The Figgs, page 5
“Birte and I have some news too,” Earle said.
“We do?”
Earle leaned over and whispered in Birte’s ear.
“Oh, yes!” she giggled. “We do.”
“We’re putting the house up for sale and moving into an apartment.”
“An apartment?”
“Because —” Earle continued.
“We’re buying a place in Phoenix!” Birte interrupted. She let out a small shriek, and then both she and Earle puckered their lips and engaged in a long, hard kiss that bent their noses sideways.
June glanced over at Randy, who had a spot of salsa on his yellow shirt. He leaned forward and shook Earle’s hand.
After the Chinese food was delivered, June joined Birte in the kitchen, removing lids from foil containers as Birte emptied the bag.
“So will Derek and Marissa be living together?” Birte arranged the eggrolls on the plate to form a flower.
“I don’t know,” June said. “We don’t know much of anything right now. This all happened yesterday. Last week he was vaping in his room and playing Grand Theft Auto, and today he went out to buy a car seat.” June put down a container of chow mein. “But you should see him, Birte. The baby. He looks just like Derek. He’s got the red hair and the long limbs.”
“I’m sure things will work out.” Birte took a wonton. “Derek’s a good kid. A responsible kid.”
“I just wish things were different.”
Birte gave June’s arm an encouraging squeeze. “We all do. Actually, that’s not really true. I don’t want anything to be different. But you know what I mean, Junie. Grandchildren are gifts. Gifts from heaven,” she said. “Now let’s eat.”
A gift from a recycling depot, June thought. A gift that Derek might have trouble sustaining. At least he was an adult, she reasoned, and not fifteen. And he had a job. And Marissa seemed nice, and maybe she was responsible. June filled her plate.
Earle proposed a toast. “To Jaxx,” he said.
“To Jaxx,” the group repeated.
After dinner, everyone fussed over Earle’s selection of coffee pods.
Randy chose French vanilla. Earle limped to the kitchen, the floor creaking under his feet. The cat jumped onto his vacated seat.
“I almost forgot about the fortune cookies,” Birte said. She pushed her chair back from the table and joined Earle in the kitchen. June looked at Randy. His arms were crossed and he was slumped forward like he’d eaten too much, but there was a hint of something else in his expression. Contemplation.
“Are you thinking about Jaxx?”
Randy folded his napkin into a square. “I’m thinking about Phoenix. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a place there?”
She pushed her plate to the side. “But you don’t even golf, and that’s all people do there, is golf.”
“Earle doesn’t golf.”
Earle lumbered into the dining room. “One French vanilla cappuccino,” he announced, setting a mug in front of Randy.
“Merci,” Randy said.
Earle bowed, tilted his head to the side like an oversized minstrel, and returned to the kitchen.
“And you’re not particularly fond of the sun either,” June added.
“I like the sun.”
“We’d have to sell our place and get an apartment. Could you live in an apartment?”
Randy shrugged. “Any word from Derek?”
June pulled her phone out of her purse. “Nothing. They must be still at the hospital.”
“And when are we going to meet this dear grandson?” Birte set a bowl of fortune cookies on the table.
June looked at Randy.
Earle ferried the remaining coffees to the table. He shooed away the cat, and it plunked to the floor with the grace of a bull.
“Ladies first,” Birte said, cracking open her cookie. “Never underestimate the power of the human touch.” She leaned over the table, and grabbed Earle’s face, thumbs pressing into his cheekbones. He leaned in too, cupped the back of her fair, thinning hair, his fingers, thick and mottled brown, pressing into her skull with just a touch of pressure. Finger on an iPad. June turned away and opened her cookie. The resulting cap-gun snap separated Birte and Earle.
“Love can turn a cottage into a golden palace.”
Birte clapped. “Isn’t that the truth?” she said. “You do have a golden palace. How blessed are you to still have your three kids at home?”
June thought about the golden palace. The hoard in the basement. Vanessa’s blue-black hair that clogged the tub. The boys’ sneakers that were too big. Elephant shoes. The econo-sized tub of parmesan cheese in the fridge. A wood-panelled palace? A golden institution? She slid the piece of paper under her plate and realized she’d missed Earle’s fortune. She gathered by the laughter it had been amusing. Maybe it was irrelevant. Maybe it was generic. Maybe it was true.
“Your turn.” Earle slapped Randy on the back.
Randy used a knife to pry open his cookie as though it were an oyster. “A pleasant surprise is in store for you tonight.”
“Ooh!” Earle laughed.
Birte gently pushed his shoulder and said, “Earle!”
“Not from me,” June said over a yawn.
Earle laughed again.
“On that note,” Randy said. “We should get back to the golden palace.”
June unbuttoned her pants and ate the remainder of her fortune cookie in the van. Randy drove past an art piece that had been carved from a tree stump on someone’s front lawn. “See that?”
“Kind of,” June said. “It’s too dark.”
“Leslie did that. It’s magnificent. Vanessa said it took Leslie two weeks to complete.”
June glanced at the side mirror. A cyclist lit up with a helmet lamp was pedalling furiously behind them. She did not want to go back to the golden palace. She wanted to go where the cyclist was going. Away. Wherever it was he was going. Downtown. Phoenix. Siberia.
“Maybe we really should consider downsizing,” June said.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know. We retired for a reason. If we sell the house, we can get a small apartment, and maybe we can get a condo somewhere hot, like Birte and Earle.”
“I don’t know about Phoenix.”
“Doesn’t have to be Phoenix. Doesn’t even have to be a condo. We could go to Europe or Malaysia. We could take a cruise.”
Randy looked at her hopefully. “June, I’ve always wanted to go on a cruise.”
“Then we should do it.”
“But the basement. The kids.”
“I don’t mean right away. But soon. We can fix up the basement, paint the upstairs. People are always looking for four bedrooms up. And we’re in walking distance to all the schools.”
He gripped the steering wheel. “We should. I mean, once Tom pays off his student loan, he’s pretty much ready to move out, and if things work out with Leslie, Vanessa…” he trailed off, but his eyes continued to speak. A beautiful story that finished with a cursive The End. He pulled into the driveway beside the car. Derek was home. A stack of flyers was on the front step. June picked them up and opened the front door, Randy following behind. Sprawled out in the sandbox on the living-room floor was Derek, his legs and arms draped over the sides of the plastic turtle, and on his chest wrapped in a Pepsi towel, Jaxx, fast asleep.
June and Randy stared at each other. Neither said anything. June set the flyers down on the bench and kicked off her shoes. Randy quietly closed the door and tossed his jacket over the flyers. He tiptoed toward the sandbox as Vanessa appeared from the kitchen. She jumped at the sight of her father, and placed her hand on her chest.
“Frig, Dad, you scared me.” Dangling from her free hand was a bottle. It was small and plastic, not much taller than a shot glass but wider. The obtuse nipple on the end was clear, not brown as June remembered them. “He has to eat every four hours,” Vanessa whispered. “I have to wake them up.”
“Why are they sleeping in the sandbox?” Randy asked.
Vanessa rolled her eyes, which had been stripped of makeup. “Do you see a crib anywhere?” She gave the bottle a shake, and got down on one knee close to her brother.
“Wait!” June called out. “You shouldn’t wake him. You never wake a sleeping baby.”
“Derek said every four hours.”
“Yeah, but he’s fine. At least give him a little more time. He’ll wake up when he’s hungry.”
Vanessa switched knees and sighed. The formula sloshed inside the bottle, grey and un-milk-like.
Randy paced. “I haven’t finished the cradle!”
“You can do it tomorrow.” June took off her coat.
“He can’t sleep in a sandbox!” Randy continued to pace, and stubbed his toe on the coffee table he’d moved earlier to make way for the turtle. He grabbed his foot and winced.
Vanessa stood up from the floor. “Leslie’s bringing over a cradle.”
“Leslie?” Randy said. He looked at June. “I told you people still use cradles.”
June ignored him. “That’s awfully nice of Leslie. Did she say when?”
Vanessa set the bottle on the table and moved to the front window. “She should be here any minute. She made it last night.”
“She made it? I’m supposed to be making him one.”
“Relax, Dad, she already had one started.”
“So did I.” He made a beeline for the kitchen.
Vanessa looked at her mother, a hint of doubt registering on her pale face. “Now can I wake him up?”
June heard the creak of the basement stairs. The sudden onset of machine noise. Buzzing, clapping, assembling. “He’s down there trying to build that cradle.”
“Yep,” Vanessa said. “The milk’s getting cold.”
“Let me get him.” June stood over Derek. His mouth was open slightly, his neck muscles rigid and pronounced. She slipped her hand under Jaxx’s body, and, holding his head, gently turned the infant face up and pulled him into her body, the towel all in a bunch. She carried him to the armchair and settled into its worn tapestry. The baby cocked his head slightly and continued to sleep. Randy appeared in the doorway, out of breath. Bits of sawdust peppered his hair.
“Is Leslie here yet?”
“No,” Vanessa answered.
“Sshhhh,” June said.
“Good.” Randy hurried back downstairs.
June looked at Vanessa. “Why don’t you sit?” she suggested. “You look tired.”
Vanessa shrugged her shoulders and gave the bottle a shake before plunking down on the couch. There was a hole in her Metallica T-shirt.
June adjusted Jaxx on her shoulder, one hand still wrapped around his grapefruit head. Her fingers looked old and bony. She mourned her younger hands, which were soft and able to open anything.
Upstairs the hall light flicked on, and Tom descended the stairs with a blue towel cinched under his belly fat. His hair dripped.
“Phew,” he said, relieved. “It’s been over four hours. Who fed him?”
Vanessa scratched at the nail polish on her thumbnail. “Mom won’t let us,” she chirped.
“Mom? He has to eat. The doctor said every four hours. I’ll feed him.” He twisted a Q-tip in his ear.
“The bottle’s probably cold now,” Vanessa said.
“You can’t waste it. That shit cost me forty bucks.”
“You bought the formula?”
“Well, Derek doesn’t have any money.”
“He bought the diapers, too,” Vanessa added. “I got him the towel.”
June looked at Tom. Water continued to trickle down from his hair like an IV drip.
“You can’t let him starve.”
June looked at Tom and Vanessa. “Have I ever let any of you starve?”
Vanessa looked up from her fingernails. “Marissa and Derek decided Derek would keep the baby.”
“What?” June replied.
“They decided he would raise him.”
June tried to make sense of the arrangement. The nonchalance in Vanessa’s voice. As though Marissa and Derek had agreed to who would go first in a card game. Who would get the comfy chair. She felt her blood gallop to her brain. She lost her breath.
“What do you mean, they decided he would raise the baby?”
“She’s going away in the fall,” Vanessa explained.
“For music,” Tom added, “but she’ll be home in the summers.”
June held Jaxx tighter. She felt a mix of rage and devastation. Hulk-like, as though her fingers might explode. Like her wedding ring might break off and lodge itself in the popcorn ceiling.
“Marissa’s just abandoning him?”
“She said she’d help out on weekends until she goes to school,” Tom said, twisting the Q-tip, like a pencil in a sharpener, in his other ear.
“Help out on weekends? That’s not parenting. You say that like we’re talking about planting a garden. What, is she going to come over and water him on the weekends?”
“Don’t get mad at us,” Vanessa said.
“Yeah,” Tom agreed. “It’s not our fault.”
June said nothing. She covered her eyes as Derek rolled out of the sandbox.
It took Derek a second to register that Jaxx wasn’t there. Not on the floor, not in the sandbox. He leaned back on his knees, and was relieved to see the baby nestled in his mother’s arms. June produced a weak smile. There was crust in her son’s eyes. He looked at his iPhone, which had fallen out of his pocket and lay on the floor.
“Fuck, it’s 9:40 p.m.,” Derek said. “It’s been over four hours.”
He was good at counting by fours.
He looked at Tom and Vanessa. “I told you to wake me up!”
“Mom wouldn’t let us.”
“Mom?”
“He was asleep.”
“He’s going to starve,” Derek panicked. He looked at the bottle. “Is that his?”
“No, it’s mine,” Tom joked, giving the bottle a shake.
“Go upstairs and put some clothes on,” June said.
Tom obliged, but only, June decided, because he was cold. Vanessa reached for the bottle on the side table and poured some of the formula on her wrist.
“I can’t tell,” she said. “Seems a little…cool?”
“Let me try.” June offered her wrist. Vanessa tipped the bottle over a second time and milk trickled out onto her mother’s forearm. “I can’t really feel it.” It lacked temperature. “Maybe heat it up again?”
Derek rubbed his eyelids. “I’m just going to make him a new one.”
“There are clean bottles on the counter,” Vanessa said. “I boiled them like you said.” Her phone buzzed from her pocket. “Leslie’s here.” She clambered off the couch.
June watched Vanessa move swiftly to the kitchen, a smile forming on her daughter’s face. She got up out of the chair and placed Jaxx on the seat. Then she knelt down in front of him. “Hi, sweet boy,” she whispered, “I’m your grandma.” She touched his arm with the back of her finger. “Sweet boy,” she repeated. The baby stretched his arms over his head, fists clenched, head tilted back, lips like Earle’s — big and puckered.
“I got him,” Derek said, returning to the room. “Come here, buddy.” Derek lifted Jaxx off the chair, leaving the towel behind. His legs remained tucked in, arms still in a stretch position, eyes open. June got up from the floor as Jaxx began to feed. She wanted to yell at Derek and she wanted to yell at Marissa, wherever the heck she was, but instead she watched Derek feed the baby, and for a moment she felt removed from the drama. Away from their weekend parenting arrangement and the sandbox crib. She detached herself from the father-son pair as though they were strangers to her. Subjects in a magazine. A man feeds his infant son. Jaxx stared at Derek hopefully, dependently. The way one looks at his mother, except it wasn’t his mother. It was his father, who counted cans and wore SWAG T-shirts and Axe body spray. It was like one of those stories from National Geographic. Cross-adoption in the animal kingdom — tigers looking after piglets, Derek and Jaxx. Awkward, askew, endearing.
In the kitchen, Vanessa was helping Leslie with a cradle. Leslie wore a K-way jacket and a plaid cap. Tufts of blond hair stuck out from the back like fur. An orange garbage bag was loosely draped on top of the cradle.
“Is it raining?” June asked.
“Sprinkling,” Leslie replied, setting the cradle down. She pulled off the garbage bag, folded it neatly, and handed it to Vanessa.
June ran her fingers down the cradle’s edge. “It’s beautiful, Leslie.”
“It swings, too.” Vanessa nudged it with her knee so that it rocked side to side.
“So does mine,” Randy grunted up the top two stairs holding his cradle at eye level. “And it’s solid.” He carried it past the island and carefully lowered it beside Leslie’s. His stood much lower to the ground.
“Check it out.” With two fingers he pushed down on one side of the cradle. It jerked down about a quarter of an inch.
“Isn’t it a bit small?” June asked, focusing on the box where the baby was supposed to sleep.
“Nope,” he argued. “It’s suitable up to twenty pounds.”
“Twenty pounds and six inches,” Vanessa said.
“It’s thirty inches.”
June looked at the two cradles. “Are you sure that’s thirty?”
“Am I sure that’s thirty? I’ve been woodworking all my life. I know how to measure, and it’s thirty inches.”
“I think it’s thirty centimetres.” Vanessa stood over the cradle. “You could rock a foot-long steak and cheese to sleep in there.”
“I like the design,” Leslie offered. “Kind of reminds me of a sled.”
Randy turned to her. “Thank you,” he said.
“Or a shoebox,” Vanessa added.
Derek hollered from the living room. “Can someone get me a cloth?”
