And what about her? Should she really be a waitress forever? There was a time when some teacher had looked at her test scores and told her that she had what it took to go to college. Maybe it wasn’t too late for her; she could use her father’s money. But she didn’t have the faintest idea what it was she should study. She had never been driven in a particular direction, like June to her dancing, and she had never had Eleanor’s confident sense of the world. Renata reclined against the end of the tub, her breasts flattening out like water lilies. What she had really wanted to do, and had turned out to be good at doing, was taking care of Charlie. But that wasn’t exactly a career move.
Bryan had taken some photography course in L.A. Since arriving in Boston he had been snapping away at them with his fancy new camera. Renata hadn’t seen any of the prints yet, but she had been surprised that he seemed to take it so seriously. Something had happened to Bryan in her absence that had changed him into someone with more purpose. Or did she just see him differently now? In his new group house, where he lived not far from her apartment, he had already rigged himself a darkroom in the basement.
She had been impressed with how quickly he got himself organized. It had taken him precisely two days to find a room for a laughably low rent, and to get a good job bartending, thanks to a tip from Theo. He was also as good as his word when it came to showing up when he said he would to get Charlie, and returning him on time. There was really no evidence that she needed to protect herself from Bryan. He didn’t seem to be the enemy at all; instead, she found herself looking forward to the times he would be coming by, and appreciating the extra hours he gave her when he spent time with the baby.
She rose from the tub and patted herself dry, then wrapped herself in a robe and lifted Charlie out of his bath seat. He rolled some r’s on his tongue and drew his rubber duck out of the water with him, holding it and babbling whoa-whoa whoa-whoa as she carried him wrapped in a towel to his changing table and put him in a diaper and a sleeper for bed. She nursed him in the rocker until his eyes closed, and lay him already sleeping in his crib. Renata watched as he began his usual turning in his sleep until he was wedged into the corner of the crib, his foot protruding through the slats. It was as if even when sleeping he was restless, not content to be put down in a straight line where his mother lay him, but needing to find and test the outer reaches of his territory.
She let him stay the way he arranged himself, and tucked the blanket over him. The foot remained sticking out the side, a small, free-agent part of his body. Renata went to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of soda—she hadn’t had a drink since the night with Bill—and carried it to the living room to watch television. Gone With the Wind was midway through. She stared idly at the screen, watching and brooding. She had always loved the outfit Scarlett made herself out of those green velvet curtains. But she couldn’t bear to watch the riding accident with the little girl, so she spun through the channels, finding nothing else that interested her. She flicked the television off, and on impulse grabbed the phone and dialed Bryan’s new number.
“Hello?” a female voice answered. Renata knew two women and two men besides Bryan lived at the house. Then, of course, mere were all the friends of all of them who no doubt trooped through. Damn Bryan for being too cheap to get his own line, anyway.
“Is Bryan there?” She heard laughter in the background.
“Bryan? Sure, he’s right here. Just a sec.”
Renata heard him say something to the others, and heard them laugh. There seemed to be quite a crowd. Were they having a party?
“Hello?”
“Hi”
“Hey, Ren. What’s up?”
Renata was feeling colossally stupid. What made her think he would just be sitting around watching Gone With the Wind, waiting to feel grateful mat she called?
“Just checking in. We on for tomorrow?”
“Sure. Like we said. I’ll be there at four-thirty, in plenty of time for you to leave for work. Okay? I’ll come straight from my shift.”
“Good. You know, you can shower and change at my place. And there will be food in the fridge. Whatever you want.”
“Okay. We all set, then?” He sounded in a hurry.
“Yeah. See you. Happy Valentine’s Day.” Christ. Had she really said that? He probably had a girlfriend over there now. Maybe he was dating someone in his house, which would be like them living together already.
“Same to you.” He did have a woman there. He couldn’t even say the words to her; he had to code it. Fuck it, anyway. Why should she care? As long as he came on time to take care of Charlie tomorrow so she could go to work.
ON WEDNESDAY RENATA PACED the apartment, fuming. Charlie, playing with his toys on the floor, caught some of her tension and began to cry. That was how Bryan found them at 4:45 when he arrived.
“You’re late,” she said.
Bryan looked up at the wall clock in surprise. It had always driven her nuts that he refused to wear a watch. “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “I had to circle a couple of times to find a place to park.”
“Well, I needed time to tell you some things. You should have been early today. Now I’m going to be late.”
“Relax, Renata.” His voice was irritated. “I’ve been with him before, remember? I know where everything is.”
“Oh, yeah? You’re not interested in how long he slept today, and whether he ate much for lunch, and what new food I’m starting him on? That’s totally irrelevant to you when you give him some dinner and try to put him down to bed?” She heard her voice rise in anger. Didn’t he understand the first thing about taking care of babies? She and June always completely briefed each other when one of them was replacing the other.
Bryan put his hand on her arm. “What’s wrong with you today, anyway?”
She jerked away. “I just want to know that you’re taking this seriously, Bryan. I just want to be on time for work so I don’t lose my goddamn job.”
Charlie had been watching their conversation with wide eyes from his sitting position on the rug. Now he began to cry again, tilting back his head and closing his eyes.
“Now look what you did,” Renata said, picking Charlie up and shushing him with kisses.
“What I did? Renata, go to work. When you come home everything’s going to be fine. Call to check up on me during your break if it will make you feel better.” Bryan reached out to take Charlie, which made him cry louder, stretching out his arms for his mother. Renata didn’t want to release the baby until she had finished reassuring him, but she had no choice; if she didn’t leave that instant, she really would be late.
She shut the door behind her as forcefully as she could without slamming it. What a mistake she had made in letting Bryan back into her life; now she was dependent on him to help with Charlie, and she hated being dependent. Why had she even told him the baby was his? Why didn’t she say she had been seeing someone else on the side, and the baby was the other guy’s? Now there was no going back.
Driving to work, Renata imagined midnight departures with their duffel bags, Charlie and Renata traveling light, the way it was in the beginning. She would leave on a Saturday night after work so that they could have three full days to get somewhere before Bryan even noticed. This time she would tell no one her address. She might even change their last name, so they couldn’t be traced. Florida. That’s where they should be, a warm seaside place with flowery winds where they would shed their winter clothes and feel the night air on their bare arms. But why should Renata sneak away like a criminal? What had she done that she needed to hide from, except want to bear and raise her son without interference? Why couldn’t Bryan just go away and let her do that?
She remembered his initial words, that he would turn around and go right back to L.A. if she asked him to. Well, she might.
As Renata circled the block Viva’s was on looking for a parking place, she saw the full moon hanging like a disk of ice against the dark. Every full moon had its own
name, June had told her. She had been going to see some New Age psychic, and had been picking up lore like that. Renata was not interested in fortunetellers. There had been plenty of them on the boardwalk in Venice, but she had never bothered with a reading. For her, bad luck wore a plain enough appearance; you didn’t need to go hunting it out in order to recognize it. When it came, it was simply what you had been dealt, and you lived past it. Even good luck, or a miraculous turn of events the likes of Charlie, she would rather not know about in advance. That way she wouldn’t waste time waiting for it, and she couldn’t be disappointed if it failed to show.
She finally found a spot three blocks away from the restaurant, and plugged the meter with four quarters to cover her until six o’clock. It was five o’clock exactly, and she would be at least ten minutes late by the time she got to the restaurant and put her apron on and punched her server code into the computerized wait station. It was a good thing that Gil and Theo liked her work well enough to cut her a little slack. She had been dragging in five and ten minutes late ever since Eleanor died, because June couldn’t seem to get it together to arrive at her apartment on time. Now it looked like Bryan would have the same lackadaisical attitude.
The full moon hung directly in front of her the whole time she was hurrying toward Viva’s; its cold light depressed her. What was February’s moon called? The Hunger Moon. It did look starved up there, vapory and thin. Such a cold city. June said that the day Eleanor died, a full Wolf Moon was coming on. Renata pictured Eleanor’s soul rising like a wild moan toward its light, solitary and mournful. Except Eleanor wasn’t mournful; she was a very matter-of-fact person. She seemed to greet life head-on, and probably lifted herself up toward death the same way. Renata liked to think so. It wasn’t so bad, was it, to die in your bed in a single instant after seventy-eight years of living?
AT WORK SHE STARTED TO CALM DOWN, soothed by the rhythms of waiting on tables. Her station filled up at a nice, steady rate—not fast enough to make her rush, but fast enough so that she didn’t ever stop to watch the clock. At nine she turned over her tickets to Gil and sat down to eat the pasta and chicken Ron had cooked for the employees. Bill was just finishing his own meal, and motioned for her to sit down. She didn’t feel like joining him, but she was taking pains not to seem disgruntled over his attentions to Sally, the new server.
“How are things?” he asked, pushing back his empty plate and taking a drink of his Coke.
“Oh, you know.” Renata shrugged. “How about you?”
“Can’t complain. I’m getting ready to take my annual leave, by the way. Actually, I’ll be quitting, but for the last two years Theo has been rehiring me when I get back from sailing.”
“Sounds fun,” Renata said.
“I’d love to take you out on the boat sometime,” he said. “I’ll still be around for another two weeks.”
“Oh, it’s too cold for me. Besides, I’m not much for boats.”
“You acted pretty interested when I was telling you about it before.”
“Well, that’s what brandy will do for you.”
Bill looked at her, catching the chill in her tone. It surprised her, too.
“How’s the boyfriend?”
“He’s not; I told you that.”
“Still in town?”
She nodded. “He spends a lot of time with Charlie.”
Bill picked up his dishes and gave her a wink. “Well, you take care. See you around,” he said.
“See you,” she echoed. Whatever chemistry they had had between them was as flat as an old soda now. His smiles and winks came across as sleazy to her; she couldn’t believe that a few weeks ago she was actually charmed by them.
WHEN SHE GOT OFF WORK, the moon was nowhere to be found. The city lights drowned the stars, if there were any. She hadn’t called Bryan on her break, and wasn’t sure exactly what she would find at home.
He was watching an old war movie, his feet up on her coffee table next to a pizza box and two empty Coke cans.
“Hey,” he greeted her.
“Hi. How was he?”
“Fine. He ate cereal and carrots, played around a little, had a bottle and fell asleep watching TV with me. He didn’t wake up when I put him to bed.”
Renata flinched. She and June had always gotten Charlie to drop off to sleep in his crib. Now Bryan was going to undo all his good habits by hypnotizing him with the television. But she kept her criticism to herself and tiptoed into the nursery to see Charlie lying pressed up against the rails, curled on his stomach with his rump in the air. Bryan had him dressed only in a diaper and a T-shirt, even though the room was cool. She pulled the blanket up around his shoulders and kissed the back of his head. Charlie rolled over and began moving his lips. Renata picked up the pacifier and slipped it into his mouth just as he was beginning to sputter into a cry. As soon as he latched on to the rubber nipple, his body went limp again with sleep.
“Okay?” Bryan asked, looking at the screen instead of her. He had removed his feet from the coffee table.
“Sure. Thanks. You didn’t have to order out, you know. I told you there was food.”
“Yeah, I know. But I didn’t feel like making anything. This was easier.”
“How’s the job going?” she asked him, sitting down in the arm-chair opposite. She wished he would turn the television off or at least down, but he kept staring at it.
“It’s okay. Tending bar is tending bar.”
Renata noticed his camera lying on the kitchen counter. “Did you take some pictures of the baby?”
“Yeah, practically a whole roll.”
He didn’t elaborate and Renata didn’t press. She was a little hurt that for almost a month he had been taking pictures of Charlie and had given her none. She was too proud to mention it, but it seemed almost intentionally cruel.
“Were you late today?” he asked, finally looking at her.
“A few minutes.”
“Sorry. I’ll be earlier tomorrow.”
“Well, I’m sorry I was such a bitch about it. I was tense today for some reason.”
“New sitter,” he said, grinning.
“You can’t baby-sit your own child. I mean, you can’t call it that.”
“He is mine, isn’t he? It’s just beginning to sink in, that this isn’t some sort of vacation. That he’s really my son.”
Renata didn’t quite know what to make of this comment. Was he thinking of leaving them?
“You had nine months to think about it, and then you had the birth and all. You must have been able to ease into it.”
That wasn’t exactly how she would describe it, the sweaty July day she pushed Charlie into the world, feeling like it would tear her in two. It wasn’t how she felt staring amazed at him in his bassinet afterward, either. The shock of him stayed with her for weeks. There was no easing into it.
She shrugged. “I guess. You getting cold feet?”
“No, of course not. It’s just that it feels weird to wake up to, some days. It would be different if we had lived together first and then split up. It’s just kind of tough never to have been under the same roof with him.”
They let that one drift, hanging in the air between them. Bryan picked up his pizza box and cans and carried them to the kitchen.
THE NEXT FEW DAYS HE WAS ON TIME or even a little early, and they settled into a routine, as Renata had done with June. Charlie seemed content, except for his general angst over all the places he would like to go but couldn’t quite manage to, his crawling still in neutral gear. Renata grew used to having Bryan around again. They traded stories about customers they waited on, trying to top each other with outrageous caricatures, just like before. She told him stories about the pregnancy, and the natural-labor classes she took with Marcia, even showing him a picture Marcia had snapped of her in the ninth month. In it, Renata was wearing a striped maternity bathing suit in the backyard, and Jess was spraying her with the garden hose. Some of the drops had gotten on the camera lens, so
the effect was that of seeing Renata’s swollen body through bleary eyesight. Bryan asked to keep it, and she was surprised but said yes, feeling a pang for him over the phases of Charlie he had missed.
One night after she arrived home, and Bryan had his usual feet and Coke cans on the coffee table as he watched TV, he asked her to tell him about Charlie’s delivery, and she sat there for a moment, trying to get back to it.
She remembered labor to be like riding ocean waves with your body: at first the waves were spaced, so you could keep up with them if you concentrated. Then the contractions got rougher, but you could still pretty much hang in there and arrive at the other side with your wits about you, though you had less and less energy to fight with. Toward the end you were rolled over by waves so enormous you couldn’t even see them coming; they slammed you to the bottom with a viciousness that almost shattered you there. At the dark bottom you had no idea which way the air was, or when you would be released. You knew that nothing you could do would slow this thing down or make it stop. It was just a matter of hoping you wouldn’t die, or hoping you would, and feeling yourself at the mercy of the force that ground you to the bottom again and again. Finally, the thing spit you out of its jaws, and you lay sprawled there, abandoned by it. Except now there were two of you.
She tried her best to describe it, and after a silence Bryan said, “I wish I could have been there.” The way he said it was not accusing but wistful, and Renata felt again that she had unwittingly stolen from him something she couldn’t give back.
“I’m sorry, Bryan,” she said, meaning it.
ON SATURDAY THE TWENTY-FIFTH, he arrived with a flat package wrapped in brown paper. He put it on the table and said, “Happy birthday.”
She was astonished that he remembered. She scarcely had herself, running errands all day with Charlie. She was twenty-seven today. About a year ago she had left Bryan, and a year before that she had met him. Who could have said that the day she let him buy her a margarita at that restaurant in Malibu would be the day the cosmos started working to create Charlie? And the day that Renata and Bryan would be forever tied in some way no one could undo.
The Hunger Moon Page 20