One Small Thing

by Barksdale Inclan, Jessica

  “Who is this?” she asked Daniel, opening her eyes to angry, obscene lyrics, the exact, terrible noise experts warned against in the “Adolescent” sections Avery had skimmed through in the books she bought on childrearing. Dan would probably kill her for letting him watch this.

  “Eminem.”

  “Like the candies?”

  “No, spelled like E-M-E-N—“

  “I get it. What’s so great about him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So why are you watching it?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Who do you like?”

  Daniel was silent.

  “You can tell me. I don’t know anything about music. Ask Dan. I listen to a news channel in my car.”

  Daniel turned to her, his eyes narrowed, and then turned back to the screen. “I like N-sync. And Britney Spears.”

  “The soft drink one. The one with the blonde hair?” He liked blondes. The actress on his mirror. The singer. After Midori’s first call, she had thought about Dan’s past for a couple of day before she’d made him show her pictures of Randi. He’d dug in a box she’d thought was full of college memorabilia and brought out stacks of photos that dated from high school. Avery had flipped through the stacks until she felt sick, even telling Dan to go to bed because she wasn’t done. She’d learned a lot about her husband from the photos, but mostly she’d stared at Randi, his first, true love. The girl in the pictures was always smiling, leaning forward, her teeth white and big, her eyes crinkled. It was hard to find the drug addict under the laughter.

  And Randi had been dark and fair and skinny, nothing like these smooth, butter-brown, blondes Daniel seemed to prefer.

  “Yeah.”

  “So are there girls at school you like?” Avery sat up and crossed her legs.

  “No!” Daniel stared at the screen.

  “But if that actress was your age—“

  “Only girls think like that. I just think she’s pretty, that’s all. When I’m older, maybe I’ll have a girlfriend like that, okay?”

  Avery was silent, watching the pale singer move his hands and yell into the camera. Daniel’s picture on the mirror was like her list of perfect boyfriends. She’d written the list, hoping that maybe she’d find a different life, one unlike the strange, sad space with her mom. He’d brought the actress with him from home, needing the same reassurance. He wouldn’t always live like he had with his mom. With the Martins. With Avery.

  “So what do you like to do? Do you like that video game your dad got you?”

  He shrugged and didn’t turn around.

  “Have you ridden your bike around here much? It’s pretty flat.”

  “No one rides bikes here. They all have skateboards.”

  “Oh.”

  A commercial for Neutrogena soap flashed on the screen, a flawlessly-skinned actress splashing herself with water. Daniel stood up. “I’m still hungry.”

  “So do you have a skateboard?”

  Daniel stood in front of her, a small ten-year-old boy with too-big jeans and a pale, drawn face. If she saw him on the news in a story about an abandoned child, she’d write a check to the account set up by the station. If she were at Sunvalley mall and he walked up to her and said he was lost, she’d hold his hand until they found a security guard. If he came to her door and said his cat was run over in the street, she’d hug him. What was wrong with her? Why had she let her feelings about Dan’s huge lie step between her and this boy who needed so much?

  “No.”

  Avery stood up and smiled. “Let’s go get one. I know just the place. And we’ll go get something to eat, too.”

  “What are all these people doing out here?” Avery asked as she circled the Fiesta Square parking lot for the third time. “Does everyone need to be out here at this exact minute?”

  “Maybe they are buying dinner. My mom took me out after school for dinner sometimes. I like KFC the best.”

  Avery looked at Daniel in the rearview mirror. He was staring out the window, his eyes searching for a space. “Is chicken your favorite food?”

  “I guess.”

  “Did your mother ever cook it for you at home?” He was silent, and she looked back at him. “Well, I had to learn to cook when I quit work. But it must seem like I don’t make anything.”

  “Dan makes stuff. Isabel makes stuff, too. Chicken. Valerie and Luis brought over something to BBQ. I liked that.”

  Avery stopped the Rover and let it idle, scanning the lot. Mothers and children walked back and forth, slipping into MacDonnell’s Department store, Starbucks, and Noah’s. Couldn’t one of them flipping go home? she thought. She was sitting here with this kid who didn’t even know she could make the best pasta salad with pine nuts, kalamata olives, and currants. He didn’t know about the epic dinners with Val and Luis and Isabel and Loren and her family, Avery making every single dish. He probably didn’t know what she did for work, either, and then she sighed. Of course, he didn’t. She’d never talked to him about it. Not once.

  “There! There!” Daniel said, his hand waving. “A space!”

  Avery put the car into drive and accelerated, just nipping into the parking spot before a Suburban made it’s eager, lumbering turn around the corner.

  “Yes!” Avery said, smiling at Daniel through the mirror. “We did it! Good scouting!”

  He smiled and took off his seatbelt, scooting to the edge of the seat. “Where’s the store? I can’t see it? Will there be skateboards in the window?”

  She felt her smile slip and fall, and she sighed, ashamed by the little she had to do to make him happy.

  

  After they came home from The Grind, the skate shop in Lafayette, and Freddie’s Pizza, Daniel took a shower. Dan still wasn’t home, and she thought to call up to Bill and Marian’s but decided not to. Hearing her husband’s voice always made her think of what he hadn’t said, of all the stories he’d neglected to tell her. Even when they were speaking of dinner or the sprinkler system or the headlines in the news, she heard the other story, the one about Randi Gold. So, she changed into her nightgown and washed her face, and then knocked on Daniel’s door.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can I come in?”

  She could almost hear his shrug, and then he said, “Okay.”

  He was sitting on the bed, his hair stuck up in uncombed spikes, his new skateboard on his lap. The young man at The Grind had walked Avery and Daniel through every step of the purchase. At first, she’d been barely able to follow him, caught up in his pierced tongue, eyebrow, nose, and ears. But then, as they walked the store, she learned about boards, grip tape, trucks, and wheels. After two hours of discussion and then assembly, Daniel had a Shorty’s skateboard with Spitfire wheels and Independent trucks.

  “This is way cool, dude,” the young man had said to Daniel. “This is a Chad Muska board!”

  Avery had no idea who Chad Muska was, and she suspected Daniel didn’t either, but he clutched his board and the copy of Transworld magazine the kid gave him, smiling the whole way through his pepperoni pizza at Freddie’s. And he was still smiling, rubbing the shiny bottom of the board that was decorated with a Japanese rising sun.

  “This is what Chad Muska has on his board,” Daniel said to her as she walked toward him. “I read it in the magazine.”

  “Remember the guy at the store said it would get scratched. So don’t be upset.”

  “I know.” Daniel kept his eyes on the board.

  “Are you ready for bed?”

  “It’s only 8.30.”

  “What time do you usually go to bed?” Avery realized she didn’t really know. When she was home early, she was mostly in her room, locked away from whatever Dan and Daniel were doing.

  “Nine.”

  “Oh.” She looked around and sighed. The whole afternoon and evening had gone much better than she could have ever planned, but now, standing in her nightgown in this boy’s room, she felt embarrassed and almost naked. “So .
. .”

  “I can read this magazine and then turn off the light myself,” Daniel said. “I can do that myself.”

  He hunched over his magazine, his eyes hidden. It was as if the skateboard and the pizza never happened. She was indeed just a strange woman in a nightgown in the middle of his room.

  “Okay. Goodnight.”

  He nodded and lifted his hand, his eyes still on the glossy pictures. Avery turned and left the room, closing the door softly behind her. Leaning back on it, she wondered how many nights they would together need before both of them felt any way near normal. And would either of them want that? She closed her eyes and tipped her head onto the wood, and that’s when she heard it, little, ragged sobs. Opening her eyes, she jerked her head up and turned around, grabbing the doorknob, ready to rush in, knowing there were so many things upsetting him: his mother, today at school, Avery, even Dan. But before turning the cold brushed-nickel knob, she stopped, her breath in her throat, her heart pounding. How many nights had she cried in her room after her father died? It became what she had to do, the darkness peeling away all the ways she faked herself out during the day, school and friends and television keeping her from remembering. When it was quiet and still and there were no voices around her, she could see his emptiness in the room, sitting in the chair next to her bed, not saying a word or making a sound.

  Her crying was the sound she made to stay connected, to bring his absence closer, to wrap it around her shoulders so she would never forget.

  Avery placed her palms on the door and listened until Daniel stopped crying and clicked off his light. She waited for the heavy paper sound of the skateboard magazine falling to the floor.

  At ten o’clock, Dan still wasn’t home. She turned the clock toward her. It was too late to call Bill and Marian now, their strict adherence to a 9.30 bedtime a legend, Jared once saying, “Fire. Flood. Gloom of night. Wouldn’t matter. They’d be in bed during a tornado.” But tonight was different, wasn’t it? An emergency on the roads? Their almost estranged son over for a visit? But then the phone rang, and she grabbed it so the ringing wouldn’t wake up Daniel.

  “Dan?”

  “No, it is not Dan,” Mischa said. “And where is your husband?”

  “What’s up?” Avery flicked a piece of lint off the bedspread.

  “He is not home?”

  “No. He’s—he’s at his parents’. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I was thinking about St. Louis. I was thinking about caviar and you.”

  This afternoon, Avery had wanted to push all the cutlery, dishes, and water glasses off the table at Andrés, throw Mischa down, and put her body on his. Their two bodies were like electrical mates, their combined current so strong. Now, she wished her would hang up and leave her alone, the air dead between them.

  “Look, I’ll call you tomorrow from the office.”

  “I don’t know if I can wait that long.”

  Avery rolled her eyes. “You’re going to have to. I’ll talk to Brody first and we can figure out what’s next, okay? Got to go.” She clicked off the phone and stared at the numbers. He was calling her at home, at ten at night, while she was in bed. Her stomach churned with pizza and acid, lurching when the phone rang again.

  “I told you I’d call you tomorrow,” she said into the receiver.

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Are you there? Mischa?”

  “This isn’t Mish—whatever,” said a strange voice.

  Avery bit her lip. Why had she said Mischa? What if it had been Dan? “Sorry. Who is this?”

  “Who is this?”

  “This is the Tacconi residence.”

  “Good. That’s what I thought. Is Dan there?”

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “I think I want it to be a surprise. He hasn’t seen me for a while.”

  Avery felt her stomach move again, nausea squeezing her esophagus. “Well, he’s busy right now. Can I tell him who called?”

  “Sure. Tell him Galvin called. He’ll remember me. We have a few dozen things to talk about.”

  “Galvin?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s right. Your hearing is 100 percent. Gal-vin. Galvin Gold.”

  TEN

  According to KCBS, there had been a ten-car pile up in Cordelia involving a tractor-trailer carrying pesticides and then a string of lookie-loo accidents, causing all I-80 traffic from Sacramento to Pinole to slow and stop. Dan had tried to take city streets, merging onto the freeway at Antelope, but even with his tricky maneuvers, all four freeway lanes looked like a parking lot. Sun glinted metallic off car hoods, traffic and police helicopters whirled in the air, and drivers opened their doors, stood on the hot pavement, and talked to one another, hands on hips, sunglasses on.

  Dan drove on the shoulder to the next exit and parked on the side of the street. He pulled out his phone, but he had service and then he didn’t, the lines on his phone rising and falling like a heart rate.

  “Shit!” He threw his phone down on the passenger’s seat and thought about Daniel. If he didn’t get home by six, Flora wouldn’t be happy, telling Dan when he hired her, “Mr. Luis tell me about this job, and I want it. But I have to be home for my family at night. This is okay? Six. I take the six-ten bus. It all work out.” He should have never told Steve he’d come out here to make the service call at Weymouth Industrial. Steve wouldn’t have minded if Lacy or Bob had gone, but Dan had wanted to seem involved, concerned, interested, when he really hadn’t been for his weeks of paternity leave and then his couple weeks at work. Since he had returned to work, all he saw as he sat behind his desk flipping through company specs and pamphlets about new technology, he was Daniel. His big eyes. His small, pale hand. His hat pulled almost to his nose.

  Dan looked at his watch. With this traffic, there was no way he’d get back to Monte Veda in time. A stream of cars flowed off the freeway, drivers looking at GND’s in their cars or unfolding maps, trying to find alternative routes home, side roads to San Francisco. In an hour or two, every road, maybe even the dirt ones, would be bumper-to-bumper. He picked up his cell and dialed home, grateful that the phone actually rang and surprised that Avery answered. He managed to tell her what had happened and that he was thinking of going to his folks, and then the line went dead. Looking across the street, he saw a pay phone, but he didn’t want to talk to her any more. Her voice sounded pinched and tight, paragraphs of complaints under her few words. But at least she was there, early, for some reason. She hadn’t said anything was wrong. She would just have to take care of Daniel. For once.

  Leaning back in his seat, Dan closed his eyes. Right now in their house in Curtis Park, his mother was sitting in front of the television watching Rosie reruns or Oprah or the local station’s afternoon show. She had a glass of iced tea in her hand, even though the air conditioner was on full-blast. She wore a flowered dress and low, sensible pumps, her clean, white apron hanging on the kitchen door, ready for exactly four-thirty when she would tie it on and prepare macaroni and cheese or spaghetti with meatballs or chicken with some kind of sauce made with Cream of Mushroom soup. Or, if Bill had made the decision that it was “time for a night out” at either Espanol or Caballo Blanco—the restaurants his parents had taken them once a month for years—Marian was looking in the powder room mirror, applying a bow of orange lipstick, the same color she’d worn for as long as Dan could remember. Even now, he could see her lips like two orange slices kissing him on his way to school or before bed, and later, whispering in tight, pinched, citrus hisses.

  Either way, his father was outside in his work clothes—a pair of khaki shorts with pockets for tools and clippers and measuring tape, white golfing hat, and well worn-in Wolverine boots—hedging or pruning or mowing. Since their father had retired last year, Jared said the yard looked better than a park with a full-time caretaker, the entire half-acre blooming and smooth and totally green. Not one weed or sucker on the apple trees. Perfe
ct.