Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
Misty showed Joan the bump in the dressing room. She had to jut out her stomach for Joan to discern the curve; Misty estimated she was four months along. Though she wasn’t certain. The identity of the father was not resolved, as she wasn’t in contact with any of the possibilities.
“That doesn’t mean I was dumped, to be clear.” Misty ran her hand along her stomach. “Things just didn’t work out. There’s only one I think would make a decent father, anyway. Now, maybe I say this because he already is a father. But I don’t actually like him.”
“We should have noticed,” Joan said to Bill that evening. “She’s been in that swimsuit this whole time.”
“We must have been distracted,” Bill said. “By her huge knockers.” Like his siblings, he had the habit of resorting to childish behavior when stressed.
“I don’t think she’s ready,” Joan said.
“Ready for what? A baby? Is she keeping it?”
“She says she’s going to give birth and then decide.”
“Oh, that sounds like a great plan. I wonder who the father is,” Bill mused. “She didn’t say?”
“I don’t think she knows.” After Saks, they’d had to stop on the street so Misty could use a pay phone.
The call had begun with seductive whispers and ended with Misty hysterically screaming—Joan had been forced to take her to the Taj for a drink of water, where she had ordered a martini at the bar.
And this was Misty “feeling incredible”!
“Still,” Bill said, “there could be worse mothers.”
“That’s right,” Joan agreed. There were various ways one could be a bad mother—endless ways, really.
They heard Misty enter the house, as she often did at night, to bring food back to the cottage. The door slammed, and Joan held her breath. Sometimes Jamie would wake up when there were loud noises and come dragging his blanket into their room. He was afraid of monsters, he said.
“It seems awfully unfair,” Joan said. “Not to try to arrange anything in advance. For the baby.”
“There is no baby,” Bill said. “Right now it’s just Misty.”
Misty left the next morning. This wasn’t surprising, as her visits were usually brief. What was a surprise was when Misty returned four months later. She was driven to the house by a man in a white convertible. Joan and Jamie came upon them on their way home from the library.
“This is Johnny,” Misty said. She pronounced his name breathlessly: Jeooohny.
Johnny acknowledged Joan with a nod. He had hair nearly to his neck and one of those melty-looking faces with thin lips and a wispy beard.
Misty exited the car, and Joan saw she was waddling in that way of heavily pregnant women. “We’re on a road trip,” she announced.
“From Mexico City,” Johnny added.
Is he staying ? Joan wondered. But minutes later, Johnny drove off; he was going to visit friends, he said.
“What’s she doing here?” Bill asked Joan as she prepared dinner. “And no notice?”
“We have plenty of food.” Joan scooped some spaghetti and meatballs into a bowl and added a liberal dusting of Parmesan.
Misty had pronounced the steamed fish Joan had originally prepared for that evening “nausea-inducing.” It wasn’t that she wasn’t familiar with Asian food, Misty said.
It was just she currently found a lot of it gross.
Bill knelt on the floor, where Jamie was playing with a toy tractor. Bill set a box of crackers on the ground. “This is a bale of hay,” he said. “Try and pick it up with the grapple.”
“Fun,” Jamie said. He pushed the tractor into the cracker box, knocking both against the wall.
“Or you could just do that,” Bill said. “That’s the nice thing about being a kid. Kids can act on impulses. Adults, on the other hand, should manage them. That’s how we have a functioning society.”
“I don’t think our society is so functional,” Joan said.
“That’s a Massey Ferguson tractor, by the way, son.”
“Massey Ferguson,” Jamie repeated in his babyish way.
“I thought her boyfriend was returning soon,” Bill said, standing. “What is soon ?”
Joan didn’t know. After dessert, she put fresh towels in the cottage. Johnny didn’t return that night.
The next morning, Misty ate breakfast and then sprawled on her usual lounger by the pool. “Is that a cocktail?” Bill asked Joan as he splashed leftover coffee into the sink. Joan hurried behind him to rinse the porcelain so it wouldn’t stain.
“I don’t think so.” She looked out the window. “Probably water.”
“It’s pink.”
“Maybe juice.” They watched Misty light a cigarette. Patty, who had been outside with Jamie, scurried him away.
“I don’t think she’s supposed to do that,” Bill said. “Smoke.”
“You can tell her,” Joan said. She herself was feeling woozy; she sat and tried to massage the pressure from her brain. After her head cleared, she went out and joined Jamie and Patty in the sunshine.
That night Joan served steak and fries, a favorite of both Bill and Misty. After remarking that it sure would be nice to have mustard and pickles, Misty asked Bill for money.
“Nope,” Bill said. “No gifts. You’re an adult.”
“This isn’t a gift. It’s an investment. Johnny has a great opportunity. Franchise-related.”
“What is ‘franchise related’? It’s either a franchise or it’s not.”
“It’s a restaurant,” Misty answered sulkily.
“You’re talking about, what, a McDonald’s?”
Joan escaped to the kitchen to fetch Misty’s condiments. When she returned, she set down the jars as quietly as possible. Even Jamie seemed to sense the conversation had soured; he was looking anxiously between the ends of the table in the way he’d been taught to cross a busy street.
“What sort of rate of return are you and Johnny offering on my investment?” Bill asked.
“Now you’re deliberately being vulgar,” Misty said. She started to cry.
“I can’t speak to you when you’re like this,” Bill said. “I can’t stand it when someone won’t have a productive conversation.”
“We just need some funding. You have a lot. I have less. It would be very helpful. In my situation.”
“Oh, so it’s the baby who needs the franchise.”
Misty shoved back her chair from the table. She may have intended to storm out, but given her size, she was reduced to shuffling at a normal pace.
Bill resumed cutting his steak. He pointed his fork at Joan. “I hope you aren’t thinking what I think you might be.”
“I don’t know,” Joan said faintly.
“I write her checks every year. For her birthday. For Christmas. She’s thirty-nine years old, for Christ’s sake.”
“I’m thirty-eight, you shit!” Misty screamed from the front of the house. Jamie put his hands over his ears.
After dinner, Joan found Misty inside the cottage. “Johnny said he was coming,” Misty said. She was already packing. “He left a card game to get me.” It was clear she considered this a significant victory.
“You can always stay here.”
“No way. The only reason I came was because I was getting self-conscious with Johnny in the car. He hates how I look. And who can blame him? I hate how I look.” Misty swept her toiletries from the top of the dresser into her bag.
“I don’t want the baby. I’ve said it and no one listens.
They just say I’ll change my mind. But I’m not going to. ”
“There are options,” Joan said hesitantly.
“You wanted yours,” Misty bleated. “Didn’t you?”
“Yes.” Although that was too rosy a picture; it had not been a continuous line of certainty.
There’d been times when she and Bill fought—nothing important, everyday squabbles—after which Joan had wept bitterly over her distended belly, convinced she must be the loneliest person in the world.
Flabbergasted that she was tethering herself forever to this person through the creation of life—how foolish she was!
How utterly stupid, to believe karma would just go on unfurling options before you, opportunities to start over, to erase and renew.
But such agonized moments had passed, as all moments do – and as Joan met Misty’s shiny, bloated gaze, she sensed this was where she should emphasize her more motherly qualities, as it were.
“I had a lot of energy. They say energy is important, that it foretells very much. It is a Chinese saying.” Joan also knew Misty liked Chinese sayings.
“Well, I don’t have energy. I don’t have any feelings at all. And I don’t have any money either.”
“I’m sorry Bill didn’t give you any.”
“He thinks he’s so tough. He doesn’t get that some people just aren’t built for making loads of cash. It isn’t how I think !” Misty inhaled. “I should have scheduled an abortion. Now it’s too late.”
“You won’t hurt yourself or the baby,” Joan said quickly.
“No. I only know it isn’t how things ought to be.” Misty gripped her head between her hands. “Do you understand what I’m saying? I refuse to accept that one mistake means I’ve got to change the whole rest of my life.”
Joan continued to rub Misty’s back. Her hand moved mechanically up and down, the dot of an idea thrumming at a higher and higher pitch in her head.
Yes, Joan said. She understood.