Jac Jemc - A Different Bed Every Time

Millie made herself a life of clean work and reality in the forest. She had made her mistake and now she was committed to surviving it. I have seen her. The “Beware” from her lips has landed beside me by the campfire. I can see the clean nests in the branches above me and it’s easy to tell that she sleeps in a different one each night so they won’t find her. When I feel her near, I say, “They’ve stopped looking,” and “Come out now; it’s safe.”

I let it get to the point where only shallow water filled our bellies. By that time, there was only one person to ask: my brother had just been released from rehab. I was watching to see if he’d still go awry. The throaty noise he made while we drove him home didn’t bode well. He asked if he could stay with us for a day or two before going back to his own apartment. He wasn’t ready to be alone.

He watched cartoons slowly, laughing a little late at the gags. I had a son, four years old, and if I didn’t have the money to pay the water bill, well, daycare seemed like a joke with another adult who could spend the days with him. Jimmy had slowed since getting clean, but my desperation allowed me to believe he could manage keeping an eye on Sammy.

I worked as a custodian at the hospital. I’d scavenge the left behind, finding stuffed animals abandoned in quick transitions to the ICU, flowers to place on my table to convince myself I lived a different life, half-empty boxes of candies in rooms occupied by non-contagious patients placed on feeding tubes.

The substance of our home shook looser every day. Each morning showed a shelf sagging, its contents sliding to the ground before I noticed. I felt denied of choices, but when more than one option showed up, I broke down, so unaccustomed to being able to make the right decision.

I’d parade through the hospital like I knew the answers. I forgot whatever I could in the daytimes. I played sick pranks on myself. I attracted men with issues and put effort into keeping them around. Someone else’s scars are always more mysterious. I’d invite men to sleep in my bed while my brother slept on the couch. When I went to work, everyone would still be sleeping, and according to Jimmy, my men would sleep all day. Jimmy watched cartoons with Sammy, microwaved cheese sandwiches, pretended to forget they hadn’t brushed their teeth. It was a workable arrangement in the worst way.

Most of my day, I did a good job of being courteous, falling easily into the patterns of politeness. If truth had been an element, though, you’d have noticed the holes. At work, I had to write everything down: if I checked a bathroom, if I failed to mop a floor. Always a record. My supervisors would glance at it, but no one would tell me to do anything different. My thumbs peeled from the strong chemicals and I waited for someone to tell me I didn’t have to come back. I’d become ambidextrous in my scrubbing. My arms were the same size. At the end of the day, I’d look hard at the ceiling while I lifted my uniform off in the locker room. I’d take a deep breath and hold it while I tied my shoes back on. I’d hold my hands under the hot water until I couldn’t stand it. I’d make malfunctions I could fix.

When I got home, I’d go through the trash, looking for evidence. I wanted to know how smart Jimmy was: smart enough to stay sober or smart enough to put his empties in the neighbor’s trash? I opened the bureau drawer in the kitchen, and asked him where the extra set of keys had gone. He pretended he didn’t know or he really didn’t. One time I came home to find him sprawled out in my nightgown — the long flowy one with the careful embroidery. He didn’t fluster when I walked in the door. I widened my eyes, running them up and down his body. “This?” he said. “I wanted to get all my laundry into one load.” If I hadn’t just worked a twelve-hour shift, I’d have argued that I had sweatpants he could have worn just as easy. Jimmy said, “Sammy, tell your mother our new nickname for me.” Sammy looked away from the cartoon cats and mice, and smiled huge. “Uncle Jimmy is Second Mommy!” I shook my head and turned back to the recliner. “That’s healthy, Jim. The boy doesn’t need an uncle. He needs a second mommy?’” Jimmy cracked up and leaned over to high-five Sammy.

A few days later I found a baggie in the trash, a different size than what we bought. “What was in this?” I asked my brother. “Jeez, Kim, Sammy had a snack,” he said, turning to the sink. “Where did such a snack come from, Jimmy? Not this house.” “Bake sale at the park. Am I gonna get in trouble for sharing a brownie with the kid?”

If I took Sammy somewhere, Jimmy wanted to come with. I shared with Jimmy every bit of my relationship with my child now. Every opportunity I saw to nourish some small internal light I saw in Sammy was undercut by Jimmy’s nudges and jokes. I wanted to pose impossible questions to Sammy to see how his youth would reason. I wanted to present him with antinomies, to see whether he would gravitate toward this thesis or that antithesis. I knew Sammy had some answers in him. Jimmy’d roll his eyes at me and tickle Sammy and tell me to lighten up — he was just a kid. At that point, I expected Jimmy to be with us a long time. Sammy was starting school at the end of summer, but I imagined the three of us carrying on. I couldn’t tell if I hated it or if I was just looking for something to end, like I’d gotten used to the finite and had trouble believing in anything more.

I brought men home. I’d tell you about a single one of them if I could remember. Every night shaped itself into a fanatical bustle. Looks in the grocery store, a kind word in the hospital parking lot. I didn’t spend minutes in a bar or dollars on drinks. The men always turned up over shoulders, in the bellies of shadows, at PTA meetings. Clint told me to call him. Randy told me I knew his number. Darren told me about problems he thought trumped mine, and I let them. Every time it happened I thought I was getting closer to a target and then it’d turn out I was throwing my dart in the wrong direction.

Jimmy didn’t mouth off about it. He knew better. His own past sounded constant, gnarly jingles and we’d try to keep the peace as best we could. Sometimes when they were giving me a bad vibe, I told them to leave before the morning. Sometimes when their phones buzzed, I told them to go find their wives. They’d scowl at me and think better of it while I held their fate in my hands. Jimmy’d say, “No breakfast buddy today?” I’d shoot him my most dastardly glare and say, “We’re allowed to do things we think better of after the fact. Am I right, brother?”

Some nights Jimmy would pace in a flurry of spells and fits — then set himself down and bite his lips, jitter his feet. Jimmy’s face furrowed and dug deep at the slightest emotion. My knees sagged, soft and liquid, just like the old ladies at the public pool. Our hard lives showed up all over our bodies, but when I said something to that effect, Jimmy’d say, “Who are we comparing to?” I’d find him some aspirin, give myself a few too. We’d sip warm soda out of thin straws I stole from the coffee station at work. We’d handle each other softly for a little while. After I’d put myself to bed, I’d wake late in the night to Jim’s dark whistling over the muted TV hum. The light comforted him even when the voices did not.

Twilight hung behind the curtained windows. I carried a sack of groceries that would sit on the coffee table long enough for the ice cream to melt. “Where’s your uncle?” I asked him. “Jimmy?” I called into every corner of that tiny house. “He can’t have gone,” Sammy said. “He was just here.” My stomach turned with disgust and frustration and relief. “What do you mean just here?” I asked my son. “Minutes or hours?” Sammy shrugged and turned back to the TV. The laundry basket with the broken handle where he sniffed out the clean from the dirty each morning lay abandoned beside the couch. He didn’t have anything else. The bread bag sat open on the kitchen counter, half as empty as when I’d used it to make myself toast that morning. A dirty knife lay next to it, looking like it meant to make it to the sink. I’d expected worse of this moment. I looked in the trash can. “You didn’t see him leave, huh?” I sat next to Sammy and stroked his baby bird hair, waiting for him to answer. At the commercial, Sammy turned to me. “How could I have seen him if he didn’t go?”