by Joni Rodgers
“Well, yeah, but—are you guys that hungry?” he asked the kids. “Wouldn’t you rather go on Space Mountain first?”
“Yeah! Space Mountain!” they shrilled. It was like offering them a game of Go Fish before bedtime. No contest.
“Let’s do it!”
Mel strode toward the line, and Kit followed, gazing, yearning, toward Cosmic Ray’s Star Light Cafe just beyond the entrance. The line looked a mile long to her.
Mitzi measured up to the height requirement.
Dang.
At least it was cool inside.
They snail-paced through a winding futuristic passageway lined with windows into outerspace until they finally came to a great room where the line of people twined back and forth like ribbon candy, and those who lived long enough were loaded into rocket cars for the ride. TVs blared clever space-comedy above their heads, but Mel was busy striking up a conversation with the family just ahead of them.
He’d been doing that all day. Greeting people, being jolly, introducing their family as “the Prizer Gang,” evangelizing from his guidebook Bible, sharing his newfound expertise. He now had more pals in Disney World than Goofy did.
“... and this is my wife, Kit. Honey, Midge and Bob Pill-erman. From Bethlehem, Pennsylvania!”
“Hi,” Kit smiled wanly.
They indicated an adolescent, Bob, Jr., over here, and little Heather hanging upside down from the metal dividing bar. Midge was planning to get off with Heather at the last escape, because of course, she couldn’t go on a roller coaster, being five-and-a-half months pregnant, you know, and poor little Heather—well, she was just plain terrified.
Mitzi seemed to lose a bit of her nerve when she heard that.
“I want to sit right behind Mommy,” she said.
“Mitz, you don’t have to get on if you don’t want to,” Kit told her. “We could go out and wait for Daddy and Coo.”
“Oh, c’mon, Kit, stop babying her,” Mel chided. “You’ll be fine, won’tcha, Mitzi-noodle? You liked Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, didn’t you?”
“Well, kind of ...,” Mitzi shrugged a noncommitment, drawing a circle on the floor with the toe of her red maryjane.
“See? She’s fine. She’s Daddy’s big girl.”
Mel congratulated Bob and Midge on the impending Pillerman, and the standard pregnancy conversation segued into Midge describing what a terrible time she’d had with Robert Junior. Placenta previa. Vomiting. Migraines. Toxemia. Edema. Ankles swelled up like tree trunks.
“Kit always had an easy time of it,” Mel said, though this was certainly news to Kit. “Never had morning sickness or anything. She worked right up until the day the kids were born,” he bragged, and squeezed her shoulder, so proud of The Little Woman. “And she looked fantastic three days after.”
“I was in labor for thirty-two hours with that boy,” Midge was saying. “They induced me Monday morning, and he wasn’t born until 2:23 A.M. on Wednesday.”
“Oh, you don’t even want to hear how long Kit was in labor,” Mel said.
Kit didn’t want to hear it either, but he went chatting right on like some PTO mommy girlfriend.
“With Cooper, Kit’s sister barely got her to the emergency room, and with Mitzi, her water broke while she was grocery shopping, and the baby was born right there in the supermarket! It was incredible! Her picture was in the Houston Chronicle” he added proudly, “and the Fiesta store gave us a year’s worth of diapers, six cases of formula, plus all the groceries Kit put in her cart before she went into labor.”
Midge cooed in awe, knowing she’d been one-upped, and Bob Senior shook Mel’s hand.
Mel beamed at Kit. Kit plotted his death.
This was one of his favorite anecdotes. Probably because he wasn’t there. All he remembered were the free diapers and the Hallmark card of congratulations signed by all the checkout girls and stock boys. But Kit remembered the towering wall of canned goods, the horrified onlookers, the agony, the panic, the terse voice announcing, “Cleanup on aisle seven.”
Two wholesome Disney employees stepped up and directed the Pillermans to their loading spots. They all wished one another a great vacation, and Midge smiled and. waved as the two Bobs sped away. Then it was the Prizer Gang’s turn, and wholesome employees were helping them into the rocket car, placing Kit in the very front.
The car moved smoothly at first, hissing down a tube of pulsing blue lights. After that, Kit found herself in a cool, dark place—the vast nonatmosphere of outer space—staring up at endless stars and a distant, familiar planet. As she ascended, nearer, nearer, and the continents and oceans separated and became clear, Kit reached out her hand to touch the face of this world, but in that same moment, her own world dropped away beneath her, and she hurtled downward, upward, side-to-sideward, sledding past nebulous blue nebulae, rushing toward the turning eye of the galaxy, spiralling, flying, above, below, and between the stars that shone like sequins.
Then, just when the wonder of the flight was almost more than she could bear, she descended, down into a warm and private expanse of pitch black, from which she was squeezed through a pulsing red narrow and delivered out into a bright light.
The unexpected earth stretched tangible and true along metal tracks and fixed walls. A wholesome young man hurried over to help her disembark. Kit took his hand and stepped out of the car onto the platform, but the concrete floor was too physical for her feet. They were still in outer space, it seemed. The straight lines of the wide hall began to bend and blur, and the next thing Kit knew, she was looking up at the ceiling and Mel’s concerned face.
“Kit? Kit? Don’t cry, Mitzi,” he said over his shoulder. “Mommy’s okay. She just got a little dizzy from the ride. She’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
Kit was cognizant of wanting milk. Wanting to suck it right out of a gallon jug.
“Kit?” Mel tapped her cheek softly. “Honey? Are you okay?”
“No,” she whispered as realization rose up and clobbered her the same way the floor had risen up to slam her in the back of the head. “I’m pregnant.”
“Let’s all sing like the birdies sing, tweet tweet-tweet tweet-tweet...”
Kit could hear the melody ingraining itself in Mitzi’s brain. She knew that for months to come, they’d hear this song sailing over the shower curtain, being sung by the tub toys, and reeling out from the high side of the swing, twittering in time to the crinkling chains.
“... sweet sweet-sweet sweet-sweet...”
“I can’t believe it,” Mel whispered and laughed out loud for the millionth time in the last forty-five minutes. “I just can’t believe it.”
“Me neither.”
He was hugging and kissing on her, grinning like an idiot, beaming down at her in the dappled half-light of the Enchanted Tiki Room.
“It’s just so incredible,” he said. “Things have been so great lately, and this is just... it makes everything...”
“Perfect,” Kit said grimly.
“Yeah,” he squeezed her hand. “I can’t believe it!”
“You wanna know what I can’t believe?” Kit shrugged away from him in annoyance. “You! You’re the one who said we should give up on it. You said two kids were all we could handle. You said we couldn’t afford it. You said you were too old to have another baby, and that was three years ago! Now it’s the worst possible time, and you’re all sunshine and happiness?”
“I know it sounds corny, but it’s like ... like a miracle or fate or something. After all these years of trying and not trying and trying to pretend to be not trying—”
It must have been Ander.
“Oh, man! I can’t wait to see the look on a certain Dr. Jane Poplin’s face! Talk to me about ‘poor sperm motility’ now, huh?”
Ander and all that prolific Swedish seed of his. The other possibility was more than Kit could stand to think about.
“I guess I can get ‘em where they need to go. I guess my little guys can swim upstream when they nee
d to,” Mel nodded, leaning back and propping one foot on the bench in front of them as if to accommodate his ponderous testicles.
Kit made a small sound with her fist pressed to her mouth.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Mel said sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to make it sound like that. It’s just—when she told us—when we couldn’t get pregnant again after Mitzi, and she said it was my fault, it felt like ... like—I don’t know, but that’s why I said I didn’t want any more kids, Kit. I felt like I was shooting blanks or something. Like I was disappointing you. And the last thing I ever want to do,” he whispered into her hair, “is disappoint you.”
“I know.”
“But I’m not taking any credit for this. This is you. It’s just you being miraculous and wonderful, and geez, I love you, Kit. Only you could give me a gift like this. Only you.”
“Oh, God!” Kit choked. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Oh, c’mon, Kit. You do it great. And you’re doing it now. What else can you do?”
“There are options.”
“You’re not serious.” His ridiculous grin faded.
The carved figures on the wall began a relentless drumming, lush bowers of lilies and nasturtiums sang in a high minor key.
“I don’t know,” Kit started crying softly. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“Ah, honey.” He pulled her to his large, warm body, stroked her hair, and kissed her forehead and cheeks. “C’mon, babe, it’s okay.”
“I’m so sorry, Mel. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“Well, geez, Kit. Don’t say that, honey. We’ll work it out. I know it wasn’t in the plan, but the plan is adjustable.” He stroked a tear away from her nose and planted a kiss in its place. “C’mon now. It’ll all work out. Everything’s gonna be okay.”
He held her just enough away to show her his eyes, show her how he really meant it.
“Don’t be sad, Kit.” And he laughed like Cooper on a slick skateboard ramp. “You can’t be sad. We’re gonna have a baby!”
Sweet Lady of Joy and Blues,
I refuse to believe that the tides and eddies of this universe, having brought you now to me, will take you away without me touching you again. I refuse to Know that I will not taste the smooth dark circle, the silk-lined chamber, the birch and ivory skin that drew my mouth and hands like a climbing vine to your strength. Nothing is right within my life since I know how you been hurt. Nothing grows from out my hands, nothing changes in its season.
When you came to me, the body and heart of my youth were born. For I was chained, you see, when it was my time to be an explorer in this world. You brought with you what I lost when I lost my freedom. The longing I learned to keep and control through years of anger and fear, it was returned to me tenfold in the form of fire, in the rhythm of an undiscovered music, in the thought of all your silk surrounding me.
There was a beautiful woman by my side last night, but I was an old man for her. The will and willingness of a young body are gone with you to whatever place you are. And until you return, I will not have all myself. I will have only that which was allowed me by my captors. Hunger, thirst, and this profound silence.
That’s all that was in the top drawer of the little desk built right into the wall of Kiki’s new breakfast nook. No ink marks or pencil shavings or anything else. It was perfectly clean and empty, except for that sweet letter from Xylo and a tablet of blank paper that kept looking like it expected her to reply.
There was something comforting about that empty drawer. And about the clean carpet that spanned seamless and soft gray throughout the apartment. And how you could see every square inch of it because she didn’t have any furniture yet. There was nothing on the plain white walls except the drawings Oscar and Chloe made in art class at their new school. Even the cupboards were fresh and smooth and virtually empty.
Kiki liked that. She liked the flawless sky-blue countertops and pristine porcelain toilet in the bathroom, the kitchen surfaces all immaculate and free of nicks and scratches, the snug-fitting window screens, the gliding closet doors. There was a brilliant new lightbulb in the spotless refrigerator, and the drip pans on the electric stove top shone like Olympic medals. The doorknobs, the miniblinds, the drain stopper in the tub—everything was new and untainted. She was the first person ever to live there, since the Cypress Tree Manor apartment complex was still under construction. Hers was the first building finished. Building A. And apartment 4A was her apartment.
She had no idea when she would be able to pay Vivica back for the security deposit and first month’s rent or Kit and Mel for the groceries and clothes for her and the kids and everything else they had paid for after they rushed back from Orlando to pick her up at the Red Cross shelter. But it was worth feeling like the stupid, needy, little sister yet again to feel her bare feet on the fresh new floor of the slate-colored hallway where Oscar and Chloe each had their very own room.
“Wake up, Winken and Blinken,” she called. “Put on church clothes. We’re going to visit Daddy.”
Oscar came out in his nightshirt, his face all rumpled and soft from sleep.
“I don’t wanna go.”
“You’re going.”
“No, I ain’t.”
“Ain’t ain’t a word, so you ain’t supposed to say it.” Kiki turned up Bonnie Raitt on the radio and tried to get him to dance with her. “All I got was a mouth full o’ feathers,” she sang along, “little birdie got free—C’mon, Oscar, how ‘bout a little footsie tango?” He put his feet on top of hers, and they clasped hands wide out to the side. “I guess my love’s got no business no business—say, you’re not gonna go and get too big for this someday, are you?”
“Mom,” he said, and he rubbed his head against her huge stomach, “I don’t wanna go there.”
“Why not?”
“It smells weird.”
“I know, Punkin, but Grandma Daubert’s going to be there today, and she’s very anxious to see you.”
“She smells weird, too.”
“Oscar!” Kiki admonished. But she had to laugh.
She smiled again just thinking of it later, and she put her arm around his shoulder as he trudged unhappily down the hall at the care center where Wayne was moved once they decided to write it on his chart that he was in a persistent vegetative state.
When Kiki quietly opened the door, Wayne’s mother was bent over the bed, gently shaving under his nose. She squealed with delight when she caught sight of her grandbabies.
“There they are! There they are! There’s my darlings!” She handed the razor and towel to Kiki and threw her arms open for them. “Come here, you sweeeeeeeet things!”
“Hello, Mother Daubert,” Kiki said, but Mother Daubert was busy kissing Chloe and Oscar and smooshing them into her billowy bosom and pulling their heads into her high-teased, blue-tinted hairdo, sandwiching her heavily made-up face between their fresh, cool ones.
She led them over to Wayne’s bed, holding their hands as if she were taking them into the traffic.
“Say hello to your daddy, sweet things.”
“Hello, Daddy,” they said.
There was a long silence.
“Well,” Mother Daubert finally said, digging into her gigantic white purse and producing two KitKat bars, “I’ll just take these little monkeys out to the trees where they belong. I thought the two of you might like to be alone.”
“Oh. Sure,” Kiki nodded. “Y’all go along with your grandma now.”
They went, hushed and reverent until they were out of the room. Then Kiki could hear them chattering, their school-shoe feet scattering down the hall toward the glass door, their grandmother calling out for them to walk, to wait, to keep their voices down. Kiki came over and sat beside Wayne’s bed, her feet on the floor straight beneath her, her purse held between folded hands on top of her big stomach.
“Oh,” she said after a while when she noticed she was still holding onto the shaving things. “Okay
. Well, hold still, honey.”
She lifted the razor and began skimming it over the soapy patches.
“So ... how have you been?”
She swished the razor in a basin of water and wiped it on a towel.
“We’re doing fine. Really fine. The kids are doing good in school, and everything’s just going along fine.”
She drew the razor up the front of his neck, stroking away the last of the lather.
“Kit and Mel are helping me out. And Mama sent money for plane tickets for me and the kids to come to Orlando again next month. So I can help her with her chemo and all. Drive her to her treatments and everything. And I might even be helping around the agency a little. She thinks I could be good at that. She said she’d pay me and everything.”
She patted his face all over with the hand towel.
“There you go. How does that feel?”
Wayne’s hands were beginning to draw up to the sides of his chest, shriveling toward the empty clutch of a dead bird. His mouth was open just slightly, and his atrophied legs twisted to the side.
“Oh, by the way,” Kiki told him,”you know those Lamberts over there by the highway? Their house got wrecked by the tornado, too. I just saw Lavina Lambert in the Fiesta store the other day, and she said they got so much insurance money, they’re building a real house over in this new subdivision just off Katy Freeway.”
She straightened the sheets and smoothed the corners and then sat down in the easy chair.
“That’s what she told me. Yeah, that’s what she said. And I figured you must have had some insurance on that house, Wayne. You’re way smarter than Ray Lambert. You must’ve thought of that. And Mel said they make you have insurance when you have a mortgage, and all I have to do is call and tell them the house is gone, but I don’t know who to call, Wayne. Did you even have a mortgage? Me and Kit, we went over to the house, but we couldn’t find anything in that mess. Everything was pretty much smashed up and wet and blown all over. Oh! You know that big brown chair you got at Star Furniture Outlet last year? Well, it went up and set down right on top of the karaoke machine. Can you believe it? No more karaoke. They found your bedroom TV clear over in Tom and Brenda Berry’s backyard.”