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.Tesh nods his head in agreement.My brain tells me Get up and catch her before she falls down, but my legs are too heavy with beer.I tip up a bottle to hide my eyes.Becca sits on the floor, flushed and sweaty, still giggling.She looks up at me and says, “What’s wrong with you?”It is a question I can’t answer.I remember when Shelly asked me the same thing.I sat counting the candy bars inside the vending machine in the waiting area of the emergency room.They sent us there to sit after they carted Billy in for his magnetic scan.The technician told us the big magnet could rip the car keys right out of our pants’ pockets.I wanted to keep searching out what came next, so I wouldn’t have to go back and think of anything already past.I rubbed at my shoulders, trying to get the feel out of them.All evening I’d sat in a vinyl booth drinking beer and making up scrapbook pictures in my head, then had come home and lifted Billy up on my shoulders, holding his feet in my palms, spinning him around the room.Shelly was shouting, “Stop it, Mitch.He’s too young.He’s only a baby.” But I heard him laughing and laughing, and I closed my eyes so that everything went purple and the spinning felt warm and liquid and made sound come from my mouth.The small heft of Billy on my shoulders felt as good as anything I’d ever known, and I wanted to tell Shelly.She was a shadow in my turning, a voice around me, circling me like a moon.Her sweet perfume was the odor of the dark behind my eyes, the smell of the heft of Billy on my shoulders.She was shouting and I moved inside my eyes when Billy’s laughing came through louder, the rounded edges of it broke off into a sound like a tearing of his lungs.I moved and opened my eyes as the room shifted behind Shelly and there was a dull thump like something dropped on wet sand, then Shelly was screaming with her hand over her mouth as I was still gathering the words to tell her how good everything felt, and I ended my turning and saw the swipe of blood on the beige wall above the thermostat.Shelly moved to the phone and dialed.In the waiting room I watched people put money in the vending machine.Shelly sat beside me; I felt her watching me.A man across the aisle held a bloody T-shirt and a broken yardstick.I had been in this emergency room once before, when I burned my hand.As I sat remembering that, the doctor came out in blue paper clothes and said Billy would be just fine.Shelly cried and shivered and held the doctor’s hands.I was happy, but somehow the fact that he would be fine made what I did seem all the more foolish.When the doctor left, Shelly smoothed the thighs of her jeans and said, “I don’t want you around him anymore.”I shook my head.“You think that now,” I said, “but it’s not what you really want.”“You won’t make it as a father.Not till you grow up.”My neck slowly grew stiff, like I’d been in a car accident.I knew right then that if Billy had died from his injuries Shelly would have thrown her arms around me, that I would have been forgiven and pitied.“I feel older than anybody,” I said.An ambulance had pulled up outside, its red lights circling along the walls of the waiting area.“That’s guilt,” she said.“It doesn’t count for anything.Everything you do is easy.” She looked at me like a bored high school teacher explaining some simple problem of geometry.That look was enough to let me know she was done with me, and the sturdiness in her voice after what we’d been through let me see straight down eighteen years, her raising the baby up decent and strong without much in the way of help from me.Shelly went upstairs in the elevator to stay with Billy overnight.She had her arms around herself.I went home and put my things in the toe of the sleeping bag.Tesh takes off to find more beer and cigarettes.I stay behind with Tina and Becca.We dance, tossing ourselves around in a loose-boned way that makes me feel good.The tape plays “Michelle,” and the three of us clasp hands and turn an awkward, slow circle, stumbling over our feet and laughing.It has been a while since I’ve held a hand or seen happy females.Becca asks where I live, and I tell her on the beach, in a giant red seashell.The words float up out of the beer I’ve drunk.She shakes her curls and laughs and calls me silly, so I tell her that big, white dinosaurs come growling every night and wake me up.I tell her animals crawl out of the ocean when the moon is out; I say that in France, people find picture books washed up on the beach.Tina says I sure can tell a story.“They’re not stories,” Becca says.I say to her, “Would you dance with me? I’ll be real careful.”Tina is distracted by the TV, pictures of waving flags and fighter jets.I guess the station is signing off with the national anthem.“You don’t have to be careful,” Tina says over her shoulder, “I trust you.”Becca takes hold of my hands and spreads her feet across my insteps, her white anklets atop my black sneakers.She is as tall as my chest.I balance her arms up and out while we turn a stiff box step, watching our feet.She smells of baby shampoo and sweat.The eyelets on my shoes press into my skin.Tina waves her arms around like an orchestra conductor, laughing, keeping time with our slow dance.When the music quits, I hear sand whisk against the storm door.Becca steps down off my feet.With her weight gone, I feel myself drifting up toward the ceiling.“I liked that,” Becca says.“Well, good.I liked it, too.” I hold out my hand and she gives me five.Tina claps for us, and we bow.The door opens, smacks open with the wind, and Tesh walks in carrying a grocery sack.“Road trip!” he says.Another man steps in behind him, young, with short hair and leather biker clothes, a wallet chained to his belt.Tesh reaches in the bag and begins tossing cans of beer to us.The biker goes to the empty pizza box to nibble on bits of crust.He has acne on his pink skin; I want to tell him his clothes are all wrong for his face.“Where are we going?” Tina asks [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]