One Small Thing

by Barksdale Inclan, Jessica

  “Don’t do this to yourself, Aves. You’ve been so good about just going forward. You know it’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of when.” He held her tight, spoke in his confident sales voice, the one he used every day at VentureOut, a telecommunications company. While most salespeople’s over eager tones would convince her the worst was around the corner, Dan’s voice was as sure as her father’s had been. He sold promise and hope, as he always had. Everything he’d told her since his first, “Hello” had been the truth.

  “I know. I want it so bad. I look at Tomás and Loren’s kids, and I know I’d be a good mom.”

  “Of course you’ll be a good mom. That’s not the point. The point is you need to do what Dr. Browne says, go to this accupuncture place, and rest. We have to follow the program, and it will happen.”

  Avery nodded against her husband’s skin. Dan had always followed the program, and look how well things had turned out for him. Maybe he’d spent a couple of vague years working after high school instead of going right to college, but in short order he’d been admitted to Cal, earned his degrees, and been hired right out of business school. He worked long hours, putting out fires with testy clients, traveling all over the state for meetings, taking calls from his boss Steve well into the night. But look how well it had all worked out. They were married, bought the house, and eventually, they would have children. Two or three. A boy and a girl for sure, like Avery had always planned. The boy old enough to protect the girl. That’s the way she saw it, and she wanted to believe Dan. She had to. There was no reason not to.

  “All right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I can’t stop thinking about it. You know me. It’s the way I was in school and at work. I think because it’s possible, I can do it. If I can’t for some strange reason, I just cut bait and move on. But I just don’t have much of a say here. I can’t go in and pluck the egg myself and slap a sperm in it and watch it grow in a Petri dish on the kitchen window sill. I can’t do anything but lie back and let people do things to me. I hate it.”

  “That’s why you’ll be a good mother. Our kids won’t have anything to worry about, not with you around. You’ll be the president of the PTA. In charge of all the fundraisers. I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up running the school.”

  Avery pressed into him again, wondering how she had found this man who knew her and still wanted her close. This close, rubbing her body, kissing her hair.

  “I’m actually feeling a little anxious myself right now,” Dan said, touching her breasts, kissing her neck. “And I happen to know the perfect cure.”

  Avery closed her eyes, let herself forget about the day. She stopped thinking about her insides as if they were charts in the exam room—the red curve of uterus and fallopian tubes, the small, potent egg falling down to swimming sperm. She blinked away the vision of her own body through the laparoscope lens, the slick, shiny organs that didn’t work right. She forgot to be jealous of her sister’s fertile reproductive fortune. She even let go of the sweet smell of Tomás, his baby hands, his rosebud mouth, his caramel skin. Her husband’s warm palms, his mouth, his dark hair against her cheek, neck, breasts brought her to a place where it had all started, this solid attraction between them. Avery pulled Dan close, let go of all her anxiety, the real and the imagined.

  TWO

  Luis leaned in and laughed. “Tom thinks his oysters have it all over us, man. But he hasn’t tasted my mother’s carne asada. And she also brought over some home-made chorizo. I’ll bring that out later. Wait until you taste that!”

  Smoke rose from the old Weber, Luis insisting on using charcoal. “The flavor, man. You can’t get that from gas!”

  Dan looked at the thin, tender strips of beef on Luis’ grill, knowing that with the salsa and the fresh corn tortillas Luis’ mother Dolores had brought over earlier in the day, the oysters would be just appetizers. “I think you’re right. Happy Fourth.” He brought up his Corona bottle and clinked it against Luis’.

  “Damn straight. Fourth of July. I’m just so glad school is out. Now I can spend all my time with Valerie and Tomás. But probably she’ll make me do all the laundry.”

  Dan nodded and swallowed his beer. Out in Dias Dorados Court, the neighbors were busy preparing for the long afternoon and evening, grills fired up, the air full of cooking meat and smoke. Earlier, Dan had helped set up about ten tables in the middle of the court, and now Frank Chow and Tim Mueller were bringing out large, green canvas umbrellas they’d all chipped in for after last year’s epic sunburn, every other person tossing all night on painful sheets. Kids were sitting on the curbs, wishing the day away, holding boxes of fireworks Ralph Chatagnier had bought in Livermore—Lotus Bloom, Flame Tower, Go Forever, Night Parade. Dan had already filled three water buckets so they could put out the blaze if a rare Monte Veda policeman were to drive by. They’d held the line at bottle rockets, knowing that even one spark could set a roof or dry, blonde hill ablaze. In fact, even though it was only ten am, it was already 85 degrees, as hot as it had been for weeks. By two, they’d all be huddled under the umbrellas, taking turns bringing the kids to either Dan and Avery’s or the Chow’s pool. When the sun finally set sometime after eight, they’d relax, take in the night, wait for the big guns to come out, the sky alight with color.

  “Yeah,” Luis was saying. “It’s great being able to watch him just sleep. I’m usually at the high school by seven.”

  Dan nodded again, feeling the muscles in his neck tense. “Summer will be great for all of you. Hey, I’d better go see what Avery wants me to do next.”

  “Okay, man. But don’t leave me out here too long. I’ll end up having to listen to Frank tell me about his new foundation.”

  Dan patted Luis’ shoulder, leaving his hand on his friend for a second. If someone had told him three months ago that he’d be jealous of Luis and Valerie, Dan would have laughed, saying, “They’re my best friends!” But in truth, he was jealous. Or maybe it was more. Maybe he was beginning to feel that he didn’t deserve a baby. Maybe he thought that it wasn’t about Avery’s body at all—it was about him. Not his sperm, that he knew. Motility and morphology had checked out, A okay, sperm 100% active and overpopulated, just as they should be. It was what he’d left behind that was the problem.

  “Dan! God, where have you been?” Avery pulled open the garage door. “I need you!”

  Dan dumped the Corona bottle in the maroon recycling bin and walked toward his wife. Avery’s hair was up in a ponytail, her neck shiny with sweat. He wondered why she’d felt it was necessary to wake up at 6.30 and take the kickboxing class Oakmont, when the preparations for the long day were obviously exercise enough. As he followed her inside the house, focusing on her tight, muscled calves, he knew she would never like the changes in her body when she finally got pregnant. Avery had organized all the changes in their life, but extra fluid and flesh were something she’d be unable to stop.

  “What is it?”

  “The damn pool cover. I swear it’s absorbing water. I can’t roll it up. You know how that thing worries me. If we turn our backs for a second, some kid is going to get sucked up by it.”

  “Let’s go figure it out,” he said, holding the kitchen door open for her. She didn’t look at him. She was in one of her, “Let’s finish this” moods. If he didn’t do as she said or teased her about her worries or the fact that her pasta wasn’t done yet or said that Isabel had called three times and was, in fact, bringing over the dreaded salad, they’d have a fight. Sometimes, when he was tired after working for fourteen hours, he couldn’t stop himself, the tickle of the irritating sentence too much to contain. Those nights, she slept on the edge of the bed, only forgiving him when he kissed her shoulder, neck, cheek, only when he held her close and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Then, she would turn to him, pull his face to hers, whisper, “Don’t leave me,” and he’d wonder what they had really been fighting about after all.

  But Dan didn’t want an argument today. He was rested for
the first time in weeks. He had the next three days off. He was going to work in the yard, swim, take Avery on a drive up the Sonoma Coast on Sunday. For at least one day, they weren’t going to think about the pregnancy. They weren’t going to mention the phrases “uterine body” or “blood levels” or “prostaglandin removal.”

  No. This weekend, they were going to be married, a couple, like they used to be, when it was simpler, when they could try to have a baby by turning out the lights and touching each other, back in the time when Dan was still ignorant of little rooms and girlie magazines; when he’d never had to hand his spunk in a little plastic container over to a nurse.

  They stood by the edge of the pool looking at the cover, and Dan could see that somehow, Avery had lumped a section of cover on the roll. He knew he’d have to unroll it and start over. “Listen, I can do this. Go ahead and finish your pasta. Don’t worry about the cover.”

  Avery wiped her forehead and then heard what he said, looking up and smiling. There she was. There was his girl, the one he had met at Peet’s six years ago, her hair the color of the summer foothills by his childhood Sacramento home. Her eyes were blue, sometimes gray, always full of light. He had imagined then and still imagined now that the light came from within her, her electricity, her drive, her current too strong to contain. If he had the right eyes, he knew he would see streaks of white shooting from her body like the flurries on the sun. She was that full of energy, electricity. She was that strong. As he’d waited long ago for the Rastafarian dude behind the counter to pour his coffee, Dan knew he’d found the woman who would make all the difference. The one who would burn away the past, leaving nothing but a space of time to be forgotten and then rewritten.

  “Thanks, honey.” Avery looked up at the sky. “It’s going to be hotter than all of last week.”

  “Yeah,” he said, bending over the cover, breathing in chlorine. “Go on. Get your work done.”

  She smiled again and turned away. He pulled on the wet plastic fabric, feeling the trail of her strong, hot light flick at his legs and then curl into their house, exactly where Dan wanted it.

  

  “I couldn’t help myself,” Isabel was saying, opening the fridge, where she carefully placed the plate that held her wobbly green Jell-O salad. “I know you said you didn’t need it. But honestly, sweetie, I saw all the people out there getting ready. Another salad never hurts, believe you me.”

  Dan turned to Avery, who was biting the inside of her cheek. She’d finished the pasta, filled the cooler with Coronas, Calistoga waters, and soft drinks, taken a shower and dressed, her white shorts/ red top outfit clearly Fourth of July, but not the spangled red, white, and blue Isabel wore. Dan stared at his mother-in-law’s sequined baseball cap, the kitchen light reflecting off her entire head. She even had on red Keds with blue shoelaces and little white socks with lace. Her fingernails were painted red, and she wore a blue bandana twisted around her neck. A vein in Avery’s tight, smooth throat pulsed, one, two, one, two.

  “Great!” Avery said. “You’re right.”

  “The more the merrier,” Dan said, wishing he hadn’t. That was the phrase Mary, the nurse at Dr. Browne’s, always used just before he went into the little room clutching the latest copy of Playboy.

  Isabel smiled at him. “Loren and her family will be here soon. She’s got a terrific surprise! That whipped strawberry pie you girls used to love. You know, your grandmother’s recipe? What was it called? Sky pie?”

  “Spy pie.” Avery was biting her cheek again. “She called me.”

  “How about a soda, Isabel,” Dan said, leading her into the family room. “Or why don’t we go over and say hi to Valerie and Luis. You haven’t seen Tomás in a while, have you?”

  As he pulled her along, he turned back, and Avery sighed and shook her head. He and Isabel walked through the house, into the garage, and out into the bright late morning light of the Fourth of July, her arm through his. Isabel was irritating, that was for sure. She’d lived alone for too long, coming over toe their house with a flurry of words she must have saved up at night, the desperate sentences coming out at once. When they went to the movies, she sat by Dan and asked, “Is that actress someone I should know? What film was she in before?” Before she read a novel, she made Avery tell her the end of the story, not wanting, she said, “Anything too ugly.”

  But he squeezed her arm, knowing that what he would like more than anything, was to be able to squeeze his own mother in this way, walk her over to Luis and Valerie’s, sit her down at one of the party tables that was now festooned with red, white, and blue crepe streamers. But when his mother Marian and his father Bill drove down to the Bay Area, it was first to see Dan’s brother Jared. And then, if he was lucky, he’d get a phone call. “We’re just headed home, but we wanted to say hi. How’s Avery?”

  Because Jared was coming to the cul-de-sac this year to eat and watch fireworks, Dan had hoped that his parents would come, too, sit with him and enjoy the life he’d made for himself and Avery. But they’d called at the last minute, saying, “Oh, Dan, it’s too hot to drive. We’ll stay here and watch the fireworks with the Davidsons.”

  “You do have air-conditioning in the Oldsmobile, don’t you?” Dan had asked.

  “Yes, of course. I meant at your house,” his mother said. He could hear her tap something—a pen, a pencil, her glasses—on the counter.

  “Mom, we have the pool. And air conditioning. It won’t be bad. And you can see Jared.” He dangled the good son carrot.

  “Not this year. Say hi to Avery.” His mom hung up, and Dan had put down the phone, wondering how long it would take before they trusted him again.

  “Oh my,” said Isabel. “This is so charming. How festive! What a wonderful day. You two are so lucky to live here. You can’t pay for this kind of neighborhood bonding!”

  Dan reached for Isabel’s hand, and she turned to him, surprised, but let her small, soft, wrinkled hand stay in his. Is this how his mother’s felt? If he grabbed Marian’s hand, would she snatch it away?

  Together, Isabel’s Keds tap, tapping on the sidewalk, his steps slow and patient, they walked to the Delgado’s. Valerie pulled open the door, Tomás on her shoulder.

  “Oh, Isabel. I am so glad to see you. Could you hold Tomás? Luis is having some kind of salsa incident in the kitchen. He and his mother are on the floor scrubbing.”

  Isabel carefully took the sleeping Tomás from Valerie, who then rushed back inside. Dan walked behind Isabel as they moved into the cool air of the house, and he swallowed. Soon, she would be carrying her own grandchild. His and Avery’s. Soon, he might be able to forget the past.

  

  “Do you remember when we accidentally exploded the Davidson’s mailbox?” Jared asked, leaning back in his chair, watching the kids light Flame Tower after Flame Tower, the air hanging thick with sulfur and smoke.

  “An accident?” Dan said, and then looked behind him. Avery—with Tomás in her lap—was sitting next to Valerie, Valerie’s sister Yvette, and Loren. “I hardly think we can call that accidental.”

  Jared sipped his beer. “You’re right. But how much of it exploded was an accident.”

  Dan nodded, picturing the steel grimace of the torn mailbox, his parents’ disappointed faces. He’d only been ten then, Jared eight.

  “Uncle Dan! Uncle Dan!” Sammy, Loren’s oldest called, breathing hard, leaning on his knee. “Did you see that one? Did you see how high the flames went?”

  “I did, Sammy. Are you having fun?” Sammy nodded, grabbed a Coke on the table and drank it down, two thin streams of soda sliding down his cheeks. He put down the can and wiped his mouth. “I’m going back.”

  He ran into the swirl of kids, their giggles and whoops twirling up with the smoke. Dan looked down at the extra bucket of water he’d just filled. He was prepared for all emergencies.

  Luis and his mother Dolores came back to the table with a layer cake Valerie had picked up at Andronico’s. The piped red
frosting read, “Happy Fourth.”

  “Ay, this party, it goes on forever,” Dolores said. “The baby should be in bed.”

  Tomás slept in the boat of Avery’s arms. Avery and Loren listened to Valerie, all three of their heads close together. Loren’s husband Russell sat next to Ralph Chatagnier, words like “distribution” and “market value” mixed in with the children’s yelps.

  “He’s fine, Mrs. Delgado,” Dan said. “Look at him. Like they say, ‘Sleeping like a baby.’”

  Just then, a Flame Tower erupted in the middle of the court, the parents “ooing” and “awing” as their children put on the show.

  “And then that time in high school,” Jared said. “Before . . . that time at Larch Bank Pool? Do you remember that?”

  Dan closed his eyes, feeling the smooth pool water on his waist, the noise from the bottle rockets whizzing above him. What year was that? It must have been before he’d slipped out of his parents’ house for good, before he’d unlocked his father’s coin case, plopping the meaty coins in his Addidas bag like magic plums. Before he’d taken their credit card and racked up charges at the hotel in Las Vegas. She’d said she’d marry him that weekend at the Chapel of Love, but all they’d done was drink and smoke in the room, ordering room service, snorting line after line.