Who’s Marin?
The baby’s mommy.
The girl considers this and then takes leave of Val, scrambling into dusty stride with Marin. Marin? she says. What does your baby like?
Marin considers the question. He likes milk, she says. And baths in the sink. And binkies.
And toys? asks Sophie.
And toys, says Marin.
What does he do?
Not much, really. Eats and sleeps, mostly. Poops.
Marin thought this would make the girl laugh, but it doesn’t. Sophie considers the information, then says, Because he’s just a baby.
That’s right.
Can I hold him?
Marin glances at Carter. He is watching them. Of course you can, says Marin.
Marin directs Sophie to sit in her folding chair and extend her arms along her lap. She lays the child in this cradle and rotates the girl’s hands at the wrist so they curl around the baby. There, she says. Just like that. Carter watches. Sophie is stern faced, taking this responsibility seriously. Though her feet swing a little, gleefully.
Marin retrieves her beer from the mesh pouch of the chair. You’re good at that, she says, then immediately regrets it when the girl smiles a smile so wide it requires the active involvement of all her facial features. Christ, thinks Marin, what a thing to say.
Just then, Sophie’s brother emerges from time-out. The boy processes the scene—the baby in his sister’s lap, all adult eyes on her—and says, No fair. I want to hold the baby.
Sophie is pure joy. You can’t, Aidan, she says. I am.
Aidan says, But—
Carter stands. The baby has to go to sleep now, he says. It’s his bedtime.
Marin scoops the child from Sophie’s lap and follows Carter to the RV. Inside, Carter tries to set up the Pack ’n Play they’ve brought—never playpen—so the baby can sleep there. Val and Jake have two tents, one for themselves and one for the children. It will be too cold for the baby to sleep outside, which is why Carter and Marin were offered the RV in the first place. But now it appears the Pack ’n Play is too wide, the space in the RV too narrow. Carter allows the half-expanded structure to fall noisily to the floor.
Now what are we supposed to do? he says.
As though Marin designed the Pack ’n Play. As though she engineered the RV. She says, What about the bed?
Carter considers the bed Val has folded out for them, converted from two bench seats and the dining table. Will he roll? he asks.
How surprised Marin is to be asked this. How satisfying it feels that Carter does not have the answer.
No, she says, shaking her head casually. He can’t roll.
Okay, Carter says. He builds a barrier of pillows and sleeping bags at the edge of the bed. He swaddles the child and lays him on his back—always on his back—in the center of the bed. As Carter pulls the door of the RV quietly closed, he pauses with a hand still on the knob. The smell of Jake’s cigar has made its way to them. Those pillows, says Carter. You sure he’ll be okay?
He’ll be fine, she says. He can’t roll.
Of course he can’t roll. She wouldn’t have suggested putting him on the bed if he could. The baby is too young to roll. He won’t roll for weeks. The books say so. The pediatrician says so. He can reach his arms above his head and sometimes he sort of scissor-kicks his legs inside his sacklike pajamas, but he cannot roll.
But the baby can roll. Once, she laid him on his back in the center of their bed back home, in the adobe house. He was asleep. Carter was at work. She hopped into the shower. She had to. She had a cheesy something behind her ears and in the creases of her knees. She washed her hair and used the lather from the shampoo to wash her body. She did not use conditioner. She did not shave. She kept the bathroom door open. Five minutes, tops. She stepped out of the shower and looked into the bedroom and the baby was not where she’d left him.
She ran to the bed, naked, dripping wet. Then she saw him. Half wedged beneath her own plump pillow. Still breathing. Thank God, still breathing. She lifted the pillow. He must have rolled in his sleep. How true, she thought, once the panic began to recede, once the baby was laid safely in the Pack ’n Play, once she was dry and dressing. To be capable of a thing only in a dreamworld. This was two weeks ago, nearly. She never told Carter.
Outside, Jake and Val put the children to bed in their tent, finally, and the adults settle into the story world of old friends. Marin gets another beer. Bent over the cooler, she can feel the warmth of the fire on her back and her husband watching her. She won’t look to him. Not tonight. She won’t see his once-fine face drooped with disappointment. She will not, will not look to him. She feels as though she has been looking to him her entire life.
Around the fire it is old times. Remember? they ask. Remember walking home through South Campus? Remember filling Sandy’s mailbox with crushed beer cans? Remember our illiterate landlord on the Strand? Remember that note he left us; oh, how did it end? They all say it together, roaring: I will not be tolerated.
Jake brings out a pipe and a baggie from a cloth coin purse. He offers it to Carter.
Carter says, No, thanks, man.
Jake extends the pipe to Marin. Em?
Em. He used to call her that.
Marin takes it. What the hell? They smoke a bit, Marin, Val and Jake. After some time, Marin exhales and says, Remember when we used to climb up on my roof and smoke?
Jake smiles and says, Remember watching the fireworks from up there?
Marin says, Remember Tarv?
Christ, Tarv!
Jake’s roommate. Tarv had gotten fucked up and was doing a happy jig to celebrate how fucked up he’d gotten when he stomped through the rotted roof of Marin’s apartment building. Marin and Jake climbed down the ladder as fast as their laughter would allow them. They left Tarv wedged in the building, his leg dangling through a neighbor’s bedroom ceiling. Remember, remember, remember. Whatever happened to Tarv? How did they turn out to be anyone other than who they were on that roof?
There is a little stretch of quiet and in this they can hear the distant voices of other campers and the hoot of a night bird. On the ground at Jake’s feet Dingus runs a dream run, then whimpers, then is still. Val stands and announces she’s going to bed. Everyone tells her good night. Marin looks at Carter, the firelight making long shadows on his face. He ignores her. For a moment she cannot remember why. She grows afraid. He is staring into the fire and she looks at it too. Her husband will not even look at her. Why? Where is he?
Marin tamps down her fear and goes to pee in the darkness. She can see stars while she’s peeing, and these stars remind her of the town they will return to. She realizes she has no one there and grows afraid again, out in the trees with her pants down.
Once, early on, Marin took Carter to visit her hometown, the T of two state routes in the Mojave desert. They drove there and spent a night at the motel where she and her childhood friends used to jump the fence to swim in the kidney-shaped swimming pool. He was the first man she’d brought home in a very long time. Jake had not been interested in that sort of thing.
That night, Marin and Carter swam in the pool, alone. He held her in the soft water and kissed her, the rough beginnings of his beard chafing against her neck and her jaw and her collarbone. When the pool lights turned off, he lifted her to the edge and untied the knot at the back of her neck. He took her nipples into his mouth, first one, then the other, and after he said, I’ve been wanting to do that all night. Then he pulled the crotch of her bathing suit to one side and fucked her like he hasn’t since.