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Brook and Stream burst out of Jamie’s van and charged into Mae’s arms, shouting, “Mama!” Finally, at one in the morning, they’d arrived.
She dropped to her knees on the gravel driveway and held the girls against her. They smelled like herbal shampoo and something minty, and they had strange hairdos and neon-colored T-shirts that glowed in the light from the front porch. Mae closed her eyes and immersed herself in the sensation of their warm, wriggly, bony little bodies. “It’s so good to have you back.”
“We missed you, Mama,” Stream said.
“Missed you too, sweetie.” Mae kissed each girl and rose.
Jamie opened the back of the van and took out a couple of shopping bags: the girls’ luggage. Though she had seen him on Skype and in some YouTube videos, the changes in his appearance were more striking in person. His hair was longer, with no layer of braids on top, and his goatee, unbraided, was shaggy. Aside from needing a trim, he looked good. Almost down to his ideal weight.
“Come here, handsome.” Mae reached out to him. “I need to hold you, too.”
He smiled, brought the girls their bags, and told them to go put their clothes in the laundry. “Give me a minute with your mum, all right? So we can, y’know, do stuff kids hate to watch.”
“How bad is it gonna be?” Brook sat on the steps. “Like, really icky?”
Mae embraced Jamie. “Maybe.”
He held her, his touch gentle. She’d expected the kind of wild, passionate hug where he tried to lift her off her feet, but he kissed her with a velvety lightness and touched her cheek. “You’re beautiful, love. So beautiful.” His eyes were huge black pools of longing, an open, vulnerable look that went straight to her soul. He kissed her again. “Thanks for trusting me with your girls.”
Mae drew him closer for a longer, deeper kiss.
The girls giggled, and Stream whispered, “Eew. I don’t want to watch. Come on. I have to pee.”
Brook went into the house with her, carrying their bags. Mae ran her hand down Jamie’s back. He didn’t feel quite as toned as he had the last time he’d been this slim, as if he hadn’t been swimming as much. Not that she should mention it. And he was warm, even warmer than normal. He got hot like that when he was brewing some emotional event, something about to erupt. “What is it, sugar?”
He squeezed her, took a deep breath, then dropped to one knee, drawing a small black velvet box from his pocket. As he opened the box to display a silver ring, an ache of dismay filled Mae’s chest. At least he hadn’t bought her a diamond, but it was one of those Irish rings with two hands holding a heart. The meaning was the same.
She whispered, “Jamie, no. Please.”
Either misunderstanding her protest or not listening, he took the ring out and caressed her left hand to unfold her fingers. His hands were sweating and shaking. She curled her fingers in again, and he stared. In slow motion, he rose stiffly, as if his hip hurt worse than usual. Or he didn’t want to get up, didn’t want to believe what was happening.
“What the fuck?” He looked down at the ring, then into her eyes, and down at the ring again. “Jeezus.” He jammed it back into the box and into his pocket. “Why not, love? Jeezus. Why not?”
“For all the same reasons I’ve ever given you.” Her voice cracked. It pained her to reject his offer, but he had to hear the truth. Again. “Nothing has changed.” Trying to soften the blow, she cupped her hand to his face and started to smooth his hair back. “I love—”
He jerked away, pacing toward the van. “I just took care of your kids twenty-four seven for three days. And nothing has changed?”
“Sugar, they ran away. They aren’t ready to be part of a new family.”
He spun to face her, his eyes blazing, his voice trembling. “I took good care of them.”
“I’m sure you did, and I’m so, so grateful. Thank you. But that doesn’t mean we should get married.”
“Bloody fucking hell.” He struck the door of the van.
A tantrum. Not exactly proof of readiness to be a father. “Jamie. Sugar. I love you, but that’s not the same as wanting to marry you.”
He yanked the passenger door open. Leaning with his arms on either side of his cat, he took a few gasping breaths. “But I took good care of them. I took good care of them.”
“I know you did.” Mae stroked his back. He was hot and damp. Panic attack symptom?
“Don’t touch me.” Jamie buried his face in Gasser’s fur.
She backed off to sit on the steps. It broke her heart not to be able to comfort him, but she’d been the one to inflict the suffering.
What had gotten into him? A marriage proposal? The time with Brook and Stream must have fueled his desire for a family, and yet he couldn’t have forgotten how Mae felt, could he? Maybe he thought the sight of the ring and of him on one knee would sweep all her doubts away.
The door opened behind her. The twins peered out. Jamie straightened up and went to the driver’s side of his van. Putting on a smile, he waved to the girls and called, “Gotta go. Hooroo, darls. Had fun driving with ya.”
They answered, “Hooroo, mate. Catcha.”
As he backed the van down the driveway, Stream shouted, “Thank you for bringing us home.”
The twins sat beside Mae. She put her arms around them, fighting back tears. Act like everything’s normal. “Did Jamie teach you to talk Australian?”
“’Strayan,” Brook said. “Too right.”
“Was he having a wobbly?” Stream asked. “He shouldn’t drive if he was.”
“He taught you that word?” Mae looked down into Stream’s upturned face.
“Uh-huh. For when he gets dizzy and can’t breathe. We took good care of him, though.”
And he was so proud of taking care of them. A tingle of alarm crept into Mae’s nerves. “Did he need you to take care of him?”
“Yeah. He’s really tired, Mama. He doesn’t eat enough. We made him eat breakfast, and we made him stop and take naps.”
“That was smart of you.” Mae tried to hide her concern. “You didn’t want him to fall asleep at the wheel?”
Brook said, “He did once, but I woke him up real quick.”
Stream said with disapproval, “You pulled his hair.”
“It worked. He should have let us drive, Mama. He wouldn’t, though, so me and Stream took turns taking naps so we could keep him busy. We got him to teach us ’Strayan words. And we made up games and stories with him.”
Mae held the girls close against her. “You were very grown up, helping him like that.”
She couldn’t let it show, but she was furious with Jamie. How could he have risked her children’s lives this way? Brave and even reckless though they were, they hadn’t felt the kind of safety they needed. Because they hadn’t been safe. Jamie hadn’t cared for them the way he obviously thought he had. He couldn’t help it; that was how he was made. Anxiety led to insomnia and then exhaustion. Had he relapsed into obsessing on his weight, too? He looked great, but strict dieting had to be making him even more worn out. His pride outraged her. Trying to look good, trying to seem strong, trying to show her he was daddy material, he’d told her he was fine when he wasn’t. If he’d been honest and asked Mae to meet him and help, she would have done it in a heartbeat. She was going to have to talk with him.
“Time for bed, sweeties.” Mae opened the door.
The girls stalled on the porch.
“Mama?” Stream took Mae’s hand. “We think he’s sick. Really sick.”
Brook folded her arms and scowled at Stream, then looked up at Mae. “I keep telling her not to believe that stupid thing Mrs. Moo said. I think he’s got that cat scratch thing Dr. Gross told us about, but he didn’t want to act sick so he could take care of us.”
Mae didn’t trust herself to speak. If Brook was right, Jamie had been lying to her for at least a month.
“And he did take good care of us.” Stream’s pitch rose, pleading. She must have detected Mae’s anger. “He took us shopping. And he sang to us and things like that. He was really kind. And he was never bossy.”
“That’s good. Now get ready for bed. I’ll come give you a goodnight kiss.”
They won’t say a bad word about him. Still taking care of him.
*****
As Jamie carried his last load into his suite, a miniature lizard came in with him, a purplish-pink gecko that matched the exterior walls of the Pelican Apartment Motel. Jamie started to shoo it out, when it ducked into a slender crevice at the base of the interior wall. Bloody hell, it lives here. Mae would have adored it. So would her kids. He choked down the pain of her refusal and forced himself to keep moving. Maybe after the twins told her more about the trip, she would understand. Would see how well he’d done.
The walls of his suite were green, the sofa and chair in the living room-dining room were red, and the dining table was pink Formica. Hoping the gecko took no interest in his bed, he carried his luggage through the broad plastered archway into the bedroom, which was only separated from the kitchen by the type of furniture. The bed was practically in the kitchen. The sheets were purple, the pillowcases orange, and the curtains green plaid. The towels in the pint-sized bathroom were magenta and pink. Brook and Stream would love it. The thought of them tore a fresh wound in his soul.
As Jamie began unpacking, a tap on the door startled him. The curtain over the glass of the front door, a dark blue drape with a picture of the sun and the planets on it, didn’t quite reach the bottom of the pane, and he recognized Mae’s scuffed athletic shoes below the fringe. Had she come back to change her mind? Or to give him his things? He kept clothes and a toothbrush at her house. He imagined them in her hands.
She tapped again. “Sugar? We need to talk.”
That didn’t sound like she was reconsidering his proposal. Jamie hesitated, staring at her feet on the electric-green cement of the motel’s patio-sidewalk. He drew the curtain open. The gecko was outside now, near a crevice in the base of a pillar built into the adobe wall. As he knew she would, Mae had crouched down in fascination, watching the lizard seize and eat an ant. Nothing in her hands. Jamie opened the door.
Mae stood. “I guess that looked funny.” Her voice, oddly sweet and girlish for such a big, strong woman, was even smaller than usual. “I was checking out your little neighbor.”
“Roommate. He comes in.”
Mae came in, without the gecko, and closed the door. “Daddy’s staying with the girls. I couldn’t sleep. I feel like I’m about to blow up. I can’t keep spinning my wheels about this all night.”
“You already rejected me. You don’t need to do it over again.”
“It’s more than that. The girls said you’re sick.”
How had they noticed? He thought he’d hidden it well. “Never told ’em that.”
Gasser waddled in. Jamie dropped into the red chair and hauled his cat into his lap. Mae took the pink-seated aluminum dining chair, just inches away, leaning toward him. “They’re smart kids. They notice things. How could you lie to them and to me and think you could drive? That was irresponsible to push yourself like that. You all could have died.”
“Jeezus. I didn’t take any chances. I told ’em to do stuff to keep me alert.”
“They made it sound like that was their idea. Games, Aussie slang lessons, naps—”
“You told me to give them jobs.”
“Checking the oil. Not keeping you from running off the road. You did take chances. Huge ones. And you don’t see it. What’s the matter with you?”
“You mean my health or how fucked up you think I am?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way, but both.” She hooked her ankles around the chair’s tubular legs and pressed against them. “Did you get cat scratch disease?”
Jamie’s shoulders wriggled. “Seems like it.”
“And you didn’t get it treated? It’s been how long? I thought you were dieting, but you were sick and lying about it.”
He held Gasser to his chest and closed his eyes. “I was ...” Being strong. Being an adult. Making myself well. But he wasn’t well yet. “I was waiting.”
“For what?” Not pausing for an answer, Mae stood and paced. “I don’t know what to do with you. I’m so mad I’m boiling over. You do something this—this—stupid and then you think you’ve proved you’d make a good father? A good husband?”
“I would. And I did prove it.” Gasser squirmed, thudded to the floor, and left the room. The cat hated fights, and Jamie understood, but the abandonment hurt. He glared at Mae. “You weren’t there. I didn’t fuck up with your kids. Not once. Ask ’em. Did they say I did?”
“Not directly. They almost didn’t tell me you were sick. But they were so proud of taking care of you, I got the picture. And I don’t like it. You do not put children in that position.”
“They hid. You make it sound like I planned this.”
“The problem is,” Mae’s words came out like leashed animals that wanted to attack, “you didn’t plan anything. Didn’t think about consequences. You just followed impulses.” She stopped at the side window and shoved the curtains open, staring out into the blinking blue neon of the night. “You should have gotten treatment a month ago. Skipped Jen’s stupid request to sing at that party. Canceled this gig if you had to. Why can’t you think like a normal person?”
Jamie’s pain exploded. Slamming his fists into the arms of the chair, he shot to his feet. “Because I’m not one, all right? First week you knew me, you got the whole bloody list of diagnoses. I do my best. I work my arse off to function every fucking day. You don’t know what it’s like, and you dare judge me? You keep calling things stupid. I wasn’t fucking stupid. Get the fuck out. I could have been the best husband, the best father, the man who’d love you forever, but you still want me to be Hubert. And I’m not. So get out. I’m not what you want.”
She faced him, tears in her eyes. “Jamie, I don’t want you to be Hubert. I just want you to think.”
“Yeah, to think like Hubert.” He yanked the door open. “I’m not good enough for you. Quit wasting your time on me.”
“Damn it.” Mae clenched her fists. “I almost should. I’m trying to tell you what’s wrong. Yes, I called things stupid. I’ve got as much right as you do to fly off the handle and say the wrong thing. But you’re going to kick me out and blame me for it. You hate being cast as Jamie-the-sick-person, but now you’re handing me your mental health as a free pass for screwing up. You can’t have it both ways.”
“I didn’t screw up.” Jamie kicked at the open door. His whole body was shaking so hard he wanted to collapse, but not in front of Mae. “Now go.”
She didn’t move.
He grabbed his room key from the table near the door. “Jeezus. If you won’t leave, I will. I’ll go sleep in a fucking park.” Leaving the door open, he stormed down the green sidewalk toward Main Street. He heard his door close, followed by Mae’s footsteps crossing the gravel parking lot, away from him, out the side exit toward the alley and Pershing Street.
Trembling, sweating, choking on his rage and hurt, Jamie dropped onto the painted wooden bench in front of one of the other rooms. The things she’d said were even worse than turning down the ring. She’d rejected him, his hard work, his best efforts, his care for her girls. No matter what he did, he would always fail in her eyes, would always be the fuck-up, the sick person.
When his anger was exhausted, a trance-like sorrow dragged him back to his room. Gasser met him at the door, mewing, looking up expectantly. There was something small and pink under his front paw. The cat bowed down, caught the pink thing in his mouth and shook it, then laid it at Jamie’s feet. So proud of himself. He’d killed the gecko.
––––––––
Jamie dumped the aspirin tablets into his hand. How many would it take? All of them? It was an anticoagulant. Like rat poison. Would he bleed to death internally? He felt like he already had. Heart ripped from his chest. He filled a glass at the kitchen sink.
Gasser yowled. Jamie dumped the pills into another glass and stopped to fill Gasser’s bowls. “Sorry, mate.”
The cat huddled over his food, crunching, and Jamie stumbled to the bed and fell onto his back, swamped once more in grief. He’d tried to feel a pulse in the gecko, to heal it, to save it, but it was gone. Taking the fragile little corpse out to the garden and setting it among the stalks of faded lavender, he had broken down, unable to stop crying. Its death was his fault. He hadn’t thought ahead to what could happen.
“I took good care of them,” he murmured, tears leaking into his hair. “I took good care of them.”
If only Ezra was here. Jamie needed someone to watch over. To make him act strong. But the boy couldn’t miss school. He wouldn’t arrive until Friday evening, when a young man from the reservation would be coming to T or C to see his girlfriend. Who would keep Jamie grounded until then? He craved the parrots’ company. Sensitive, slightly human in their alien, avian way, they required steadiness from him. But he needed them more than they needed him. They would be all right if Jamie offed himself. Gasser, however, had lost an owner already, and he’d bonded deeply with Jamie.
So I choose to live for my cat? Jeezus.
More tears. Jamie turned face down and hugged the orange pillow, muffling his crying in case neighbors could hear.
Someone walked past his bedroom window, talking, so close behind the plaid curtains he bolted upright.
“No, this is the wrong alley,” said a woman. “The gate is up the alley we were in.”
“Sh,” a man replied. “We’re right next to someone’s room.”
Jamie recognized the voices. Sierra and Yeshi, wandering around in the middle of the night.
“They’re still up,” Sierra said, fading away as she and Yeshi reversed direction. “The light is on.”
“That’s Jamie’s room. He must have just arrived.”
Arrived from his reason-to-live trip, with the reason pulled out from under him. The chants that had seemed so healing while he traveled struck him as empty noise now. He wouldn’t be able to do them at six thirty in the morning. Getting better—Jeezus. Saving his own life. What an illusion. He’d clung to it, believed it, but his fever was surging. Nothing had happened.
A knock sounded. The curtain on the door was open, and all the lights were on. If he could see Sierra and Yeshi, faint through the reflection of his two bright rooms, they could see through the wide archway straight to Jamie’s bed. He rose, though he wished he could hide. All he could think to do was tell them to leave and let him sleep.
As soon as he opened the door, the couple stepped inside. They were wearing bathrobes, and their hair was wet. Sierra’s had grown out into angelic little curls that clung to her head. “You look terrible.” She studied him with her pitying look. “I’m not surprised.”
Jamie shoved the door shut. “You get out the shower to come tell me that?”
Yeshi chuckled, deaf to the sarcasm. “We have been enjoying the mineral baths.” He sat in the armchair, his back to the kitchen and bedroom, smiling, making himself at home. “Are you ready for tomorrow? We start every day with the mantras and meditation in the Loft. That is the room behind the turquoise wall with the surfboards on it, inside the Red Pelican Courtyard. It’s also our room.”
“We meditate in your bedroom?”
“It’s like an art gallery. It’s huge. You’ll see.” Sierra drifted through Jamie’s suite. “This isn’t bad. You have a real kitchen.” She picked up the glass with the aspirin in it and shook her head. “You could have undone everything for our entire soul group, Jamie. Don’t try to escape your karma. We have work to do.”
He sank onto the red couch. Don’t try to escape your karma. He’d tried so many times he’d lost track of it. Chance and miscalculation had saved him. And spirits. Even Gasser had saved him once. But why? Why so much bloody miserable crap, and why so many survivals? Between suicide attempts and accidents, the fact that he was still alive was as inexplicable as his bad luck.
He felt like a heavy blanket had been thrown over him, suffocating and trapping him. No. He couldn’t have work to do with Sierra’s soul group.
The only sounds were the ticking of the wall clock and the equally steady clicking of each pill as Sierra returned the aspirin to the bottle. She wasn’t quite in sync with the clock, and the mismatch grated on Jamie’s nerves. “Just throw ’em away, all right?”
“You need them for your fever.”
“I don’t have a fever.”
Yeshi rose and laid a hand to Jamie’s forehead. He shook his head and sat beside him. “You do. Let me see what is wrong.”
“I don’t need an examination. I’m tired, all right? I drove for thirteen hours.”
“You’re sick. I need to know what is wrong.”
Sierra continued refilling the bottle pill by pill as Yeshi checked Jamie’s pulse, one hand supporting his forearm while the other lightly touched his wrist, fingers spread a hair’s breadth apart. “Ordinarily,” Yeshi said, “I would examine your urine first.”
“There’s some in the crapper.” Religious about saving water in the desert, Jamie hadn’t flushed. “Not that I actually want you checking my piss. I mean my regular doc tests it, not that I see her, but she ...” Jamie realized he was yabbering and stopped.
“Not good that way.” Yeshi closed his eyes. “It has to be fresh.”
Jamie sensed his heartrate speeding up just for being noticed. Pill-click. Clock-tick. Pulsebeat. None of the rhythms was synchronized. No coherence. He wanted to pound one of his drums until everything came into order. “Stop fucking with the bloody aspirin, will you? Jeezus.”
Sierra came into the living room, the half-filled bottle in hand. “You’re very angry.”
“You’re in my room and I’m tired.”
“Hush.” Yeshi nodded toward Sierra without opening his eyes. “Take his other hand.”
She would see Jamie’s disease, the way she’d seen the metal in his bones, the pains in his hip and arm, the sparkles. No. He couldn’t hear it from her. Dr. Farrow would call any day. A kind person who listened.
Jamie wrapped his arms around himself, massaging his forearms. “I don’t want her touching me.”
Yeshi said, “We see together, Sierra and I. Like two eyes sending images to one brain.”
She rattled the aspirin bottle. “I think you know what we’ll find. Are you finally as sick as you wanted to be? Have you brought yourself where you needed to go?”
“I’m not answering that.” Jamie stood and yanked the door open, an agonizing echo of sending Mae away. “I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”
“Of course. You must rest.” Giving Sierra a look, Yeshi got to his feet. She placed the bottle on the table and he took her arm to guide her out.
Jamie dragged the curtain across the door, grabbed the bottle, and flushed the aspirin. Gasser was lurking in the bathroom, wedged into a corner under the tiny sink.
“Don’t like those people, do ya, mate?”
Jamie lifted him up and cradled him, stroking his cheek across the soft tufts at the tips of Gasser’s ears, and looked at their reflections. Lonely man clinging to cat. His eyes were red and puffy and his hair wild and tangled.
When Mae had seen him, she’d said he looked good. Everyone did, since he’d lost weight. His swollen glands were hidden behind his hair. The only reason Sierra would tell him he looked terrible was because he so obviously had been crying. She’d also realized he was ready to swallow the pills, and she hadn’t shown the slightest compassion. Instead, her questions had been cold, even smug.
Jamie wanted to reject them, but he couldn’t. Did she know something? Was there a reason, psychological or spiritual, why he needed yet one more disaster, one more dance with death?