Lucy nodded, afraid to talk. She swallowed down tears and finally said, “I understand. I hope he works out. If not, call us.”
“Oh, I will, honey. I will.”
Lucy stared down at the floor after Ethel walked away. She hated lying, hated being forced to pretend that everything was okay when the whole town knew it wasn’t. She remembered all the times she avoided the break room before Jared came, not wanting to hear the women in there bitching about working too hard and living with husbands that were too drunk. Before, she’d avoided it because she didn’t want to believe that could be her. Now, she avoided it because it hit too close to home. She looked at her co-workers, though, and wondered how they did it, year in and year out. Was there really no other way?
“Miss?” an older man said on the other side of the fully loaded belt.
“Oh. Sorry,” Lucy said. She wiped her eyes and rang him up.
LUCY ROARED UP the gravel of Marla’s driveway after her shift ended, still furious with Jeptha for losing the only job possibility he had had in months. It was one of her three long days each week, when she worked a shift at Walmart during the day and then went to the bar at night. She had to be at Judy’s in forty-five minutes, but she always came by Marla’s in time for dinner so she could see Jared. She would have just long enough to feed him the dinner Marla had already made and then run out the door. She slammed her car door shut behind her. Even when he wasn’t there, Jeptha could ruin a moment.
“Hey, Lucy,” Marla called from the kitchen when Lucy walked in. “Jared’s in his chair.”
“Thanks,” Lucy said and turned into the dining room. Marla’s kids were spooning mac and cheese and peas into their mouths silently, their eyes on the TV in the corner. Lucy watched Jared chase a mashed pea around his plate, his fat little fingers struggling to pick it up. She walked over to him and crouched down by his side.
“Hey, bud,” she said, smiling.
“Mama!” His face lit up at the sight of her. He pointed at the pea, his face suddenly serious, and said, “Mama.”
“Yeah, that’s a pea. Can you say pea? That one is not cooperating, is it?”
“Mama,” he said, shaking his head with the dismay only an almost-one-year-old could muster.
“You want some help?”
“Mama.”
Lucy dragged a chair over beside him. She mashed the peas a bit more with the back of his spoon and put a few in his mouth. He closed his eyes with pleasure, which made Lucy laugh. Jared loved to eat.
“He loves that word, don’t he?” Marla asked.
“Uses it for everything,” Lucy said. She looked up at Marla. “How’re you?”
“Fine. The same.”
“How was he today?”
“Good. He’s aching to get after those big kids. He took a couple steps today holding onto the table,” Marla said, hesitantly.
“He did?” Lucy asked, her heart breaking. She’d missed it, like she’d missed the first time he sat up on his own, the first time he had pulled up to standing, and the first time he’d said “Mama.” Sometimes Lucy felt like Marla was more of a mother to her son than she was.
“Sorry,” Marla said, quietly. “I know it’s hard to miss that stuff.”
“Be easier if it was fair.”
“Fair?”
“If Jeptha was doing his part too. But no. He lost the only job possibility he’s had since Cody got him on at the plant and he got his ass fired.” Lucy looked around at the kids, who were now looking at her. “Sorry,” she said to Marla.
“It’s okay. Nothing they ain’t heard before.” Marla wiped her hands on the dish towel that she wore over her shoulder nearly every second she was in the house. “You okay?” she asked, her hand on Lucy’s shoulder.
“As okay as I can be, I guess,” Lucy sighed. “Nothing’s gonna change. It’s my fault for thinking it might.”
“What are you gonna do?” Marla asked.
“What can I do? I’m gonna go to work, try to raise this baby,” Lucy said, her fingers stroking the side of Jared’s cheek. He turned a gummy smile to Lucy. “Speaking of which, I better get out of here.”
She kissed Jared on the head, her stomach aching at the thought of walking away from him. “All right, little man. I love you. I’ll see you later.”
“He’ll be asleep and waiting on you,” Marla said.
Lucy kissed Jared one more time. He happily returned to his dinner, as if his mom walking out the door was nothing to him. Tears came to her eyes again.
“And Lucy …” Marla called out. “It’ll be okay. Things’ll get better.”
She looked back at Marla and shook her head. “That’s sweet of you to say, Marla. It ain’t true, but it’s sweet of you to say it.”
Lucy walked slower than she should back to her car, breathing in the cold night air. She wanted Marla to be right, wanted to believe things would get better. But she couldn’t see her way clear to believing it. She’d settle for getting a little bit more time with her son. One day a week wasn’t enough. She wanted to be able to put him to bed two nights in a row, to feel that soft, warm cheek nuzzle into her neck, his warm, milky breath leaving a damp spot on her skin. Beyond that, she wanted a partner in all this. She wanted the old Jeptha back—the one who had shown up at her door with diapers and a crib, taken her to the Fold, and rubbed her feet at night. The one who didn’t drink. Even out of work, that Jeptha would have been a prize compared to the one who shared her home now. He was drunk more often than not, and out more than he was home. When she did spend time with him, he stared at her, his cheeks sunken and his eyes dimmed with squashed hope. He looked at her like he was craving something—anything—from her. She wasn’t the only disappointed one in their trailer at night. They were both wanting more than they got.
But Lucy didn’t have anything more to give. She was purely wrung out by the soul-consuming love she had for Jared, the way it had overtaken her on first glance and continued to beat her to within an inch of her life every day. It was exhausting loving something like that; there was no more of her to go around. Jeptha could see that. She tried to hide it from him, to force her face to remain the same when she glanced from Jared to Jeptha. But there was no way to do it—the light fell away from her skin as soon as she turned away from Jared. She was just so tired. She had nothing left for her husband except for anger and frustration. And even if there was something to give, who would she give it to? The sad, grizzly guy on the couch? She barely knew who he was.
She didn’t know much of anything anymore. All the certainty she’d once had was gone. The only thing she knew for sure was how much she loved Jared. Twenty-two years of living, and he was the only good thing she had to show for it.
WHEN LUCY WALKED through the door of the bar, Judy was wiping down the counter, lifting up Delnor’s glass and paper and glasses and keys as she moved past his spot on the bar. “Damn, Delnor, you about moved in here, or what?”
“Lucy!” Delnor said, ignoring Judy and turning to the front door. “How’s that baby?”
“Trouble, Delnor. Pure trouble,” she said, starting to laugh. She couldn’t help herself. Delnor—with his scraggly beard, habit of living at the bar, and evident drinking problem—was such an unlikely person to inquire about a baby, but he asked after Jared every time he saw her. When Jared was only a few months old, Lucy had had to bring him in for a couple hours one afternoon because Marla’s kids were sick. Delnor had eased Jared out of the car seat while Lucy went down to the stock room and had him asleep in the crook of his arm before she returned. He stayed there for two hours, asleep for most of it and pulling on Delnor’s beard for the rest. Both had been delighted.
“Jeptha playing tonight?” Judy asked when Lucy looked up. He’d never come in last Friday night, and Lucy had been caught telling the truth—that he’d been fine when she left—as Cody was spinning a web of lies about him being sick for days. Lying to Judy was dangerous, and Cody had slunk out of the bar after the set, eager to get away b
efore Judy made eye contact with him. When Lucy got home, she found Jeptha face down in the middle of the bed, snoring. The room smelled of whiskey. Lucy had slept on the couch that night.
“Far as I know,” Lucy said, her anger flooding back in. “But I don’t know much.”
Judy was silent. Her right eyebrow pointed skyward, and the right corner of her lips tucked back, rendering her whole mouth off-kilter. It was her deeply skeptical look, the one she wore when the person in front of her was slinging bullshit. “Y’all doing all right?”
Lucy shrugged her shoulders. Judy had been a bartender long enough to know the signs. She had once told Lucy that the people who had had the worst things happen in their lives rarely shared them—they stayed on the periphery of the crowd, got along well enough with everyone, but rarely divulged anything about themselves. It was the ones yelling about themselves on the bar stools that hadn’t really experienced anything terribly profound.
“Want me to say something to him?” Judy volunteered.
“Can’t imagine it would make a difference,” Lucy said. “Besides, who knows if he’ll even show tonight?”
“He better,” Judy said, pulling a beer off the draft with a practiced hand. “I hired a bluegrass band. I don’t know much, but bluegrass seems to come with a mandolin. If the band doesn’t have one, then they’re not a band. And I’m not paying.”
They needed the money, little as it was, that Jeptha brought home from the gig. “I’ll tell him,” Lucy said. “He’ll be here.”
She dug her phone out of her back pocket as she went down the stock room stairs. The call went straight to voicemail, of course. She’d thought missing his son’s birth might have been enough of a reminder for him to charge his phone, but no. He was forever forgetting. She left him an acid-tinged message that he’d get tomorrow and threw up a quick, pointless prayer that he wasn’t sitting at home drinking, totally oblivious to tonight’s show.
AN HOUR AND a half later, the band had already played half a set when Jeptha finally stumbled in. He made a beeline for her.
“Hey,” he said, and tried to hug her. She pushed him away.
“What?” he asked.
The audacity of the question made her faint with rage. She took a breath and ignored it. “You are late. They already started.”
“It ain’t like I missed much.”
“Eight songs.”
“Hell, Lucy. We play sixteen. I’ll get on half.”
“Judy’s gonna stop paying you if you don’t start showing up.”
“Nah, she won’t.”
“Yeah, she will,” Lucy said. “And seems like you are rapidly running out of job options these days. The Slocums hired somebody else when you didn’t show.”
“Oh, shit. I forgot about that,” Jeptha said. He rubbed his beard, and his eyes darted away toward the stage. “Damn. Can’t believe they did that.”
“You can’t believe it? You didn’t show up. What do you expect? It’s a job—if you aren’t there, the work doesn’t get done. It’s not like a marriage, where you can’t get out no matter how often a person doesn’t show up.”
She strode back to the bar without a backward glance. Lucy busied herself for an hour, ignoring the band as best she could. Every time she saw Jeptha up there, trying to catch her eye and mouthing the words “I’m sorry,” at her, she turned away, finding any excuse she could to clean. She wiped down tables that still had five people sitting at them, hand washed beer glasses, a first at Judy’s, and took away glasses from the bar with a vigor that bordered on mania. She had Delnor hoarding his spread, one arm shielding his beer, the other his hamburger.
“Lucy!” Judy said. Her sharp tone stilled Lucy in her most recent sweep down the bar.
“What?” Lucy yelled back.
Silence followed. Lucy turned slowly to Judy and saw her boss’s mouth set in a thin line, her blue eyes dangerously sparkling. “Take a break. Now.”
“Fine.”
Lucy ripped off her apron and threw it on the bar. Delnor cowered as she passed, picking up both his glass and his plate and holding them in his lap. She pushed the back door open with both hands and kicked it shut behind her.
“Dammit!” she screamed into the wind, finally giving in to the tears that had been hounding her all day.
A few minutes later, Lucy heard the door ease open. She tensed, thinking it was Jeptha, but breathed out when she heard mandolin notes from inside. She gave Judy a half-hearted smile.
“I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “Bad day.”
“You okay?” Judy asked. The tender note in Judy’s voice made Lucy start crying again.
“No,” she finally said. “Not really.”
Judy squeezed Lucy’s arm. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for? It ain’t your fault he turned out to be exactly what he is.”
“But I … I told you to ask yourself if maybe there was more to him. It wasn’t my business.”
“It wasn’t your decision, either. I made this choice.”
“Still, I told you love like that didn’t come around every day. And it doesn’t. But love may not be enough.”
“Don’t worry about it, Judy. I made my bed.”
“Don’t mean you have to lie in it, though.”
“Did you just say ‘don’t’? Instead of ‘doesn’t’?” Lucy asked, starting to laugh.
“Oh God. Did I?” Judy asked, a genuine look of horror on her face. “Been hanging out with all you rednecks too much.”
Lucy’s laugh petered out as she pictured her drunk husband knocking into the door on his way into the bar tonight. “Redneck is right, I guess.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know. But if the shoe fits …”
“Lucy, just because you made a choice to be with Jeptha a year ago, that doesn’t mean you have to keep making it.”
“What would I do?”
“What women all over the world do every day. Pack up your stuff, get your kid, and go.”
“Where?”
“I happen to know you’ve got a nicely decorated baby room waiting for you at your old house.”
“With LouEllen. Who kicked me out.”
“People make mistakes. Honestly, I don’t know what the right answer is. But you do. Or if you don’t, you’ll figure it out.”
Lucy looked out at the parking lot, the site of her son’s conception. The lights cast a sickly orange glow on cracks that ran through the asphalt like a dried lava field while tumbleweeds of McDonald’s wrappers, cigarette butts, and smashed beer bottles heaped around the dumpster. There was no romance, no happy ending to be found here. It was little wonder that nothing after had gone well.
“You’ll figure it out,” Judy said. “Just because you’re in this place now, doesn’t mean you have to stay in it. You’ve got choices. You need to make them.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said, feeling like her world was spinning and she had no safe purchase.
“All right then,” Judy said, squeezing Lucy’s arm one more time. “Come on back in when you’re ready.”
“Choices,” Lucy said under breath after the door closed behind Judy. She thought of Jared’s face at dinner as he’d happily shoved peas into his mouth. “We’ve got choices, buddy,” she said, both to her son and to herself. “We’ve got choices.”
19
JEPTHA WOKE UP IN bed for the first time in two weeks. He’d been coming home too late and too drunk to risk waking up Lucy, so he’d been passing out on the couch. Truth was, he liked falling asleep there, listening to Jared’s breath whistle in and out, his little baby sighs puncturing the air every few minutes. Today, though, he stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom and waited for the pain to kick in. It always seemed to take a minute for his brain to catch up with the job the alcohol had done on his body. He looked to his right and saw Lucy sprawled beside him, asleep on her belly with her right leg up at an impossible angle, her hair in a messy halo around her face. He watch
ed her for a moment, trying to match her sleep-swollen face with the angry one from last night. There was no malice in her puffy cheeks or half-parted lips. Still, her words played endlessly in his head, pounding along with his headache—“It ain’t like a marriage, where you can’t get out no matter how often the person doesn’t show up.”
Lucy shifted in her sleep, a sigh floating out over her lips. He leaned toward her, breathing in the air she had just exhaled, desperate to be close to her. A paralyzing tremor ran through him at the thought of losing her. It was as if a sinkhole had yawned open beneath their trailer, leaving Jeptha clinging to the sides, his hands stripping bark from the roots he clung to, hoping like hell someone would come along and save his sorry ass, but knowing he was the only one who could do so.
When Jeptha couldn’t hold it any longer, he breathed out and hoisted himself up. He stumbled into the corner of the bed and out into the hall. He rubbed his hand over his face as he shuffled down the hall to the kitchen. He wondered if he should shave his beard, an outgrowth of nothing more than laziness. Then his head throbbed and the thought of a razor near it made him cringe. Just then, he stepped down hard on the edge of a plastic block. It dug deep and painfully into the meaty part of his foot.
“Ow, shit!” he yelled, jumping up and down with his foot in his hand. He banged his shoulder against the wall and finally landed in a heap on the floor. He held his breath, hoping no one had heard. The silence was deafening. Then came the storm. Jared was standing up in his crib, crying as loudly as Jeptha had ever heard him.
“Dammit, Jeptha,” Lucy said as she stepped over him and made her way to their son. “It’s six thirty in the morning—he was actually sleeping, for a change.”
“I stepped on something,” Jeptha protested. “What was I supposed to do? Why are his blocks all over the hallway anyway?”
“When did I have time to clean it up yesterday? You were here all day. Why didn’t you pick ’em up?” Lucy asked.
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