Laura Adamczyk - Hardly Children

When I returned, everyone’s eyes were freshly red.

She’s gone, honey, my aunt said. She’s gone.

I missed it, I said. Like falling asleep before midnight on New Year’s.

We went through the usual arrangements. My aunt sang her hymn in front of a black-clad crowd, and Dad, Carla, and I split a large jar of gray dust. A week later, aquatic experts surveyed a cloudy square of ocean floor, but all they found were a few pieces of silver wing sunk deep to its fathomless bottom.

CARLA CALLEDthe day after Christmas, her voice full of sighs and intention.

Dad said it reminds him of Mom.

What?

The box. The infinity box or whatever. When we talked on the phone just now.

I walked the apartment, from front to back. Jay said he’d take me out for dinner when he got home. I hadn’t been gainfully employed for some time, and I’d been spending my days taking baths and listening to men jackhammer who-knows-what across the street. I was ready to catapult out of myself. I walked into the kitchen and moved the dishes in the sink.

You don’t think that’s weird? she said.

I found a block of cheese in the refrigerator, ripping off chunks and stuffing them into my mouth. I said, He’s probably just thinking metaphorically.

Metaphorically? About your wife ? Why not just put up some pictures?

Why don’t you suggest that?

You could. You should call him. He always says that he never hears from you. You know, in his own cheerful, nothing-ever-really-bothers-me sort of way.

I just saw him.

Before that.

I picked up the cheese brick and let it fall on the counter in dull, loud thuds.

Hey, I should run, Carla. Gotta get dinner on the table!

My man wouldn’t like the crumbs, but I knew he wouldn’t say anything. It was just like me to make little messes. I met Jay a few months after my aunt had put on her show in the old church. I’d been doing fine with a number of fellas whom I didn’t know very well but with whom I had agreeable understandings. Every few days one would bring over something to drink, and I’d relate to him the most pleasant version of my day, skating along the slick surface of our conversation, and then we’d go into the room where I usually slept alone. I had, at that point, stopped talking to the people who knew me best. When Mom was in her living room bed, my thoughts had felt very clear. I drank pale tea and spoke with Carla in slow, careful sentences. After she gave me my share of Mom’s dust, I felt a persistent head muddling. I didn’t want anyone to poke deeper than What did you do today? Carla insistently noted my absence in voicemails, emails, text messages, and even a buzz on my apartment’s call box. I’d eventually reply in short missives confirming my existence.

Jay had caught me alone in a bloodred bar one night when I’d had more than the recommended dosage. The next morning, my chemicals all mixed up, he started asking the getting-to-know-you questions we’d skipped the night before. One of the questions was Mom, and I, as they say, lost it. It , in this case, being the ability to keep from weeping on a stranger. Yes, he looked afraid. But then there was hugging and talking and, at his suggestion, the watching of a DVD of my choosing. The follow ing night he asked to see me again, the following night the same until it became hard to entertain other guests and even rude to do so. Too I had quit my job, and money was at a dangerous low. Not long after our falling together, I fit my life into his apartment and, for reasons I can’t quite explain, started answering my phone again.

THE DAY AFTERNew Year’s. Or the day after that. Hot hangover sweat, mouth film, and the requisite stooped walk from bed into the living room. Jay blinked at me from the couch.

Do you want to know what happened? he asked.

I sat down, covered myself in a ragged fleece, and shoved my feet beneath his butt. There was an insistent pang in my side.

You kind of got into a fight.

Those girls?

I remembered a trio of dumb heels and legs like plastic. Short skirts that didn’t fit the pool hall venue. I recalled asking one of them if they were a package deal or if you had to pay each by the hour.

You made a few comments.

I put my hand up.

You don’t want to know? Jay asked.

I shook my head.

Do you want some coffee?

I shook my head.

Food?

Head.

Water?

Head.

Shelter?

I rested my head on the back of the couch.

He put on Cosmos . Sagan told how long a Saturn year was, sweeping along its orange rings on the deck of his ship. His sonorous voice dropped me into a black hole.

I don’t think I smoke enough pot to enjoy this, I said.

You don’t smoke any pot, he said, holding a lighter to his bowl, his bowl to his face. He inhaled, exhaled, and offered it to me. I wrinkled my nose.

It’s a different way of feeling good, he said. Jay had become so adept at euphemism that he barely said anything anymore.

I’ll just get paranoid and fall asleep, I said.

But you’ll have one good idea.

Last time, I had an idea for a show in which people were kidnapped, forced to ride roller coasters for twenty-four hours, and returned home without explanation. Another time it was an art installation that was a dimly lit staircase filled with fog and people crawled up and up and they had no idea when it would end and the stair case was so long that people eventually got too tired or hungry to go on, so they’d give up and walk back down.

Oh, look, Jay said, turning. His apartment was on the second floor of a two-story graystone, and the tall windows behind the couch beveled out in a half polygon.

They put in a new sidewalk where they tore up the old one, he said.

What happened to the old one? I asked.

Dunno.

I started tearing up thinking about it. I went into the bathroom, where I kept a bottle of Listerine filled with off-brand whiskey under the sink. I did my worst in private. I was losing memories before I had them. I took a swig and looked at myself in the mirror. I sat on the toilet and took another pull. The floorboards in the hallway creaked, and Jay’s knock came, like I knew it would, then, Hey, Andie. He always said it the same way: concerned with not sounding overly concerned. I used to love watching him come out of the shower. Those few moments when he’d zip himself into jeans and walk the apartment damp and shirtless. It had nothing to do with his body or how it looked, but rather how he lived inside of it. Ragged, like how some men toss logs into the bed of an old truck, not worried if they beat it up. It had given me the feeling of, if not security, then sturdiness. Like it wouldn’t be easy to knock him over.

You okay in there?

Yes, I said, running the bathwater.

I heard the door creak as Jay leaned against it and slid down.

I always said I didn’t want to have a baby, he said. I was afraid I’d crush it or something. But now I know that I can take care of things. And eventually the child would take care of itself. Take the training wheels off, you know?

Can we talk about this later?

Your sister seems so happy, he said.

I thought that she was more impermeable than happy. She whisked bad news right off of her. Maybe that’s what being happy meant.

It might be a good time to think about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, he said.

He kept on as the tub filled. I took off my clothes and lay down in the water, submerging my ears so that every sound came to me muffled and from a distance.

I PREFERRED THE OLD WAYSof communicating or not communicating, so the next day after my baths, I wrote Daddy a letter.