All the Good Parts

by Loretta Nyhan

  His expression closed up. “My father remarried after my mother passed on. He wanted to start over, and he has. New family, new town. He wanted me to fade away, just as much as I did. I haven’t spoken to him in years.”

  “Even so, don’t you think he would have helped you?”

  “No,” Garrett said flatly. “I don’t. He would have wanted me to help myself.” He picked at a hole in the knee of his jeans. “I couldn’t do that. Help myself. It wasn’t in me. I don’t know if it is now.”

  “It is,” I assured him, with conviction. Garrett had such potential. Anyone could see it, but I wanted him to. “Look, I wanted to talk to you about something. It’s going to sound crazy, but I want you to know what I was thinking about and why I was thinking it.”

  Looking like he’d been given a reprieve, Garrett smiled. “Please, let’s talk about you. I don’t think I can stand to talk about myself for another minute.”

  I didn’t like that either, but I moved on, hoping to circle back to his situation. Garrett needed a boost, and I hoped it would be me to give it to him. “I’m thirty-nine. Did you know that?”

  Garrett shook his head. He suddenly looked fearful, like I was going to announce a terminal illness. He was so fragile. I couldn’t ask yet. The time wasn’t right.

  “What do you want to tell me, Leona?”

  I took a breath. “Do you want to come to a party this Saturday? My brother-in-law, Donal, is turning forty.” I winced. “It’s got a patriotic theme, and my sister is hoping people dress up.”

  He grinned, and I got a flash of what Garrett looked like as a kid, open and charming. “Will there be sparklers?”

  “Knowing Carly? Yes.”

  He laughed. “Then I’ll come.”

  “I can pick you up.”

  “No,” Garrett said, his voice growing forceful. “I don’t want to put you out. I can make my own way there.”

  “You can,” I said. “You absolutely can.”

  Nursing 320 (Online): Community Health

  Private Message—Leona A to Darryl K

  Leona A: You there? I’m sorry for being such a pushy drunkard. Did I change things? Please don’t tell me I did.

  I drove around for a while after leaving the library, stopping here and there, aimless. Garrett insisted on walking home, claiming he wanted the time to process what we’d discussed, and I didn’t argue. I was pretty sure he simply felt like he had taken too much from me today, and in accepting the offer would further add to what he saw as a debt. Living in my sister’s basement kept me well acquainted with the constant guilt weighing down my side of the scale of our relationship.

  I rarely left Brophy House on Sunday nights, and it felt strange to be out. The kids would be finishing up with dinner, arguing over whose turn it was to load the dishwasher. Homework came next, then bath time, then more squabbles over the remote. I usually helped keep the mayhem at bay, or at least occupied Josie while Carly and Donal managed tempers and tears. I didn’t doubt that they missed me, but tonight I didn’t want my sister’s family. I wanted my own.

  I shot off a quick text to Carly so she wouldn’t worry, and cruised down the empty streets of Willow Falls. It was a family suburb. Six o’clock on a Sunday evening resembled three a.m. in the city—the only people out were the people who had nowhere to go.

  I turned onto a main thoroughfare, the warm yellow light emanating from a Starbucks calling my name. I ordered two coffees, no sugar, and drove over to Jerry’s house.

  It looked nicer in the few weeks since I’d seen it. Refreshed. Paul hadn’t stopped with the railings—he’d painted the door and window casings, too, the same deep, forest-floor green. It contrasted well with the blond brick. Paul Pietrowski, uptight, closed-off lawyer, had an eye for color.

  Maybe if I told him so, he’d respond to the bit of flattery with tolerance and let me talk to Jerry. I balanced the coffees in one hand, took a deep breath, and rapped on the door.

  “Sweetheart.” Jerry had taken his time answering, but his breathing was raspy. He wore a loose-fitting robe over a T-shirt and sweats. His socks didn’t match.

  “I came by to say hello,” I said, looking past him for Paul’s enormous shadow. “You alone?”

  “Yes, thank God. Come on in.”

  The antiseptic smell still pervaded the house. He brought me into the kitchen, where he rifled through the fridge with his good arm. “There’s nothing edible in here,” he mumbled. “Nothing I would even give a dog.”

  “I brought coffee. Let’s stick with that.”

  He sat down heavily in the wooden chair, and jabbed his finger at the wall next to the closed fridge door. “Get a load of this shit.”

  Apparently Paul wasn’t worried about Mrs. Lim ripping him off. The time sheet was gone, but in its place he’d posted a road map of spreadsheets. I caught the words “medicine,” “vitamins,” and “sleep hours.”

  “Paul’s work?”

  “No. Lim. She’s out of her ever-loving mind. Take your medicine now, Jerry. Wake up, Jerry. You sleep too much, Jerry. No ice cream for you, Jerry. It never ends. I rested more back in ’Nam.”

  “She’s conscientious,” I countered, trying to stay positive. “She’s good for you.” But not that good. There was something musty about Jerry, a sour sadness that coated him like a layer of dust. “What else is going on? You don’t look so good.”

  “Yeah? Neither do you,” he said.

  I shrugged. “Hangover.”

  “I hope you had fun on the way to it.”

  I tried to fight the embarrassing grin that overtook my face. “I did. I met someone. He’s not right for me in any way, but it’s kind of exciting.”

  “That’s great!” Jerry dipped his chin. “So, is this guy a candidate for . . . you know.”

  “For what?” I said, keeping my expression blank, pleased we were back to playing these kinds of games.

  Jerry flushed. “The guy. The baby guy. Can you date this fella and ask him to help you have a child?”

  “I don’t know if we could have a future. That should make it easier, but it doesn’t. I like him. I want to know him better. He’s got . . . problems, but I want to see if they are the temporary kind. The weird thing is, the more I get to know him, the less I want to ask him. Not because I don’t like him, but because it doesn’t feel right at this point.”

  “Do you still want a baby?” Jerry asked gently. “It’s okay to change your mind.”

  “The thing is, I haven’t. I still want one. But circumstances are telling me it isn’t the right time. Maybe I should listen to the universe?”

  “I don’t know about the universe,” he said, “but these circumstances seem to involve people other than you. What you want hasn’t changed.”

  Jerry awkwardly tightened his robe and took a sip of his coffee, then another, fidgeting as he thought through his answer. He was uncomfortable with pronouncements, but when he spoke, I always felt I should be taking notes. In another life, under different circumstances, Jerry could have held his own at the head of a classroom.

  “So,” he said, gearing up, “how many people do you think are honest with themselves?”

  “I don’t know, much less than the number who think they are?”

  “Close enough.”

  “Are you saying most people are too afraid to see things as they are?”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding slowly. “They are until something shakes the truth out of them so hard it lands on the floor at their feet and they can’t step around it. You had that happen to you when you were at the doc’s office. You want a baby. That became clear, right? You could see it because it was just you and the decision, nothing else. You were too shocked to let anyone else’s needs come into play. You didn’t think about how you were going to feed the kid or who was going to babysit for you or even how you’d get a baby in your belly in the first place. You had the confidence to make a tough decision because all you could think about was how important it was. You were going
to have a baby in your life, and that was that.”

  His philosophy seemed clean and neat, orderly and logical, but also suspended in a clear, fragile bubble. “Should a decision be made purely from want?”

  “The decision can, yeah, because it’s got to come from a place of strength or else it’ll die out. You’ll start to feel shitty about yourself and tear it down. You’ll worry about what other people will think or question whether your reasons will hold up to scrutiny a few years down the road. In your case, you’ve got other things keeping you from what you want. Mother Nature fights back at us for being such destructive assholes by reminding us every so often that she’s in charge. We get weak, we get sick”—he winked at me—“our eggs turn into duds. After a while, everything is an uphill battle and you’re carrying an eighty-pound pack on your back.”

  “How uplifting,” I joked, but my false tone couldn’t cover up my disappointment. Carly had said I wasn’t strong enough to fight for what I wanted. Was Jerry trying to tell me the same thing?

  Jerry smiled, and for the first time since I walked in, it warmed his eyes. “Don’t look like that, sweetheart. What I’m trying to tell you is pretty simple. You want a baby above everything else? Ask this guy and see what happens. Be clear, and kind, and accept whatever he says or does. Deal with it. Then move on.”

  “What do I have to lose, right?”

  He laughed. “You’re already losing. We all are. Isn’t that the point?”

  I laughed and hugged him tight. “I guess you’re right,” I said into his ear. “Thanks. You are exactly what I needed today.”

  When I pulled away from him, his mouth had gone slack and his blue eyes were swimming with tears. “Take that soft heart of yours and harden up the parts you’re gonna need to do what you need to do. Nothing wrong with that.”

  I let myself out. Paul was walking up the driveway, his arms full of grocery bags. Apparently, he’d bought everything green in the store. Stalks surrounded his head and upper body, his disapproving face jutting forward like Bigfoot peeking out from the darkened forest.

  “Don’t say a word,” I warned him, finding strength in the small part of my heart I’d already fortified. “Don’t even start.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Nursing 320 (Online): Community Health

  Private Message—Darryl K to Leona A

  Darryl K: You are way too hard on yourself. I didn’t respond because I was extremely busy hating everyone but you. The entire world. Personal bull crappity crap. But I’ve dealt with it and now I’ll deal with you. 1. Stop assuming you’ve done something wrong all the time. It implies a lack of imagination. 2. Don’t ever apologize for having a good time. 3. Yes, I will meet up with you. I’ll have my life in some kind of order in a couple of weeks. Consider this: just outside of Rockford is a place called Loves Park. Some single mothers meet regularly at a community center there, and I’m sure they wouldn’t mind us sitting in to do research for our project. We can interview them for a while, and then head over to a pub nearby, where I’m a—ahem—regular, to compile our information. Also, we can just sit and talk. I think it’s about time we did that without a computer in the way.

  Leona A: Is Loves Park really a place?

  Darryl K: This is what you’re focusing on?

  For someone whose life had been moving ponderously, a dinosaur lumbering toward extinction, everything sped up, like those fast-motion films of cities at night, multicolored lights blinking. The fact that men were behind the change didn’t get past me, but I was too hopped up for analysis. Carly wasn’t.

  “What you’re doing with Garrett and Darryl,” she asked on the morning of Donal’s party, “do you think it’s feminist or antifeminist?”

  “I don’t think it has anything to do with feminism at all. Why does everything need to be politicized?”

  “You’re a woman. You know the answer to that,” she said while stringing up a banner of Irish and American flags. She held up the end of it and spoke in a low voice only I could hear. “Should I stick with the Stars and Stripes? I don’t want to imply divided loyalties in the photos.”

  Carly still seemed to think evidence of Donal’s patriotism would bolster his case at the hearing on Monday. I didn’t think so but kept my mouth shut.

  “Do you like Garrett?” Maura asked from her perch at the counter. Her job was frosting cupcakes in red, white, and blue piping. She hunched over them, brow furrowed in concentration.

  “I do. He’s a nice man in an unfortunate situation. I’m trying to help him.”

  “Auntie Lee has a Florence Nightingale complex,” Carly said with a smirk.

  “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to help people.”

  “There is when you want to date him,” she retorted. “You know that.”

  Maura paused, holding up a sleeve full of blue frosting. “Are you going to ask him?”

  “Am I going to ask him what?”

  “You know,” she said, flushing pink, “for a donation.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I haven’t decided.”

  She squirted some of the frosting directly in her mouth. “I’m not a woman yet, so maybe I don’t understand, but I think you should do it. He’ll totally say yes.”

  “Ease up on the sarcasm,” Carly interrupted. “It’s unattractive. So is talking with your mouth full.”

  “I still think she should,” Maura mumbled, a line of neon drool escaping the corner of her mouth.

  “Should what?” Donal said as he entered the kitchen. He picked up a sponge from the sink and began wiping up the smudges of frosting from the counter. House cleaning had become an obsession with Donal since Carly found out about his possible deportation. They were waiting until the day after the party to tell the kids, figuring the buildup to the hearing would be excruciating for everyone if they knew. I agreed with them, but the secret felt heavy in the house, like everyone was on the verge of catching the flu. Irritable and off-kilter, the kids acted like they were already fighting something they knew was coming but didn’t quite know what it was. It gave everything a desperate edge, and Donal’s obsessive need for order sharpened it.

  “I’m not even done yet, Daddy,” Maura scolded. “Ease up on the OCD cleaning.”

  Donal sighed and, head still down, asked when people were arriving.

  “You need to get your costume ready,” Carly said, not looking at him either.

  “Is it really necessary?”

  “It is. Hal Michaelson is dressing up as George Washington, wig and all. It’s the least you can do.”

  “And what’s the most?” he said before slinking upstairs.

  The Brophy garage could have doubled for an Independence Day float. A thick curtain of red, white, and blue streamers hung from the rafters, obscuring the upper half of the tallest bodies and tickling the scalps of the smaller ones. A keg stood upright in the corner, next to a table overflowing with staples of American suburbia—burgers and dogs, spinach dip, potato chips, seven-layer salad, honey-encrusted baked beans, and a sheet cake topped with berries artfully constructing the Stars and Stripes. “I like my cupcakes better,” Maura told me as she dipped a finger into it, dislodging a strategically placed strawberry.

  “Aren’t your friends coming?”

  She glared at the younger kids playing on the driveway. “I don’t have any.”

  “That’s not true.”

  Maura blinked back the tears threatening to fall. “How would you know what it feels like to be alone because everyone hates you? You have a friend. He’s coming down the walk.”

  “Maura—” Calling after a teenager stalking away is an effort in futility. I watched her tug a basketball from Patrick’s unwilling arms and toss it cavalierly toward the garbage bins. She rushed past Garrett, who was ambling up the block, his cheerful greeting to Maura ignored.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked as he approached. I nodded, but I wasn’t sure. People always referred to teenagerhood as “that age,” and everyone would smile
knowingly, but did that mean that all teens were the same? There was only one Maura. I worried for the hurt she was carrying around, for the burden that might become unbearable once Donal shared his news.

  “I hope it will be,” I answered Garrett. “Being thirteen sucks.”

  “It’s the time when you know all the secrets of the world but feel you’ve got no one to tell them to,” he said as he took in Carly and Donal’s house of chaos. Garrett wore a white undershirt upon which he’d drawn the American flag with markers, and his dark hair hung loose, curling wildly over his shoulders. “I’m Abbie Hoffman,” he said apologetically. “I couldn’t think of anything else.”

  “It’s perfect,” I said, and meant it. Garrett’s polite glance tried to take me in without staring. I’d spent so much time helping Carly with her costume, I’d slapped mine together quickly—baby-doll dress from the ’90s, John Lennon glasses, Doc Martens, and a shower cap on my head. “Betsy Ross,” I said to save him the guessing game. “Punk version. Or maybe a cross-dressing Benjamin Franklin.”

  “Either one works for you,” Garrett said, and I tried to ignore the shiver of hope his appreciative glance sent jumping up my spine.

  I threaded my arm through his. “Let’s do some party things. Eating. Drinking. Introducing you to people you won’t remember thirty seconds later.”

  I half dragged him over to Donal, who was dressed as the skinniest Captain America ever, and offered a quick introduction.

  “You’re the one helping Maura pass algebra?” Donal asked, sharpening his gaze.

  Garrett’s voice took a turn toward Southern hospitality when he answered. “She’s passing on her own, sir. I’m just helping things along.”

  It was the right answer. Donal clapped him on the shoulder and promised a beer, pronto. He motioned to Carly, who made a beeline for Garrett, red boots clapping on the cement.

  Her costume was a work of art. Tinfoil tiara and cuffs, spandex everywhere with Spanx underneath, my raven-haired sister made a supersexy Wonder Woman. “How are you, Garrett?” she asked loudly, tugging him down for a kiss on the cheek. “We’re so glad you could make it.”