It Feels So Good When I Stop (24 page)

MARIE WA S SITTING in a folding chair. A threadbare, stuffed Hamburglar character with a broken neck was slumped over in a high chair next to her. It was so grim I wondered whether she had put him that way on purpose. The camera was rolling. I read from the script.

“Do you think you were ever going to tell Sidney he was an accident? ”

“When he got old enough to understand, I would have. And I would have told him that sometimes an accident can be the best thing that ever happens to a person. It was for me.” She took a drag off her smoke. “I thought about this a lot when he was alive. The only other thing that might possibly have changed me as profoundly as having him would have been surviving a life-threatening illness. New job, new city, marriage, divorce—even the death of my mother—didn’t change me as much.” She took another drag. “Before I had Sidney, I was a lot of things: selfish, vain, careless with other people’s feelings. If it wasn’t for him, I know I’d still be that old person. Maybe worse.” She told me to stop shooting. “Fuck.”

“What is it? ”

“I don’t like how I said that. Sounds so fucking fake.”

I agreed, but didn’t say so.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Can we please just do another take, quickly, please? ” She asked like I’d been trying to dissuade her.

“Sure. We can do as many as you’d like.”

“What I’d like is to do one fucking good one. Again, please.”

I rolled tape and we started over. I tried to sound more casual.

Marie left a pregnant pause between the question and her answer. “Sidney’s father and I weren’t married until after Sidney was born. I messed around on him before that. I loved him. It was shitty of me. I was young, stupid . . . Fuck, fuck, fuck, stop the fucking tape, please.”

I stood up. Marie smashed her two fists together. “This sounds so retarded. Jesus fucking Christ.” She mocked herself. “ ‘I was young, stupid.’ Give me a fucking break. What is this?
How Green Was My Valley
? ”

“I don’t know that movie, but I’m sure you weren’t that bad.”

“Goddamnit, I wrote it exactly the way I wanted it, but it sounds like crap. I’d puke if I had to watch a film like that.”

“Maybe you should just wing it.” I knew what I was talking about. I had a lot of experience at going into something unprepared.

“How so? ”

“I don’t know. Why don’t we just let the camera roll and shoot the shit.”

A soft lightbulb went on inside her head. “Instead of act.”

“Might feel better.”

“I don’t know. I spent a long time preparing. I had it all planned out. The look, the script, everything.”

“You’re the one who said sometimes an accident is the best thing. Did you mean that? ”

“Yes.”

“So? ”

She positioned Hamburglar so that his head would remain upright. “That means I’m going to need something to sip.” She got up and headed out of the room.

I called after her. “What are you having? ”

“Bourbon.”

“Set me up, too, would you? ” I lit a cigarette and stood between the camera and the sliding glass doors. There was a spade sticking out of a weedy pile of loam off to one side of the backyard. I breathed on the glass, drew a triangle, then wiped it clean. “What in the fuck am I doing here.”

“What was that? ”

“Just thinking out loud.” I turned. Marie was now in the doorway holding two coffee mugs of bourbon on ice. She gave me my drink, then checked to see if the camera was still in focus.

“Hey, you never turned off the camera,” she said.

“I thought I did.” I started for it. “I can just rewind it to where—”

“No, no, no. Don’t bother. It’s all part of the process.” She sat back down in her chair. “As embarrassing as it may be.” She raised her glass to me.

I got behind the camera. “You, as my mother would say, like to take drink, don’t you? ”

Marie laughed. “Now and then.”

“Did you drink while you were pregnant? ”

“Jesus, no. I quit everything—drinking, weed, cigarettes, coffee—all the things I’d tricked myself into believing weren’t that bad for me. That’s how I knew I was pregnant. Just imagining myself taking a sip of booze or coffee would make me retch. It’s pretty remarkable when you think about it. There I was, a grown woman being watched out for by an embryo.”

“Like all kinds of choices were being made for you.”

“More like, all of a sudden, a lot of the things weren’t even on my radar anymore. It was a relief. All the guilt, all the excuse making—gone. Replaced by the purpose of growing and delivering this person. It was very peaceful.”

“Sounds pretty good.”

“It wasn’t pretty good. It was fucking amazing. And it kept getting better, especially after he was born. Who knows if it ever would have plateaued.”

“Growing up, did you ever imagine having a kid could make you feel that good? ”

“God, no. I never wanted kids. I remember when I was about twenty, my friend Tina taking my hand and placing it on her stomach when the baby was kicking. I didn’t like it all. It just seemed creepy and wrong. She was way overdue, and her skin was pulled so tight, I thought her stomach was going to split open right there on the subway. It was disgusting. She got mad at me for saying so.

“But when I got pregnant, I loved it when Sidney woke me up kicking. I’d just lie there in the dark with my hands on my stomach. I wouldn’t even wake up Jason because I was worried that if I did, all the commotion would make the baby stop.” Marie stared silently into the camera for a few seconds.

“Do you ever worry, like, okay, here was this great person who changed you and your whole world and everything, and now that they’re gone, everything will go back to the shitty way it was before? ”

“Obviously.” She raised her mug of bourbon in one hand, and her smoke in the other. “But in other ways, it changes you for good. It stains you. I mean, look at me.”

“Did you get all of those tattoos after he was born? ”

“The better ones.”

“Can I see? ”

“Oh, God, really? ”

“If you don’t want to . . .”

“No. I do.” She took off her shirt. It didn’t seem like she was wearing just a bra because she was covered in ink. She tapped the place above her left breast. “This one . . .”

I couldn’t make it out. “What is it? ”

“Two dates. The day he was born and the day he died.” She tapped the corresponding spot above her other breast.

“And that one? ”

“Two more dates. My birthday and the day I was planning on killing myself.”

BY THE END of the day’s shoot, we were both frazzled. Marie thought we were onto something. I had a head ache and I was starving. I asked her if she wanted to get something to eat, but she said she was too torched. She paid me another fifty bucks in cash and handpicked a few articles of clothing from a pile on the toddler bed.

“Here,” she said. “These look like they’d be about Roy’s size.”

 

ROY WAS A crabby loose cannon because he had a bad cold and hadn’t slept much the night before. James dropped him off with me just the same. After his lunch, he could barely keep his eyes open. I brushed the sand and crumbs from my bedroll and folded it in half so that it would be twice as comfortable for him. I covered him with my jacket and put my knit hat on his head. He liked that. I started to tell him a bedtime-story version of
Dog Day Afternoon
. He fell asleep in about two seconds. I didn’t want to get sick, so I sat out on the front porch. I cracked open the copy of
Glengarry Glen Ross
Marie let me borrow. I got pretty deep into it when I heard Roy crying inside.

“Jesus Christ, Roy. What happened? ” He was sitting upright, covered in diarrhea. It looked like he’d been sprayed with A1 sauce. The smell had a toxic chemical component to it not found in your everyday shit. He was freaked out because his hands were messy. He held them up for me. It was a damn good thing he couldn’t see the rest of him. He was probably thinking, How the fuck did this shit get all over my hands while I was sleeping? Please clean them at once.

“Sorry, kid, but that’s horrible.” I couldn’t hide my expression. Roy stopped crying on a dime and smiled, proud of himself. He clapped his hands, liberating a poisonous mist into the room. Then he raised one hand toward his runny nose.

“No, no, no. Don’t do that.” I grabbed his slippery wrist just in time. I scooped him up, then carried him—at arm’s length—into the bathroom. “Dear God in heaven.” He loved it.

I set him down on the floor and turned on the shower. There was no graceful way to free him from his soiled clothes so I just went for it. His head was further beshit ted as it passed laboriously through the opening of his shirt. I started taking off all of my own clothes. Roy was curious. He reached up for my crotch. It shocked me.

“Get out of there,” I laughed. “Jesus, kid. Didn’t your old man teach you anything? ”

He giggled, naked except for the shit.

I sat him in the middle of the tub. The water going down the drain turned
Psycho
brown. I sat like a bobsled der behind him and soaped us both up.

“Breathe in that good steam. It’ll fix you right up.” I demonstrated. He followed. He exploded with a series of yellow, ropy sneezes. I plucked the phlegm from his nose after each one and flung it at the drain. “Huh, kid? What I tell you? Better, right? ”

I looked through the mommy bag for a change of clothes. There was a pair of green socks. That was it. “What the fuck, James? ” Even though it hadn’t happened yet on my watch, one had to think the possibility of a toddler shitting not just his pants but his entire outfit was not altogether far-fetched.

I’d been a little weirded out when Marie gave me that stack of Sidney’s old clothes. But it was a good thing she did. I dressed Roy in a pair of black sweatpants, a black long-sleeved shirt, and a
Velvet Underground and Nico
T-shirt over that. He looked pale and exhausted, like a roadie for Soundgarden. I threw our dirty clothes and my makeshift bed into the washing machine. There was no detergent, so I ran it all through twice.

“Where’d he get those clothes? ” James asked.

I told him everything.

“You just called Roy Sidney, you know.”

“I did? ”

“Yes. You said, ‘Sidney had an accident.’ ”

“That’s strange.”

“Yes, it is. Do me a favor. Don’t do that again. I’m superstitious. It’s bad enough you got him in a dead kid’s clothes.”

 

THE NEXT TIME I worked for Marie I told her the whole story. I laid it on thick, making it sound like Roy’s diarrhea was more explosive than it actually was. She liked the story, especially the parts about Sidney’s clothes and me getting shat on.

“Babies and men and poop,” she said. “Guys who don’t have kids fear diaper changing almost as much as anything. That’s the easy part.”

“Really? Because it was not exactly a good time.”

“That’s because he was sick. He probably had the flu.”

“Great. That means I’m going to get it. I’m fucked.”

“Oh, don’t be such a pussy.”

I liked that Marie didn’t have a problem using
pussy
as a playful put-down. She’d also drop a C-bomb in conversation now and then. “Well, anyway,” I said, “it’s a good thing you gave him those clothes.”

Marie thought about it. “I think I’d like to see them on Roy. I don’t know how it would make me feel, but I’m curious.”

“Hang on,” I said. “Don’t you think the camera should be rolling when you say stuff like that? ”

“Hmm.”

“Would it be too fake if we let it roll and had that whole talk over? ”

“I don’t know. We can try.”