11
Although yes and no. That was just one of my feelings.
Another was, Oh, Ma, I remember when you were young and wore your hair in braids and I would have died to see you sink so low.
Another was, You crazy old broad, you narced me out last night. What was up with that?
Another was, Mom, Mommy, let me kneel at your feet and tell you what me and Smelton and Ricky G. did at Al-Raz, and then you stroke my hair and tell me anybody would’ve done the exact same thing.
As we crossed the Roll Creek Bridge I could see that Ma was feeling, Just let that Renee deny me, I will hand that little beep her beeping beep on a platter.
But then, bango, by the time we got to the far side and the air had gone from river-cool to regular again, her face had changed to: Oh, God, if Renee denies me in front of Ryan’s parents and they once again find me trash, I will die, I will simply die.
12
Renee did deny her in front of Ryan’s parents, who did find her trash.
But she didn’t die.
You should have seen their faces as we walked in.
Renee looked stricken. Ryan looked stricken. Ryan’s mom and dad were trying so hard not to look stricken that they kept knocking things over. A vase went down as Ryan’s dad blundered forward trying to look chipper/welcoming. Ryan’s mom lurched into a painting and ended up holding it in her crossed red-sweatered arms.
“Is this the baby?” I said.
Ma turned on me again.
“What do you think it is?” she said. “A midget that can’t talk?”
“This is Martney, yes,” Renee said, holding the baby out to me.
Ryan cleared his throat, shot Renee a look like, I thought we’d discussed this, Love Muffin.
Renee changed the baby’s course, swerved it up, like if she held it high enough, that would negate the need for me to hold it, it being so close to the overhead light and all.
Which hurt.
“Fuck it,” I said. “What do you think I’m going to do?”
“Please don’t say ‘fuck’ in our home,” Ryan said.
“Please don’t tell my son what the beep he can beeping say,” Ma said. “Him being in the war and all.”
“Thank you for your service,” Ryan’s dad said.
“We can easily go to a hotel,” Ryan’s mom said.
“You are not going to any hotel, Mom,” Ryan said. “They can go to a hotel.”
“We’re not going to a hotel,” Ma said.
“You can easily go to a hotel, Mother. You love a good hotel,” Renee said. “Especially when we’re paying.”
Even Harris was nervous.
“A hotel sounds lovely,” he said. “It’s been many a day since I reclined in a nice place of that nature as a hotel.”
“You’d send your own mother, who works for a church, along with your brother, a Silver Star hero just home from the war, to some fleabag?” Ma said.
“Yes,” Renee said.
“Can I at least hold the baby?” I said.
“Not on my watch,” Ryan said.
“Jane and I would like you to know how much we supported, and still do support, your mission,” Ryan’s father said.
“A lot of people don’t know how many schools you fellows built over there,” Ryan’s mother said.
“People tend to focus on the negative,” Ryan’s dad said.
“What’s that proverb?” Ryan’s mother said. “To make something or other, you first have to break a lot of something or other?”
“I think he could hold the baby,” said Renee. “I mean, we’re standing right here.”
Ryan winced, shook his head.
The baby writhed, like it too believed its fate was being decided.
Having all these people think I was going to hurt the baby made me imagine hurting the baby. Did imagining hurting the baby mean that I would hurt the baby? Did I want to hurt the baby? No, Jesus. But: Did the fact that I had no intention of hurting the baby mean that I wouldn’t, when push came to shove, hurt the baby? Had I, in the recent past, had the experience of having no intention of doing Activity A, then suddenly finding myself right in the middle of doing Activity A?
“I don’t want to hold the baby,” I said.
“I appreciate that,” Ryan said. “That’s cool of you.”
“I want to hold this pitcher,” I said, and picked up a pitcher and held it like a baby, with the lemonade spilling out of it, and, once the lemonade was pooling nicely on the hardwood floor, spiked the pitcher down.
“You really hurt my feelings!” I said.
Then was out on the sidewalk, walking fast.
13
Then was back in that store.
Two different guys were there, younger than the earlier two. They might have been high schoolers. I handed over the MiiVOXMAX tag.
“Oh shit, snap!” the one guy said. “We were wondering where that was.”
“We were about to call it in,” the other guy said, bringing over espresso and cookies.
“Is it valuable?” I said.
“Ha, oh, boy,” the first one said, and got some kind of special cloth from under the counter and dusted the tag off and put it back on display.
“What is it?” I said.
“It’s more like what’s it for, is how I’d say it,” the first guy said.
“What’s it for?” I said.
“This might be more in your line,” he said, and handed me the MiiVOXMIN tag.
“I’ve been away a long time,” I said.
“Us, too,” the second kid said.
“We just got out of the army,” the first kid said.
Then we all took turns saying where we’d been.
Turned out me and the first guy had been in basically the same place.
“Wait, so were you at Al-Raz?” I said.
“I was totally at Al-Raz,” the first guy said.
“I was never in the shit, I admit it,” the second guy said. “Although I did once run over a dog with a forklift.”
I asked the first guy if he remembered the baby goat, the pocked wall, the crying toddler, the dark arched doorway, the doves that suddenly exploded out from under that peeling gray cave.
“I wasn’t over by that,” he said. “I was more over by the river and the upside-down boat and that little family all in red that kept turning up everywhere you looked?”
I knew exactly where he’d been. It was unbelievable how many times, pre — and post — exploding doves, I’d caught sight, on the horizon, down by the river, of some imploring or crouching or fleeing figure in red.
“It ended up cool with that dog, though,” the second guy said. “He lived and all. By the time I left, he’d be like riding right up alongside me in the forklift.”
A family of nine Indian-Americans came in, and the second guy went over to them with the espresso and cookies.
“Al-Raz, wow,” I said, in an exploratory way.
“For me?” the first guy said. “Al-Raz was the worst day of the whole deal.”
“Yes, me too, exactly,” I said.
“I fucked up big-time at Al-Raz,” he said.
Suddenly I found I couldn’t breathe.
“My boy Melvin?” he said. “Got a chunk of shrapnel right in the groin. Because of me. I waited too long to call it in. There was this like lady party going on right nearby? About fifteen gals in this corner store. And kids with them. So I waited. Too bad for Melvin. For Melvin’s groin.”
Now he was waiting for me to tell the fucked-up thing I’d done.
I put down the MiiVOXMIN, picked it up, put it down.
“Melvin’s okay, though,” he said, and did a little two-finger tap on his own groin. “He’s home, you know, in grad school. He’s fucking, apparently.”