Everything Here is Under Control

by Everything Here Is Under Control (epub)

  I’m overcome with affection for the stranger, who is roughly my own age. Her body looks solid but yielding, perfect for bear hugs or crash landings. Her uterus, when occupied, must be spacious, accommodating cartwheels and backflips well into the third trimester. I imagine she has three children, that she drives the oldest two to school each morning before rushing home to get the baby down for a nap. Every day, she showers and fixes dinner and keeps her shit together.

  “We should do something to show our thanks,” I say. “Maybe she likes fudge.”

  I turn, hoping for obligatory smiles if not laughter, but Carrie’s nose is buried in Jack’s hair and Gabe is staring at the space Nina vacated, wishing he had the nerve, or the right, to follow her. Whenever he visits Deerling—twice a year since he was eighteen, even after his parents moved back to the East Coast—Gabe falls prey to the same pattern of emotions. He lands in Cleveland giddy with excitement to see his daughter, is immediately rewarded with a glimpse of Nina’s best self—her maturity, her effortless cool—but later blindsided by some moment of conflict between Nina and Carrie that exposes his own irrelevance. His uselessness.

  “I have no idea what it means to be a dad,” he tells me, often over the phone, because I often stay in New York.

  The problem, I suspect, has shifted. For the first time in thirteen years, Gabe knows exactly what it means to be a dad.

  * * *

  I have never asked Gabe

  • if he wishes he had been in the delivery room when Nina was born,

  • whether the pictures Carrie used to send to his Yahoo! account—files so large they would crash his computer—made him want to book the next flight to Ohio,

  • how much it shocked him the first time Nina said “Hi” into the phone,

  • why he never fought Carrie for partial custody,

  • if he has forgiven his parents for exonerating him from fatherhood,

  • if he has forgiven himself for leaving Deerling, or

  • if he has forgiven me for not making him stay.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  In an attempt to salvage Nina’s birthday, Carrie orders pizza and wings from the place near the train tracks, an establishment I almost went the rest of my life without patronizing. Gabe goes to pick it up. The four of us plus Jack sit around the kitchen table, grease staining the corners of our lips fluorescent orange. We’re not talking about the lawn, cropped close to the earth like a boy’s head buzzed for summer. Nor are we talking about Nina’s proposed solution, screamed with such hysteria that she could easily take it back.

  I doubt she will.

  Gabe finally makes an attempt at conversation. “Thirteen years old,” he marvels, eyeballing the last slice of pepperoni. “Carrie, I can’t believe you were in labor thirteen years ago.”

  “I wasn’t, technically,” she says. “I went into labor on the fourth. Nina was born on the morning of the fifth.”

  Gabe says, “Hear that, Nina? Your mom was in labor with you for multiple days.”

  There’s so much Gabe doesn’t know about those days. How Carrie felt her first contraction in the deep end of the town pool. How we walked home along Center Street, Carrie stopping periodically to bury her face in my shoulder. Cars slowed as they passed, the drivers’ concern yielding to something else when they saw the spectacle of Carrie’s pregnant body in a bathing suit. No one stopped. At home, lurching between the shower and her parents’ California king–size bed, Carrie labored for another ten hours. On our way to the hospital, we saw fireworks from the highway.

  It has never felt like the right time to tell Gabe the story of his own daughter’s birth.

  Nina squeezes her shoulders, unimpressed. “That’s rough.”

  “Rough?” Gabe pretends to be aghast. “It’s the ultimate sacrifice!”

  “All right,” Nina says, “but it’s not like I asked to be born.”

  I smile and try to meet Carrie’s eyes, but she’s distracted by the doorbell. She jumps up, clearly expecting someone. Gabe and Nina and I sit in silence, ears pricked for clues. A minute later, it’s Tyler Cox who steps into the kitchen.

  My first thought is, Damn, Carrie. Good for you.

  Tyler is so handsome—with a sharp jawline and a cinematic symmetry to his face—that just looking at him feels like openly acknowledging his beauty. Time seems to fold in on itself. Instantly I am nervous and hopeful and embarrassed. Had I been warned, I would have expected him to look vaguely juvenile, unappealing in his familiarity.

  Turns out, no.

  “Whoa!” Tyler says, looking at my lap. “A baby!”

  He reacts only mildly to my laughter, lifting his eyebrows in Carrie’s direction as he scoops Jack from my lap and hoists him into the air. Tyler is a pro at baby talk, Jack an enthusiastic audience. The baby’s gummy smile stretches beyond anything I have ever elicited. Enraptured, he bleats like a goat.

  “What a guy,” Tyler summarizes, returning the baby to my lap and kissing Carrie on the cheek. The sleeve of his T-shirt rides up to expose the tattoo on his arm. The trout’s scales are pink and yellow like a sunset or a bruise, glistening as if wet. With the bent brim of his baseball cap and chest like a billboard, Tyler is not my type, but I get it. I haven’t been gone from the Midwest so long that I can’t appreciate a man with nothing to prove.

  Gabe is looking at me, horrified. At first I think it’s because I blushed when Tyler walked into the kitchen, but now I realize it’s about Jack. I wasn’t supposed to let Tyler toss our son around like pizza dough.

  “Tyler,” I say brightly, “this is my partner, Gabe.”

  Tyler is already reaching a tanned forearm across the table. “Feldman. It’s good to see you, man.”

  It’s nearly imperceptible, but I catch Gabe’s confusion as it flickers across his face. He would recognize the story of Tyler mounting me on the school bus but not the kid’s name and not the man himself. Gabe may have been a novelty in Deerling that year, but Deerling was, to him, the indistinct background of the year his life veered off course.

  “You too,” Gabe says. And then taking a guess, “What are you doing back in town?”

  “My dad had a stroke,” Tyler says.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “We’re also dating,” Carrie blurts out.

  “Smooth, Mom,” Nina says. Tyler’s arrival has darkened her mood.

  “Oh.” Gabe relaxes. “Sit down, have some wings.”

  There are exactly three wings left, their sauce cold and congealed. The definition of a good sport, Tyler reaches for one. Our conversation bumbles toward the details of his father’s recovery. Mr. Cox can write short responses on a handheld white board more easily than he can speak. Tyler’s latest battle with his family’s health insurer is over coverage for the wheelchair his father desperately needs. Everyone but Nina has something disparaging to say about health insurance companies.

  Everyone, including Nina, is growing bored.

  Tyler remembers he has a present for the birthday girl in his Jeep. He goes outside and returns with a pair of hot pink wireless headphones still in the box. It’s a gift that astonishes and cheers Nina, one she clearly wasn’t expecting to receive from her mother’s boyfriend. Carrie watches with critical detachment as Nina digs her thumbnail between the flaps of the box. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou,” Nina chants.

  Morosely peeling the label from his beer bottle, Gabe appears defeated. His own gift for Nina, which he selected without my input, is inadequate. I can tell.

  I hope it’s not stickers.

  Rising from the table, I’m surprised by the heaviness of my bladder plus a rush of dizziness. “You okay?” Gabe asks, half standing.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Just gotta—” Out of habit, I pass Jack to Carrie then shuffle out of the room without finishing my sentence.

  I get to the toilet at what feels li
ke the last possible moment. Elbows digging into my thighs, I cradle my face in my hands. I want to be alone. I need to be alone. It blows my mind to remember I’m here by choice. Sitting across a table from Tyler Cox is not a requirement. I’m not obligated to witness all the jealousy and self-loathing play out on Gabe’s face. This experience is strictly optional. Another idea would have been to stay in New York. Couldn’t I have persuaded Gabe to cancel the trip? Couldn’t we have spent these days sinking into our couch and watching Jack get bigger?

  Reluctant to go back, I linger in front of the mirror.

  The first time I peeked at my postpartum body, I was still in the hospital. I had left a blood-tinged urine sample in a tray beside the sink, as per the nurse’s instructions. As the gown fell from my shoulders and into a heap on the floor, I kept my eyes squeezed shut. It wasn’t vanity so much as the fear on which so many movies capitalized in the nineties—the terror of waking up to discover you’ve aged twenty years, turned into Santa Claus or your mother.

  But then I looked. And it wasn’t so bad. My boobs hung slack, no longer resting on the high shelf of my bump and not yet bursting with milk. My stomach, though squishy, had defaulted to the shape of early pregnancy—month four or five. But I recognized my own bright eyes, thick thighs, and bony feet. I felt like cheering.

  After turning myself inside out, I had not disappeared completely.

  I no longer want to cheer. Endeavoring to judge myself through Tyler’s eyes, I finally admit that the extra weight on my face has formed a second chin. Once, when we were fourteen, he told me I had “massive, spooky eyes—like a deer.” They’re dull now. And edged with creases. Neither the old tank top I borrowed from Carrie nor the nursing bra beneath it are doing me any favors.

  I splash some water on my face and think, Fuck it. That girl thought she knew herself, thought she knew what her body was for. She didn’t know the half of it.

  In the hallway, Tyler is waiting to use the bathroom. Just standing there, as if we’re in a restaurant or on a plane.

  “Oh, sorry,” I say, conscious of the extra minutes I loitered over the sink, ignorant of Tyler’s needs.

  “No, I want to talk to you. I think I owe you an apology.” His brow is furrowed, and he is trying too hard to sound sincere.

  “Oh, no,” I say.

  “Yes. I mean, maybe you don’t remember, but that time on the bus . . . ?”

  Forcing me to acknowledge the incident is its own kind of violation. “I remember.”

  “I’m so sorry about that. Obviously, it was forever ago, but I guess it was a big deal to you guys. Carrie almost didn’t go out with me the first time I asked.”

  “Oh, no,” I say again.

  “I want you to know it was just a joke. I had no intention of . . . you know.”

  “Um.”

  “Still, it was inappropriate. I was way out of line.”

  In the kitchen, Jack starts to fuss. My patience dries up instantaneously. “Sexual assault usually is.”

  He cocks his head, thrusts his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “I mean, I wouldn’t go that far. We were fourteen.”

  “Nina’s thirteen.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “So, if some kid did that to her, you wouldn’t call it assault?”

  Tyler holds up his hands. “Look, I don’t want to get into a political debate. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  Jack produces a sound like a siren. I hear Carrie say he sounds hungry. Gabe wonders aloud where I am.

  My teeth grind. Why can’t he take the baby?

  “Okay,” I say to Tyler, “I forgive you.”

  I will pardon his every sin if he will end this conversation.

  He exhales. “Great. That’s great. There’s actually something else I want to ask you.”

  If he hears the baby crying, he doesn’t appear cognizant of my obligation to the baby. Tyler Cox, it occurs to me, is stupid. Did I always know that? Does Carrie?

  “I want to ask Carrie to marry me, but I thought it would be nice to get your, uh, blessing.”

  In the kitchen, the screen door creaks open and slams shut, and Jack’s cries fade. An ambulance retreating.

  “My blessing?”

  “I thought it would be a nice gesture. Since you guys are so close.”

  Close is both an exaggeration and an understatement.

  The bet was not that Carrie would be the first to get married, or even engaged, but that she would be the first to find herself on the receiving end of a proposal. Struggling, suddenly, not to laugh, I clasp Tyler’s limp hand between both of mine and say, “Yes, you should do that. As soon as possible.”

  He beams. “I was already planning to do it tonight.”

  “Tonight is perfect.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, okay.” His head bobs up and down. “Cool.”

  “I have to feed my kid, but do me a favor? Don’t propose to Carrie until I get back?”

  Tyler winks at me. It’s a charming, fraternal wink. “You got it.”

  * * *

  In the yard, Gabe is standing in a patch of shade between the picnic table and the ash tree, holding a tear-streaked, hiccuping Jack. I take the baby and sit atop the table to nurse him for something like the tenth time today. Jack’s small hand searches the air until it lands on my chin.

  My milk is inexhaustible. It’s the only part of me that is.

  I offer Gabe a smile. I want him to ask how I am or demand every detail of my private conversation with Tyler Cox. Beneath this rational desire for Gabe’s attention is the less reasonable wish that he would take care of me. All the time. Forever. Is this what everyone wants, secretly? For another person to accept both the blame and responsibility for all our bad feelings? Maybe the adolescent struggle for independence is misguided. We grow up and fire our mothers, insisting their work here is done, before realizing we cannot hire a replacement.

  It should not come as a shock to me that I am no one’s baby.

  The sun is in Gabe’s eyes. He is disheveled and irritated, and I don’t have the energy to cajole him from his gloom. So this won’t be a moment of connection or respite. It will only be another moment to get through.

  I’m staring at the blur of shadows the leaves cast on the lawn, unable to separate the cicadas’ drone from my own internal murmur, when Gabe says, “You look beautiful.”

  I laugh, no less startled than if a stranger on the street had said it—though of course, Gabe has said it more than all the strangers combined. “Pretty sure I look terrible.”

  “No. Different, maybe. Younger. You look like you did when I first met you.”

  Pleasure cuts through the static.

  Gabe takes a breath. “I’ve been thinking about what Nina said. About moving. I think we should try to help Carrie find an apartment in Queens. I know we’ve been down this road before, and she always says no, but things are different now that Nina is older. Do you agree?”

  “I agree that things are different.”

  “Whatever she needs upfront, we could give that to her. The deposit and everything.”

  “We don’t have any money.”

  “My parents—”

  “Carrie’s not going to take any more of your parents’ money.”

  He’s quiet, indulging or else mourning the fantasy: Carrie and Nina living a few subway stops or even a few blocks from us. Carrie could rent studio space in Brooklyn; twenty-two-year-olds, eager to commemorate their autonomy with tattoos of birds fleeing their cages and old-fashioned skeleton keys, would add their names to her waiting list. She could travel to conventions and festivals, hold guest spots at the famous shops in Chicago and LA, while Nina stayed with us. In New York, our family would be almost conventional: a boyfriend, a girlfriend, an ex. A pink-cheeked infant and a bira
cial teenager. No one would need to know that our family’s origin was Carrie and me, a fortress of a childhood friendship built with ease but not easily escaped. Does Gabe imagine Carrie and I could live in the same city and pretend that he, the father of our children, was all we had in common? Because I have a fantasy too.

  In mine, Carrie falls in love with a stranger. A New York stranger who has everything to prove. They have a baby. This time, it’s Carrie’s mother and her partner in the delivery room—or better yet, this baby is born at home, the furniture pushed aside to accommodate the inflatable birthing pool, that nightmare of landlords everywhere. The birth is quick. Not precipitous but efficient, twelve hours from the first contraction to the final push. While Carrie lies naked and elated, both ravenous and more satiated than anyone has ever been, I sneak into the building armed with champagne and toilet paper and bagels and pad thai and laundry detergent and Epsom salts. I deposit these offerings outside the apartment door, knock, and vanish.

  Sometimes love means making yourself scarce. I know that now.

  Gabe doesn’t dwell on what it would mean for me if Carrie moved to New York. And it’s not that he’s self-absorbed, or even that he believes his connection to Carrie eclipses mine. To him, Carrie’s proximity would be almost beside the point.

  He wants his daughter. He wants Nina to need him as much as he needs her.

  * * *

  Back inside, the party has moved to the living room. Nina is curled into one corner of the couch, scrolling through Twitter on her phone, and Carrie is telling Tyler about a work problem. A prospective client wants his old gang tattoos covered up with the kind of curling ivy for which Carrie is famous, but his existing tattoos are dark, muddy, and spaced far apart. Carrie doesn’t specialize in cover-ups. She should refer him to someone who does, but he’s so invested in the idea of getting a Carrie Hart original—he’s followed her on Instagram for years, memorized the FAQ section of her website—that she wonders if she shouldn’t give it her best shot.