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Ava 2WW, so happy to hear things are going well. I am trying again, but nothing yet. I’ve got a little girl, but I want a boy too. I know what you mean about being the AFTER! I’m 36 and I already feel like I’m late to the party. I have a niece who is nineteen and expecting. I look like a grandma compared to her. LOL! I’ve been trying for many years too. I know I should be grateful for my baby and I am, believe me. But the first time I was pregnant with my Phoebe (eleven years old in two months) I got pregnant the first time I tried. You get cocky when that happens. Let me tell you. I told that story so many times when I was expecting. I never thought about how hurtful it might have been to women trying and trying for years. Like ME! Live and learn or live and don’t learn. Either way. I’m hoping for the learning. LOL. Good luck, good luck. Keep us posted. And I’ll let you know the absolute second Baby 2 decides to show up☺ WISHING4TWO
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I hope you all get what you want. Mom 2 B
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Hey, WISHING4TWO. You were so lucky with your first one. I’m sorry about the second. Don’t give up. Don’t give up. You and others on this site keep me hopeful and encouraged. I would be so alone without you. They gave me progesterone suppositories to try to keep the pregnancy, but things look good. Anybody use those? My HCG numbers are increasing (they didn’t last time) even doubling every day. Things look great. I have no symptoms, no morning sickness. I’ve read too much not to be worried about that, but the doctor says everything is fine. Fine! Have other people had no morning sickness and a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby? Anybody? I would love to hear your stories. If I can give you hope, that’s what I want to do! AVA2WW
26
Ava and Sylvia held on to each other as they walked from the car to JJ’s house. Puddles of standing water from the early morning rain dotted the red clay yard.
“Step on the pieces of board, Mama,” Ava said as she steered her mother away from the slick mud.
“Look at this swamp. Somebody could break their neck out here,” Sylvia said.
Jay waited for them at the unstained open door. “Sorry. It rained before I could get the stepping-stones in.”
Sylvia entered the house behind Ava. The ride up the mountain she prepared herself to see what Jay had created. A fist tightened in her chest at the prospect of his beautiful house rising in front of her, a dream conjured from the ground itself. What she would not admit even to herself was that she was jealous. Jay Ferguson and his house advanced the cause, credited the race, as they used to say. Why then was the gnawing, the hollowness eating her from the inside out?
Sylvia stood in the empty foyer big enough for a reception table. Sparkling clean windows along the front of the house still had their maker’s stickers on their faces. What in the world, Sylvia thought as she walked to the staircase and silently took it all in.
“Come in the living room,” Jay said.
Jay waited by the slate fireplace as Sylvia removed her shoes.
“What do you think, Mama?” Ava asked.
“It’s nice. A nice house,” Sylvia said.
Ava glanced at Sylvia, a quizzical expression on her face.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” Jay smiled at her, a boy wanting her approval.
Ava cut her eyes to Jay, and they grinned at each other. Sylvia saw them hold each other’s glances, schoolchildren keeping a secret. They had connected before. That much was clear to Sylvia now. She settled into a folding chair.
“I’ve been living like a turtle, Sylvia. Can you believe a grown man and I don’t own a real chair?”
The three of them looked around the room, imagining the space. Oh the television shows and magazines that tried to convince us that our rooms, lamps, and throw pillows are all windows into our truest inner selves. What a crock! If nothing else Jay’s rooms proved to Sylvia that anything looked beautiful—even folding chairs—surrounded by enough money. The fact was a chapter of a life story Sylvia knew by heart.
“Take your time, JJ. Get just what you want,” Sylvia said.
Jay smiled at Sylvia, then at Ava. He had waited for this very moment and it had happened. Sylvia couldn’t help but feel some of his joy. Not many people get a taste of that feeling—getting just what you want just when you need it.
“Want to see your house?” Jay pointed to the deck.
“I do,” Ava said.
Sylvia shook her head and motioned for the two of them to go on. The folding chair groaned at her weight. Folding chairs were designed to be portable pain, and this one did not disappoint. Sylvia gave up and eased herself up from the seat, cradled her purse on her belly like the old ladies she had made fun of back in the day. Those old ladies with their boxy pocketbooks shoved under their iron grips secured themselves from the snatchers of the world. Sylvia shifted to get another view of the room. When she moved into her own house she had felt such pride. She had not had to scrub and clean or paint or make do with nasty and old rooms that would never be more than nasty and old until the transformative power of money took hold. What she would have done with all this house she could not begin to imagine.
Ava and Jay stood together in the middle of the unfinished deck. Sylvia stood up to watch them. Jay circled his arm on Ava’s shoulder and drew her closer. Ava did not hug him back, did not rest her head on his arm, but Sylvia saw her body give for him and ease into the hollow place of his so that they stood as one unit, no daylight between them and not two people at all. Sylvia couldn’t hear if they spoke to each other.
“Ava,” Sylvia said as she opened the door to the deck. “I need to go. Come on.”
“What’s wrong, Mama?” Ava said.
“I’m just ready,” Sylvia said as she stared from Jay to Ava and then back to Jay. “I have no business here. Let me get home.”
“At least look around. That’s why you came,” Ava said.
Sylva looked out over the valley. She could see for what seemed like miles into the town, though none of the houses was recognizable. What the lights must look like at night from this height.
“Come here, look right there.” Jay pointed. “There’s your roof, the greenish-gray one. See?” Jay pointed to a clump of trees.
If Sylvia used the full capacity of her imagination, she thought she might see the smallest sliver of a roof. “I’ll take your word for it,” Sylvia said.
“You know what?” Ava began. “You should get Mama to help you pick out plants.”
“That’s right, Sylvia.” Jay turned to face her. “I could use your help out there.”
“I doubt that,” Sylvia said. She was embarrassed that they were trying to include her, like she was a child. “Don’t put me in this,” Sylvia said. Jay glanced at Ava, a little panic on his face. Good, Sylvia thought. They should be scared out of their damn minds.
Ava was sharing a bed with Jay. Here it was all out in the open. In Sylvia’s youth even the men you desired, hell, even the men you married, you kept at the edge of your feeling. Ensnare them with the prospect of an abundant sexual life, sure, but frustrate them with only glimpses of it. Do this and (better said) be the first to do this to your man and you can control him for the next thirty years. But under no circumstances do you believe your desire, your stupid fallible body. Every good girl and even the pretty-good girls knew this. Follow the code, keep your legs closed, and in return you might keep him or at the very least you might not have to live under the burning gaze of shame.
“Let me show you the downstairs. Five minutes, okay?” Jay said.
“Okay, be quick,” Sylvia said, not sure why she didn’t run as fast as she could.
“On the other side is the dining room.” Jay pointed it out as they walked—the docent in his personal museum. “The family room is down here.”
“Jay, do you mind if I lie down on your bed? I’ve got a little headache,” Ava said.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Go ahead with Mama.”
Sylvia followed Jay down th
e stairs in the back of the house. A large space almost the size of her entire house opened up in front of her.
Jay flipped a switch and the gas fireplace and flame burst into life like a magic trick. Sylvia jumped.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh sorry, I wanted to show you the fireplace.”
“Does the one upstairs do that too?”
Jay nodded to her a little sadly she thought.
Sylvia ran her fingers along the cool slate of the fireplace. In the house she’d known as a child they’d had a woodstove in the back where the children slept. The different weathers of the house—arctic kitchen at the front of the house to dry smothering desert of the big open room at the back—were like different geographic zones of the globe. So much can happen in just a few short years.
“What are you and Ava doing? I can see. I’m not stupid, JJ.”
“I don’t know exactly,” Jay said unable to keep the smile off his face. “We have to talk it all out.”
“Have you been seeing her since you got here?”
“No, no. Nothing like that.”
“I told you to go slow. I told you she’s not in any shape to be making changes.” Sylvia sighed. “You understand what I’m saying. I know you do.”
“You don’t have to whisper, Sylvia. She can’t hear us.” Jay spoke in a calm way that infuriated Sylvia. She tried to be reasonable but it was all she could do not to rush to Jay and yank his arms off his hips.
“Listen,” Sylvia said not sure what she wanted to say. Ava had always been lonely and sensitive, always taking in stray people, deciding that she could fill up their lack with her lack. Henry and JJ, and now JJ again. Maybe even Sylvia should count herself in the list, but she brushed off that thought—a problem for another day. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things. She’s got a husband. He may not be shit, but he’s hers.”
“I’ve been thinking, Mrs. Sylvia. Why do the good people have to do the right thing?” Jay said. “The assholes don’t care and they get what they want.”
“Who will be the good people then, JJ?”
“I’m sorry. It looks fast, but it’s not for me, Sylvia.”
“Is she pregnant?”
“I shouldn’t say. She needs you.”
“You think I need you to tell me that? You think you’re special because you want something? What happened to you young people? Hell not young, middle-aged brats. You want everything and you think you can get it because you want it.” Sylvia turned from Jay. She needed to get to her own home, put her feet up on her own ancient couch, and watch her own television. People Sylvia’s age didn’t expect so much. They understood limitations. They accepted no, they adjusted to no damn way, even when it hurt, even when it meant nothing else mattered. They made their lives and didn’t worry all the time about what else they could have made if the universe got shook out and emptied and reset. How had all the forty-year-old fools misunderstood?
“Are you telling me life is hard? I think I know that by now.”
“Do you? Don’t listen to me, JJ. I’m just the Negro that sits by the door.”
“What?”
“Pay me no attention. I don’t even exist.” Sylvia raised her hands above her head—a surrender. “I’m going home.”
Jay rushed to her, grabbed her hand awkwardly, an action that surprised them both.
“JJ,” Sylvia began, “this is truly something, honey. You did it.” Tears stung Sylvia’s eyes. She was not a crier. She shook her head no to will the tears away.
“Sylvia, I want you to be happy for me and for Ava.”
Sylvia took a deep breath. She would not be a crier now either. “Y’all have lost your damn minds,” Sylvia said and started back up the stairs. “Ava! Come on,” Sylvia called. She was breathless, much too tired to have just climbed the eight short steps.
Ava slumped in the hall, her shoes and socks off, her hair in a fuzzy halo like a half-sleep child. “Mama, what’s wrong? Are you crying?” Ava looked to Jay for an explanation. He would not return her stare.
“I’m fine. You all need help. Let’s go.”
Ava did not move from the spot. “I’m going to stay here, Mama. Jay will bring me home.”
Sylvia hesitated, not quite sure what to say that would make a difference. “Ava, come home with me. This is not where you want to be right now.”
“I’ll come down with Jay, Mama. I’ll be there soon.”
Sylvia wasn’t sure what a good mother did now. “You want dinner?”
“Mama, I’m fine.”
Sylvia turned to go. She wasn’t sure if she should listen to her daughter or to every warning voice in her head.
“Everything’s okay, Mama,” Ava said.
Sylvia slipped on her beat-up shoes as Ava and Jay watched. She would not return their stares. “Mama, stay for a while,” Ava began. Sylvia turned away from them and opened the massive wooden door. They were still young enough to believe in happy endings. That final thought as she turned from them was the most painful yet. She closed the door behind her.
27
Ava’s head was sweaty and hot on Jay’s chest. He shifted her gently onto the pillow beside him, the bottoms of their legs still touching. He had thought he might make himself a peanut butter sandwich, but he didn’t feel like moving. From the first words out of Ava’s mouth, Jay knew that she would sleep with him. Ava had a scraped-out inside that her voice betrayed—he would know it anywhere over any number of years. Sex was not the only goal, but it was a start, a first step. They could pretend they had the power to fix their lives. The trick was making themselves believe it. That’s what joy is, isn’t it? Belief for a little while that you have the power to mend everything?
Jay closed his eyes and tried to keep still. The house still smelled of fresh paint, chemical and new. He had never lived in a new house or even a new apartment before, always in borrowed rooms, somebody else’s dust to clear away. The rooms echoed his movement, talked to him as he shifted. People thought houses were haunted, but Jay knew better. The ghosts live with the people, slough off little by little into new spaces, reassemble in a quick minute, returned immediately to you if you tried to leave them behind. Let them rest.
There were not many times he could remember feeling content, safe in his bones, with Ava, sure, with his mother, but only a few other times. When Jay was very young he’d felt that warm stillness too with his father. He’d loved the days his father decided to stay with them. Too few of them, too many day of ins and outs, starts and stops of his living with them., but how good they felt. Jay would be surprised and thrilled if his father stayed with them three full days in a row. But he liked the comings and goings too—his father’s reappearances full of the strangeness of a comet. His father a celebrity and not the trifling bum his mother said he was.
A few times Frank had taken JJ with him to his all-night poker games. The men sat at cafés and sheds in the woods, played cards into the morning hours, the smell of rotted wood in their noses—a smell that would call up his father in an instant. At those games the men lost small fortunes, at least to them, a few hundred dollars the difference between a good month and thirty whole days of an angry woman’s sideways glances, her hissed mutterings under her breath at the spells she’d have to work those last lean days before the next check. Frank had been the only one to bring a child, but nobody minded, JJ was no trouble. If he wasn’t sleeping he was sitting quietly in the corner or he was out in the car pretending to drive. JJ ate the food the men ate, pickled eggs, pig’s feet, chips, soda right from the bottle and not just a taste of it poured into a cup like his mother would give him. Sometimes the lovely sister of one of the men came with sandwiches to sell. JJ felt the air around the room thicken with her presence. Some of the men teased her, pretty thing, this your sister? She’s too pretty to be your sister. These men she shooed off like eager pups, but Frank was quiet. He liked her. It was clear that she liked him. Her attention to his father made JJ inexplicably pro
ud.
“WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT, Jay?”
“Did I wake you up?” Jay sat up and leaned over her. “I’m sorry. I was trying not to move.”
“I sleep in fits these days. How are you feeling?” Ava rolled closer to Jay on the bed and pressed her body against him.
“I feel good. Your mother wanted to cuss me out, but I feel okay.”
Neither of them had wanted to talk about Sylvia’s leaving, but her departure hung on the air. Jay had fully expected Ava to leave with her mother. When she’d walked out of the bank earlier in the day (had it really been just one day?) she’d scanned the parking lot, searched for him though she couldn’t know his car. He couldn’t help but wonder if another possibility presented itself: Would she walk quickly and decidedly away?
“She’ll be fine,” Ava said, though she worried too. “I should go on home.”
“She knows where you are. Why don’t you bring your stuff later? I’ll help you.”
“Maybe in a few days, okay?” Ava asked.
Jay wrapped his arm around Ava’s back, his face a couple of inches from hers. Ava closed her eyes. She had a few tiny gray hairs at her temple that he could see even in the dull morning light. Otherwise she looked the same as he had always remembered. “What are you thinking, Jay?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you worried about Mama?”
Jay stretched and got up from the bed. “She’ll be fine. She’s just worried.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m getting a drink.”
“Jay, stay here.”
Jay stretched his arms above his head. “Be right back. Right back,” Jay said but he didn’t look in Ava’s direction.
ONCE FRANK WON A BIG HAND, a hand he wasn’t expecting. “JJ,” he said and motioned his son to the table. He pressed a twenty-dollar bill into JJ’s pants pocket. “You remember your daddy gave you your first twenty-dollar bill.” Frank dropped JJ off at home early the next morning. “Tell your mama, I’ll see her tomorrow,” Frank had said and drove away. JJ wasn’t sure he hadn’t dreamed his father, the poker game, but the twenty was real.
No One Is Coming to Save Us Page 20