How to Party With an Infant (10 page)

It occurs to Georgia that her son is the only one in their household earning a paycheck.

“That was nice of you,” she says.

“I know,” he says.

They wind down the freeway toward the south of the city. A blanket of light rolls out before her. She feels this way about her son, too—that he’s rolling out before her.

“I
want you to know that if you need help I’m here,” she says. “If you’re doing drugs you can tell me.”

“I’m doing drugs,” he says.

“Oh,” she says.

“Just weed,” he says. “Like, socially. I’m not a hermit or anything toking day and night and talking crap about
reality, man
. That’s probably what you did back in the day. Actually, you and Dad probably weren’t even doing that.”

“Well, I think it’s natural to experiment, and I appreciate your honesty, but you need to make sure you’re safe. In fact, you shouldn’t—”

“Have you?” Chris asks. “Have you done drugs?”

She hasn’t. Nothing. Some grass in high school, but she never liked it. She’d take fake hits, then dance in her peasant skirts, pretending to be high and enlightened.

“Yes,” she says.

Chris laughs as though he doesn’t believe her. “Like what?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Grass.”

“Grass.” He laughs. “Rad.”

“And acid.” She quickly checks his face and hopes he won’t ask her what acid looks like. “And I’ve snorted cocaine.”

“What!” Chris says. “Nuh-uh.” She smiles because he seems so proud of her.

“I was a real cokehead,” she says. “So was Dad,” she adds. “That’s how we met. I mean, that’s how we bonded.”

Chris stares, his mouth agape. He’s envisioning his father as a smoker, a fighter. They both tripped out and did white lines. Perhaps he sees Eric tucking a wad of cash into her bra and saying, “Go get yourself some cocaine. It’s on me.” Perhaps he’s imagining his beautiful mother tottering off on platform heels.

“But then I overdosed,” she says. “And we sobered up. Together.” There she is convulsing on the floor of a bathroom, blood running out
of her nose. Eric hoists her over his shoulder and smokes a cigarette as he carries her to the hospital. He could drive, but it’s a nice night, warm and humid like Kuwait. “You hang in there, sweetcakes,” he says every now and then while gently patting her bottom.

Chris looks amused, yet confused, like he’s listening to a comedian that he hadn’t planned on liking. Georgia’s a bit afraid of her son’s gaze. She knows this small thread of respect could unravel in an instant, but she settles her shoulders, leans back, and lounges in the deceit.

“Wow,” he says. “Well, all right.”

They drive in silence, and Georgia knows that he’s thinking he’s wrong about her, and that she’s an interesting person. Zoë starts to make little whimpers—little accusations. They clash with the Brazilian woman’s throaty whimpers, which sound like she’s enjoying something delicious.

“Aren’t you going to eat your burger?” Georgia asks.

He takes a sip of his shake. “We can pull over if you want,” he says. “If you want to eat, too. Or just wait till home or whatever. I was just going to wait. I don’t like eating in motion.”

“Neither do I,” she says, slowing before the next exit, her heart racing. “So should we pull over or can you wait?”

“Up to you,” he says.

It’s not a life-or-death decision, she reminds herself. Just make a decision. Just veer off course. She takes the exit.

*  *  *

The dirt lot at the top of the hill overlooks Pacifica.

“This is such an odd parking lot,” she says.

“It’s probably for maintenance people,” Chris says, nodding toward something near the entrance that looks like a water heater. She parks so that they can look out at the ocean, black and rippling like oil. Houses are huddled together by the expanse of forest and ocean, a little, bright
patch of life. She can see Target, the telltale bull’s-eye, and thinks of toilet paper. She forgot to get some this afternoon, which reminds her of Zoë’s full diaper. Zoë has gone back to sleep. Chris hands her a bag of loose fries and a burger wrapped in wax paper.

“I hate when they don’t give you enough ketchup,” he says.

“You hate a lot of things,” she says.

“You should try it sometime.” He takes a bite of his burger. “Ah,” he says. “It’s good to be out of jail.”

She laughs, realizing her son is funny. She has a funny child, and for the first time she considers it’s something to be proud of, that funny is an intelligent and hard thing to be. She unwraps the burger, and the paper fills her with warm nostalgia. She takes a bite. The bun is soft on her tongue and it melts into her teeth and onto the roof of her mouth. Everything collides and becomes one—bun, patty, sauce. She puts a fry in her mouth just to employ everything equally, and the dense concoction is heavenly. She has never felt so centered, so content.

Except.

She wishes there were a bathroom. Her breasts are full and hard and she can feel them growing. She’s worried Zoë will make a sound triggering the downpour of milk, which feels like raining needles. She wishes she could squeeze her breasts over a sink or even outside on the dirt. Chris catches her eye, and they both look away from each other with full mouths. They come back though. They chew and their eyes meet again.

“Bomb, isn’t it?” Chris says.

She nods. Yes. Bomb. She tries to think of the other fake things she did when she was a girl. What kinds of things would he appreciate?

“Vanna White sure looks good still,” she says.

“Yeah, but she’s got those hard boobs that are everywhere now.” He chews and looks like he’s contemplating something significant. “It will be weird when these ladies get superold, but their boobs will
be the same. Their boobs will be like the old perv who still tries to look young and hang with the kids. They’ll be perv boobs.” He takes a loud sip of his shake. “I don’t how Vanna can do that job for so long.”

She pictures Vanna clapping her hands in a way that allows her to keep every other part of her body still. It’s very easy for Georgia to see how Vanna can still do what she does. Same reason she can be with Eric for so long, or can let her son speak to her the way he does. Same reason she hasn’t weaned or potty-trained Gabe. People get stuck, and not a good kind of stuck, like Vanna. Some people just don’t have what it takes to be anything else. Lose a turn, sorry, too bad. It’s a thing, a place, a person. Can you solve it? What would you like to do now, Georgia?

“I used to model,” she says.

She sees a flicker in Chris’s eye, something wanting.

“Is that how you got into coke?” he asks after chewing down a fry.

She hadn’t put that together. “Yes,” she says.

“That’s awesome.”

“I didn’t like it though,” she says. “The modeling. I just wanted to travel. I went to India. That’s where I learned yoga and why we live so . . . minimally.”

She thinks of Eric and his joke of an art, likes that she can source their failure in spirituality. She can do anything she wants. She takes another bite of her burger.

“I just want you to have a chance to see the world like I did. I want you to be able to make mistakes, but have the education and support to lessen the effects of mistakes. Cocaine didn’t kill me, but it could have if I hadn’t come from a good family and done well in school.”

She has never expressed herself so well. She did horribly in school. Her mother and father were alcoholics. Her dad worked as a teller at a bank in a wealthy neighborhood and would come home, drink his gin, then have conversations with imaginary customers. “Yes, Mrs. Rich Bitch,” he’d say. “Is there anything else?” At dinner he’d look under the table and yell, “Are you under there, Mrs. Rich Bitch?”

When she was little she actually thought this was a real woman.

Chris nods as he chews. Georgia looks over the ocean; the music is low on the radio. She is beautiful, well traveled, deep, experienced. She’s a mother eating fast food with her son. They should do this more often. Come up here, hang out, talk. What are his goals, his dreams? What are hers? She’s about to ask. She’ll just come out and say: “What do you want, Chris? What do I want?” but just then Zoë issues a sharp wail that stabs their beautiful bubble. It’s an awful, awful sound, and her breasts respond to it immediately, like servants. Wetness blooms on her blue shirt. Two round wet circles, one bigger than the other.

“I need to feed her,” she says. Chris looks at her shirt and stops chewing.

She passes him her food, then turns to get on her knees and move over the console. She unbuckles Zoë and brings her to the front so Gabe won’t wake up and see them. Zoë makes frantic movements, butting her mouth into Georgia’s shirt.

“Hold her,” she says, and Chris looks down at his hands, then places everything on the floor and takes his sister.

Georgia sits back down in front, then unbuttons her shirt and pulls down her bra. She has never bought one of those nursing bras with the flaps. She just pulls one side down and it stays underneath her boob. “Okay,” she says.

He hands her to Georgia, but positions his body so that he faces forward.

Her exposed breast is spraying milk all the way to the dash. It’s like an old-fashioned hose-end sprinkler. Zoë latches on and sucks desperately, and Georgia’s unused breast drips. Zoë pops off, takes a few breaths, then goes back.

Chris looks out the right of the car, then reaches down for his
shake. He sucks on the straw, then stops. He turns the radio’s volume up a little louder, looks down at the baby, then looks away. She knows she has lost him. He sees her for what she is, for the only thing she can be. The beautiful woman and the soldier are gone. He gets shot in the head. She breaks her neck somehow. Everything has vanished.

And now Gabe is awake, in tears, his face red and critical. He makes the sign to be fed over and over again.
Gabe want milk. Gabe want milk.
All of her children are always so hungry.

“Use your words,” Georgia says, but Gabe keeps signing. She doesn’t know why she ever taught him such a thing.

“You’re not an ape!” she yells. “Use your words! Just say what you want! Just speak like everyone else!”

“Mom,” Chris says.

“What?” Georgia yells. “What, Chris?”

Georgia has ripped Zoë off her nipple, and her depleted breast hangs like a sock. Zoë roots around her chest like a little pig looking for truffles. The woman’s voice on the radio does a kind of ethnic yodel, and all Georgia can think is that this woman seems terribly, terribly free.

“Just ignore it,” Chris says. “Let’s just get home.” He takes Zoë from her arms, then gets out of the car to put her back in the seat. Does he even know how to buckle a car seat? Does she care? She fixes her bra and her shirt. Gabe screams and continues to make signs.

“Stop that,” she says forcefully. “Stop making those signs or the bad men are going to get you. The gang is going to get you.” Gabe takes a pause, looks at her searchingly, then howls. When Chris opens the door to put Zoë in, he says something to his younger brother, but she’s not sure what. She faces forward, looks out at the lights below. Gabe is suddenly quiet. She glances back, and he has his pacifier in his mouth, his lids heavy with what looks like bliss.

Chris walks back to his side, and as he’s getting in, the car brightens with someone’s
headlights and for a second she sees them all lit up as if onstage. Two cars come into the lot, rolling in slowly over the gravel.

“What if it’s them?” she says. “The gang with the artichokes.”

“Yeah, right,” Chris says, in a way that’s not at all convinced. He holds his burger on his lap. “Let’s go,” he says. “We can finish at home.”

She starts the car. The other cars seem to be waiting for her to leave. She reverses, then drives forward. One of the cars also moves forward, toward her left. Chris stares straight ahead. When the car gets closer to them it slows, then comes to a stop.

“Just keep going,” Chris says, but she thinks this could be the wrong move to make. In fact, even thinking about moves is the wrong move. These are probably just teenagers or maintenance men, or someone who’s lost. She stops and puts her window down. “What are you doing?” Chris says through clenched teeth. He shifts in his seat, putting a foot on the dash, then putting it back down.

The driver of the car grins at her. He’s small—compact and ropy. His car is a honey brown that glistens.

“You’re not waiting for us, right?” he asks.

“I don’t think so,” Georgia says. Two guys in the back of the car laugh, and the driver nods as though she’s said something wise. He looks into his rearview mirror, and Georgia looks ahead at the car behind him, which is somewhat blocking the exit. On the other side of the exit is a patch of trees and a Dumpster.

“You sure you’re not waiting for us?” the driver says, and his passengers laugh again, though less so this time.

“Just go,” Chris says, and she realizes her son isn’t nearly as bad as he’d like to be, that jail was just a fluke, a stroke of bad luck, something he’s probably proud of.

Chris is afraid. He thinks they are going to die, and for some reason this gives Georgia a small thump of joy. She is his mommy.

“Hey, you’re listening to the same song as us,” the driver says. He
reaches forward to turn his volume up, and she hears the woman on both radios. Her cries are insistent, firm taps. They blend with the drums, simmering like flavors, building toward something exquisite and exotic yet entirely expected.

“Nice,” Georgia says. “Like a duet.” The driver bobs his head, then says something to the others in Spanish. She doesn’t understand why she isn’t frightened. Maybe residual adrenaline has morphed her anger with Gabe into something like courage or something like apathy or something like hope. She loves when days don’t go as planned, when she’s not on a playground bench staring into space, when she’s not at home watching other people on television making love, drinking pretty cocktails, fighting wars, or asking Pat for a
T,
please. She loves that her son is afraid and that she isn’t.

She feels the cold air blow through her wet shirt. The driver looks at her again, nodding to the music and tapping his fingers against his lips.