Everything Is Going to be Okay

By Jeremy T. Wilson

MARIA IS WORRIED about the future, which has Doug worried because usually his wife is never worried. He blames it on the pregnancy, then hates himself for being that kind of guy. Recently she has been calling him, sending him text messages, posting on his Facebook wall, emailing him with dismal news about the gloomy world their child will face. By the year 2030, college tuition will reach the staggering price of $$$$$ per year. Why didn’t they start saving earlier? The Chicago Tribune reports that gang-related violence in Humboldt Park has risen 5 percent in the past six months. Should they think about moving? A 12-year-old in Texas shot his parents while they were asleep because he’d been grounded from his PlayStation right before a very important Halo tournament. Isn’t that the game Doug plays after she falls asleep? They should get rid of it.

Today she leaves him a voice mail message with the news their brains are dying. Researchers have found that constantly interfacing with personal technology, laptops, smart phones, smart TVs, smart radios, DVRs, games, pods, buds and pads is literally killing our brains, and with each new leap forward our humanity is sliding back. We no longer charge that part of the brain that teaches us to talk to one another, socialize, carry on a conversation that doesn’t involve emoticons, acronyms and egregious misspellings. As a result, we are breeding a race of over-stimulated, short-attention-spanned, solitary, techno-zombies who, she says, “can hold blockbuster movies in the palms of their hands but don’t know how to hold each other.” Doug cannot believe this is Maria, a woman with two degrees, founder and director of a successful nonprofit (PBJ, a pit bull rehabilitation center and no-kill shelter), a smart and talented woman, who sends him such warnings using these same “brain-murdering” methods without any sense of irony. He texts her back, making sure to spell out all the words, “Everything is going to be okay.”

Doug is in the middle of editing a hyper-stylized 30-second promo for an upcoming special on steroids in professional sports — a subject Maria would probably also find portentous — when his cellphone rings. Normally Doug doesn’t answer his phone during an editing session, but his wife is pregnant and recently over-worried so he’s made it okay. He looks behind him at the producer sitting on the leather couch. He is asleep. Doug likes to edit when his producers fall asleep. They stay out of the way and let him do his job. When he picks up his cell phone he is surprised to see that the screen does not say “Maria,” but “Julie.” He can’t remember the last time he talked to his sister. She doesn’t make a habit of calling, and never calls during the day. Something must be wrong.

He answers. “What’s wrong?”

“Where do you live?” she asks. She is talking on speaker phone in her car, the wind rushing an ambient whoosh through the open windows making it so she has to yell.

“Chicago,” he says.

“I know that. Your address.”

Doug can hear country music whining in the background. He and Julie have never had the same taste in music. He tells her his address, then hears her navigation system advise her to stay straight. Julie lives 700 miles away in the suburbs of Atlanta. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“Sending you a letter,” she says, then the sound of the wind and the car and the country music are gone.

The conversation is weird, but so is his sister.

Doug hits the space bar and plays the promo he’s been working on from the beginning. After 30 seconds of quick cuts, bumping electronic music and synced-up sound effects on every crack of bat, crunch of pads and swish of net, the producer wakes up and tells Doug he doesn’t like the music anymore.

“What’s wrong with it?” Doug asks.

“I don’t know,” the producer says. “It’s too ...,” he slaps the back of his hand into his palm, three quick slaps, “... something.”

Later in the afternoon, Doug gets another call. The phone screen says, “Dad,” but when he answers it’s Maxine, his dad’s second wife. “Sister’s missing,” she says.

Maxine names everyone according to their roles in the family, like they’re characters in a Tennessee Williams play. Doug hates this. “Missing what?”

“That’s not funny,” Maxine says, and Doug can picture the look on her face, eyes saucer wide, lips puckered like a lipsticked anus. “She didn’t pick the kids up from school. Corey’s been calling her. She won’t answer.”

None of these facts mean Julie is missing. He wonders what Maxine expects him to do about it. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he says. It occurs to him that he might need to cover for Julie, maybe she’s done something she needs to hide from, robbed a liquor store, shot a would-be rapist in the face, left a trail of crimes followed by a column of troopers. You could never tell with Julie.

“You’re her brother,” Maxine says.

Again, Doug doesn’t know the intentions behind such an obvious statement. “If I hear from her, I’ll let you know,” he says.

Maxine squawks out “You –” before Doug’s thumb ends the conversation.

By the time he and Maria go to bed, he has not heard from Julie again. A neighbor’s porch light makes their bedroom brighter than either he or Maria like, perpetual dusk. He’s told Maria he’s close enough to shoot it out with a BB gun. She says it would probably be more neighborly to go talk to them. In the not-quite dark, Doug stares at the rotating ceiling fan, turns on his right side, tries to keep his eyes closed to not look at the clock, turns to his left side, stares at his sleeping wife, Maria, peaceful and beautiful, thinks how cliché he is for staring at his sleeping wife, Maria, peaceful and beautiful, flips on his back and stares again at the rotating ceiling fan. He is surprised to be so worried. He feels like his dad. Julie has kept their dad awake a billion nights with worry. Doug senses that this will be the rest of his life after their baby is born: a dad, forever awake in the half dark, no sleep, never again, psychotic with worry. He tries to convince himself that Julie was joking, that she punched in his address on her navigation system just to see how far Chicago was, that she really did intend on sending him a letter or a package or a cookie bouquet just because she was thinking of him, that’s she’s back at home, asleep next to Corey, who is rolling over and staring at her in the dark, peaceful and beautiful, just as much of a cliché as Doug. But Doug is not convinced.

At 2 in the morning, the condo buzzer goes off. From his dog bed, Brick barks until Doug tells him to hush. Brick is built just like a brick, squat and rectangular, solid, rust-colored. A Wendy’s employee found him starving by the dumpster, maggot-covered wounds on his chest. Maria saved him, brought him home. Doug does not immediately move for the door. Sometimes there are prank buzzers in the middle of the night, neighborhood kids flattening their hands across buttons on their high walks home. The buzzer buzzes again. Brick looks at Doug, waiting for approval to run to the door and bark himself hoarse. In a sleepy voice, Maria tells Doug to go see who it is. Earlier that night, over Thai takeout, Doug had told Maria about his weird conversation with his sister, but Maria knows Julie, too, and agreed that it was probably just her bad idea of a joke. In his boxers, with Brick following, Doug hurries from the bedroom to the front door, to the intercom on the wall, hits the talk button, says hello.

“It’s freaky out here,” Julie’s voice crackles through the intercom. Doug feels like he’s in a dream. “Let me in.”

Doug buzzes her in, opens the front door and walks into the stairwell. Looking over the rail, he can see her brown and blond highlighted hair bouncing hurriedly up the stairs. As far as he can tell she’s not carrying a suitcase, just what looks like a deep pocketed purse slung over her shoulder, so Doug doesn’t go down to help. He figures she would yell for help if she needed it. “Third floor,” he says.

“You would,” she says.

When she reaches the top she’s out of breath, and Doug thinks she looks tired. She has on no makeup. Julie always wears makeup. She’s doesn’t go grocery shopping without makeup. Her khaki shorts are what he considers too short for his sister, for a mom, a 40-year-old woman, and her black V-neck shirt plunges too low, revealing the wide and ample freckled space between her wide and ample fake boobs. When she hugs him, Doug angles to the side to avoid meeting her chest to chest. Ever since she got those boobs Doug has been uncomfortable hugging her. That was 10 years ago. Doug was 22. He remembers thinking at the time that Julie was not going to let herself get old and that new boobs were the first of many measures meant to counter her inevitable aging. He’s not sure what all she’s had done since then, but tonight her teeth look as bright as his neighbor’s porch light.

Inside the condo, Brick clips across the hard wood and nudges his muscled head under Julie’s hand. They have never met. Doug thinks people are wrong to be so afraid of pit bulls. “Nice neighborhood,” she says, petting Brick’s head. “Can I leave my car parked on the street or is it gonna get jacked?”

Maria is standing in the living room, sleepy-eyed, with a threadbare 1995 Big Pig Jig Barbecue T-shirt draped over her growing body. Maria is a vegetarian. “It’s not that bad,” she says. She’s sensitive about the neighborhood and likes it the way it is. When she and Doug first moved, she did not want them to appear like yuppies gentrifying Humboldt Park. She signed them up for Spanish lessons and started shopping at the Carnicería y Frutería. Maria’s dad is Puerto Rican, but wanting to fully integrate, did not speak Spanish at home. For similar reasons he pushed her into tennis. Now his daughter is trying to reverse the process.

She tells Julie there’s a towel for her in the front bathroom and asks her if she needs anything else. Julie says no thanks, and Maria slides sweetly on bare feet back to the bedroom, Brick following, where she shuts the door behind them both. Doug loves this about Maria. She stays out of other people’s business until she’s asked or forced to jump in. Her family is just the opposite.

Julie slings her purse on the floor and collapses, face first, on to the sofa.

“Want a drink?” Doug asks.

Julie doesn’t answer. Sitting next to her on the sofa, he puts his hand on her shoulder. She is too thin. She is not shuddering or shaking, but Doug can tell she’s crying. He can smell it. Since he was 5, Doug has believed he has the power to smell Julie’s moods. Grapes mean she’s happy. Spaghetti means she’s scared. Dirty laundry means she’s upset. He has never told anyone this, not even Maria, and sometimes he doesn’t believe it himself. But even with the windows cracked and the cool Midwestern May carrying in city scents — fried foods, dog poop, blooms and sewers — Doug’s certain he can smell sweaty socks.

On Saturday mornings Doug and Maria like to get up and stake claim to a tennis court in Humboldt Park. When they wake up, Maria asks him if they’re keeping their date. Maria is fanatic about tennis. Whacking a ball around the court calms her, loosens a week’s worth of tension. Tennis is her therapy, she says, but much cheaper. She tries to play three times a week, but Saturdays with Doug are the most important, the date she won’t let slide. Even though Doug knows not playing might ruin Maria’s weekend, he hopes that his sister will want to talk this morning, let her brother in on the secret of her visit, confide in him. Last night Julie had only told him she was tired and wanted to sleep, so he didn’t press the issue. He’d showed her to their guest bedroom, the soon-to-be baby’s room, where, luckily, the futon was still there ready for her. Doug and Maria have had arguments about keeping the futon, but he’s lost them all.

“Let’s play it by ear,” he says. Maria nudges him out of the bed with her still slender feet. He wonders when and if they’ll get fat.

When Doug walks into the kitchen he’s surprised to see Julie already awake, sitting at a bar stool, his laptop open in front of her on the countertop. The kitchen smells of coffee. Julie has helped herself. He’s glad she feels at home. Through the tiny speakers on the computer Doug hears a tiny voice. “Daddy’s mad,” the voice says. It’s Doug’s niece Charlotte. Doug does not like her name or her brother’s — Harvey. They are both too old-fashioned. He has told Maria that they aren’t going to choose an old-fashioned name for their child, that he wants something new, something forward-looking, original and futuristic, like Brace or Steen. They are having a child, not writing a sci-fi novel, Maria informs him. Doug wonders why Julie’s using Skype instead of her phone.

“He’s just grumpy,” Julie says.

“You didn’t tell him,” Charlotte says.

“Ask him if he’s my daddy.”

“He’s outside.”

“Want to say ‘hey’ to your uncle?”

Doug grabs the coffee carafe and a mug before looking over Julie’s shoulder. He pours himself a cup. On the computer screen, captured in a small square, a wide mouth with its front teeth missing opens and closes over the camera eye, moaning, “Haaaaa-looooow, haaaaa-looooow, haaaa-looooow.”

“Hey, Charlotte,” Doug says.

The mouth closes and moves back from the camera. A purple ring circles her lips, sticky, like she’s been guzzling Kool-Aid. She already looks older than the last time Doug saw her at Christmas. Everybody seemed okay then. Kids are honest. They shoot straight, tell you you’ve got spinach in your teeth when your friends won’t. Doug asks Charlotte, “What’s your mama doing in Chicago?”

“She needed a break,” Charlotte says.

“We gotta go,” Julie says. “Tell your brother I love him.”

Charlotte turns her head and yells, “Har-vey! Mama loves you!” then turns her head back, facing the camera. “Where’s Maria?”

“On a rocket ship to Pluto,” Doug says.

“Pluto’s not even a planet.”

“So. You can still go there Miss Smarty Britches.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Yeah-huh.”

“Uh-uh.”

While they argue, Maria comes out of the bedroom dressed for tennis, neon yellow visor, black skirt, long-sleeved black shirt with a neon yellow pattern that swirls on her small round belly like a hurricane. So much for playing it by ear. Behind Doug’s shoulder, she stands on her tennis-shoed tip toes and waves to Charlotte in the computer. “Good morning, Charlotte,” she says, then takes the coffee carafe from Doug and places it back on the burner.

“Ha!” Charlotte shouts. “Told you!”

“She hasn’t left yet,” Doug says. “Aren’t you going to Pluto later?”

Maria is pouring herself a glass of orange juice and doesn’t answer.

“We’re all going to Pluto,” Julie says. “Right now. Bye, baby. Love you.”

Charlotte waves her hand in front of the camera like she’s trying to shake a booger off her fingers. She blows purple Kool-Aid kisses left and right. “Love you. Love you. Love you,” she says, a jewel off the drama queen’s crown. Her face shoots close to the camera eye again. “Send me a postcard from Pluto, Mama.”

“Yes ma’am.” Julie folds down the computer monitor and checks out Maria sipping from her juice glass.

Maria catches Julie staring at her. “What?” she asks.

“Black is slimming on you,” Julie says.

Before they can go, Doug has to walk Brick around the block, which Julie takes to mean she’s got time to get ready. She showers for what feels like a good half hour, blow dries her hair to hay, painstakingly puts on makeup, and takes her time debating which color nylon sports jacket — aqua or chocolate brown — to borrow from Maria to wear over the same V-neck and shorts combo she had on last night. Doug wonders if Julie has brought any more clothes in her purse, or if she just dropped the kids off at school, told them she was going to Chicago for the weekend, and kept on driving, on a whim, fed up. The conversation with Charlotte has made Doug less worried. At least her family knows where she is, but he’d still like to know why she is with him.

The morning is nice for May, not too cool, already warming. Maria walks a few strides ahead, most likely convinced the extra time Julie has taken will mean all the courts are full. Doug hauls the tennis bag on his shoulder while Julie walks empty-handed, her purse strap carving a diagonal strip through the swells in her lake-colored jacket. Her flip-flops flap as she hums a song that sounds familiar, but one that Doug can’t quite make out.

“Are you humming Jimmy Buffett?” Maria asks, her chin cocked sharply over her shoulder, looking back.

“I can’t get it out of my head,” Julie says. “They say you’ve got to sing a whole song through to get rid of it, but nobody ever knows the whole song. That’s why it gets stuck.” She sings, “Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville–”

Maria interrupts. “I hate Jimmy Buffett.”

Doug can’t help but think Julie is dropping clues, hinting at something in the song that provides reasons for why she’s here. For the first time in his life, Doug wishes he knew all the lyrics to “Margaritaville.”

Luckily, one court is open when they arrive. As the due date speeds closer — Sept. 13 — and Maria gets more uncomfortable, Doug fears the inevitable end of tennis. He doesn’t know what to expect from her then, how her attitude will change, but worse than that, and he hates himself for even thinking it, he fears what will happen to her physically. He knows. He’s a terrible person, but the thought more than crosses his mind, it takes up residence and squats. He tells himself it won’t matter, that they could be a fat and happy family together and that would be great. But Maria is Maria because of her body. Doug has never known anyone else like her, an athlete, a real athlete, an athlete-athlete, a person so intimately connected in mind and body. Doug tries to flip his ugly fears positively, rationalize them not in terms of physical attraction, but in terms of mental activity and grace. He does not fear Maria getting less hot; he fears her getting dull. But no matter how he spins it, he still hates himself for thinking like a pig.

Maria pulls a can of fresh balls out of their tennis bag and peels it open. She keeps two balls in her hand and wedges another into the elastic under her skirt, a move Doug always has and still does find incredibly sexy. “I can’t play very long,” Maria tells Julie.

Julie is sitting on a bench facing the morning sun, huge sunglasses covering her face like solar panels. She unzips her borrowed jacket. “Take your time,” she says. The scene is surreal to Doug, his sister sitting on a bench in Humboldt Park. Until she punched his address into her navigation system, he’s positive she didn’t know exactly where Chicago was.

When Doug and Maria first started playing tennis together they kept score, but he could never beat her, so trying to became less fun. Now they simply volley with no points or games on the line, Doug hitting the ball where Maria wants it so she can practice her forehands, backhands, net play, serves. A glorified ball machine. On the court, the time from Doug’s thought to physical action seems like minutes, muddy slow motion, but Maria is always on her toes, running to the right place before he even hits the ball, like her body can see the future. But today Doug can see she’s slowing down.

After only 15 minutes of volleying, Maria is ready to practice her serves. Typically, this is Doug’s least favorite part. When she’s on, her serves are lethal, and most of the time he simply stands there and lets the ball fly by, or, when he is able to get his racquet on it, ends up misfiring over the fence or squirting the ball on to the adjacent court. He doesn’t really even need to be there, only she says she wants someone to aim at. Julie can stand there as easily as he can. Doug asks her if she wants to play. She has her legs out long and crossed at the ankle, her arms stretched wide over the back of the bench catching the sun. Julie raises her right leg up and, flexing her toes, slaps her flip-flop against her heel. “I’ll have a blow out,” she says.

Doug bounces on his toes in the deuce court, ready to receive. Maria’s first serve hits the net. It’s difficult watching her try to put her whole body into it, a motion that once was so fluid for her has turned awkward. She tosses and serves again, this time over the net, and he returns it easily. Her serve has no juice to it, still, Maria seems surprised that he’s gotten it back to her, a well-paced return. She doesn’t have to move much and rockets a forehand down the line, obviously angry at her weak serve, but Doug sees it coming and is in position to hit a soft backhand.

Julie starts singing, loudly, “‘Lookin’ for my lost shaker of salt.’ He’s really a good song writer,” she says.

Doug wants to laugh, but the volley has suddenly turned serious. Julie must recognize it, too, and is trying to help him by distracting Maria with a song she hates. It only makes Maria more competitive. She tries to go cross court on him, but he runs the ball down. He does not know why he’s continuing to play this point, to reach for every ball, but he hits a perfect drop shot that Maria is not expecting. She is out of position and galumphs to the net in chase. It is difficult to watch, graceful Maria galumphing. He worries for a minute she’s going to fall, and Doug pictures the ultrasound image inside her, a scrunched face on a tiny tennis ball head, bouncing and sloshing in the squishy gray, the little thing’s home shaken like a snow globe. The baby probably hates tennis. Maria does not trip, but barely gets her racquet on the ball, just lifting it over the net.

“‘Cheeseburger in Paradise’ is crap,” Julie says, “but some others are good.”

Maria smartly stays at the net, and normally this would mean Doug should hit the ball at her so she can practice her angles, but this volley is not normal; it’s like he’s recognizing weakness and, with Julie’s distractions, can’t help himself from trying to beat Maria, to win this point. If they were to play a whole match, he’s certain now he could give her a run for her money. Instead of hitting the ball at her, Doug lofts a high arching lob over her head, believing she’ll not even follow it, she’ll just look at him, slouch her shoulders and tilt her head, calling him an ass with every joint and muscle, but she turns and takes off, scrambling to get started, spinning her wheels like a cartoon character, before she barrels back to the baseline. He’s certain now she’s going to fall. She’s going to fall, and it’s his fault for playing the point, for trying to beat a pregnant woman. He is an ass.

Julie sings, loudly again, “‘I blew out my flip-flop, stepped on a pop-top.’ That’s pretty good you’ve got to admit. Can’t you just see that?”

Maria stumbles toward probably the best lob Doug has ever hit. With her back still turned to him she flails at the ball and completely whiffs, whacking the racquet against her back and tumbling to the fence before catching herself from falling.

“People forget that song is so sad,” Julie says.

Doug looks at his sister. He doesn’t know why she’s still talking about that stupid song when his pregnant wife has almost face planted on the hard court. She should stop. The point is over. “Are you okay?” he shouts to Maria.

Maria stands up straight, her back still turned. Doug sees her shoulders rise and fall, a deep breath. Maria is an avid practitioner of deep breaths before rash action. Doug wishes more people were like her in every way, lovers of animals, tolerant of family, mindful of heritage, connected physically and mentally, graceful, consciously taking the time to calm themselves with a deep breath before hurling their racquet against the fence or on the court, pausing thoughtfully before flipping birds, punching each other at bars, firing handguns into crowded porches, driving wildly to Chicago.

She traps the ball between her shoe and her racquet and kicks it up to her hand. When she turns around she’s smiling. “Nice lob,” she says, and walks back to the baseline for her next serve. All the way across the court he can see a different intensity in her eyes. Maria tosses and serves.

His sister is still singing.

In the freezer they keep a bottle of vodka that hasn’t been touched in a while. Doug prefers beer. He exchanges the tennis bag for a soft cooler and sticks the bottle in, searches the fridge for garnishes, a plastic yellow squeeze bottle of fake lemon juice in the shape of a lemon and some Tabasco. Brick looks at him like he can’t believe he’s left him in the condo all morning and is about to leave him again. He grabs Brick’s leash and brings him along for company. At a corner bodega, Doug buys a bag of ice, plastic Solo cups, V-8 juice and a sack of chili-roasted sunflower seeds to munch and spit if he has to wait. Maria and Julie decided to take a walk through the park. Because she hadn’t given any indication she wanted to talk to Doug, he thought Julie might feel more comfortable confiding in Maria, woman to woman, so he left them alone. It’s a beautiful day, he said. They should stay outside. He offered to meet them with Bloody Marys.

When Doug gets back to the court, Maria and Julie aren’t there. He’s not too worried. He figures they might take some time on their walk, Maria pointing out her favorite parts of the park while Julie finally unloads her pent up confession:

Those old men will slap dominoes all day long.

I’m having an affair ...

The smell from the fritura trucks always makes me hungry.

... with a woman ...

Look at the cute baseball players on their way to Little Cubs Field.

... who’s also married ...

Isn’t it cool how the Puerto Rican flag sculpture spans the street like a welcoming gate?

... to a violent meth addict.

Doug still has no clue.

The courts are full. An older couple plays where Doug and Maria had been playing, each one of them decked out in full tennis whites like they’re at Wimbledon. Doug sits down on the bench to watch and loops Brick’s leash through the slats. He mixes a Bloody Mary — ice, vodka up to the first O in Solo, V-8, lemon squeeze, Tabasco. He pops chili-roasted seeds in his mouth one by one and watches the couple play. The heat of the seeds mixes perfectly with the V-8 and vodka. He makes a note to himself to rim a glass with chili powder next time he’s mixing Bloody Marys at home. He gives Brick a couple of ice cubes to munch on. Watching the older couple makes Doug happy, both of them still active, still living in a city, still slowly but surely tapping the ball over the net to one another. He wants that to be him and Maria, still keeping the ball in play after all those years. Doug spits and drinks and laughs at himself for being so sentimental about these old people playing tennis. Sometimes he wishes he was more original. Chili powder on a Bloody Mary rim, he thinks; that might be original.

When the woman angles a winner way out of the old guy’s reach, Brick chases the ball before he’s snapped back by his leash. “40-love,” the woman says. It sounds like a term of endearment. The old man picks up the ball a few feet away from Brick. Doug smiles at him, gives him a thumbs up.

“He ought to have a muzzle,” the man says.

Brick stands with his leash taut, staring at the old man. Brick’s harmless. Doug hates people who are scared for no reason, scared because they’re ignorant, scared because they saw a special on “60 Minutes” that told them to be scared. Brick was chasing after a ball because that’s what dogs do, not because he wanted to gnaw the old man’s face off. Doug is more likely to gnaw the old man’s face off. Doug stands up, spits shells, unties Brick. “You ought to have a forehand,” he says, and takes Brick and his cooler outside the court, under the shade of a shedding cottonwood tree.

When he finishes his Bloody Mary and the women still aren’t back, Doug ignores the screen telling him he’s got four missed calls from “Dad” (Maxine) and looks up “Julie” on his cell phone, then presses the talk button. His call goes straight to voice mail. He knows Maria does not have her phone with her because it was in the tennis bag. It’s not the smartest move, but it has been almost an hour since he left them, and now he’s worried and tired of waiting, so he and Brick set off looking for them. He walks all the way down to Division, stands on the corner for a minute or two, then turns around and walks all the way back, past the courts again, up to North Avenue. He doesn’t see them anywhere. People must not have worried so much back in the days before cell phones. An unanswered phone simply meant you weren’t at home, not dead in a ditch, not kidnapped, not randomly taking a road trip to Chicago. He thinks about Corey, calling and calling, worried sick until his kids told him where their mama was like it was obvious. That was pretty cold even for Julie.

Doug’s close to the condo, so he decides to take back Brick along with the cooler that’s getting too heavy. When he approaches the front door, he sees a piece of paper wedged between the buzzer and the front brick. It’s Maria’s scribble written on the back of a receipt. “We waited for you. Going shopping. Love, Maria.” Doug flips the receipt over. Julie bought a 64-ounce soft drink, a pickle and a bag of pretzels at a Shell station in Bowling Green, Ky.

Julie thought Doug had said to meet him back at home. Maria couldn’t remember what he’d said. After they’d taken a short walk through the park, they had gone to the condo looking for him and the Bloody Marys, but couldn’t get in. When he wasn’t there and he didn’t show up, they left. They’d taken a bus down to Wicker Park. Julie bought a pair of red cowboy boots at a vintage store. She treated Maria to lunch at a newly opened restaurant with an outdoor patio. They brought him back a hamburger and French fries.

“Why won’t you answer your phone?” he asks Julie.

“I lost it,” she says, swiping her hands across each other like she’s finished, good riddance.

“There are still pay phones,” Doug says, and realizes he sounds like Maxine.

He sits down at the counter in the kitchen and opens the Styrofoam clamshell holding his food. Maria is heating water up for tea. He doesn’t blame her. It’s easier to get mad at Julie. She sits next to Doug at the counter, his laptop open again. He can see she’s checking her Facebook page.

“You’ve done good,” she says. “You can be whatever you want here.”

“What do you want to be?”

“Maybe I’ll move,” Julie says. “I could be your nanny.” She laughs and looks knowingly from the monitor to Maria. The kettle whistles, and Maria pours the water into her mug. She grabs a magazine before walking back to the bedroom. She doesn’t look at either of them.

Julie types something on the computer. Laughs. “Love or money?” Julie asks.

“Are those my only choices?” Doug bites into his burger. Mushroom Swiss. His favorite. Maria is good to him. He smells spaghetti, but can’t tell if it’s something in the food, maybe the ketchup, the fries, or if it’s coming from his sister.

“Apparently you can’t have both,” Julie says.

He figures this angle has something to do with why she’s here. Doug thinks if you’ve ever been in love, have known what love feels like and means, the question is not even difficult. Of course, he and Maria aren’t exactly flush with cash, so he hasn’t really known the alternative. “Love,” he says, his mouth full of juicy meat, cheese and tender mushrooms. He hears the bathtub filling with water and wishes he was in there with Maria, her camomile tea, her vanilla bubbles, her smooth belly poking through the suds-clouds.

“Okay,” Julie says, and closes the laptop.

For some reason Julie spends most of the afternoon in the guest bedroom. She comes out once and asks Doug for the phone. He hears her behind the closed door yelling at someone, probably Maxine. “He can’t do that,” she says. “Why is everyone on his side?” she says.

Doug presses Maria for any more information she might’ve gotten on their excursion, but Maria is being just as cryptic as Julie.

“She probably hates her kids,” Maria says.

“What?”

“We didn’t really talk about it.”

Doug feels like he’s in a sci-fi movie where everyone is in on a secret but him, the secret being that he’s the alien, he’s the foreigner, the planet he once ruled is being ruled by monkeys.

After Julie finally comes out of the bedroom and after she takes another shower and after she tries on a bunch of Maria’s clothes to see what goes best with her new red boots, they head to a wine and beer bar at California and Augusta, one of Doug and Maria’s favorite restaurants in the neighborhood — small plates so they can all share. They have to wait a little while for a table. Eating past 9 o’clock and passing around mismatched plates of carefully crafted food makes Julie feel European, she says. Maria has a glass of red wine. Her doctor says it’s okay, but Doug can’t help looking around the restaurant to see who’s noticing, who’s whispering about the pregnant woman they think is knocking back glass after glass, who might be commenting on “her type” and casting false judgments about the future. When Doug looks around the restaurant though, no one seems to be staring at Maria.

Toward the end of the meal, much to Doug’s surprise, Maria tells him that he ought to take Julie to the honky-tonk down the street. When Julie bought those red boots, Maria had told her she knew just the place to wear them. The words honky-tonk get Julie excited. She squeezes Doug’s arm, expressing her enthusiasm for the idea. Doug has never been to the honky-tonk down the street and has no idea how Maria knows about it. Someone at work must have told her. He pictures giant belt buckles, uncoordinated line dancing, ironed blue jeans, cowboy hats with feathers, a mechanical bull, but worst of all, country music. Where there are no real cowboys there should not be a honky-tonk. As far as Doug knows, Chicago does not have real cowboys. Once the idea has been floated, it’s impossible to retract. Doug says they should all go home, that Brick needs to be let out, that he’ll even turn on country music from the digital TV stations and Julie can line dance all she wants, in her boots, right there in the living room. While Doug pleads, Julie hands their waiter a credit card before either of them even notice. “Now you have to take me dancing,” she tells Doug.

The three of them walk down the street together before Maria says she’s getting a cab. Julie rubs Maria’s belly, says bye, then disappears behind the red door of the bar. Once Julie’s inside, part of Doug feels like getting in a cab with his wife and going home, leaving his phone with Julie so she can call for directions at closing time. It’s not far. But Doug figures he ought to give it one more shot with his sister, maybe she’ll get drunk enough to tell him what the hell is going on in her life, provided the music isn’t too loud.

He waits outside with Maria until a cab shows up. He tells her to text him when she gets home. She says she will.

A bar stretches most of the length of the right side of the honky-tonk. Doug sees only a few cowboy hats, no mechanical bull. At the far end of the bar, a small stage is set up for the band. They are not so loud he cannot still hear people talking and laughing. In front of the stage, couples dance together instead of in ill-formed lines. The music is whiny and twangy, but the place is all right, less of a costume party than he’d thought. Julie has found a booth to sit in and waves him over. The booth is filled with empties, brown beer bottles, short glasses with squeezed limes collapsed in puddles, cocktail straws scattered like branches.

“What’ll you have?” Julie asks across the empties.

“Beer’s good.”

Doug reaches for his wallet, but Julie says she’ll start a tab. As she walks to the bar, taller than most of the crowd in those boots, Doug catches men looking at her. After trying on most of Maria’s closet, she ended up with a long-sleeved button up shirt, whose unbuttoned top three buttons allowed her the best opportunity to show herself off. Her shorts are the same too-short shorts she showed up in. Nobody should pair cowboy boots with shorts, but it’s especially troubling on his sister. Doug sees a bearded man in a tight plaid shirt elbow his buddy when Julie squeezes next to him and leans over the bar. Doug is certain she sees the men looking at her, but doesn’t care. She would only care if they weren’t looking at her.

She walks back carefully with a beer and a shot for Doug, a tall glass of something dark for herself. Doug smells grapes. “You happy?” he asks.

“As a clam,” she says, pushing aside the empties with a swipe of her arm.

They clink glasses and Doug gulps the shot he didn’t ask for but is grateful to have. Julie sucks on her small straw, swallows. “Remember NuGrape?” she asks.

He does. The grape soda they used to drink as kids, yellow can, bright purple letters. He has not seen a can of NuGrape in years. He wonders if they still make it. He laughs and nods.

Julie sucks on her straw again. “It’s not NuGrape, but it’s good.” She pushes her drink across the table to Doug. The smell of grapes gets stronger. The drink is dark. He takes a sip. Grapes. Grapes and coconut.

Julie smiles. “It’s called a Purple Martin. The only bar in Chicago with grape soda on the gun. Cowboy at the bar said so.” Doug takes another sip of her drink, laughing at himself for thinking the grape smell came from her. She pulls the glass back from him. “Wanna dance?”

Doug does not like the idea of dancing with his sister. He tilts his beer back and shakes his head. “I’ll be here,” he says.

When Julie stands up to dance he expects the men to descend on her like buzzards, but they don’t. She dances by herself, spinning and twirling in a kind of hippie dance that doesn’t fit the music. The only words Doug can make out coming from the baseball-capped singer are something about prison — just like every country song, he thinks — and the refrain, “Mama tried. Mama tried.” The dance floor is filled with couples, some of them same sex even, and he thinks about Maria’s voicemail message from yesterday. He wishes she had stayed with them, had had it in her to come dance. He would take her out on the dance floor and have her faith in the future restored. Here are people dancing together, holding each other close, elbowing their buddies to check out good-looking women, listening to a live band playing real instruments, singing with real voices. Don’t worry, Maria. See. Look around. Everything is going to be okay.

Doug checks his phone. No messages. Maria has not texted him yet. She should’ve been home already. She should’ve gotten in and already texted to say she was in. It’s not far. He realizes they may lose the booth, but Doug steps outside to call her.

Smokers, laughing and talking, congregate away from the door. He’ll tell Maria about them, too. People still dance together. People still huddle together outside a bar and smoke together, even when they know they’re killing themselves. Everywhere, people are still together with other people, socializing, having fun. She doesn’t answer her cell phone. Her insistence that they keep a land line has never seemed necessary until now. A cell phone dies. A cell phone gets left on vibrate in a tennis bag. A home phone can ring and ring, wake anyone up. He calls the home phone, but she doesn’t answer that either. Doug calls her cell again. Voicemail. Then back to the home phone letting it ring and ring until he hears his voice on the voicemail, “Hi. Doug and Maria can’t –” he hangs up and redials the home phone. It rings four times before Maria finally answers. Doug unclenches his teeth. He did not know they were clinched.

“I was walking Brick,” she says. She sounds funny, upset, maybe like she’s lying. Doug thinks about the grape soda he just smelled, believing it was Julie. Deep down he has probably always known it wasn’t true, that he didn’t possess a telepathic sense for his sister’s smell, but that hasn’t stopped him from believing he did. He wishes he could use it on Maria, that he could smell her right now through the phone, tell what’s wrong.

“I was worried,” he says.

“I wouldn’t do it,” she says. “I swear I wouldn’t.”

She’s crying now. Doug does not need to see her face or touch her tears to know. She is crying. Outside the bar smells like cigarette smoke.

“Maybe you didn’t need that glass of wine.” He jokes, but he knows he shouldn’t joke.

“I wanted to fall today,” she says. “When I was running for the ball I wanted to fall. I wanted to trip on purpose. Right on my stomach.” Now she is half laughing and half crying. “I wouldn’t do it, but I wanted to.”

Julie comes out of the front door looking for Doug. The bearded guy from the bar follows behind her. He is a full head shorter than her in those boots. He reaches into his front shirt pocket and fishes out two cigarettes, lighting one for Julie. They shake hands.

“We’re coming home,” Doug says.

“No,” Maria says. “I’m okay. Stay with your sister.”

When Julie sees Doug, she runs over and grabs him by the neck, hugging him tightly, smashing the phone between his ear, his hand and her right breast. He can feel the cigarette burning next to his face, can smell coconuts and grapes from her breath. Maria says something else, something more, but he can’t hear her now over his sister’s singing.