The Nature of Jade

by Deb Caletti

  Sebastian sprinkles some cheese on his chili. I have a bite of mine. It is way too salty, but who cares. "I don't always. I mean, I have a lot of help. My family." He gestures at the wall. "Without them, forget it. Even then, when Sebastian was first born? They gave him to me, you know, at the hospital. When it was time to go home. I almost handed him back. It felt so wrong. Like they shouldn't give him to me to take anywhere because I might wreck him. Or break him or hurt him.

  Later, I was so tired. I'd never been so tired in my life. It's not like you have an all-nighter and can sleep the next day. It goes on and

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  on. ... I'd feed him in bed with a bottle and we'd fall asleep there, and I'd jump up in this panic that I'd rolled over him and suffocated him." Scary.

  "I was so crazy about him. This love just.. . overtakes. But, shit. Suddenly your whole life is dominated by this one thing. I can't even explain the adjustment. Like someone just hung a bowling ball around your neck and you've got to go on like you used to. That's not quite right, because the bowling ball's got to be kept alive. Needs to eat every few hours, cries and spits up and needs to eat again. Gets a cold and can't breathe . . . You've got to handle any need of his right then, not when you feel like it. There's this little demanding human and he is yours every day, every minute, and sometimes I'd have to step outside of the house and shut the door. Just, I was so fucking exhausted. I didn't think I could do it."

  "What happened?"

  "Well, we were with my mom and dad then, and they helped. Took over if things got too crazy.

  And just, day by day, I guess. You get to know what you're doing. I got used to the demands, and then the demands changed. Now it's demanding in a whole new way. Honestly? Sometimes I want to strangle him. But, look." We watch Bo munch his hot dog. His shiny hair. His rows of tiny, white teeth. He tries to scoop up some cut bananas with a spoon, with maybe 20 percent accuracy. "I go to work and I miss him. I go out without him and I feel like I've forgotten something. I think, Wallet? Jacket?" He laughs.

  "It's strange, because here you are, just two years older than me, and every guy my age seems like he's still thinking about his video games or sex or football."

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  "Na-nas!" Bo says, holding his spoon in the air.

  "Don't get the wrong idea. I used to love video games. I can't wait until Bo's old enough--man, that'll be a kick. I just don't have time. That all feels like a lifetime ago. Sometimes I feel like I'm fifty. Sometimes I feel like I was just seventeen and had this experience where someone hypnotized the real me and took over my life and, shit, look what they've done."

  "I'm impressed, though."

  "Don't be. It's not heroic. Someday you'll see Tess tell me to pick up my socks like I'm seven. Or hear me yell at Bo, and then feel like he'd have been better off adopted. But, talk to me about you.

  I'm not kid obsessed, really. Maybe a little. But tell me more about you. Your family--start there."

  So I do. I tell him about Mom and her prom dresses and her parents in Florida, and about my dad and his sports obsession and Oliver and Milo and my dad's family. I tell him how Dad once tried to teach us all to ski and how Mom had the television on all day every day after 9/11, and how she even bought masks for us in case of chemical warfare, and how I accidentally knocked out Oliver's first tooth and how my mother used to sometimes cry and stay in her room with the door closed before we had to go over to my dad's parents' house.

  Bo has basically smooshed or examined everything on his tray, which now is all half swimming in what is definitely apple juice. Then he wants "Dow!" and off he runs, and Sebastian tries to clean his face with a wet paper towel, which Bo distinctly hates.

  "Want to get your jams on?" Sebastian says, which cues Bo to fling off his socks and begin a frustrating attempt to take off his own clothes. Sebastian finishes the job, and Bo has a 183

  glorious minute of naked freedom, running around like a cupid.

  "Hey, Turbo," Sebastian says. "I'm gonna getcha!" Sebastian catches him and they wrestle Bo's pajamas on. "He can take off most of his clothes, but no way can he get them on yet," Sebastian shouts over the noise, and I carry our plates to the kitchen.

  The phone rings and a newly p.j.'d Bo dashes to it, beating Sebastian easily.

  "To?" Bo says, then drops the phone where it is. You can still hear a voice coming out from where it lies on the floor.

  Sebastian retrieves it. "Hi. Yeah. My secretary. Hey, can I call you later?" He pauses. "No, like tomorrow." He rolls his eyes toward the ceiling for my benefit. "She's supposed to be back late.

  FFECR meeting." He pauses again, listens. "Say it fast and it sounds like a word we don't want Bo to learn. Mmhmm. Okay. Tomorrow. Promise--jeez! Bye.

  "My mom," he says.

  "Hey, I should let you get going. Get Bo to bed."

  "Let me just get him his toothbrush. He thinks he's brushing, but basically he sucks on it. He loves it, though, so it'll give me a chance to say good-bye."

  "Ba," Bo says, and blows me a kiss. "Mwah!" he says, movie-actress style.

  "Not yet," Sebastian says. "Hey, man, she's still here."

  He finds Bo's toothbrush, and he is right, of course. Bo sits right down on his diapered bottom and sucks that toothbrush like a Popsicle. Sebastian walks me to the door.

  "I really enjoyed this," I say.

  "Go home and take a couple Tylenol," Sebastian says, the nature of jade 184

  "No. Come on, he was great. This place ... I had a terrific time."

  "Me too," he says. He gathers my hair behind my back, lets it fall. We are close enough that I can feel his warm breath on my face. He leans down, and sets his lips not quite on mine. Just to the edge of my mouth. A light brush, oh, God, and then I perfect his aim.

  We kiss for a while, not long enough. His mouth is chili-warm. We pull apart. Sebastian, my red jacket boy, looks at me for a while. He puts his hand behind my neck, pulls me to him and kisses my forehead.

  "Good night," he says.

  "Bye," I say.

  "Bah," Bo says from the living room. "Mwah!"

  Wow lifts me up, plunks me outside into the cold, misty-wet night air. The lights that are strung along the dock reflect in the water of the lake. Ripple, dance. I head past the flowerpots, am just about to step off the dock, when I almost bump into a figure coming on. I barely see her, in her dark coat with the hood up against the rain. The hood comes down and out pops a fluff of gray hair, eyes direct and blue as the color of the china some old ladies have.

  "Well, you don't look like a burglar," she says.

  "I'm Jade. DeLuna. A friend of Sebastian's."

  "Uh-huh."

  She just stands there, drilling me into the ground with her eyes. This is Tess, I know, the one with the smile and the fishing pole in the pictures, the one with her arm around the big, bearded man, the one sitting with her sister on a rock wall

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  somewhere that looked over the sea. Somehow, though, it doesn't seem like a good idea that I know who she is. That knowledge makes me too close, and she is already shoving me back with her gaze. I decide to fake ignorance. For a small woman, she seems capable of lifting me up in her fist and throwing me into the water. She seems too fierce for yellow gardening clogs.

  "And you are . . . ?" I say.

  "Early, it appears."

  My insides gather up in some kind of shame, huddle together against her bad feeling of me.

  "Excuse me," I say. "Good night." I walk past her, feel her eyes follow me down the dock. The wind picks up and the houses rock up and down, their moorings creaking. I have gone from happy to humiliated in less than a minute, and as I walk to the car, I start getting that creepy, alone in the dark/someone about to jump out/victim of violent crime/check your backseat feeling.

  My chest starts growing dark and heavy, my palms sweat a little. I have a flash of fear that I won't be able to catch my breath, and so I get in the car in a hurry, lock all the doors and sit for a minute wi
th my hands cupped over my mouth and nose. Breathe. In. Out. It's okay. I can. Handle this. Nothing is wrong. Only my body. Giving me. The wrong signals. Breathe. In. Out. From the diaphragm. See? There is no danger. Only the sense that I suddenly have something important to lose.

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  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Some animals are emotionally invested in the help they give others. Rescue dogs, for example, become depressed if instead of saving lives they only encounter corpse after corpse. After the Oklahoma City bombing, the search dogs became morose, wouldn't eat, had to be dragged to work. No amount of treats or rewards could alter their sense of hopelessness. Only after a live

  "victim" was placed where the dogs could find him alive did their joy in their work resume . . . --

  Dr. Jerome R. Clade, The Fundamentals of Animal Behavior

  "So, Abe, how do you know what to listen to inside?"

  "What do you mean?" Abe sips his tea. He'd stolen another one of Dr. Kaninski's coffee cups.

  GET A GRIP! it reads, with a cartoon guy holding a club in a half-swing. Probably what Dr.

  Kaninski felt about his patients, too.

  "Well, how do you know if something is a good thing for you or a bad thing?"

  "For example."

  "For example, you meet someone. And they're great. Really great. But there are these other parts of it that people would generally think of as not good. Maybe your insides think those things are okay, even nice, but you have some other worry you can't put your finger on. How do you know?

  When to trust your inner voice?" Sebastian--God, he's warm and funny and smart and caring. But something is still nagging me about

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  Tiffany. His reaction to her, the loss of her. Then again, maybe everything is getting wrapped up in his grandmother's reaction to me. I felt like I had been caught stealing and wasn't sure if I could go in that store again.

  "Why are these questions important to you now?" Abe says. "Tell me about the person you've met."

  "Don't get all psychologist on me, please? I just want to know how you know what to listen to.

  Person to person. Your human being knowledge."

  "Shit." Abe sighs. "That's a big question. You're looking at instinct like it's a foolproof system.

  Like it's a global positioning device."

  "I thought that's why we have it. That's why animals have it. To protect."

  "Sure, but it's a tool. Not THE tool, one tool. More like an old-fashioned map, not a GPS. You know, it's great to have a map, but there's the chance you can hold it upside down, read it wrong.

  Sometimes you just have to see where the road leads."

  "But instinct should be right."

  "It's mostly right. Think about it. You're descended from the very first person or creature that existed. Think what they had to do for you to be here in this time and place. All of your ancestors came from someone before, and you're the end product. You have Australopithecus ancestors."

  "Who?"

  "The guys with the big jaws, small brains." "Are you insulting my father?"

  "Ha. But think about it. Even before that. I love this stuff! You have ancestors that made fire and fought saber-toothed tigers and explored new territory and traveled oceans and went 188

  to war and survived the Great Depression." Abe gets up. His shirt is coming untucked. He refills his teacup with hot water, bobs a tea bag up and down.

  "I never really thought about that."

  "Well, look. They have. Your ancestors. You didn't just, poof, appear. You have the pieces of every person that came before you, from the dawn of time. You've lasted. That's what you're made up of. You've done pretty well, huh? Made of strong stuff."

  "Me? Always afraid? They'd laugh."

  "Think what a huge force fear must have been. Imagine being out in the dark, alone in the elements. Fear, great enough to change the formation of all living things--eyes on the side, eyes in the front, protective coverings, spikes, and venom. Other protections, too--shyness and anxiety and superstitions--all remnants of fear. Rituals and rain dances, gods and mythology. Living in groups ... It goes on and on. Fear causes the greatest changes, when you think about it. Fear is a monumental force."

  "Maybe my ancestors left behind too much of it. My instinct sucks."

  "Sometimes it can get drowned out by other things. Maybe it gets tweaked by people in your life.

  Urged in one direction. Sometimes that's just the way you come."

  "Or it gets broken ..." I think about Onyx and the other elephants. How they will become afraid to the point of harming people after they've been hurt, even people who try to help them.

  "Nothing about you is broken, Jade."

  "I'm not talking about me. Just... in general."

  "Sure, okay." He rocks a bit in his chair. "Instinct's an awe 189

  some thing, but we don't have to be a prisoner to it." He scratches his whiskers. "So. Anyway.

  What's happening now that's brought all this to mind?"

  "I met someone. Not just someone, but someone."

  "You're in love." He grins.

  "Quit it." I glare at him. I look away, stare at his bookshelf and his photo of Tibetan prayer flags, waving yellow, red, blue, green in the wind.

  "Your instinct is there and in fine working order, okay? You've just got your fear turned up a little loud. Like your stereo with too much bass. Makes it hard to hear the lyrics."

  "I don't want to get hurt."

  "How does a person stay safe, always? Lock yourself away? You're looking for a guarantee and there are no guarantees. If you love, you'll feel loss. You can't 'careful' yourself into avoiding loss. You're trying to get day without night."

  "All the marshmallows without the cereal," I say.

  "Summer vacation without the school."

  "We can stop now," I say.

  Abe sighs. "I was just getting going."

  "I've got a new plan for Onyx," Damian says to me when I arrive at the elephant house. "It's brilliant, if I do say so myself." Damian is checking health charts when I find him. His warm, brown face is soft and pleased with himself, his eyes bright. "I could barely sleep last night, I was so excited. It's so simple." "What?"

  "What Onyx needs. A mother. Her own, full-time mother. Consistency. Unconditional love."

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  "Okay ..." I wait for more.

  Damian faces me, clasps his hands together. "Delores!" he says.

  "Delores?"

  "She's perfect. The solution has been right here all along." "Delores? Are you sure?"

  "Of course I am sure. She is a caregiver. She is a mother with a loving heart. Do you see those pictures of her children?"

  "Yes, but have you asked her to do this?"

  "Well, that is my one small problem. She says no."

  "That seems like more than a small problem." I step into my overalls, zip them up.

  But Damian's eyes are still all gleaming and dancing. "That's where you come in!"

  "Me?"

  "She likes you. You will coax her out of that little box she hides in."

  "Damian! I barely know her."

  "You are young and you make her smile, I've seen it. And she is missing her daughter. Get her to come out of her box and just see."

  "If she doesn't want to, what can I do?" "Try," Damian says. "And try quickly. Onyx is running out of time."

  I work a little cleaning stalls, and then hang a traffic cone on the chain for enrichment. Hansa is the first one over. She saunters right over to it and sniffs to examine it. She sets her trunk to my head as if to get me to play too.

  I pat her, rub her trunk. I love its roughness under my hand, 191

  and her funny little face. The fluff of hair. "Sweet one, you are," I say to her. "Funny girl."

  As it gets closer to leaving time, I watch for Sebastian. After Tess and her reaction to me, I don't know if he'll even come.

  And I am right. It's a nice day, and there are several visitors in the vi
ewing area. See the elephants.1 Say hi to the elephants! But there is no Sebastian and no Bo.

  I pass Delores as I leave the front gate. She is in her booth, doing word searches and drinking a can of Diet 7 Up.

  "Wow, you look down," she says. Her voice is small and echoey from behind her window.

  "I do?"

  "Written all over your face. That boy?" I nod.

  "Complicated," she says. She picks up her purse from the shelf near her feet, fishes around inside.

  She pulls out a pack of cinnamon gum and offers me a stick through the half-circle hole in the glass. "Here. I just got to give you something," she says.

  She's a person with a loving heart, just like Damian said. "I'm supposed to talk to you about Onyx," I start.

  "I don't want to hear any more about it," she says. She unwraps a piece of gum for herself, folds it into her mouth.

  "Delores, you'd love it."

  "I'd get attached, I'd get all involved, I'd never leave. . . ." "That's the idea."

  "I had that in my old job, remember? That's why I left. No more. This is perfect for me." "You're missing out," I say.

  "So, I'm missing out." She chews her gum, smacks it all juicily.

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  "Hansa would love that gum. The smell," I say. "She'd put her trunk right up to your cheek."

  "Go," Delores says. "I'll be back," I say.

  I walk the long way home, through the rose garden, hoping Sebastian will still show. The garden is mostly green sticks, an improvement over the brown sticks they were a month ago. Green stick bushes and hedges, a pavilion at one end. In the summer it will be beautiful there, but now it is harsh and prickly. Jake Gillete isn't in the parking lot, and Titus is too focused on his work to wave. Through the window of Total Vid, I can see Mrs. Porter, our mail lady, perusing the display of Riding Giants as Titus heads her way, determined as a salesman in the Nordstrom shoe department.

  When I open the door of my house, I can hear my mother talking on the phone in the kitchen, laughing. I shut the door loudly, to let her know I am there. I don't know why this feels necessary, except that her voice has something different about it. A lightness that erases the mother parts of her. That makes her seem like a girl. Her voice--it's like ice cubes tinkling in a glass.