by Pete Fromm
Elmo pulls Midge’s fingers back from the flames. Blows for her. Now lets Midge grab. Everyone claps. Chocolate everywhere. They clap harder. Blow the horns again.
As he starts to back away, Rudy, standing behind Elmo’s chair, catches his eye. Taz bites his lip, shrugs, and opens the back door without looking, without turning around. Rudy nods, a little sideways dip, like he knows.
Nobody knows. Not a single thing.
He breathes in the dark on the porch swing. The world never emptier.
He pulls his phone from his pocket. Looks at the list of missed calls. Pictures her in Ohio, in her own darkness. Her day all about loss. Not even a candle about to go out. He punches Call.
She doesn’t say hello. The ringing just stops. Then, “Has she blown out her candles?”
He says, “She had help.”
The quiet stretches, just her breathing, a mirror of his own. “I would have given anything to see that.”
“There’s a lot of people here,” he says. “Somebody must’ve, their phone or something. I’ll send it.”
“Is that what you’d want?”
He pushes the swing. Tilts his head back the way she used to. Stills it instantly. Foot on the ground. Her birthday present, the first year here. Teak. Only time he’d ever used it. His unveiling and her one word, “Teak?” A sudden blowup over, for christ’s sake, tropical deforestation. His general ignorance about, you know, the whole world. “It’s wood, you know?” she’d shouted. “I mean, I thought maybe you’d at least know about that.”
Her mother says, “Is that how you’d want to see it? On some stranger’s phone video?”
“No,” he says.
She lets that sit.
He says, “As far as I know, the planes still land here.”
He fingers a screw in the brass eye holding the rope. Backed out just enough to feel the edge. The pressure of the freezes and thaws.
“Was that an invitation?” she says.
“You don’t need an invitation. You’re her grandmother.”
“Is that an invitation?”
“I just—” he starts, but lets it slide away. “You can come anytime you want. Stay here. Motel. Whatever you want. I’m working nonstop. You’d hardly even know I was here. You could watch her full days.”
“What about your babysitter?”
He squeezes the phone. “She’s going to be moving sometime,” he says. “Getting a real job.”
She asks, “How’s Midge? Tell me about her.”
He takes a breath. How on earth? “She’s perfect,” he says. “You’d see her every day. In everything she does. Everything.”
She says, “Marnie?” like taking a blow.
He sits, swings just the slightest bit. “There’s a party here I’m supposed to be at,” he says.
“Can I talk to her?”
“She doesn’t talk yet.”
“Taz.”
“She’s in the middle of her cake. She won’t know what’s going on.”
She makes a noise. Maybe some sort of laugh. “Marnie hated my birthday calls, too.”
She did. Made vicious fun of them. The two of them in bed, the 6 a.m. call, insisting, always, that she be the first to wish her happy birthday. Taz doing everything to Marn he could to blow it wide open. Marnie having to jump up, run naked out of the room, trying to keep her voice level, bland. He says, “No, she didn’t.”
Lauren laughs, and Taz can’t help a smile. He pushes the swing back. Tips his head. Closes his eyes. Pushes again.
“You better get back to your party,” she says.
The world sways beneath him. He keeps his eyes closed. “It’s just, you know, a party.”
“It’s about Midge now. Everything is.”
“I know.”
“You have to call, though,” she says. “Before I come out. Tell me when it’s a good time.”
“I will,” he says.
Then she’s gone and he swings until the push is gone, the brass and rope and teak and his own dead weight pulled back straight toward the center of the planet.
He stands. Phone still in hand. Opens his eyes. Draws a breath. And steps back inside. Shields his eyes, looks at the floor.
Rudy bumps up against him. “You okay?”
Taz holds up his phone. “Had to call Grandma.”
“Mrs. H?” Rudy says. “She ask about me?”
“Of course she did, Rude. They all do.”
“I can’t help it,” Rudy says, and Taz asks if he filmed the candle deal, the dive into the cake.
Rudy says he did, says, “Crazy wasn’t it? Just like Marn around a dessert.”
Taz opens his phone, says, “Could you send the video to Mrs. H? She misses her pretty bad.” He reads off the phone number.
Rudy taps it in, says, “Thanks, man. She will be forever in my debt.”
Taz scans the party until he finds Elmo, carrying Midge again. Still some chocolate cake on Midge’s face. Icing between her fingers. A streak of it down Elmo’s cheek, a little in her hair. They’re laughing.
Every single thing Marnie wanted to be.
She catches his eye and smiles, and he smiles back, nods a thanks. There is no way to make it across the room. No way to make his house be empty. He steps backward through the door again. Sees her stop to watch him leave. He holds up his phone, an excuse. He doesn’t know if, through the screen, she sees it.
At Midge’s room, he works the screen’s turn buttons, drops it down beside the house, pushes the window up. He jumps, hooks his belly over the sill. Crawls through. She will not like this. Who would? Marnie says, Are you kidding me?
He hasn’t said a word to her all night. Never got the chance. Just that one bump in the back, like, Wake up.
He curls on the small bed. Punches his pillow. Buries his face in. Their baby’s birthday.
She’s quiet. Just whispering to Midge. Singing kind of. Hardly even breathing. The crib does its squeak. A sigh almost.
He pretends to be asleep.
She stands and waits beside the crib, making sure. The same way he does.
One step back. Another.
His every move.
Around the low foot of the bed. Maybe a finger drag across the post. The hand-rubbed walnut.
She stops.
He waits.
The mattress sags with her weight. Sinking him toward her. He leans a shoulder the other way. Opens his eyes. He is turned away from the door. Her. She won’t see.
She pats him, on the shoulder. Leaves her hand there. In the same voice she used with Midge, she says, “You did okay tonight. You tried.”
One year, he thinks. Not one step forward.
“I know,” she says. “How hard.”
He bites his lip.
“More than I could have done,” she says.
He says nothing. Keeps pretending.
“The window thing, though,” she says. “That one even surprised Rudy, who says he knows your every move.”
She pats him again. Stands up. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” she says. He hears her pause at the door, the touch of her hand on the knob.
She says, “Sleep tight, okay, Taz?” and he listens to her tiptoe out, ease the front door shut behind her, the house like a vacuum around him.
DAY 366
Elmo taps at the door. Says through the screen, “I know you’re awake.”
He rolls onto his side, faces the door. Midge just drifted off again beneath the mobile. But he’s been spinning the hoop, around and around. She hardly pays attention anymore, even when she is awake. Just crawls off.
“Come in,” he says.
She walks in. Stands watching him.
He should have put on a shirt.
“Do you ever sleep?” she says.
He sits up, ducks into the bedroom, comes back out pulling on a tee. “I suppose you want to start in on the bathroom,” he says.
She sits, on the chair edge, keeps her head down, looking at Midge. “I didn’t get a cha
nce to talk to you at the party.”
“I know.”
She glances up. “You noticed?” she says, but digs at her back pocket. “There’s something I wanted to tell you.” It’s an envelope. Creased and folded. “I thought the party’d be the perfect time.” She pulls the paper out of the envelope. “But I changed my mind.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I got my student teaching assignment.”
He sits on the couch, facing her. “That’s good. Right?”
She keeps looking at Midge. Her hair, almost caught behind her ear, falls forward. The crooked part line. Somewhere between red and brown. Mahogany. Not as flame as it had looked that first night, in the bar.
Marnie’s hair, splayed around her on the bare floor, an almost perfect match for the maple.
“It’s in Helena,” she says. “Other side of the mountains.”
He hitches. “I thought it was going to be here,” he says.
More hair falls across her face as she nods. “I know. Me too.”
Taz looks at Midge. The two of them watching her sleep.
“When?” he says.
“End of the month. But I’ll have to go over, find a place to live.”
“How long?”
“The whole semester. Till Christmas.”
“Then?”
She blows out a sigh. “Put out apps. Wait.”
Taz puts his fingertips together. He has no idea what to say, has not given this moment a second of thought. Has not thought a single day ahead ever. Not since. Only moving. Motion.
“For Midge,” she says, “there’s a couple people from school. I could ask for you.”
“What about your house?” he says. “Students starting back. Rent it?”
She glances up at him.
He tries a smile. “I could watch it for you. Do anything that needs to be done.”
“Like what, the manager?”
“I don’t know, I’m just saying.”
“Well, don’t, okay? I think we can just leave it for a while, right? You know, wait and see where I get a job. If. Gives me some place to crash whenever I can get back over.”
He looks down, sees he’s still holding his fingertips together. Like some kind of asshole. A lawyer or something. He stands, his head doing a little spin, no idea where he’s going. “You want,” he says, “some coffee or something?”
He’s in the kitchen before he knows he’s started there. Finds the grinder in his hand, the tin in the other. He looks at the grinder. The coffee. Knows they go together. He just has to figure out how. Like the game he plays with Midge. Two of these things belong together.
When she touches him, barely, fingertips between his shoulder blades, he starts, the leap nothing he can pretend away.
“Jesus, Taz,” she whispers.
“I, it’s, just. I don’t know, it’s just, Midge. What she’s going to do without you.” He turns slightly toward her, tries again to smile. “I was, I’m making some coffee,” he says. “It’ll just be a minute.”
She fills the whistler, turns on the flame. “I’ll talk to these two girls I know,” she says.
“Yeah,” he says. “Thanks.” He hits the grind button. The blades whirring.
DAY 390
They road-trip. The three of them. Under two hours on the interstate, but she says, “Who’s in a rush?” and Taz turns up the Blackfoot, straight past the turn for the North Fork, their secret swimming spot, which he says not one word about. They cut through the mountains, up over Flesher, then down Canyon Creek, the longest way there is, the water low and slow, neither of them in any hurry. She works her phone, guiding them to three addresses in a row. They look from the street. Don’t bother getting out of the car. Leave the owners waiting.
“Cutting it kind of close,” he says. “Waiting until the last week.”
“You wanted to do it earlier?”
He shakes his head. “Didn’t even want to think about it.”
She reaches over the car seat and touches his arm. Gives him this little pat. “She’s going to be okay. She’ll like Alisha.”
The last apartment looks possible. She texts the owner, who is in his car, across the street. His first words, when they get out of the car, are, “No kids.”
Taz wonders if it’s even legal.
“It’s only me,” Elmo says. “They’re just my ride.”
Taz walks up the stairs behind her, carries Midge through the apartment with her. This old fourplex. The price more enticing than the rooms, the half-scabby furniture. “Like I give a rip?” she says. “I’ll be gone before I’m out of the boxes.”
Taz lets Midge down. Lets her walk through clinging to Elmo’s finger. She signs a yearlong lease. Back in the truck, she says, “Let him try and find me.”
“Rent and mortgage?”
“Nobody promised easy.”
Taz guesses not.
They take Midge to a park, a swimming pool beside it. They sit on the grass. Elmo watches Midge tilt toward the sound of the water, says, “You ever going to show me her Aqua Girl skills?”
“No suits,” he says.
She lifts an eyebrow. “No suits, huh?”
“I mean, we didn’t bring any. It’s kind of frowned on, in the city.”
“Helena. So boring.” She opens the cooler, peers in. “Chicken,” she says, “or ham?”
It was her deal. If he drove, she’d do lunch. Rules.
DAY 400
Her last day. Her replacement all lined up. Alisha seems nice. Will move into Elmo’s house for the duration. “Boyfriend troubles,” Elmo explains. “As if they aren’t all trouble.”
Elmo gives her the walk-through, Taz barely a shadow in the background. “This is the dad,” she says, a wave in his direction. “He can be useful.”
Alisha can give him afternoons. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Elmo trying to come back for a weekend when she can. “Keep marking my territory,” she says.
From the porch they watch Alisha walk off, and Elmo says, “Okay, then. This big, secret thing you do with her.”
Taz looks at her. “I can’t,” he says.
She looks at him, taps her foot. “It’s me, Taz,” she says. “Why do you keep me out of her life with this one thing?”
He looks out at the street.
“I know how to swim.” She tries a smile. “I’ll be all right.” She drops off the porch, starts for the street. Midge takes off after her like there’s a string between them.
Taz takes one step down. “El,” he calls after her. “It’s where I tell her about her mom.”
She stops at his truck door. “Good,” she says. “I’m glad you do that.”
He stands, hands at his sides.
“It’s the last chance I’ll get to see her,” she says. “You don’t have to tell her stories today, if you don’t want. But it’s okay. I wouldn’t mind hearing them myself.”
“They’re not that kind of story.”
“What? That I can hear?”
He looks at the sky. Not as hot as a year ago. A whole fire season without smoke. “They’re like bedtime stories,” he says.
“I can take a nap. We both will, you talking us to sleep.”
Taz pictures it. Midge on his chest. Marn’s head on his shoulder. His arm around her back, the sweep of her blonde hair, wet from the pool, across his shoulder, his chest. He stops.
“We don’t sleep,” he says. “We’re in the water.”
“I’ll stay awake then. Promise.”
He watches her, then walks down the steps, around the front of the truck. She pops her door, hesitates, then fits Midge into the car seat, looks to him once more before snapping the buckle. Midge says, “Da da da,” as she waits for Taz, and Elmo climbs in, smiles the tiniest bit when he starts the truck. Her lips open, just the trace of teeth. A gleam.
“Your door,” he whispers.
She reaches out, brings it in.
“I’ll keep my eyes closed the whole way,” s
he says. “You won’t have to blindfold me.”
“Okay,” he says.
He puts the truck into reverse.
She’s true. Eyes never opening. Not on the first turn, not even on the gravel. He keeps glancing over. Her freckles. That glimpse of teeth. Her head tips to the side. She may really, he thinks, be asleep. As asleep as Midge, the ride working its narcotic magic on her.
He crawls over the two track, twice as slow as usual. Three times.
But still he gets there. Their wall of chokecherries, the giant ponderosa. His and Marn’s secret spot. He lets the truck roll to a stop. Neither of them moving. He turns the key. A second of dieseling. Then silence. Even Marnie gone dead quiet.
Elmo cracks an eye. Stretches. “Here already?” she says. She sits up. Looks around. “I kind of thought there’d be water.”
“There’s water,” he says.
“Bueno,” she says.
Midge wakes when Elmo opens her door. She looks around, blinking, sees the tree.
She caws like a raven. He’s got no choice.
He lets her down to the ground. She does her stiff-legged waddle, straight to Elmo. “Momo!”
Midge tries to push on, but Elmo waits for Taz, and he shows the way through, around the far end of the wall, over the rock, where they won’t leave any marks, no telltale path crushed through the willows for others to follow.
Then it’s there before the three of them. Their swimming hole.
Midge pulls down her pants, holds up her arms. Dances in place. “Wow,” Elmo says. “You go, girl.” She works Midge’s arms through the sleeves, pulls off her shirt. Looks to Taz. “Diaper?”
He nods. Looks away.
“Yowzer,” Elmo says. “The full Monty.”
He hears the pull of Velcro. A moment later she says, “And you?”
“No,” he says, only a whisper. “No diaper.”
“Double yowzer,” she whispers.
He closes his eyes. He’s got a shirt with buttons. An old Hickory, sleeves cut off, something he wears in the shop for the pockets. His fingers fumble with the first button. He tries to listen only to the water.
“Are you going to tell stories,” Elmo says, close.