A Job You Mostly Won't Know How to Do

by Pete Fromm

  “Way not to get ahead of yourself,” she says, fighting back her own smile.

  Taz leans back, looks at her.

  “Like, two years or so.”

  “What?”

  “Taz, that’s a big-girl bed. Best big-girl bed in history, but . . .” She sees his face, stops. “. . . but it’s so perfect, I might sleep here myself.”

  “You will not.”

  She laughs. “We’re going to need a crib for a while.”

  Taz looks around the room. “Well, we could use this one ourselves. Like if she’s sick or something. Or can’t sleep. If we have to be here with her.”

  “Do you have mattresses?”

  He twists his mouth to the side.

  “So we’re going shopping,” Marnie says, as if money were no issue at all.

  In the final days, Marn helps with the trim, just the standing stuff, door casing mostly, though Taz comes in from the shop once and finds her putting the cove moulding down along the bottom of the baseboard, lying stretched out against the wall, huge, not even using the air gun, because she likes tapping in the little finish nails. He laughs, says, “Should I call the stranding team?”

  “The what?” With the nails pinched between her lips, it’s a little Elmer Fudd.

  “You know, the people who roll the whales or dolphins or whatever back into the water.”

  “Come over here,” she says, a nail held up, her hammer. “I want to see your toes for a second.”

  Taz crosses to the opposite side of the room. “You sure you should be doing that?”

  “Lying down? It’s what I do best.”

  He puts down the last pieces of the baseboard, giant ten-inch planks he couldn’t have touched without the bleachers, checks the fit. “Think your mom is going to like it?”

  Marnie chuckles or hums, or maybe just chokes on a nail.

  Taz says, “You okay?”

  She spits out her nails, still chuckling. “You know exactly what she’ll do,” she says. “Walk in here, say, ‘Oh, nice,’ and go straight to the kitchen, her white-glove deal, say, ‘Oh,’ in that other way, then the bathroom, not even saying ‘Oh’ anymore, just that lip-purse thing she does.” Marn does it herself, like she’s just taken a big juicy bite out of a mostly rotten lemon.

  “That,” Taz says, “is so hot.”

  Marn rolls onto her back, flops her arms to the sides, her belly like a mountain, her boobs the jutting foothills. Her lips still pursed so tight she can hardly get out words, she manages, “Take me, baby, I’m yours.”

  They’re into the same week as the circled due date on the calendar Marn nailed to the kitchen wall, decorating it up with different felt-tips—stars, fireworks—when Taz barges in with what looks like a couple sections of fence. Marnie raises an eyebrow, and Taz says, “Crib.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “I’ll make her a good one,” he says. “I’m just, you know, running out of time.”

  “Salvation Army?” she asks.

  He says, “Sort of,” and carries the pieces through to the nursery before she can say a thing. So she yells it. “Clean it. With bleach. Twice.”

  He shouts back, “I know,” and a while later, “Directions. Directions would have been nice.”

  He hears her walk to their bedroom, come back down the hallway, stand in the nursery door. She doesn’t say a word, so Taz turns, holding some big metal rod he can’t quite figure the use of, and sees her with this big, white wicker-basket thing. “Mom’s way ahead of both of us.”

  “What is it?”

  “A bassinet.”

  “Isn’t that something they play in band?”

  She laughs. “It’s what she’ll sleep in first. In our room. Then, eventually, your crib, in here. You might have the time to build one yet.”

  Taz nods, as if none of this is news. “Then the big-girl bed.”

  “Matter of fact,” Marnie says, “you might want to, you know, set your crib up in our room. We can put the bassinet in it to begin with.”

  Taz glances to the mattress frame, the door, guesses it’ll fit through without taking it apart, starting over. He hoists it up, pulls it in against his chest. “Make a hole,” he says, and Marn steps back just in time to let him bash his knuckles against the new casing. He hasn’t let her lift anything heavier than a hammer in a month.

  When he gets the mattress in, realizes they have no sheets for it, she says, “We can wrap it up in something. Cut down one of our old sheets.”

  He stands there looking into the crib. “Your mother will bring everything. All pinky and girly and gross.”

  Marnie laughs. “You think I just came all princess?” which makes Taz laugh, too.

  “You know,” she says, “there really isn’t anything left to do.”

  Taz stands nodding, not quite believing that could ever be true.

  “Sooo,” Marnie says, “I was thinking. Maybe one last trip? Give the girl one more swimming lesson?”

  “The North Fork?” he says. He gives a wave toward her belly. “That road’ll probably shake her right out of you.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “You and me, going all homesteader? Delivering a kid on our own, in the swimming hole? What do you want to do, bury the placenta thing under a tree?”

  “Okay, now that’s just gross.”

  “Well, come on, if anything happens . . .”

  “We’d be an hour away, tops.”

  “Which could get to seem like light-years.”

  “Taz, just once more.”

  “We’ll go a gazillion times. Duh. But right now?”

  She stares at him until Taz starts looking for his keys. It is, after all, her favorite place in the world. One last time, just the two of them.

  ZERO

  A week later, they strip the bed, replace the mattress pad with a vinyl shower liner, something she’d read, saving the mattress if the water breaks at an inconvenient time. “When would be a convenient time?” Taz asks, but she levels him with a look, flops the sheet in the air and he grabs a corner, tucks it in.

  They make it about a minute before they start to laugh. It’s like sleeping on butcher paper, just less comfortable. “Feel like a fish,” Taz says, and Marnie does her fish-lip thing, and they’re both gulping for air laughing as they peel it out from under the sheet, crumple it onto the floor, spoon in again, breathless. She laughs once more, says, “This is what it’s all going to be like, trying to do all this shit we don’t know a single thing about. Being complete idiots.”

  He says, “We were made for it,” and she answers, “You were, anyway,” scooching back against him.

  The water breaks the next night.

  She lumbers up, says, “I’m fine. I think I’ll shower first. But, Taz, it’s showtime.”

  He hears the shower start, asks once more if she’s okay, and strips the sheets, bundles them back into the laundry bag beside the washer crammed into the kitchen. When she comes out of the bathroom, towel around her hair, sees the dark blotch on the mattress, she says only, “What’s a mattress?” As in costs, the greater scheme of things. Her mother’s gift, but Marnie trying.

  “Exactly,” Taz says. “We pretty much wore this bad boy out anyway, getting here.”

  She smiles, then bites her lip, bracing for another contraction. “Pick up another,” she says, panting a little. “It won’t stand a chance either.”

  They leave the house before dawn, the light easing into the darkness beyond the mountains hemming in the east side of the valley, turning the sky so red it looks on fire itself. It’s their favorite time, they’ve always said, except for the waking up and all, the whole getting out of bed thing, and Taz has told her about the fire sunrises after he shuffles out to the shop every morning, asked her to get up and see, but he’s never coaxed her beyond the front door, a stare down the street.

  Marnie takes his hand and squeezes, and he squeezes back, says, “Bad?” and she pants, says, “Ha.” The streets around them stre
tch empty, the stoplights blinking yellow all the way down, as if they’ve got a whole motorcade thing going on.

  Only a few minutes later she clenches her fists, her eyes, grabs his hand off the wheel, begins to huff and puff. When it lets up, she turns, her smile shaky. “Phew,” she says. “This kid is not messing around.”

  He takes the last turn into the hospital, and Marnie says, “You’ll have to call Mom.”

  “Me!”

  “You want me panting into the phone again? Moaning? Like it’s a birthday call?”

  Taz smiles, just the idea of going after her, trying to make her crack while on the phone with her mother.

  She slaps at him. “Call her,” she says.

  “As soon as the eagle has landed,” he promises. “FaceTime. The works.”

  DAY 1

  He sits rocking beside the hospital bed with his pocket full of bubble gum cigars. One real one, for Rudy, wedged in with all these pink and blue Double Bubbles. Because, you know, who knows? No matter what Marnie said.

  He holds his temples, squeezing, trying to remember. Acronyms, of course. Everything here is. But it was two words. He knows that. Or maybe three. He just can’t bring them up out of that sudden rush and flurry. Holding the baby, grinning so wide, Marn’s panting, after that last great push, not easing, but getting harder, her eyes going wide, trying to get out his name through the gasping. “Taz? Taz? Taz?” All question. He’d held the baby up, for her to see, still not catching on. He stood to set it on her chest, but the doctor and the nurse were already scrambling, others rushing into the room. Someone, he can’t even say who, or how, took the baby, and Marn clutched his emptied hand like it was the last thing holding her to the planet.

  Cardio. But that wasn’t it. Pulmonary. Maybe.

  Pulmonary, pulmonary. He runs through his medical vocabulary, the few TV shows they’d watched, before the TV gave out. Hematoma. Contusion. Embo—

  Pulmonary embolism. PE.

  Still rocking, head clutched in his hands, he whispers it again and again, wondering what it is.

  Balloons tremble around him every time the AC kicks in, and someone finally reaches into the room and switches off the glaring lights, Rudy’s gigantic stuffed bear looking bewildered in the gloaming.

  DAY 2

  DAY 3

  Rudy brings them home, driving Taz’s truck, and when they unload in the front yard, Taz feels Rudy follow him up onto the porch, like Taz might lose his way if left on his own. He touches Taz’s back at the door, says, “Want me to . . .” and Taz shakes his head and Rudy eases the door shut between them before Taz has to say another thing.

  In the living room, Taz turns a circle, as if he’s never been here before, the gleaming maple boards creaking beneath his feet, Marn’s giant smiley face grinning from the kitchen. He cannot say now where the nursery is. Not to save his life.

  He closes his eyes. Takes a breath. Another. A shift of weight in the car seat. A slight tug through his fingers, traveling to his shoulder. He opens his eyes and the baby’s eyes are open too, blinking. It cannot focus this far away yet, the nurse told him. No more than a forearm’s length.

  “So, here we are,” he says. He manages a wave around the room. “It’s small, but it’s half demolished.” He edges one of the cigars out of his pocket, a pink one, and peels off the wrapper. His fingers shake, but he gets it into the corner of his mouth. The baby watches whatever it sees. He pretends a puff, pulls the cigar out, wags it toward the car seat. “From here on out,” he says, “it’s you and me, Baby.”

  He rubs at his eyes, the cigar pinched between his fingers. Breathes.

  The car seat trembles. A kick maybe. An arm waved. He bends, sets it on the floor. Pulls a chair from Marnie’s gigantic table and falls into it. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

  They’d read Operating Instructions. What to Expect. Her mother told them, The baby will teach you everything you need to know. How on earth could anyone—

  God, her mother. He’d have to, to . . . Make the bed? Put out towels? Had they done all that already? Before? Had that been the plan? That she’d be staying? Had he even called her?

  Had they had a plan? Ever?

  The baby whimpers.

  He shuts his eyes, could not be more tied to the chair if ropes had been used. Chains.

  He looks at his hands. Nothing but the pretend cigar. The bag, he guesses, is still in the truck. The nippled bottles. The three cans of formula the hospital gave him, something Marn had sworn they’d never use. He does know that. No formula. No way. Not even as a joke. And not just to save the money, she said. She’d pump so he could hold a bottle, see what it was like, his tits as useless as men in general. He sees her exact smile as she says it, and has to remember again to breathe. How to.

  The baby squawks. Something avian. Head tipped back, mouth open, searching. A plea from a nest. Next, the nurse said, would be the squall. Then the scream. The progression of the S’s, she called it, trying the first small smile anyone had. After all the extraordinary measures, that smile seemed like maybe the most extraordinary of all. He’d tried one back, lisped, “All the S’s.” But the smile cracked, and he felt it might carry through his whole body, leave him a piled jumble of broken bits on the floor. She touched his arm, said, “It’s best not to let things go to the end,” then almost flinched. “The S’s, I mean.”

  He said, “Will you come home with me?” and she smiled, kept her hand on his arm, whispered, “You’ll be okay.”

  Now he forces himself to stand, whispers, “Okay,” and looks away from the seat in the middle of the floor. The maple, grain so tight it’s hard to see, so shiny and blonde and hard, is the color of Marnie’s hair. All of it hidden when they’d bought the house, a surprise underneath the plywood, the mangy carpet. He walks across it to the kitchen’s worn linoleum tiles, and, passing, tears the calendar from its nail, frisbeeing it and its hallowed due date toward the trash barrel. His hand scuffs the horsehair plaster as he braces himself along the wall to the window. They’d never gotten to the kitchen, he thinks, as if it’s news.

  The backyard wavers through the old glass. The gigantic apple tree. The fruit litters the ground, shriveled in the heat. Plans for the tree house already drawn out on the kitchen wall. Branches straight through the floor. The roof. A witch’s hideaway, she’d said, tapping him on the chest. “You shall build us our coven’s lair, or I shall turn you into a toad.”

  In the living room, the squawk reaches squall, a storm rolling in. He sees his life stretch out. Hiding in other rooms. Staring out windows at everything they’d planned.

  “Hungry?” he calls. “Can I get you a sandwich? Or, you know, you just want to go out, throw a ball around? Get after that tree house?” His voice trails off as if he himself is vanishing.

  The baby wails.

  He squeezes the rough plaster until his fingertips bleed, his eyes shut until he wonders if blood will leak from them, too.

  And then, suddenly, the baby is silent. Taz starts, knee bending toward a dash as he turns, but Rudy’s standing in the kitchen doorway, the car seat swinging in one hand, diaper bag slung over his shoulder.

  “I think,” he says, “we’re going to have to figure out how to feed this thing.”

  Which is what they’re doing, the two of them, mixing formula straight in the bottle, fitting on the cap, touching the nipple to her lips, smiling at the way she latches on, Rudy whispering, “She’s got Marn’s way around a cheeseburger, that’s for sure,” when there’s a knock on the door. They glance up, then at each other. Rudy says, “Momma H,” and Taz says, “Really?”

  They both stand, and Rudy says, “She got in on the midnighter. She’s been at the hospital pretty much ever since, dealing with all their shit.” He starts for the kitchen, the back door, and Taz says, “Rude, one favor.”

  Rudy stops, turns.

  Holding the baby, Taz says, “Could you, like, the crib. It’s in Marn’s room. It’s, I, that’s where—”

 
“Want me to haul it out? Put it in the nursery?”

  Rudy’s already on his way, a moment later bashing down the hallway with it, calling, “What about this white basket thing?”

  Taz stands anchored in the living room. He sees the bassinet in the crib, all of it pinched to Rudy’s chest. “Yeah,” he says.

  There’s a little crash from the baby’s room, and then Rudy’s out, moving fast for the back door. “Call,” he says, “if you need anything.”

  “You’re leaving me here?” Taz says, but he gives Rudy a wave, lets him dodge out before he crosses over to the front door, swings it open.

  Marnie’s mother stands on the porch, clutching the handle of a roller suitcase the size of a stamp. Under her other arm is a paper grocery bag, bulging. Food. Marnie used to say her mother’s answer to any disaster—tornado, tsunami, nuclear holocaust—would be to put on some potatoes.

  Taz takes one look at the reddened holes of her eyes, her trembling lip, so far from the cartoon he and Marnie had always made of her, and they both look away. She manages, “Ted, I, I don’t, I—” and then only stutters in a breath. From somewhere she conjures a tiny laugh. “I picked up some things,” she says, and Taz swings the baby away in one arm, takes the bag in the other. “Marnie would just kill me for that,” she says.

  Taz walks her into the living room, their show room, but she barely makes it a few steps. “Oh how she must have loved this,” she says, and puts a hand to her mouth, all but cracking. “I, I don’t know what to do, Ted.”

  He swallows, clears his throat, no idea if any sound will come out. “I’m with you there,” he croaks, and she says, “I haven’t slept since I, since she, since you called.”

  He says, “With you there, too,” but he can’t for the life of him remember calling, how awful that must have been. Could he have gotten Rudy to do it? Would he have sunk so low?

  “Well,” he says, “maybe we could start there. Sleeping, you know?”

  He shows her to their bedroom, the first room they’d finished, but the varnish still gleaming, paint smooth and hard as china. With his hands full, she can only clutch at his arm for a moment at the door, her eyes so scorched-looking that Taz asks, “Lauren?”