She opened the package before she left for work, and found an album of matted black-and-white prints of herself and Charlie. The first one in the collection was the snapshot she had given him of herself pregnant in Marcia’s backyard, but Bryan had somehow copied it and enlarged it, printing it in black and white. The water-smeared lens gave the photo a dreamlike aspect, as if Renata were made of some element other than flesh and bone as she stood there with long white arms and legs, and huge pregnant belly, warding off the spray of the garden hose. The other eleven prints were taken during moments when Renata had not even realized she was being photographed. Bryan’s camera had been so ubiquitous that she had soon learned to ignore it. Renata got to see for the first time just what the bond between herself and her son looked like: Charlie nursing at her breast, their eyes locked; Renata down on hands and knees trying to get him to crawl, the two of them grinning at each other; Renata leaning back to avoid being splashed as she kneeled beside the tub to bathe him. She was surprised at how professional the work was. The pictures glowed with suffused, complex light, and the printing was so crisp that she and Charlie seemed revealed in the photos as their essential selves.
“This is terrific, Bryan. You’re really good at this.” She was so happy to have the pictures that the photo she was staring at misted over. She had a million pictures of Charlie, but almost none of her holding him.
“They’re not bad, are they,” he agreed, pleased. “Of course I had to take a lot to get these good ones. I’ve got some other shots here in the envelope that didn’t make the album, but that you might like to have.”
She took them with her to work to look at on her break, and pulled them out over dinner. She was startled by some pictures of herself and Charlie taken at a distance, presumably when Bryan had been watching them before he announced his presence in town. He had used a telephoto lens to shoot a couple of pictures of Charlie as he sat in the stroller glaring into the winter sun. The photos had the look of being taken by a sly journalist, with Renata’s blank expression unconscious of the photographer, and their blown-up faces slightly grainy, like newsprint. Then came a few pictures of Eleanor carrying Charlie, ones Bryan must have taken that Saturday as he followed her. She was stooped with the baby’s weight, and the telephoto zeroed in mercilessly on her anxious, confused face. There was one of her sitting on the curb, just as Bryan had said he had found them, an image of a thin old woman wrapping her arms around a shawled infant. The background was obscure. The photo could have been taken anywhere, anytime, a picture of a forlorn refugee. As disturbing as it was, it was a stunning picture. Renata found she could barely look at it. She doubted Bryan was taunting her with the photo; he simply wanted her to see his work. She had been too absorbed in worrying about Charlie and in the tumultuous feelings accompanying Bryan’s appearance to give much thought to Eleanor’s fear on that day. Now she saw it before her, and it made her ashamed of her self-centeredness.
Driving home through the quiet streets, she felt restless, too keyed up to be alone; she realized she wanted Bryan to stay with her that night.
It was not just the fact of her birthday that made her want him to stay over. It was how everything had lately shifted, her balance becoming counterpoised against his presence. It was the queer way they were and were not a family; it was Charlie’s new habit of raising his hands to be picked up and given a ride whenever Bryan entered the room; and now these photos—evidence of how closely he looked, how well he had seen the two of them. Right now she longed for someone to know her, someone whom she had a little history with. The fact that she had spent only a year with Bryan seemed insignificant next to the fact that together they had made Charlie. They had changed each other’s life; what more can you know about a person than that?
WHEN SHE LET HERSELF INTO THE APARTMENT, Bryan was dozing on the couch. His expression was one of almost wounding sweetness, the way Charlie’s was in sleep. Renata turned off the television, and the silence startled him awake. He rose to his elbows and looked at her, his eyes opaque and blank for an instant. Then he stretched and rubbed his face.
“Already?” he yawned.
Renata smiled. “It’s twelve-thirty.” She kicked off her shoes and sat down to put her feet up on the coffee table, nudging aside an empty beer bottle with her toe. Maybe she would have one, too.
Bryan swung himself up to a sitting position. The cushion had imprinted a line from his eye all the way down the side of his face, as if he had been scarred in a street fight. His flannel shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, and she could see how he still had some tan from California, slightly orange in this light. Her eyes kept straying back to that little triangle of skin; she used to know every part of him.
Renata had never had to seduce anyone. She had always been the one to say, Maybe; we’ll see; well, okay. Now it seemed to her that Bryan should somehow fathom her willingness, should cross the room and need to ask no questions.
Instead he rose to get his coat.
“Um, Bryan?” She suddenly felt that if he left now, they would forever be watching each other from separate places. Like looking at someone in his car stopped next to you at a light.
“Yep. Do you know what did I with my hat? I thought it was right here.”
Renata saw the hat on the floor beside the couch. She twirled a lock of hair.
“Would you like to stay and have a drink? For my birthday?” She felt cheap adding that, but she could see how he already had momentum toward the door, and thought she needed to throw out whatever ballast she could to slow him down.
He looked at her, and it seemed to her that his expression was the wrong one, his face softening in the wrong way.
“Oh, jeez, Renata …”
She felt herself close up, as surely as if she were one of those anemones in the glass tank at the restaurant, pulling their little spears of flame into a puckered fist meant to pass for a rock.
“Not tonight, okay? I mean, I know it’s your birthday and all, but I didn’t think—”
“That’s okay.”
“It’s just that I promised to meet someone.”
“Look, forget it. I’m wiped out, anyway. Your hat’s over there,” she added, pointing.
“We could do it another time.”
“Sure, fine.” Just leave, she thought.
The door closed behind him and she lay faceup on the sofa where he had been. It was still slightly warm from his body. Of course he had a girlfriend by now. Men didn’t just wait around for months without finding someone. She felt a comforting anger begin to build. He probably had had two or three lovers in the year they had been apart. How dare he appear on her doorstep and pretend to be all wronged and outraged? As if her leaving him had been even a minor blip in his life. Well, fuck him. She had erased him once, and she could do it again.
AT FIRST WHEN SHE STOPPED EATING, she kept it to herself. If she was planning to eat with Owen that night, she skipped breakfast and lunch. She couldn’t keep that up for long, though, almost fainting one day in class after she rose from a psychology lecture. So she bought herself some high protein diet drinks to sip from cans three times a day. Owen discovered them in her cupboard and held one out in front of her, dangling it from its plastic six-pack holder as if it were a dead animal.
“What’s this?” he asked. “Don’t tell me you’re dieting.”
“Well, I am,” June said.
“But June, you don’t need to.”
“I think that’s my business, don’t you?”
“This stuff isn’t even food.” Owen read her the list of chemical ingredients on the label, pronouncing them all correctly because he was a science major.
“Owen, excuse me, but whose body are we talking about here?”
He set his mouth in a superior, judging way, and put the can back in the cupboard. They returned to their homework without speaking.
It was worth it, though, to see her jeans gap around her waist, and to run her fingers over the shelf of bone her clavicle
made. She loved how her bones were rising out of her like another June.
She couldn’t tell Owen that the reason she had gained weight in the first place was because almost every time he left her, she paced her apartment nervously, her heart pounding, which set her off on an eating spell. The gauntness that had overtaken her following Mrs. MacGregor’s death had puffed into extra pounds as soon as she began dating him. One day after vomiting a food binge, June was alarmed to see blood. She decided that she had to stop throwing up. Hence, she needed to diet, to balance the times when she lost control. So far, it was working. Since she had been dieting, she had binged once, but overall she had lost eleven pounds.
June didn’t know why being with Owen would have this effect on her. There was nothing to fault him with. He was a completely nice guy. He told her how much he liked her; he bought her little surprise presents; he asked her about her day and listened when she told him. He worked hard and was putting himself through school. He earned good grades and was probably on his way to becoming a big success in life.
The problem was, he didn’t excite her. She had enjoyed his company on their first date, and then the second, and by the third time they went out together, she knew she should be more receptive when he slipped his arm around her shoulders. When she did kiss him good night, she had to think of something else to distract herself from the loose, fleshy feel of his lips. She wished they could just be friends; June really wanted a friend. But Owen was clearly hoping they would get serious. Not that he was pushing her; he was too nice for that. She began sleeping with him, feeling that he somehow deserved it. This turn of events made him ecstatic. June pretended to enjoy it, too.
ON A SATURDAY MORNING IN EARLY MARCH when Owen was at work, June swept out the apartment, carried the garbage to the Dumpster, and scrubbed the bathroom. An apartment as small as hers took even less time to clean than Mrs. M’s. June still missed Mrs. M., and Renata, too—for Renata seemed to have forgotten all about her, never once calling her to baby-sit. It had wounded her to lose her job, though she knew that things had changed now that Bryan was around. But she wished she could see Charlie and Renata. Maybe she would call Renata, ask if she could drop by for a visit.
After she finished cleaning, she took a shower and changed from sweats into jeans. She hated all her clothes; they hung like sacks on her, now that she was down to a hundred and seven pounds. She needed to buy new ones, but she had no money to go shopping with. The last of her savings from baby-sitting had dwindled to a hundred dollars, and she was going to need that for groceries. There was no cash coming in after that, none at all, and she hadn’t had the energy to look for a new job. She hated to call her father for money, but it was time.
Of course she reached Melanie instead.
“June, what a surprise. Your father’s just gone out to meet some clients. Do you want him to call you later?”
“Yeah, that would be good.” June faltered. Was she supposed to try to have a conversation with Melanie out of politeness? Her father’s wife—June had never been able to say stepmother—had never shown much interest in her.
“How are you doing?” June asked.
“Just fine, June, and you? How’s school?”
“School’s okay.” Neither her father nor Melanie knew the first thing about her life. There was no point in going into any detail. “Are you feeling all right?” June asked. “You know, with the pregnancy and all?”
“Very well, thank you, June.”
Was that all she was going to say? Didn’t June count at all to be included? Couldn’t Melanie just tell her something about it?
“Dad said you’re having a boy.”
“That’s right, a little boy.”
June was getting angry. She remembered the surprised look her father had when she had used the words my brother. She could picture it magnified a hundred times on Melanie’s face in Chicago as she held the phone with manicured nails in their lakefront condominium.
“I hope I get to spend some time with him after he’s born,” June said. “You know, since he’s my half-brother and all.”
The silence on the line was stabbing. She had said it only to irritate Melanie, but as soon as the words were out they seemed true. She wanted to know that baby.
“Why June, what a lovely notion,” Melanie said, smoothly recovering.
JUNE DIDN’T EXPECT OWEN until three. When he let himself in sometime before that, she was bent over the toilet bowl, vomiting up the last of the pound cake he had baked and left wrapped on the counter. He found her there, her hands gripping the freshly cleaned porcelain, her face an ugly twist of embarrassment.
His smile evaporated as he stared, then crouched by her in concern.
“June? You sick?”
She started to say yes, then began shaking her head no, faster and faster, until she stopped and sat back against the cold wall, her face buried in her sleeve.
“You’re not pregnant?”
That made her laugh, a little smothered sound.
He tried to hug her but she stayed bent over, rejecting his touch. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “It’s food, isn’t it? You’re getting rid of food?”
No, she wanted to say, I mean yes, but what she really meant was that the food wasn’t the point at all.
“Okay,” he said, patting her stiff shoulder. “Okay.” Not It’s okay, or You’re okay, because those words would not be true, June thought, just Okay. It was what he had to offer, all she would let him give.
RENATA WAS PERFECTLY POLITE TO BRYAN when he came by to pick up Charlie for a trip to the playground on Sunday, the day after her birthday. She declined the invitation to accompany them. She was also cordial on Wednesday when he came to baby-sit, and noticed that he had adopted her tone of distant civility. By the week’s end, the civility was dissolving into simple distance. The tension grew more pronounced between them in the week that followed. Bryan showed up, stayed with Charlie while she worked, then went home. They talked only when necessary, and then in clipped, cool tones. On the weekend, Bryan didn’t mention taking Charlie on Sunday, and the day came and went without his call.
The next Wednesday he was twenty minutes late, and she was sure he was doing it to spite her. She fumed in silence, trying not to upset Charlie as he sat in her lap, fingering her black tie. The phone rang. She answered it in cold anger.
“Is Bryan there?” It was a woman’s voice—a girl’s voice, really—high and perky.
“No, he’s not,” Renata said with emphasis.
“Would you ask him to call Cindy? He left his portfolio here, and I just wanted him to know so he wouldn’t think he lost it.”
“I’ll tell him.”
Renata was just finished scrawling “Call Cindy” on a note when Bryan showed up, breathless and apologetic.
“Forget it,” she said icily, handing him Charlie and heading toward the door. “You had a call,” she said, pointing to the note on the table.
FINALLY ON FRIDAY SHE BROKE THE SILENCE after work as he was getting ready to leave.
“Look, Bryan, I don’t think we can keep going on like this.”
“Like what?” he asked.
“You know exactly like what. This not-talking business.”
“This is your silence, if you recall. You’re calling the shots here, isn’t that right?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“This whole arrangement. I revolve my life around yours, jump when you say ‘Jump’, say ‘please’ and ‘ma’am.’ Mr. Step ’n’ Fetch It.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I never asked you to do anything for me. It would probably make my life a whole lot easier if you wouldn’t.”
“Fine.”
“What?”
“I said, fine. You tell me when I get to take Charlie for visits, and I’ll come by and pick him up. If you want to do fifty-fifty custody, that’s fine with me.”
“What are you talking about?” Renata’s heart was racing.
“I
’m talking about what you’re talking about. Ending our arrangement, starting tomorrow. I certainly have other things to do with my evenings than hang out in your apartment. But don’t think I’m going to give up spending time with Charlie.”
“Bryan, you are not sharing custody!”
“Then we’ll work out some kind of visitation schedule. Something legal. I’ll pay you child support, and we’ll get a lawyer to write it all down. You’ll have rights and I’ll have rights.”
Renata sat down, her pulse thudding in her ears. Think, think,
she said to herself. Say the right thing.
“Get out,” was what she finally thought of.
RENATA WAS UP UNTIL THREE, drinking beer and pacing. The word custody kept torturing her. Charlie was hers. She was the one who would say when and if Bryan could see him. This wasn’t for lawyers to decide. It wasn’t their business. She was his mother.
She began to see that it was impossible to stay in the same town as Bryan. And that he had lied to her—he had no intention of going back to Los Angeles if she asked him to. As unfair as it was, she was the one who had to leave. Renata walked from her kitchen to her bedroom, her bedroom to her living room. She didn’t want to give up her apartment. It was her home. She had a good job. She didn’t want to start all over somewhere else. Then the word, custody.
Renata woke at eight, with a hangover and the sour taste of beer on her breath. Charlie was screaming at the top of his lungs, and she was still in her work clothes from last night, stretched out on top of the bed. She let the baby scream a minute more while she lay there, looking at the blank ceiling.
By ten she was showered and dressed, Charlie was bathed and dressed, and she had two bags packed. Charlie was gay as he faced the full-length mirror at Renata’s feet, patting his hands on the glass, saying Hoo, hoo, hoo, his mouth pursed in a small circle to kiss his reflection and then lean back to examine the mark he had made. Renata was trying to put on some makeup, but she couldn’t get it right.
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