, no, he worked on those dreams. Ralph could sell anything, even back in high school, he pushed a cart up and down the aisles of the football stadium selling nothing but crushed ice from his parent’s doublewide freezer. No overhead, he figured wisely, but for the cost of small paper cups, and the sweaty hot kids in the stands gladly gave him fifty cents for a cool swab of freezing slush to wipe their foreheads, sneak down their girlfriend’s blouses, scrunch between their teeth when the ball was out of play. It was a genius plan and Ralph raked in more money than the soda and pretzel vendors combined. Something cheap and cold was really all anyone needed and that’s exactly what he delivered. Back then, as now, Ralph was not ashamed to admit he was damned proud of himself.
She saw his pride and confidence from the stands as he called up and down the stadium aisles “ieeeeece chips ice cold ieeeece chips” and she saw it when he took her to the movies in his spit-polished truck. She saw all that pride and confidence and couldn’t get enough of it. She sidled up to him hoping some of it would rub off, like crushed ice against hot skin.
Here it was six years later and it still felt that way, though he had moved from ice chips to refrigerator magnets to car alarms to automatic sprinkler systems, while she, she was still Callie, the girl in the stands, looking for an arm to hook into, looking for someone to lean on.
“Night baby” he mumbled, turning into her, “I love you, baby” he whispered into the sticky pillow.
Callie turned her eyes toward the night. Ralph’s arm wrapped around her, she didn’t dare move, afraid to wake him. She stroked the dark hairs on his arm, soft in one direction, bristly in the other, and found herself thinking about Robin again. It usually only happened at times like this, quiet, in the dark, when dreams and what was really happening got mixed up into indecipherable whirls. She hadn’t run into him since that first time, several weeks back, maybe more, she wished she could remember exactly. She tried picturing him but Ralph shifted slightly, and the coarse hairs on his arm tickled her neck. Callie couldn’t help but wonder if Robin had as much hair on his arms. She didn’t think he did.
10.
ON THE WAY HOME from Ray’s place I missed the turn-off and headed clear to Lake Wildwood before I figured it out. Then I had a hell of a time finding my way back to Exit 28. It shook me up a bit. I had to pull over and then decided it best to stay away from the super highway. Instead I worked my way along the old route 60, dead-end town after dead-end town, all victims of the interstate—folks walking slowly through the streets as though they had no place in particular to go.
And then there I was back home, turning on to Meadowbrook Lane, and sure enough, the first thing I saw was the floozy across the street, up on her ladder again, trying out a peacock blue this time. She’s been sampling colors for years, it’s what she does. She bought the house the year before Pa died and we hoped it was a sign the neighborhood was going to spruce up. She turned out to be just another crazy who managed to scrape together enough to afford a two-bed one-bath blip in this tired neighborhood. She had hoisted her ladder in front of the house the week she moved in, and ever since she’s been slathering on stripes of blues, grays, golds, even tried a sickening pinkish peach once, then back to blues again (which was a relief) forcing the neighborhood, and me in particular since