Your Constant Star

by Brenda Hasiuk

“Well, it’s so great to finally meet you, Bev,” Helga says.

  It hits me that I know all I need to know about these people. Thanks to their profile folder, I know more about them than I do about my own family. Helga is an executive assistant at a big insurance firm, which means she’s a glorified secretary, but will quit when a baby arrives. Her mother died from uterine cancer when Helga was eight, so she wants to be there for every moment of her children’s lives. The biggest challenge in their marriage is that he’s a saver and she’s a shopper. Their favorite place in the world is their cabin at Matlock Beach. They are both Lutheran and, though they don’t attend church, will probably christen their children “because they both found a great sense of security growing up within a community of faith.” They will “welcome this baby into their lives with much joy and be fully prepared to maintain ongoing contact with his/her birth family.”

  Denise picks the crumbs off her pants one by one. Faye squeezes her thighs together like she’s horny. Olef and Helga sit and wait, trying not to stare at the bump. What kind of guy wants to have kids more than anything else in the world and marries someone with a bum uterus? Apparently this one, with the homemade banana bread and shiny, desperate face.

  “Bev has had a chance to get familiar with your file,” Denise says. “I know she has some questions for you.”

  The straw in my drink is the bendy kind they give you in hospitals. I take a long swig, and the Little Alien jabs my pelvic bone. “Helga, you want to be a stay-home mom. Olef, you run a store that’s been open for just over a year. What if the business fails? Do you have a plan?”

  They are surprised, but hungry, and recover quickly. Olef tells me he’s worked in retail for years, and if his own place fails, stores are always looking for good people, good managers.

  After that, we roll along nicely. The Little Alien jabs, pointless questions pop into my head, and Helga and Olef answer dutifully. Would they both be hands-on parents? Yes. Would the baby have cousins close in age? Yes, a girl and a boy in Calgary, ages two and four, a boy in Brandon, eighteen months, and three girls in Winnipeg, twelve, eight and five. Are there good schools in the area? Yes, an elementary two blocks away, a bus to the high school. Do you have a nursery ready?

  Yes. A blinding-yellow box of a room with nothing but a glider rocking chair, probably from the big-box store. We all crowd into the doorway except for Helga, who walks right into the middle and holds out her arms like she’s about to sing opera.

  “We both automatically thought yellow,” she says. Her chipper voice echoes against the bare walls, and her cheeks are suddenly more blotchy than rosy.

  “It’s like sunflowers,” Faye says.

  Helga hugs herself and giggles, as if Faye has just uncovered some in-joke between her and Olef. “Isn’t that funny. The paint’s called Sunflower Fields.”

  Good ol’ Faye rescues the milkmaid from blotchiness and tears. I knew there was a reason I brought her along.

  I give Denise a let’s-wrap-this-up raise of the eyebrows. “Well,” I say, “you have a lovely home. This has been great. It was so nice meeting you in person.”

  “Us too,” Olef says. He takes my hand awkwardly, grasps it in both of his like I’ve just won an award. His hands aren’t sweaty like I expected. They’re smooth and warm and firm.

  Denise pulls them both aside into the kitchen, and the grown-ups chatter quietly amongst themselves for a minute. When we get to the van, Faye and I both get in back, as if Denise is just our driver.

  “They were nice,” Faye says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “They were nice. But I’m not sure they’re the ones.”

  Denise turns on the ignition and busies herself pretending to adjust the mirror.

  Faye starts pick, pick, picking. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she says.

  “What?” I ask. “Can’t do what?”

  “This,” she says. “This whole thing.”

  “I know it’s weird,” I say. “But I need some backup, Faye. You know Lara, she used to say you had good judgment. You were just a kid and she thought you were the Queen of Good Judgment.”

  Denise peers at us through the rearview mirror. She looks tired, like she might be coming down with something. “Well, Bev, you’ve chosen a few files for consideration. We can meet with those couples as well, if you like. You’re in your third trimester now, Bev, and we’ll want to move things along, but we want you to feel totally comfortable with your decision.”

  Faye stares down at her poor, picked-over fingers.

  “It has the hiccups,” I say. “Do you want to feel? It’s bizarre.”

  I grab Faye’s hand and hold it against the bump.

  “That’s hiccups?” she asks.

  I nod and hold her hand there until we’re practically back at the school.

  “You sure you don’t want us to take you home?” Denise asks.

  Faye is already out the door. “This is great. I have a late cello practice in the band room.”

  It warms my heart to think even perfect Faye is a liar.

  SIX

  For the first time, I dream about Faye. It’s like I’m a fly on the wall as she and Mannie sit down to dinner with her parents. They’re eating something pink, maybe baked salmon, and I can tell Mannie hates it. They keep asking him polite questions like “Do you have brothers and sisters?” and “What part of town did you grow up in?”, but he’s mumbling and I can’t hear his answers. Faye smiles happily as he mumbles, like she finds the whole thing amusing.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I say to him. “How do you even know them?”

  But he can’t hear me, of course, and when the Little Alien wakes me up, I have to pee really bad. I kick Mannie as I struggle to get up, like it’s his fault he was in my dream.

  I swear, it’s as if those days when I was a kid on Montrose barely existed after I left. Then I went back, to the big bare trees and snow-rutted back lanes, and I saw Faye and I started remembering all kinds of things about River Heights, when Ray was still pretending that the restaurants weren’t in the crapper and Lara still thought there was something she could do to make him want her again. Back when my Big Sis Jill still came to stay and made hilariously sad faces behind Lara’s back.

  Maybe that’s all what Denise calls “baby brain”—most of your mind gets fuzzier than morning tongue, but some things get super clear.

  I sit on the toilet for several minutes, but all I manage is a good burp. Denise and Dr. Kohut keep saying that if I’m getting constipated, I have to get lots of fiber in my diet, which makes me want to puke chewed-up bran all over their precious files. I know I need to eat broccoli or dried fruit or fricking wood chips, but the Little Alien wants starches. It likes to play with knives inside of me, and it likes to carb out on noodles, processed cheese and white bread. Lara would turn over in her tanning bed if she knew the way I was eating these days.

  “I feel like I should be there,” she said last week over the phone. “I’m going to book a flight.”

  “We’re fine,” I said. “Please don’t.”

  “Why won’t you let me come?” she asked. “Why don’t you ever let me in? You’re my little girl. Are you eating good? Is he being good to you? What’s his name, Danny—is he being good to you?”

  “He’s good,” I said. “We’re good.”

  “What about Ray? Is he being a shit about this? You know he made me get an abortion once. Eighteen months after you were born. Did I ever tell you that? He said six was enough, like he was talking about pairs of shoes. Sometimes I lose track of what I’ve shared with you. I wanted to protect you, baby. I’ve always wanted to protect you.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “You told me. But he’s fine. I can take care of Ray.”

  “That’s my strong Bev,” she said. “I love how strong you are. But don’t forget about your mama. I want to help. I want to be there for you.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’ll keep you updated.”

  She’d sighe
d then. “Oh, my baby Bev…”

  “You okay in there?” Mannie shouts though the bathroom door.

  The Little Alien shifts around and delivers a swift punch below my ribs. Dr. Kohut says the fetus can recognize voices already, and I wonder if the Little Alien is already as irritated by Mannie’s verbal diarrhea as I am.

  There’s a knock on the door. “Bev, you okay?”

  Yes, I should’ve said to Lara. He’s being so good to me I want to kill him.

  The Little Alien delivers a double kick to the groin, and pain slashes down my right leg. “Yes. I’m okay, moron.”

  After the first trimester, when I didn’t feel ready to hurl every minute and my gut busted open the zipper of my best jeans, I moved in with Mannie, and things were bearable for a while. He worked nights at the pizza place, and if the place was a sty, at least I had most of it to myself. Mannie’s roommate, Warren, a big fat gangbanger who fancied himself some kind of street warrior, slept all day and went out at night, dealing with shit way out of Mannie’s league. But Warren was actually a bit of a neat freak, always telling Mannie to get his shit out of the sink. And he never brought girls back unless it was for business. I figured maybe he was a closet case trying hard to cover up with a macho criminal act.

  “What’s with him?” I asked once. “He doesn’t even look at me.”

  Mannie stuck his tongue in my ear and purred. “He blames you for turning me into a pussy.”

  I laughed and let his tongue twirl around. “You did that all yourself.”

  I laughed harder than I had in a long time, because it was true. When I first met Mannie, he seemed so unpredictable, skinny and muscular at the same time, always watching me with those green cat eyes. He carried stacks of dirty dishes like he was doing some kind of circus trick and appeared out of nowhere without a sound. One of the waiters told me he’d done time at the youth center for joyriding, and I couldn’t help it—I started to imagine him trolling the back lanes of the old neighborhood, silent and quick, sliding in the front seat of the car as the family ate its angel-hair pasta and focaccia bread, backing out beneath the glow of the motion-detector light.

  But that was before I really got to know him. Three months after we hooked up, he started following me around like a puppy waiting to be kicked.

  “What’s up with you?” I asked.

  Then he started talking nonstop, a gushing vomit of words worthy of Lara herself. I knew his mother was from Argentina and he hadn’t visited her in the loony bin for years. I knew his father was Filipino and had left when Mannie was two. I knew his best friend’s mother, the saintly Betty, had taken him under her wing and kept him off the street. But that was it. I didn’t want to know more. Why do people feel the need to trade their family histories just because they’re trading bodily fluids?

  Turns out his father had suddenly called Mannie after sixteen years and messed with his head. This guy, Eduardo or something, told him he’d met Mannie’s mother in ESL classes and it had been love at first sight. She was ten years older, a hot-to-trot former rich girl who still acted like she wasn’t poor, and Eduardo decided to hell with his disapproving Catholic family. They moved in together, had a kid, and then she started coming unglued. Sometimes she wouldn’t get out of bed for weeks, and other times she’d get caught walking out of grocery stores, cart loaded up and no receipt. It wasn’t long before Eduardo was out of there, marrying a nice Filipino girl who sang at weddings.

  “You have to understand,” he told Mannie. “I have my own family now, and they wouldn’t understand. But I think about you, and I wanted to know you’re okay.”

  “What a tremendous prick,” I said to Mannie when I found out.

  But Mannie only shook his head. “No. You don’t know what it’s like to live with her.”

  I would’ve understood if he was fricking furious, but he wasn’t. For a couple of weeks he just sulked, acting like he wanted something from me but had no idea what. And then, just like that, it was over. He didn’t bring up Eduardo again—didn’t even bring up poor, dead, saintly Betty for a while, which was nice.

  Because no one had messed with Mannie’s head the way that woman had. The world’s problems will not be solved if we all go back to the bush and start picking our own berries, and you can’t keep blaming your own problems on stuff that happened a hundred years ago. And Mannie is not one of the Indian Brotherhood just because he can pass.

  Still, things were bearable until a few days ago, when Mannie quit the pizza place and started sitting around in the pawnshop recliner all day, playing Grand Theft Auto. And the other night, Warren brought home a girl who looked like she’d be found dead in a ditch sometime soon, and it was enough to make me want to crawl back to Ray on my hands and knees and vow to drown the Little Alien in a toilet. But I know how stubborn Ray can be—stubborn enough to pick himself up and dust himself off every single time, to keep promising to love them through better and through worse, to keep luring new investors for restaurant after restaurant, nightclub after nightclub.

  “What’s your plan?” I asked Mannie yesterday. “How are we going to eat?”

  But he kept pouting and playing, ignoring me, just like his big, scary warrior buddy, Warren. Until last night when I got home from Olef and Helga’s.

  “Warren’s gone,” he said. “He had to bugger off for a while.”

  Mannie was still sitting in the recliner, but in the dark. The TV was nothing but a blank black screen. “From now on,” he said, “I’m a changed man. I’m going to have a kid. This is no place for a kid.”

  I turned on the light. “No shit.”

  Now, I open the bathroom door and he’s standing right there, waiting.

  “What?” I say.

  “Nothing. You were just in there a long time.”

  The elastic in his underwear is saggy, and I can make out the top of his pubic hair. His stomach is perfectly flat, and before I can stop myself, I reach out and touch it. It’s hard and smooth and amazing.

  “I’m going to have stretch marks,” I say. “It’s not fair.”

  He cups both hands around the bump like he’s about to shoot a hoop. “You’re beautiful.”

  I know he’s horny and full of shit. I know I’m constipated, I have morning breath, my fingers are swollen pork sausages. But I let him spill it. I let him tell me about the time Betty gave him his traditional name, how he is finally a changed man. I let him rub my feet in bed, let him coo at the bump, let him rest his head wherever he wants.

  “I feel him, I feel him kicking,” he says. “Hello. Hello, little Little Bear.”

  The next day, Denise wastes no time and sets up another interview. I take a nap in the afternoon, and I dream about Faye again, only Jill is there this time, and we’re still kids. Jill is maybe fourteen, back when Lara called her “horsey-looking” when she wasn’t around and her favorite lunch was sugar-and-banana sandwiches. She isn’t a big-time model yet, hasn’t sworn off all white foods. Hasn’t couriered me a supersize suitcase full of her best fashionista shit, with no note, not a word, so that I know something is very wrong.

  In my dream, Jill is brushing Faye’s hair. “It’s so strong,” she says. “No split ends. You could do hair product, you know. You don’t have to be tall. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Faye is a musician,” I say. “She’s going to play in the symphony.”

  Faye rolls her eyes.

  “Faye’s adopted,” I say. “She was born in China.”

  “That’s so exotic,” Jill says. “Exotic is hot right now, you know.”

  Faye’s mother appears in the room, like a mama lion ready to pounce. “What on earth are you doing?”

  Then the dream is over. I hear Mannie in the other room, breathing hard. He is counting push-ups to himself, something that normally makes me horny. But the Little Alien is awake now too, getting out his knives, and I still feel like a kid, I’m still with Jill, back when we hung out all the time.

  When the stepsibs came to visit, Ra
y was always keen to show off his only boy, Jill’s brother, Thomas, so Jill and I were on our own. She taught me how to put in a tampon before I even got my period. She showed me how to extend my lashes with Vaseline. She could tell Lara to chill out without upsetting her.

  Mannie comes in and crawls slowly toward me on the bed.

  “You stink,” I say.

  He licks my earlobe. “You used to like it.”

  I push him away even though the licking has sort of worked. Part of me wants nothing more than for him to slide his finger between my legs. “What are we going to do for money?” I ask.

  He puts his hands behind his head and stares up at the ceiling like there’re fluffy clouds up there sailing through a blue sky. “Don’t you worry about nothing. I got it covered.”

  “Anything,” I say. “Don’t worry about anything.”

  He lights up a joint and keeps watching the clouds. “Yeah, exactly.”

  “How?” I ask.

  “How what?” he asks.

  The Little Alien starts to hiccup, and suddenly I’m hungry, as if the secondhand smoke is giving me the munchies. “How do you have it covered?”

  “Warren owed me,” he says. “I got almost a thousand.”

  “What about when that’s gone?” I ask.

  He reaches over and brushes his fingers against my cheek. “Don’t worry, babe. Your daddy’s not the only one who can provide.”

  I roll out of bed instead of kneeing him in the balls for being such a dumbass. I eat some sugary O’s, leave Jill behind and climb into the van with Denise. We pick up Faye to meet Lisa and Chris, and just one look tells me their profiles make perfect sense.

  Lisa wears her hair butch-short and likes hiking and mystery novels. Chris is neatly bald, wearing pleated pants and a pinky ring. He likes hiking and jazz.

  “You guys have only been married for a year,” I say. “You haven’t known each other all that long. How can you assure me your marriage is going to last?”

  They look almost offended, are obviously not as hungry as Olef and Helga. They offer tea and coffee and that’s it.