John Domini - Highway Trade and Other Stories

“Don’t worry,” she croaked. “Nobody else spent…”

But before she could finish Wade hauled himself out of his bedroom, skipping the wheelchair because he didn’t want to miss anything. Nellie settled on a kitchen chair. She hardly glanced at the pack of Camels Ernie tossed onto her place-mat. Keep the priorities straight, check the boy out.

Like most of the c.p. victims she’d seen, Wade had a handsome head. She could read his eyes so well because they were so sensitive, with the kind of wide, slow lids that would be sexy on another man. His nose was large enough to give the rest a center, and while Wade hadn’t stopped grinning since he’d seen that it was Ernie, his lips were so bright and defined that he didn’t look goofy. When she’d finished her onceover — the strain told: the skin under one eye was twitching and that lid drooped — Nellie rose and got his juice and vitamins from the fridge. She took one of his unbreakable cups from the rack and fitted it into the boy’s better hand; she made sure to slip the index and middle fingers inside the handle together.

Ernie kept up the hustle. The radio had gone on, some bang-the-can blues out of a college station somewhere, and he worked around Nellie and Wade as if the kitchen were house-sized. Even singeing a finger on the coffeepot didn’t stop him. What sort of a person wakes up ready to rock? Wade made a crack about the burn throwing off his aim, and in another minute they were trading ball scores. Just how was Nellie supposed to handle it? She took a cup of Ernie’s “earthquake bean”—Italian and Maxwell House, at least she’d had it before. The eggs were steaming spiky with dill in front of her and she was working up to them, nearly done with her first cigarette, when Nellie realized the conversation had gotten round to Mom.

“Wouldn’t you like it if Mom here went back to college?” Ernie was saying. “Wouldn’t you like to say, ’My Mom the bachelor?’”

Wearily she made a face. “Ernie, do we have to go through this?”

“Go through this? Gnarly girl, go through this?” God he was hungry for an argument. “How can you call this anything after what you’ve been through for the last ten years?”

“Ernie,” the best she could manage was trying to be reasonable. “You just got finished with one catastrophe. What have you got to prove, that you have to go straight into another?”

“Mom,” Wade said. “Come on, never mind that stuff now. Tell him about what happened with your comp teacher.”

“I can imagine.” Ernie opened the Sports, flat-faced.

Nellie had to laugh, the nasty thought starting to warm her up at last. “Oh Ernie. Honestly. You think I—“

“Mo-om . Come on. Tell him.” Wade’s robe-sleeve flopped over his hand when he tried to point. “And Ernie, you listen. Mom tells a great story when she gets into it.”

Okay, made as much sense as anything else this morning. Nellie’s comp teacher. “Talk about having something to prove. The guy wore a coat and tie and like, serious dress slacks in June. In June. I mean I know he can’t be making more than 12 K a year.” She noticed that while Ernie kept his eyes on the scores, he’d held one page so long that the butter on his burnt finger had started soaking into the print. “And then one day he starts telling the whole class about how he and his wife are trying to have a baby.” That got his head up.

Wade was giggling. “Listen, Ernie. The best part is when she starts foaming at the mouth.”

“Right in front of the whole class.” Nellie liked that last crack herself; she figured she could risk a piece of bacon. “I had to wonder, was this Writing 121 or Sex Education?

“I mean, imagine if a guy like that walked into the Drop By. You’d see through him right away, right? But up there in front of the blackboard, dress slacks in June. The guy actually comes across like he’s somebody who knows something. And he stands there, and he has the nerve to tell us that he and his wife have it all planned. I mean I’m sitting right there and he has the nerve to say that if they don’t have a kid in the next year they’re not going to have one at all, because it would increase the percentile risk of disability. Increase the percentile risk!”

Wade was laughing, Ernie grinning. He’d worked a hand up under his turtleneck, scratching for effect.

“Very next class I brought in Wade. Oh yeah, I hauled Wade in there front and center and I said, ‘This is my son.’”

“It was beautiful,” Wade crowed. “Really Ernie, I wish you could have seen it. Every time the guy tried to write on the blackboard he misspelled another word.”

Now Ernie had begun laughing, Wade had got him into it. And she’d talked enough to blow off a little anger, so at last Nellie caught on to what the boy had been doing. Talking slick—“the guy.” Setting up the rules for this part of the conversation and then following them through. Wade was even playing along with Ernie’s touch-game, his better hand under his robe. Grinning smart and happy, father and son. And so here it came, a classic mybaby flash. Nellie never got used to them. Start with mybaby, mybaby and somehow in the same moment see him in the computer lab or behind the biggest desk at a government agency; start with picturing his disease as if the muscles drained from his arms and legs had to be dragged behind him in a sack, rotting and bleeding forever, but at the same time imagine a day when the c.p. might be nothing more than an offhand chuckle, a one-liner like “It was harder on my mother than it was on me.” Grinning smart and happy.

Her eggs had gone cold, that helped. But after her second rubbery forkful Nellie realized that the two men were still at it: get Mom back to school. She needed another cigarette.

“No way Jose.” But she hadn’t meant to hit Ernie with the match, she’d been aiming for the sink.

Wade adjusted his lapel, his stalky fingers hooking the terrycloth expertly. “This isn’t just you, Ernie. You should know that. The last couple Christmases, Mom was saying she was going to join the Communist Party.”

“Ganging up on me only makes it worse. Look Wade, this guy is a loser.”

“M-m-mom!” She felt his look in her spine. “All we’re saying is, you did g-g-good that year you were in school. When you got that A in P-poly Sci, you p-put the exam up on the f-f-fridge.”

She’d dropped her forehead onto her fists, but now the tabletop itself seemed to aggravate her. Jesus what clutter, a pepper mill and ajar of British jam. Wade had actually fallen for this?

“Tired of the same old grind?” Ernie said. “Of dead-end jobs that get you nowhere?” The rap was so-so at best, but Wade was laughing already. “Well have you ever considered a future in—“

The knock at the door saved him. Saved him, positively: she’d hooked her fingers under the coffeepot trivet. But the aggro was so zingy in her by then that when it turned out to be Wade’s father on the stoop, thrusting roses in her hand and brassing his way through hello-may-I-come-in, Nellie could only stand and stare while the man kept going on whatever had brought him this far and brushed past her into the house. Wade’s father, Rusty. His guitar-player’s body still too rangy for a place this size. Plus he’d handed her these impossible cherry-red roses (fakes of course: paper was the best you could get on a Sunday), plus he carried three stacked, hefty presents for Wade. Somehow he made room for these on the kitchen table. Nellie couldn’t really see, and she couldn’t pick up what kind of excuses he was giving Wade and Ernie either. The back of the man’s good London Fog or whatever blocked her view, and with the door open behind her the rain was too loud. Jesus God, had she asked for such a Sunday morning? The weather on her back was cold, as well; she had nothing but panties and a t-shirt under her robe.