They work all week, twelve-hour days, more, Alisha helping out a little longer, through dinner, Taz bringing Midge days Alisha’s in school. Rudy lifts, holds, runs the level, climbs the ladders, but otherwise plays with Midge, keeps her away from the tool bucket, the nailers. Taz squeezes her food into his lunch cooler. Some toys into Rudy’s tool bucket. Changes diapers on brand-new kitchen counters. They’ll never know.
Stiff, sore, exhausted, he plods in every night, the house dark, Midge all but unconscious on his shoulder. He sings her a few songs, tells one short installment of Marnie the Mariner, then slides her into the crib, her thumb in her mouth. He tiptoes away, eases the door half shut, flips on a light, sits, gathers himself before reaching down and untying his boots. Toeing them off. Eventually he forces himself all the way up, gets the mail. Bills. Junk.
Trying to stay on top of things, he lines the bills up on the table the way Marnie did. Cuts them open with his utility knife. Knows he has to.
He looks at totals, due dates. The numbers swim, and he leans over, head in his hands. If he closes his eyes, he’ll be out where he sits. With all the work, things do look better. Until he lines up the bills. The house payment right on top, crushing as ever. Even with the first-half check folded in his pocket, the owner doing a surprise walk-through this afternoon, ecstatic, pulling out his tooled leather checkbook. He’d glanced over at Midge in her walker, lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t ask. Some sordid divorce, no doubt. The working class. The pathetic masses.
He pulls out the check, sets it down on top of the bills. Maybe enough to get him through the rest of the year. He’ll have to put the ad on Craigslist for Marnie’s Ghia.
He pushes at the mail stack, beyond the bills. A Costco flyer. A credit card app. Something stiff, like cardboard.
A postcard.
He sees the picture. Helena. The bright lights of Last Chance Gulch.
He turns it over. “You going to make it another weekend without me?”
A postcard?
He takes his phone from his tool pocket, changes his mind, puts it down. “Yeah,” he says, to the empty room, “we’ll make it.”
Marn says, I don’t think she’s talking just brute survival.
He picks the phone back up, types, “Got your card. We’re hanging in there.”
His phone buzzes almost instantly. “Good for you two.”
He looks away from Marn’s I told you so, texts back, “Everything OK over there?”
“Hanging in there.”
Marnie says, Ouch.
Taz has no idea what to say, holds the phone so long it goes black. He puts it on the postcard, spins it.
I think she’s waiting, Marnie says.
Minutes pass before it lights up, buzzes. “Okay then,” she says. “Off to bed. A room full of third graders always comes too early.”
He picks up the phone, clicks to see if maybe she’d called before resorting to postcards, if somehow he’d missed it. But there’s only one from Lauren. He knows he wouldn’t have missed it.
Hardly aware of his hands, he pushes call back instead of voicemail, and clicks and clicks to get it to stop, hears one ring before it shuts off. He just doesn’t have it in him. Not tonight.
Leaving the phone, he pushes back his chair, wanders into the kitchen, knows he should get something to eat. But he sees his computer, wonders since she’s using the post office, if maybe she emailed. He swings the lid up, waits, and waits, and sees nothing but the blank circle of his parents’ Skype dot, just two missed calls, both late, his mom waiting until his dad’s asleep. He wonders what it’s like down there for her, with him, and slowly shuts the computer. He wonders, too, what it’s like for Lauren, just sitting, waiting for the life ring of his call.
After looking over El’s texts once more, not a lot for analysis or hope, he shuts down the lights, walks through his empty house in the dark, and finds his way into the little bed in Midge’s room as if it’s the only walk he’s ever taken. Listening to her breathe, he drifts off, the night a tangled spin of Marnie and Elmo, even Lauren, his own mother. Midge sleeps through it all and when he wakes in the morning, he’s snarled in the sheets and his head aches. He feels less that he’s slept than that he’s been on a forced march. He drags out, starts the coffee, picks up his phone.
Nothing from Elmo. Not a word.
He looks at the computer, almost afraid to open it, but it’s the middle of the night there, maybe his mom’s only chance.
The phone rings in his hand, and he smiles, thinks, “At last,” like the two of them have this connection, can tell when the other needs them most.
He says, “Hey,” almost a sigh, but it’s Lauren who says hello, who says she knew she wouldn’t be waking him. She says that she saw that he called, that she’s been wondering about coming out, just a few days. It’s been so long.
He pushes the computer lid open, sits staring at the lighted blip of his parents’ Skype, until Lauren goes quiet, says, finally, “Ted?”
“Yeah?”
“So, what do you think? Would now be a good time?”
“Yeah, it would,” he says. “It’d be great.”