One Small Thing (10 page)

Dan nodded and looked out the living room window. Her Land Rover was back—parked out front—but she’d walked over to Luis and Valerie’s, their front door closing behind her. “Yeah. Both of us.”

“Of course. But the facts about Hep C are clear. It can be hidden, and then it can cause problems.”

“I’m not worried about it,” Dan said. “My wife and I, we’ve been going through infertility treatments. I’ve been tested for everything a couple of times. Randi must have picked that up after—after me. After the baby.” Dan leaned back against the couch. What had her life been like after he left? Had she given up the drugs when Daniel was born? As she closed the thin apartment door, what did she decide? To keep the baby, that was one thing. To go back to her drugs. That was another. And when had she contracted hepatitis? That was through blood. Needles? Sex? He didn’t think he’d ever be able to ask Daniel any of these questions.

He sucked in air. “But the boy? He’s fine, isn’t he?”

“Daniel? Oh, yes. He’s a little small, but his doctor said physically everything was great.”

“Physically. What about, you know?”

“I did mention to you that he’d been left alone for almost a week, right? The story is that Randi went to the hospital—or someone called the ambulance. She was critical at that point, and he ended up taking care of himself. Not going to school. Feeding himself. Worrying. A neighbor finally figured out what was going on, though it took him a while because Randi wasn’t always home in general. Let’s put it this way, Daniel has some ‘issues.’”

“Issues,” Dan repeated. Who didn’t have issues? He himself had ten years of “back” issues. He had a year’s subscription of issues. Avery did, too. Luis. Valerie. Even happy people had issues. Problems. Sad stories. But most people didn’t have to stay at home in a trailer while mothers died of a blood disease in a hospital. Most people had family and friends to take care of them. Most people weren’t completely alone.

“How has he handled all of it?” Dan asked.

“He’s really a great little kid. I think he took over the parental role in some ways, making him overly responsible but still upset. This happens with children of addicted parents. He fights sometimes when he doesn’t have words. Acts out. It’s hard for him to open up.”

A chip off the old block, he thought. He hadn’t opened up either, and now he had no words, the pause in the phone staticky and long.

“So is your wife pregnant?” Midori asked finally.

“No. Nothing’s worked.”

“Oh.”

“She gave up. For now. This morning. Called her doctor, canceled all the appointments. Do you know what that means?” he said without pausing. “That’s like giving up a life. She’s saying no to the process that she’s followed to the letter since we started two years. I can’t believe it.”

“Dan.”

“We’ve been trying for fucking two years. And this morning she rips up the nursery, calls the doctor, and then leaves.”

“Dan,” Midori said, “this hasn’t likely been easy for her to hear. I’m sorry I had to dump it on you like this. If it hadn’t been—“

“It’s not your fault at all.” Dan paced the living room. “It’s all about me and how I screwed everything up long before I even met Avery. How did I think things could be normal? I just left Randi. I left her, and she had to take care of our son. I know he’s mine. Randi might have been a drug addict. She might have partied and been a lazy mother or something, but she was true. My God, she was true to me. She never called me, even when things must have been complete shit for her. She let me have my life.”

Dan leaned against the smooth, just painted wall and then slid to the floor, bouncing on his knees, his head hanging. “She never even called me.”

“Dan,” Midori said, her calm voice raised. “Listen. This is difficult. No matter who you are in the situation, this is difficult.”

“Especially for Randi. She’s the one who’s dead.” He wiped his eyes and tried to breathe.

“Yes, that’s true. But really, it’s harder for you and Daniel and Avery. You’re the ones who have to live now. There is so much that all of you will have to adjust to. But first things first.”

Right
, Dan thought. One thing at a time, the way he’d lived since the day he woke up to find Randi asleep in her own vomit. Take one day at a time and do it. He’d bucked up, like his father had always wanted. He kept cracking.

“First, do what we talked about last night. Make the appointments, okay? And I’m going to give you another number. I want you to call today, right after we hang up. I bet he’s not in the office, but you need to see someone.”

“You mean like a psychologist?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean. His name is Bret Parish. He’s in Berkeley. We’ve known each other since college. He’s worked with a lot of families.”

Dan blew out a trapped breath and stood up, pushing his hair back from his forehead. Outside, Ralph Chatagnier was sweeping the remnants of sparklers and firecrackers from his driveway and talking to Frank Chow, who was watering his slightly crushed Jerusalem sage and purple penstemon. Just beyond this window, life was going on as it had for years. How would he ever be able to open the door of his house and merge into it as if nothing were different? Avery had managed to keep moving, work out, talk with friends. Here he was. Stuck. That’s why he loved her, why he’d always loved her. She knew how to go on, to take plain air and form it into action and substance.

“I’ll take it,” he said, walking over to Avery’s organized desk and picking up a pen. “Give it to me. I’ll call.” He would go anywhere to stop feeling like this.

Luis opened the nursery door and poked his head in. “Hey, man. I’ve been knocking on the front door.”

Dan shrugged, staring at the crib. “Sorry. I’m . . . .” He trailed off, not know what he was at all.

Luis opened the door the whole way and walked in, putting his toolbox on the carpet. “Well, Avery sure had at it in here.”

“Are they still at your house?” Dan swallowed, wiped his face, and stood up. “Or did they go to the park?”

Putting his hands in his pockets and leaning against the wall, Luis shook his head. “Man, they high-tailed it out of there. Packed up a lunch that will last them for days. Thank God it’s cooled down some, or I’d have to go rescue Tomás.”

Rescue. That’s what Dan should be doing already, finding his poor boy and bringing him home. Going to Breuner’s or Sleep Train to buy a big boy bed, going to Mervyn’s for clothes and shoes, calling up the school district to get him tested this summer so he could be ready for school. Rather than calling Jared and Midori and the doctors and this psychologist, Bret Parish, and making all of his appointments, he should be gone, halfway to Turlock by now, half-way to the foster home.

“So, like, what happened, man?” Luis sat down on the carpet next to him.

Dan looked into Luis’ brown eyes. If he’d been able to look at eyes like that instead of his father’s or even Jared’s, he knew he’d never have had to lie. Tomás was lucky if this was the gaze he’d get when he cut school or blew up a mailbox or skinny-dipped at Larch Bank Pool. Or became, God forbid, a pot fiend or lived with a live-wire girl or stole family-heirloom coins to buy drugs. He sighed and pulled his knees up, wrapping his arms around them. “The past. It caught up to me. Big time. And it’s bad.”

“Avery said there was a kid, man.”

Dan nodded. “I had a girlfriend. For a long time. All of high school and four years afterward. She died. She died a month ago, and she had a ten-year-old kid. They think he’s mine.”

“Shit, man. Unbelievable.”

“Yeah.”

Luis leaned against the wall. “You know, this happened to my father’s family. In Mexico City, where my grandfather is from—Tacuba—he had another family. Like, four girls. My grandmother knew about it, but it was this terrible family secret, a giant skeleton in the closet. When my dad finally found out, he wouldn’t speak to my grandfather for years.”

“What about your grandmother? Did she forgive him?” Dan thought of Avery, her sudden, early morning rearranging of this room, her clipped, tight voice, her rigid back as she walked out of the house.

“It was ugly, man. They lived in a house that has a courtyard, house on all four sides. My grandfather stayed on one side, my grandmother on the other, only meeting for meals. When my father went down, he’d stay on my grandmother’s side. At
fiestas
, they would ignore each other or say things like, ‘Would you ask your
abuelo
to answer the door,’ or ‘Tell your
abuleita
that we have run out of rum.’”

Dan looked around the room. Maybe he would end up in here, alone, or with his boy, Valerie acting as intermediary, saying, “Avery wants to know if you paid the gas bill”’ or “Did you call Terminex about the repair on the pool deck?”

“So, what happened?”

Luis shook his head. “My grandfather got sick and called all his family to the death bed. My father and his brothers and these four girls, women, at this point. My grandmother made a big wailing deal about forgiving him, hugging the four girls, and then he died, my grandmother holding his hand. And now, I have this huge extended family. Valerie and I visited them all when we went to Mexico City after we graduated. It all ended up okay in the end.”

“But,” Dan said, “it wasn’t easy during.”

“No. My grandmother and grandfather lost a lot of years. Could have been good years. My dad, too.”

“I’ve lost ten years of this boy’s life. And with Avery and the baby we don’t have, I’m losing more time.”

“But,” Luis said, patting Dan’s knee, “man, you didn’t even know. My grandfather knew about his ‘surprise’ other children. You weren’t even warned. You are acknowledging this right away. Not like my family.”

“So what? It all boils down to the same thing. Look what I’ve lost.”

Luis leaned forward and opened his toolbox. They sat in silence as Luis picked up and looked at his wrench, screwdriver, hammer, finally putting them down and sighing. “I can’t pretend to really know how you feel, man. But you don’t have to lose any more, Dan. It doesn’t have to be that way. We’re not in Mexico. It can be a different story.”

“What do I do? What should I do? I don’t know how to do this. No one seems to be able to tell me. I’ve been listening to advice, but I’m sitting here in this room. Waiting.”

“What are you waiting for, man?”

Dan looked up at his friend, his mouth open. He was waiting for it to be over. He was waiting for the test results, the foster care visit and reunion or “union” with Daniel, the move home, Avery’s reconciliation with his past and his son and their new life, his parents’ blessing. A baby, his and Avery’s, born after Daniel settled in. He was waiting to not have to live through it. “I just need it to be over.”

Luis stood up. “It’s not going to be over unless it starts.”

Dan stood up, feeling a new ache in his bones. “You’re right.”

“So let’s take this crib apart.”

“Fine.”

“And then take a shower man, so I won’t get arrested if I haul you out of this house. We’ll get some lunch, and we’ll do what you need to do today. Maybe I’ll barbeque tonight. I’ve got some leftover
carne asada
.”

Dan bent over Luis’ toolbox, trying to pick a screwdriver through the blur in his head. “Yes,” he whispered, and they began, taking apart the thick, rich wood of his baby’s bed.

Even though she wasn’t invited, Randi Gold sat between Dan and Avery at dinner. As Valerie and Luis passed dishes—
carne asada, salsa verde, arroz con elote
—Avery handing plates to Dan but not looking at him, he felt Randi sidling in, leaning her elbows on the table, saying, “What’s this shit? God, Dan, what in the
hell
are you eating? Do you have any hamburgers or something? A plain old hot dog?” As she said the words, she looked at him, her fine, thin freckled skin crinkled at the corners of her eyes. Her hair was pulled up in a puffy ponytail, wild curls spilling to her shoulders, the right one bare, her purple shirt pulled down over it. She kicked him under the table with her sharp, black heel and then wrapped her leg around his as she used to do, pulling him close.

“This is even better the next day,” Avery said, holding up a fork full of carne asada. “I could eat this constantly if it weren’t for the cholesterol.”

“Who is she trying to impress?” Randi dug an elbow in his side. “She doesn’t even know how to spell it. Like, can’t you just see her, all ‘A-s-e….’ whatever. I bet she really wants some of that wiggly-shit Jell-O salad.”

“My mom, man, she would cook this for days,” Luis said. “That and soup. Soup with different noodles each day. It’s called
fidellos
. Maybe she thought if there were wagon wheels one day and macaroni the next, we wouldn’t notice. But we did. I can’t bear to even smell it now.”

“I wish she’d stay with us and make that soup every day,” Valerie said. “I can’t even open a can of Campbell’s I’m so tired.”

Randi pushed closer. “Let’s get out of here. Why are you with these people? Who are they, anyway? Some boring couple? And, like, your wife? She’s all perfect and shit. I don’t know what you see in her. Look at her clothes!” Randi swished her skirt, the smell of synthetic fabric flowing into his nose. “Khaki! A polo shirt. God. There’s no way she does what I did to you. Remember, Dan?”