The Lit Report (15 page)

“Hey, Julia,” he said as we walked in. “Boone's holding out on me. Wanna give it a shot?”

“Sure,” I said. I put my pack down on a chair and took Boone from him. “But I'm not singing some lame-ass Beach Boys' song to him.” I started to waltz around the room humming “Edelweiss,” of all things. What can I say? I love
The Sound of Music
. Always have. When we were little, Ruth always insisted on being both Captain von Trapp and Maria in our bedroom productions. Jonah, if we could talk him into it, had the thankless role of Rolf the Nazi boy as well as all the male von Trapp children. I was all the nuns and all the girls. Today I was the Captain—firm, sensitive,
musically gifted. Ruth came in with Jane, followed by Jonah, who was loaded down like a Sherpa. A hot white Sherpa in Tommy Hilfiger jeans and a tight T-shirt. I stopped singing. The biceps were very distracting.

“Where should I put these, sir?” he asked my dad.

Dad gestured up the stairs. “Third door on the left, past the bathroom.”

Jonah nodded and disappeared up the stairs, with Ruth and Jane behind him. I had just launched into a passionate rendition of “Do-Re-Mi,” when Boone let loose with a huge belch. About a gallon of formula cascaded down the front of my shirt.

“Crap,” I said, reaching for a towel.

“That comes later,” Dad said. “He's pretty much mastered the sucking part. Now if only he'd move on to actual digestion.”

“How's Miki?” I asked as I dabbed ineffectually at the mess.

“Pretty much the same.” He shrugged. “Maybe a bit better. It's hard to tell. She gave Boone part of a bottle yesterday, and at least she's come out of the depression chamber.”

I laughed as much as his bad joke deserved and said, “She knows Ruth and Jane are coming, right?”

“Yeah. I told her. Her exact words were ‘Whatever. I don't care.' Which aren't words I'm used to hearing from her, as you know.”

I laughed, since he seemed to be trying to make a joke, but it wasn't very funny. Miki's indifference was good for Ruth and Jane, but it still wasn't funny. Boone hiccuped in my arms, and I felt a different kind of dampness spread across my T-shirt.

“Want me to take him?” Dad asked. “I'm an ace diaperer.”

“Me too,” I replied. “Why don't you go have a shower? I'm going to clean Boone up, and then I'll check on Ruth. Jonah brought stuff to make fajitas, so just relax.”

He nodded and ran his hand over Boone's head. “Relax, huh? I'll give it a shot. See you later, little guy,” he said. “You're in good hands.”

MIKI WOULDN'T JOIN
us for dinner even though she loves fajitas; when Dad brought her tray back down, it looked as if she had picked at the chicken and ignored everything else, even her favorite hot sauce.

I finished burping Boone, changed him and took him up to bed. He slept beside Dad's side of the bed, in a super-cute bassinet with a Bert and Ernie theme. Miki was sitting up in bed, watching
TV
. Miki hates
TV
. Especially reality
TV
.

“Hey, Julia,” she said. “Check this out.” She pointed at the screen. “They're swimming in a vat of leeches.”

I put Boone in his bassinet and covered him with a soft flannel blanket. The room smelled, as Ruth would say, like ass. A half-empty bottle of Shiraz sat on the night table.

I sat on the edge of the bed and watched a heavily tattooed, big-breasted woman in a bikini lower herself into the vat. Gross. I didn't know what to say. The woman in the bed didn't look at all like the woman my dad had married. For a start, she was really skinny and her breath was rank. Her skin was pale and flaky. Her teeth were yellow. Her nails were bitten. Her lips were chapped. The shadows under her eyes looked like spilled ink. In fact, she looked as if she had barely survived a dip in a vat of leeches. That whole new-mother glow that was illuminating Ruth seemed to have bypassed Miki altogether. I didn't get it. Miki had every-thing—money, a loving husband, a great job, a fabulous house. Ruth had nothing. It didn't make sense. Was it all just a big hormonal crapshoot?

“We missed you at dinner, Miki,” I finally said. “Ruth's here, with Jane. I, um, wanted to thank you for taking them in. Our place is so small and—”

“I know. Your dad told me. He says Jane's adorable, and Ruth's a great mom.” Her eyes filled with tears and she turned away from me and burrowed under the covers. I stroked her leg and watched her back shudder. I couldn't think of anything more to say. After a while she and Boone both seemed to be asleep, so I turned off the
TV
and tiptoed
out of the room. As I was leaving, a faint and sorrowful voice wafted from the bed. “When something is wrong with my baby,” Miki sang, “something is wrong with me.” It was kind of backward, but I knew what she meant.

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

—Harper Lee,
To Kill a Mockingbird

I would have liked to name Ruth's baby Scout, after the main character in
To Kill a Mockingbird
, but Demi Moore and Bruce Willis scooped me, and I wouldn't want anyone to think that I named a baby after a celebrity's kid. I also toyed with the name Harper, but in the end, Jane just suited her better. Don't ask me why. Something about her eyes, maybe. It would be amazing if she ended up writing one of the greatest novels of all time, like Harper Lee, but I sure hope she turns out to be a bit more outgoing. I mean, Harper Lee wrote this one great book and then—nothing. She hung around with Truman Capote while he wrote
In Cold Blood
, and she won the Pulitzer Prize, but she never published another novel and she never gives interviews. I'm not even sure she's alive. How sad is that? Maybe I'll never
write another word after I finish this book, but I'm pretty sure that no short guy with a lisp and bad taste in hats will ever replace Ruth as my best friend. And you can be damn sure that, if this book becomes a bestseller, I'll be selling the movie rights to the highest bidder, giving interviews to
Vanity Fair
and
Rolling Stone
and going to as many red-carpet events as possible. Ruth will be my date, and I will name my first son Atticus because by then I'll be a celebrity and Demi and Bruce will be old news. Maybe they could play Ruth's parents in the movie.

Two days after Ruth moved in at my dad's, someone banged on the front door and I opened it to find Pete and Peggy on the doorstep, Bibles in hand (I kid you not), flecks of foam on their lips. Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit about the foam, but it wasn't long before Pete was frothing at the mouth in the living room, where Ruth was nursing Jane in Dad's favorite brown leather recliner, the only evidence of his former bachelor existence. I perched on the arm of the chair, ready to take Jane upstairs if things got ugly, which seemed inevitable. Peggy didn't say anything; she just cleared a space on the love seat opposite Ruth and fixed her gaze on her granddaughter.

“Cover yourself,” Pete barked as he shielded Peggy's eyes from the sight of Ruth's bare breasts. Peggy swatted his hand away and continued to stare at Jane. “Have you no shame? No sense of decency? Who is the father of this child?”
Pete continued in classic Pastor Pete style. He remained standing, looming over us like a trailer park prophet in his Wal-Mart jeans and stained white wifebeater. Talk about no sense of decency. “Who planted the demon seed in your tender young womb?”

Ruth laughed, which was probably unwise. “Johnny Appleseed,” she said.

“You think this is funny?” Pete roared. “You dare to mock me?” Jane stopped nursing and swiveled her head toward the noise.

“Pete,” Peggy whispered, tugging at his hand. “You promised.” She continued to stare at Jane the way an anorexic looks at a piece of fudge cake—with adoration and disgust.

Pete glared at Peggy. “Tell me,” he hissed, “on that baby's innocent soul. Tell me the father's name.”

“I don't know,” Ruth said. Peggy gasped and Pete lowered himself down beside her on the love seat.

“You don't know?” he said. “How can you not know?” As the answer dawned on him, he lowered his head and brought the Bible to his lips.

“That's right, Dad. There was more than one guy. And I don't care. Even if I did know, I wouldn't tell you. JJ's mine. Not his, not yours. Mine.”

Pete shook his head as if a wasp was strafing him. “I don't believe you,” he said. “You're just trying to protect him.
Tell me his name. If you marry him, the baby's soul will be saved. You can come home with us, and the baby will be raised to walk the path of righteousness. We'll see to that. I promise you.”

Ruth shook her head vehemently. “The baby's name is Jane, Dad. Jane Julia Walters. And we're not coming home. Even if I knew who the father was, I wouldn't marry him. And as far as the path of righteousness goes—I've been down that path, and this is where it led me.”

When Ruth said Jane's full name, I couldn't stop grinning, which made Pete even angrier. He looked as if he was going to have a stroke. His face was the color of borscht, and sweat was beaded on his upper lip. “I wash my hands of you, harlot,” he said. “I have done all I can.” He stood up, towering over his wife. “We have no daughter; we have no granddaughter. You and your child will burn in the eternal fires of hell. On your head be it.”

“Pete,” Peggy whimpered as he yanked her to her feet.

Ruth remained in the recliner, eyes shiny with tears. Her freckles stood out on her pale cheeks like cinnamon sprinkles on cappuccino foam. “Mom?” she said in a small voice. “Don't you even want to hold her?”

Peggy pulled away from Pete and moved toward Ruth, but Pete was too fast for her. He grabbed her elbow and hauled her toward the door. “Wife, submit yourself unto your husband,” he yelled as he dragged her out of the house.
The sound of her sobs lingered in the air and performed a sad duet with Ruth's own.

Ruth switched Jane to her other breast, and we sat together as Jane suckled and Ruth cried. I missed the old Ruth—the one who would have yelled at her father and thrown a lamp at his head. I massaged Ruth's neck and wondered what it would feel like to have a father who was so full of hatred and a mother who was ignorant and weak. Ruth had always treated her parents like quaint relics of a bygone age or strange members of a tribe whose customs were, at worst, mystifying and, at best, amusing, but this was way past mystifying, and it sure wasn't amusing. If it was me, I'd probably become bitter and twisted, so it totally took me by surprise when Ruth stopped crying, blew her nose on the edge of the receiving blanket and said, “I feel so sorry for her.”

“Jesus, Ruth. Why?”

“She's a prisoner. You saw the way she was looking at JJ?”

“Yeah.”

“She wants to help—I can see it in her eyes—but she's been brainwashed.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But she's still an asshole.”

“Don't call her that,” Ruth said, sounding more like her old dangerous self. “I can call her that, but you can't. She'll find a way to see me. Maybe not right now, but when Dad calms down...”

“You could be right,” I said. “I hope you are.” When hippos fly, I thought.

Ruth stood up and handed Jane to me to burp. For some reason I had become the go-to burper in the house. Dad called me the Belch Whisperer. All my clothes were stained and sour-smelling, but I didn't care. It was my badge of courage.

“Don't be such a Jem,” Ruth said as she buttoned up her shirt.

“A what?”

“A Jem—you know—Scout's brother in
To Kill a Mockingbird
. He got all bent out of shape about all the evil in the world. Don't be like that. It doesn't help.”

I was stunned. “You actually read
To Kill a Mockingbird?
” I asked. To the best of my knowledge, the last book Ruth had read voluntarily was
The Poky Little Puppy
, which she liked because there were pictures of rice pudding and strawberry shortcake.

“Yeah,” she replied. “I knew it was, like, your favorite book and I wanted to see what the deal was.”

“And?”

“And I get it. I'm not an idiot. So can we stop talking about it and get something to eat? I'm always starving after Jane feeds.”

“Okay,” I said. “And Ruth?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“For what?” she asked.

“For the second J.”

“You deserve it,” she said. “So
now
will you call her JJ?”

“Not a chance,” I said.

Ruth rolled her eyes and threw a cushion at my head.

RUTH'S FIRST VISITORS
, after her parents, were Maria and Mark. He and I sat on the deck outside the dining room, sipping Pepsi and dipping chips into a big bowl of Maria's homemade salsa, while she checked out both sets of mothers and babies.

“So, Mom says you did a great job delivering Jane. It's pretty cool, huh?”

I nodded, my mouth full of chips, and he continued, “I used to help my mom out all the time, but when I hit puberty, some of her ‘ladies' got a little weirded out with having me around. Guess they didn't want me looking at their, uh...”

“Snatches?” Ruth said as she joined us, cradling Boone in her right arm and clutching a baby monitor in her other hand.

Mark blushed and stood up. “I should get going,” he mumbled.

“Not so fast,” Ruth said, handing Boone to Mark. “Make yourself useful. Jane's asleep, but it's burp time for Boone.
Miki actually fed him today, but she hates burping him for some reason. I didn't want to push it.”

I stood back to watch Mark's technique, which involved a lot of hip swiveling (it looked like the samba), accompanied by clockwise patting. Boone usually held out for at least ten minutes before he projectile-vomited all over me, but Mark was obviously an old pro—Boone delivered the goods in record time, with no accompanying gush of formula. Maybe it was a guy thing. Mark held Boone up in front of him, grinned and said, “Way to go, buddy. Lookin' good.” Boone smiled, and I felt a trickle of jealousy run down my spine. I'd rather be spit up on any day.