The Lit Report (16 page)

“I'll take him now,” I said, holding out my arms.

Mark blew a juicy raspberry on Boone's tummy, wrinkled his nose and said, “Good, ‘cause I don't do diapers. See you ladies later.”

The next visitor was Brandy, who came armed with candy and gossip. Ruth devoured both. I'm not sure which she enjoyed more. Maybe the candy, but it was a close call. Apparently everyone from school knew that Ruth had had a baby, which didn't surprise me. All Mark had to do was tell one person. Before too long, kids were passing around some really insane stuff: Ruth had had triplets, the delivery had taken place inside a pentangle under a full moon, the baby was black. The best one, which Rachel Greaves circulated, was that I had performed an emergency C-section with a
steak knife and had stitched Ruth up with fishing line. Ruth thought the rumors were hilarious. I thought none of them were as unbelievable or even as interesting as the truth.

“Tell them I weigh three hundred pounds and my hair has fallen out,” she told Brandy. “Tell them the baby's father is an albino circus dwarf. Tell them I fucked an alien and gave birth in a
UFO
.”

“Tell them the truth,” I suggested to Brandy. “She got pregnant the first time she had sex, her baby was delivered by her best friend, her parents kicked her out, the baby's beautiful and Ruth's an awesome mother.”

Ruth rolled her eyes. “What's wrong with you, Jules?” she said. “Tell them I've converted to Kabbalah and Madonna is my real mom,” she told Brandy. “Tell them anything you like.”

“I'll do my best,” Brandy said, “but it'll be hard to top the albino circus dwarf thing. Who is the father, anyway?”

“Nobody,” Ruth said. “Just a guy.”

STEWART AND MARSHALL
turned up one night and made dinner for everybody. It was Miki's first meal with us since Ruth had moved in, and she only came downstairs because Stewart lured her with the promise of a vodka martini (straight up with a twist) and a floor show. I don't know if it was the vodka or the fact that a teenage Korean Dean
Martin look-alike delivered the invitation that got her out of bed. I guess it doesn't really matter, although I think it hurt my dad's feelings. He'd been trying to tempt her downstairs for weeks. Maybe if he'd dressed up like Sammy Davis Jr. and promised to sing “Candy Man” she would have come down sooner. Who knows? The important thing was that she joined us.

The dinner was fifties-themed and tasty in a kind of gross, over-processed way: Tang, Chex mix, onion dip, tuna and potato chip casserole, iceberg lettuce with Thousand Island dressing, and Bananas Foster for dessert. After dinner Stewart and Marshall did a Martin and Lewis routine that had everybody pissing their pants. Even Miki, who ordinarily acted like she'd had her funny bone surgically removed. Ruth laughed at all the jokes, but she kept telling everyone to keep it down so that we wouldn't wake the babies. Miki lay on the couch, martini in hand, and guffawed loudly at everything Stewart and Marshall said. It was like being in an old
Twilight Zone
episode where two women switch personalities after their babies are born. It freaked me out. I wanted the old Ruth back—the one who gnawed her fingernails until they bled and once took a dump on center ice at the hockey rink. She really hates hockey, and she wanted to see how long it took for shit to freeze. I even wanted the old Miki back—the one who bit the heads off interns and would never in a million years laugh at an
anti-Semitic joke. Boone and Jane slept through it all in a playpen in the dining room. I was saying goodbye to Stewart and Marshall at the front door when Boone started to cry. Dad was in the kitchen cleaning up and Ruth was in the bathroom. Miki was already halfway up the stairs. She hesitated, turned and came back down. Slowly. She stood over Boone for a minute before she plucked him out of the playpen and headed for the kitchen.

Things were looking up.

JONAH CAME OVER
a lot, but we didn't have a lot of time alone. Even so, I shaved my legs every day, worked on my tan, did a hundred sit-ups every morning, listened to creepy jazz and made him his favorite banana–chocolate chip muffins. But he still spent all his time with the only female in the house who shit herself on a regular basis and didn't know the difference between Monk and Miles.

“I'm going to be gone soon, Julia,” he said one day in late August as we sat outside with Jane in the shade of the plum tree. Ruth was feeding Boone inside, and Miki was sleeping. Dad had gone back to work. It was as alone as we got.

“I know,” I said, hoping he was going to profess his undying love for me. Jane was lying on her back, gurgling and waving her arms and legs like a doodlebug. A really cute
doodlebug in a Baby Gap T-shirt. Jonah stretched out beside her on the blanket and rubbed her tummy. She burped and he laughed. Maybe I was missing something. I took a big gulp of my iced tea and belched loudly. Jonah looked up at me and frowned.

“Oops,” I said. “My bad.” I thought I looked and sounded adorable. I also wondered if I was losing my mind.

“S'okay,” Jonah said as he turned back to Jane. No “Wait for me”; no “Run away to Vancouver with me.” I glared at the back of his head for a few minutes before I got up and stomped into the house. For the first time ever, I wanted to punch him instead of kiss him.

“What's up with you and Jonah?” Ruth asked from the recliner.

“Nothing,” I said. “He's just reminded me that he's leaving. As if I could forget.” I started to unload the dishwasher, slamming the plates into the cupboard, hurling the knives and forks into a drawer.

“Why are you being such a selfish jerk?” said Ruth.

“I'm being a jerk?” I squeaked. “What about him?”

“He's leaving, Julia. As in going away and not coming back. It's a pretty big deal. The last thing he needs is a girlfriend back home messing things up for him.”

“You think that's what I'll do—mess things up for him?”

“Yeah—in a way.”

“What way?” I demanded. “It can't be any worse than what you've done. Talk about messing things up.”

Ruth shrugged and shifted Boone onto her shoulder. “That's different. We're family. He'll get used to being away from us. You're way more distracting.”

I laughed. Me—distracting. Studious, sensible Julia Riley,
femme fatale
.

“So I guess I can take that as a compliment, huh?” I said. “I'm so hot he can't concentrate?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, it's bullshit and it's so not your business.”

She shrugged again and stood up. “He's my brother, Jules. What can I say? I want what's best for him.”

“Like I don't?” I yelled.

“Don't yell in front of the baby,” Ruth said. Since when was she such a self-righteous bitch?

“I'll yell if I like. Give him to me. You know he likes me to burp him.”

“Not when you're upset. Babies pick up on vibes.”

All of a sudden I couldn't take it anymore. Nothing was turning out the way I had planned. I had no boyfriend, my best friend had turned into a Stepford mommy, my half-brother puked on me every chance he got, my zombie stepmother had abandoned all pretense of personal hygiene, and my dad was too worried about his wife and new kid to give his first-born child a second thought. I had no future with
Jonah. My little fantasy of sharing an apartment with Ruth in New York had crashed and burned. There were no survivors. I had no future. Period.

“I'm going home,” I said stiffly. “Tell Jonah goodbye for me.”

I kissed Boone's cheek. “Bye, little guy,” I whispered. “Be good.”

I grabbed my pack and walked home. The one person in the world I wanted to see was reading on our tiny balcony. She looked up and smiled as I came in. I burst into tears and she stood up and put her arms around me. She smelled like vanilla with a slight hint of bleach, which was a lot better than rancid baby vomit and dirty diapers, but it made me cry even harder. I'm not a pretty crier. Rivers of snot gushed out my nose; my mouth opened in a wail of despair. She stroked my hair and rocked me in her arms just the way she did when I was ten years old and Kelly Sims didn't invite me to her birthday party. We stood swaying on the balcony until my sobs subsided to pathetic gasping moans. She staggered slightly under my weight, and I hiccuped and stepped back, wiping my nose on the sleeve of my T-shirt. Her blouse was damp, but otherwise she looked the way she always does: neat, composed, hyper-alert. It takes a lot more than snot to phase my mother. I'd never really appreciated that before.

“Rough day at the baby farm?” she asked.

I nodded and sniffled a bit more. “Ruth and I need a break from each other. She's just so full of herself. Like having a baby makes her better than me or something. I mean, Jane's alive because of me. Ruth would have had an abortion if I hadn't helped her. And now she's all, like... super-maternal and shit.” I stopped and took a breath. My mother looked bemused but attentive. “And Miki, well, Miki's just nuts.” Mom's right eyebrow rose. I'd fill her in later, but I doubted news of Miki's incompetence would give Mom any joy. She's just not like that. She's all
hate the sin, love the sinner
,
turn the other cheek, judge not lest ye be judged
. I was in a judgmental, hate-the-sinner, slap-the-bitch mode. “I need to go back to school,” I continued. “Read some books without diagrams of the birth canal, get my life back. Graduate. Date. Go to parties. Think about a career. Ruth's on her own. Jonah too. I'm out.”

“Okay,” Mom said. She didn't argue with me or ask me questions or even tell me things would get better. She didn't appear to be awaiting divine guidance. She just patted my cheek and asked me what I wanted for dinner. I was so glad to be home.

I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods.

—Truman Capote,
Breakfast at Tiffany's

I was a little hard on Truman Capote before. After all, he wrote
Breakfast at Tiffany's
, which was made into an awesome movie. I saw the movie first and then I read the book, which is unusual for me. I still like the movie better. To start with, Audrey Hepburn is totally gorgeous. Sure, her eyebrows look like they were drawn on with a wide black felt marker and her voice sounds like she's got a glob of peanut butter stuck in her throat, but she's still seriously beautiful. My mom wasn't allowed to watch
Breakfast at Tiffany's
when she was a teenager. My Nana thought it might give my mom ideas, which is so dumb. It's not like Holly Golightly's a hooker in the hot pants, stiletto boots, blow-job-in-an-alley sense of the word. In the book she says she's only had eleven lovers—eleven rich lovers who adore her and pay for her
companionship, which may or may not include sex. They get amazing arm candy; she gets jewelry, designer gowns, a satin sleep mask and George Peppard for a best friend. The smooth, blond, tasty, pre-
A-Team
George Peppard. Some of the girls at school have had more than eleven lovers by the time they're sixteen, and yeah, I know, they're not getting paid for it, but still...everyone gets something out of the deal, even in high school. My mom and I have watched
Breakfast
together a few times, even though it's probably not on
Christianity Today
's Top Ten list. We pull on long gloves, douse ourselves in
4711
perfume, put our hair up in French twists and sing along to “Moon River.” We always cry. It makes perfect sense to me that Paul and Holly love each other: they're both outsiders, even though Paul is sort of dull and Holly is, let's face it, a total wack job. Holly has friends with weird names—Sally Tomato, Rusty Trawler, Jose Ybarra-Jaeger. Paul has Holly. He gives her a St Christopher's medal; she gives him an empty birdcage. I could write you a ten-page paper on the significance of those gifts. Or on why Holly says, “I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart.” I'm going to have that put on T-shirts and give them as Christmas gifts. And don't get me started on why Mickey Rooney was cast as Holly's Japanese neighbor, Mr. Yunioshi. That's just all kinds of wrong. Wars have been started over less.

The big difference between the movie and the book is that, in the book, the narrator (who never reveals his name)
and Holly are friends, not lovers. A lot of that has to do with the narrator (and the author) being gay, but I like the idea that people can love each other deeply without sex messing it up. I thought about that a lot after I went back to my mom's. I wondered if maybe that's the way Jonah and I were headed. We'd never really had sex anyway, so would it be so terrible to back off the whole thing and try and be friends?

I WENT BACK
to my old routine—Dad's house on Saturday, church with Mom on Sunday, back to Dad's for dinner—but Jonah was never there when I was, and he didn't call. I missed seeing the babies all the time, and I really missed Ruth, but every time I saw her she was busy with Jane, so I spent my time with Miki and Boone. Miki had started taking some kind of medication, and she didn't spend all her time locked away in the decompression room anymore. Maybe Ruth's Super-Mom routine had kick-started Miki's competitive streak. Whatever it was, Miki was way better. She still needed help with Boone, and she spent a lot of time sleeping, but she fed him and changed his diapers and took him for walks. Dad was thrilled.

“You girls ever going to make up?” Miki asked one day when we were taking Boone for a walk in his bright orange Bugaboo stroller (with
UV
-block parasol!). Trust Miki to buy
the Ferrari of strollers, although I have to admit, it's pretty cool. “Ruth seems kind of down,” she added.

“She seems okay to me,” I said. “She's always all ‘Oh, I have to sterilize Boone's bottles' or ‘I'm freezing a batch of organic applesauce for when the babies start on solid food.' Brandy's even offered to babysit so Ruth can go out for coffee with me, but Ruth's always got something more important to do, like clean Jane's ears or clip her fingernails. It's pretty obvious she doesn't want me around.”