How to Party with an Infant

by Kaui Hart Hemmings

  “Is this where I go?” she asks, turning in to the narrow passage.

  “Yes, Mom. You look at the menu? Then order?”

  She used to go to drive-throughs all the time, but it seems so different now.

  “Just order me a cheeseburger, fries, and a shake,” he says.

  “Could I order a cheeseburger?” she says to the neon sign.

  “Not here!” he yells. “You need to pull up, God!”

  She pulls up toward the window.

  “Stop!” he yells.

  She slams on the brakes and sees a metal box. Someone says something out of the box.

  “Hello? Okay. Well, my son says he would like—”

  “Don’t introduce it,” Chris says. “Just say the order. Just say it!”

  “Oh, well. We would like a cheeseburger, fries, and a shake.”

  “What kind of shake?” the voice asks.

  “Whatever,” Chris says.

  Her face burns. “Well, I don’t know.”

  “Just pick one,” Chris says.

  “Chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry,” the voice says.

  “Which one would you like?” she asks Chris.

  “It doesn’t matter! Just pick one!”

  “I suppose the chocolate then. Or could you do a Neapolitan?”

  “A what?” the voice says.

  “Nothing. Chocolate. Chocolate’s fine.” She glances around, feeling as though a lot of people are laughing at her or waiting for her to parallel-park.

  “Anything else?” the voice asks.

  “I don’t think—I suppose a Coke or something. Or maybe I’ll have a chocolate shake, too.”

  Silence.

  “You need to say ‘I’d like a chocolate shake,’ ” Chris says. “Not ‘maybe I’ll have one.’ She takes orders, not wonders.”

  “I’ll have a shake then,” she says. “Chocolate. Okay. That’s that.”

  “Anything to eat?”

  “Well, maybe—”

  “Just double the order!” Chris yells, leaning over her. “Two of everything!” He goes back to his side. “God!” he says. “Sometimes you can just, like, kill events. You make things so unnecessarily difficult.” He flicks his hand forward. “Pull up.”

  Georgia does as she’s told.

  * * *

  Driving on 280 she feels protected by the rolling hills and the silence of the cool night. With the light of the moon on the hills the ride feels almost romantic.

  “If you’re having any trouble you can tell me, you know.”

  “I’m not having any trouble,” Chris says.

  “But I just picked you up in jail.”

  “All I did was get a goddamn jacket, then I’m in some ghetto holding cell stripping in front of a guard who could have butt-raped me if he wanted to.”

  “I still think something is going on—”

  “I just explained!”

  “You’re not . . . you’re not in a gang or anything, are you? I’ve heard about these initiations—”

  “With the artichokes! Oh my God, that is so messed up. Where did they even come up with that?”

  “So you’re not—”

  “No, I’m not psychotic! That’s like Clockwork Orange shit. Scary.” He looks back at Zoë with what seems like concern.

  “Well, you do get detention a lot,” she continues. “That’s trouble.”

  “That’s nothing, too. Just a bunch of bullshit. I was in there last time for not running. Big deal.”

  “What do you mean?” she asks.

  He looks up at the ceiling. “In our timed mile I hid behind this blue mat. The mat people land on after they leap over a pole with a pole. What’s that called again?”

  “Pole vaulting,” she says, happy not only to know the answer but that her brain had transmitted this knowledge so quickly.

  “Why the cock do people do that?” Chris asks. “Who even came up with that? I mean, for reals. So I hid behind the pole-vaulting mat, then joined in on the last lap. Curt, a total vagina, ratted me out.”

  “Why didn’t you just run?”

  “Because it’s a ridiculous thing to do,” he says. “People need to compete all the time. Coach Ron is standing there with his clipboard. Coach Jon is recording our times. Why? What’s the point? People eat spiders and roll around in bat feces to win something. I’m not going to put on little shorts and jog so I can beat my record.”

  He needs a role model, Georgia knows, and yet Eric is proving to be a bad one. Chris doesn’t respect him—his art, his mind, and his “alert approach” to living. If only he could relate to him somehow, to both of them.

  “Your father thinks running is ridiculous, too,” she says.

  “Yeah, but he has no problem putting spandex on every Saturday morning and riding down hills on a bicycle with his asshole in the air. I don’t see why they all have to wear those tights. You can bike in normal clothes, you know.”

  “Your father was in the army,” she says, having no idea why she would say such a thing and what it’s supposed to accomplish. She was watching something about Navy SEALs on the Today show and they seemed so stoic and wise, not to mention incredibly sculpted. She supposes she wants him to envision his father moving through a swamp with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. There he is in the jungle or the desert, squinting in the hot sun. He’s had a hard day, lost one of his best friends in a surprise attack. He holds a letter to the friend’s wife that says, “If you get this it means I’m gone, my love.” Eric looks up at the sky and shouts. The other men look away, uncomfortable with his savage grief. He’d cheer up later that day after receiving the letter from Georgia, telling him she was pregnant with his son, a war baby.

  “He was not in the army,” Chris says. “Are you kidding me?”

  It’s a horrible lie, and what did she expect to get from it?

  “I think he was,” she says. “Just a little stint—to pay for his education.”

  “Big deal,” Chris says. “And if he was he sure doesn’t act like it. At that barbecue he had to scrape the grill because bacon touched it! It’s like someone’s done a 187 on his manhood.”

  She remembers Eric scraping the bacon essence. She caught her friends exchanging looks, Mele mouthing, Oh my God.

  “He has allergies,” she lies.

  “Bullshit.” He coughs.

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” Georgia says. “Your brother and sister are susceptible. They’re like sponges.”

  “Yeah, right,” Chris says. “Gabe can hardly talk. Kids are supposed to talk by now. Gabe want milk. Gabe make peepee.” Chris laughs.

  Georgia experiences a shock of humiliation and guilt. She has a faulty child, and it isn’t a manufacturing problem. It has to do with care and maintenance. She fills Gabe with juice and candy. She lets him watch hours upon hours of toons, and the toon he loves happens to be about a bunch of kid scientists who, quite frankly, behave as though there’s no chance in hell that they could be scientists. She gets too tired to make lunch for him and gives him Lunchables instead, which make his fingers puffy. She wonders why Chris isn’t eating. The burgers smell sweet and smoky.

  “Kids are all different,” she says. “They all move at different speeds. Gabe excels in other things.” She tries to think of the other things, but when she measures his abilities against those of the Panhandle bunch, Gabe comes out a dwarf. He doesn’t have milestones. He has centimeterstones.

  Zoë begins to make her hungry cry, and Georgia speeds up. She doesn’t want to have to nurse her in front of Chris. The absolute worst thing would be if Gabe woke up and wanted to nurse—Gabe want boobie!—fussing with her breast like a kitten with a ball of yarn. She has kept it a secret from Chris and Eric that he still breast-feeds.

  “Hush, Zoë,” Chris says. His voice isn’t soft, but it’s kind. He always speaks to Zoë as though she’s an adult. “I bought you a blanket,” he says. “It’s pink. You’ll love it. Don’t cry.”

  “You got her a
blanket?” Georgia asks.

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “Where?”

  “Giggle.”

  Georgia has never gone in there—that fancy Marina baby store with modern baby furniture and poison-free plastics.

  “The saleswoman said some celebrity has the same blanket. She said to a customer, ‘If they have an ugly baby, just get it some gorgeous clothes!’ She sucked.”

  It occurs to Georgia that her son is the only one in their household earning a paycheck.

  “That was nice of you,” she says.

  “I know,” he says.

  They wind down the freeway toward the south of the city. A blanket of light rolls out before her. She feels this way about her son, too—that he’s rolling out before her.

  “I want you to know that if you need help I’m here,” she says. “If you’re doing drugs you can tell me.”

  “I’m doing drugs,” he says.

  “Oh,” she says.

  “Just weed,” he says. “Like, socially. I’m not a hermit or anything toking day and night and talking crap about reality, man. That’s probably what you did back in the day. Actually, you and Dad probably weren’t even doing that.”

  “Well, I think it’s natural to experiment, and I appreciate your honesty, but you need to make sure you’re safe. In fact, you shouldn’t—”

  “Have you?” Chris asks. “Have you done drugs?”

  She hasn’t. Nothing. Some grass in high school, but she never liked it. She’d take fake hits, then dance in her peasant skirts, pretending to be high and enlightened.

  “Yes,” she says.

  Chris laughs as though he doesn’t believe her. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Grass.”

  “Grass.” He laughs. “Rad.”

  “And acid.” She quickly checks his face and hopes he won’t ask her what acid looks like. “And I’ve snorted cocaine.”

  “What!” Chris says. “Nuh-uh.” She smiles because he seems so proud of her.

  “I was a real cokehead,” she says. “So was Dad,” she adds. “That’s how we met. I mean, that’s how we bonded.”

  Chris stares, his mouth agape. He’s envisioning his father as a smoker, a fighter. They both tripped out and did white lines. Perhaps he sees Eric tucking a wad of cash into her bra and saying, “Go get yourself some cocaine. It’s on me.” Perhaps he’s imagining his beautiful mother tottering off on platform heels.

  “But then I overdosed,” she says. “And we sobered up. Together.” There she is convulsing on the floor of a bathroom, blood running out of her nose. Eric hoists her over his shoulder and smokes a cigarette as he carries her to the hospital. He could drive, but it’s a nice night, warm and humid like Kuwait. “You hang in there, sweetcakes,” he says every now and then while gently patting her bottom.

  Chris looks amused, yet confused, like he’s listening to a comedian that he hadn’t planned on liking. Georgia’s a bit afraid of her son’s gaze. She knows this small thread of respect could unravel in an instant, but she settles her shoulders, leans back, and lounges in the deceit.

  “Wow,” he says. “Well, all right.”

  They drive in silence, and Georgia knows that he’s thinking he’s wrong about her, and that she’s an interesting person. Zoë starts to make little whimpers—little accusations. They clash with the Brazilian woman’s throaty whimpers, which sound like she’s enjoying something delicious.

  “Aren’t you going to eat your burger?” Georgia asks.

  He takes a sip of his shake. “We can pull over if you want,” he says. “If you want to eat, too. Or just wait till home or whatever. I was just going to wait. I don’t like eating in motion.”

  “Neither do I,” she says, slowing before the next exit, her heart racing. “So should we pull over or can you wait?”

  “Up to you,” he says.

  It’s not a life-or-death decision, she reminds herself. Just make a decision. Just veer off course. She takes the exit.

  * * *

  The dirt lot at the top of the hill overlooks Pacifica.

  “This is such an odd parking lot,” she says.

  “It’s probably for maintenance people,” Chris says, nodding toward something near the entrance that looks like a water heater. She parks so that they can look out at the ocean, black and rippling like oil. Houses are huddled together by the expanse of forest and ocean, a little, bright patch of life. She can see Target, the telltale bull’s-eye, and thinks of toilet paper. She forgot to get some this afternoon, which reminds her of Zoë’s full diaper. Zoë has gone back to sleep. Chris hands her a bag of loose fries and a burger wrapped in wax paper.

  “I hate when they don’t give you enough ketchup,” he says.

  “You hate a lot of things,” she says.

  “You should try it sometime.” He takes a bite of his burger. “Ah,” he says. “It’s good to be out of jail.”

  She laughs, realizing her son is funny. She has a funny child, and for the first time she considers it’s something to be proud of, that funny is an intelligent and hard thing to be. She unwraps the burger, and the paper fills her with warm nostalgia. She takes a bite. The bun is soft on her tongue and it melts into her teeth and onto the roof of her mouth. Everything collides and becomes one—bun, patty, sauce. She puts a fry in her mouth just to employ everything equally, and the dense concoction is heavenly. She has never felt so centered, so content.

  Except.

  She wishes there were a bathroom. Her breasts are full and hard and she can feel them growing. She’s worried Zoë will make a sound triggering the downpour of milk, which feels like raining needles. She wishes she could squeeze her breasts over a sink or even outside on the dirt. Chris catches her eye, and they both look away from each other with full mouths. They come back though. They chew and their eyes meet again.

  “Bomb, isn’t it?” Chris says.

  She nods. Yes. Bomb. She tries to think of the other fake things she did when she was a girl. What kinds of things would he appreciate?

  “Vanna White sure looks good still,” she says.

  “Yeah, but she’s got those hard boobs that are everywhere now.” He chews and looks like he’s contemplating something significant. “It will be weird when these ladies get superold, but their boobs will be the same. Their boobs will be like the old perv who still tries to look young and hang with the kids. They’ll be perv boobs.” He takes a loud sip of his shake. “I don’t how Vanna can do that job for so long.”

  She pictures Vanna clapping her hands in a way that allows her to keep every other part of her body still. It’s very easy for Georgia to see how Vanna can still do what she does. Same reason she can be with Eric for so long, or can let her son speak to her the way he does. Same reason she hasn’t weaned or potty-trained Gabe. People get stuck, and not a good kind of stuck, like Vanna. Some people just don’t have what it takes to be anything else. Lose a turn, sorry, too bad. It’s a thing, a place, a person. Can you solve it? What would you like to do now, Georgia?

  “I used to model,” she says.

  She sees a flicker in Chris’s eye, something wanting.

  “Is that how you got into coke?” he asks after chewing down a fry.

  She hadn’t put that together. “Yes,” she says.

  “That’s awesome.”

  “I didn’t like it though,” she says. “The modeling. I just wanted to travel. I went to India. That’s where I learned yoga and why we live so . . . minimally.”

  She thinks of Eric and his joke of an art, likes that she can source their failure in spirituality. She can do anything she wants. She takes another bite of her burger.

  “I just want you to have a chance to see the world like I did. I want you to be able to make mistakes, but have the education and support to lessen the effects of mistakes. Cocaine didn’t kill me, but it could have if I hadn’t come from a good family and done well in school.”

  She has never expressed herself so well. She
did horribly in school. Her mother and father were alcoholics. Her dad worked as a teller at a bank in a wealthy neighborhood and would come home, drink his gin, then have conversations with imaginary customers. “Yes, Mrs. Rich Bitch,” he’d say. “Is there anything else?” At dinner he’d look under the table and yell, “Are you under there, Mrs. Rich Bitch?”

  When she was little she actually thought this was a real woman.

  Chris nods as he chews. Georgia looks over the ocean; the music is low on the radio. She is beautiful, well traveled, deep, experienced. She’s a mother eating fast food with her son. They should do this more often. Come up here, hang out, talk. What are his goals, his dreams? What are hers? She’s about to ask. She’ll just come out and say: “What do you want, Chris? What do I want?” but just then Zoë issues a sharp wail that stabs their beautiful bubble. It’s an awful, awful sound, and her breasts respond to it immediately, like servants. Wetness blooms on her blue shirt. Two round wet circles, one bigger than the other.

  “I need to feed her,” she says. Chris looks at her shirt and stops chewing.

  She passes him her food, then turns to get on her knees and move over the console. She unbuckles Zoë and brings her to the front so Gabe won’t wake up and see them. Zoë makes frantic movements, butting her mouth into Georgia’s shirt.

  “Hold her,” she says, and Chris looks down at his hands, then places everything on the floor and takes his sister.

  Georgia sits back down in front, then unbuttons her shirt and pulls down her bra. She has never bought one of those nursing bras with the flaps. She just pulls one side down and it stays underneath her boob. “Okay,” she says.

  He hands her to Georgia, but positions his body so that he faces forward.