LOL. Noooo. I’m gonna get fat, hanging out with you.
Ummm have you seen you? I think it’s genetically impossible for you to get fat.
I pause, my thumbs hovering over the keyboard. This is all getting a little too close to flirting. Need to rein it in. Gotta go. See you at work tomorrow. I type a smiley face but delete it before I hit send.
A few moments later, my feet hit grass and I’m walking directly toward the water. This isn’t my favorite part of the lake—it’s grassy and there are trees everywhere, not beachy at all—but it’s close to home and better than nothing. It’s pretty hot out today, probably one of the last summery days of the year. Before long, it will be winter again, and Hope will be too big to carry in the sling, and it’ll be like when she was first born and I had to push her around in a stroller through a foot of snow. Uphill both ways.
I sit on the grass, take my shirt off, and lay it on the ground for Hope to lie on. She’s sturdier now than she used to be but still all floppy, so I have to be careful whenever I put her down to make sure her head doesn’t snap back or anything. I’m not sure what would happen if it did, but it seems like we’re better off not finding out. She fusses, making little ehhhh baby noises and moving her arms and legs around a lot, but not full on crying. I give her a teething ring to gnaw on. When she’s settled, I lean back on my elbows, staring at the water. The surface ripples with the breeze.
I don’t know how long I stay like that, staring off into space, but the sun is warm and my mind is blank and my eyes are unfocused, and it feels really good to not think. When my phone buzzes again, I snap to attention. The sun is hitting the lake at a different angle now. I have a feeling I was zoned out for a while. Good.
It’s another text from Joni—but this one has an audio file attached to it. Thought you might need this. I hit play.
At first I can’t identify the sound coming from my phone. It’s not a song, I can tell that much. It’s not someone talking either. I push the volume as high as it will go, and it finally hits me. It’s Joni’s room. The street sounds, the fountain. It’s the soundtrack of Washington Square Park. I can’t help it—I smile. A real smile, the kind only Joni is able to get out of me lately. I place the phone between me and Hope, and I watch, amazed, as it lulls her to sleep. Holy shit. It’s like riding in the car but better.
Thank you, I write back. Joni has no idea what a gift she just gave me. One day, I’ll tell her.
About twenty feet away, a couple of girls set up a blanket on the grass. A blond and a redhead, both wearing dark sunglasses. They’re around my age, but I’ve never seen them before. Maybe they’re in college. They strip out of their shorts and tank tops and stand there in nothing but tiny bikinis, spreading sunscreen on their arms and legs and stomachs and—Jesus—their tits.
I can’t look away. My mouth goes dry. They’re so incredibly hot.
Then one of them moves her hair aside, and the other girl lotions up her back. I swallow.
I really need to have sex. Not a relationship. Not love. Just sex. When was the last time I even…uh…relieved myself? I can’t remember. How fucking sad is that.
But really. If I’m not at work, I’m at soccer, and if I’m not at soccer, I’m either in the presence of a crying baby or so exhausted I can barely keep my eyes open. What am I supposed to do, say, “Oh hey, Mom, can you take Hope for ten minutes so I can go jerk off in peace?”
The blond catches me staring, and I look away quickly as she says something to her friend. Don’t stare, you idiot. You used to be smoother than this. I keep my eyes focused solely on the water ahead of me for as long as I can stand it, and when I finally look back, the girls are coming my way.
Shit.
I sit up straighter, praying to God the crease in my jeans hides my boner.
“Hey,” the blond says.
The redhead just smiles.
“Hey,” I say.
“We were wondering if you wanted to—omigod, is that a baby?!” Their eyes go all gooey, and they’ve got these sappy grins on their faces.
Kill me now.
“Yeah. That’s Hope. She’s my—uh, niece. I’m Ryden.”
“I’m Jaime,” the blond says. “This is Emory.”
Emory gives a little wave and her boobs jiggle.
“So, Ryden,” Jaime says, pulling her hair over one shoulder and swaying coyly back and forth. “You want to come hang out with us? We’ve got plenty of room on our blanket. And we have wine coolers.”
Tempting, but no. For about a hundred thousand reasons.
“No, thanks. I’m cool.”
Jaime and Emory pout, their expressions so identical I have a sudden hilarious vision of them practicing the look in the mirror together. “Okay, well, we’ll be right over there if you change your mind.”
I nod.
They turn to go, but Jaime turns back. “By the way, what are you listening to? It’s weird.”
Hey, don’t dis my miracle baby sleep inducer. “It’s Washington Square Park,” I say and leave it at that. She shrugs and walks away.
A year and a half ago, that whole scenario would have gone very differently.
I lie back on the grass, keeping one hand on Hope’s belly to make sure she stays where she is, and close my eyes. She grabs my finger in her sleep. It’s not very long before the New York sounds pumping from my phone combined with the rise and fall of my hand from Hope’s baby breathing and the gentle pressure on my finger from her grip send me off into sleep.
Chapter 14
I’m jolted awake to the sound of crying. I sit up slowly and push my hair back from my eyes. It’s almost dark. My face feels weird—I run my hand over it to find there are hundreds of little imprints on my cheek from the grass. The park sounds have stopped. Shit, my phone is dead. Jaime and Emory are gone. Probably long gone. The air is a lot chillier now. And Hope is wailing away.
I lean forward and sniff her butt—yup, she crapped her diaper. Fantastic.
I slap my face a couple of times to wake myself up and go about the disgusting yet depressingly mundane task of changing her.
There’s a garbage can about ten yards away, and I move to throw away the reeking diaper but stop. I can’t just leave her here on the grass. I’ve seen America’s Most Wanted. Babies get snatched like that all the time. A parent turns his head for one second, then poof.
Yet another example of how nothing, even something as minute as throwing away a diaper, will ever be easy again. I put the diaper down, pick up the crying baby, and begin the ridiculously complicated process of putting my shirt on while holding her. It involves a lot of shrugging and shifting her from arm to arm, while her arms, legs, and head bobble every which way and she screams in my ears. Then I pack all the diaper stuff back in the bag, secure the baby harness to my chest, and slide Hope inside. She’s probably hungry. Actually, so am I. And then I remember—eggplant parm. Shit, what time is it?
“We’ll get you a bottle soon, baby,” I say, picking up the diaper and finally trudging over to the trash can.
Fifteen minutes later, I walk through my front door. The clock on the wall at the top of the stairs says 7:46.
“Mom?”
“In here.”
She’s in the kitchen, sitting at the set table. She sticks her bookmark in her book. There’s a basket of garlic bread in the center of the table and two open beer bottles—a near-empty one at her place setting and a full one at mine, dripping with condensation. I raise an eyebrow. This is new.
Mom follows my gaze. “I thought we could have a beer together, since, you know, you’re a dad now, a grown-up for all intents and purposes. But clearly I was wrong.”
Oh, now I see it. She’s pissed.
“I’m so sorry, Mom. My phone died. And I fell asleep.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and slide it across the table as evidence.
She rakes her hands through her hair. Huh. I must get that from her. Never noticed that before. “Where were you?”
“At the lake.”
She studies me. I’m just standing there, at the table, like I’m waiting for her invitation to sit down. Like this isn’t my house too.
Finally Mom’s face changes, and the annoyance and accusation fade away. “Give me that baby,” she says, holding out her arms.
I pass Hope over, and Mom shushes and coos at her. “She’s hungry,” I say. I drop the bag and baby harness in the middle of the floor, heat a bottle for Hope, and pull the eggplant parm out of the oven. It smells amazing. I serve it up, and we all eat. I drink my beer, because warm beer is better than no beer. That was crazy cool of Mom. I look at her, somehow managing to eat her food while also feeding the baby in her arms, and something hits me—something so obvious and duh but something I never really thought about before, at least on a conscious level.
“You’re a really good mom, Mom,” I say.
She looks up, surprised. “Thanks, Ry. I’ve had practice, you know.” She nods to Hope, who’s happily chowing down on her formula.
“I know. But it’s not only the baby stuff. You’ve always been a good mom to me, no matter how old I am.”
She smiles, and the little lines next to her eyes that none of her friends have yet get all crinkly.
I take another swig. I guess I’m in the mood for talking, because I say, “Meg’s parents weren’t good parents.”
Mom just nods, like she already knew that.
I scrape my plate clean with the side of my fork and lick off the last bits of sauce and cheese. “I’m gonna get more. You want?”
“No, I’m good,” Mom says. “Thanks.”
When I sit back down, I down the last of my piss-warm beer and say the inevitable. “So, you wanted to talk.” Might as well get it over with, so I can call Mabel and see what’s going on.
Mom sets Hope’s empty bottle on the table and looks at me. “School starts a week from tomorrow, Ryden.”
“I know.”
“What are we going to do with this little munchkin?”
I stare at my plate. “Alan can take her after school while I’m at soccer, and then I can pick her up and drop her off here before going to work.”
Mom shakes her head like she can’t believe how thick I’m being. “First of all, it’s not fair to rely on Alan like this. You’re not paying him, and it’s his senior year too, you know. Hope isn’t his kid.”
I wish she were.
Whoa, where did that thought come from? I mean, if I had it all to do again, obviously I would have put on a fucking condom, pill or no pill. But that’s not what the thought was. The thought was I wished Alan were Hope’s dad. That would mean everything would be the same—Meg would be gone, Hope would be here. Only, Meg and Alan would have…
No. I do not wish that at all. He’s just so much better at taking care of Hope than I am…
“Ryden?” Mom says.
Huh? “What? Sorry, I was spacing out.”
“I can see that. Please, we need to focus. This is serious, bud.”
“Sorry.”
“I think you should really rethink the Alan thing. But the more pressing issue is what we’re going to do with Hope during the hours when you—and Alan—are at school.”
“I wish Downey High School had a day care center like UCLA does,” I say on a sigh.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think there’s much of a demand for that.”
True.
Mom gets up and helps herself to another beer. She doesn’t offer me one this time.
“I’ve tried everything I could think of, Mom. I called Grandma and Grandpa, I went to Meg’s parents’…I don’t know what else to do.”
Mom nods. “Your check from Grandma and Grandpa came yesterday,” she says. “I put it on the hall table for you. Did you see it?”
“No.” I’ve been d-i-s-t-r-a-c-t-e-d.
Mom’s looking at me, and every time I glance up from my empty plate, I catch sight of her tired eyes and hate myself just a little bit more for putting her through all of this.
Finally she says, “I asked around, did some digging. We have a couple of options.”
“You did? We do?”
“Option one: There’s a government-subsidized child care facility downtown that offers a sliding fee scale. I called them, and they would charge us $275 a week.”
I’m about to say that sounds amazing—I make about that at Whole Foods. I’m sure Mom will help with other expenses while we figure it out. Maybe I can ask for a raise at work too. But she keeps talking.
“The environment there isn’t great though, Ryden. There are a lot of children and not enough staff. Hope probably wouldn’t get very much, if any, personal attention. And the facilities definitely leave something to be desired. And who knows what kind of germs are being spread around.”
“Well, what’s option two?”
“My friend Selena offered to share her nanny with us, which was very generous. The nanny is wonderful. It would be such a nice place for Hope to go to every day. But they live in Addison, so you’d have to drive more than a half hour each way before and after school.”
Which means I wouldn’t make it to soccer on time. A half hour there after school, another half hour back to Alan’s, then back to school. I’d be almost an hour and a half late to practice every day. Yeah, Coach would stand for that for, oh, about four seconds. And then I’d be gone. Off the team. Sayonara, UCLA.
“And we’d have to contribute to the cost,” Mom continues, “because the nanny’s rates would go up since she’d be taking care of another child. Selena said two hundred a week should be fine.”
So my choice is between handing over my entire paycheck so Hope can go to an overcrowded, budget day care where she would get ignored and probably catch some nasty ass infectious disease, or quitting soccer and spending a lot more time in the car for $75 less a week and for Hope to get a much higher quality of care.
I bang my head on the table. “My brain hurts.”
Mom takes a deep breath, clearly about to say something, but the doorbell rings. I look at her. “I’ll get it?”
“Yeah, go ahead.” She hands Hope back and gets up to start clearing the table.
I open the door. It’s Mabel.
My heart suddenly feels like it’s on a bike flying down a hill in tenth gear.
She smiles when she sees Hope. “I tried calling you. It kept going to voice mail.”
“Phone’s dead.”
“Oh.”
“Did you find something?”
“Can I come in?”
I shake my head and step out onto the stoop, closing the door behind me. I don’t want Mom to know about the Great Journal Caper. She’ll just give me some line about focusing my attention on all the wrong things. Mabel and I sit on the steps, and I hand her Hope without asking. She takes her happily.
“So?” I ask. “What you got?”
She doesn’t answer. She’s too preoccupied with the baby in her lap, awake this time.
We sit there, Mabel talking baby talk right up in Hope’s face and tapping Hope’s little baby nose and putting her pinkie in Hope’s fist and laughing when she grasps on.
Get to the point, Mabel.
Finally she looks at me, surprised, like she actually forgot I was sitting here. She reaches into the pocket of her shorts and pulls out a key with a yellow Stor-Fast tag attached to it. The tag reads #1017.
“You found it,” I whisper, staring at the key like it’s that blue diamond from the Titanic movie. Meg loved that movie. I never really understood why both of them couldn’t fit on the door at the end. There was plenty of room. All they would have needed to do was take off the life vest Kate Winslet was wearing and strap it to the bottom of the door
to reinforce the door’s buoyancy. Surely they could have found something to use—there was plenty of stuff floating around in the water. Then they wait for an hour, get rescued, and live happily ever after.
I tried to explain that to Meg, and she said that while she admired my mad physics smarts and critical thinking, that wasn’t the point. The point was that it was beautiful and romantic that Leonardo DiCaprio would sacrifice himself for Kate Winslet rather than worry about his own fate. She said it was an “epic love story.”
I should have known right then and there that she would also try to go down in a blaze of unnecessary, misguided glory.
“It was in the glove compartment of my mom’s car,” Mabel says. “Took me forever to find.”
“Let’s go,” I say, standing up. But then I remember Mom. If I bail now, without finishing our conversation, she’ll lose whatever scrap of faith in me she has left. “Wait.” I sit. “Shit, I can’t. Tomorrow? Can you do early? I have practice at nine.”
“Yeah, whenever. But it might take a long time to go through all the boxes. There’s a lot of stuff in there.”
I nod, thinking. “Well, we’ll start tomorrow morning and see how far we get. I’ll pick you up at seven.”
• • •
I take the night to think about the day care options, to show my mom I’m taking this seriously, but come on, there’s no question of which one I’m going with. If I go with the nanny, I give up soccer, my scholarship, college, my chances at playing professionally. Which will affect Hope’s future too. If I go pro, I’ll have all kinds of money to send her to the best schools and all that. But if I don’t, I won’t. And it’s not like the day care downtown is run by knife-wielding Nazis with open wounds on their faces. I’m sure the people there know what they’re doing. It will be fine. And anyway, it’s only for a year.
Mom’s still asleep when I leave early the next morning to go pick up Mabel, so I write her a note.
Had to take care of a few things before practice. See you tonight. Love you. PS—let’s go with the day care downtown. Let me know what I need to do.
Chapter 15
What You Left Behind Page 11