Claire Watkins - Battleborn

Last November, my sister married a very tall, very wonderful man named Jacob, who I suspect never treats her like a walking stick. They have a big apartment in the Sunset District with a garage and a little rooftop garden. These things are not easy to come by. For example, I have a crumbling studio above a taqueria in the Mission. There are brown water stains dotting the ceiling, and both of my windows open to the view of my neighbor’s windows, so close I can lean out and press my fingertips to the sills.

When I first moved in, about two years ago, when Peter and I had just started dating, we painted my apartment together. Now, that memory baffles me. Or rather what baffles me is who we were then, the way we stood in the aisle at the hardware store, side by side, our fingers moving delicately over color samples. As though the perfect shade of pumpkin-colored paint would make the hot water run longer, the thick smell of carne and cilantro lighter, the neighborhood better. As though it would do anything for anyone.

Jacob, my brother-in-law, is six-four. He has long ropy limbs and can pick Gwen up like the elephants in Dumbo pick up poles with their trunks when they are assembling the circus tent. Do you remember that scene from Dumbo ? Well, Jacob can hug Gwen like that and he often does. My heart is warmed by tall, ropy Jacob. I beamed at their wedding. Jacob and Gwen are having their first baby soon, and I hope Jacob’s tall genes do not go to waste. I hope they average each other out, at the very least. On our second whale-watching trip Peter and I sat on a narrow wooden bench inside the boat, wet and cold. Peter worked halfheartedly at a crossword puzzle. I asked him to do a Punnett square to see if Jacob and Gwen will average each other out at the very least.

He said, Catie, Punnett squares are not tarot cards. It is when he says things like this that I am reminded that Peter once knew me better than anyone in the world, very briefly, and that one day he could again.

Though they haven’t been told the sex of the baby, I have a feeling that Gwen will have a daughter and that she will be beautiful. She will be tall and thin and lithe like Jacob, with Gwen’s great big brown eyes. They will average each other out and I will be grateful.

In the third grade I won a spelling bee with the word grateful . When she was alive, my mom often told the story of how she felt when I won. She told it as this funny anecdote about how she and the other parents would let out a little cheer each time their child passed a round, and how each round there were fewer and fewer cheers, and how gradually, as I advanced, she became alienated from every other parent in the gymnasium. I cannot remember her even being there.

When I returned from Vegas, the bar where I work gave me time off, paid. Though I wanted to work, needed the tips, I took the time. Peter said we could do whatever I wanted, but the only thing I could think of was to go to the zoo, which we did. After that I wasted my days. Slept in. Watched Law & Order marathons and Dumbo . Napped. Waited for Peter to get off work. When he came home we ordered vegan Chinese, and on one of these nights I asked Peter to take me out on the bay in his research vessel, though I knew this was not allowed.

I said, I need to see the dark silhouettes of blue and gray whales moving like submarines through the sea.

He said only, Oh, little one, which is what he always says these days.

Instead, Peter took some personal days and we left that weekend for the Oregon coast, our first whale-watching trip. It was the second trip to Oregon on which I felt the saltwater spray of the adolescent humpback and on which Peter refused to make me a Punnett square. For the third trip I borrowed Peter’s car and went alone, though he said, I can get the time off, and meant it. I have not made things easy for him.

I saw no whales in the Oregon sea. I missed my sister. I hadn’t seen Gwen since we got back from Vegas, two months before, and I was sick over it. And yet as I drove toward the city I didn’t want to go home, didn’t want to see her. I took my time unpacking, folding clean clothes neatly. I didn’t call Peter to say I was back, that I was okay. I slowly rode my bike out to Gwen’s apartment.

I buzzed and buzzed. There was no answer. From the street I saw that the apartment was lit, though the shades were drawn. I could see Gwen’s silhouette moving from the living room to the kitchen and back, so I used my key and let myself in. Inside the apartment, I came down the hallway and found Gwen wiping the kitchen counter with a sponge. Graceland blared from an old CD player on the counter.

Oh, she said, startled. She turned the music down. I must not have heard you buzz.

This was her way of saying, I hope you aren’t abusing your key.

After a bit she nodded to the CD player. Mom used to play this, she said.

I remember, I said. All the time.

Gwen isn’t a music lover. She probably hasn’t listened to anything besides NPR since her senior year of high school. Once, we rented a car and drove to Santa Cruz and I made her listen to Common and she complained the whole way there. And here she was with Paul Simon. I thought, if you were a musical hermit and your older sister had been recommending you new bands and burning you CDs since you were in the sixth grade, why would you suddenly, after all these years, run out and pick up Paul Simon? Which is to say, of all things to listen to she picks that?

But I didn’t say anything and she went on wiping the counter, standing on her tiptoes to reach the center of the wide island. I picked up a tangerine from the fruit bowl and started peeling it with my thumbnail. I watched how she turned her body to avoid pressing her large belly against the edge of the counter.

I often think about my unborn future beautiful niece. I have plans to buy her nongendered, nonbranded toys: books where the girl characters are smart and adventurous and independent, chemistry sets, plastic models of all the great land mammals, extinct and not. I will read her Rudyard Kipling and show her Dumbo . I hope being a beauty will not be as lonely as they say it is. I am not sure our family can handle much more loneliness.

Finally I asked Gwen, Can we turn this down?

Imoved away from Vegas when I was eighteen, so I’ve been flying there for nearly ten years. In these years I have formulated a theory that all flights into Las Vegas are purposely orchestrated to be as festively stupid as they are to make the idea of traveling to the city for any other reason than to gamble seem hopelessly, painfully bleak. Gwen’s and my flight was no exception. As the plane ascended, the flight attendants flung packets of peanuts down the aisle, gravity pulling them toward the tail, and a voice over the intercom urged us to grab them as they slid past.

It said: Ladies and gentlemen, you’ll find your return flight to San Francisco to be a bit more crowded. The voice said this though the flight was full.

It said: Weight restrictions on this Boeing 757 allow more passengers on return flights from Las Vegas, as their pocketbooks are significantly lighter. And the passengers chuckled and munched their peanuts and they were happy happy happy. And I’ll tell you I envied them. Because this was the voice’s way of saying, We’re going to drop you off in this city and it will take you by your ankles, turn you upside down and shake everything from you. And this was something my sister and I had to learn for ourselves.

As we taxied at McCarran International, the voice came over the PA. again. Pick up as many peanut wrappers from the floor and seats around you as you can, it said. They will bring you luck!