One Small Thing (4 page)

Dan nodded again, feeling the muscles in his neck tense. “Summer will be great for all of you. Hey, I’d better go see what Avery wants me to do next.”

“Okay, man. But don’t leave me out here too long. I’ll end up having to listen to Frank tell me about his new foundation.”

Dan patted Luis’ shoulder, leaving his hand on his friend for a second. If someone had told him three months ago that he’d be jealous of Luis and Valerie, Dan would have laughed, saying, “They’re my best friends!” But in truth, he
was
jealous. Or maybe it was more. Maybe he was beginning to feel that he didn’t deserve a baby. Maybe he thought that it wasn’t about Avery’s body at all—it was about him. Not his sperm, that he knew. Motility and morphology had checked out, A okay, sperm 100% active and overpopulated, just as they should be. It was what he’d left behind that was the problem.

“Dan! God, where have you been?” Avery pulled open the garage door. “I need you!”

Dan dumped the Corona bottle in the maroon recycling bin and walked toward his wife. Avery’s hair was up in a ponytail, her neck shiny with sweat. He wondered why she’d felt it was necessary to wake up at 6.30 and take the kickboxing class Oakmont, when the preparations for the long day were obviously exercise enough. As he followed her inside the house, focusing on her tight, muscled calves, he knew she would never like the changes in her body when she finally got pregnant. Avery had organized all the changes in their life, but extra fluid and flesh were something she’d be unable to stop.

“What is it?”

“The damn pool cover. I swear it’s absorbing water. I can’t roll it up. You know how that thing worries me. If we turn our backs for a second, some kid is going to get sucked up by it.”

“Let’s go figure it out,” he said, holding the kitchen door open for her. She didn’t look at him. She was in one of her, “Let’s finish this” moods. If he didn’t do as she said or teased her about her worries or the fact that her pasta wasn’t done yet or said that Isabel had called three times and was, in fact, bringing over the dreaded salad, they’d have a fight. Sometimes, when he was tired after working for fourteen hours, he couldn’t stop himself, the tickle of the irritating sentence too much to contain. Those nights, she slept on the edge of the bed, only forgiving him when he kissed her shoulder, neck, cheek, only when he held her close and said, “I’m sorry.”

Then, she would turn to him, pull his face to hers, whisper, “Don’t leave me,” and he’d wonder what they had really been fighting about after all.

But Dan didn’t want an argument today. He was rested for the first time in weeks. He had the next three days off. He was going to work in the yard, swim, take Avery on a drive up the Sonoma Coast on Sunday. For at least one day, they weren’t going to think about the pregnancy. They weren’t going to mention the phrases “uterine body” or “blood levels” or “prostaglandin removal.”

No. This weekend, they were going to be married, a couple, like they used to be, when it was simpler, when they could try to have a baby by turning out the lights and touching each other, back in the time when Dan was still ignorant of little rooms and girlie magazines; when he’d never had to hand his spunk in a little plastic container over to a nurse.

They stood by the edge of the pool looking at the cover, and Dan could see that somehow, Avery had lumped a section of cover on the roll. He knew he’d have to unroll it and start over. “Listen, I can do this. Go ahead and finish your pasta. Don’t worry about the cover.”

Avery wiped her forehead and then heard what he said, looking up and smiling. There she was. There was his girl, the one he had met at Peet’s six years ago, her hair the color of the summer foothills by his childhood Sacramento home. Her eyes were blue, sometimes gray, always full of light. He had imagined then and still imagined now that the light came from within her, her electricity, her drive, her current too strong to contain. If he had the right eyes, he knew he would see streaks of white shooting from her body like the flurries on the sun. She was that full of energy, electricity. She was that strong. As he’d waited long ago for the Rastafarian dude behind the counter to pour his coffee, Dan knew he’d found the woman who would make all the difference. The one who would burn away the past, leaving nothing but a space of time to be forgotten and then rewritten.

“Thanks, honey.” Avery looked up at the sky. “It’s going to be hotter than all of last week.”

“Yeah,” he said, bending over the cover, breathing in chlorine. “Go on. Get your work done.”

She smiled again and turned away. He pulled on the wet plastic fabric, feeling the trail of her strong, hot light flick at his legs and then curl into their house, exactly where Dan wanted it.



“I couldn’t help myself,” Isabel was saying, opening the fridge, where she carefully placed the plate that held her wobbly green Jell-O salad. “I know you said you didn’t need it. But honestly, sweetie, I saw all the people out there getting ready. Another salad never hurts, believe you me.”

Dan turned to Avery, who was biting the inside of her cheek. She’d finished the pasta, filled the cooler with Coronas, Calistoga waters, and soft drinks, taken a shower and dressed, her white shorts/ red top outfit clearly Fourth of July, but not the spangled red, white, and blue Isabel wore. Dan stared at his mother-in-law’s sequined baseball cap, the kitchen light reflecting off her entire head. She even had on red Keds with blue shoelaces and little white socks with lace. Her fingernails were painted red, and she wore a blue bandana twisted around her neck. A vein in Avery’s tight, smooth throat pulsed, one, two, one, two.

“Great!” Avery said. “You’re right.”

“The more the merrier,” Dan said, wishing he hadn’t. That was the phrase Mary, the nurse at Dr. Browne’s, always used just before he went into the little room clutching the latest copy of
Playboy
.

Isabel smiled at him. “Loren and her family will be here soon. She’s got a terrific surprise! That whipped strawberry pie you girls used to love. You know, your grandmother’s recipe? What was it called? Sky pie?”

“Spy pie.” Avery was biting her cheek again. “She called me.”

“How about a soda, Isabel,” Dan said, leading her into the family room. “Or why don’t we go over and say hi to Valerie and Luis. You haven’t seen Tomás in a while, have you?”

As he pulled her along, he turned back, and Avery sighed and shook her head. He and Isabel walked through the house, into the garage, and out into the bright late morning light of the Fourth of July, her arm through his. Isabel was irritating, that was for sure. She’d lived alone for too long, coming over toe their house with a flurry of words she must have saved up at night, the desperate sentences coming out at once. When they went to the movies, she sat by Dan and asked, “Is that actress someone I should know? What film was she in before?” Before she read a novel, she made Avery tell her the end of the story, not wanting, she said, “Anything too ugly.”

But he squeezed her arm, knowing that what he would like more than anything, was to be able to squeeze his own mother in this way, walk her over to Luis and Valerie’s, sit her down at one of the party tables that was now festooned with red, white, and blue crepe streamers. But when his mother Marian and his father Bill drove down to the Bay Area, it was first to see Dan’s brother Jared. And then, if he was lucky, he’d get a phone call. “We’re just headed home, but we wanted to say hi. How’s Avery?”

Because Jared was coming to the cul-de-sac this year to eat and watch fireworks, Dan had hoped that his parents would come, too, sit with him and enjoy the life he’d made for himself and Avery. But they’d called at the last minute, saying, “Oh, Dan, it’s too hot to drive. We’ll stay here and watch the fireworks with the Davidsons.”

“You do have air-conditioning in the Oldsmobile, don’t you?” Dan had asked.

“Yes, of course. I meant at your house,” his mother said. He could hear her tap something—a pen, a pencil, her glasses—on the counter.

“Mom, we have the pool. And air conditioning. It won’t be bad. And you can see Jared.” He dangled the good son carrot.

“Not this year. Say hi to Avery.” His mom hung up, and Dan had put down the phone, wondering how long it would take before they trusted him again.

“Oh my,” said Isabel. “This is so charming. How festive! What a wonderful day. You two are so lucky to live here. You can’t pay for this kind of neighborhood bonding!”

Dan reached for Isabel’s hand, and she turned to him, surprised, but let her small, soft, wrinkled hand stay in his. Is this how his mother’s felt? If he grabbed Marian’s hand, would she snatch it away?

Together, Isabel’s Keds tap, tapping on the sidewalk, his steps slow and patient, they walked to the Delgado’s. Valerie pulled open the door, Tomás on her shoulder.

“Oh, Isabel. I am so glad to see you. Could you hold Tomás? Luis is having some kind of salsa incident in the kitchen. He and his mother are on the floor scrubbing.”

Isabel carefully took the sleeping Tomás from Valerie, who then rushed back inside. Dan walked behind Isabel as they moved into the cool air of the house, and he swallowed. Soon, she would be carrying her own grandchild. His and Avery’s. Soon, he might be able to forget the past.



“Do you remember when we accidentally exploded the Davidson’s mailbox?” Jared asked, leaning back in his chair, watching the kids light Flame Tower after Flame Tower, the air hanging thick with sulfur and smoke.

“An accident?” Dan said, and then looked behind him. Avery—with Tomás in her lap—was sitting next to Valerie, Valerie’s sister Yvette, and Loren. “I hardly think we can call that accidental.”

Jared sipped his beer. “You’re right. But how much of it exploded was an accident.”

Dan nodded, picturing the steel grimace of the torn mailbox, his parents’ disappointed faces. He’d only been ten then, Jared eight.

“Uncle Dan! Uncle Dan!” Sammy, Loren’s oldest called, breathing hard, leaning on his knee. “Did you see that one? Did you see how high the flames went?”

“I did, Sammy. Are you having fun?” Sammy nodded, grabbed a Coke on the table and drank it down, two thin streams of soda sliding down his cheeks. He put down the can and wiped his mouth. “I’m going back.”

He ran into the swirl of kids, their giggles and whoops twirling up with the smoke. Dan looked down at the extra bucket of water he’d just filled. He was prepared for all emergencies.

Luis and his mother Dolores came back to the table with a layer cake Valerie had picked up at Andronico’s. The piped red frosting read, “Happy Fourth.”

“
Ay
, this party, it goes on forever,” Dolores said. “The baby should be in bed.”

Tomás slept in the boat of Avery’s arms. Avery and Loren listened to Valerie, all three of their heads close together. Loren’s husband Russell sat next to Ralph Chatagnier, words like “distribution” and “market value” mixed in with the children’s yelps.

“He’s fine, Mrs. Delgado,” Dan said. “Look at him. Like they say, ‘Sleeping like a baby.’”

Just then, a Flame Tower erupted in the middle of the court, the parents “ooing” and “awing” as their children put on the show.

“And then that time in high school,” Jared said. “Before . . . that time at Larch Bank Pool? Do you remember that?”

Dan closed his eyes, feeling the smooth pool water on his waist, the noise from the bottle rockets whizzing above him. What year was that? It must have been before he’d slipped out of his parents’ house for good, before he’d unlocked his father’s coin case, plopping the meaty coins in his Addidas bag like magic plums. Before he’d taken their credit card and racked up charges at the hotel in Las Vegas. She’d said she’d marry him that weekend at the Chapel of Love, but all they’d done was drink and smoke in the room, ordering room service, snorting line after line.

“Yeah,” he said, standing up, his legs stiff from sitting. “Do you want another beer?”

“I’m good. Look at that one.” Jared pointed to a Lotus Bloom, white and furious and burning hot.

“I’ll be back.” Dan walked over to the cooler, patting Avery’s shoulder as he passed by. She didn’t seem to notice him, listening to a long story Loren was telling about Dakota’s birth.

“Great party this year,” Frank Chow said, manning the hamburger grill, children still eating, their smudged hands holding out plates, waiting for Frank to slip a half-burned patty on their buns.

Dan dug in the cooler and found the last Corona. He wondered if he should put it back for Frank or Tim or Ralph, but then wiped the water off the bottle with the flat of his hand. It was the only alcohol he allowed himself now. “Sure is,” he said, putting down the bottle opener and taking a sip. “The fire department should be getting their show going soon.”

“Usually, it’s what? Nine-fifteen? Nine-thirty? Better be good what with the fund-raising drive they go through.”

“Yes, it always is.” Dan nodded and walked toward his table but then moved close to the circle of children, standing back just enough so that Sammy, Jaden, or Dakota didn’t see him. The sky was falling light gray, darker, darker, until only a tiny white slip of light hung over the Berkeley hills, the triangles, ellipses, rectangles, and squares of neighboring lawns rich and emerald in the twilight. Gray bunches of indistinguishable perennials—sage, penstemon, lamb’s ear—were artfully positioned around the lawns and professionally designed slate, concrete, or brick paths.