Chosen (19 page)

M
aggie can only stay the weekend. Driving him to the airport Monday morning, Eva feels a panic, her heart beating too fast. Or is it the caffeine, the huge coffees they got at Strohecker’s on the way out?

“I don’t want you to go,” she says.

“Me neither. Duty calls. But you’re doing okay, right?”

Eva takes a shaky breath. Is she doing okay? While she is formulating her answer, thinking about how much she can say to him about the dark, slippery slope into the abyss in twenty minutes of postcommuter interstate, Wyeth begins to fuss in the back. She reaches behind her into the bucket of Wyeth’s rear-facing car seat, finds his pacifier where it has fallen down in the crook by his thigh, and pops it into his open mouth, holding it there while she drives with one hand. In the silence that follows, Eva’s eyes pull closed too, just a moment, but Magnus shouts and jerks the wheel straight in her hand.

“Are you falling asleep?” His laugh is not a funny one—a barking exhalation of adrenaline, terror.

“No, sorry, just tired.”

There is a long beat of silence; she can feel him watching her.

“You’re amazing, you know. Seeing you as a mom is surreal, especially given the model we had…,” her brother says.

“Imagine if I still had the stick shift,” Eva says, trying to lighten the mood. “I suppose I could steer with my knees—”

“Really. You’re like the glue, holding these guys together. I’m being, well,
me,
whining to you about Genai wanting to settle down, boring you with my woman problems, and Paul’s all trying to be Mr. Busy-Businessman, and of course the baby’s NeedyMcNeedy. Even Henry, the pissing cat, needs you. You’re like Wendy to all the Lost Boys. I ordered you a jacket off eBay.” (It will arrive four days later; a vintage hot pink sateen cheerleader jacket with the name Wendy embroidered over the left breast, and Eva will burn it in their fireplace, because she’s not worthy.)

“How do you think Paul is doing?” Eva asks, to change the subject. She is still shaken—had she really almost fallen asleep there? What is wrong with her?

“Enh.” Maggie shrugs.

“Exactly. I mean, I know we’re so lucky, Paul and I. We’ve got each other, our house, and finally our baby, but sometimes, Mag, I just feel like someone has popped my top and scooped me out with a melon baller. Hollow.”

“I know,” Magnus says, and he looks out the window at the river.

They drive in silence, the sound of Wyeth furiously slurping on the pacifier she holds for him filling the car.

“Good god, your poor jibbles.”

“Yeah,” Eva says on a sigh.

“Poor Wendy.”

She pulls up at Departures, and she swallows her panic. Maggie, her brother, her constant, slipping back to La-La Land. “You’ll be back, right?”

“Of course. Two weeks. Maybe less. I’m scared to bring Genai,
though—one look at that handsome little hoover, and she’ll ovulate on the spot.”

“Bring her.”

“Really?” Magnus unfolds his long legs, preparing to get out. “We should do it? Have a kid?”

“Enh…,” Eva says, and they laugh. “No, I’m joking. Please, do it. God, Maggie, keep me company. Keep me sane.”

“I
been thinking about this for too long,” Jason says as he bends her willing rag-doll frame over the rust-stained sink. In the mirror, her weasel eyes meet his, and she offers him a lukewarm smile that says,
Go for it
. He knows what she wants. He can throw it in like nobody else, doesn’t Penny always say so?

“Waiting,” he says, and he grabs around in front of her, unsnaps her jeans. “You have too.” She doesn’t help him, but she doesn’t stop him as he yanks them down to the middle of her twiggy thighs. She’s wearing a turquoise thong, the elastic spent so it hangs in loops on her hollow, sallow hips, and he gives one jerk, snaps it in his hands, throws it toward the trash can spilling over with used towels and tampon applicators.

He’s out of his own pants, and the tiny, cement-floored bathroom fills with the man-smell of him. He stops for a moment, loving the feeling of the winter air on his hot skin. He’ll give it to her so good she’ll do anything for him.

“You got something?” she asks.

“Oh, I got something,” he says, misunderstanding, rubbing it in the crease of her skinny ass. Ugly white goose pimples dot her coffee skin, so fucking cold up here at nine in the morning, on a Monday no less, talk to her boss about a job since she won’t do it for him, but you
gotta do what you gotta do, he thinks. Means to a fucking end. A job, cash, Mexico…

“I don’t want a baby,” she says, and he laughs then, thinking she’s as stupid as she is homely.

“Oh, don’t you worry,” he says, because that’s not where he was headed, but she’s digging in her sweatshirt pouch for a brand-new box of rubbers, yanked from over the register out front. Might be better anyway, he thinks as she opens the box with her ugly pointy crank teeth. God knows where she’s been. A few strokes and she’ll be his, do anything he wants. He’s a stallion.

I’m doing this for you, baby.
He thinks of Penny, curled up on their bed with the blinds pulled.

“Jesus!” Brandi yelps. She has one of those whiny froufrou-dog voices, and she’s writhing, trying to get away from him, but he’s got her right against the edge of the sink, can feel the front arc of his pelvic bones meeting the back of hers where she is trapped, pinned against the porcelain.

“Don’t move,” he grunts.

She’s whimpering, and he’s sawing away, this was supposed to be so fucking good, so fucking good. He yanks her sweatshirt up in the back and rears back so he can see it, that narrow brown back, dimples at the top of her ass; her showing them around the apartment every goddamn time she bends over and her jeans slip low, imagined this, and how fucking good it was going to be. He’s no cheater, he loves his Penny—with her glorious white ass like two gigantic boiled Idaho potatoes—he’s just a guy doing what guys do, bend over or get bent, he thinks.

He reaches around to grab for Brandi’s tits, pathetic little puddles under her sweatshirt that don’t feel like nothing,
This was supposed to be so good
, and she’s still whining like a goddamn dog who wants out.

“Shhh,” he says, but it comes out soft, so he barks, “Shut up, shut the fuck up, you want someone to hear us?”

Wasn’t she supposed to be all moaning and grinding back and
screeching his name the way she did Lisle’s? Wasn’t this supposed to open doors for him? He is not too proud to pump gas.

And then she’s silent and still, which is worse. The bathroom is quiet except for the jingling of the buckles on his leather jacket with each thrust, like the impatient ringing of a doorbell in an empty house. Jason looks up, by accident catches his reflection towering over her hunched back in the fluorescent lighting, and something about the zigzag part of her slippery black hair, the pink butterfly clip, makes it look like he’s fucking some kid, like he’s one of those sickos who likes little girls.

“How old are you anyway?” he grunts, still sawing—it still feels plenty good enough to keep going.

“Huh?” she says, and lifts her head to meet his eyes in the mirror. There are tears in them, and she sniffs hard. “Seventeen in July. Why, how come?”
Fuck.
He pulls out, and instead of looking relieved, she just looks confused, almost disappointed. She breaks eye contact, stares down at her hands gripping the wet edge of the sink, stretched like starfish.

“I changed my mind.” He tears the rubber off, throws it toward the trash. He can’t look at himself in the mirror. He zips his pants as best he can, still half hard, thinking he should have just kept going—it might have gotten better. Godammit, always making the wrong choice.

Finally he says, “You’re out of soap in here. You can tell your boss I’m good with details.” He tries to laugh, but his throat is dry, ragged. Without even bothering to pull up her pants, she hobbles to the wall, grabs paper towels from the dispenser. She runs cold, rust-colored water over one and stuffs it between her legs, uses the other to carefully wipe down the edge of the sink.

“Okay.” And then she stands there, swiping at her eyes—god, she’s ugly, like a cat-faced apple going brown, he thinks as he reaches in his jacket pocket for the crinkling baggie. She has a pen hollow in her sweatshirt pocket that comes out now. The coke is snow-white,
not that shit cut with baking soda Victor’s usually peddling, and he sees her see it, her face almost pretty when she beams, whispers, “Good shit,” and he thinks disgustedly that for this, he really should have fucked her in the ass.
Goddammit!
He slams out of the bathroom, kicking the door behind him with his boot.

Jason grabs a fresh pack of Camels from over the register, and he’s sucking down his first one, thinking. Pissed at himself; wrong idea with Brandi. But if she could just get him this job, get their shit together, get him and Penny out of that hole, he’d heard about a trailer park forty minutes farther southeast, with a wide stream and a fire pit, a real sense of community. Of course there’s rules, no trailers more than ten years old, and the one he’s got his eye on is cheap, but it’s thirteen, always a fucking glitch—

Around the front of the station there’s the ping of a car driving up. Jason pounds his fist on the steel door to get Brandi’s attention. She comes out all glassy-eyed, wiping at her nose with her sweatshirt sleeve—god, where does his brother find these kids? Lisle’s thirty, two years younger than him, and he’s still running around with the fucking nursery school.

“Customer’s here.” Jason grabs her by the elbow to propel her around the side of the building, his cigarette clamped between his lips, when he sees the car. A spanking-new silver Volvo Cross Country, how could he forget it? And as Brandi fumbles, then shoves the nozzle into the gas tank, Jason sees the Oregon license plate, SPR-NVA, the arc of the car seat handle in the back, and the back of Blondie’s head in the front, and with a barking cough in the cold air, his smoky breath disappears, leaving in its place the hint of a plan.

I
t happens early Monday morning, when Eva is driving back from the airport in light misting rain, her brother off to L.A., Wyeth asleep in the car seat in the back.

“So you’re coming back, right?” she had asked Magnus again at Departures.

“I’ll give you a call, but you know I can’t stay away long. I just have to work a few things out. Genai…” He left the sentence open.

“Bring her! My friend Francie knows real estate—we could find you two a cottage.”

“Maybe so.”

“We need you, Mag.” Neither of them mentioned that Magnus had been less and less willing to help out with the baby the last two visits as their slack-limbed, placid newborn had slowly been replaced with a wiry, gassy, cranky, twist-faced gargoyle. Conversations focused on what might be the cause—was the house too dry, their detergent too perfumed, should Eva really be eating onions/peppers/dairy/nuts/garlic? Should they call the pediatrician? (They did, three times—she was sympathetic but unconcerned.)

“Hey,” Magnus had said sharply to get her attention as he tucked his ticket into his jean hip pocket. He made meaningful eye contact, waited to speak. “You and Paul are doing a good job, Chicky.”

“I’m glad someone thinks so.” Her voice wavered as she wiped at her eyes.

They had hugged, and she watched him walking into the airport, his oversize carry-on bumping beside him like a companion dog.

There were clothes still hanging in the narrow guest-room closet under the eaves; two shirts, a pair of khakis, and his gigantic creased Adidas. Magnus would be coming back, but much sooner than either of them realized just then.

N
OW
E
VA PULLS INTO
the gas station off Sunset, right near Portland Heights. There is a thick fog rolling up the hill, and she can barely see the little brick building as she waits for the attendant. She ticks through the list of things to do in her mind.

Maggie—airport

Gas!!!!

Go to gym, elliptical, 40 minutes

Coffee!!!!

Wash sheets

Call Francie?

Take walk to grocery w/Wyeth if not raining

Milk, lemons for pasta dish, and ice cream. Wine?

It’s not much, but making these lists, adding structure to her yawning days, days that will no longer have the company of her brother and the endless analysis of his disastrously dysfunctional relationship, his suggestions that they go out for lunch or browse Powell’s, his willingness to hold the screaming baby for the thirty seconds it takes her to twist her hair back into a knot, just might keep her afloat. Until what? she wonders. Lather rinse repeat, as Paul would say. This is her life now.

The night before, when Wyeth had finally cried himself out and she and Paul were bumping around each other in the bathroom taking
out contacts and brushing teeth, the alarm system had gone off at Paul’s Hillsboro office, activating one of the hallway fire sprinklers. It was a fluke, but he had stayed until two in the morning getting everything sorted out, and she knew he planned to go back early today with the cleaning crew, arrange for industrial dryers and dehumidifiers to come and draw the damp out of the carpet before it had to be replaced.

“It’s not that we can’t afford to replace the carpet,” Paul had assured her. “Just no need to.”

Wyeth had woken up to nurse around two twenty, startling at Paul’s big boots clomping up the wooden stairs. It had taken him until almost three to nurse both sides, some kind of a growth spurt maybe, and then her brother’s flight was at nine, but he wanted to leave at seven…. God, she’s exhausted. It is only the sight of her thighs spreading to touch each other on the car seat that is driving her on to the gym.

A skinny teenage girl shuffles out with her hands in her jacket pockets to pump the gas, shoulders braced against the morning damp rolling up the hill off the highway below. Her sweatshirt hood is bunched up behind her black hair, a sad smattering of deep pits and sores around her mouth, slight trickle of clear snot just under her nose. She sniffs hard, wipes at her face with her sleeve.

“Fill it up?” Eva says. While the girl fiddles with the pump, Eva rifles through her gym bag, always so awkward to be waited on for something she could easily do herself. She has her portable CD player, a towel, but no water. Squinting, she can see the light of a vending machine just inside the glass door of the no-frills gas station. Eva counts out two dollars in quarters, thinking that should be more than enough, even in Portland Heights. She gets out and crosses the pavement to the building, stepping around the coiled black hoses as if they are snakes.

It will be okay, she thinks to herself, if she can just get Maggie into his own place up here, less tension between him and Paul, fewer
pleading/stabbing looks between her and Paul, and then she can put her life in some semblance of order, maybe even get a sitter for Wyeth a few times a week while she pursues something of interest…something of interest…Eva closes her eyes in the empty gas station office, tilts her head forward against the vending machine.

The machine dispenses an Aquafina, ice-cold, and Eva pulls her fleece sleeve down over her hand to carry it back to the car. She quickly shuts the car door, rubs her hands together, almost starts the engine to turn on the heater out of instinct before she realizes that the gas is still being pumped. She hears the metallic clunk of the pump handle shutting off, and Eva is annoyed—now the girl is nowhere in sight. Stupid Oregon law, not allowed to pump your own gas. When she first moved out here, years ago, she thought it was as charming as the Japanese teahouses in the Rose Garden, as though the whole state was so polite that it knew nobody wanted to stand around in the famously miserable rain while their car filled up. Lately, especially now with the baby who cries if he’s in his car seat without the soothing rumble of the motor, it just seems inefficient and inconvenient.

Finally, Eva sees her coming around from by the restrooms and starts the engine to put down her window, turns the heater vents on high. She hands her credit card to the girl, who has it back to her in no time, practically shoving it back in the half-closed window, holding it in the sleeves of her sweatshirt, the hood up around her face now, and though she will regret it later, Eva spares her the embarrassment of looking at her ugliness too closely. The girl ducks her head as she half runs back to the little brick building.

Eva watches in satisfaction as the gas meter turns all the way back to full, puts the car in drive, and winds smoothly on the switchbacks toward the highway, to the health club. The fog dissipates into light drizzle as she leaves the hills of Portland Heights. Her windshield wipers make streaks of the silver water; she needs to get some new blades. At the dark on-ramp traffic meter, she adds this to her list of
things to do during the week.
Buy windshield wiper blades.
Something of interest…

In the gym parking lot, she grabs her water, her cell phone, her gym bag off the floor of the passenger seat, and gets out.

For a moment, as she stands by the driver’s side door, the sun breaks through the clouds, and Eva is struck by the way it glints off the windshields of the wet cars all around her. How long since they have seen the sun? she wonders as she opens the back door to get Wyeth out. If they could just have a day or two of sun this month, things might be—

The car seat is empty. Eva freezes, a rush of dread like a truckload of lead to her empty stomach, feels it drop to her toes.

I left him with Paul, she thinks, looking again. Her hands shake as she opens the phone to call home, when she remembers her brother earlier that morning, leaning in with his carry-on over his shoulder through the back door of the Volvo to drop a kiss on Wyeth’s sleeping forehead. She remembers too Paul’s sleepy voice in the predawn dark of this morning as she pulled on her black stretch pants, “You’re taking the baby, right?”

“What?” Her irritated rasp of a whisper.

“I have to go to the office to empty the dehumidifiers—then the cleaners are meeting me at eight thirty.”

And so she had scooped up the sleeping baby, grabbed a dry diaper for when he woke, grouchily zipped him into a fleece, and left.

I should call 911.

Come on, Eva!
Nothing but frozen disbelief. Staring again at the empty, rear-facing blue plaid car seat, Eva snaps her phone shut. The sun goes back behind a cloud. She can’t dial, her hands shaking too badly, she needs people, help, corroboration, validation, she needs this not to be happening to her alone in the middle of the vast and nearly vacant 24 Hour Fitness parking lot on a cold Monday morning at the end of January.

Eva runs, jerkily, toward the gym, her legs flying awkwardly out of the sockets, out of her control. She trips over the curb and falls to her palms and knees in front of a slope-shouldered Asian woman wearing a turquoise velour sweat suit just outside the glass doors.

“I—” She tries to say something, but just like the dream with the scream-but-no-sound, finds her throat closed, her voice a strangled squeak. “I’ve lost my baby—help.”

For a moment, the woman looks at her coldly. She glances grudgingly between cars in the parking lot, as though the lost baby might be toddling around nearby, and Eva chokes, “He’s only eight weeks, I’ve lost him,
help me
.”