by Andrew Roe
What happened was this: the premonitions stopped once the baby was born. Flat out. No more. Nada mas. Shell was out of the hospital and back on the couch, nursing our son and circling shows in TV Guide, and she said it’s over, nothing was there, it had to do with the pregnancy, a temporary situation, and that was that. One of life’s little mysteries.
Now it’s the three of us. The baby, Tyler’s his name (not Nigel, not Percival), is two months old, a mystery of his own. He cries and cries like he’s shooting for martyrdom, like a giant mistake has been made. Shell sleeps a lot. Our conversations revolve around two main topics: diapers and bills. The apartment shrinks on a daily basis, filled to the ceiling with baby toys, baby books, baby everything. We had no choice but to fill out some of those credit card applications, first signing up for two, then four. I’m currently putting together a resume and doing sit-ups every night.
And I know it’s wrong, I know it’s bad and I’m living up to the much-publicized faults of my sex, but I keep wondering how permanent this all is—marriage, wife, now a child. They’re part of me yet also separate, removed. There are times when they vanish—poof, presto, it’s magic—even if we’re all in the same room together. And then I’m left with nothing but my lazy random thoughts. Which are never as profound as I’d like. Nothing about mortality or religion or the meaning of existence, or even what it means to live with someone, to share your life like this. Just the everyday clutter that prevents you from getting down to the heart of the matter, or matters. How I drive too fast, stay up too late. How I mumble. How women who are too beautiful seriously frighten me. How there’s always the possibility: to disappear, walk away. What else is there to say? Marcia Higbee thinks I’m a software engineer, divorced, trying to put his life back together.
Often at night I stand and watch my son as he sleeps in his crib. He squirms, has difficulty sleeping for more than an hour. I understand. I sympathize as he battles this strange new universe. Always restless. As if he has a troubling knowledge of what’s to come. As if he’s the one who has the gift now, like it’s been passed from mother to son. He sees the future, yes, I’m sure of it, but he won’t be able to tell us for a few years. When he finally speaks he’ll tell us everything we need to know. But until then we’ll just have to live as best we can, and wait.
AMERICA’S FINEST CITY
1.
The first abortion left her numb, feeling dreamy and indistinct, hardly a person at all. When the time came for the second she was beyond that. It was nothing, no big deal. Just another procedure. Why not two? Why not three?
She took the bus to the clinic, both times. Walked the many, many blocks through downtown Oakland. There was no sun and lots of wind. People stared. People knew. The two doctors were different but the same. They didn’t say much, just the bare minimum. Men, of course. The nurses were the ones who actually spoke to her.
“Do you have someone to take you home?”
This was the second time, four months ago already, a few years after the first. She had slipped. The time from when she was with Henry. Henry: who didn’t handle the news so well. Who kind of disappeared.
“No, I don’t,” she admitted.
The nurse finished checking her blood pressure. Then she scribbled the results on a chart that hung at the end of her bed.
“How is it?”
“Normal,” said the nurse.
No doubt about it: she thought she was doing much better than the first time. Definitely. She knew what to expect, what not to feel and dwell on. The nurse brought over her clothes in a plastic bag.
“You know I’m not supposed to let you leave if you don’t have someone,” the nurse explained. “You don’t have anyone?”
“Okay,” she said. “Then there’s someone. I lied. There’s someone outside waiting for me. They’re pulling the car around, right now, as we speak.”
The nurse let it go, handed her a piece of paper. The first nurse had done the same. She had been alone then, too.
“Sign here,” they both said.
2.
Arlo Booth was new at the hospital. He was there when she got back after her two days off, Monday and Tuesday, replacing Ronnie, one of the night janitors, and Sheila and Mary Jo were all giggly and girly about him, this new guy, Arlo, and she predicted that he would become a topic of conversation and speculation for a good long while. After the bathroom (splashing water on her face, avoiding her blurred reflection in the mirror), she settled in for the shift. Put on her apron. Pulled up her hair. The kitchen smelled like it always smelled: of old food, of leftover things. There were dishes and trays to wash and dry and stack, and then after that the prep for the morning’s breakfast. It was Wednesday night, the beginning of her week, when everyone else was already more than halfway through theirs.
The scrubbing started, Sheila to her right, Mary Jo to her left, all at their respective sinks. Suds accumulated. They wore rubber gloves but their hands still turned dry and wrinkled, like old people, and their backs had grown stooped, too, as if prematurely afflicted with the infirmities that should have been awaiting them somewhere in the future. The radio crackled with classic rock, Mary Jo’s turn to choose. The three women worked and talked.
“Speak to him yet?” Sheila asked.
“Who?” she said.
“Who? Who, she says. You believe this, M.Jo?”
Which made Mary Jo’s cheeks brighten and blush, just as it did every time Sheila used the nickname she herself had given her.
“She says who,” Sheila went on. “Like we get us some fine specimen of man in here every night. You know who.”
“Oh, him.”
“Yeah, him.”
“Just got here, you know. There’s time. The whole night ahead.”
“It’s never too soon, never too soon to make the initial approach,” said Sheila, who was about as in-your-face as you could get, the opposite of Mary Jo, who was about as not-in-your-face as you could get. “It’s never too soon to make an impression.” And Sheila added, laughing: “Good or bad.”
Changing the subject seemed like a good idea.
“So what happened to Ronnie then?” she asked.
Night people came and went at the hospital, especially the janitors, but Ronnie had been working there since before any of them. He had kids and divorces, a sister with M.S. One time he asked her out on a date. She had to say no. After that, they didn’t talk as much.
Mary Jo reached for another stack of food-crusted plates. “Nobody knows,” she said.
3.
Working nights was a total horror. The disrupted sleep patterns, the empty and late buses, the falling out of touch with friends and family, how the rest of the world was no longer part of your orbit. You were exiled, of the marginalized and sleep-deprived, the heavy-lidded zombies who shuffle endlessly, forget about birthdays and movies and overdue bills, and hardly ever see daylight. Minimum-wage vampires, according to Sheila. But she’d never gotten used to it, the time fuck. Almost a year in and still she felt like a traveler who arrived at her destination without knowing the language, the customs of a strange and terrifying people.
She lived in Hayward and worked in San Francisco. That’s where the hospital was, in the Mission District, way out on Cesar Chavez. With the odd hours and the long commute she didn’t have much leftover for anything else. When she got home she usually sought refuge on the sofa and sat through the last of the morning shows. Then she’d fall asleep. If she happened to wake, she might drag herself up and crawl into bed. Mostly, though, she’d just stay there sleeping on the sofa, the day developing outside, the TV moving on to the afternoon talk shows, people whose lives were worse than yours.
4.
The shift continued, the night lengthening like a movie that doesn’t know when to end. They washed and dried, yawned and commiserated, drank coffee even though they would regret it later. Sheila told a story about how the other day she was standing in line at Wendy’s and the person in front of her ordered li
ke ten burgers and the person working there said is that for here or to go and the person in front of her said something like yeah right I’m going sit here and eat all that by myself and the person working there said bitch I don’t know your life. Mary Jo confessed that her ex-boyfriend was making overtures. And while her two coworkers talked, she only offered the occasional commentary, laughed or sighed when appropriate.
This was how the nights passed. Stories, advice, counseling. Recounting histories and neglects. Battling pasts and presents. Planning futures. They worked together, spent their breaks together. And only they understood what it was like to be cut off like this: up, awake, working, while everybody else you know slumbers away like children.
The focus tonight, however, kept returning to Arlo. He swept and mopped and cleaned, took out the trash, restocked the cafeteria with paper napkins and Styrofoam cups and the powdered creamer there was never enough of. Whenever he entered the kitchen, he was too shy to come over and introduce himself. But she managed glimpses here and there: he was young, tall, thick-haired. Finally Sheila stepped in.
“Hey Arlo,” she called out. “Stop working so hard. You’re gonna tire yourself out your first week. Bring yourself over here for a sec. Don’t worry. We won’t bite. Not yet, anyway.”
Arlo smiled, approaching with his mop and bright yellow mop bucket with sloshing brown water. He had sideburns, too, and one of those dimpled chins. Nice.
“Now you already know Ms. Mary Jo, but there’s someone else here you haven’t had the pleasure of being introduced to, another of our lovely kitchen staff,” Sheila said, guiding him toward her like a dance instructor, showing them the proper steps, schooling them on how to move their bodies in unison.
She removed her right glove and they shook hands, like you do when you meet someone new. Hi. Hi. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Repeat. Repeat.
Arlo peeled away, went back to his work, while she resumed her post at the sink, sneaking a last look as he walked away. Sure, he was young, perhaps too young for her or Sheila or Mary Jo, but for the remainder of the night she—and Sheila, and Mary Jo—continued to track him as he performed his duties. He worked hard. Sweated. Moved with a purpose, someone who had plans. You could tell he still cared. Up close, his face was kind, like maybe he knew things.
By the time the shift ended, the sun was up, a declaration in the sky, although she couldn’t see any of it. The kitchen was located in the basement, no windows, and so she never came across the hospital’s patients much. But she knew they were there, above her, sleeping, breathing, dying; people wounded and damaged, either temporarily or permanently; and they were there every night and every day, just like her.
She said her goodbyes to Sheila and Mary Jo, rode the elevator up, away. Outside, the daylight lashed out at her like a rush of fire. Every morning it was like this. The light a shock, a stab, a fist. And it got in your eyes and skin and teeth, aged you even more. She stood at the bus stop and waited. She’d never met someone named Arlo before.
5.
On Thursday: her bus was running late and so she was late for work. On Friday (actually Saturday morning): she got home and there was a message on her machine saying she was qualified to win an exciting vacation at an exciting five-star resort, all she had to do was call back and confirm. On Saturday night, back at the hospital: she kept trying to conveniently run into Arlo but it hadn’t worked out. On Sunday: it did. She found him dusting a ceiling light in the hallway just as she came out of the bathroom. He groaned a little as he finished with the light, dragging, his eyes already permanently puffed and his posture lurching like he needed a cane and might fall forward.
“Long night,” he said, his voice sounding drained, like an instrument that’s been played too much.
“They always are,” she offered back.
“You ever get used to it, being up all night, sleeping in the day?”
“Sort of,” she said. “But not really, no.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “That’s not what they said at the interview though. You get used to it. You adapt.”
All right: two coworkers standing around, talking and complaining about work. This was normal, she thought. This was good. This was a start.
6.
“Change the locks,” Sheila said. “Change your phone number. Get some mace. Protect yourself.”
This was directed at Mary Jo. Yesterday she arrived home and found her ex-boyfriend sprawled out on the couch, like he still lived there, like he was king.
“He’s just bitter is all,” Mary Jo tried to explain.
“I know,” said Sheila. “That’s why. That’s why you need to protect yourself.”
They were on their break in the cafeteria, sharing a cigarette, passing it around like a joint. You weren’t supposed to smoke in there but nobody was around so nobody cared.
“Now with someone like our Mr. Arlo, see, it’s different,” Sheila continued. “That’s what I’ve been trying to say. He’s young. He’s fresh. You don’t want no baggage.”
The cigarette, almost down to the butt, went around again, from her to Sheila to Mary Jo. The break was now technically over, but they were lingering.
“What about you, Miss Lovely?” Sheila asked her. “How about your turn for a change? Have any men stories you’d like to put on the table tonight?”
“Sure, I’ve got my stories,” she said.
“Then let’s hear one. Looking like you look, I bet you got some good ones.”
There were things she told Sheila and Mary Jo, and things she didn’t. She was closer to them than she was to anybody. Still, she couldn’t give like they gave. She hadn’t told them about the clinic, about Henry, about any of it.
“One time a guy I was dating, he slashed my tires,” she said, hoping she wouldn’t have to say more than that.
“That’s good,” said Sheila. “Slashed tires are good.”
“What happened to him?” Mary Jo asked.
“He inherited some money. Moved to Phoenix, last I heard. We better get back.”
“We got time,” said Sheila. “The dishes aren’t going anywhere. Let’s hear another one. With more details this time. Take it slow. Give it a beginning and middle and end. Make it a story.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, standing. “That’s my one. That’s my one for tonight.”
7.
Her two days off: it was mostly sleep and recovery, sleep and recovery, getting her body rested and ready for the upside-down week ahead.
8.
She reconsidered the sad men that had previously paraded through her life. Not specific names. But the type. The type of man she typically ended up with. By nature they were distant and often angry about things, matters they couldn’t control. Simmering men. Hurtful men. Men who for whatever reason wanted to take you down with them, keep you down. For many years it hadn’t mattered to her. She went along for the ride. They did offer their comforts, routines. And when the time came, they were easy to shed. If you never expected too much, then you never got too disappointed. That was the theory at least.
But Arlo—Arlo stood out, shined brighter, gave her a vague, humming hope even though it wasn’t based on anything solid, not yet. They had hardly spoken after all, just passing pleasantries, and as the next few shifts at work finished, nothing had progressed all that much. But maybe that was better. Better than the other way, how it usually went, too fast too soon, because she could imagine and wonder and not be messed up by what already had happened. And so he regularly popped into her head, no matter where she was, no matter the time of day. Dreams, too. Arlo smiling. Arlo sweeping. Arlo unbuttoning the top buttons of his nametagged shirt…
And more than once she pictured going home with him after work, the two of them tired but not that tired, horny as teenagers, rolling on the floor, half naked, mildly pornographic, hungry for something, something to transform them, to take them away from the reality of who they were and who they weren’t. She let him know w
ith her eyes whenever she had the chance: it was possible.
9.
Back home from work—and there was Henry, surprise, camped out on her doorstep, sitting on the floor and blocking her entrance, drunk, with his shoes off. A friend of his used to live in her building. There had been a party. There had been margaritas. That was how it began.
“What’re you doing here?” she asked.
Henry: who’d been a band-aid, a way to cover one of her lonely parts. But it didn’t hold. Temporary, the clock ticking from the moment they were introduced, maybe even before that, and she probably had led him to believe it was more than it was, which wasn’t the first time. And so she deserved some of the blame. Some but not all. And she had slipped.
“Waiting for you,” he answered, smiling like he’d said something very clever. The alcohol and cigarettes so strong it was like you could practically see the fumes escaping from his hunched body. “Just happened to be in the neighborhood and all. Just a friendly ex-boyfriend visit.”