Amy Yamada - Bedtime Eyes

Coco laughed. It was unbelievable that she could be in love with a sloppy drunk! And as she thought about him, that sloppy, drunken face floated into her thoughts and she found herself weeping. She was beginning to see that maybe love wasn’t impulsive, that it wasn’t a pounding heart or some big, momentous event.

Maybe, she thought, it means crying just because he’s not there. She slapped herself on the forehead at how long it had taken her to figure that out. So maybe that’s it. For a moment it seemed mildly irritating, but then a warm glow began to spread over her.

One weekend, when Coco went to visit him, Rick was packing a suitcase.

“Hey, honey. What are you doing?”

Rick explained that his father was dying and that he would be going back to San Francisco for about ten days. He turned his attention back to the suitcase, humming happily to himself as he packed.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of thoughtless to be so cheerful?”

“Huh? You’ve got to be kidding me. This is the guy who walked out on my mother. He just ditched her, and I haven’t seen him since I was a kid. How do you expect me to feel sorry for him? Shit, I don’t even know the guy. All I know about him is that he’s an alcoholic.”

“Sounds a lot like you…”

“Hmm, I guess drinking runs in our family….”

A broad grin spread across Rick’s face.

“Aw, poor old Dad, I’ll raise a glass to him.”

Having given himself the excuse, Rick stopped packing for a moment and poured himself a drink. Jesse was next to him, quietly putting toys into a bag.

“Is he going, too?”

“Yeah, baby, sure he is.”

“What about school?”

“Hey, I know he’s got to go to school, but who’s going to look after him? I told his mama that I had to go away, but she just went nuts on me. Said she wouldn’t look after him unless I gave her two hundred bucks. Shit, it’s not like I can’t afford it—a couple of hundred bucks ain’t nothing—but I’m fucked if I’ll pay the bitch to look after her own kid. I’d rather take him with me and let him miss school for ten days.”

Jesse said nothing. He just listened. Coco wanted to say, Let me take care of him, but she kept her mouth shut. She knew there was no way she could get along with Jesse on her own. He’d surely refuse to rely on her for anything. Coco thought Jesse was like a puppy—she knew he wouldn’t let anyone but Rick get close to him.

But two hundred dollars? That was ridiculous! How could anyone ask for that sort of money just to look after a kid for ten days? Maybe the woman had forgotten that Jesse was her own child? But however you cut it, the fact remained that she was happy to ditch her own son for the want of a lousy couple of hundred dollars. What sort of a woman was she? Who the hell did she think she was?

Coco herself was basically scared of kids. She had no desire to have any of her own, and with a body like hers, with men falling at her feet, she couldn’t imagine giving that all up to be pregnant. But while she had no interest in becoming a mother herself, she couldn’t understand anyone having a child and then abandoning all responsibility toward it.

The more she thought about Jesse’s mother, the angrier she became.

“I’ll look after him,” she blurted out.

There was a brief silence. Speechless, both Rick and Jesse stopped what they were doing to look at her.

“Are you sure?”

Rick looked like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Jesse stared, too, a hard, piercing stare that made Coco flinch.

“Y-y-yeah, s-sure I’m sure,” she stammered.

Now there was no going back. Before she could regret her offer, Rick had her in his arms.

“Baby, you’re amazing. What would I do without you? Damn, I’ve got good taste in women!”

He was clearly delighted.

“Now, Jesse, you see you behave yourself for Coco, you hear? And if she brings any guys home with her, you just let me know, okay?”

Suddenly Rick’s face changed.

“You know, thinking about my daddy like this, it makes me feel real sad. He was just a drunken bum, but he was a good dad.”

A few moments later, Rick’s sadness had turned to grief and he began to mourn his father, ignoring the fact that he wasn’t dead yet.

Coco expected Jesse to refuse to stay with her.

“So, will you be okay with me staying here?” she asked him.

“Sure,” he replied, “but it ain’t gonna be easy for you.”

It was times like this when Coco found it hard to like Jesse. She loved men—all men—and she thought that maybe someday she might even care about Jesse, too. But sometimes she found it hard to convince herself.

Rick was leaving on a flight to San Francisco the next morning, but instead of finishing his packing, he started drinking. Coco was beginning to feel nervous about being left alone with Jesse, so she started drinking, too. It would be ten days until she saw Rick again, and already she was hurting.

“I wonder if I’ll be able to sleep at night?”

“Once Jesse goes to bed it will be nice and quiet. You’ll be fine.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. What I mean is, will I be able to sleep if you’re not here with me?”

Rick took her in his arms and held her tight.

His face looked suddenly serious, and he asked, “Will everything be okay at work?”

“Sure, that’s no problem. It’s only during the day, anyway.”

She sighed and gave him a weary smile.

“So how did I end up falling in love with a guy like you, huh? I had dozens of guys hanging around me, opening doors and following me around…

“Oh, my poor old daddy!” wailed Rick playfully. She knew he was trying to change the subject.

He held her close again, and Coco winced as she felt the rough stubble on his chin scraping painfully against her cheek.

When a woman falls in love with a man, she mused to herself, she’ll forgive him just about anything.

And so Coco and Jesse were left alone together.

Coco’s friends were all very interested to see what would V happen, and one by one they came to visit her to see how she was coping. Like Coco, they had never had anything to do with kids before, so they called in regularly. It was like taking a trip to the circus.

For his part, Jesse made no attempt to get along with Coco, and apart from when it was absolutely necessary, he hardly spoke to her at all. He sat in a corner of the apartment like a caged animal, listening to his music.

Coco decided that the least she could do was feed him. After her workday was over, she still had to go shopping and then cook when she got home. One day, Coco was expecting her friend Kay to drop by, so she started cooking a roast. As the wonderful smell of the beef roasting in the oven filled the apartment, Coco began to feel blue, sad that Rick wasn’t there to share it with them and sad that the roast would disappear without him ever seeing it.

Coco missed Rick. When people care for each other, she thought, they want to talk to each other about their thoughts and feelings, and about the things that happen to them each day. But when there’s no one there to listen, when you can’t tell them those things, that’s when you start to feel lonely.

Coco had only spent the weekends with Rick, but now weekends were no longer enough. Until now, she had never met a guy she wanted to spend much time with. She had no desire to share activities like brushing teeth, taking an afternoon nap, or shopping for clothes. The guys she went out with always brushed their teeth before their dates with her. And they always picked out their own clothes. Seeing Rick wandering around the apartment with a toothbrush hanging out of the corner of his mouth was an entirely new experience for Coco, and there was no difference for her between his brushing his teeth and their making love—they were both as important. So did this mean that sex and brushing your teeth were more or less the same kind of thing? Coco blushed at the thought. Since Rick had been away, she had nearly made the decision to give up her apartment and move in with him.