Holding on to Nothing

by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne

  THE DAY DID not improve. Every time Jeptha picked Jared up, he screamed and cried. It took Jeptha until noon to remember that he wore diapers and probably needed a change. His diaper was well past the saturation point, and Jared’s bottom was the ferocious red of cheap hot dogs. Lucy checked in at eleven and again at three, and Jeptha had stepped outside the trailer, far enough away that he hoped she couldn’t hear Jared screaming. He lied to her, telling her they were fine and Jared was napping both times. Truth was, Jared slept about twenty minutes the whole day long, and ten minutes of it had been at Cody’s house on the couch. It had gotten so bad that Jeptha himself had cried twice, pleading with his son to stop. That hadn’t worked either.

  By five o’clock, Jeptha was done. He’d never wanted a drink more in his life. He didn’t know what else to do or where else to go. His whole body was aching for alcohol; his head was pounding from the combined effects of his hangover and Jared’s crying; and he wanted—no, needed—someone else to try to entertain Jared for even a few minutes. At ten minutes after five, they pulled into the parking lot at Judy’s. Jeptha toted the seat into the bar, aware as he did so that there was something wrong about taking a baby into the place.

  “Jared, this is where Daddy works,” he said.

  “You bringing that baby in here?” Judy asked from behind the bar.

  “That okay?”

  “I mean, it’s a bar. Not a babysitting service. But come on in.”

  Jeptha settled at the bar and put the car seat on the counter.

  Judy poked her head into the car seat. “Hey, Jared. How are you?”

  Jared stared back at her, his lips turning down into a pout. Jeptha laughed.

  “What?’ Judy said, pulling her head back and looking affronted. “It’s not like you’re so good with him.”

  Jared smiled at Judy then. “See? He’s a smart kid,” she said. “You want some water or something?”

  “Yeah,” Jeptha said, remembering Lucy’s warning from the morning. His hands shook as he set down Jared’s car seat on the floor beside him. He knew if he had a couple sips of beer, he’d be back to feeling normal again. He’d promised Lucy, but surely half a beer didn’t count. “Don’t suppose you would bring me half a beer too?”

  Judy stared at him, her eyes steely. Jeptha shook, and not just from lack of alcohol. The truth was, Judy scared the shit out of him. He wasn’t alone in that feeling—everyone, Jeptha included, liked to blame it on her being a Yankee, but he knew that wasn’t it. She was so hard, so flinty, like that buck out at Delnor’s place that people had been hunting for years. No one had ever come close to getting it, but sightings came in a few times a season. Fourteen points, a monster of a white tail, with an antler spread that looked more moose than deer. Jeptha had seen him once and been stunned into silence in his tree stand. The buck walked past Jeptha with a fearlessness and pride that no deer ought to have. Jeptha had eased the safety back on his rifle and set it across his lap. The buck watched every move, and not a muscle flinched, as if nothing—not humans, not guns, not death—scared him. Judy was giving Jeptha that same look now: piercing, fearless, and haunting. He looked down at the counter, rubbing the smooth curve of the edge with his thumb. He’d been no braver with that buck. Two minutes after it had stepped off into the underbrush, Jeptha had packed up for the day and gone home to finish a six-pack by noon.

  “You are fucking up your life, Jeptha Taylor,” she said finally. “It’s awful to watch.”

  “What are you talking about? Because I want a beer?” he asked.

  “Not ’cause you want this beer but because you want all the beers. You are circling the drain. You aren’t like Delnor—who can maintain this,” she said. Delnor shone with a rare, if backhanded, compliment. “You’re going down. And I can’t stand to see you take Lucy and this baby with you.”

  “I ain’t going nowhere. I’m fine.” First Cody, now Judy—what had he done to the world today to deserve this?

  “If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a drunk say that …”

  “Well, you wouldn’t have a dollar from me. I ain’t a drunk,” Jeptha said, feeling the kind of righteous anger that only came when he was lying through his teeth.

  Judy nodded at his hands, one frenetically rocking the handle of Jared’s car seat, the other shaking as he reached for a sip of water. “So, what’s that? Parkinson’s?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  Judy was silent for a moment. “Here’s the thing, Jeptha. This,” she looked around the bar, “is my business. And Lucy works here, so she’s my business. That band you’re in is my business. And you’re making a mess of all of it.”

  For Jeptha, there’d always been a fine line between anger and sadness. He always had to choose—if he didn’t stoke the fire, he’d cross over into the sort of pitiful territory he’d always associated with old women, mourning their life. He tried to summon the same anger that had given him whatever little drive he’d had in life, but at the moment it wouldn’t come. He just felt tired, and behind that exhaustion was a sadness so deep and profound he felt that sinkhole sensation again, the earth gaping open beneath him.

  “Whatever,” he said. It was the only word he had available to him in the moment.

  “So that’s how it is.” She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head at him. “You told me once that Taylors didn’t, quote, ‘have no honor.’ I guess you were right.”

  Jared busted out with a squall that turned every head in the bar. Jeptha nearly cried with relief. He hustled him out of the car seat and spent the next ten minutes trying to quiet him down, never once looking at Judy. Eventually, as Jeptha walked up and down the floor bouncing and shushing Jared as he went, she stopped glaring at him and went downstairs.

  “We’re all right, aren’t we, Jared?” Jeptha cooed to him. His son stared up sleepily at him. “Daddy’s not as bad as everyone thinks, is he?”

  “Hey, Jeptha. Hey,” Delnor said as Jeptha passed, his hand wagging awkwardly at Jeptha.

  “What’s up, Delnor?”

  “Here. This is for you.” Delnor passed him an unopened beer. “For after. When you get home.”

  “You sure?”

  Delnor looked down at Jeptha’s hands, where they patted Jared’s bottom. “I know how it is. You need one to steady you out a little.”

  “Thank you, Delnor.”

  “It’s for after, though, mind you. I’ll kick your ass myself if I see you drinking it before you get that baby home.”

  “I wouldn’t …”

  “Yeah, tell yourself that. I used to,” Delnor said. “I’m serious now. Only after Lucy takes that baby.”

  Jeptha nodded. He looked down and saw that Jared was finally, blissfully, asleep on his shoulder. Jeptha eased him into the seat and carefully fitted the buckles around him. Jared’s face creased like an old man and then relaxed back into sleep.

  “Lucy’s gonna be home soon. I better go,” Jeptha whispered to Delnor.

  Jeptha stuffed the beer into the bottle pocket of Jared’s diaper bag and grabbed the car seat in the crook of his elbow. At the car, he set the diaper bag down on the ground and flipped the car seat to face backward like Cody had done and strapped his son in. He shook the seat back and forth, satisfied that it didn’t move and thrilled that somehow Jared was still asleep. He straightened up out of the car, smiling. He felt, if not competent, then at least not totally incompetent.

  He picked up the diaper bag, the beer seeming to call his name. He pulled it out, imagining the crisp taste, the exhilarating cold tumbling down his throat. His finger crept under the tab, the cold metal digging into the pad of his fingertip. He wiggled it there, back and forth. His hands shook harder. He closed his eyes, hearing Delnor’s words in his head. Home. He’d drink it at home, once Lucy was there.

  Resolution made, he opened his eyes to find Lucy staring at him, a fury in her eyes like none he’d ever seen.

  20

  LUCY WAS NO STRANGER
to anger. Growing up, her house hadn’t been the sea of calm that she imagined others were. Her mother burned with a cool flame that grew white-hot when she was really angry, but her father was more like her, fiery and sudden. Their collisions had seemed epic to her as a child. Still, those fights had been nothing to the anger that Lucy felt when they died. It was an anger that seared through her, cauterized her soft edges. It was the kind of anger that made her so mad at God—who she imagined looked down on his creation like some sleazy reality show producer—that she did dumb shit, like get in the back of Jeptha’s car. It made her think that nothing mattered, that there was nothing to lose. Because in the end, she was sure, we were all as likely to die too young at the hands of a man so drunk he actually thought it was possible his pig had been driving as we were doing something stupid.

  Then, Jared came. Now, everything mattered. She was still angry, but love for him had kicked some of it aside, and for what was left, there was a purpose. So when she saw Jeptha standing by the car with her baby strapped inside and a beer in his hand, his face tipped back like he was about to relish that cool drink before he drove their son home, she found she had scaled a new, dizzying height of anger, one she had never surmounted before. She was so angry that her throat closed up, and the only word she could force out of it was a scaly, hoarse, “No.”

  Jeptha’s eyes dropped to the can of beer in his hand and then back to her face. How dare he look sad that she had interrupted him before he could drink that beer?

  “No,” she said again, as she stomped closer to the car. She pushed him out of the way and leaned down to unbuckle Jared’s car seat. His eyes were half closed, but they sprang open when he saw her face.

  “Mama!” he yelled, grabbing her cheeks with his hands and smiling with the glee of a kid who has no idea what’s going on. Lucy envied him.

  She jerked the seat out of the car and faced Jeptha. She shook her head at him, gritting her teeth as she tried to breathe, tears of rage massing in her eyes and clogging in her throat like a thunderstorm gathering power. She wanted to scream at him, to wound him, to scare him. But none of it would come out.

  “No,” she said again and walked to her car.

  “Lucy, no! I wasn’t drinking. I wasn’t going to,” he yelled behind her. She heard footsteps cracking over the loose chunks of asphalt. “I wasn’t—Delnor gave me this, for later. I was about to put it away and drive him home.”

  Lucy kept walking.

  “Please, Lucy. You got to believe me.”

  She whipped around. “Why? You’ve been drunk every night for months. Why should I believe you?”

  She saw the hurt look in his eyes, and satisfaction surged through her.

  “I wouldn’t, Lucy. I wouldn’t hurt him like that.”

  “No,” she said, leaving him behind her and plopping Jared’s seat into the car seat base as gently as she could given that she wanted to throw something.

  “Tink!” Jared said. She leaned down and forced her voice into as close an approximation of Mommy-speak as she could.

  “Yep, you do stink, buddy. We’ll go change it.”

  “Lucy! Wait,” Jeptha said, his hand on her shoulder.

  His face was splotchy with worry, and rank sweat dotted his shirt and soaked his armpits. He was sober and terrified. But all she could see was that look, the one he’d been giving the can of beer in his hand, that look of delicious abandon. She shook her head again as she got in the car.

  “No,” she said and drove off.

  Five minutes down the highway, she realized she had no idea where to go. She pulled over and put her head down on the steering wheel.

  “Mama?” Jared called from the back seat.

  “Yes, sweetheart. Mama is here,” she mumbled into her hands.

  “Tink?”

  “No, Mama doesn’t stink. She does need to think, though.”

  “Dink,” Jared said somberly.

  Marla was gone, her kids still sick. Lucy had to be at Judy’s tonight and couldn’t take Jared with her. As a last resort, she could bail on her shift tonight, but Judy’s patience wouldn’t last forever, especially if both members of her family stopped showing up. She had a vision then of Judy talking about choices the other night. Lucy knew exactly where to go.

  She bumped up the drive to LouEllen’s ten minutes later, by which time Jared had lost his excitement over his new word and had begun to cry about being in a wet, dirty diaper. She hadn’t seen LouEllen in months. Her heart thudded against her chest with fear that LouEllen wouldn’t take her in. Lucy didn’t care anymore that LouEllen was right. She just wanted to keep Jared safe.

  She brought his car seat up on the porch and then got him out of it, balancing him on her hip as she knocked on the door. The look of kindness and love on LouEllen’s face when she saw them made Lucy burst into tears.

  “Lucy! Goodness, what’s wrong?” LouEllen asked, opening the screen door and shepherding them inside.

  “I … I didn’t know where else to go. Can we come in?”

  “You know you don’t need to ask that,” LouEllen said, bringing them into the house and grabbing the car seat and diaper bag off the porch. “You never need to ask.”

  As LouEllen went into the kitchen, Lucy collapsed into the couch, her entire body melting with relief at being back in LouEllen’s house. She held Jared tightly against her and wiped her tears away. When LouEllen came out, she held two glasses of water and a just-made bottle. Lucy almost cried again at the sight of someone making Jared a bottle without having to be asked or directed to do so.

  LouEllen set the water in front of Lucy and held her arms out to Jared, shrewdly holding the bottle in one hand. Jared almost never went to strangers. When he looked up at Lucy, she smiled and nodded. Suddenly he thrust his arms out and crawled into LouEllen’s. She nestled him into the seat with her, cozied up between her boobs and her arm, and Jared greedily grabbed the bottle and lay back happily.

  “He never goes to strangers,” Lucy said.

  “Well, that’s ’cause I’m not a stranger. Am I, little man?” LouEllen cooed at Jared. “No, I’m not. I’m your Auntie LouEllen.”

  She looked up at Lucy, a worried look on her face. “Is that okay? If I tell him that?”

  “Yes,” Lucy said. “It sounds good.”

  “Well, Auntie LouEllen hates to be the bearer of bad news, but you stink, little man.”

  Jared removed his bottle and looked up at her, his brow creased. “Tink,” he said.

  LouEllen laughed so hard they both shook. Jared was startled for a moment and then smiled broadly at her. LouEllen grabbed the diaper bag and changed him quickly on the couch. When she was done, Jared lay back on her, stuck his bottle back in, and smiled up at her. Then he looked over at Lucy and said, without removing the bottle, “Mama.”

  “Yes, honey, that is your mama,” LouEllen said, using her broad thumb to wipe the milk that had dribbled out of the side of his mouth. “And she’s a good one too.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Lucy said.

  “I do. I can tell.”

  They watched Jared as he slowed from vigorous sucks on his bottle to slow, sleepy ones.

  “I’m sorry. For everything,” LouEllen said. “I shouldn’t have made you leave.”

  “Me too,” Lucy said, not daring to speak more yet. Establishing any kind of peace with LouEllen, no matter how fragile, felt good. She had missed her, missed being in this house. Pride bit at her as she thought of what she wanted to say next, but she swallowed it down. She needed help. As Jared’s eyes fought against sleep and then finally closed, she said, “Do you still have that baby room set up in the back?”

  LouEllen’s head flew up, her eyes wide and her face flushed with hope. “Of course! Even got another crib just in case …”

  “Could he stay here tonight? While I go to Judy’s?”

  “There is nothing on earth that would make me happier.”

  “You really don’t mind?”

  “Never
. But … do you want to take him home after? Or maybe you can stay for the night, both of you?”

  Lucy smiled at the hesitation in LouEllen’s voice and looked around her. She was more relaxed after five minutes in this house than she had been in the last ten months. A night feeling like this would be good for her, give her some space to think about what to do next.

  “Yes. I’ll stay too.”

  IN BETWEEN GLARING at Delnor so harshly that he finally apologized and left an hour early, Lucy spent her shift at the bar thinking about that word family. She had come to LouEllen because she had lost her family and then left her in search of a family for her son. But she wasn’t sure how much family was left in that trailer.

  When she entered LouEllen’s house at 1:00 a.m., she found LouEllen in the kitchen, two cups of tea on the table, both with a smoky whiff of bourbon coming off them.

  “For you,” LouEllen said, pushing a cup toward Lucy.

  “How’s Jared?” Lucy asked as she collapsed into the chair with a sigh.

  “Fine. Asleep. I’m more worried about you.”

  “I can tell. Bourbon, huh?”

  “Thought you could use a drink.”

  “Pretty sure that’s what got me in this mess,” Lucy said.

  “Oh, please. The difference between this cup and what Jeptha’s doing is light years apart.”

  Lucy sipped the hot drink as her body relaxed. “I just … I thought it would be different. I thought I could …”

  “Save him?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “You can’t save someone from himself, Lucy. He’s an alcoholic.”

  “But is this him? There were these moments, LouEllen, before Jared was born. He was sober, working, and we were—happy.”

  “What happened?”

  “I mean, what kicked it off was Crystal Gayle getting hit by that car and him having to put her down, but really …” Lucy shrugged. “Life happened. It was life.”

  Lucy stared up at the ceiling, remembering those months before everything fell apart. “I thought …” Lucy stopped. “I thought that was the real him. But now …” Lucy stopped and toyed with the handle of her tea mug. “I’m worried he’s going to hurt Jared.”