by Kelly Fordon
Sharon held her finger up to let her class know she was almost done with the call.
“Where is the baby exactly?”
“On the sidewalk in front of this rundown, old house.”
“OK. Well, stay away from it. Get in your car and lock the door. Don’t move. I’ll be right there.”
“Don’t move, or get in the car?”
Sharon had hoped the progression of the disease would be gradual, but Evie’s symptoms had accelerated markedly over the last two months. There was no way she should be driving. Ever.
Sharon sighed. “Get in the car, lock the door, then stay put.”
Sharon followed the computerized voice of Mitzy, her navigator, toward the city. Tyler, her son, had programmed Mitzy to sound British eight years ago when the Dodge Caravan was new, around the time he’d transitioned out of the neighborhood public school to the Ridgeton School twenty miles away.
Evie’s band had broken up when the saxophonist, Gary, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer five years earlier. Gary, Evie, and Joe had been the core of the jazz band, fixtures in New Orleans. Joe lived in the same apartment building as Evie. He was the first one to notice that after Gary died, Evie was spending whole days in her apartment watching Lost reruns and subsisting on Planters peanuts.
One day it dawned on him that she was watching the same episode over and over. He took her to the doctor, where she failed a series of aptitude tests. Sharon flew down to New Orleans the following week and was shocked by the state of Evie’s apartment—shoes in the dryer, Honey Bunches of Oats cereal in the cat bowl. She suggested a move back to Michigan and was caught off guard when Evie agreed.
It felt a lot longer than two months ago.
Since Evie had moved into the apartment over Sharon’s garage, she’d yelled at a young girl at the mall for using the water fountain (disgusting/unsanitary/vile) and at a woman using hand weights on the treadmill at the gym (do you want to break your fucking neck?).
And then there were all of these far-fetched notions—delusions really. The current one had to do with whether people Evie encountered on the street, in the pharmacy, at the doctor’s office, had “paid the cover,” a question she’d taken to shouting at random intervals. At least this one was based in reality—a vestige of Evie’s years playing in New Orleans, where she’d made a living off tip jar donations and cover charges.
Sharon turned down Thrush Road and passed a team of parolees in orange vests picking up trash. Detroit was enjoying a comeback, but only in Midtown so far, and Evie had ended up in a terrible part of the city. On the next block, a single, abandoned house remained amid the prairie grass.
As she drove, she felt her resentment escalating. It felt like she was being saddled with a deranged interloper. She’d rarely heard from Evie over the years. When she’d gotten married in 1992, Evie had sent a Snoopy Christmas card with Merry Christmas crossed out and “Happy Wedding” scrawled above it. In 1994 for Tyler’s birth, she’d sent another card with a generic “Congratulations on the birth of your baby” with no reference to Tyler’s name or any indication that she’d bothered to learn the gender of the baby. In 2002 when their mother died, Evie had flown into Detroit for the funeral.
Still, even then, in the funeral home with their mother’s open casket in front of her, Evie had been her usual callous self, leaning over to whisper, “What is up with your son?”
“It’s called autism,” Sharon had said.
“It’s like a record skipping. He just keeps asking the same question: When are we going? When are we going? When are we going? I don’t know how you can stand it.”
How ironic Evie’s observation seemed to Sharon now.
Sharon parked behind Evie’s Volvo and dialed her sister’s cell. She didn’t want to get out of the car so close to the parolees—not that they were desperate for women in late middle age, but still.
“Hello?” Evie asked, as if she had no idea who it could be.
“It’s me. I just pulled up right behind you.”
Sharon watched as Evie turned her head around as slowly as a swing bridge someone was cranking by hand.
Sharon waved to her.
“Mom?” Evie asked, waving back.
“It’s your sister, Sharon.”
“Oh,” Evie said, sounding relieved.
Why would she confuse Sharon with their mother? She looked nothing like their mother, who was svelte like Evie, not short and stocky. Secondly, their mother had been a raging alcoholic, as volatile and unpredictable as the cast-iron gas burner in Sharon’s jewelry studio.
Sharon prided herself on complete control of her emotions and her alcoholic intake—no more than two glasses of wine per night. Their mother had been inebriated for so long and so relentlessly, that by the time their father finally defected with his French Canadian office manager, no one could blame him.
When Sharon was a teenager, Evie had never missed a chance to tell her that their mother had gotten pregnant with Sharon so late in the game as a last-ditch attempt to save her doomed marriage.
As if her mother hadn’t already made that very clear.
Evie still didn’t move. Sharon got out of the car and hurried over. She leaned into the driver’s side window. “I will come back for your car. Grab your purse.”
“Absolutely,” Evie said, reaching for her purse. “But what about the baby? It’s right over there.” She pointed outside the passenger side window.
Sharon looked over at the sidewalk.
The parolees were almost upon them, making their way up the right side of the road collecting trash with their long-handled grabbers. The sidewalks were an inch deep with detritus because the city had started shutting off services, forcing people to move downtown so that they could further shut off services to the outlying neighborhoods. Sharon scanned the weeds: a black trash bag, a Chiquita banana box, a striped hobo bag, a large box stuffed with newspapers, a dead houseplant. No baby, of course.
“What did I tell you? You don’t see that every day,” Evie said pointing.
“Evie, it’s just trash.”
“I bet it’s the baby.” Evie marched over to the trash pile.
Sharon could just envision Evie crawling on the ground. She hurried after her and put a hand on Evie’s arm.
“Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll call 9-1-1 on the way home. There’s nothing else to be done if the baby is dead.”
“Is that what the world has come to? Mothers dumping babies on the sidewalk?” Evie asked as Sharon took her arm and steered her toward the car.
“It is a crying shame.” Sharon bit her lip to keep from adding something snide about Evie’s lifelong disdain for children. Once, during Sharon and Phil’s rough patch, Sharon had told Evie she’d hired a babysitter so she and Phil could rekindle the flame. They were both so burned out by Tyler (God love him) that Pastor Rich had pronounced the vacation crucial.
“I don’t get it. Why do you need a babysitter for an eighteen-year-old?” Evie had said. “Is he really that slow?”
It had taken Sharon a long time to get over that comment. Was she even over it now? Despite the fact that the principal at Ridgeton was “sure” that Tyler would “optimize his full potential” if they paid $35,000 a year in tuition, it turned out they had wildly different calculations about his potential.
•
When they were sitting down to dinner that night, Sharon told Phil she’d had another incident with Evie.
“Can’t say I’m surprised.” Phil passed her a container of curry noodles and unpacked his own pad thai. One of the things Sharon loved about Phil was that he relished the routine of Meatloaf Monday, Thai Thursday, and Stew Sunday as much as she did.
The phone rang. Phil set his chopsticks down and got up to answer it.
“Hello, Pastor!” he bellowed into the phone.
Phil always greeted Pastor Rich with the enthusiasm most people reserve for long-lost relatives. Pastor Rich had been Phil’s BFF ever since he’d steered them thr
ough their marital quagmire. His advice had centered on acknowledging the different languages of love—Sharon’s “acts of service,” Phil’s “physical touch,” and of course Tyler’s language, which wasn’t in the book but which Pastor Rich called “ask and ye shall receive.”
If Phil wanted Tyler to express affection, he had to ask for it directly. Phil was supposed to say, “I’m feeling like I need a hug.” He was not supposed to let it bother him that Tyler couldn’t comprehend why.
The fact that her son shied away from physical touch had never bothered Sharon all that much. She had never been touchy-feely either. She could remember only three times when her own mother had ever hugged her: once when she broke her leg bicycling in second grade, once in seventh grade when she’d tripped over a tangle of Christmas lights and banged her head on the corner of the piano, and the day she graduated from high school—then simply because the photographer had trained his camera on them.
“Your sister called Pastor Rich this afternoon,” Phil said when he returned to the table.
“She said she was going up to take a nap. How did she even get his number? She must have done it when I went back in the cab to get her car.” Sharon dumped more pad thai on her plate.
“Apparently, she wanted to talk about the baby.”
“I was just going to tell you about that.” Sharon set down the carton.
“Have you told him about the dementia?” Phil brought his chopsticks to his mouth.
“It hasn’t come up.”
“She told him the baby was on the sidewalk, so he got in his car and drove down there to check. Poor guy. I filled him in. He’s got the picture now.”
The following week, Sharon received another call. The Grand Ridge Police Department had Evie in custody. The police officer, a blond man with a thin mustache, told her that her sister had been picked up walking along the highway. When they’d asked her what she was doing, she’d said, “I’m going to get the baby.”
“The dead baby?” Sharon asked.
“She didn’t mention a dead baby. She said something about an abandoned baby.”
“Abandoned?”
Sharon told him about Evie’s diagnosis. “Last week it was a dead baby,” she said.
On the way to the station, Sharon tried to keep from crying. She was not going to let this bring her down. She’d withstood the disappointment of autism and a nonexistent relationship with her mother. But seriously, how much more could she take? She took a deep breath. Probably, a lot more. People withstood a lot more. She had to look on the bright side. Phil could be annoying, but he was a bright side. The jewelry making could be a bright side, if she ever got the chance to pursue it. Tyler’s autism was not a bright side, but at least he was functioning, holding down a job.
When Phil walked in the door, Sharon asked him to sit down in the living room for a minute. He said he wanted to change. He was going fishing; the steelhead had just started running.
“Five minutes is all I need. I’ve come up with a game plan. Here’s the gist of it—I feel guilty, but I also feel like my sister should not be my problem. I don’t feel anything for her. Like nothing at all. I know that sounds terrible . . .”
Phil shrugged. “Understandable.” He went over to the closet. “Let me just get my tackle box out and then we can talk.”
Sharon followed him and stood by the bifold doors. “I want some time for myself. Is that too much to ask of the world? After what we’ve gone through with Tyler . . . Frankly, I mean, I don’t think I have it in me to be a caretaker again.”
“So, what do you want to do? Put her in a home?” Phil retrieved his fishing vest.
“Yes.”
He pulled his tackle box out of the closet. Studied it as if it had the answer. “I don’t think that sounds unreasonable given the circumstances. If we can find one that’s not too expensive.”
“I keep wondering why I’m even hesitating. She couldn’t have raised one child. She’s never done one thing for me. She left me alone with the worst mother on the planet, and then when I did see her, she’d say things like, ‘Sharon, you ought to try this diet. Sharon, what’s with those dowdy dresses? Sharon, that looks like lipstick a clown would wear.’”
Phil laughed.
“It’s not funny! You try listening to it for a lifetime and let me know how funny it is then.”
When Sharon went up to the apartment the next day to bring Evie’s groceries, she found Evie dressed in a black flapper-style dress and bright pink galoshes with a line of lipstick running across each cheek like Indian war paint. A sterling silver necklace with rose appliques Sharon had made for Evie last Christmas was broken and dangling from the coffee table in the foyer. Sharon picked it up and put it in her pocket. She should have known Evie wouldn’t appreciate it. In the tiny living room/kitchen there was a half-eaten piece of chocolate cake sitting on the leather ottoman, crumbs all over the floor.
“What in the world are you thinking with all that makeup and those galoshes?” Sharon asked as she steered Evie toward the bathroom.
“It’s not my fault.” Evie pulled away from Sharon. “I know you blame me, but it’s not my fault.”
“No problem. I know it’s not your fault.”
“This party is for musicians, and children aren’t allowed, so you are going to have to leave.”
“I’ll be on my way then.” Sharon tried not to sound as exasperated as she felt.
“Are you drunk, Mom?”
“Not yet,” Sharon said.
When they reached the bathroom, Evie put her hands up on either side of the doorjamb and refused to enter.
“You better not keep it.”
Sharon let go of Evie’s shoulders. “Keep it?”
“That kid.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“I don’t know, but you can’t handle it.”
After she finally got Evie settled in front of the television, Sharon went out front to adjust the sprinklers. Across the street, three little boys were chasing each other and screaming.
Sharon wondered if it were possible that Evie had tried to talk their mother into giving her up or even aborting. She’d been fourteen years old when their mother was pregnant with her. Old enough to understand their mother’s limitations. One time when she was ten, she had to call Evie in New Orleans because their mother was passed out on the sofa in the living room. She’d vomited all over a stack of Good Housekeeping magazines. Evie had suggested she go to the neighbor’s house next door. The Whitneys were nice, she said, and they wouldn’t mind.
“They moved last year,” Sharon had said.
“Too bad, I practically lived there when I was in high school. Well, put a blanket over her and turn her on her side. She’ll come to eventually.”
After that, afraid of what she might find, Sharon had stopped coming home after school. Instead, she often went to the library or her best friend Molly Jacobson’s house. The summer after junior year, the YMCA offered a discounted jewelry making class that ran on weekdays from 1 to 5 p.m. Sharon signed right up. She spent her summer mornings in the library, her afternoons at the jewelry making class, and her evenings at friends’ houses—anything to avoid interacting with the woman she’d taken to calling The Creature.
“Hand your pain to Jesus,” Pastor Rich would have said if she’d confided in him about the sadness that felt like heaps of refuse collecting in her chest.
As if Jesus were the garbage man.
Later that evening, Tyler called from his computer repair job where he worked three nights a week. It was better for him to work at night when no one was around because interacting with people was a strain, but some nights there was nothing to do at the shop, and then he called incessantly.
Sharon told him she’d spent the day with Aunt Evie.
“It’s sad, Mom,” Tyler said. He’d witnessed Evie’s outburst at the mall, when she’d yelled at a girl for using the water fountain.
“I know it.”
“Is she a pain in the butt?” One time a teacher at the public school had called Tyler “a pain in the butt,” and he’d never forgotten it.
Though she would have liked to answer truthfully, Sharon said, “No, she isn’t.”
“Nobody’s perfect,” he said, which is what he said every time she got mad at him for blowing the leaves into the driveway instead of onto the tarp or shoveling snow back onto the driveway.
“You’ve got that right,” Sharon said.
Sharon did some research and located an assisted living center five miles away that was both inexpensive and well-regarded. Look at all the fun activities, she would tell Evie. Great food! And best of all, Monday night is Music Monday! Maybe Evie could perform for the other residents.
When Sharon went up to Evie’s apartment the next morning, she found Evie sitting in the kitchen staring vacantly at the news. She was eating peaches straight out of the can.
Sharon said she had something to tell her, and Evie shushed her.
“Wait until my show ends,” Evie said.
Sharon took a seat at the kitchen table and scrolled through Facebook on her phone. It was incredible how much time Pastor Rich wasted posting quotes he considered inspirational, which were so often inane: God knows the journey you need to take before you do, and I’m blessed and I thank God every day for everything that happens to me. Give me a fucking break, Sharon thought. She wanted to reach into the phone and pinch Pastor Rich. Hard.
She shut the phone off. Evie was watching the news as if the newscaster were Billy Graham offering her the keys to the kingdom.
The feel-good news story at the end of the broadcast was about a woman who had lost her four-year-old daughter in New York. The doors closed between them on the subway. Luckily, a Good Samaritan had stayed with the girl on the platform until her mother was able to ride the subway back to pick her up. It turned out the girl didn’t even know her last name or her address.
“Isn’t that a wake-up call for all parents?” the newscaster asked his sidekick, a blonde in a bright green top.
Evie turned to Sharon. “I found the baby,” she said. She lifted another spoonful of peaches to her mouth.