“Okay. Whatever you want,” her mother said, and started softly humming a tune Jesus sometimes hummed to help her sleep. Rolling her eyes, Miranda snatched her phone and called Ray.
“Uch, goddamn voice mail!” She threw the phone across the room. “Where the fuck is my fucking husband?!”
Joan liked to pretend that unpleasant moments like this didn’t happen. What was the point? It was best to just move on, and move on quickly.
“Want another sip?” she asked her daughter, offering up the can of soda. “I think it’s yum.”
“No.”
“Okay. Suit yourself.” Joan shrugged as she took her daughter’s hand and started lightly stroking it. “Dashing through the snow, in a one horse open sleigh…”
* * *
At that exact moment, Ray and Courtney were just outside of Goodlettesville, Tennessee, barreling north on I-65. In two and a half hours they had managed to travel two hundred twenty four miles. At this rate, Ray would be by his wife’s side by one ten
A.M.
, or dead in a fiery crash.
The low-fuel light flashed on the dashboard. “Fuck,” he mumbled. It was the first word either had spoken in forty-six minutes.
Ray pulled the Jeep off the highway and counted fourteen fast-food restaurants, two auto parts stores, nine gas stations, and a twenty-four-hour sporting goods superstore in case an interstate basketball emergency arose. A billboard featuring a corn-fed goddess in denim cutoffs reclining on a bale of hay pointed toward a nearby boot warehouse, or perhaps the location of a local barn prostitute. Sandwiched between a Cracker Barrel and a Waffle House was a gas station where Ray decided to fill up. He cut off the engine, and Courtney started to cry again.
“Jesus Christ, what’s wrong now?” Ray snapped.
“Granddaddy used to always take me to Cracker Barrel on special occasions.” She wiped her cheeks on her sleeve. “And now he’ll never do that again!”
Ray was unmoved. Since leaving Gatlinburg, Courtney had cried about everything. They’d pass an eighteen-wheeler and she’d wail, “When I was a little girl, whenever we’d drive by a big truck, Granddaddy would pull up next to them and get them to honk their horn for me.”
Outside Gatlinburg she saw a billboard for Dollywood and started bawling, “because ‘Hard Candy Christmas’ was Granddaddy’s favorite song.”
Finally, Ray had had enough. “Dry it up!” he yelled after a McDonald’s ad on the radio used the word “starvin,”—“which rhymes with ‘Marvin!’”
“No more radio!” he screamed, practically tearing off the knob. “We’ll just sit in silence for the rest of the trip!”
Ray was being neither reasonable nor compassionate, and he knew it, but his wife was having a baby, probably at that very moment, and he wanted to concentrate on how shitty he felt for not being there.
Courtney, however, did not appreciate her mourning taking second position to Ray’s baby. He already had, like, three of them or something.
She,
on the other hand, had just suffered a tremendous loss—granted, she had already suffered, like, three of them or something—but this was the first one she would have to deal with on her own, as a grown-up. Nothing less than fawning sympathy would suffice. Also, it was still her eighteenth birthday, and the tradition in her house was that on your birthday, you got to do whatever you wanted. The death of her grandfather shouldn’t change that.
“I want to go over to Cracker Barrel and get one of those little golf tee games.”
“We don’t have time for that.”
“Ugh! You won’t let me listen to the radio and you won’t talk to me, so what am I supposed to do? Just sit here and think for six hours? If I thought about everything I know, it wouldn’t take six hours!”
“Look,” he said, forcing civility, “we have to get back on the road. If you need to pee, then go here at the gas station, but make it quick.”
Courtney stuck out her bottom lip, crossed her arms, and glared at him.
“Goddammit, what?”
Tears.
Ray sighed loudly through his throat. “Courtney, I’m sorry, but I do not have time for your—”
Before he could finish, she grabbed her purse and stormed off toward the Cracker Barrel.
“Where are you going?”
She flipped him off without turning around.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Pulling at his hair, Ray shoved the nozzle back in the pump and ran after her. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
She wouldn’t look at him.
“Courtney, you
have
to understand how important it is for me to get home.”
“You’re mean,” she said without stopping. “I’m getting a golf tee game.”
A thick antitheft cable ran through the legs of the handmade rocking chairs that lined the long wooden porch of the Cracker Barrel, belying the implied folksiness the place served up like a side of buttered grits. An elderly couple in crisp bright orange Tennessee Vols paraphernalia lazily rocked while openly eavesdropping on the apparent father-daughter dispute. The old man smiled and offered Ray a nugget of wisdom he’d picked up over his many years; “Kids, huh?”
“Yeah … mind your own fucking business,” Ray responded.
The man smiled back and raised his voice, “I said, ‘kids, huh?’”
“Yeah, kids!” Ray said loud enough to make sure the old man heard every word. “Don’t get ’em pregnant or they turn into fucking crazy people! The Vols suck!”
Twenty years ago, the old man would have kicked Ray’s ass all the way to Owensboro and back again. Instead, he ushered his horrified wife into the restaurant and gave Ray a look filled with so much genuine disappointment it could have come from Ray’s own father.
Ray resisted the urge to shake Courtney until she fell to pieces, and took a long, deep breath. The girl had the emotional maturity of a pumpkin. Reason would get him nowhere, so he tried something else.
“Courtney, please! My wife is having a baby!” Ray’s voice cracked. Not much, just enough to sound vulnerable. “What if I wasn’t there when you were having
our
baby?”
Courtney stopped. “What?” Fresh tears started to fall. “Where would you be? Why wouldn’t you be there with me?”
“I
would
be,” Ray said, mimicking the cadence of a bad handsome actor he saw on a popular prime time medical drama. “But that’s exactly what Miranda’s asking herself right now. ‘Where’s Ray? Why isn’t he here with me?’ She’s expecting me to be there for her just like you’re expecting me to be there for you. It’s no different, except she’s my wife. I need you to help me get to her. Can you please do that for me?”
Courtney wiped her face, now flushed equally from shame and emotion, and nodded.
“Thank you,” Ray said gently. Taking her hand, he led her back to the Jeep and buckled her in like a child in a safety seat. “You good?”
She nodded, and he kissed her on the head, just like he would any of his other children.
“I’ll be right back.”
Inside the gas station’s FoodSmart, Ray picked up a book of
Mad Libs
, a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, a heat-shriveled hot dog, and a bottle of Diet Dr Pepper, which reminded him of the glass of mashed up Ceaseocor left in the cabin. Those were the only pills he had, and the thought of getting more made his brain hurt.
One setback at a time.
The junk food and Mad Libs immediately lifted Courtney’s spirits. She was chatty again, which wasn’t ideal, but it was better than listening to her cry. Ten minutes later they were back on the road when Courtney spoke near a whisper, “Don’t be mad, but … I forgot to go to the bathroom back at the gas station and I have to go really bad. Can we stop again?”
After a long, hot silence, Ray got off at the next exit, where Courtney ran in to a Cracker Barrel to pee. Minutes later she walked out clutching one of those little golf tee games.
* * *
At one twenty-six
A.M.,
Ray tore through a back entrance of Bluegrass Baptist and sprinted toward the delivery rooms. He’d dumped Courtney off in her driveway the way a Mafioso dumps a body in front of an emergency room.
“I’ll call you!” he screamed over the sound of flying gravel. She even thought she heard him say, “Happy birthday,” as he sped away.
In the waiting area, Joan sat half asleep watching a staticy rerun of
Everybody Loves Raymond
on an old TV needlessly bolted to the wall. She shot Ray a judgmental smile and wagged her finger, silently scolding him.
“I know, I know,” he said, forcing levity and kissed her on the cheek. “I gotta get in there.”
Be kind, Joan. He’s had a rough day.
Joan smiled and forgave him instantly. Just like Jesus would.
Pulling on a surgical gown, Ray burst into the delivery room to find Miranda in the middle of a contraction. Her eyes looked like she’d been pepper sprayed, and her hair was matted with sweat. Christie stood bedside rubbing her back, fresh scratches from what looked like a feral cat crisscrossed her neck.
“
Where
the
fuck
have
you
been?!” Miranda screamed.
In eleven years of marriage, she’d never cursed at him, not out loud, anyway. It made him feel small. He started to explain but realized he hadn’t spent a single moment of the ride home coming up with a story.
“I, um, I am so sorry it took me so long. It was just”—long exhale—“a bad scene, you know? Death and sadness and…” He waved his hands to give the impression of utter chaos, then held Miranda’s free hand. “How are you?”
“How the fuck do you think I am, Ray? My daughter is going to be born on the worst day in history. I’ve been in labor for ten hours, and my husband has more important things to do than show up on time for the birth of—OH, FUCKING SHIT!” Another contraction.
“What is she, lighting firecrackers in there?” She squeezed Ray’s hand with the force of a robot. Ray knew he could not complain—about anything—for a very long time, but he couldn’t help wincing when he heard the deep pop of his knuckles.
“There you go, babe. Just breathe.”
“Ha!” Christie laughed and rolled her eyes, prompting a look from Ray that genuinely frightened her. Fifteen of his last twenty-four hours had been spent in a Jeep with a woman whose every word made him feel like human garbage. He didn’t have it in him to deal with another one.
“Christie, why don’t you go fu—”
“Hello, all!” The door swung open and Dr. Fales entered, cutting Ray off before he had a chance to end his sentence
and
last remaining friendship. “You’re here!” he said to Ray as he snapped on a latex glove. “Good.”
He crossed to Miranda and casually stuck two fingers in her vagina without even saying hello. Contorting his face, he hummed softly, then gave a satisfied nod. “Nice,” he said, peeling off the glove. “That … is almost ready.” He could have been talking about a Thanksgiving turkey. Then, like a gynecological Fonzie, he gave his patient a wink and a finger-gun “looking good,” and strode out the door.
“What the hell was that?” Miranda said. “Reminded me of my prom.”
“What?” Ray did a double take as his wife’s small, exhausted smile slowly grew into heaving, convulsive laugher.
Perfect,
he thought.
She’s having mental breakdown.
He was actually jealous. Six months in a nuthouse sounded perfect.
“Are—are you … okay?”
“Yes!” Miranda burst. Then, as if that brief moment of amusement was the last of her joy escaping, she immediately burst into tears. “I’m just so glad you’re here.”
Ray closed his eyes and sighed. He was suddenly aware that he hadn’t slept in thirty-three hours. Was Gatlinburg a hallucination? There was no way that could have actually happened. Was he really going to drug Courtney’s Dr Pepper? Why did he do
any
of that? Memories of the past couple days started to break apart and drift away like pieces of an iceberg, melting into an ocean of bad ideas. Ray was now exactly where he needed to be, and like Miranda, he was happy he was there. Smiling at his bawling wife, he leaned down and kissed her gently on the forehead.
“Of course I’m here,” he replied, pushing a sticky clump of hair out of her eyes. “Where else would I be?”
At four fifteen
A.M.
, Brixton Destiny Miller decided she was ready to meet the world. Miranda felt like she’d lost a war. The sweat on her skin had mixed with the lotion she’d asked Ray to rub on her arms to form a viscous paste that stank like brined lavender. She was close to delirious. An hour earlier she’d asked Christie to find a watermelon and put her feet in it.
“Oh, my God, that would feel so good,” she purred.
Ray, however, had gotten his second wind thanks to three cans of Mello Yello and a blister pack he found in the nurses’ lounge that turned out to be a new chewable ADD medication for toddlers. All things considered, he was holding up remarkably well.
Dr. Fales sat on a stool between Miranda’s knees and told her to push, which she wasn’t sure she had the strength to do. She’d already cussed out everyone in the room and pooped on the floor, so quitting at that point would have been an embarrassing waste of resources. Miranda pushed.
“One more ought to do it!”
Ray stroked her hair. “You hear that? Just one more push and we get to meet Brixton!”
“Shut up,” Miranda said through gritted teeth, then screamed like she slammed a car door on her uterus. Moments later, the room was filled with the joyful cries of a seven-pound-nine-ounce baby.
Dr. Fales smiled and held her up to show the parents. “Well, it’s a girl!”
“Oh, thank God.” Miranda said, and not flippantly. It was a genuine thank-you to a higher power.
Dr. Fales took another look at little Brixton and his expression changed. Christie had already seen what the doctor was just now noticing. They exchanged nods and carried Brixton to a nearby table. Ray had given hundreds of nods like that over the years. He felt sick.
“What going on, Larry?”
Dr. Fales smiled automatically. “I just want to check her out real quick. It’s a doctor thing.”
Asshole,
Ray thought.
Miranda sat up as straight as she could with her legs still in the stirrups, “What’s wrong? Is something wrong?”