Day Forty-One #3
“I bet the person who invented the brownie was trying to bake a cake and fucked up.” He held up the dish for her to take a bite, and surprisingly, she did.
She made a meal of chewing it, solid chunks befouling the smooth ice cream, but did not seem displeased when she eventually swallowed. After, they continued their stroll.
“So, while I’m here I wanted to ask you something about Dad.”
“Not this barrel of fish.”
It was hardly a topic they’d exhausted, especially given the enormity of his absence, so Jesse pressed. “What do you remember about him?”
“What do you remember?” she challenged.
“I don’t remember anything. You may recall he disappeared before I was born.”
In fact, Jesse could only recall hearing his mother speak about Jesse Sr. once.
He’d been in high school at the time. He came home late from concert band practice, where he had been assigned to play the trombone, and his mother, two-thirds of the way through a bottle of syrupy wine, something she usually mixed with Fresca (which, from the grocery list stuck to the fridge, he could see they were out of) to make something she called her “little spritz,” was not her usual self.
She talked in circles about every which thing, the permission slip she signed for his spring trip and who was doing what at her store’s team-building day—something she fought vehemently against despite her employees’ insistence, but claimed was “not torture”—before running out of mindless things to say and breaking down: It was the anniversary of the day his father had disappeared.
Or, rather, the day she was informed of his disappearance, as who the hell knows exactly the moment when someone actually disappears.
(Until recently, Jesse had agreed with her on that front.) It had been seventeen years, the age she was when they were first introduced.
She’d lived as much of her life without him as she had before they met.
Or something like that. She was slurring her words and not entirely making sense and math was neither of their strong suits; he understood then why she usually cut her wine with Fresca.
Anyhow, it was the only time she’d ever entertained questions about his dad.
“You were a real fighter,” she had told him at the time.
“I don’t know how you held on.” Jesse didn’t know, either, especially given his passive personality now.
His mother had never remarried, even though she dated a man with one leg for some time, holding out hope that her first love might one day return.
When the time came, she fought tooth and nail to keep Jesse from leaving for college, even though he was only going to UCLA; she, too, had a fear of abandonment.
“He didn’t disappear, your father.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you have his current address? Maybe I could take him out for donuts next.”
“Your father is missing. There’s a difference.” She waved her spoon about to punctuate her thought.
Was there?
“What do I remember? He had big hands. Long thin arms and big hands that looked like paddles. We went to an auction once, some silly thing his division put on, none of the items were worth very much money, it was sort of mostly for fun. But your father raised his hand to wave at a friend and accidentally bought a dinner for six at some fish shack.”
Her annoyance at this detail all these years later made Jesse smile. He got his irritability from his mother, as much as he wished that weren’t true. But Jesse got his lanky limbs from his father. Maybe he couldn’t piece Norman together, but he could perhaps piece together himself.
“Your hands are not that big, thank god. Still, you should have stuck with the piano lessons I paid for.”
His teacher didn’t make much teaching piano; Jesse recalled whispers about his also being a masseur. (One way or another he was going to make money with those magic fingers.) “How did you deal with it when you found out he”—Jesse carefully rephrased—“went missing?”
“This is ancient history.”
Ancient history? Jesse pushed his sunglasses up his nose with the top end of his spoon; he couldn’t very well explain his predicament, why it was relevant or how history is always in danger of repeating itself. “He didn’t disappear building the pyramids.”
“I didn’t dwell on it. There’s your answer.”
“You didn’t dwell on it? You were pregnant and your husband disappeared, but you didn’t dwell on it.”
Gail frowned. Disappear. They had been over this. “Dwelling on a problem preserves the problem. I got on with my life.”
“But you didn’t, though.”
“I raised you, didn’t I? Although from the way you’re behaving, not very well.”
“Your only significant relationship was with a man with one leg.”
“What does his having one leg have to do with anything?”
It was obvious, Jesse thought. “You picked a man who couldn’t leave!”
“He could leave. He could leave at any time!”
“What was he going to do, hop away? HE ONLY HAD ONE LEG!”
“Don’t be ableist,” his mother replied with disgust, throwing her empty dish in a curbside trash can. Jesse wondered how a woman who thought even Jesus was too woke knew such a word. “Why all this nonsense about your father?”
Jesse insisted it wasn’t nonsense but didn’t say much else.
He still had more ice cream to eat, since he had done the lion’s share of the talking.
He offered his mother another bite, but her spoon was already in the garbage, so she declined.
He manically scraped the bottom of his dish for any last taste of ice cream; the spoon made a desperate, unpleasant scrape like rodents trying to escape a trap, and they continued on.
Gail was not exaggerating about the Toybox’s new look. It was painted in bright circus colors and had an awning that looked like a big top. “Good lord. The city approved this?” Jesse asked. It was garish.
Gail just looked at him to say, See?
“Let’s go in,” Jesse said, and before Gail could stop him he was holding the door open for her. She only reluctantly entered.
It was the smell that was most familiar, as if Jesse’s childhood had seeped into the paint and the carpeted floors.
They were drawn into the long narrow space, past the toddler area, past games and puzzles and magic kits and rock polishers.
Jesse had spent hours inside this store doing homework while his mother tallied the day’s receipts.
A woman with a young son whisked past them, and Jesse and Gail both stared into their past. The mother held the son’s hand; neither of them could remember a moment so intimate.
“Oh my god, it’s still here!” Jesse exclaimed when they came across the clawfoot tub at the back of the store. Near the books, it was filled with pillows for children to climb in and read. He opened his phone to the camera and handed it to his mother. “Take my picture.”
“Oh, don’t climb in there,” Gail protested.
Jesse knew she was imagining the tub filled with germs. But he didn’t care.
There were so many photos of him in that tub when he was young, and he desperately wanted one more.
He lowered himself in, which took more strength than he imagined, and his limbs draped comically over the side like enormous tentacles. “Why not?”
Gail sighed. “Because you can’t go backward in time.” Jesse had to admit she was right; as soon as he was wedged in, he didn’t easily see a way out.
A manager approached to check if they needed any help. “I see you’re here with your little one,” she said with a laugh.
“Not so little,” Gail said, but to her credit she smiled. “We’re just browsing.” Jesse could see she was embarrassed and hoping not to be recognized, which opened the door for some fun.
“This is Gail Wyler,” he informed the manager.
His mother shot him a look while the manager tried her best to place the name. Then a lightbulb. “The former owner! We’re delighted to have you back. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Actually, we were wondering if you could take our picture.” He instructed his mother to give the woman his phone. “Here, Mother. Sit on the edge.”
Gail treated him to one of her famous death stares, but she sat for the photo, perhaps figuring it was the quickest way to end this misery. When the manager returned Jesse’s phone and left to help a customer at the register, Gail asked, “How does Norman put up with you?”
Jesse returned to the lie. “Norman’s in Milwaukee. Apparently, I’m easier to handle from there.”
Gail scoffed.
“What? It’s a real place.”
“The alien thing was more believable.”
Jesse saw his mother clearly. She accused everyone else of being a snob without any irony. “To dwell on a problem preserves the problem,” he repeated.
Gail checked her watch, hidden under the sleeve of her turtleneck. “What about it?”
Jessie kicked his legs over the edge of the tub like oars. “I’m just trying to decide if there’s actual merit in that or if it’s the biggest line of bullshit ever spoken.”
Gail blanched at such language in the Toybox. “Well, you asked.”
With his long arms, Jesse reached for a book called Thaddeus the Platypus, flipped through its pages, and put it back. “Do you think if Dad knew he wasn’t coming home, he still would want to be a father?”
Gail looked at him, confused.
“That, even if it was just for a moment, he was happy to know I existed?”
“What kind of questions are these?”
Jesse didn’t know exactly. He’d always harbored some fear that he was the product of an immaculate rejection. That his father didn’t want to be saddled with a kid, and decided a life in the jungle was better than a life changing diapers. He tried to explain as much to his mother.
“Your father flunked out of the Boy Scouts. He wouldn’t last five minutes on the run.” Gail pressed the back of her hand against her forehead like she was growing too warm. “Besides. We have no way of knowing if he ever got my letter. If he ever knew about you at all.”
Jesse sighed. He wanted to know.
“You can’t know everything. Now get up, before we receive any more looks.”
Jesse extricated himself from the tub, lucky he didn’t wrench his back doing it. “Then I wish I could know everything that will happen in the future and then I wouldn’t worry about it now.”
Gail checked her watch again. “Knowledge of the future is not helpful.”
She said it so definitively, Jesse knew she was right.
If he knew what was going to happen in the future, it would be all he would worry about.
Especially if what was coming was not good.
He just wished he could make peace with being abandoned.
Something that was perhaps growing into a recurring theme.
When they left the Toybox, the skies threatened rain, and Jesse invited himself to stay at his mother’s for the night.
They ordered takeout in the downpour from a Mexican place they both liked, a favorite once upon a time of Julia Child’s, and watched a show Gail said was good but wasn’t.
He slept soundly in his childhood bedroom, his limbs overhanging the twin bed like they did the tub in the store.
When he woke up, Norman was pressed against him, the warmth of him both familiar and shocking.
Jesse froze, inhaling the scent of Norman’s hair, wondering how aliens had stocked the same shampoo Norman liked, the one that smelled like basil and rain.
And then in a blink it wasn’t Norman by his side, but his father sitting on the edge of the bed, watching tenderly as he slept.
And then he woke up for real, shocked all over again to find himself alone.
The smell of coffee brewing was only a mild comfort.
Jesse dressed and went downstairs to find the sun shining—the storm had rolled through, though he remained convinced something bigger was coming, something that wouldn’t lift overnight.