Love Like That, page 5
Mercy had a sewing kit in the office.
“Mercy sews?” Ruth asked. Trembling, she put on gloves. She looked for the thinnest needle and held it under a match. She dipped his thumb in a cup of iodine, and then draped his legs with a clean apron. He used to be a fisherman, working with his brothers all the way down to the Georges Bank, until one of them drowned. For a minute, Ruth stared at his hand—his knuckles scarred, the skin honeycombed and red, lined like a map.
She reached for his wrist and turned it over. A long, white gash ran along his palm, trailing out from a bigger mark in the center, like a star with a tail.
“Jesus,” she said.
“A beauty, huh? Took a hook in it off Boothbay and got pulled in. Got helicoptered to Boston. My heart stopped cold in the air, and they jumped it back to life.” She held the threaded needle now. His thumb was rusted with iodine, and blood was dripping into the apron on his lap. There was more of that egg in her eye now, a whole omelet. She blinked over and over.
“Okay, so—” she said. “So I guess I’ll just—”
“You’re such a fucking fruit.” He took the needle, exhaled, and pressed it into his skin. He bared his teeth and hissed through them. “All right?” he said.
She took the needle from him and tried to steady her hands.
“Want a drink?” he said.
“Sure,” she said. “Fine.” He stood up and got a bottle from the freezer. He pulled her bottom lip open with his good thumb and tipped the rim to her mouth. A few cold beads of vodka slid down her chin and into her collar.
“I don’t live with Mercy’s mother, you know.”
Ruth swallowed. “Heidi,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“I remember,” she said.
He wiped the vodka from her neck with his hand. “I don’t live with any of my kids’ mothers.”
Ruth pulled the thread through the skin six times. He made her wrap his thumb with duct tape. At the sink, she washed her hands.
“Let’s feed a fucking bus,” he said, and kicked open the door to the kitchen.
* * *
The tourists had taken over the picnic benches and were looking around, staring expectantly at the windows. Children wound the umbrellas up and then down again.
“Way to leave me holding up the roof!” Mercy said, when they came back into the kitchen. Her face was red. “I was about to start stripping! Didn’t know if, you know, the Chinese were into that.”
“Japanese,” Ruth said.
“Yeah.”
“I think they would be,” Ruth said. “They’re into all sorts of stuff. They have brothels where men dress up in diapers and then the prostitutes change them.”
“Get out,” Mercy said.
“Eyeball licking’s a thing, too,” Ruth said. “I think I read that somewhere. Their sexuality is interesting. They have a very unapologetic—”
“Both of you women,” Eddy said, “shut the fuck up.”
He breaded and cooked the haddock in bulk, using all four fryolators. He held his hand out as if mid-dance. After he shoveled the fish into baskets, he slid them to Ruth, who stood on the other side of the steel counter, putting them onto trays and handing them out the window. They didn’t look at each other, or speak.
After everyone was served, Eddy slammed the CLOSED sign on the window. He took off his baseball hat and ran his hand through his hair. He ripped off his apron and threw it in the hamper. The strings slapped against the canvas. “We’re done,” he said.
“Fucking A,” Mercy said. “I’m gone.” Kris was already outside, eating a hot dog and playing with his keys. He was stoned and happy.
“You gonna clean, lady?” Eddy asked Mercy.
“No.” She stared at him in a hard squint. Her eyes bounced between Ruth and Eddy. “You kids can do it.”
“Go,” Eddy said. “Whatever.”
“What about me?” said Denis, wiping grease from the grill. Ruth kept forgetting Denis was even there.
“Sure, go, go,” Eddy said. “Everybody under eighteen get the fuck out.”
Eddy and Ruth wiped down the counters with bleached rags and dumped the rest of the dishes in the sink for the cleaners, who would come later that night. Eddy seemed tense and irritable. He still had to get paper products from the basement and then stock the shelves upstairs. “I can get them,” she said to Eddy, who was tucking money in the safe.
The cellar was dark. Steam rasped up the pipes. The air was close and mossy. Water dripped from the ceiling onto the dirt floor. Every few minutes, the generator would burst to life and call out. Through the half window smeared with mud, she could see the occasional shoe, and she heard all the frogs in the marsh, the driving pulse of them.
Ruth heard Eddy upstairs, the slam of the refrigerator door and the wet knock of the mop in a pail. He yelled out the window, “Yeah, we’re closed!” and she hoisted herself on one of the supply shelves. The cellar door whinnied open and shut, and as she watched his ankles appear, she reached behind her and pulled the strings of her apron free.
THE PACKAGE DEAL
You know he has a kid, but right now it’s whatever. Right now, it—the Kid—is a safe distance from you, far, far away on the remote island called Dad’s Just a Rebound. It is early days. If the Boyfriend has the Kid, which is half the week, you don’t even talk on the phone until the Kid is asleep. The Kid doesn’t know you exist, in this context or any other, and truth be told, you don’t ask that much about him, either, but you’re not a total asshole. You know enough to look pleasant and interested when he talks about him. You learn he plays Little League, which is nice. You learn he gets pancakes on Sundays, also nice. You learn the two of them slouch around in beanbags all weekend, playing video games.
“All weekend?”
“Well, not all weekend.”
“Are they violent?”
“Violent? No! No. Clowning.”
“Clowning with guns?”
“Just silly boy stuff. Father-son bonding.”
“Oh,” you say. “That’s nice.”
* * *
You have no intention of ever meeting the Kid, so logically you should not be dating the guy in the first place. At the very least, you should wrap this thing up. But it’s hard to find the right time when he holds you in his arms and fucks you like that, standing up, no wall. Or when he lays you down, spreads your legs, and takes an hour not touching you at all, just exploring you carefully, telling you how fucking small you are, and how pink, and how beautiful you smell. Or when he puts you in his bed and reads aloud The Wind in the Willows, his big arm resting gently on your chest, his elbow near your collarbone, his fingers just beneath the edge of your underpants, until you’re falling asleep, until you’re falling in love with him.
* * *
You tell yourself, “Kid, schmid.”
You tell your friends, who ask why you’re doing what you’re doing, “It’s not a big deal.”
You tell your mother, who grips your biceps and whispers with soupy eyes that entering a child’s life is a very, very big deal, “I know, Mom, Jesus!”
* * *
On your first date, the three of you get ice cream and walk the jetty, the ocean swirling against the rocks, cowlicked and pale. You feel anxious and strung out, your tongue thick as a futon, although you’ve pulled it together somewhat with lipstick and Xanax and long glass earrings. The Kid stumbles ahead, his feet bigger than he’s used to, his windbreaker billowing because he refuses to zip up. Besides the bad bowl job from Supercuts, he is objectively good-looking, which means so is his mother.
“Careful!” he yells to you, pointing dramatically to each rock he’s just vetted. “That one moves a little!” He has been showing off his knowledge of sports stats, eager to stump his father. “Cy Young career wins?” he shrieks into the wind.
“Three hundred forty-one?” the Boyfriend shouts, discreetly hooking his thumb inside the waistband of your jeans, whispering in your ear that later, when the Kid goes to bed, he’s going to get you naked, lay you facedown across his lap, and make you come for his—
“No!” the Kid yells.
“God, I don’t—Hey,” he says to you, pulling his hand away. He mouths the right answer. “You don’t know, do you?”
“Geez,” you say, pretending to think. You are so turned on you can barely breathe. “I’m feeling like it’s—I’m probably wrong.”
“Guess!” the Kid says.
You feign doubt, defeat. “Five hundred eleven?”
The Kid whips around, his lips licked so big and red he looks like your great-aunt Lois. “How did you do that?”
“Hey, buddy,” you say. “Come here.” When he does, you grab the Kid by the hood and pull it over the Kid’s head. “I know hoods are crappy,” you say. “But having no ears would be crappier.” You feel the Boyfriend watching as you zip up the Kid’s coat, carefully, so it doesn’t snag his chin. You realize how badly you want him to approve of you, to think that you are worthy of his child.
That you would make a good mother.
* * *
In the beginning, the Boyfriend is eager to show you their life, and you are eager to show you can fit into that life, and the Kid, thinking you are just a friend, is eager to show off, and in general everyone has a pretty great time.
At the house, the two play PIG with the six-foot Little Tikes plastic basketball hoop in the living room while you watch, hooting, the Boyfriend dedicating each shot to you, the Kid making you kiss the ball for good luck.
At the grocery store, the Boyfriend and Kid make you crawl into the cart, and the two take turns whizzing you down the ice cream aisle.
At night, you watch the Kid’s favorite movie, The Toy with Richard Pryor, the Kid in the middle of the couch, an arm draped awkwardly around each of your shoulders.
And after four months, eleven movies, one Celtics game, one stomach flu, twelve apple cider donuts, two bloody noses, one Halloween night in which you three are a blender, a toaster, and a pepper grinder, respectively, twenty-three frozen pizzas, and seventeen ice cream cones—which, off-season, the Kid calls “winter cream”—you and the Boyfriend decide to move in together, because you’re in love and it’s what you do when you’re in love.
* * *
You look for places on a Kid-Free Weekend. You see one that looks perfect, but the Realtor can only show it on Monday. Monday is a Kid Day.
“Too bad,” the Boyfriend says.
“Can’t we take him with us?”
“Feels like a lot to ask, dragging him around.”
“Don’t you want to find a place?”
“Yeah,” the Boyfriend says. “You’re right.” But he looks nervous.
You find half a Victorian with ceilings so high you’d have to stand on the sills to pull down the shades. While the Boyfriend checks out the basement, you explore the rest of the place with the Kid, flipping light switches, opening china cabinets, pretending to look for him—“Kid? Kid, where are you?”—when he runs ahead and closes himself in a closet. You scurry up the stairs and take in the view. “See that blue strip?” you say. “That’s the harbor!” You ruffle his hair, and when you put your arm around him, he sort of hugs you back.
“Want to live here?” you say.
“It’s cool.”
“I think it’ll be fun.”
“Yeah,” he says. “You can visit if you want!”
Downstairs, you corner the Boyfriend in the kitchen.
“He doesn’t know.”
“Nah, he does.”
“So you told him.”
“Well, I mean—why else would we be moving?”
You blink at him. “Yes or no.”
“Can you cut me some slack? This is—” He sighs a trembling sigh. “I’ll go ask him.”
“You mean you’ll tell him.”
“Right,” he says. He looks stricken and pale. “That’s what I mean.”
But later, at dinner, the Kid won’t look at you. He pulls all the cheese from his pizza, slowly, and lets it drop like a bloody sock onto his plate.
* * *
“He hates me.” You’re in bed, your heart flapping like a castanet. “Just say it.”
“Nope. I asked him.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“What?”
“You asked if he hated me?”
“Yeah. No! I just asked what he thought.”
“Of me.”
“Yeah.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said he likes you.”
You think about this.
“What if he’d said he didn’t? What would you have done?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Nothing.”
* * *
Moving is difficult, especially when consolidating two households. Extra couches, dining room tables, dish sets—what to do with them? Do they go to Goodwill, and if so, whose? And what about the furniture that stays? There is a clash of taste and style, and you do your best to find places for it all. The living room is a strange shape, and you aren’t sure how to arrange the furniture without blocking the bay window. You’re working with your couch and his chair, your coffee table, his TV and your TV stand, the antique armoire he picked off a garbage truck. But the balance is off. Maybe it’s the lighting. You begin to change the lamps.
“Wait, wait,” the Boyfriend says. “I got it!” He goes to his truck and reappears lugging the six-foot Little Tikes plastic basketball hoop, which he places—“Wow,” you say, “hmm, not quite sure if that’s what I was”—triumphantly in the bay window.
“There!” he says. “I knew something was missing.”
* * *
On your first Friday night in the new place, you get Chinese and stay up late watching The Toy, the Kid in the middle as usual, the Boyfriend’s arm along the back of the couch, surreptitiously touching your neck. You feel cozy and happy, excited for your new home and your new little family, and you hit pause and ask if anyone’s up for a snack.
“Yeah!” the Boyfriend says.
“Yeah!” the Kid says.
You pop corn the old-school way and serve it in a salad bowl, snowy with salt. You make your mother’s Italian hot chocolate and bring it to the boys in matching mugs. The Boyfriend moans as if in a porno. “See this woman here?” he says, swiping his mouth clean with his palm. “This woman is magic.”
The Kid takes a cautious sip.
“The best, huh?” the Boyfriend says.
The Kid tosses the cocoa around in his mouth, deliberating, and you wait for the verdict. Your stupid heart pounds. “No offense,” he says finally, after an effortful swallow. “But my mom’s is better.”
“Aww, buddy,” the Boyfriend says, winking at you. “That’s a nice thing to say about Mom.”
* * *
Because you are a Man, a Woman, and a Child under the same roof, there is an expectation that you will spend your weekends together. But what should that look like? The Kid, who always seems surprised to find your car still in the driveway, is waiting for another day of Nonstop Fun with Dad to start. Their monogrammed bags are singing out to them, a chorus of beans. There are Pop-Tarts to wolf and footballs to accidentally send soaring into the Rothko print. Later, if they’re feeling up to it, they might go to GameStop and blow Dad’s money on another video game. If not, there’s always laser tag at Laser Quest, a half day at the batting cages, and if Dad has to answer a few work emails, not an issue—the Kid can self-soothe with his PlayStation 4 until they order pizza.
A used bookstore? What’s that?
The Boyfriend is stressed. The Kid has already been through a lot. His whole little life—it’s too much all at once. But the Boyfriend wants to make everyone happy.
“How about we get you a baseball mitt?”
You play catch in a triangle formation—the Boyfriend to you, you to the Kid, the Kid to the Boyfriend. You aren’t athletic, you never played sports, but you’re better than you thought you’d be, and you’re stupidly proud, convinced you’ll impress the Kid with your mad skills. The day is warm and full of birds. The Boyfriend loves watching you catch, watching you throw, the way your body moves. He keeps giving you that look, the one that says he’s going to fuck you the minute he gets a chance.
“Look at her!” the Boyfriend says. “She’s an ace!”
“Dad!” the Kid yells, waggling his glove at his father. He does not want to look at you. He does not want you to be an ace. “Back here!”
“Coming at you!” the Boyfriend says, and throws it to the Kid instead of you.
You hold your mitt up, thinking the order has changed and that the Kid will now throw to you and you to the Boyfriend, but the Kid just throws back to the Boyfriend. So the Boyfriend, to keep you in the mix, throws the ball to you, and you, to get the circle going again, make a gesture to the Kid, as if you’re about to throw to him, but his back is to you, and he’s chipping a hole in the grass with his toe.
* * *
One day the Ex-Wife calls the Boyfriend and tells him that it appears all the Kid did last weekend was errands with you. Errands, she says, should be done on the Boyfriend’s own time, when he doesn’t have the Kid. If he can’t put his child first, she says, if he’s too busy doing errands with you, he should just give her full custody.
“I thought you said she was normal.”
“She is,” the Boyfriend says. “Most days.”
“So this is one of the other days.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Kids can’t choose every—I mean, sometimes they just have to do normal—We did other things he liked. Jesus Christ. We went to GameStop!”
“I know,” the Boyfriend says.
* * *
On a rainy Saturday, you try to make the day fun and cozy. You play hide-and-seek, giving the Kid hints when he can’t find the Boyfriend. You make a sheet-and-pillow fort in the living room and serve everyone grilled cheeses in it. Later, you all watch The Toy. Twice. When it’s over, everyone is glassy and dulled, the Kid sullen. You suggest venturing to the North End for a cannoli, but the Kid doesn’t want to. He is moping on the couch, his hands piled existentially on his forehead.
