Chapter Six

The baby and the alarm both started blaring around the same moment at 6 a.m., waking Wade from the four rough hours of shut-eye that he’d managed to get. He headed to the toilet while Jessa grabbed Lydie out of her crib. To both girls, this was just morning routine. But Wade was charged with purpose. He had maybe three hours to set his life up on the right path before everything was ruined.

“Honey, why don’t you get in the shower first?” he asked Jessa, who sat at the edge of the bed, preparing to turn on the news. “I can watch her.”

Jessa glared at him, puzzled.

“What gives, Wade?” she asked. “You hate how long it takes me to shower. You complained about it literally yesterday.”

“I overreacted,” he said to her, heading toward the linen closet. Everything was only two steps away from everything else in the room, never meant to house anyone at all, let alone three people.

“I, um—,” she started, shifting the baby on her lap. Then, she handed Lydie over to him. “This feels like a trap,” she said to him.

“It’s no trap,” he said, winking and tossing her a blue towel with his spare hand.

“I don’t know what this is about, but I’ll take it,” she said. And then she moved at her usual snail’s pace toward the damn bathroom.

Wade watched as she shut the door, then waited for the sound of the shower. But there was nothing. Then, the toilet flushed. Then, nothing.

A full minute passed, and there was no sound at all. Wade tried to distract himself by changing Lydie’s diaper. But, once that task was done and the baby was chill, he still couldn’t hear any shower.

“Jessa, are you OK?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“What happened to your shower?”

“Jesus, Wade,” she snapped. “I’m looking at my damn phone.”

“No big deal, baby,” he said. “I was just checking on you.”

At that, she turned on the tap. Water began flowing into the tub, then the shower spray resonated through the basement, and Wade got down to his most immediate business, heading out the door with Lydie in tow.

“We’re going on a little adventure to the car,” he sang to the baby as he rushed across the lawn barefoot in his T-shirt and boxer shorts, Lydie bouncing with each step. “Won’t that be fun? Mommy takes such long showers, it gives us all the time we need.”

Lydie squealed.

“I know, I knooooow,” Wade said to her playfully. “We’re being sneaky! Look at the driveway! Grandma’s already gone to work!”

Mary’s white Yaris was thankfully gone. Wade hit the unlock button on his key fob as he stepped off the lawn on to the driveway, tripping a little before recovering his balance. He did get startled, though, and that startled Lydie. Seeing the panic in his face before he could hide it, she started to wail.

Recovering his balance, Wade whispered quickly to his daughter, “It’s OK. We’re OK.” But it was too late. Her lungs unleashed. Paranoid, he glanced at the neighbor’s house, and he saw the blinds move. Wade nodded toward the window, letting them know that he had everything under control.

“Nothing to see, nothing to see,” he whispered, bouncing her in his arms. Two seconds later, Lydie calmed down.

He continued toward the Prius, then opened the passenger door. Lydie started to struggle. “OK,” he said to her as she persisted in wiggling. Wade opened the back door on the passenger side, then put Lydie into her car seat.

“We go bye byes.”

At that, she giggled. Wade buckled her in, even though he hadn’t intended to go anywhere, but he needed her to stay still while he did what was necessary. He closed the door on her, then returned his attention and his hands to his own passenger seat.

Wade grabbed the ceramic teeth, but he didn’t know what to do with them right away. Unsure, he wrapped them in his shirt. He shut the car door, opened the window a bit, locked the car with his keys and headed back toward the house. It wasn’t yet sunrise, and it was February in the suburbs of Atlanta. So, he figured Lydie could stay put while he put the mouth in his favorite hiding place. She’d be safe. He’d only be gone a sec. His mom had done this all the time when he was a kid, and she was a nurse. The doubt in his head began to whisper, but he’d been able to disregard that since everything went to hell yesterday.

When Wade was a kid, his favorite hiding place was the secret kitchen cabinet over the fridge. It was like his own personal cubby hole for random Little Debbies and Matchbox cars. It was one of those quirks of home construction, a storage area that was mostly out of reach that no adult ever used, not even for storage. Wade discovered it the way that boys discover most things, by climbing on things they shouldn’t and sticking their hands in places without looking first. He figured he could claim the cabinet as his own when he reached in there at age 8 and had no fingers snapped off by a mousetrap or a rabid, crazed rodent. His mom never knew about it. She was always so tiny, never curious enough to climb her own kitchen.

Wade was lanky, flexible, and entirely too thin, no matter what he ate. Like his dad, he towered over everyone from around the time of middle school. It was no issue for him to climb up on the counter and sneak the teeth away until he could figure out what to do with them. He didn’t want to throw them someplace where he’d never be able to get at them again. Better to know where they were.

It was no trouble getting to the kitchen, then putting the teeth on the counter. He noticed a hair caught in the braces and tried to wipe it away, but it was tangled in there. He didn’t have time to address it, though, because he heard glass shatter and his child scream out in the driveway.

He rushed to the living room window to see what was happening, then saw the most bizarre sight. That neighbor lady, Mrs. Winston, was standing next to the car, holding an insanely freaked-out Lydie in her arms, brushing glass out of the baby’s hair. At her feet was a claw hammer. She looked up into the window and glared at him. He looked back at the counter, where the mouth still waited for him to do something. Quickly, he rushed back to the kitchen, climbed the counter, grabbed the teeth and shoved them into the secret cabinet above the refrigerator. Then, just as quickly, he jumped off the counter.

Wade headed out the front door toward his Prius, which now had a busted backseat window, and toward Mrs. Winston, who looked mad as hell. He made his way around the glass, but he still managed to catch some in the soles of his feet.

“What did you do?” he asked her, wincing. “Get your hands off my daughter, you fucking bitch!”

“You left that baby in a locked car, you idiot jackass!” the neighbor screamed. “KIDS DIE LIKE THAT!”

“I was in the house a goddamn second,” he screamed back. “I cracked the window! You should mind your own fucking business!” He reached for Lydie, who was screaming, but Mrs. Winston wouldn’t give her over to him. “Give me my daughter! I swear to God!!!”

Wrapped in a towel, Jessa sprinted up the lawn toward the noise, barely managing to keep covered. She was screaming at them both, “What in God’s name is going on out here???”

Mrs. Winston shouted, “I should call the cops on you for what you did to that baby!”

“Give me back my damn daughter, you stupid, fucking cunt!” Wade shouted, ready to punch Mrs. Winston. “Get the hell away from my house!”

Mrs. Winston bristled at the name calling, continuing to hold his baby away from him.

Jessa intervened, stepping between them and grabbing the baby in one arm and her towel in the other. But it didn’t work. The towel dropped, which caused her to wail in frustration.

“Cut it out right now! Both of you!!” Jessa stepped delicately, trying to avoid the glass on the driveway, when she noticed the tool.

“Mrs. Winston, what are you doing with that hammer??”

Mrs. Winston’s eyes blazed with fury.

“Your piece of shit boyfriend here locked the baby in the car and just left her to suffocate in the sun,” she spat. “Don’t either of you have any goddamn sense.”

“More sense than to shatter a window in a baby’s damn eyes, you fucking whore,” Wade yelled at her. “I should call the cops on you. I was only gone in the house a damn second, for God’s sake.”

Mrs. Winston paused. “I don’t care. You don’t leave a kid in the backseat of a car unattended.”

“You don’t even have any kids,” he cursed. “You should mind your own damn business.”

“And neither of you should have kids,” the lady said to them, glaring. “An idiot and a slut.”

And Mrs. Winston grabbed her hammer and walked back toward her house.

“You’re going to pay for this goddamn window,” he announced as she retreated. Her reply to him was a hand gesture before she slammed the door to her house.

This day wasn’t going to get any better than yesterday, Wade realized. Jessa stared at him.

“Did you really leave Lydie in a hot car while I took a shower?” she asked him, shaken with overdramatic concern for the baby.

He rolled his eyes.

“No, I did not leave her in a hot car,” Wade ranted sarcastically. “It’s February. Beyond that, I cracked a window before the sun came up and then went into the kitchen for one second.”

“Why would you do that? Why not take the baby with you?” Jessa asked.

“I don’t fucking know, Jess,” Wade said, annoyed. “I just had to go to the kitchen.”

Wade glared at her.

“And now I’m going back to the kitchen to get a broom and a trash bag for my car window. I can’t fucking believe this.”

He started to move away and then whined, “I guess you can drive her to daycare before school then while I take care of all this shit. Just put some fucking clothes on.”

And Wade stomped off toward his mom’s kitchen again.

Δ

During the drive to school, alone and tired, Wade tried listening to the audiobook in the Prius. He wanted a moment’s calm. He wanted to feel normal and positive. He wanted to stop thinking about Jessa naked on the lawn with fury in her eyes. When was the last time that she wasn’t even a little bit pissed at him? She barely knew anything about all the shit he was up to, yet Jessa’s anger and disappointment always simmered at a low boil. He knew he deserved her anger. He knew he deserved more anger from her, in fact. But, for the longest time, he could not win with anyone, no matter what he did.

Lydie was a sweetheart, but babies—even good babies—try people’s nerves. Jessa had this scowl she would aim at Wade at night, this look that screamed “You did this to me!” while she was doing homework or eating a Lean Cuisine while the baby cried.

When was the last time things were normal or even good between him and Jessa? He thought back before Lydie arrived around Christmas, which was just chaos.

The pregnancy had sucked, for the most part, for both of them. Once Jessa started to show, in particular, everyone in Waverly was a little bit like Mrs. Winston toward them, the judgmental stares, the fake Southern bullshit “Bless your hearts.”

Wade wouldn’t receive the looks as much as Jessa did. People knew who she was and who her daddy was. So she started sending Wade out alone on errands. She wouldn’t shop at his store anymore, just send him with a list of stuff to buy. They couldn’t go to the movies or go to dinner even. Jessa said it was because they were supposed to save money, but Wade knew it was the good townsfolk that she was actually avoiding.

By the third trimester, Jessa was pretty much a shut-in, binging TV and eating junk food all day in his basement. In the most Southern way possible, Jessa had been “encouraged” to stay home from school that late in the pregnancy. The principal told her that her condition might “advertise” pregnancy to underclassmen, that the school didn’t encourage “that kind of behavior,” that the PTA might complain. After that meeting, Jessa didn’t leave the house and barely left the glow of the television.

“He damn near called me the town whore,” Jessa told Wade when he asked. Then, she got quiet. And stayed quiet. For hours.

Wade’s mom raised an eyebrow toward Jessa on occasion in those days, though not out of annoyance. Mary told Wade that maybe the girl ought to talk to someone. But Jessa shrugged off any and all suggestions that she might be depressed. Instead, she would just blame her self-imposed exile on vanity.

“I’m as big as a house, Wade, hot and puffy all the time,” she whined. “No way in Hell am I going anywhere.”

Wade didn’t argue with her, feeling too guilty that he had done this to her. She didn’t need a fight in her condition. And Wade didn’t tell her how he felt about the massive change their lives had seen, growing bigger inside Jessa every day. Grown-ups get to act like a new baby is a blessed event. The only time Wade and Jessa celebrated the coming baby or felt blessed, instead of damned and cursed, was when they were at checkups.

Trips to the doctor were the only time Jessa would leave the basement that past October.

That was it, he realized.

The last time Wade felt normal, with Jessa or anybody, was the last ultrasound appointment, the one where the pictures looked more like a baby than a blob to him. The technician, who had always been super nice to them, introduced Wade and Jessa to their daughter’s newest habits.

“She’s growing bigger,” the tech said warmly, getting excited. “She opens her eyes now. She’s going to be so strong for y’all.”

Wade was holding on to Jessa’s hand. And he looked at her. And Jessa was smiling at their baby, who she knew was strong already because Jessa knew the girl was growing and kicking inside her. Jessa had read the baby books. She knew what to expect.

And, looking at his daughter, Wade started to sob. It hit him so suddenly, he jerked his body, and Jessa held his hand firm so that he couldn’t break away.

“I just—I just don’t want to fail her,” he admitted to Jessa. “I’m scared I won’t deserve her. Look how big she is. She’s stronger than me already.”

Jessa rubbed his arm tenderly.

“It’s OK to be scared,” the tech said to them both. “And it’s OK to be excited.”

Jessa added to this, “I think you’re going to be a good dad.”

“I don’t know.”

“I think all dads have that same worry,” his girlfriend said. “My dad probably did. Your dad probably did.”

Wade squeezed her hand. He was still crying a little, thinking about how his dad tried to pretend to be in a good mood for Wade’s sake, no matter how sick he felt during the chemotherapy. He was a good father, right up to the end.

He whispered to her, “I miss my dad.”

“It’s OK,” Jessa said. “I miss him too.”

That was the day they chose the name Lydie, after his late father.

That was the last time Wade felt normal. The nightmare of the town whore in his basement and the baby that was going to ruin his entire future were more than just a series of mistakes. For that moment, they felt like a family to him.

Δ

Waverly High School was a safe, nice place where Wade could feel like the kid he actually was again. Throughout the tumult of the past few months, because Mary demanded he stay in school, he thankfully had moments where he didn’t have to feel like a total, struggling adult.

Jessa had talked about maybe the two of them getting their GEDs so that they could work and make more money. But she just wanted out of his mom’s basement. And her own family didn’t want her around. Wade liked the chance to escape it all, even if it was for something as mind-numbing as a math class, but he had more to escape than Jessa did.

Because, for months, Wade concerned himself with Dr. Emmett in addition to everything else. Wade just wandered from disaster to disaster every day, except when he was in school.

Today, walking into Waverly just before the bell for first period, Wade knew that had to end, much as he dreaded it. To save himself and spare his family, he needed to be free to focus.

And it didn’t take long for him to decide who he wanted to punch, at least. That part was the easiest.

That puny punk Victor Lennox’s locker was four away from Wade’s. Victor Lennox taunted Wade in gym class every day, calling Wade a fag, even after Jessa got pregnant and everybody knew it was a lie. Victor Lennox was an asshole. And Victor Lennox was standing next to his locker. And Victor Lennox looked at Wade and said hello.

So, Victor Lennox got his ass knocked to the ground. And then Wade crouched on top of Victor Lennox and kept punching him in his stupid face.

Thirty minutes later, Wade had a weeklong suspension from school. His mom had received a phone call. And Wade walked back to his car.

Instead of driving right home, like Mary ordered him to do, Wade drove directly toward the dentist’s office, which—thanks to the weird office hours that Dr. Emmett kept—he knew was still a half hour from opening for business.