THERE YOU ARE

In the first place, Jill didn’t want the baby, and this surprised everyone except for Jill. I never wanted kids, she told Cathy, and this wasn’t exactly true, but it was true enough.

Even some of their closest friends couldn’t understand. When Jill complained about the baby crying or spitting up on itself or pooping its diaper again, they gaped at her like she was some sort of monster. They told her she couldn’t keep calling the baby it. That’s how kids develop complexes, they said. That’s why they grow up and kill their teachers.

Jill had heard the word complex, but she wasn’t exactly clear on what it meant. It made her think about apartments, and apartments reminded her of a sticky hive crawling with thousands of buzzing bees.

How come, Jill said, you never hear about teachers killing kids?

They—Cathy and the friends—thought this was terrible, too. What was wrong with Jill? How did she come up with this stuff?

Rampaging teachers. Apartments and bees and walls made of wax. Complexes. Jill wondered if she had one.

Just now, she was painting her nails Blue Blazes. Her hands shook as they had since junior high, but the tremors were getting worse. She had to plant her palm against the stained arm of the recliner to have any hope at all, and even then, the brush trembled and bobbed. She might have dipped the tip of her finger into the bottle and got a similar, perhaps better, result.

Porky the Parrot watched from Jill’s shoulder. You’re too sexy, he said. You’re too sexy for your clothes.

The television was on—some kid show with lots of music. Cathy was dressed for work, but she was on the floor with Barbara, wincing as she shifted from one bad knee to the other. Barbara couldn’t stand up on her own, so Cathy held her little hands and bobbed her own head in a kind of dance.

Cathy blew air from between her lips. She opened her eyes and her mouth wide. Then she strung a bunch of nonsense sounds together, and smiled at Barbara as if, in the middle of their baby conversation, one of them had told a smart joke.

You’re too sexy for your hat, Porky said, and Jill said, Goddammit, because she’d jumped when Porky brushed against her ear. His wing was light, like nothing at all, like air, like breath against Jill’s skin, and now there was an ugly streak of blue down her pinky finger all the way to the knuckle.

Ha-HA, Cathy said. HA-ha, HA-ha, ha!

Jill glared, but Cathy was making faces at the baby. They’d had Barbara for nearly a month, but Jill still wasn’t used to it. She felt like she was always trying to guess who was talking to who. Cathy said something else, and when Jill didn’t respond, Cathy said, Anybody home?

What? Jill said. Me?

I said, she’ll be walking any day now.

Barbara squealed as if she understood. She held tight to Cathy’s fingers. Her dimpled knees buckled in and out and in again.

See? Cathy said.

Whatchya think about that? Porky said and jumped on top of Jill’s head. Think about that, whatchya.

Cathy’s talkie squawked. She pulled it from her belt and adjusted the volume.

Barbara frowned and reached for the talkie. She missed and, off balance, sat back hard on her diapered bottom. She looked like she might cry. From the radio came a string of words and numbers, codes.

Cathy’s face was grim as she clipped the talkie back to her belt. The navy EMS shirt and the cargo pants made Jill think of the military. There she goes, Jill said, reporting for duty. She meant to be funny. The parrot said something that didn’t mean anything.

We should watch how we talk, Cathy said, in front of the baby.

Cathy stood and swung Barbara up on her shoulder in one fluid motion as if she’d been doing such a thing all her life. Another wreck, she said. Out toward Darpo.

I didn’t say anything, Jill said.

Cathy pressed her lips against Barbara’s sticky cheek.

Porky just scared me. That’s all.

Cathy sat the baby down in Jill’s lap. She gets what you’re saying. She gets a lot more than you know.

Barbara squirmed in Jill’s lap. She made a face. Jill held her wet nails in the air. She opened her mouth to say something, and Cathy kissed her on the cheek. BRB, she said, and in a rattle of keys and boot stomps, she was gone.

Usually, Cathy worked the night shift so that when Jill was alone with the baby, most often they both just slept. Sometimes Barbara cried, and Jill would wake up and lie there listening. It was a lonely suffering sound, like a dog or something wilder, and Jill would think of her brother Boone, those times he’d go hunting and miss the clean shot. All night, she’d hear the rabbit, and sometimes she’d find its blood trail, the quiet places it dragged itself to hurt in some sort of peace.

Jill told herself that if Barbara’s crying went on long enough, she’d go check. But eventually, Barbara seemed to whimper herself to sleep, and the next thing Jill knew, she was waking up again, and Cathy was back. Time, since Jill had moved in with Cathy and particularly since they got Barbara, seemed to move differently. Through one of the windows upstairs, Jill sometimes saw the sun in one corner of the sky and a piece of the moon in the other. It wasn’t right to see both at once. She’d never thought so. It made a person feel like she was on an altogether different planet, and there were times when Jill was so tired she wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised to find her feet floating up off the ground, to find herself slipping up through the top of the house and the sky and the atmosphere which supposedly kept the world from bursting into flames.

You didn’t hear about teachers killing kids, but the same couldn’t be said for mothers.

Barbara squirmed, and she might have fell over backward if Jill hadn’t caught her. Jill kept her from falling, but she held the baby too tight. She felt the soft baby flesh and soft baby bones against the muscles and the points of her own arms.

Barbara let out a wail, a rabbit missing two of her feet, a ragged hole for an ear. Barbara flashed the few teeth she’d grown, and Jill said, Stop it. Just quit already.

Outside, the dog barked, and Porky hollered, You’re so sexy. You’re so sexy it hurts!

Barbara’s daddy was Cathy’s nephew, and at first, Jill didn’t think he was intellectually disabled, but now she wasn’t so sure. He’d come by the house twice since she and Cathy had been keeping the baby, and both times, he’d sat on the couch like a lug with his oily black hair over his eyes, and his mouth hanging open until Jill could see the only glimmer of anything about him—a small bubble of spit at the corner of his pale, chapped lips.

He was sixteen years old, and it was a miracle and a mystery how and why anyone had ever slept with him, but someone had, presumably. Cathy said the girl’s name was Nicole.

Who is she? Jill said. Where does she work? What does she do?

And the nephew, sunk even deeper into the crevices of the couch, muttered something Jill had to ask him to repeat.

Ralphie’s, he said.

It was unclear which, if any, of Jill’s questions the nephew was answering, but at the time, Jill couldn’t muster the energy to pry anything else out of him, and now it was all the information she had—Ralphie’s Roller Rama. She would go there. She would take Barbara back where she belonged. Jill had to do this before she did something else.

Jill drove around the square in the only direction that was legal, the streets around the courthouse being their own kind of rink where people routinely cut each other off and stopped in the middle of the road to wait on a good parking spot. Jill lived in Columbia for a while (She always said South Carolina, not South America until she realized people were laughing at her. Of course, it was South Carolina.), and it drove her crazy how country people drove any which way they wanted and at their own pace. Even now, as the Cutlass in front of Jill hesitated ever so slightly at the recently turned-green light, Jill laid on her horn and yelled, Come on!

She was in some kind of hurry.

The Roller Rama was about a mile down Vine Street. The cement block building, formerly a short-lived gym and before that, a thousand other doomed ventures, was wedged between a gas station turned car detailer and a Subway restaurant. The outside of the building was still painted with a few poorly sketched figures—a Speedoed man of obscene proportions, a girl in a karate suit with teeth like a monster’s. The paint peeled and flaked into a sad confetti, and one day, when Cathy and Jill were eating at Subway, Jill noticed that one of the karate girl’s feet was unfinished. Time, it seemed, had run out.

Ralph, a failed farmer looking to cut every corner, wouldn’t even consider repainting. He hung a homemade sign with his name stenciled on it and kept the floors concrete instead of putting in wood. Hitting hard, he said, just learned the kids to skate better.

It was the middle of the day. Kids were still at school, and the parking lot was nearly empty, but when Jill turned in, she spotted a skinny orange-haired girl out back, smoking by the trashcans. With the girl was some other boy that looked like the nephew only shorter, fatter. Even though it was sunny and almost hot, both of them wore black hooded sweatshirts.

Jill didn’t bother parking. She pulled around the building as if she were going through a drive-thru. With the tires still rolling, she hit the button and the window went down. You Nicole? she hollered.

She expected to scare the girl. She wanted to. It’d be nice to see somebody else jump for a change, but instead, the girl turned slowly, and her mouth hung open just like the nephew’s, and she closed and opened her eyes for such a duration that Jill felt the moment as if it were unfolding in a kind of slow-motion.

Nickie, the girl said, and then broke into a lethargic gurgle of thick laughter that made Jill wonder if the girl was about to vomit.

The boy standing beside her snorted. With some violence, he dragged the dirty sleeve of his sweatshirt under his nose. Then he looked back over his shoulder.

Nickie Dickey, the girl said.

Jill reached for the radio knob and twisted the volume down, but the radio wasn’t on. I don’t care what your friends call you.

Nickie’s shoulders shook. She seemed to be trying to open her eyes. Then she stuck out her tongue and said, Blahhhh.

The boy hissed. He had a vicious rash around his mouth.

The engine idled and made a snapping noise.

Nickie blinked and stumbled toward the car. Hey, she said, as if it was the first time any of them were speaking, can you take us somewhere?

Around Nickie’s neck was a black leather choker studded with a line of fake diamonds that caught the light. Seeing this, or perhaps something else, something familiar, Barbara smiled and, like Cathy had taught her, blew air through her lips. She wagged her little arms and beat her fists against the seat.

Yo, Nickie said. Whose baby is that?

As Nickie came forward, her sweatshirt fell open, and Jill saw the tight T-shirt riding up. Nickie was boney, but the skin around her belly was loose and white, like the hide around something dead.

That’s my baby, Nickie said, and she was coming closer, but the toe of her boot hung in the gravel. She lurched and caught herself on the car door. That’s my little Barbie. Before Jill could think better of it, her foot was punching the gas, and the car was jerking forward, and in the rearview mirror, she saw Nickie fall down. She was rolling around on the ground, and it was hard to tell if the girl was laughing or crying, but the claw of her hand was reaching after them.

Jill didn’t look both ways before she hit the road. She didn’t even stop. She popped the curb, and there was a terrible scraping sound, and they might have been killed, and in the back seat, Barbara just laughed and laughed.

A truck came close, and the driver—a piggish man in a straw hat—made twisted faces at Jill and yelled at her. His window was up, and now Jill’s was too, and the man didn’t honk, but when his mouth opened, she saw the white of his tongue. It was a strangely silent assault, and afterward, the man hit the gas and pulled far in front of Jill. There was an EAT BEEF sticker plastered to his bumper.

Jill slowed the car down to a crawl. She didn’t know where she was going anymore.

In the backseat, Barbara grinned and howled. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and giggled. She rubbed at her face with her fists, and by the time they’d turned onto South Main, she was licking her lips and fighting to keep her eyes open.

Cathy said sometimes a nap was just what a baby needed to turn things around. Jill wondered what would do that for her, what would be the thing that made all the difference.

She couldn’t give Barbara back to Nicole like she’d planned. The girl was just a baby herself, and that was the least of the problems. The nephew was certainly not an option, and his mother, Cathy’s sister, was a real head case. Jill hadn’t seen it for herself, but according to Cathy, who didn’t like to talk about it much, the nephew never had a chance. His mother packed the house with all manner of things from newspapers to empty milk cartons to VHS tapes she said she felt bad for because nobody had any use for them anymore. Cathy said the house and everything in it was a real fire hazard, and she wouldn’t be surprised if one day a call came in, and she’d have to go unearth her own sister’s charred and unrecognizable body.

Sometimes Jill felt that way, like the world was closing in on her. There was a time when it seemed to Jill like she could go places, like she could be someone, but every day, this seemed less and less true. On the wheel, her hands were shaking worse than ever. That, the tremors, had started when her daddy started doing what he did, and when her mother started doing nothing except calling Jill a liar. But Jill didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think or talk about it ever again. What she wanted was for things to be like they were without Barbara. What she wanted, she realized, just about the time the light by the Presbyterian Church turned, was a strong drink.

She’d have to make a U-turn and drive five or six miles in the other direction to get to Mike’s. Foxy Lady was closer—was, in fact, almost already in sight.

Jill looked up at the mirror. Barbara was out now for sure. Her mouth was open, and a line of drool dripped on her shirt. Her arm hung down over the edge of the car seat, as if she’d dropped something important but tired herself out reaching for it.

Every summer, babies fried in cars, usually in the Walmart parking lot. But it wasn’t that hot, Jill thought now as the wind came in the window. Just a little warm. Barbara would be okay. She’d be just fine. It would only be a minute or two. It’d be more likely for her to get kidnapped than to burn up. Jill laughed to herself. That’d be one way, she thought. But she didn’t really believe in kidnappers, not in Black Creek anyway.

Jill pulled off the road, and when the car stopped, she half-expected Barbara to wake up, but Barbara didn’t. She kept right on sleeping even when Jill rolled down the rest of the windows and cut the engine and got out of the car and shut the door. She slept through it all like some kind of princess who, one day, will wake up and see that everything has changed.

Jill took one last look, and then she headed on inside.

The Foxy Lady was Black Creek’s only strip club and calling it a club was a bit of a stretch. It was really just an old house with a few walls knocked out and a bar in the living room. The floor was still carpeted, and you had to pass through the kitchen—which was grimy but still furnished with all the appliances—to get to the bathroom, and if you sat on the toilet, you stared into the tub, and if you stood over the toilet, you could read a framed copy of the Christian poem “Footprints.”

The owner and sole proprietor of The Foxy Lady had inherited the property from his mother, and there were things he’d changed and things he hadn’t. The tub, after all, sometimes came in handy. Everyone, even the cops, seemed to know that The Foxy Lady offered a wide range of services.

One of Jill’s exes—not the construction guy or the porno watcher but one prior—had been a regular, and when Jill and Cathy first got together, Jill made Cathy take her. Cathy didn’t like going to Foxy Lady much, but Jill got a real kick out of it, doing what her ex had done. She experimented with wearing flannel shirts and large gold belt buckles. She smashed her fist against things—the wall mostly, just for the hell of it. She even ordered the drink he liked to drink, rum and coke.

Just now, though, she asked the bearded bartender for vodka with anything, and anything turned out to be Tang, which was just fine. Jill sat at the bar and drank it down and asked for another. While the bartender poured, Jill said, You know anybody wanting a baby?

A what? the bartender said.

A baby.

He made a face like he’d smelled something bad, and Jill said, Never mind. She told him she was just kidding. It was a joke. Then she laughed in a way that wasn’t so different from the sounds Cathy made when she was playing with Barbara. Ha-HA, ha-HA, ha-HA!

Why couldn’t she be funny? Maybe if she could tell a good joke the world would turn right again. Being funny might make all the difference. There wasn’t anybody else there, at least in the front part of the house, but Jill thought she heard something. She looked over her shoulder, toward the screen door, but it was coming from the back of the house, where the bedrooms were.

When she turned back, the bartender was eyeing her. He set the second drink down. Then he pressed the button on a stereo, and there was music.

Jill took her drink and went over to the couch that was printed with scenes from the English countryside. She sipped, and on the arm, she traced the outline of the woman’s big blue skirt, the lacy trim of her bonnet. Her mama used to say things were better when ladies stayed at home and men were soldiers. People still had their values, her mama said. Jill was tracing the edge of the bonnet and getting to the round cheek when a girl in a neon green bikini came through a curtain beaded to look like the Mona Lisa.

Hola, the girl said.

She wasn’t Spanish. Or Mexican. Nothing about her, Jill thought, could be more white, more pale. Her long flat belly. Her crimped hair. Even her eyelashes, Jill saw when the girl sat down beside her, were white.

Bet you burn, Jill said. The drink was leaving a film in her mouth.

The girl stared. Her eyes were a dull blue.

In the sun, Jill said. When it’s hot.

Oh, the girl said. She sat back from Jill and dusted something like crumbs off her chest. Yeah, Mama always made me wear Coppertone.

Jill nodded and took a drink. It was strong, and it was helping. The edges of the room spun a little. That’s good, she said.

The girl sighed.

No, Jill said, as if the girl was arguing with her. It’s good that your mama cared like that.

The girl ran a thumb under the waistband of the bikini. There was a red mark where the elastic cut at her skin. She wanted me to be in the movies, the girl said.

Jill snorted. My mama just wanted me to go away.

The girl laughed without smiling, and the bartender coughed, cleared his throat.

Jill held the drink. The Tang wasn’t the best. She thought she might throw up soon. She considered going to the bathroom. She could hang her head over the bowl. She could read the “Footprints” poem. She knew it was about Jesus, about never being alone. Instead, she kept talking.

They can really mess you up if you stop to think about it. Mamas, I mean. And Daddies too. Daddies especially. When they want to.

Jill’s thoughts were turned around backward. It seemed like she was getting to the right place but in a stuttering way that could make a person crazy. She felt something fluttering at her temple and flinched before she realized it was the girl, brushing the hair out of Jill’s eyes. She’d scooted closer and looked hurt, maybe even a little angry when Jill shrank from her. What little eyebrows she had were knitted up, wrinkling her forehead. She was never pretty enough for the movies. That was plain to see. You do like girls, she said, right?

The bearded bartender was watching them. It seemed like the same song was playing over and over again, some generic R&B. Just then, Jill could have sworn it was getting a little louder.

Why else would you come? the girl said.

Now, Jill thought. Now she would go to the bathroom. She tried to get up, but before she could, something was pressing her back against the scenes of the English countryside, against another time, another place.

I know what you need, the girl said, and if before she’d seemed like a sullen teenager hell-bent on getting a sunburn, now, in an instant, she’d become an all-knowing epitome of at least one kind of experience. She was like a ballerina, performing a show she’d rehearsed for years. She pivoted off and away from the couch and shimmied down to a squat, and then she was spreading Jill’s knees as far apart as her own.

Jill needed to pee. She meant to tell the girl so when she heard a noise, she said, Did you hear that?

The girl grinned as she plastered her thin lips against Jill’s knee.

Jill cocked her head. It was the sound of a rusted hinge that might have been a truck dropping a ramp at the convenience store across the street. Or it could have been closer, in the parking lot, a door opening or closing.

Can you turn that down? Jill said to the bartender. The music.

She made a move to push the girl away, but the girl was stronger than she looked. A vein pulsed in her shoulder as she gripped Jill’s calves, and for a minute, she was like a girl in a movie. Something in the girl’s face. She was dangling off the edge of a building, hanging on for dear life. Please, that girl would say. Help me.

The music was even louder now, at least that’s how it sounded in Jill’s head. She looked down at the girl who was, just then, licking Jill’s shin bone. She looked so young, like a kid with a popsicle.

That. There was another sound, clear and distinct and definitely Barbara. With more resolve, more confidence than Jill had felt in years, she shoved, and the girl lost her balance and fell over backward. Dimly, Jill saw the girl’s face, more surprised than angry as she fell. She was someone’s baby, losing her footing. She was falling through the air, plummeting to a gruesome death.

From some distance, it seemed, Jill heard the bartender calling after her hey, bills to pay, what the fuck. But she was already through the door and out in the lot. The door of the car was open, and she ran to it, unaware of her own voice, the rising chant. No, no, no, no, no . . .

Barbara’s bags were still there. The clothes and toys and bottles and other junk Jill had packed that morning. I’ll take her back, she’d decided. I’ll take her back where she belongs. She’d been certain it was the right thing to do. She shouldn’t be responsible for a baby, for a life. She didn’t feel like she could be responsible for anything.

And now Barbara was gone. The car seat was empty, and Jill half-drunk and out of her mind with terror, lifted the bags and the floor mats, and looked under the seats as if Barbara might be playing some trick, as if she were old enough to consider the ways she might fool a person.

Jill even thought she heard Barbara laughing. Then she knew she heard it, and raising her head from the floorboard to look out the windshield, she saw the muscled back of a woman wearing high heels and a pink sparkly one-piece, and when this woman turned around, Jill saw that she was holding Barbara.

Jill rose up so quickly she slammed her head against the top of the car, but she kept moving. She ran, tripping over a rock, turning her ankle but lurching forward, and from a certain perspective, she and Nicole didn’t look so different, stumbling ahead, reaching for something to catch themselves. All of those kids skating in circles at Ralphie’s Roller Rama, breaking their arms and legs. Kids, well, people were so delicate when you got down to it. There was hardly anything so fragile.

The stripper must have thought so, because when Jill reached for the baby, the woman hesitated only for a few seconds, and then seeing, recognizing something in Jill’s face, she handed Barbara over.

Jill closed her eyes and pressed Barbara to her chest. Oh my God, she said and said again. There you are. Here I am. Jesus.

The stripper watched. She was much older than the blonde girl, much older than Jill, too, and she was tall. She looked down her nose. You shouldn’t leave a baby in a car like that.

Jill stammered something about thinking it would be okay, just for a minute, such a nice day.

It don’t matter! the woman said. It don’t matter what kind of day it is. You don’t leave a baby ever.

Jill’s whole body was bobbing up and down in an exaggerated show of agreement.

A baby can die, the woman said.

I don’t know, Jill said.

The woman rolled her eyes and adjusted herself. She popped the strap of her bathing suit, shifting from one heel to the other. People take babies for granted, she said. People would pay a lot of money for a pretty baby like that.

I don’t know, Jill said again. It seemed like all there was to say. I don’t know what I’m doing.

She meant she didn’t know what she was doing with Barbara. She didn’t know what she was doing at the Foxy Lady or with Cathy, and she didn’t know about a lot of things which were larger and not yet formed in her mind.

Jill patted Barbara’s back. She studied the woman, and the woman looked back at her until Jill finally understood. She shifted Barbara to her shoulder and reached in her pocket. She pulled out a wadded five and a couple of ones. She handed them over, and the woman took them. She was smiling now, and in a sweet slow drawl, she said, Pleasure.

Jill said yeah.

The stripper blew a kiss at Barbara. Y’all take care now.

They were home a few hours before Cathy got back, and in that time, Jill did things she’d never done by herself before. Cathy usually stepped in. Cathy usually took over. But now it was just Jill, giving Barbara a bath in the kitchen sink. She bumped Barbara’s head on the faucet and put her pajama pants on backwards, but they figured it out. Eventually, they got it right.

Jill fed Barbara a bottle, burped her, changed her, and then laid her down in the crib upstairs. She found a book and read from it. The story was meant for a much older kid, but Jill kept reading. After a while, she eased up from the chair, turned off the lights, and watched Barbara for a few more minutes before she made her way down the hall and the stairs.

Jill didn’t feel like a mother. She didn’t feel like she was entirely herself, either. There was always some distance, some spiritual gap she couldn’t seem to bridge. But maybe that was normal. Maybe that’s how everyone felt.

I’m so sexy? she said like a question. She went over to Porky’s cage. He was holding tight to his perch, looking at himself in the mirror. Jill watched him through the metal bars. Porky was only a year old. He could live ninety-nine more. He would outlive all of them. Cathy kept saying how they needed to make up a will, for Porky, and now for Barbara.

It hurts, Porky answered. Whatchya think? It hurts.

Jill stared at him a little longer. Then she threw the sheet over the cage.

She was sprawled in the chair with the television on by the time Cathy finally came home.

Howdy, Cathy said, when she opened the door and closed it behind her. She stepped out of her boots and set her duffel by the door. She unclipped the talkie and switched it off. She stopped and listened, then pointed up. She asleep?

Jill nodded.

You did that? Cathy said.

Jill shrugged.

Wow, Cathy said. She took a deep breath and let it out again. She made her way to the matching chair and fell back in it. She stared at the TV, and by the look on her face, Jill could tell that the wreck had been bad, that probably someone was dead.

They both stared at the television. It was a nature show, something about the way plants are adapting to conditions of global warming. The screen showed a time-lapsed video of a desert plant, its leaves widening to catch more of the morning’s dew.

I took Barbara for a drive, Jill said.

Did it work? Cathy said.

I guess so.

Good, Cathy said. Then she turned and looked at Jill. Show me your hands, she said like she did every day. She’d been after Jill to go see a doctor about the tremors. She warned that it might be a sign of a medical condition. Maybe something serious.

Jill rolled her eyes, but she stuck out her hands. They still shook but maybe less so. Five fingers were painted and five still weren’t.

Here, Cathy said. The bottle of Blue Blazes was on the table. Cathy turned on the lamp and went to unscrew the lid, but Jill took it from her. You, she said. She motioned for Cathy to put her hands on the table.

Cathy rolled her tongue and shook her head. Nails, that’s something I don’t do.

Jill, though, wouldn’t take no for an answer. She thought of the girl at Foxy Lady. I know what you need, she said with surprising force.

Cathy watched with eyes that were tired but searching, and when she looked at Jill like that, Jill got the feeling that Cathy saw things deep inside her, as if in Jill, there was still so much to be found.

Jill shoved a clear spot on the table between them. She tapped the varnished wood until finally, Cathy relented. Finally, Cathy spread her fingers out flat.

Jill took the cap off the bottle. I think we should teach Porky something new.

Cathy frowned. Like what?

Jill shrugged. I don’t know. Maybe some of those codes you use.

Cathy laughed. Code 33, 999.

See? Jill said. It’d be funny. Porky the paramedic parrot. After a while, she added, I could learn too.

Jill held onto Cathy’s hand to steady her own. The lines weren’t perfect, but she kept painting. Even when it was uncomfortable to lean like that, even when she felt a muscle cramp, she would keep on until she couldn’t, reaching out across the little table and the remote control and whatever else that was piled there between them.