I knock the door open with my butt and pass by Kimmy who says “Can’t wait to get our kids together” and it almost dissipates the all-pervading feeling of desolation I get in Altavista, look at this friendly normal person raising her family and having a great life up here even if she is homeschooling them and teaching them god knows what. I file this thought and get back to the table and look around for someone to get us the check and Alice says “I paid,” and I consider groping around for cash I don’t have and instead just say “Thank you, that’s very nice.” I set Honey on her feet and get on my knees to clean up the wads of bread and napkin and meat and other shit all over the dense nap of the rug and tuck it into a napkin and when I lift my head I see Honey is running down the room with that forward tumbling run. By the time I’ve leapt to my feet to go after her she’s splayed headlong on the ground and wailing and I pick her up and kiss her grab the bag make sure Alice is out of her seat and walking slowly behind and wave to the van Voorheeses wave to Kimmy and I’m sweating when we get out into the cool night air.
I put Honey down on the crunchy grass that abuts the parking lot and let her run around. It feels so good outside, the air smells so good and feels so good on my skin and it’s the first time in weeks I’ve felt a good physical sensation that wasn’t immediately followed by psychic distress. Honey screams just to hear herself and pants, she’s so happy to run around.
“Well,” I say to Alice, “I guess I ought to take you back and we’ll all get ready to go tomorrow.”
“Let the little one run around some,” Alice says. “You don’t let her stretch her legs enough.” It’s amazing to me that I find a rebuke of my mothering in even the mildest statements from friends coworkers strangers i.e. “Sleepy baby!” or something innocuous but this actual rebuke, this correction, feels so natural I accept it without injury. “Stay on the grass, please, Honey,” I say and lower myself onto the low concrete wall that lines the path to the lodge. I’d love to pull the cigarettes out of my bag where I’ve stashed them just in case but there’s Honey and there’s Alice and all the promises I’ve made to myself about not being trash. Not trash. Shouldn’t say trash. Alice stays standing. “If I sit on that thing I’ll never get up,” she says. I wonder at her body, that she’s been able to drive out here all alone.
“So how will we work this?” I am feeling efficient ready to bang out some logistics. “So you’re going to call Mark and Yarrow and tell them what exactly? That you met a responsible person who is going to drive you out there and then bring you to an airport? I haven’t looked at a map yet—do you know what town this place is near?”
“It’s in Oregon,” she says. “Someplace over the border. I have it all printed out in my folder. It’s something like four hours from here.”
“That’s nothing,” I say. “Do you want to do it in one day or break it up?”
“Maybe we can see how everyone does.”
“We can stop in Berwin Falls or something if you want to spend the night. Ooh, if we leave early enough tomorrow we can drive up to Surprise Pass and have a picnic. It has a beautiful view.”
“Well, all right.”
I have been making a little grocery list for what would make the nicest picnic when I pause to realize that something about our plan makes no sense. Honey runs up to us and throws herself against Alice’s legs and I hold a hand out to Alice’s arm to steady her and say “gentle, please be gentle” and she takes off whirling unsteadily and falls onto her back in the grass and says “baaak” which is “bonk.”
“Sorry, Alice—I just realized—are we going to drive your car? And then we’ll all drive back together? You mentioned the airport, I guess I didn’t think about what would happen to your car.”
“No airport,” she says. “If I need to I’ll ask Mark to come and drive me home from Altavista. This will just be a day or two, to see the place. We can take your car. It’s more comfortable than mine.”
“The Buick! Can’t beat it,” I say. Honey is yanking on my pant legs and she has that shark look like she might bite me. “Shall we…” I say, and Alice begins moving toward the car.
We drop Alice off and agree to meet at the motel at 9:30 a.m. after I’ve stopped at the market to get provisions. She eats everything, she says, except very chewy things. Back home Honey is a damp wriggling critter thrashing in the bath but we get through it then we read the two halves of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and she puts her finger in the hole left by the caterpillar and when I put her in the Pack ’n Play she just lies right down with her head on the pillow and her butt in the air and suffers to be covered up with her blanky and the light turned off with no fuss. There is enough vodka left for two little drinks, I reckon, and I carefully pour half into a glass stir in the juice and almost run onto the deck to smoke. Inside Cindy’s lit window I see her and Ed toing and froing and when she walks out the door onto her porch I holler at her. “Hi,” she says very curtly, and carries a duffel to Ed’s truck. “Going somewhere?” I ask, but she doesn’t hear or doesn’t answer, and I realize I don’t care. I have a real friend now, I laugh to myself. Me ’n’ Alice, against the world. One more drink, I think, and amble inside to mix it feeling the whole night stretching out before me to relax in my lawn chair on my deck and look at the stars. By the time the relief of being off duty re: Honey has faded and I start to feel horribly lonely I’ll be slightly blotto and ready for the king bed to receive me. I sit down with my new drink. I pass my hand over the egg on my eyebrow and light another cigarette and again see how far I can draw it down with one drag.
DAY 8
I have my dream I have all the time where I am in an office trying to talk to a Turkish person, not Engin, someone unknown to me, and I’m saying “Oh of course I speak Turkish,” in Turkish, preparing to launch into the explanation of what is wrong, a thing I don’t know in the dream, and find I can’t speak Turkish at all and can only force a few words out until they smile sympathetically and shake their head and I want to start screaming and I open my mouth wide to do it and nothing really comes out, just a tiny squeaking and I wake up feeling that there’s nothing a man can tell me about impotence.
But I wake up feeling surprisingly fresh given the dream and the egg on my forehead, just a gentle throb on my eyebrow. I wake up with the expectation of hearing Honey and realize I don’t. The clock reads 6:57. I move very carefully out of the bed and tiptoe around to the closet and peer in and she’s sprawled on her back, deep asleep, and I pause long enough to see her chest rise and her fingers move. I scurry away into the shower and take a long hot one listening for her cries. She’s still asleep when I emerge and I say the prayer of thanksgiving for how much I am about to get done unencumbered. Now that I am not really doing anything there is nothing I am really unencumbered from but it’s still easier to do anything when your baby is asleep. I make coffee. I put laundry in. I pick up the living room. I smoke a cigarette out on the deck knowing I need to call Engin and trying to see if I can pick up Cindy’s Wi-Fi which is recalcitrant this morning when I hear Honey beginning to chirp. I go in.