by Amy Yamada
After a while, she began to stay with Rick and Jesse on weekends, and it was not long before she came to hate Mondays because it meant she had to go back to her own place. Every Monday morning she would kick off Rick's tired, worn-out bedcover and scream at the top of her voice, "I hate this bedcover and I hate leaving here." And Rick would rub her back gently, like he would a little baby, to comfort her. Then she i g o a m y y a m a d a
would calm down a little, lie back using his arm as a pillow, and fall asleep with a smile on her face.
Coco's relationship with Rick was stable and comfortable, but when it came to Jesse there was never any shortage of surprises.
One morning Coco was in the kitchen making breakfast and Jesse told her he wanted raw eggs.
"Raw eggs? What are you, Rocky the boxer or something?"
Without a word, Jesse broke an egg into a bowl, drowned it in soy sauce, then threw rice in on top and started to mix it all together. Coco just stood and stared at the disgusting sight of him guzzling the whole bowlful with a spoon, the sticky mess turning his mouth yellow.
When Rick came in, Coco pointed wordlessly at Jesse.
Rick ignored her, instead turning gleefully to his son.
"Hey! Raw eggs and rice, right? Outstanding! Make some for me, too, will ya?"
Coco gave an involuntary shiver of revulsion as she watched them greedily slurping down their breakfast together.
"Baby, don't you want some? Aren't you hungry?"
"Are you kidding?"
"Jesse's mama used to make this for us all the time. She's Japanese, too, you know."
Coco didn't believe in God, but at that moment she couldn't help crossing herself and praying for help.
She had already noticed that Jesse usually didn't bother to use a knife and fork. It seemed that his mother had never really bothered to teach him about things like table manners. So when Coco saw Jesse grab a piece of meat with both hands one day, stuffing it into his mouth like a dog, she immediately ran into the kitchen to find him something to eat with. She searched the cupboards, but all she found was a single clean plate and fork. This house was simply not equipped for normal, everyday life.
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Coco had always been taken to the best restaurants and she was used to spending time with well-mannered, sophisticated people. So eating with Jesse was a real headache. She could only hope that she never had to go out to eat with him.
"You've got to do something!" she screamed at Rick. "You can't let him keep eating like that!"
Rick didn't seem to mind it at all.
"Don't sweat it, baby," he said soothingly. "He can learn about things like table manners when he gets himself a woman."
"Why doesn't he ever stay with his mother?" she asked.
"He did at first, but after a month he couldn't take it anymore, so he packed his stuff up, got on his bike, and came to live here. He told me every day was just fighting and arguments and that there was no fun at all. If I learned anything at all from being married, it's that a bitching, whining woman is the most difficult thing in the world for a guy to deal with. And Jesse's a guy, too."
"But his manners are awful!"
"And whenever he wants to see his mama," Rick continued, "he can go on his own: she lives right near here. But anyway, you don't have to worry about it. Parents have to raise their kids and teach them manners.
That's not your responsibility. You're just here because you're my girl, right?"
He kissed her in an attempt to bring an end to the conversation, but Coco's mind was on Jesse and his part in their relationship.
All Coco had ever known was the simplicity of sex between a man and a woman. Nothing else had mattered to her before. But now, for the first time, she began to realize that there might be another type of relationship: far more difficult to understand, infinitely more complicated, and completely unavoidable.
Coco didn't understand her feelings toward Rick. Looking at it objectively, Rick certainly wasn't the sort of guy she would normally fall for. He drank so much that she was sure he was well on the way to terminal alcoholism, and would go numb from head to foot. He never seemed to savor the taste; it was more like a race, like he was trying to get drunk as fast as possible. And he made sure he never wasted a drop—he even sucked the whiskey off the ice cubes in the bottom of the glass.
Coco enjoyed drinking, too. But Rick drank so much that it hurt just to watch him. Because he was so used to consuming large amounts of alcohol, it was extremely rare for him actually to get drunk. Coco was sure it would take at least a couple of bottles of Bacardi to do the job.
That was Rick in a nutshell: he was a middle-aged drunk with a kid. And that made it all the more difficult for Coco to understand why she wanted to spend so much time with him and why she would go crazy every Monday morning when it was time for her to leave and go to work.
The sex was great, of course. Rick never failed to satisfy Coco in bed.
But she didn't think that was the reason she stayed with him. She en-I $ d A M Y Y A M A D A
joyed sex, of course, but she could say with absolute certainty that sh had never been a slave to it. To Coco, it was just a pleasure shared between a man and a woman.
Rick could not be described as cool. Nor did he ooze sex appeal.
When they went to bed at night, Rick was always clinging to her, his arms and legs entwined with hers. At first Coco found it claustrophobic and irritating, but after a while she found she couldn't sleep without it.
He was like a warm blanket covering her when she woke in the morning, and, like a kid with a comfort blanket, she had to have him with her.
One night when they were drinking and talking together in the apartment, Rick told her that his biggest problem had always been women, and that whenever he saw a good-looking girl, he couldn't help turning around to look at her.
Cute, thought Coco.
Of course, whenever she saw a good-looking guy, Coco would turn to look at him, too. But then she would contrive to bump into him "by accident," get close to him, and eventually get him into bed. Coco knew there was no way Rick could ever do anything like that. And then the ridiculous image of him watching his laundry in the washing machine floated back into her thoughts and made her smile. Rick made Coco laugh. And even when he had poured so much liquor down his throat that he was completely trashed, all she could do was scowl and then give him a resigned smile, the way a beleaguered but loyal daughter might treat a beloved but underachieving father.
Coco liked to think that she was the only one who could really appreciate Rick's charm. His scruffy, unshaven face when he woke up in the morning, and his pitiful, sorry expression the day after they'd had an argument. Coco thought she had never seen such a pathetic face in her life. And when she was feeling really down, he never had a clue. He would always come out with some inane remark about the weather or J E S S E 7 5 5
last night's ball game. These were all things that warmed her heart when she thought of him. And when she realized that Rick—just an ordinary guy whom no one else thought was special in any way—had begun to mean so much to her that she didn't want to spend another moment without him, she knew that she was beginning to fall in love.
Coco laughed. It was unbelievable that she could be in love with a sloppy drunk! And as she thought about him, that sloppy, drunken face floated into her thoughts and she found herself weeping. She was beginning to see that maybe love wasn't impulsive, that it wasn't a pounding heart or some big, momentous event.
Maybe, she thought, it means crying just because he's not there. She slapped herself on the forehead at how long it had taken her to figure that out. So maybe that's it. For a moment it seemed mildly irritating, but then a warm glow began to spread over her.
One weekend, when Coco went to visit him, Rick was packing a suitcase.
"Hey, honey. What are you doing?"
Rick explained that his father was dying and that he would be going back to San Franci
sco for about ten days. He turned his attention back to the suitcase, humming happily to himself as he packed.
"Don't you think it's kind of thoughtless to be so cheerful?"
"Huh? You've got to be kidding me. This is the guy who walked out on my mother. He just ditched her, and I haven't seen him since I was a kid. How do you expect me to feel sorry for him? Shit, I don't even know the guy. All I know about him is that he's an alcoholic."
"Sounds a lot like you . . . "
"Hmm, I guess drinking runs in our family...."
A broad grin spread across Rick's face.
"Aw, poor old Dad, I'll raise a glass to him."
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Having given himself the excuse, Rick stopped packing for a moment and poured himself a drink. Jesse was next to him, quietly putting toys into a bag.
"Is he going, too?"
"Yeah, baby, sure he is."
"What about school?"
"Hey, I know he's got to go to school, but who's going to look after him? I told his mama that I had to go away, but she just went nuts on me. Said she wouldn't look after him unless I gave her two hundred bucks. Shit, it's not like I can't afford it—a couple of hundred bucks ain't nothing—but I'm fucked if I'll pay the bitch to look after her own kid. I'd rather take him with me and let him miss school for ten days."
Jesse said nothing. He just listened. Coco wanted to say, Let me take care of him, but she kept her mouth shut. She knew there was no way she could get along with Jesse on her own. He'd surely refuse to rely on her for anything. Coco thought Jesse was like a puppy—she knew he wouldn't let anyone but Rick get close to him.
But two hundred dollars? That was ridiculous! How could anyone ask for that sort of money just to look after a kid for ten days? Maybe the woman had forgotten that Jesse was her own child? But however you cut it, the fact remained that she was happy to ditch her own son for the want of a lousy couple of hundred dollars. What sort of a woman was she? Who the hell did she think she was?
Coco herself was basically scared of kids. She had no desire to have any of her own, and with a body like hers, with men falling at her feet, she couldn't imagine giving that all up to be pregnant. But while she had no interest in becoming a mother herself, she couldn't understand anyone having a child and then abandoning all responsibility toward it.
The more she thought about Jesse's mother, the angrier she became.
"I'll look after him," she blurted out.
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There was a brief silence. Speechless, both Rick and Jesse stopped what they were doing to look at her.
"Are you sure?"
Rick looked like he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
Jesse stared, too, a hard, piercing stare that made Coco flinch.
"Y-y-yeah, s-sure I'm sure," she stammered.
Now there was no going back. Before she could regret her offer, Rick had her in his arms.
"Baby, you're amazing. What would I do without you? Damn, I've got good taste in women!"
He was clearly delighted.
"Now, Jesse, you see you behave yourself for Coco, you hear? And if she brings any guys home with her, you just let me know, okay?"
Suddenly Rick's face changed.
"You know, thinking about my daddy like this, it makes me feel real sad. He was just a drunken bum, but he was a good dad."
A few moments later, Rick's sadness had turned to grief and he began to mourn his father, ignoring the fact that he wasn't dead yet.
Coco expected Jesse to refuse to stay with her.
"So, will you be okay with me staying here?" she asked him.
"Sure," he replied, "but it ain't gonna be easy for you."
It was times like this when Coco found it hard to like Jesse. She loved men—all men—and she thought that maybe someday she might even care about Jesse, too. But sometimes she found it hard to convince herself.
Rick was leaving on a flight to San Francisco the next morning, but instead of finishing his packing, he started drinking. Coco was beginning to feel nervous about being left alone with Jesse, so she started drinking, too. It would be ten days until she saw Rick again, and already she was hurting.
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"I wonder if I'll be able to sleep at night?"
"Once Jesse goes to bed it will be nice and quiet. You'll be fine."
"That's not what I'm talking about. What I mean is, will I be able to sleep if you're not here with me?"
Rick took her in his arms and held her tight.
His face looked suddenly serious, and he asked, "Will everything be okay at work?"
"Sure, that's no problem. It's only during the day, anyway."
She sighed and gave him a weary smile.
"So how did I end up falling in love with a guy like you, huh? I had dozens of guys hanging around me, opening doors and following me around...
"Oh, my poor old daddy!" wailed Rick playfully. She knew he was trying to change the subject.
He held her close again, and Coco winced as she felt the rough stubble on his chin scraping painfully against her cheek.
When a woman falls in love with a man, she mused to herself, she'll forgive him just about anything.
And so Coco and Jesse were left alone together.
Coco's friends were all very interested to see what would V happen, and one by one they came to visit her to see how she was coping. Like Coco, they had never had anything to do with kids before, so they called in regularly. It was like taking a trip to the circus.
For his part, Jesse made no attempt to get along with Coco, and apart from when it was absolutely necessary, he hardly spoke to her at all. He sat in a corner of the apartment like a caged animal, listening to his music.
Coco decided that the least she could do was feed him. After her workday was over, she still had to go shopping and then cook when she got home. One day, Coco was expecting her friend Kay to drop by, so she started cooking a roast. As the wonderful smell of the beef roasting in the oven filled the apartment, Coco began to feel blue, sad that Rick wasn't there to share it with them and sad that the roast would disappear without him ever seeing it.
Coco missed Rick. When people care for each other, she thought, they want to talk to each other about their thoughts and feelings, and about the things that happen to them each day. But when there's no one i 6o
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there to listen, when you can't tell them those things, that's when you start to feel lonely.
Coco had only spent the weekends with Rick, but now weekends were no longer enough. Until now, she had never met a guy she wanted to spend much time with. She had no desire to share activities like brushing teeth, taking an afternoon nap, or shopping for clothes. The guys she went out with always brushed their teeth before their dates with her. And they always picked out their own clothes. Seeing Rick wandering around the apartment with a toothbrush hanging out of the corner of his mouth was an entirely new experience for Coco, and there was no difference for her between his brushing his teeth and their making love—they were both as important. So did this mean that sex and brushing your teeth were more or less the same kind of thing? Coco blushed at the thought. Since Rick had been away, she had nearly made the decision to give up her apartment and move in with him.
"Coco!"
The sound of Jesse's voice brought her out of her reverie.
"What are you making?"
"Roast beef," she replied.
"Oh, okay ..." he mumbled.
Roast beef was Jesse's favorite. This was the first time in her life that Coco had ever considered cooking to please someone. She had begun to make something every day that Jesse would like. When Rick was there she didn't need to make any effort—as far as he was concerned, whatever Coco made was the most delicious meal he had ever eaten. Even if she served up a burned omelet, Rick would wolf it down greedily, as though it were his last meal. As only a father can, he also made sure that Jesse ate
it, too. But now Coco didn't have Rick to depend on.
"I'm going out for a hamburger," Jesse announced.
She was washing vegetables, and she froze at his words.
"I need some money."
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She felt as though the whole world was turning black before her.
There was a long pause, but she finally managed to find her voice.
"Why?"
"I want a cheeseburger, that's why."
Coco tried to control her anger, but she couldn't stop her hands from shaking as she took a five-dollar bill from her purse.
"My mama's a great cook," said Jesse, blowing a bubble with his gum and popping it.
"What sort of thing does she make for you?" asked Coco, her voice shaking, too.
"Raw eggs and rice," came the reply.
Coco turned back toward Jesse and threw the money at him. Grinning, he bent down, picked it up from the floor, and walked out the door.
Coco opened the oven door, took the meat, and threw it angrily into the garbage can, beef juices splashing all over her and the kitchen. As she wiped her face, she wondered what the hell she had done to deserve Jesse—she couldn't believe that anyone would want to hurt her so much all of the time.
The doorbell rang. It was Kay.
"Hey, what's going on? The meat do something bad?"
Coco slumped down into a chair and put her head in her hands. She still had grease all over her fingers, and now there were bits of meat and fat all over her face and in her hair, too.
"What the hell have I done?" she wailed in despair. She suddenly realized that nobody had ever insulted her the way Jesse had, and as the anger welled up inside her, she started to cry.
"What is it? What's wrong?" asked Kay, rushing over to put her arm around Coco's shoulders.
Sobbing, Coco told her about the way she was looking after Jesse and trying to cook him something he would like, but how every night he I $ d
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would take great delight in upsetting her, making her feel usel grinding her feelings into the ground. ^ S S H H
"He's a child. What do you expect?" said Kay, wiping the tabl a paper napkin to mop up some of the gravy.