Authors: Emily Gray Tedrowe
On cue, her phone went off in her hands. Lacey held it and watched the 914 number blink and repeat, blink and repeat, Jim’s number. It rang three, four, five times. From the curb the teens stared.
“You gonna get that already?”
Lacey ignored them. The phone warmed in her hands, and its display changed to
MISSED CALL
. The ringing stopped. She let out a long shaky exhale.
Oh, now you’re proud? The incredulous voice inside her head. For doing what every decent wife does without a second thought? For pretending you are one?
The teens were harassing a slow-moving homeless guy. One imitated his junkie lean, the other knocked a plastic bag out of his hand.
They’ll all find out what you did. Eddie will find out. Otis. Martine will. All the women in your group, everyone at the gym—
“Hey!” Lacey yelled over their laughter.
The phone clattered onto stone as Lacey stormed down the stairs barefoot. “Get out of here! Leave him alone. Get going now.” She picked up the man’s bag and gave it to him with a gentle shove on his way.
“What’s your problem,” one of the kids said, stepping to her. The friend smiled.
“Don’t mess with me,” Lacey said. “Not tonight. Get the fuck off my block, or I’ll call the police.”
“Ooh.”
“My kid’s asleep up there and if he wakes up because I’m hollering at a couple of fools I will
really
be pissed. Move.”
“Maybe we will, maybe we—”
“Mr. Reynolds?” Lacey let out the full force of her voice but didn’t take her eyes off the punks. A window opened in the upper floor of a two-flat nearby. “Can you give the station a call about some loitering down here?”
“Shit,” muttered one of the teens.
“Cyn already did,” Mr. Reynolds called back, weary. “Could everyone shut up now?”
“Shut up!” someone else yelled.
“Fat fucking bitch,” one of the teens said. “Ugly old bitch.” But they were moving off. Lacey almost wished they weren’t; her heart was pounding, amped for more of a fight. Then her energy rushed away. She went slowly back up her stairs, feet sore on the pavement and breasts chafing, alone, alone, lonely and she deserved it.
Ellen sat in her car, parked on Denham across the street from the run-down building where Jane lived. Rain poured off the sagging eaves, the rotten wood porch, a quilt someone had left hanging over a plastic chair in the disheveled front yard. Waiting for a break in the downpour, she was also trying to gather her courage. On her lap was a tote bag filled with peace offerings: homemade carrot bread, spirulina-seaweed mix from the health food store, two paperback books on animal activism from A Room of One’s Own, the local feminist bookstore.
A sharp knock on the passenger-side window made her start. “No,” she called, before fully registering the sodden man peering in at her. He was mumbling something she couldn’t hear in the splattering rain, pointing upward and then back at her. “I’m sorry—no,” Ellen said, motioning him away. She had to assume he was asking for change, but he just stared at her and repeated what he’d said, pointing up and then back at her car. After a moment he shook his head and moved off down the block, soon dissolving from sight.
As soon as he was gone, Ellen gathered her things and pulled up her raincoat hood. She was spooked, and not just by the panhandler. Why did Jane insist on living here, in cruddy willfulness? Why did she always make things so hard? Most of all, would she listen to reason today? It was Ellen’s last chance, if she had gauged the time right.
On her dash across the street she narrowly avoided a giant crack in the road, but she slowed at the rail-less front stairs, no matter the rain, testing each slippery step before she committed. Then Jane was there, bare legged in the storm, grasping her arm, pulling her up and into the house.
“You’re barely dressed,” Ellen gasped. Water poured off both of them in the dark, humid foyer.
“I was watching you through the window and I thought you were going to drown,” Jane said, laughing. “Come on. I’ll get us towels.” She pointed her mother toward the front room and disappeared into the back of the house. Ellen wiped her eyes and surveyed the crowded, messy hallway. She draped her raincoat over someone’s bike and tugged off her rainboots.
Such a shame, what had happened to this house. The front room, which had beautiful bay windows and the shell of a crumbled fireplace, was filled with Salvation Army furniture. The plank wood floors were scraped and warped, and water stains climbed the walls to buckle ripples of plaster up and down. Ellen, in stocking feet, eyed a dark blotch the size of an opened umbrella in the corner of the ceiling.
“You know that might be mold,” she said when Jane returned, pointing. Jane now in sweatpants, still bare feet, handed her a damp towel.
“Yep, might be.”
Okay. Go carefully
. “I brought you a couple of things. The man at Willy Street said to tell you they have the algae back in stock now. I think I heard that right … did he mean actual algae?”
Jane seized the bag and held up the spirulina bottle triumphantly. “Lifesaver! But I’m going to have to hide this,” she said, glancing back at the stairs. “We’ve got some sticky fingers around here.”
Meanwhile, Ellen scanned as much of her daughter’s body as she could without getting caught. No visible signs of her pregnancy, thank God, although the baggy T-shirt and sweatpants would disguise whatever there could be at this point. With her hair tied back and her face scrunched up as she read the ingredients on the back of her expensive vitamin powder, Jane was suddenly
Jane
and Ellen threw both arms around her daughter and pulled her close. Jane wrapped one arm around her mother’s back and Ellen felt the prick of tears beginning. Unfortunately, she also smelled the funky towel she’d been given, and it made her recoil.
“Let’s go out for lunch,” she said. “My treat. You pick where.”
“I made tamales,” Jane said, frowning. The moment of the hug was over. “It took all morning, but whatever, if you don’t want to be here—”
“No—it’s fine, fine, of course! I just didn’t want you to go to any trouble.”
Stop it,
Ellen told herself. She put the towel down on a card table, on top of a copy of the
Isthmus
(“Pentagon Surveillance of Anti-War Groups Extends to Madison”) and steeled herself to follow Jane into the kitchen. There looked to be at least six places set at the large Formica table in the middle of the room—but then she saw that these were used, dirty dishes abandoned after previous meals.
“Right here, Mom,” Jane said, amusement in her voice. Ellen sat where she was told and laid her napkin in her lap. Jane bustled at the counter and the stove, filling plates, chattering about how great her taping was for Serena’s students’ project and if only they hadn’t had to edit her portion down to fit the program. Almost the whole house had come to support her, and yeah, they’d been pretty rowdy but that was part of taking action. The grad students had wanted her to talk about Mike and stay personal but Jane insisted on bringing in facts from iraqbodycount.org.
They began to eat. Ellen expressed delight at the tamales and salad, she didn’t mention the greasiness of her water glass. When a bearded, shirtless man walked in, filled a teakettle, and then left, Jane took no notice and so Ellen pretended not to also.
“When she gets up I want you to meet Melanie,” Jane said. “She’s going to teach me how to puree all different kinds of things—not just basic fruits and vegetables, but entrées or entire dinners too. Like tamales! Babies can eat actual human food, you don’t need to give them that processed slop that comes in pricy little jars.” She took a big bite of human food herself, eyes wide and innocent.
Ellen’s heart sank. “Oh, Janie. You can’t. You need to … I want you to think about this. We need to think about what you’re planning to do!”
“I have thought about it.”
“How can you have a baby? Now, in your life the way it is.”
“I’m going to ignore that last part, but, ‘how can I have a baby?’ Same way billions of women around the planet do, Mom. Not everyone has to have a perfect designer nursery all set up in advance. This is happening, you can stop being in denial now.”
“You’re not ready! There’s so much time for this, later in your life, when you’re more settled, after school and finding a real job—”
“Do you think pregnant women in Baghdad are stressing about getting their lives in order, getting some
degree
before they—”
“What does that have to do w—”
“They’re too busy worrying about us shelling their homes or raping their sisters—”
Ellen stood up, but where could she go? The rain had stopped. She stacked a bunch of old dirty plates and carried them over to the filthy sink.
“Babies don’t need all this stuff, the crib, the plastic toys, a black-and-white mobile so you can train their eyesight … they just need love. And breast milk.”
Scrubbing viciously at crusted-on food, Ellen blinked away angry tears. “And insurance? Doctor’s fees? Diapers, clothes, a car seat?”
“Cloth diapers, duh,” Jane said, but quietly. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do!” Ellen nearly shouted. The teakettle whistled, a breathy screech.
“And so now you’re kicking me off the medical plan? Now, when I actually need it? Fine. I’m sure there are plenty of clinics downtown—”
“Who is the father?” Ellen went back and sat down, holding a wet sponge. “You can tell me. Sweetheart, please.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Jane’s face closed down.
“Is it … someone who lives here?” On cue, the bearded man came in to pour his tea. Jane shook her head.
“He’s out of the picture,” she said.
“From work? From school?”
“No, Mom. It’s not—you don’t understand. Just forget it.”
Could this guy take any longer to make a cup of tea? Ellen sent a glare at his chubby bare back. “So
help
me understand. At the very least he needs—” She dropped her voice. “He needs to contribute! I don’t want you to go into this alone.”
“Are you kidding? I live with fifteen people. I’d kill for a little alone time.” At the counter, the bearded man snorted.
“If you’re going to joke about this,” Ellen said, and stopped when her voice broke.
“Well how do you think it is for me, Mom? Remember? That it is about me? When I hear you saying you’re going to have nothing to do with my baby, with your own grandchild—”
“Stop it. Don’t try to make me feel guilty for asking you to think clearly, for once in your life, about what it means to bring a child into the world. You have no sense of reality!”
“Wait a minute,
I
have no sense of reality?” Jane was standing, shaking. The man quietly slipped from the room with his tea. “Do you even know where Michael is right now? And don’t say ‘Iraq.’ Can you say anything specific about the cities or provinces where he’s stationed, the missions he’s undertaken, the things he’s done?”
Ellen open and closed her mouth. Humidity in the soiled kitchen pressed in on her.
“You’ve written him a thousand letters but do you even care about what’s actually going on over there? Did you know he’s been promoted? That he’s now—”
“Lance corporal,” Ellen finished. “Sit down, Jane. Let’s be calm.”
“What do you think some grunt has to do to get promoted out there?” her daughter shrieked. “How many kills earns you that?”
Ellen went around the table and tried to hold her, all thoughts of the pregnancy scattered by confusion and concern. Why had she jumped to this, why now? Startled by the girl’s feverish vehemence, Ellen only wanted to soothe her. But she was at an odd angle, trying to embrace Jane from the side—her shoulder and upper arm blocked the way. For a moment, Jane let her mother stroke her hair, lean into her, and whisper
it’s all right, it will be all right
. But then she jerked away.
“You know more about Edith Wharton’s bowel movements than you do about the real world,” Jane said coldly. “So don’t lecture me.” Ellen let go of her daughter’s arm. And then she did something she thought she might regret: she left the room. She walked down the long dark hallway, ignoring a few heads above, poked out over the railing in curiosity. Jane followed—
don’t overreact, you don’t have to go, I’m just saying what everyone—
To tell the truth, Ellen wasn’t listening carefully. She put on her raincoat and soggy boots, tripping over the jumbled mess in the foyer.
“Fine,” she said, to stop Jane from going on. “Fine, go ahead!”
“Go ahead with what?”
“With your baby, your life—fine. What do I know.”
“Mom. Mom!”
Ellen blindly pushed herself outside, taking the rickety porch steps as fast as she dared, nearly running across the street to her car. She was crying from frustration at herself as much as anything else. One or two ugly comments from her sneering, troubled daughter? Was that all it took to unhinge her motherly equanimity? What a poor showing. She should get herself together and go back in. She would get over her own hurt and focus on the real problem: Jane’s situation. But the more minutes Ellen sat in the front seat of her car, the more impossible it seemed, to cross that street again, to go back into that crumbled bad-smelling house. To face Jane.
Eventually, she started the engine. A sodden orange envelope obstructed the windshield; Ellen lowered the window to reach it.
Parking violation, maximum fine. $250.
By leaning all the way across the passenger seat it was possible to read the street sign directly above her car, the one she hadn’t seen in the downpour, the one that man knocking at the window must have been trying to alert her to.
FIRE LANE; EMERGENCY ZONE; NO PARKING ANYTIME.
* * *
Weeks went by. Ellen expected a call from Jane; maybe Jane expected a call from her. The worst heat of August had settled low over the city and wouldn’t budge. Neighborhood groups formed early-morning water-watches, patrolling for illegal predawn yard sprinklers during the water shortage. Ellen gave up on everything except mowing the grass (a teenager on her block came every two weeks, give or take a week); the lobelia had faded earlier than any other summer, and her favorite patch of wild bergamot never even bloomed. E-mails from Mark Carroll, department chair, went unopened, as did an official-looking one from the assistant dean. It was too hot to cook, too hot to make plans with anyone. Paul called as usual, but Ellen turned down his invitations. She ate little, she slept during the day in fitful naps that left her more tired than before.