by Paula McLain
Suzette rose from the table and went to the fridge, standing for several moments with the door open. She didn’t even look pregnant from the back. She looked like a stick figure in a half-finished drawing. When she came back she was carrying a bowl of cherry tomatoes and a beer, which she offered to Raymond. “Anyway, I figure I can’t do any worse than Berna did raising us.”
Raymond simply nodded, focused on the steady lip of the can.
“I’ve gotta go to work,” Suzette said, snapping the stem off a cherry tomato and putting it into her mouth. “Will you still be here when I get home?”
“Of course. Where else would I be?”
She shrugged and stood, and suddenly seemed to age ten years. “I don’t know. I guess I keep thinking that one of these days you’re going to give up on me. Everyone else has. Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because I love you. You know that.” He said the words, trying to fill them absolutely, wanting her to trust him, to lean on him, to feel him as a net that would never, ever fail her.
“I know that,” she repeated, sighing. And then she tightened her apron, put on another, prettier face, and went off to deal someone else’s fortune, card by card.
After Jamie was born, Raymond kept in close touch despite Suzette’s resistances, calling to hear the baby cry or coo, sending a check whenever he could. He was there when they brought her home from the hospital, and for her first birthday, bringing a painted wooden caterpillar as a gift. Jamie immediately picked up the toy and began gumming on the pull string, and he felt a satisfaction that reminded him of that first time he’d put Suzette to sleep. Jamie was a sweet baby, with wide brown eyes and an unmanageable shock of sandy hair fountaining from the top of her head. He watched her patiently mangling a mound of gift paper, gnawing on the ribbon, chasing a half-deflated balloon around the small apartment, and thought about how babies were so open, so easy in a way. They needed a lot from you, but what they needed was simple and straightforward. He didn’t think Suzette would agree. She looked like she was being swallowed up by the demands of motherhood from the inside out. At the birthday party, such as it was, Suzette sat at one end of the table in a housedress, her slip showing, her hair unclean. It was teased up in front and in a little ratted ponytail in back, as if she’d slept on it and couldn’t be bothered to tidy it in the morning. As Jamie scooped a blue rose from the piece of cake on her tray and gleefully smeared it everywhere she could reach, Suzette chain-smoked, unsmiling. In fact, she grew animated only when Benny came home with pizza and a small baggie of Mexican reds. They all got very high that night, Raymond included, while Jamie slept down the hall on a mattress they had set up for her on the floor, pillows all around—but he couldn’t help feeling, as he drove away the next morning, that Suzette was teetering on the edge of a pretty dark place.
He should have done something then, but he didn’t. Within a month, Suzette began calling him frequently, saying she was sure Benny was having an affair. She was worried he was going to leave her, and had started tailing him at night, throwing Jamie in the back of the car, wrapped in a blanket. She insisted he take her to parties, introduce her to his friends, but the more clingy she got, the more cagey and elusive he grew. He’d stay away for days at a time so that she couldn’t go in and work her shifts. When he did come home she’d pick a fight and he’d leave again.
And then came the call when Suzette said it was all just too much for her. Raymond knew it had been coming, and was only a little surprised when Suzette asked him to take the baby to Berna—just for a few months, until she could get herself straight again, put a little money by. Suzette and Berna were barely civil to each other in those days, true, but who else was there? So he made the call and headed to Reno. He did everything she asked, driving most of the night to get there. When he arrived, the baby was still asleep and Benny was on the couch in his underwear and messed up on something. Raymond found he couldn’t look at Benny’s hands—at the stumpy, yellowed nails, bleeding here and there—when he took the note Suzette had left. I can’t stay and watch you take her, she’d written. Tell Berna not to worry. I’m going to send money. Raymond had turned the note over, looking for more, but there hadn’t been more. There had also been no calls and no money. Not that this surprised Berna. When she had agreed to take the baby, Raymond had heard considerable resignation in her voice, but she had asked surprisingly few questions. It was as if she’d simply been waiting for the moment, knowing Suzette as she did.
It wasn’t yet dawn when Raymond headed out of Reno with Jamie in the backseat. She was tucked into a Chiquita banana box with her bottle and a pink flannelette blanket, a few toys around her. She slept a lot, lulled by the car’s motion and the radio, and Raymond couldn’t help but look in the rearview at her soft bud-face and fantasize about keeping her. Maybe he could do it. For daytime, he’d get a babysitter. Or he’d talk Suzette into moving out to LA, where he was living. They could care for the baby together; they could be a family—hell, they already were a family. But as soon as the thought fully materialized, Raymond forced it away. Suzette was a train wreck; she couldn’t help take care of Jamie right now. He would have to do it on his own, and was he really ready to be a father?
When Raymond had handed over the baby in Bakersfield, he told himself it was the best option for everyone—a short-term solution, a way to get past the tough times. But who was he kidding? He was simply doing what Suzette had asked him to, no matter how wrong it felt to him deep down, because he couldn’t stand to see her unhappy. He wanted to fix it, fix everything—but he’d made things worse in a way. Sending Jamie to Berna had given Suzette a kind of permission to duck out and forget her responsibilities. Although she swore it was only going to be for a while, that “while” kept growing. It was just going to be four more months or six, or when she got a good enough job, felt more settled, got her head on straight. But the right circumstances in the right order seemed always just out of Suzette’s reach. And if it pained Raymond that he never heard Suzette talk about her daughter, never saw her longing for Jamie or even missing her, wasn’t it his fault as much as Suzette’s? Hadn’t he been the one to spirit her away, to make the problem of the baby disappear?
Raymond wanted to be thinking of something else, or better yet, nothing at all, but as he drove through Bakersfield in the early light, he found himself ticking through the names of the boys and men Suzette had driven herself crazy over through the years. Her romantic history was a kind of landscape he could pass through the way he did his hometown, into the sad heart of it and out again, recognizing every farm, barn, and silo, every listing fence line. Bakersfield, like Suzette herself, didn’t change much—and it made Raymond feel sore, tired at bone level, imposed upon.
Now, while Suzette slept like a baby, he drove all the way up to the mouth of Berna and Nelson’s long drive and let the car idle. It was nearly dawn. Berna and Nelson would be awake soon if they weren’t already. He could pull in and wait out front of the house. If the first thing Suzette saw when she opened her eyes was her daughter, maybe she’d be happy she was there; maybe she’d even forgive Raymond for going against her wishes. But it was just as likely she’d be pissed enough to spit nails, that they’d have a tense breakfast, his mother and sister glaring across the kitchen table at each other while little Jamie grew more and more confused. That they’d leave without anyone feeling good about the visit.
With an insinuating whisper, a sigh, Gerry & The Pacemakers began to sing “Ferry Cross the Mersey,” and it was too mournful, too loaded. Suzette in the backseat, wrapped in his jacket, was suddenly too much cargo. He couldn’t carry her to safer waters. He couldn’t make decisions for her, couldn’t live her life or protect her from anything or anyone, least of all herself.
When Raymond turned the car around and headed back to town, he turned the radio off altogether. The windshield was littered with a night’s worth of dead bugs the wipers only smeared. In fifteen minutes, he was pulled over to one side of the Safeway parking lot,
watching skewers of light breach the roofline where a congregation of fat pigeons slept with their heads nestled down into ruffs of feathers. This was how Suzette slept, too, her shoulders up to her ears in a sustained flinch. What or who was filling her head in sleep? Maybe he’d never know. Maybe he was lucky not to.
Raymond went inside for juice and powdered doughnuts and a newspaper, and when he returned, Suzette was sitting up, her eyes pink and raw as new skin.
“Where are we?”
“Home sweet home, babe. Don’t you recognize it?” He twisted the juice cap off, offered the bottle to her.
“I’m starting to think this was a bad idea,” she said.
“I could have told you that.”
“I’m serious. I had an awful dream last night. Benny was already dead and talking to me. As if he didn’t know he was dead yet, you know?”
Raymond didn’t respond to her half-question because it was clear, as she continued telling her dream, looking out the window, that she wasn’t talking to him, but to herself or to no one at all.
“He was standing in a closet with the door open and there was a clothes hanger that went right through his ears, but no blood. And he was telling me that I’m going to die soon. Me, like he was sent to give me the message. ‘Everything’s going to be okay,’ that’s what he kept saying, like he didn’t want me to worry about anything.” Raymond looked into the window Suzette faced, at the fragments of her rumpled face reflected in the unclean glass. She didn’t look or sound like she thought anything was going to be okay.
“Suzy, sweetie,” he said, trying to call her back. “You’re not going to die. No one’s going to die. We can go over there right now and you can talk to Benny himself. How about that?”
“No. What I’m telling you is he’s dead. I know he is.”
“What do you want to do then? We came all this way and you don’t even want to go over there?”
“Why don’t you go?” she said, pinching at the fabric of Raymond’s jacket, which still lay in her lap, with her fingertips. “I’ll wait here.”
“You got us into this, sweets. It’s your party. I can’t do this for you.”
“Well then, just call or something. You don’t even have to tell Benny we’re here. Just say you wanted to know how things were going. A social call.”
“At six in the morning?”
“We’ll go get something to eat, call in an hour or so. How about that?”
And so they drove to the café, where Raymond stared into his eggs and the eggs stared back. At seven, he went to the back where there was a pay phone wedged next to the bathroom and flipped through the book until he found the number. He waited a long minute before dialing, thinking it should be Suzette who was making the call or no one. But Benny’s parents, the Garabedians, had never cared for her, that much had been obvious from the beginning. Even after Jamie Lynn came to live at Berna and Nelson’s, Benny’s parents acted as though she didn’t exist. Berna said she’d run into Mrs. Garabedian at the grocery store in town a number of times, and that the woman had pointedly steered her cart into another checkout line. Raymond didn’t even think Berna and Nelson had told Jamie who her father was, and why would they? She already had one clear strike against her with Suzette leaving her for others to bring up, without knowing that her father was right across town, jobless and living in his parents’ house, with no intention of seeing her or taking any responsibility for her well-being.
Raymond had met the Garabedians only once, when Suzette had convinced him to pay them a visit when he was in town, to see if she could get some money from them or Benny for Jamie’s care. Thinking back, he couldn’t believe he actually went and sat in their kitchen and begged for Suzette, humiliating himself in the process—but she had kept at him and kept at him, the way she did, making him feel it was his duty to do this for her. It was crazy and useless in the end. Benny had let him in and given him a cup of coffee. It was the middle of the afternoon, but Benny was in his bathrobe, unshaven, with what appeared to be women’s slippers on his feet. He wouldn’t meet Raymond’s eyes, and stuttered, unable to finish a sentence, but what he was trying to say was that he didn’t think Jamie was his baby.
Raymond wanted to hit him, but Benny’s parents were in the room, sitting pleasantly enough at the table, stirring half-cold cups of coffee, corroborating. It wouldn’t have been very satisfying anyway, he guessed. There wasn’t anything for his fist to connect with. Benny was like an empty sock puppet. There was no identifiable human expression on his face. His movements and reactions, the way he held his cup, stroked the belt of his bathrobe, cleared his throat, seemed hollow and delayed. Behind his eyes, there was an unanchored vastness Raymond could barely stand to think about, let alone look into. And this was the guy Suzette had fallen so in love with that when he left her, a few months after Jamie was sent to live with Berna, she was almost catatonic for the better part of a year? Raymond couldn’t count the number of times she had called him, sobbing over Benny. “No one knows me like Benny does, Ray. How can I live without him?”
Raymond sighed with disgust at the memory, then dropped a dime in the slot on the pay phone, waiting through four metallically guttural rings before Benny’s dad answered. His voice was grizzled and full of phlegm as he said, “Who is this?” instead of hello.
Raymond nearly hung up but pushed through. “Ray Pearson,” he said. “I’m sorry to call so early. But I’ve been wondering about your boy, and just wanted to know how he was doing.”
“Is this a joke? Are you a prank caller? I can have this call traced, you know. I can send the cops out right now.”
“No, no. It’s Raymond Pearson.” He was nearly shouting. “We’ve met before. I went to school with Benny.”
Silence.
“I’m Suzette’s brother,” he added finally.
“I know who you are. What do you people want with us now? I should think you’ve about done enough.”
“I’m not trying to cause you any trouble, it’s just my sister. She’s been worried about Benny.”
“The worst thing Benny ever did was get involved with that girl, and you can’t convince me she cared a lick for him at all. She’s worried about him you say? Well you can tell her she needn’t. Benny took his own life a little over two weeks ago. If she wanted to worry, she should have worried when it would have done him some good.” The line went dead.
Raymond hung up the receiver, feeling like a heel for troubling the obviously grieving man. And what would he do with this new information that he didn’t want to know? He didn’t want to head back to the booth where Suzette waited for him, but where else was there to go? What else could he do?
“Well?” Suzette said, when he made it back to their table. She had her feet tucked under her, and chewed at the sides of her thumbnail with all the seriousness of an excavation.
“Everything’s fine,” Ray said, sliding behind his side of the table. His breakfast was cold now, but he picked at it anyway, forcing himself to chew a forkful of jellied fried egg, cardboard toast.
“Are you sure? That dream felt pretty real.”
“I’m sure. Benny’s just fine.” His eyes took in her face, the wash of relief there, and felt little or no satisfaction. He was utterly spent. He hadn’t slept at all the night before, but more than this, he felt the weight of terrible news he couldn’t share, the weight of a sister carried over impossible waters, through minefields, blind, down long and jagged and endless roads—all with absolute futility. “You can stop worrying now,” he said. “But I for one am sick of this town. What do you say we get out of here?”
YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT
Claudia Fletcher turned sweet sixteen on August first. Her party began like a child’s, with a bakery cake, too-sweet frosting roses, rocky road ice cream melting on paper plates. Besides Fawn and myself there were four other guests, all girls, plus the parents. (Tom had been judiciously shuttled off to a friend’s for the evening.) While the blue flashcube on M
r. Fletcher’s Instamatic popped and spun, Mrs. Fletcher played hostess, right down to managing Claudia’s responses to her gifts. At nine, we were driven to the roller rink for “late skate,” where the whole session, even the hokey pokey and twenty minutes of limboing under a fake bamboo pole, was lit by strobe lights and by the giant glitter ball. During the couples’ skate, we all met out by the Dumpster at the back of the building and shared a joint, which, once we were back inside, worked to turn the light into ripped flower petals on the polished wooden floor and our own sweaty, wobbling bodies.
At eleven fifteen, Mr. Fletcher collected us, taking us back to the house, where the slumber portion of the party was to ostensibly begin. We dutifully changed into our nightclothes and brushed our teeth. When Mrs. Fletcher came in to say goodnight, we were all sitting quietly on our sleeping bags on the floor. Claudia waited the standard twenty minutes, tiptoed down the hall to check for snoring, then came back to declare the real party officially begun. It was midnight. By one thirty, everyone in the room knew absolutely everything about everybody else, only we were too drunk to know it.
“I never” was the drinking game we played, a combination of truth-or-dare and liar’s poker. Whoever’s turn it was would confess something about herself in the negative. That statement could be either a lie or the truth, but it had to be personal. For instance, a girl might say, “I’ve never shoplifted dirty magazines.” If she was telling the truth, she could simply sit there, basking in her virtue. If she was lying, she had to drink deeply from a concoction that Claudia had cooked up (one part peach schnapps, one part peppermint schnapps, one part instant iced tea, sweet enough and foul enough to curl your toes), as did anyone else in the circle who couldn’t truthfully say she had never stolen pornography.