“She’s pretty awesome.”
“She is—& I’ll bet you are too. I remember you as being awesome.” (She telephonically blushed) “What about today, later on today? Do you think you can make it out here?”
“Uhm — today?” (Taken aback) “Today… you know, I really don’t think so. I’ve been having car trouble.”
(She would have to figure out a way to get there. She could take a cab, or maybe Dr Phil could take her, she trusted Phil. She didn’t want Rikki to know she was trying out for something because she was embarrassed, it was something she would never do under so-called normal circumstances but there wasn’t such a thing anymore, she’d left the world of normal circumstances the moment she got pregnant, & now with the break from her mother her banishment was permanent. There was a time not too long ago when she would have laughed at a pathetic pregnant girl calling some casting geek she met at a lameass convention but now everything was different, like for Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, the house had fallen to Earth only she was stuck beneath, she needed money, they needed money, needed it bad & one never knew. Maybe it was for a commercial, Toyota or Apple or whatever, no, probably it was for a baby product, maybe even for the people with the umbilical cord blood company. Also, she didn’t want Rikki to know because of the casting fiasco he’d just gone thru, she didn’t want him to feel like the same thing was about to happen to her, the same heartbreak, or for him to think she was trying to upstage him.)
“Uhm, tomorrow?”
“To—morrow… let me look & see what we’re doing to-morrow… aren’t the iPhones somethin? I was synching mine the other day & it wiped my calendar & addressbook clean! Sorry it’s taking me a moment—”
“That’s terrible.”
She’d been so stiff; she wanted to at least sound somewhat personable before they hung up.
“… and 2 o’clock it is!”
“OK great!”
“Do you know where we are, Reeyonna?”
“It says Canoga Park on the card?”
“Correct. It’s a pretty sprawling campus… I’ve been here 3 yrs & I still get lost!”
She was nauseous, not because of him but because of everything.
“Reeyonna, what’s your email? I’ll shoot you the directions.”
“That’s OK. We have GPS.”
She said we because she didn’t want him to think she was by herself. He sounded totally cool but she wanted to be careful, and smart about it.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m okay. Is there anything special I should wear?”
“At this stage, I’d say anything you can fit into!”
The call wrapped & she pressed END.
She immediately got a text message from a number she didn’t recognize, and thought it was a good omen: MOVIE EXTRAS WANTED! Make up to $300/day. All looks, No Experience Required! To register call 877-589-4432. to unsub reply STOP.
Then:
She tried to stop it but the sick came up, sternum-stinging & vile, bursting from nostrilsmouth into the futile catchbasin of her cupped beggar’s hand, roaring stinging stinking thru the rolling hilled town of her fattened body & into the toilet, bile train express, she flushed flushed flushed and the sick swirled down in its spiraling hurry toward
subterranean
stops
at
stations
un
known.
CLEAN [Jacquie]
The Heart Is Unholy Hunter
When
Jacquie got home from Scottsdale, she went over to Jim & Dawn’s for coffee.
Jim said he spoke with Reeyonna and got the sense she might be growing tired of what he called “the itinerant life.” He suspected she’d soon take him up on his proposal, “hopefully sooner than later.”
. .
The Arizona woman was Ginger’s 1st cousin. The timing of the deaths — Ginger’s stillborn & her cousin’s infant — was morbidly preordained. Jacquie was a little more certain of herself than before, but only a little. This was a far different tableau.
The baby was almost four months old. Mom wanted him to sleep in their bed but the dad thought that wasn’t safe; he worried about them rolling over and suffocating it. Besides, they never did that with their toddlers. Both parents fell into a deep sleep. A few hours later, the mom had a nightmare and woke up. She went straight to the crib (foot of the bed) and snatched up her baby, knowing it would be dead.
A neighbor watched the kids while they brought their son to the hospital. In a quiet moment in the cafeteria, the father told Jacquie he kept speeding up, instinctively, as if something could still be done, then slowing down when his wife cautioned his speed. Each time he slowed, he would suddenly remember what sort of errand they were on, that his son was dying. His thoughts would drift to funerals and grieving before abruptly returning to the present, whereupon he would speed up again. A father is not supposed to be the driver of his son’s hearse. That was a thought he couldn’t at that moment give words to. On the 10-minute ride, the only words he did say were directed toward the road ahead. “Is this happening?” His wife didn’t answer.
He was six hours dead by the time Jacquie got there. The doctors suspected SIDS but in these sorts of cases, an autopsy was standard. Child abuse needed to be ruled out; the place of death would be investigated like a crime scene. The presence of toxins, fungus and nitrogen dioxide would be thoroughly delineated. Large stuffed animals would be regarded as suspicious asthmatic triggers. A/C ducts and heating vents would be examined as carriers of mold and second-hand smoke. All manner of things would come into play before anyone might even begin to approach a reasonable conclusion.
The very phrase Sudden Infant Death gave Jacquie the heebie-jeebies. She remembered her own fears, especially when Jerry Jr. was born, back when SIDS seemed to be more talked about. (Perhaps it still was but if you didn’t have babies you wouldn’t hear about it.) It still seemed the stuff of folklore, like those Japanese ghost stories she read in college where red foxes came from the hills to carry off sleeping children. It was a freakish puzzling thing, like spontaneous combustion.
When the pastor explained to the hospital administrator their wishes — to have a portrait taken as a memento — he was given a compassionate response. Their request to take their son back to the house for the photo was denied, but the administrator said they could have use of a doctors lounge or the hospital chapel. They chose the chapel. After the session, they insisted Jacquie stay for supper. Their children were young and well-behaved, & the parents didn’t censor themselves. The mother complimented Jacquie on the portraits she took of Ginger and Daniel’s beloved; her cousin sent the images to her online. She said it was “God’s will and God’s way” that she saw those pictures because not in a million years would she even have thought of doing what they did today.
Toward the end of the meal, the three-year old said from his high-chair, “Is baby dead?”