Seeing those shirts made her sad. He wore them only to church or a dinner at her family’s house on the lake, and she knew if they ever fixed things between them that Mom and Dad would have to welcome him back, though it would never be the way it was before he’d slapped her not once, but twice, and the last time had sent her flying across the kitchen in front of Cole and she had to call 911, she just had to.
Still, by the end of the second week the fear was gone and all she felt was sad and guilty and alone. She’d read and sing Cole to sleep, then watch TV and skim magazines and eat a snack. When she finally went to bed she left the rifle in the closet and tried to rest but she couldn’t. She kept thinking about him, remembering him really, from before, when she worked at the Walgreen’s and he was her boss. She wasn’t so big then and she was good at her job, her drawer hardly ever over or under. What she liked about him was how shy he was, how he might be telling her and another cashier about a new special or an updated store policy from the district manager and his eyes would pass over her breasts and he’d look away fast, his face reddening up. He was polite and looked handsome in his white shirt and tie and khakis with the crease up the leg. She wondered if he ironed them himself. He wasn’t much older than she was but he had to be pretty smart to be a shift manager already.
Then that cool night in January when her battery died. She was the last cashier to leave. She was still sitting in her car when the overnight manager relieved AJ and he came out and saw her there. He stood on the sidewalk, the fluorescent light of the store behind him, looking at her behind the wheel of her mother’s Geo like she might be sick or hurt. For a second it didn’t look like he was going to do anything but stand there. Then he walked over and she opened the door and told him about the dead battery, that she was about to call her folks but didn’t want to wake them.
“I’ll drive you.”
His truck had smelled new, and sitting in it, buckled up beside him, driving out of the parking lot riding so high, she felt as if she’d just won something. He said he was thirsty, that it was a Friday night and did she want to get a beer somewhere?
“I’m only nineteen.”
“That’s okay, I’ll pick up a six.”
It was cold and went down real smooth after seven hours on her feet. She was surprised he drank his Miller so openly driving down the road. He seemed so careful at work. He asked where she lived and she told him.
“You do?” Like he was surprised, like he hadn’t expected she’d live in a house on the water. But then he glanced over at her and smiled. “You got to stop calling me Mr. Carey.”
“Well what’s your name?”
“AJ.”
“What’s that stand for?”
“Ask Jesus.”
“You’re teasing me.”
He looked over at her. He switched on the radio, got a good station from Tampa. They were on Myakka City Road driving in the dark. He finished his beer and opened another. She did too. They drove quietly a while, just listening to the music, REM singing about a man on the moon. He turned it down low. “Where’d you go to high school?” His voice was soft and he sounded interested and like he wasn’t just making conversation.
“Bradenton.”
“You have any brothers or sisters?”
“My brother Reggie. He’s in the army.”
“So what do you like to do?”
“What do you like to do?”
“I don’t know—work, I guess.”
“For fun?”
“Yeah, I like work. You?”
“What?”
“You like to work?”
“It’s all right. I like to read, watch some TV. I play cards with my mother a lot.”
He looked at her a little longer than was safe. “I play cards with my mama, too.” Her cheeks had heated up and her mouth went dry but it made her feel good, that look he gave her. Then he pulled off the main road and parked under a tree. He cut off the engine, left the radio on. “You got a boyfriend?”
“No.”
His hand on her knee and how she had to lean forward to get that first long kiss that so quickly turned into something she hadn’t seen coming, but it wasn’t at all like with Reilly; it was gentle and got her excited and she knew she should’ve made herself a little harder to get than that, but how could she know if he’d ever drive her home again, if she’d ever be with him like this again? And after, the way he dropped his forehead to her breast, lay his cheek against it.
Then that one-room studio of his in that loud, smelly complex behind the mall. It seemed all they did was make love, watch TV, and eat, then make love some more. Her breasts got tender fast and she felt a little off.
She’d been alone at his place when she peed on the stick over the toilet. She hadn’t known how to tell him. Didn’t know if she ever wanted to tell him. But she wasn’t the kind to go and get rid of it so he’d have to know and they’d have to figure out what to do next. He’d never even told her he loved her, though, so what was he going to say to this? And how was she going to tell him? She decided to just leave the stick on a napkin on his counter near the coffee machine. She tore off the corner of a grocery bag and wrote: Call me. Deena.
It was after one and she was falling asleep in front of Jay Leno, waiting for the phone to go off in her hand. Her eyes were closed and there were the TV voices, then another one, a tapping. A tapping that became a knocking that opened her eyes. She looked behind her through the dark living room and kitchen and could see under the outdoor light his face framed in the door’s window.
She didn’t know if she’d dozed off or not. She was a little worried about her breath but didn’t want him to keep knocking and wake her folks. She got up and let him in. He followed her to the living room lit only by the light of the TV, and she found the remote and pressed the mute button. He was still in his Walgreen’s outfit, his tie loosened. He kept looking at her, then away, just like he used to whenever he couldn’t help but glance at her breasts.
He said, “I guess we shoulda been more careful, huh?”
“Yeah.”
He looked at the screen. A new truck was climbing a mountain road, then it was carrying a load of lumber, then a load of kids and dogs pulling into a green field to play ball. “We gonna keep it?”
She liked that he’d said we. She knew he was going to do the right thing, whether he liked it or not, and she felt like crying though it bothered her to see him sitting straight as a soldier getting orders. “Yes.”
His eyes were back on the TV. “Get married too?”
“If you want.”
“Do you?”
“It’d be better for the baby, wouldn’t it?”
He nodded, looked at her. “Yeah.” He smiled then, though he didn’t look happy.
“C’mere.” She patted her leg and he lay his head in her lap. She lightly scratched her fingernails through his short hair and she wanted to say something to make him feel better, though she didn’t know what that was. Now the room was too quiet. She pressed the mute button and Jay Leno’s teasing voice was in the air again. AJ seemed to be watching it and she was watching him: Who was he anyway? Out of all the millions and millions of men in the world, how did this one get to be the father of her baby? Did she even know him? Love him? Did she love him?
She didn’t think so. Not yet. And she tried not to study too much his physical qualities, how his ears stuck out a bit too far from his head, how his trunk was short and his legs kind of long; his eyes were a handsome blue, but they were set too deep under a forehead that wasn’t high enough. It made him look less intelligent than she knew he was. Would their baby look like that? A little dim-witted?
Her face grew hot and she stopped scratching his head. On the TV Jay was interviewing an actress she recognized though she couldn’t remember her name. She was probably Deena’s age exactly and had millions of dollars and long black hair and a body no man anywhere would ever say no to and how could Deena have forgotten how AJ could hardly keep his h
ands off her? How could she forget so soon that he treated her as if she looked like that girl on the TV right now?
“AJ?”
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
He raised his head. “Can you turn this off?”
She did. He sat away from her at the end of the couch. The living room was dark and she could only see his face in the pale light across the floor.
“I feel pretty stupid, Deena.”
“It’s not all your fault.”
“I know, but—” He shrugged, sat there.
“What?”
“I should’ve pulled out.”
“No, I don’t like that.” Reilly coming on her belly, no tenderness at all.
“It could get rough. I don’t make much, and wouldn’t you have to be home with the kid?”
“Yeah.” She wanted to ask him then if he loved her. She could feel the question right there in her throat, but he might ask her back and what would she say?
“Your folks know?”
“Not yet.”
He looked away again. She was aware she was sitting there in just her baggy T-shirt and loose pajama pants, her hair messed up, no makeup on, yet she felt a way she never had before, like she held all the power that could be held, that she was completely and utterly in charge and was beautiful because of it, no matter how lost he seemed to be right now, her toes pressing against his knee. She lifted her T-shirt and began to pull off her bottoms.
“Your folks.”
“We’ll be quiet.”
When he came, his pants around his knees, he whimpered and she held him close. “Do we love each other, AJ?”
“We will.”
There was the justice of the peace and AJ training in heavy equipment, then working with Daddy. They bought this abandoned house AJ fixed up himself. The baby grew and grew and she came to love this new direction her life had taken. She loved how much attention her mother and father gave her, how her mom would take her shopping for baby things and at night and on weekends Daddy would smile over at her the way he did when she was a little kid, as if she were the only girl ever invented. Before falling asleep beside her, AJ would say those three words to her and she’d say them back and she didn’t feel like a liar saying them but she didn’t feel them much either. Then they were in this house and she didn’t want to be ungrateful, but it was a tiny house. They painted it in whites and yellows, but still, she couldn’t breathe in it. During the long long days when AJ was at work and she was here alone with Cole, his toys scattered over the floor so she couldn’t walk anywhere without stepping on one, she’d take him outside to play in the grass and she’d sit in a lawn chair and try to get some sun on her legs and face and arms. She’d skim her magazines and try not to eat anything. That’s all she wanted to do—eat. She didn’t want to admit it and felt like an awful mother even thinking it, but she was bored just taking care of Cole. She loved him more than she loved the pumping of her own heart; she loved seeing the faces he made—curious, angry, confused, even sad and full of joy; she loved the way he would turn his blue eyes up at her as if she were the only other human being who ever lived; she loved that he came from her body yet had his own; she loved his hair and skin, his ears, and nose, and knees, the way they turned in like hers; she loved his sweet-milk smell, she loved his high voice and how he couldn’t say his r’s; she loved how he climbed into her lap to watch a video, how he fell asleep against her breasts.
Still, she needed to go out and do something. Even working at Walgreen’s had felt like something; she was serving people who needed things when they needed them and she got paid to make sure they got them. She liked that part the most. Getting that check with her name on it and cashing it and having that money in her pocket she’d earned. She saved over two thousand dollars but had to give every cent of it to AJ to go toward this place. That gave her some sense of pride, though—it did. But now she felt her time out in the world was already over. They couldn’t afford day care, but wouldn’t her mother watch Cole now? At least a few days or nights a week? Was Deena really going to spend the rest of her life just taking care of others? Her son and maybe more children, and AJ, who, these past three years had become a tired, short-tempered tangle of wants and needs she alone had to see to: she washed, dried, folded, and put away his clothes. She made the bed after he left it, wiped down the sink after he’d shaved there, all those dark whisker nubs pooling at the faucet she had to wipe off too; she made sure he had his lunch packed—almost always the same thing, smooth peanut butter with strawberry jelly, two bananas, a bag of Ruffles chips, and a thermos of lemonade. If she made him tuna instead, or substituted apples for bananas, she’d hear about it that night when she heard about everything else she wasn’t doing right: Why can’t you pick up the goddamn toys off the floor, D? Why do you cook with so much grease all the time? Didn’t Cole wear that shirt yesterday too? Why can’t you keep a couple cans of beer cold in the fridge, Deena? You have any idea how goddamn hot it gets running heavy machinery in this fuckin’ heat?
It always came down to that: his anger at her, his resentment that he had to do something all day he hated while she got to stay home with Cole and play house. That’s what he called what she did—“playing house.” Then, the once every four or five weeks she actually spent a little money on just herself, to color her hair a bit or put a wave in it or something small like that she did so she didn’t feel completely invisible, he’d yell at her, tell her she’d looked better before and how much did that cost anyway? She’d lie and tell him thirty dollars when it was really twice that and still he’d cuss and shake his head, grab another beer from the fridge and sit down in front of the TV, Cole playing on the floor at his feet.
And later, when they were in bed, lying stiff and quiet beside each other, hardly breathing it seemed, she wanted to ask him why he was so damn mad and miserable all the time. Was it just the job? Because if it was, why not quit and go back to work at the store? How many times had he pushed that in her face? I could’ve been district manager by now, you know. I’d be making just about as much. She wanted to ask him these things but part of her was so hurt by him and mad at him for how he treated her, for how little he valued what she did, that she just couldn’t open her mouth to start. Then he’d turn to her and she always got fooled. She didn’t know why she did but she did; she thought he might speak for once, to talk to her even a little the way he used to, but she’d feel his fingers running up her leg, feel his palm push against a soft thigh to part them. It was the last thing she wanted to do, not because she didn’t like it, but because she didn’t like it when she didn’t like him.
There were those hot afternoons when she sat in the sun in shorts and a T-shirt, barefoot, Cole pushing his truck over the grass, and she’d close her eyes and sometimes get that warm thick throb between her legs, picture them opening for the man kissing his way up to what she offered. Sometimes it was AJ’s face she saw, that low forehead and big ears, those soft blue eyes she tried to concentrate on, but other times it’d be other men. Most of them were faceless or nameless but some were actors she liked and read about a lot: Pierce Brosnan and that sneaky smile, like he had a surprise for you and still wouldn’t tell; Billy Baldwin, Brad Pitt, and strange to say, Morgan Freeman, not because he was black—though she was curious what the difference would be—but because he was older and seemed so kind and caring with that sad, knowing smile of his like he’d know just what to do if she ever gave herself to him.
But it wasn’t other men she wanted, or even sex; it was that feeling she’d had early on with AJ, that not only was she desirable but likable. That she was liked. And those tears on AJ’s cheeks tonight. Was he just feeling lonely and sorry for himself or did he really miss her? And if he did, was it just the sex. Or was it her? And if it was her, was that a good thing? Did she really want him back? Or was he just better than nothing? Better than nobody?
Deena swung her legs out of bed and walked down the darkened hall past Cole’s room
into the kitchen. She opened the freezer and reached for the last of the ice cream, got a spoon from the dish drainer, stood at the counter, and ate slowly. She thought of AJ’s broken wrist. She had a vague curiosity about how he’d done it, but not much. She just kept thinking how hard it would be for him to hit her with it now, how much it would hurt.
DRIVING DOWN MANATEE in the predawn, it was no use even trying to sip his coffee and ice his wrist and drive and listen to the young girl whine for food and her mama. Maybe he shouldn’t’ve woke her up just to get some Benadryl down her, but he knew how things went—you don’t look out for one thing and then the other comes up and hits you on the back of the head: What if she woke up when he planned to lift her out of Cole’s seat at the temple on Lido Key? How could he lay her down somewhere then? But now she was as up as Cole used to get after a good nap, sitting straight, pushing her hair back from her eyes, looking out at dark, sleeping Bradenton.
“I’m hungry.”
“It’s late, Francie. You go back to sleep till we get to your mama’s house.”
He glanced up at her in the rearview. She seemed to take in what he’d said: Sleeping, then her mama.
“My name is Franny.”
“Franny.” He smiled at her in the mirror. He liked her spunk, but what would come of it? Spunk turns to sassy turns to bitch turns to whore. Just like her mama. Who’s to say this runt wouldn’t grow up into another Spring? Another Marianne? Just smiling and shaking her tits and leading you on till you’re broke and your Visa’s full and you’re holding your dick in your hand?