Joy

by Erin McGraw

  “My shoes are brown.”

  “Those are your other shoes. These are your white shoes.” I sound perky. I sound demented. I don’t blame him for looking away.

  He says, “Don’t you—don’t do this.” In a split second, his face is tight, his eyes small and trapped. He had been so happy.

  “Do you want to walk, Dad?” I say as gently as I can.

  “Don’t you. Don’t lie.”

  I have to leave the room and splash cold water on my face. He used—never mind what he used to be. This is who he is. Will it be this bad for me? Of course it will.

  From his room comes a roar, the sound of a very angry baby. I race to find him sitting on the bed, brown shoes on, untied. He looks up, his face wet and red. He says, “That place where you’re taking me? I’m not going.”

  Spice

  Out in the sun porch, every surface is draped and dripping pink: ribbons and wrapping paper and punch and cupcakes. A strawberry milkshake could have exploded in there and no one would have known the difference. The baby shower’s been going on for two hours and we’ve all adjusted, but poor Rich, the father-to-be, stops in the doorway, pink-blind.

  “Hi, honey!” his wife calls, waving so he can find her. “We’re only halfway through the presents. Pull up a seat.”

  We’re packed in, both moms and all four grandmas and Lindy’s grad-school cohort and friends from high school and everybody she’s ever worked with and me, the friend from college. She only wanted one shower, so we’re here in force, including three cousins all well along themselves, displacing extra sofa space. I quit counting pink onesies at the ninth one, when the baby already had three pink teddy bears and a pink mobile to go above the crib. Like most of the women who aren’t pregnant themselves, I’m nursing a strawberry daiquiri that’s allowing the presents to pass in a nice pink blur.

  “You’re scaring me,” Rich says. “If I stay in here, the baby won’t ever have a brother.”

  “Then you have to stay!” yells Raynelle. She’s the one giving the shower, and the only name I remember. “There are enough damn men in the world. Time for the women to run things. Down with the patriarchy!”

  “We’re cutting you off, Raynelle,” I say, and the others smile at me, polite. The friend from college doesn’t get to cut anybody off.

  Rich shrugs and makes a place for himself on the floor between heaps of wrapping paper. “I’ve never been to one of these.” He’s wearing jeans and a dark T-shirt, and my eyes keep coming back to him just for relief.

  Lindy’s already ripping into the next present. The first few she opened delicately, but they took forever and her mother went to the kitchen and came back with a pair of scissors. About half an hour in, she gave up on the scissors, too, and just started ripping. Any minute she’ll be using her teeth.

  “Pepper and salt!” yells one of the cousins, responding to the shower game whose rules were explained earlier, when I wasn’t listening. The loser has to sing a song. The current loser, one of the grad-school cohort, happily belts out “Let It Go,” getting a lot of sing-along on the second chorus.

  Lindy hasn’t gotten to my present yet: a baby sling. I hope that the drinkers will be far enough in the bag not to notice that Lindy’s college friend got her a hippie-dippie present, probably not safe to use. I remember, though Lindy may not, when we were nineteen and worked together at a food co-op, pouring fifty-pound bags of brown rice into open bins so the customers could help themselves. Once a man came in during our shift—not a member of the co-op, no one we recognized. “Guess you two are going to change the world, huh?”

  “Guess we are,” said Lindy.

  “One brown rice cake at a time?”

  “Think globally, act locally,” she said.

  “What if I don’t want your changes?”

  “Then you’re in the wrong store,” she said, and we were laughing so hard we barely noticed him leave, though our supervisor lectured us later. I bought the baby sling as a gesture to the girls we were then, and to changing the world, and to her new baby, but now she’s an advisor to companies with third-world investments and I make hemp shirts and dresses, and could use another daiquiri.

  “Look! Onesies!”

  Lindy is not a glowy mom-to-be. Her lank hair drags across her forehead, and through the skirt of her jersey dress I can see the baby throwing punches. At this moment, Rich is a lot prettier than Lindy, nodding at the stack of pink receiving blankets and agreeing that these are going to be really useful. Rich and Lindy met after grad school, and during their first date Lindy put on Facebook that she had just met the man she was going to marry. I hoped she was being ironic.

  “Oh, I hoped someone would get me this!” she says, holding up a baby-care set with a bulb syringe and snubby scissors.

  “Nice,” says Rich. Trying to be companionable, I reach for the present as if I had an opinion about scissors. He shrugs at me and smiles. I smile back. Nothing wrong with a smile.

  “Pepper and salt!” scream the cousins, crammed on that couch like the see-no-evil monkeys. They’re pointing at me and laughing.

  “Wait. What? Why do I have to sing?”

  “It’s pepper! Gotta sing! Sing!” Even Rich, who can’t know the rules any better than I do, is chanting along. Teasing, he bats my arm. Lindy has paused, the next present—mine—half unwrapped on her lap.

  Her face is tired and hot, and I’ll bet her feet want to explode out of their dainty shoes whose little straps are digging into her flesh. When we were nineteen, she wore Birkenstocks every day, and put her hair in braids. We signaled the end of our shift at the co-op by playing “Revolution” at top volume, so I launch in now.

  Nobody sings with me. Most of the women look annoyed, and Rich smirks a little when I get to the part about everything being all right, which would make a decent lullaby. After two choruses, I can quit singing.

  “There you go,” Rich says.

  “We’re going to be here all afternoon,” says one of the cousins.

  “What is—oh!” Lindy says, holding up the sling, a little patch of unbleached muslin.

  “Is that safe?” says one of the cousins.

  “Mothers use them all over the world,” I say. Every woman in the room is thinking that she lives in the United States so that she doesn’t have to carry her baby in a cloth sling. I would understand that if I’d ever had a baby, had ever been pregnant, could comprehend the rules for a game at a baby shower where the father-to-be has become the honored guest. I glance at him, but he’s staring at the sling as if I’d given his wife a dust rag.

  “I didn’t know people still made these,” Lindy says, gently shaking it out.

  “All over the world,” I say.

  “You’re pepper,” Rich says to her, and Lindy snaps, “No, I’m not. She’s still pepper.”

  She’s holding up the sling, surveying it. Rich’s eyes slide over to mine and I smile at him again, but his eyes are assessing, trying, like me, to figure out why I’m here. It’s our shared moment, and I try not to let my shame show on my face.

  Lindy stands up, puts the sling on, and nestles a few onesies inside, along with a blanket that hangs halfway out, like a tongue. “It’s not bad. It’s actually comfortable.” She smiles at me, then at the room. “We were friends,” she says.

  Learning

  Our song just came on. Thinking of U.

  This is not surprising, and neither is the picture of the flower. He thinks girls like flowers. “Our song” stings, but what did I expect?

  That is the most lame-ass rose Ive ever seen. Ive gotta get a better class of boyfriend.

  Ive been telling u.

  When he texts me, he asks if we have beer. Usually he texts his girlfriends dick pics, but to this one he sends messages. Its a great day. R u out?

  Hours pass before she texts back a video of an inquisitive chipmunk and a sprinkler.

  Scott is so bad about his phone he might as well just hand it over to me. Love makes him careless, and he le
aves the phone on the counter, on the coffee table, on the dresser. I can follow every twist in the plot. His girlfriend lives twelve miles away, and she doesn’t close her bedroom blinds because she likes to see the stars. She likes sushi. Bait, Scott writes back. She’s going to get bored with him.

  Go out quick and look at the moonlight. The text came while he was showering, so I went to the window and saw velvet light coating every leaf. By the time Scott materialized, pink and damp, the light was fading, and by the time he wandered into the kitchen for another beer, it was gone. The next night he spent a half hour in the backyard, and when he came in, he had nothing to say.

  She writes, Did u see the frost this morning? Amazing.

  I feel like u r giving me tests I keep flunking.

  Study harder.

  He writes, Do u love me?

  Don’t think so.

  Y not?

  U keep flunking my tests.

  Naturally I Google her and then can’t think of anything except her videography business and her curly hair. I’ll bet Scott wraps the coils around his fingers when they’re pillow talking. They’ve been going strong for two months. Scott tends to fade at three, and I have the insane impulse to warn her. My other impulse is to put a bomb under her car.

  She drinks martinis and wears tailored black pants that make the most of her ass. I don’t know where to go to get pants like that. There’s a silk blouse, too.

  She writes Change in plans. I’ve got to meet with my sound guy Friday.

  Lucky guy.

  He’s 6'2" and looks like Robert Redford.

  Use yr words.

  There’s an hour-long gap before he writes back I dont like this.

  Two hours before she writes Mama’s gotta make rent, son.

  He sulks all night, drinking beer and grunting at the TV. I stand by the window and look at the cool light edging the honeysuckle that Scott was going to cut back two months ago. I give it six months before it swallows the house.

  “It’s pretty outside,” I say. The gray light covers the lawn without illuminating it; this heatless light is full of possibility. “Come look.”

  “Why does everybody in the world want me to stand next to a damn window?”

  “It’s better than looking at the Raiders.”

  “Just please not now,” he says. If I say anything else, he’ll go to the bedroom and shut the door, so I wait a good five minutes before saying, “Look! A raccoon.” He closes the bedroom door with a soft click. I made up the part about the raccoon.

  The next morning, I tell him that I accidentally dropped his phone in the sink, another lie. I protect that phone like gold. He makes a show of turning it on to demonstrate that it still has a display, then disappears into the bathroom. He is reading the text that says her shoot went fine, and she doesn’t like jealousy. It’s their first fight.

  He was jealous over me once—it’s why he married me. He liked how I looked slinging beer in my Tailgater’s uniform, and then married me so I wouldn’t wear it anymore. After our reception he carried me over the threshold of his duplex, dropped me on the bed, and held me down by the shoulders. “If I ever catch you looking at another guy, I’ll leave.”

  I think we got to our first anniversary before he started cheating, but I wasn’t checking his phone yet.

  The others have been just like me—regular girls, graduated high school, sometimes with a kid who becomes a good excuse when Scott’s ready to move on. This one, though. I can’t figure out where he met her. He codes merchandise at a loading dock, a job he calls “entry management.” I’ve seen enough of her videos to know that if she was at the dock, she’d be shooting cranes and shipping containers, not Scott.

  I buy steaks for dinner, and restock our beer. “Long day,” he says, dodging around me. “Let me get a shower.” His phone goes into the bathroom with him and stays in his pocket through dinner and after; when we go to bed, not touching, the phone isn’t on the dresser or the bathroom counter.

  The next day, when he escapes with the phone still hidden, I’m close to frantic. Frost furs the windows. She could be out with her sound guy again, or she could be doing setup for a new job she just got for the city. She could be with Scott, the least interesting possibility. I spend the day running errands, three of which allow me to drive past her studio. Bright, fat little beads of water dot the window where the frost has melted.

  Scott is late coming home, and as soon as he sees me, his face crumples. “I—,” he says, and that’s as far as he can get before he’s facedown on the couch, sobs clawing out of his throat.

  After a while, I say, “Let me see.”

  An hour ago she wrote, We’re done.

  Not till I say so.

  No response from her, of course. I am married to a moron. I write, Sorry. Stupid.

  No shit.

  Can we start again?

  Y?

  Im stupid, but I learn.

  Ten minutes pass before OK. I toss the phone back at Scott. “That’s how you do it.”

  He shakes his head. “I’ll just fuck it up again.”

  I go over to the window and pull back the blind. There’s no moon yet, but the weak, diffused light from the neighbors’ safety lights sparkles on the frost-tipped grass. “Come over here and look at this.”

  Still crying, he buries his face in the sofa cushion.

  “Come. Now.”

  This time he does.

  Hope

  I had never been on TV before, and didn’t even pull a comb through my hair before I came out to face the cameras. As soon as the light came on I smiled, then begged the abductor—rapist, murderer—to turn himself in. My smile a gash across my face, I pleaded with anyone who might have seen my daughter, snatched from our broad-daylight front lawn, to call the police. “Please,” I said, smiling. I was begging God just the way I’d been trained, full of confidence that he would answer my plea. The smile was proof of my hope. I was holding up my end of the bargain.

  Jennifer had been twelve, Randy’s and my only child. Investigators found the lawn edger she had been using tossed into the laurel. “The perp wanted to make sure she didn’t have a weapon,” one of the investigators theorized, excited to use his police word. Later we would find out about the maroon Honda CR-V with the plates that had been switched, and little girl five miles away who had been approached first, and who screamed like an air-raid siren until the CR-V roared away. Jennifer, a dreamy girl who liked gardens, must have fallen into his hands like a plum.

  For weeks I kept the pleading up, praying without ceasing. I took my despair, which rooted early and which I refused to name, and twisted it into unrecognizable shapes. My smile distorting my face, I reminded God that he promised he would never abandon us.

  Randy got quiet before I did. After dinner he sat on the couch and didn’t even turn on the TV, his face slack as if he were made out of cotton wadding. Jennifer had chocolate-brown hair like his, and sometimes she joined him as he puttered in the garage. He would come back in the house and say wistfully, “She’s growing up fast.” He moved out after six months, though we are still married. The Lord once joined us, another one of his promises.

  Even though we came in separate cars, we kept going to the same church, kept taking in faith’s sturdy food. Pastor Michael, a good enough man who looked like he was drowning every time he glanced my way, urged me to lean not only on God’s promises, but on my church family, my brothers and sisters ever quick to remind me that God has a plan and that everything happens for a reason.

  They didn’t need to remind me. The universe in all its glory quivers with reasons the Lord Almighty might allow a girl at the edge of womanhood to be abducted from her own front yard, where she was working for her Naturalist badge. Maybe God didn’t like petunias. Maybe he was teaching me what happens to careless mothers. Maybe the sight of a twelve-year-old girl bending over to dig out a stubborn root was more than even God could resist.

  “He wanted another star in heaven,” said The
resa Mimford after we found out that Jennifer was dead. Theresa beamed as if she were offering comfort, and I felt my horrible smile stretch my face. So God can just reach down and take whatever he wants? How exactly does that make God different from Charles Louis Brown, parole violator with multiple priors, everything from DUI to armed robbery to, yes, of course, sexual assault? He looked at my girl, saw what he wanted, and took it. Maybe Charles Louis Brown, currently appealing his life sentence, was the hand of God reminding Randy and me just who Jennifer belonged to. Maybe I shouldn’t see Jennifer’s abduction as a tragedy, but as a demonstration of God’s unfathomable love. Maybe I should be on my knees every day saying, “Please, sir, I’d like another.” It isn’t long before you start having thoughts like this.

  We don’t know where her body is. Charles Louis Brown, who of course insists he had nothing to do with Jennifer even though strands of her long hair were wound around the seat belt buckle, will not tell us where he put her. “She is with her Lord in Glory!” says Theresa. I hope so, I truly do. But if Theresa expects me to cheer up as I ponder Jennifer edging the celestial lawn, then she has a better expectation of my faith than I do. What I find myself hoping is that Theresa will lose something that she loves, so she can get a taste of God’s heavenly food.

  Wicked thoughts like these come wreathed in flame. The slyer ones are dull, voiced like logic. Mine isn’t the only tragedy in the world. What about Lloyd Nathan, centered in the front pew every Sunday even after burying two wives and visiting his youngest boy every month in the state penitentiary for intent to distribute? He sings hymns week after week, full of pleasure in his Lord’s crown. Or Tillie Forrington, her ALS far enough progressed now that she participates in the service only by jerking her head. I can see hope shining in her sunken brown eyes. Why aren’t those eyes darting from side to side, looking for the cure that surely she’s prayed for? Why does Lloyd talk about miracles when none ever came for him? We have been promised a banquet and served crumbs. Why does no one notice?