by Monica Drake
Georgie felt suddenly short and fat and a little oily. A minute ago, in the mirror, she’d looked fine. Now, she was definitely not sleek. She smiled, invited Arena in, and led her back upstairs. “You’ve changed a diaper before?”
Arena said, “Not really.”
Not really? What did that mean? The girl was still in trouble for selling crystal meth, but Nyla swore up and down that was all a mistake, that it was Crystal Light. Expelled over Crystal Light?
Highly unlikely.
“But you’ve given a baby a bottle? I pumped fresh milk. She’ll be hungry when she wakes up.”
Arena shook her head. Her hair slid down over one eye. “Couldn’t be too hard.”
Downstairs, the front door opened then closed. Humble had left for the day.
Georgie stared at Arena. She’d changed Arena’s diapers. She’d helped give this grown girl a bottle. How was that even possible? Arena ran a hand through her loose hair, but instead of moving it out of her face, she drew it to her lips and slid that forelock between her teeth. She was like a tall five-year-old.
An abandoning mother isn’t a mother. Leave your kid behind and words like this will forever sing in that child-animal’s mind. Leave, and you don’t get it back, you don’t get to erase the mistake, it doesn’t go away. Georgie sang the words back to her own absent mother. To leave for a conference when Bella was so small? That’d be a tiny bit of what Georgie experienced when her mother left for Malaysia.
She couldn’t do it. “You know what? Come with me.” Georgie bent and started packing a diaper bag. “Come to the conference, hold Bella, keep her calm, stay close. I’ll do what I’m there for.” She’d introduce speakers and network.
“Really?” Arena slouched even more, a fragile flower wilting.
But it would be good.
If the baby needed to nurse, Georgie would be there. If Arena bought or sold drugs, Georgie would be there, too. Right?
She tucked extra disposable diapers in her diaper bag. Yes, disposable diapers! She used them. Each diaper took five hundred years to degrade in a landfill, longer than Oregon had been a state, longer than the United States had existed so far. The grandchildren of her grandchildren’s grandchildren would live with that waste, but so what? Today she needed the godsend of high-tech diapering.
Arena slunk along the wall, down a hallway to the dining room. She followed Georgie. “So, what exactly are you doing at this thing?” Her teeth were white and charming in their awkward alignment. Her lips were doll lips.
“Introducing a speaker. It’s part of a conference.” She’d been assigned at least one, and maybe only one as far as she could tell.
“Somebody famous?” Arena picked up a postcard on the table and turned it over as though there was a chance it would be addressed to her.
“Might be,” Georgie said. “They’re all pretty big in my world, anyway.” She packed picture books, a pacifier, extra blankets, a rattle, and a soft toy—anything to calm a screaming baby in a tight moment. Mostly, at six weeks, the answer was always nursing. Boobs, boobs, boobs.
The point of the day was to let Georgie feel like a person with a brain, not a milk dispenser. That’s all she wanted. She put a bottle of frozen breast milk in a side pocket of her diaper bag. Arena leaned on the arm of the couch and stared at the TV like the TV was on, but it was off. Arena said, slowly and quietly, “I like to read, too.”
The conference was in the Convention Center. The parking lot was so big they had to take a shuttle from their car to the entrance. They actually may have parked closer to Georgie’s house than to the place—they were that far away across a broad expanse of parking lots. The three of them sat crowded in two of the shuttle’s sideways-facing seats. The folded stroller jutted into the aisle. Georgie held Bella in her lap. The diaper bag was as big as another rear end, like a person crouched on the floor, a Seeing Eye dog.
Georgie smoothed the dark, silky swirl of her daughter’s hair, looked down, and saw a mark at the edge of her own lucky shirt. It was a milk stain, or a water mark. It was almost invisible but no, there it was. Had that been on the shirt when she put it on?
Then she saw another one, higher up. And a little splatter. Breast milk or toothpaste? Either way, the flickering shuttle bus lights, with their hint of green, brought the stains out like subliminal patterns.
In the Convention Center, Georgie put Bella in the stroller then broke into a power walk to keep her from screaming. Movement usually did the trick. Arena loped along at her side. They found the volunteer coordinator in the lobby at a lone freestanding booth. The woman handed Georgie an envelope and a name badge. Inside the envelope was a form letter:
THANK YOU FOR VOLUNTEERING.… YOUR GUEST TODAY WILL BE MR/MRS/MS. CLIFFORD. PLEASE MEET MR/MRS/MS. CLIFFORD IN THE GREEN ROOM AT LEAST ONE HOUR BEFORE THE ASSIGNED TIME OF THE EVENT
There was a map, a schedule, and a coupon for a cup of Starbucks.
Mr. Clifford? Georgie’s heart picked up. James Clifford was brilliant. He was a well-known anthropological theorist. But then again, there’d also been a woman named Anita Clifford doing widely recognized work, briefly. Maybe it was her.
Arena twisted back and forth, her legs wrapped around each other like a little noodle ballet, her fingers laced. She asked, “Get somebody cool?”
Bella yawned and blinked.
“I think so.” Georgie scanned the schedule until she found the name, Clifford, highlighted. She had less than an hour. She was already late. She hoisted the diaper bag back on her shoulder and gripped the stroller’s handles. “He’s an interesting man. You’ll meet him.”
But where was the Green Room? She turned again to the volunteer coordinator. “Excuse me—”
The woman was busy with somebody else.
Bella hated the stroller. She gave a mewling, fussy cry, trying it out.
Georgie waited her turn. Everywhere she looked, she saw people who looked like somebody she might know. She thought she saw Al Gore, but it was instead a man who looked like Al Gore. Then another one, who looked like Al Gore crossed with Alec Baldwin.
They waited too long—Bella’s cry climbed, louder, then burst into full song. They were already late. Bella screamed and then threw up. Her tiny hands were covered in baby spit and shaking.
Arena wandered off and fed coins into a Coke machine ten steps away. Georgie picked Bella up. She found a wipe in a bag to clean those darling starfish hands, even as the hands grabbed Georgie’s clothes, her best effort at dressing up. “There there, sweets. You’re okay,” she whispered.
Finally, the volunteer coordinator was free. She started packing, ready to leave the booth. Georgie cut in, “Excuse me?” She bounced Bella. “Where is the Green Room?”
The woman hitched up her Dockers. She took a short breath and clicked the cap off a Sharpie. She marked a big X on a map over one tiny room, a square, and handed the map to Georgie.
“How will I recognize my guest?”
The woman took the form letter from Georgie’s hand. She read it, then handed it back. “You’ll see ’em,” she said. Job done, she waddled off.
As soon as Georgie pushed open the Green Room door, she saw him. Right next to a tray of salami and Havarti. Clifford. She saw the red hair on his back, his giant head as it swung her way. His big cartoon character eyes and ever-present smile. Georgie said, “Clifford?”
The dog bobbed its massive head.
There was no mistaking the situation, and no way out.
Arena, behind her, giggled. Georgie shook the dog’s stuffed paw. Then Georgie turned and introduced Arena, because what else could she do? She was ready for full retreat—time to go home. It was time to hit the couch, cuddle with her baby, forget about work, career, networking. Forget about the world. It was time to drink the glass of wine she’d been denying herself since even before she got pregnant and take those pain pills the hospital had sent her home with. They had forty-five minutes to kill with a big red stuffed animal. Her job was to introduce
a person in a dog suit.
Another volunteer handed her the assigned script.
“Okay,” Georgie said. She tried to smile. “Let’s go find your stage.”
Bella screamed when she was back in the stroller. Georgie offered her blankets, pillows, and a rattle that attached to the stroller bar with a martian-esque bobbly head, but the baby kept crying. Georgie broke out in a sweat, then gave in and carried Bella, letting the blankets and toys ride. Arena pushed the stroller through the crowded wide conference halls like some kind of middle school science lesson on birth control.
Right away they passed a group of three faculty from Georgie’s school. Georgie nodded, smiled, kept walking. She saw a former student who looked glad to catch her eye. She nodded back, adjusted the baby in her arms, and didn’t break her clip.
Who wants to mingle when your date’s a guy in a dog suit?
Then she saw Brian Watson. Maybe Brian Watson saw her first. Whatever. She saw her ex. The married professor, her professor, the man who never left his wife for her after all. That’d been so many years ago. It should’ve been forgotten. It was forgotten. They’d grown up. They grew out of it. She’d met Humble and fallen in love! Still, she lurched, stumbled against the carpet, tried to turn away.
His rock-star curls were silver—they’d been half-gray before—and still fabulous. He was a Fulbright fellow, an award winner. His skin had a perma-tan, weathered like a cowboy.
Georgie scratched the side of her face and held up the conference paperwork, a map of the booths and stages, to hide behind it.
“Georgie!” he called. His social skills had always been better than hers. Particularly if you count fucking around as a social skill.
She said, “Brian!” and hoped it sounded spontaneous.
He said, “Look at you, you haven’t changed at all.”
She knew it was a lie—her hair was thinner, her ass was bigger, she had toothpaste on her shirt. She hadn’t changed her clothes at all, was more like it. In this moment, Georgie wanted Humble by her side. She wanted her sexy man, her life.
Brian Watson said, “You brought your family,” and waved a hand.
“Family?” If only. Georgie kept a smile on her face. She followed the wave. There was her crew: Arena, tall and thin and rumpled, who made the world into her own little Calvin Klein ad. Clifford stood with his hands on his hips. The stroller was full of blankets, rattles, a stray pacifier, and the martian-esque bobbly toy. There was something demented about pushing a stroller with no baby in it. Georgie tried not to slouch and not to stick her hip out under the weight of tiny Bella and the massive diaper bag. As a group, they were a family right out of the toy box, a hodgepodge of creatures pulled from different boxed sets. She forced what she tried to present as an easy smile, and said, “Sure. That one’s my husband,” and pointed at the big red dog. “And that’s our latest addition,” the empty stroller. It seemed funny, like a kid’s game, until she said it out loud.
Brian Watson, the smartest infidel in academia, the most gracious of liars, leaned forward so easily, so readily. He glanced at Arena’s boobs. He read her shirt. He said, “I heart old people. Fabulous!” He offered a hand to the dog suit. He said, “Nice to meet you. You’ve got a gorgeous family.”
How did he manage to come off as sincere?
His sincerity made Georgie feel like the cad, like she’d set him up, told him a lie.
Clifford’s smile never faltered. It couldn’t—it was sewn in. Clifford shook Brian Watson’s hand and nodded his big fuzzy head. It was like the dog was half-deaf in that outfit. Who was in there? Knock-knock. Georgie wanted to rap the dog on his head.
She said, “Really, only the baby is mine.”
Brian Watson tipped his chin up, like he was working out a philosophical angle, sinking into brainiac musings.
Georgie said, “The dog, Clifford, is a social signifier employed in this context to convey that interstitial terrain between childhood and adulthood, the locus between television, the great equalizer, and the individuality inherent in fantasy, as seen through the eyes—yes, plastic eyes—of an almost human form intended to elicit a sympathetic response while gratifying basic urges through purporting to know what we can never know, the mind of animals and the mind of the other …”
Georgie was looking for the end of her own sentence, while Brian Watson watched her like an infomercial. Maybe he was thinking about a new paper on hostility and comedy, one disguising the other. Maybe he thought Georgie was a jerk. Either way he held a relaxed, pleasant look on his philosopher’s face. He took one step away. He didn’t laugh. He said, “Did you ever finish that book you were working on? What was it, Vigée-Lebrun?”
She flushed. How could he possibly remember that, and—Oh, God!—had she really been working on it for that long? She said, “I’ve started another book.” The hypochondriac’s guide, her book about baby ailments. He, an academic and an award winner, wouldn’t count that as professional work.
He said, “Really? What’s it about?”
“Health,” Georgie said. “And psychology.”
“Psychological health?” He dragged the words out in an awkward combination of syllables, making the whole thing sound preposterous.
Georgie nodded. “It’ll be a significant contribution to women’s studies—”
“Women’s studies?” he said, nodding as though he understood, but raising his eyebrows at the same time, as though she were talking about unicorns and fairies.
She said, “It’s a nonfiction work offering advice based on a particular study.…” That study was her, Georgie’s life, her own ex perience.
But Brian Watson had already quit listening. A tall, thin woman half his age ran her arm through his, and he shook his silver hair. He said, “Take care, okay? Don’t be a stranger, kid.” He tapped her with a rolled-up program.
The dog turned its big head Georgie’s way. She saw a second set of eyes behind sheer black screens, hidden in the dark fabric of the animal’s mouth. Those eyes—did they look at her with pity? Georgie couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman inside. An androgynous judge. It was somebody who refused to talk. Did this outfit, this Halloween joke, this toddler celebrity, really need an introduction?
Georgie walked. Arena, with the empty stroller, fell in line. Clifford, too.
What kind of parade has my life become? Georgie thought.
She avoided everyone she could until she saw the department chair, her adviser. Part of her tenure committee. “Hello, Dan,” she said.
“So, I see you found your guest,” Dan said. He rocked up on his toes.
“Can you believe it?” Georgie whispered. She turned away from the animal, afraid it could read lips. “Out of all the visiting stars, the professors, the writers, I end up with a stuffed dog.”
The department chair closed his mouth into a thin smile. He gave a slow blink, and said, “I was sure you’d be thrilled.”
“Wait, you knew about this?”
He said, “I set it up. You’re perfect.”
Georgie felt her face grow hot. Her fingers were trembling. She needed to sit. Why was she suddenly “perfect” to introduce a cartoon character?
This didn’t look good for tenure.
She wanted to put the baby down, to walk away, to pull herself together. Her arms were weak and strong at the same time—it was like there was no weight to them, no blood, but like she could swing, could hit something and pack a punch. She wanted to run, to jog, to get off the planet.
“Because I’m a mom?” she said.
“Sure, and it’s fun, right?” Dan clicked his fingers down low, a habit he had.
Not “fun” in any way that he might take it on himself—his serious, academic, male self. He saw her now as a mother, existing in the world of children’s books, not literature.
He saw her as a child.
She wanted to throttle him.
She called to Arena and handed over the baby. Bella screamed immediately, in that psychica
lly attuned way that infants can give voice to the parent’s inner life; Georgie wanted to scream, too. She reached for the stroller. She turned around to grab her diaper bag, too fast, and bumped into a group of men coming up on one side. One man’s shoe hit the side of her wedge heel and knocked her leg out from under her.
She was kicked down.
As she fell, she saw it was a pack of frat boys, strong men in slacks and T-shirts. They had square heads and bodybuilder arms. They had Bluetooth headsets. It was frat boys knocking down intellect, knocking down the academy, the faculty—or just her. A person. The crowd against one. Georgie. She landed on her side, padded by her weight. Oof!
She wanted to cry.
But there was one guy in the middle of the crowd, a man with a lighter build. He was different from the others. He had a nicer suit. He leaned toward her. He had long hair. He tucked a wayward strand of his hair behind his ear as he leaned in. His eyes were wide and brown. They were kind. His mouth opened as though to say something. He licked his lips. Reached a hand. It was Johnny Depp. The frat boys—they were bodyguards, or handlers. They were security.
Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture boomed in the auditorium of her mind.
Georgie reached back. Her fingers were inches from his, from Johnny Depp’s hand. Then she felt herself lifted. Two fuzzy red paws took her by the armpits and helped her up. They pulled her away from Johnny. The brown-eyed man—was that Johnny Depp?—disappeared so quickly. Manly bodies closed in like doors and cut him off from the masses.
Clifford’s paws beat against Georgie’s lucky shirt, her tight skirt, to dust her off. She couldn’t see around the dog’s stuffed and swinging cranium. Where was Mr. Depp? Where was her angel? Johnny!
Clifford picked up the diaper bag in one thick paw and slid it onto his arm. He managed to collect the scattered onesies in his hairy paws and shove them back into the bag. Instead of handing the diaper bag over, the big red dog hoisted it to his own shoulder. The bag looked at home there. He bent for a fallen rattle and rested it on the shelf of the stroller. Baby Bella still screamed in Arena’s arms. Arena was a good kid, but her top skill as a sitter seemed to be acting deaf. She was a shy girl, with no leadership skills.