“So would your daughter being named Jane.”
We both laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re probably naming it after Jim’s mother, Margaret.”
“I don’t know what my daughter is going to be named yet.”
In a lot of ways, it felt like we were talking how we’d always talked, as if no time had passed, as if I hadn’t shown up drunk at her place and passed out on her couch with a gun in my hand.
She said, “I have the best story about my new neighbor and her pet iguana,” at the same time as I said, “Why are you here?”
I could tell by the way her shoulders drooped that she had been hoping we’d talk and joke for a few more minutes before she’d say goodbye, take care, like she always did. I half expected her to pull out her wallet and fold twenties into my palm.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve just been feeling guilty, like it was my fault that you were in that position.”
I almost told her that, yes, it was absolutely her fault I was in that position. That if she’d never called in to Eddie’s, never left me alone with Adam, if she’d never kissed me back, if she hadn’t made me feel special, like the things I did and said mattered, I would’ve been okay. But I knew that was a lie and that, even if I’d never picked up the phone and heard her voice on the other end, I would’ve found something else to lose myself in—if you were pushed off a cliff, you’d grab hold of anything resembling safety.
“You don’t owe me anything,” I said. “It’s okay, really. Just tell me about your neighbor and the iguana.”
There was still more I wanted to ask her. What exactly I meant to her, how much of herself did she actually reveal to me, did she still miss me sometimes like I missed her—a missing that had no electricity, no lightning, or thunder, a missing like a hand digging into an empty chip bag searching for crumbs, any last salty bit, a missing more like mourning.
But we just talked about her life in Bakersfield—the classes she’d started taking at the local YMCA, how Adam wasn’t playing baseball any longer, but was interested in painting now, spent hours in their backyard staring at blank canvases before he even reached for his paintbrush, and then he’d stare at the different-colored paints before he made another move, how Jim was coming home earlier than he ever had since they’d been married, he didn’t even wear a tie to work anymore—and the more she talked, the more the desire to ask faded. Her hair had grown a little longer. It didn’t flow freely and lightly down her back like her ponytail did, but it went a couple inches past her chin, and she seemed to stand straighter and looser at the same time, nothing weighing her down. She would never be anything more to me than what she was now. If we saw each other again, it would be by chance, or, if you believed in this kind of a thing, by the large invisible hands that were responsible for pushing and pulling people together.
Billy called me and I answered on the first ring. “Hi.”
“Hey, if you’re still at work, can you get some ground turkey and tater tots? Brussels sprouts too if they’re on sale.”
I looked at Jenny. She smiled back. “No,” I said. “I’ve already left. How about I pick something up tonight and we eat with Mom. I saw a new Chinese-Italian-French fusion place opened up near us, and I don’t know what that means, but I’m interested.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment and I was worried he’d hung up, but then he said, “Yeah, okay. Sounds good.”
I hung up and put my phone back in my pocket. “I’ve got to go.”
“Me too,” Jenny said. “Take care, Jane.”
* * *
—
I’D MOSTLY STOPPED DRINKING.
The second night back from the hospital, I’d been unable to sleep and got up from bed, sure Billy was awake, and gone to Dad’s shed. I pulled all the unopened beers I had from the mini-fridge and opened them, dumped their contents onto the backyard lawn. The next day, I bought a new lock to put on Dad’s shed and drove to a freeway overpass, threw the key to the lock over it.
That would’ve been nice if that was the last time I ever had a drink. That was the shit that people said in AA meetings, the stories re-created in commercials that encouraged people to live better lives. Not even a week after that, I left the grocery store and parked out in front of a liquor store, begged seven different men and women before a homeless guy in a wheelchair agreed to buy me a six-pack if I rolled him to the McDonald’s across the street and bought him two Big Macs and a large fries. I asked him if he wanted a soda with it and he shook his head, said he heard if you left a tooth in a glass of Coke for twenty-four hours it would dissolve.
I broke the lock off of Dad’s shed that night with a pair of pliers and drank four of those cans, dumped the last two. The next week, the same guy bought me another six-pack and I drank three and dumped the remaining three.
In the twenty-fifth week of my pregnancy, I finished my shift and drove to the liquor store. I could see the homeless guy wheeling around the front of the store, but that time I didn’t get out of my car. I pulled out of the lot and kept driving.
I drove past my street and turned around, almost turned onto Jenny’s old street. I didn’t know where I was going. My daughter had been kicking almost every day. It was mostly just a small kick or two here and there, randomly—when I was brushing my teeth, opening the fridge, locking my car, saying hey to Marina. But that night, as I pulled up to the liquor store, she kicked four times, in quick succession.
I kept driving, and my left hand drifted from the wheel to the top of my belly. My belly had grown significantly, protruding far enough that I’d had to move my driver’s seat back a couple notches. My hand felt comfortable on the crest of it, and as I cruised down the road, no turns being taken, I started talking to my daughter.
“Her name was Jenny Hauser and every Wednesday I put pickles on her pizza.”