Me and My Baby View the Eclipse (13 page)

I
got a wife, which might surprise you, seeing as how I'm still so young and all. I got a baby too. Well I've got this wife. She looks like Ann-Margret too. But her name is Kim. We live with my moma and my sister, Janice. You ought to see this picture of my wife we've got up on top of the TV, Kim making her debut which is something she honest to God did three years ago in Rocky Mount. In the picture, Kim is wearing a long white floor-length fancy dress and pearls and little pearl earrings. She's got lace and flowers and all in her hair. She looks great. She is staring right out of that picture frame and when you look at the picture, it's like her eyes will follow you all over the room. You can sit on the couch or you can sit in the recliner. There is a famous painting like that too. I remember this from Art in high school. Anyway when I look at Kim's deb picture in its fancy frame, I like to think that she is looking into the future. That she is looking for me.

She found me about one year later. See, first Kim was a deb and then she went to St. Marys College over here in Raleigh, they have got a lot of debs at St. Marys. Kim's mother and two of her aunts went to St. Marys too, what chance did she have. They make a daisy chain when you graduate from St. Marys, and hand it over to the juniors. I have seen a picture of this, Kim's mother holding up the daisy chain. She is younger in the picture, but she does not look like Ann-Margret. Her collarbones stick out. She looks like a bitch which she is, no wonder Kim's daddy split.

Kim herself did not get to do the chain thing. She got pregnant, and married me.

See, last spring I went over there to St. Marys with Creative Landscaping. I was working two jobs then because Daddy was in the hospital at Dorothea Dix which he has been in and out of for years. He sees things. He hears them too. You can't keep him on his medicine. It is another story. Anyway I had already graduated from Broughton High and I was working these two jobs, so I went over there to St. Marys College with Creative Landscaping. We had a contract with them. They have these big long rows of bushes going everyplace, and if any one of those bushes started dying, we would come in and take it out and replace it with another one the same size. And we used to change the flowers around the fountain and the sundial and all along there in front of the chapel, whatever was prettiest that was in season, first daffodils then pansies then petunias then gardenias then mums in the fall. Something is always blooming at St. Marys College. Everything is the same size. It looks great. So I liked that job a lot, I like to see things looking good. In fact I got to thinking I might go over to State and get a degree in that. I had thought English, before I got the Creative Landscaping job. I had $1,900 saved up, but then I got married.

I used to have this weird little man teacher at Broughton High named Mr. Burton, he thought I was great in English. When we did Shakespeare, we had to write a sonnet. The end of my sonnet was,

So let me be a candle burning bright

With hope and love against the coming night.

That is a couplet. It knocked him out. He gave me an A plus. Then he came over and sat down next to me in the cafeteria at Lunch. He had this big salad. He said he was a vegetarian.

“Joe,” he said next, “what are your plans for next year?”

“Work, I reckon,” I said.

He said he hoped I was considering college. He hoped I had looked into the possibilities for financial aid. But on account of what had happened with Daddy and all, I had dropped out once already. So my grades were not too hot. For a while there I couldn't concentrate. I got plenty of Cs. But then Moma quit drinking and got another job and I came back for senior year.

But I did not want to get into all this with Mr. Burton.

He had a pink shirt on. This buddy of mine, Roger, always said Mr. Burton was gay but I don't think so. “I'll be glad to write you a recommendation anytime, anyplace,” Mr. Burton said. He had salad in his teeth. “Do you
want
to go to college?” he asked me. We stood up with our trays.

“It is my dream,” I said.

As soon as I said this, I knew it was true. And who knows? I might get there yet. But I've got a family to take care of now. I try to do the right thing.

So this is how I met Kim. It was spring, everything blooming and the right size on the campus at St. Marys College. Azaleas, forsythia, periwinkle, you name it, it was blooming. We were edging the walks. So that day I had to work bent over which made my jeans too tight. I took my wallet and my knife out of my pocket and put them up in the crotch of a tree. Then when I got halfway home I remembered this, so I had to get off the Beltline and turn all the way around and go back. So I was pissed. It was hot, and I was pissed. I went back over there.

Now the grass was full of girls, soaking up the rays. Classes must have been over for the day. Lord. Tits and ass and long, long legs, and all of them winter white. This was just about the first day it was hot enough to lay out, see.

Then I saw her. Oh lord. Kim was laying on her back on her towel, wearing this little bitty pink bikini bathing suit. She had cotton pads over her eyes. She had this aluminum, I guess it was, reflector under her head, so she would get
more
sun. Oh lord. She was all pink and curvy. She looked as good as it gets. I got my knife and my wallet out of this crotch in the tree and put them in my pocket and then I just stood there. I couldn't of moved if you'd paid me. I stood there awhile and then two things happened real fast.

Kim sat up all of a sudden and the cotton pads fell down off her eyes. “What do you think you're looking at?” she said. But she did not act mad. She had a little line of sweat on her upper lip. She looked so good.

At the same time she sat up, this big security guard in a brown shirt and pants started across the grass toward us. “Hey, buddy!” he was hollering. They keep a real close watch on those girls. By then, though, I didn't care if he shot me.

“I'm looking at
you
,” I said to Kim.

She crinkled up the corners of her eyes then the way she does and smiled at me, she was ready for adventure, I could tell.

“All right, buddy. The show's over.” The security guard had me by the elbow, he was hustling me out of there. I looked back at Kim while he did this.

“Call me,” she said.

Well, I did, of course. I was a regular Sherlock Holmes figuring out who she was and how to do it. I had to sleuth around. But she was my dream girl. I told her so, right off the bat.

“Don't even get in this truck unless you are going to take me seriously,” I said the first time I picked her up. I had planned to say this. I had practiced saying it. My truck was the only truck parked along that half-moon driveway in front of the school, where you go to pick up your date. People were looking at it.

She climbed right in. “Where are we going?” she said.

I drove her up to Kerr Lake. We got some beer and some crackers and Vienna sausage and Velveeta cheese at a 7-Eleven on the way up there. We had a picnic. It was the best food I ever ate. On the way back, I played her my new Don Williams tape. It's real romantic. I was in love. By then it was dark out and we rode with the windows down. Kim scooted over and sat real close to me in the truck. She has this way of filling her skin so full of herself that she almost busts out, if you follow me. It's hard to explain. It is a very attractive feature though. Maybe you call it charisma. I went home and wrote a song about her.

We kept it up. I was over there at the college as much as I could be, whenever I wasn't working. Anytime I could get over there, Kim would go out with me. She could have had her pick and I knew it, boys from State, fraternity guys from Chapel Hill. But Kim wanted me. She wanted me even after her mother started taking a fit which she did soon enough. Her mother really got up on her high horse about it. She told Kim that she couldn't see me anymore, and said I was a day laborer. I couldn't argue with her. I reckon I am one. I did not even try to tell Kim's mother about being in the Art Club or the Honor Council or what Mr. Burton said. Kim's suitemates thought it was all real romantic, they used to cover for her when she would stay out all night. Of course I couldn't take her over to my house because of my little sister, Janice, that I felt kind of responsible for. So we stayed at Days Inns, and like that. One time we went down to Morehead City and ate at Captain Tony's, right on the dock. Kim was not doing so hot in school by then as you can imagine. Exams were coming up. I reckon she would of flunked out if she hadn't of gotten pregnant, which she did.

“What do
you
want to do?” I asked her this when the EPT showed positive. What I wanted to do was marry her, but I didn't want to force her into anything.

She looked at me. Her brown eyes got big and sparkly. Again I felt that quality I was telling you about, like she might pop right out of her skin. “I want to have the baby,” she said. Kim's dorm room was all full of stuffed animals and Care Bears and rainbow posters, and like that, so I was not surprised.

“Mama will just
die
,” she said. Now I knew
that
was true too. Kim's mom always told her, Marry a surgeon. Kim hates her mom. Kim's dad left because he just couldn't take it anymore, according to Kim. Her older brother went with him, out to California. Kim's mom had already tried to get her father to write to Kim and tell her to stop dating me, but he would not. Instead he sent her a postcard from Hawaii that said, “Follow your bliss. Love, Dad.”

So I was not surprised at the way Kim's mom acted. The only thing that did surprise me was my own family's reaction. My mother is a sweet woman, she was sweet even when she was drinking. Now she's got high sugar and can't. Anyway my mother just smiled and kissed me when I told her, but that night I heard her crying in bed like her heart would break, that real loud kind of crying which is embarrassing to hear. The only time I ever heard her do it before was when Gran-Gran died, and the first time Daddy went into Dix. Janice kicked me in the leg when I told her, this surprised the hell out of me. I mean, I practically raised Janice. I guess she is jealous of Kim or something. Still, they came around. And they have been sweet as can be ever since Kim tried to slit her wrists.

That was four months ago, when Stacy was two months old. I was working two jobs, one at Creative Landscaping and one at Copy Quick, and we had a room in a boardinghouse down on Hillsborough Street. But things were not going so good. For one thing, Kim's mom had cut her off, I mean entirely. She didn't call on the telephone, she didn't come over to see the baby.

“I might as well be
dead
,” Kim said. She stuck out her full bottom lip and her pretty brown eyes filled with tears.

“You've got
me
,” I said. Between us on the bed in the room on Hillsborough Street, Stacy cooed and cooed. She held on to my finger. Sirens were screaming out in the street.

Kim looked at me. “I can't live like this,” she said all of a sudden. “I just can't.” She started crying.

Later that week was when she tried to slit her wrists, with a Trac II razor thank God, so it didn't work too good. The social worker at the hospital said she might not of really meant it. He said we needed some additional support. He called Kim's mother but even then she wouldn't talk on the phone to her daughter, heart of steel. Then Janice moved in the bedroom with Moma and we moved in with them, so Moma and Janice can watch the baby and Kim can get out some. Now Kim has got a part-time job at Tanfastic. But she still cries a lot, and she won't say why. The doctor says it is hormones, Moma says it's the blues. Anyway this is common, after a baby. It's been on TV. You can't blame Kim either. Her life is different from what it was. At her mother's house in Rocky Mount, for instance, they have five bedrooms and wall-to-wall carpet. I know this.

But Kim hasn't got it
too
bad since we moved over here. She put Stacy on a bottle so she's got her figure back, and she's real tan. She looks great. And she doesn't have to do a thing except play with Stacy and watch TV. It's a funny thing, before we got married, I did not have any idea that Kim watched so much TV. I used to read books all the time myself. I can read the hell out of a book. But Kim doesn't like for me to read too much, she says it makes her feel left out. I am mostly too tired now, anyway. Now what we do is, she watches TV and I watch her. Janice is dating somebody now, she's gone a lot. Moma is in her room. I lay on the couch watching Kim watch TV and little Stacy lays on my chest. Stacy loves this. She's a little doll. She has this funny snuffly breath and a sweet milk smell. Stacy is one of those real solid babies with a round head and big round eyes. Her cheeks stick out. Now she sits up by herself, it won't be long until she is all over the place, Moma says.

On Sundays when I'm off work, me and Kim will go for a long ride in the truck, we put Stacy in her carrier between us on the seat. We might drive over to Chapel Hill or Rocky Mount, eat some tacos. We might take all day and drive up on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I can't ever figure out how they got all those rocks up there, to build those walls along the Parkway. It is amazing. It looks good too. I love riding along like this, looking out at some scenery, looking over at Kim, looking down at Stacy just sleeping away. It makes Stacy sleep, to go riding.

It makes her sleep to lay on my chest too as I was saying, we do that most nights. Stacy will snuffle and hold on tight to my finger even when she's asleep. I look at Kim and her face is beautiful in the pale blue light of the TV. She watches TV real hard, like she's taking a class or something. Stacy snuffles. This is my family. I am the man of the house.

Only, this morning something happened that worries me some, it's hard to say why. Me and Kim were on our way to work and we drove in the Biscuit Kitchen like always. Mornings are a drag because you've got so much to do then, Kim has got to spend plenty of time dressing because she's got to look real good for her job at Tanfastic. It's like, part of the job. So I get Stacy up and change her and give her a bottle. She's got these little yellow pajamas with rabbits on them. I fix Moma her Diet Pepsi and take it in there and put it on the nightstand for her when I wake her up, which is the last thing I do before we go out and get in the truck and head for the Biscuit Kitchen. It's early, foggy and misty all over Raleigh. The arc lights are still on in Cameron Village when we drive by there, they make a misty pink glow in the fog, like fairyland. We drive past NC State, we drive past St. Marys.